Audio Version Of The Blog – 03.01.17
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Question: Why does the Torah conceal secrets that are so essential to manage in this complicated world?
Answer: The Torah doesn’t conceal anything. A person doesn’t need to know more than he does; otherwise, he may become confused and do something silly. If he wants to understand more, he must study the wisdom of Kabbalah regularly.
There are no prohibitions regarding the study, only internal, natural, psychological prohibitions. In a person’s head and heart, there are safety valves that do not allow him to see or know what actually is happening in this world.
A person only sees the external wrapping of it. And the deeper internality he cannot know so he will not touch it with his “dirty hands.” Therefore, he must first engage in the study and show himself and the world that he is ready for a right, good, and sensible action. And to that extent, he can advance.
[202100]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/4/16
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Question: The Torah talks about a prohibition against fortune telling…does the wisdom of Kabbalah predict the future?
Answer: Fortunetellers only ruin life for us. A person doesn’t need to think about the future and ask questions about maintaining his perishable body. We need to attain a soul. Where is our soul? It is necessary to discover and develop it, connect with it, and live within it, not within the body.
Question: In the Torah it is said that it is necessary to kill, burn, execute, or hang fortunetellers. What is your explanation of this? What are these four types of death according to the Torah?
Answer: What the Torah is talking about is completely irrelevant to our world. When it talks about four types of death, it is not referring to the physical body but to the soul and how it is destroyed by a person. He is the only one who can harm it.
Nobody else has the ability to reach and influence the human soul. A positive influence on it is expressed in elevation to the level of the Creator. A negative influence is a descent through four phases that are symbolized by strangulation, stoning, decapitation, and immolation. But these four types of punishment of the soul are in a case where a person neglects its development.
Question: What does the use of these deaths mean in regard to predictions of my future?
Answer: A prediction of my death symbolizes that I must fix a characteristic within me, which I get rid of from within me. It is an internal correction and no more than that.
Question: A person must correct his own soul. Is he “burning” his uncorrected desires this way?
Answer: Nobody is capable of touching a person’s soul other than himself. If he goes deeply into his spiritual development, he can influence his soul in any direction, either in a bad direction or a good direction.
[200862]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/1/16
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New Life #353 – Past, Present, Future
We are inside the special system that is called “nature” or “Creator,” which is one and the same. This system is closed, perfect, and constant, and humanity receives reactions and influences from it and develops more and more.
The system works on us, trying to bring us into conformity with it, so that we would feel, attain, and become similar to nature by becoming its active integral parts consciously, according to our decision and through our work.
A person should become a master of this system—all people as one creature. In order to become as perfect as the system of nature, we must connect as one man.
Bestowal to each other, mutual connection and support, up to loving your neighbor as yourself, is the law of the single system in which we exist. This system works on us in order to bring us to its state.
Therefore, the law about loving the neighbor is a mandatory law of development that acts upon us regardless of our desire or reluctance. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to fulfill this law so that the advancement will go by a good way, according to the mutual consent of the Creator and creature. Then our development will be fast and enjoyable.
Through a good or a bad way, sooner or later we still advance getting closer to the qualities of the system of nature. We see that the world is changing all the time, each time revealing more advanced states in order to finally fulfill the compulsory requirement. Altruism, a general connection above all the differences, is the basic law of nature, so it should be carried out among the people as well.
Inanimate matter, plants, and animals exist without freedom of choice, but a person must understand this law and agree with it, so much so that even if he has an opportunity to choose something else, he nevertheless prefers this altruistic law of complete connection with others.
Altruism is the final state of the evolution of nature to which we shall come. Along the way, we always pass through two states, two lines. We enter the left line, sufferings and troubles, and then we understand that it is necessary to connect and rush to the right line.
Humanity moves this way: sometimes brutal regimes arise, and other times more kind and merciful ones. Again and again evil and good replace each other, until finally, after all these sufferings, we would say, “enough!” and will be able to unite completely.
Question: Why is the reaction of the system on human behavior so nonlinear and complicated? One nation doesn’t act in an integral form, and the system hits another nation. Everything is so confusing it is difficult to advance.
Answer: Indeed, advancement is not carried out according to our understanding and feeling, but in accordance with the reason and the sense of the higher degree called “faith above reason.” After all, we advance due to the higher forces of nature. Why did it organize so we can’t see anything on this path?
The Kabbalists explain that if we had an opportunity to see everything, we would never ascend to the higher degree. We would only extend the material horizons on our degree.
However, in order to ascend to the next level, it is necessary to change our internal work program, our desires, intentions, and thoughts. This is impossible to do while staying in the same sense and reason. We need to receive strength from above and constantly improve ourselves with its help.
We can’t receive additional spiritual development with the tools we currently have. It is possible to receive material development though because it happens at the same level. There are smart and stupid people, strong and weak, successful and losers, but all of this doesn’t relate to qualitative development.
Qualitative development is the transition to the next level, like the difference between inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels, or between a fish, a beetle, a dog, and a man. It means this is a qualitative development in the perception of reality, or to be more precise, in the approximation to the upper force that controls everything.
Such a development assumes the renunciation of one’s current degree in order to be included each time more and more in the upper degree. Therefore, we can’t perform the qualitative ascent by ourselves. We can’t understand the upper degree before we rise to it because it is above us. We don’t feel it.
A stone can’t feel how a plant lives. There is a connection between the degrees, but not in the sense and reason. Precisely by annulling my sense and reason, I can receive some kind of foretaste of the next degree.
The way a stone can’t feel a plant and a plant can’t feel an animal, so too a person can’t feel the upper force. Only if we work in order to get closer to it do we cause its reaction and eventually will be in contact with it.
For the first time in history human begins to climb the ladder of nature, from our world to the upper world. The difference here is not the same as between a stone and a plant, but much more qualitative.
[201040]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/12/17, Lesson on the Topic, “Mismah Arosa,” (Arosa Document)
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Question: Just like a mother and her developing fetus, is it possible to say that a student and teacher have a shared spiritual circulatory system?
Answer: Certainly, it is to the degree that the student is included with the teacher. But the best way to be integrated with a teacher is through a group of ten.
[200826]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/7/16
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New Life #411 – The Game of Changing Characters
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz
Summary
How does a person develop through the game, what is the goal of the game in our lives, and how is it possible to be clothed in the character of the divine and understand the game of life?
All our lives we play characters.
Children play games, do sports exercises and the like. Teenagers already begin to play characters. Basically all of us play different characters all of our lives, at home, at work, everywhere. We don’t know who we truly are. No person is familiar with himself. The ego obligates us to play characters.
It is possible to discover who I am only if I will begin to clothe in new forms that are of benefit to others, like the Creator. Playing the character of the divine means being good and beneficent to everyone. This is the most enjoyable game.
When a person wants to play the character of the divine, he begins to get the feeling and the understanding of what that is. This is not talking about just doing good. I must learn well what it means to be good like the divine. We learn this together, in a group of players. This is the most enjoyable, most complicated and most excellent game.
This is not about thinking that you are divine like a crazy person thinks, but is about the effort to be like Him in your attitude toward others.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #411 – The Game of Changing Characters,” 22/6/14
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Preparation for the Lesson
[media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic: “Descent for the Sake of Ascent,” Part 1
[media 3] | [media 4] |
Lesson on the Topic: “Descent for the Sake of Ascent,” Part 2
[media 5] | [media 6] |