New Life 829 – Religions And The Development Of Man

New Life 829 – Religions And The Development Of Man
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What does the return to religion today indicate? How did Abraham discover the upper force? What was the impact of this revelation on humanity and why did popular religion emerge?

There is a trend of returning to religion today as a result of the growing egoism. People are looking for meaning of life. Religion tells us that there is a force that manages us above nature, that we should believe in it and obey its commandments. We don’t need to “believe” in order to reveal the Creator; we need to work and to acquire the attribute of love of others.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 829 – Religions And The Development Of Man,” 2/14/17

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 03.31.17

Preparation for the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic, “Preparation for Pesach” 

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 03.30.17

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What Is Prayer?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion from Facebook: What is prayer?

Answer: Prayer is an appeal to the upper force of nature to correct one’s egoistic inclination.

This is the only thing that the upper force accepts as the right request, a desire, a sense of deficiency, that attracts a positive force, correcting this deficiency.

Question: And what about the millennia of prayers humanity raised in the course of history?

Answer: They cannot be considered prayers because only a request to correct one’s egoism and to replace it with universal love for everyone is called a prayer.

If you do not ask for this, you don’t appeal to anyone. The upper force responds only to this request because the property of love and bestowal is all that it contains. Whoever asks this force for the property of love and bestowal gets it to the extent that they have a true desire. Whoever doesn’t ask, doesn’t receive it. You can cry as much as you want about everything else, it’s “a voice crying out in the desert.”

Question: Then what is the purpose of the purposefully composed prayer books that people recite prayers from?

Answer: By reading these prayers, a person raises his desire not toward correction, but toward all sorts of personal benefits: money, health, and so on. None of this works.

Question: What should I ask for in order for it to be a true prayer?

Answer: You should ask only for a supra-egoistic property: bestowal and love of others. Everything else is a waste of time.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/3/17

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Attitude Toward Anti-Semites

Laitman_632_4Question from Facebook: How do you deal with anti-Semites?

Answer: Anti-Semites are people who instinctively feel that there is a source of their good or bad existence within the Jews. Feeling their dependence on Jews, and at the same time suffering in this life, they hate the Jews.

We need to explain to them the real reason for their hatred and work together on correction; otherwise, we will not accomplish anything. It is impossible to annihilate the Jews because they must carry out their mission.

Even if an additional world war breaks out in which half of the Jews and half of the rest of the world are killed, in any case, we will ultimately reach the same common denominator.

It is necessary to explain this to everyone and to try to explain this to the Jews themselves, because they are the true opponents of the correction of mankind.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/1/17

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My Thoughts On Twitter, 3/29/17

twitter

Maybe antisemitism doesn’t really exist?

jccJewTwitMar29

In Nazi Germany Association of German National Jews supported Hitler. History is repeating itself: American Jews are voting against Israel

Jews against AIPAC2017 are against Israel’s existence, eager to renounce their Jewishness. This is the hatred that has destroyed the Temple

Since falling from love to hatred, we’ve hated Kabbalah & the unity that it teaches for 2,000 years now–this is the root of our suffering.

Naturally, the man exhibiting anti-Semitism threatening Jewish organizations is Jewish: by rejecting “love of others” we hate ourselves.

Jews will never be accepted in any society, because society will always feel their oppositeness due to their bestowal origins.

Egoistic #relationships in humanity have been determining all our history, but cannot continue developing anymore and must be corrected.

Let’s not fear robots taking people’s jobs. Humanity’s job is to reveal the Upper World in a corrected connection (love) among all people.

Kabbalah: it’s not man who must be corrected, but his connection to others. That is the quality of “human,” while the others are “animal.”

The growing ego causes a fractured society of 90% poor and 10% rich. This is fraught with war. Correcting the ego is becoming a necessity.

Jews are a people created by uniting different Babylonian groups. If lacking connection, hatred arises among them, and they oppose Israel.

Jews-turned-anti-Semites reject not only their heritage, but primarily their task to bring the method of connection for the entire world.
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From Twitter, 3/29/17

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The Value Of Each Soul Equals The Value Of The Whole System

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person’s soul has its own individual root, a point in the heart, that is not related to anything or to anyone. There are different states in it that are divided mainly into male and female, high and low, right and left, etc.

This means that there is a significant distinction between the souls according to their attributes. This has nothing to do with the value of the soul because if it is a closed system, if a certain part, even the smallest one, ceases to function, the whole system will come to a halt. Therefore, the value of every soul is equal to the value of the whole system.

At the same time, there is a great difference between the individual souls; each one is different from the others. But in the ultimate state, which we will eventually reach, all the souls are equal. On the way, there can be male and female souls, souls of children and of adults, souls from the right line or the left line, etc., and even with regard to height, there are souls that belong to each of the ten levels.

Question: Suppose there is a male soul in a body of man and he has to attain a certain part of the soul or the whole soul, and then he has to return to another life. Does that mean that he has to be in a male body again?

Answer: We needn’t think that it has anything to do with how the soul resides in a body in our world. I don’t want to talk about that because then it will be difficult for us to avoid the wrong impressions.

A person’s body doesn’t determine anything, whereas the point in the heart that one has to develop is eternal. I have to think about how to make it complex and integral, integral with the other points, and how to unite with as many people as possible in mutual bestowal.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/6/16

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Jewish Business News, “Starving People Make The UN Fat”

In my regular column in Jewish Business News, my new article: “Starving People Make The UN Fat

“More than 20 million people face starvation and famine.” Where has the UN been until today? Gorging at their expense.

On December 20, 2016, the Internet site Big Think wrote about Swedish billionaire László Szombatfalvy’s launch of an “international competition in order to find a better system for world governance.” To explain the reasons behind the competition, a letter published on the foundation’s website states that “The greatest threats we face today transcend national boundaries; they therefore need to be addressed jointly by all countries based on an increased realization of our mutual dependence.”

And if one might ponder why Mr. Szombatfalvy did not approach the UN for this sort of undertaking, as that should be the default entity for carrying out global transformations, the fund’s website reflects the billionaire’s view of the UN. According to the site, “Our current international system – including but not limited to the United Nations – was set up in another era following the Second World War. It is no longer fit for purpose to deal with 21st century risks that can affect people anywhere in the world. We urgently need fresh new thinking in order to address the scale and gravity of today’s global challenges, which have outgrown the present system’s ability to handle them.”

Indeed they have. Less than a week ago, Stephen O’Brien, the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, stated that “more than 20 million people across four countries face starvation and famine. Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death. Many more will suffer and die from disease.” Mr. O’Brien also said that “$4.4bn was needed by July to avert disaster.”O’Brien has been in office for nearly two years now. Where has he been for the past two years? Where has the UN been? Starvation of twenty million people, nearly 1.4M of whom are children, does not happen overnight. Why has the UN not alerted the world that this was unfolding? All of a sudden, harrowing images of emaciated little children are taking over the newsfeeds. Could the warning not be sounded earlier?

As Mr. Szombatfalvy noted on his site, the UN is a defunct, irrelevant entity. It is rotten to the core. The sole interests of the politicians and diplomats who serve in it are their paychecks and promoting their careers. The billions of dollars the organization already gets could have cured the world’s problems several times over. They could have shipped a few million of the 1.3 billion tons of excess food trashed each year and solved this crisis, but they have no interest in doing so. Starving children bring in donations. Feeding them would dry up the flow of money and kill this cash cow.

To understand just how warped the perception of the UN is concerning its task, consider this piece of information concerning the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). On its Frequently Asked Questions page, UNICEF USA refutes the “vicious” and unsubstantiated rumor that Caryl M. Stern, President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, “earns more than $1 million.” In truth, the organization proclaims, Mrs. Stern “earns $521,820.” Indeed, a CEO who is a role model of austerity.

In Search of Viable Governance

To “find a better system for world governance,” as Mr. Szombatfalvy put it, we need to start at the root cause of all the problems. In 1964, Nobel Prize laureate in physics Dennis Gabor wrote, “Till now man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up against his own nature.” More than fifty years later, we are still reluctant to accept the truth in these simple words.

In fact, we have been told since Biblical times that “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen 8:21), but until recently, when we began to talk about the narcissism epidemic engulfing the Western world, we obstinately tried to circumvent the problem rather than solve it.

Over the eons, humanity has tried every conceivable means of governance—from slavery to feudalism to capitalism to liberalism, to fascism, Nazism, communism and every other ism in between. But if you look in the annals of history, you will find that we have been swaying from one brutality to the next. More than anything, our history is one long bloodbath. We have not found a single means of governance that is both sustainable and guarantees the well-being of all human beings. And the reason we have not found it is that we are narcissistic and selfish to the core.

Therefore, if we truly want to help ourselves and others, we must address two issues. The first is provision of sustenance. In a world where so much food gets lost or wasted, it is unconscionable to let other human beings starve. The food already exists, so all we need is to collect and ship it where it’s needed. The second issue in the healing process is a long-term educational program that will prevent crises from recurring. This is the issue I would like to focus on.

You Cannot Know Unless You Try

In a TED talk given in May 2010, acclaimed American sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis stated that human beings form a kind of superorganism. Approximately eighty years prior, acclaimed commentator of The Book of Zohar, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, wrote that “we have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society.” He also added that “in our generation, when each person is aided for his happiness by all the countries in the world … the possibility of leading a good, happy, and peaceful life in one country is inconceivable when it is not so in all the countries in the world.” Ashlag admitted that “people have not yet grasped this,” but stressed that it is only because “the act comes before the understanding, and only actions will prove and push humanity forward.”

In other words, we will not feel that we are a single superorganism (as Christakis put it) until we begin to act as one. Once we begin to “experiment” with this, we will suddenly realize that this has been the case all along, yet we were unaware of it.

Consider this interesting fact: The only nation to have survived since antiquity is the Jewish nation. The Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman nations have all vanished. Only Judaism remains. Numerous scholars, philosophers, philo-Semites and anti-Semites have pondered, “What is the secret of his immortality?” as Mark Twain asked about the Jew.

The answer is that there is a fundamental difference between the Jews and all the other nations. The secret to the endurance of the Jews is the adhesive of unity. The original Jews were completely unaffiliated, coming from different tribes and cultures. The only thing that held them together was Abraham’s idea that mercy and love are the foundation stones upon which to build society, and that whenever the ego erupts, they should cover it with love instead of fighting or parting ways. This approach had held the Jews together through crises and wars for approximately 1,500 years—from Abraham’s time until the ruin of the Second Temple some two millennia ago.

Moreover, history has proven that this “cement” of unity that covers egoism is so strong that it not only sustained the Jewish people longer than any other nation, but kept them in tact through countless attempts to destroy, disperse, and exterminate them. Although today’s Jews have forgotten what had sustained them for centuries, the persistent strength of that adhesive is still strong enough to keep this nation in existence.

Implementing Unity above Enmity

This historic proof is our key to solving the world’s problems. Unity over egoism is the one mode of governance the world has not yet tried. But in the face of current crises—the risk of another world war, mass starvation, accelerated global warming, and pollution of natural resources—I think that we have no other choice but to give this approach a serious consideration. Of all people, it was notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford who wrote, “Modern reformers, who are constructing model social systems, would do well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized.” On this point, he could not be more right.

As Ashlag said, “the act comes before the understanding.” Today, we are implementing Abraham’s principle of unity above enmity defacto. After numerous successful unity events throughout the world, including in conflict zones such as in Israel, with Arabs and Jews (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3 [the latter is in Hebrew, switch on the Subtitles option]), we are certain that we can reinstate our forefather’s method in large scale. Even people who have tried this notion independently, after reading my book, Completing the Circle: an empirically proven method for finding peace and harmony in life, have testified to its positive impact on their lives.

In my view, until we deal with the heart of the problem, which is the egoism in human nature, and do so specifically in the way that Abraham bequeathed to his disciples, by bonding atop their animosity, we will find no remedy to our woes. The notion that we need not suppress our unruly egos, but simply exert to unite above them may be a novel idea to some, but in my view, we have run out of options and this is the only way to spare humanity many more years of needless torment.

And finally, I would advise Mr. Szombatfalvy, that if he wishes to try out Abraham’s method of connection, and help the world “find a better system for world governance,” as he put it, to take our free materials and spread them the world over. Our non-profit, voluntary organization does its utmost to circulate this notion of unity. If he or any other capable and understanding individual may assist us in this task, we would be more than happy to provide whatever is required.
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What Did The Creator Create: A Body Or A Soul?

Laitman_720Question: You claim that according to Baal HaSulam, man descended from the ape. Could it be that Baal HaSulam was wrong? After all, it says in the Torah that the Creator created man in His image and His likeness.

Answer: It isn’t only Baal HaSulam who says that man descended from the ape. Many other Kabbalists write about that. When we speak about man, it should be clear what man we refer to. If we refer to a man who is flesh and blood in our world, we refer to the level of the animal, and in this case, we should agree with what the books say.

Three hundred years before Darwin, a great Kabbalist the Ari said that man is the next phase that descends from the monkey, which is the intermediate phase between the animate level of nature and man.

Our animate state is accurately attained by Kabbalists. Moreover, when the Ari wrote about it, it was not a new idea about creation and the development of man from the ape since it was already mentioned in The Book of Zohar, which was written in the second century.

Kabbalists saw this process by seeing the development of the upper forces, and they described it in just a few sentences, which were enough to understand everything. When we examine the system of creation, we divide it into five levels according to the five phases of the spreading of the Direct Light. Therefore, when we speak about a certain object, we have to talk about it on all levels of its development.

Man is called a soul without a body. Just like any other animal, the body undergoes its phases of development and dies, while the soul only accompanies it. The body helps the soul develop. This is its mission. As long as a person has not acquired his soul and has not begun to assemble it from the shattered parts, he exists in a body.

When a person begins to correct his soul, that is, his intentions from receiving for his own sake to bestowal unto others, he is no longer a monkey and not man in our world but a human being (Adam). The human level symbolizes man (Adam) that resembles the Creator, even it is only in one small part of the desire that emerges in him. The small part that is corrected is called Man (Adam). From this perspective, there are no human beings in our world; there are only apes that resemble man in their shape. If we speak about humans, we call them souls. Therefore, it depends on what we speak about and on which level.

Question: What did the Creator create: a biological body or our soul?

Answer: The Torah speaks about everything, but it basically speaks about the soul. Everything we see around us doesn’t actually exist, but is inside us in the form of different desires. The replicas of our desires are imprinted around us and are called “this world.” Objects in the form of the still, vegetative, animate, and human nature, which we see, represent impressions of our internal attributes.

We are in a matrix in which there are only forces that depict ourselves to us, and everything that we see inside us and outside ourselves, are like on a computer screen. When we see our internal desires, which are aimed for our own sake on the screen, they depict our world to us. When the internal desires and forces are aimed at the sake of others, they depict the upper world to us. This is how we are made.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/4/16

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Preferring The Son Of The Unloved Wife

Dr. Michael LaitmanTorah, Deuteronomy, 21:15-17: If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved, then it shall be in the day he wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn. 

But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right of the firstborn.

Everything that is said in the Torah must be understood in the spiritual and not material sense: as if I like this baby, and the other one less, or that this is a beloved wife, and the other one not.

At the spiritual level, everything happens in a completely different way. My favorite desires are egoistically closer to me. Unloved desires make me work harder and therefore, the firstborn comes exactly from them. This is my strength.

The “firstborn” is higher and stronger than what comes from a weak desire that I love, so contrary to all kinds of egoistic calculations, I should prefer a desire that originates in a more serious egoistic layer.

My “unloved wife” is complex, integrated, difficult, and has a tough character. It is my very strong egoistic quality and therefore, with its help I can attain a greater spiritual height.

However, I need to work on it, overcome myself, and that is why I have to take up precisely the unloved desire, raising myself above my egoistic qualities only to the act that draws me closer to the Creator and pushes me higher and further away from my egoism. Naturally, the unloved son gives a greater ascent, a greater elation. For this very reason it should be preferred.

Question: Is this the root for enemies eventually becoming closest people to me?

Answer: Of course. And vice versa, it is said that those living in your house will be your enemies because with your enemies, you have to work harder and correspondingly, you ascend higher.
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From KavTv’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book”, 9/26/16

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