Audio Version Of The Blog – 05.19.17

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Haaretz: “The Fundamental Flaw Behind the Cyber Attack”

In my regular column in Haaretz, my new article: “The Fundamental Flaw Behind the Cyber Attack

The best way to secure cyberspace has nothing to do with computer technology and everything to do with human nature.

The massive cyber-attack the world has been under for several days now is a serious wakeup call for all of us. It is still unclear how many facilities and individuals have been affected and to what extent, but this is clearly the most widespread ransomware attack in history.

For the most part, the $300 US ransom those affected were required to pay were more symbolic than actual financial damages. Yet, the extent and speed of the spread should teach us several things: 1) no agency is hack-proof, not even the National Security Association (NSA), whose stolen software, WannaCry, is used in this ransomware; 2) today, inflicting widespread damage requires only a computer geek with plenty of ill-will; 3) there is no way to completely guard from such attacks.

Incomprehensible Capability to Harm

Consider this scenario: A terrorist hacker simultaneously infiltrates the computer system of several large hospitals in Iran and installs malicious software. The malware changes the prescriptions of drugs to thousands of patients causing a mass poisoning that kills hundreds of patients. The malware is built in such a way that it points to Israel as the perpetrator. How Iran would retaliate is anyone’s guess but the risk of starting an all-out war is evident.

Consider another scenario: A hacker breaks into the navigation system of a passenger jet, causing it to crash into a crowded residential area. With today’s hacking capabilities, a 9/11 type scenario would not require terrorists to hijack planes. They could simply hijack their systems in midair and cause the same damage without risking themselves.

Hacking can also hit us on a very personal level. Imagine that one morning you wake up to find that your bank account with all your savings has been emptied by what seems like a legal withdrawal. When you call the bank, they tell you that you made the transaction; it is even documented in their computers.

Train derailments, uncooling of nuclear reactors, traffic lights turning green all at the same time, drugs and dosages being changed in hospitals so as to cause harm, records of government decisions deleted or changed… In an age when everything is controlled by computer networks, anything can be hacked and sabotaged. We should know: No firewall or anti-malware is hack-proof.

Machines Control Us, but Unhinged Narcissists Control Them

Globalization and the internet provide endless opportunities for happiness. Think of all the people you can meet on Facebook, all the places and things you can see on Instagram, and all the products you can buy at huge discounts on eBay. Also, today there is no need to go to stores when you can order literally everything online.

But instead of enjoying ourselves, exploiting these possibilities for pleasure, these developments only increase our loneliness and pain. Social media has become a replacement for real friendship, and people use it to broadcast the most sickening acts that humans can do to one another. According to CNN, Facebook is planning to hire thousands of people to help review users’ posts following multiple incidents of people sharing videos of suicide and murder. The WannaCry ransomware has demonstrated that instead of benefitting from our interconnectedness, we fear it.

We have turned over control to virtual machines, but unrestrained narcissists control these machines and use them to manipulate and exploit us. The virtual arena not only reflects our ruthless, callous nature, it even emphasizes it because the relative anonymity of the virtual realm allows us to show our true, pitiless hearts. If anything good is to come out of the online realm we have developed, it is the recognition of evil—the acknowledgement that our nature is evil to the core, and without taming our very nature, we can forget about peace or peace of mind.

An Anti-Malware for the Ego

There is a way to tame the ego, if we are only willing to open our minds and hearts to it. It is thousands of years old and stems directly from the cradle of civilization. The progenitor of the method is Abraham, father of Isaac, Ishmael, and subsequently all Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In the days of Abraham, his town of Ur of the Chaldeans—a bustling city in the Babylonian Empire—was struggling with a similar problem to ours: excessive egoism was destroying the social order. Some sources, such as Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer (Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer), detail the extent of the enmity among the ancient Babylonians. The book writes that at some point, the builders of the Tower of Babel became so hateful toward each other that they hammered their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears, so to speak, and slaughtered one another. Naturally, the building of the tower was never completed.

When Abraham saw the hatred among his townspeople, he reflected on this day and night, writes Maimonides in Mishneh Torah (Chapter 1). Maimonides also writes that Abraham discovered that there is only one, uniform force in the world, which always manifests through opposites: heat and cold, expansion and contraction, giving and receiving, life and death, etc.

Abraham also discovered that in nature, everything is harmonious and balanced because the two opposites manifest equally. Yet, in humans, the negative manifestations have such dominance in society that the positive ones barely show. This is why the Torah writes, “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21).

Additionally, the sage from Babylon realized that forcefully suppressing the ego was hopeless. His father, Terah, was no ordinary man. The Midrash (Beresheet Rabbah) tells us that Terah was a high-ranking priest in the Babylonian Empire, who built and sold icons for a living and had contact with the Babylonian king, Nimrod. Abraham, who grew up with him and stood in for him at the shop, knew about the ways the Babylonians dealt with their problems and recognized their futility.

Therefore, instead of fighting with the ego head on, Abraham suggested something so radically different that to this day it is a novel approach. He said, “If you can’t suppress your hatred, use it as a tool to increase your love for others, and that way cover your hatred with love.” Several generations later, King Solomon capped Abraham’s method with his adage, “Hate stirs strife, and love covers all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12).

How Hate Increases Love (if used correctly)

Abraham’s idea was revolutionary, but implementing it was quite easy: Every time the ego increases and people become more hateful toward each other, use this enmity as an indication that it’s time to increase unity. When there is no hatred, people mind their own business and have no need to unite. They get along but they are basically indifferent to each other. But when hatred manifests among them, they can either part ways or strengthen their unity and brotherhood to match the increased hatred. The result of such work on unity is that brotherhood among people increases proportionally to the intensification of the hatred.

Think of it this way: If you build a house where there are hardly any winds, you do not need to make the walls exceptionally strong. But if you build it in an area that is prone to hurricanes and fierce storms, you must build it that much stronger in order to withstand the weather. As a result, your house would be much stronger.

Abraham realized that the intensifying hatred was therefore an opportunity to restore the balance between positive and negative that exists in nature but is absent in humans. Moreover, the conscious effort to unite made people aware of nature’s modus operandi and granted them wisdom that they could not otherwise acquire.

With this knowledge, Abraham’s descendants built the social system by which the ancient Hebrews were arranged. That system was so perfect, just, and balanced, that it became the basis of human justice to this day. Historian Paul Johnson wrote in the prologue to his book A History of the Jews: “No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny. At a very early stage in their collective existence, they believed they had detected a divine scheme for the human race, of which their own society was to be a pilot.” Even the most notorious anti-Semite in American history, Henry Ford, noticed the importance of the ancient society of the Hebrews to humankind. In his book The International Jew—the World’s Foremost Problem, Ford 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.”

Restoring Abraham’s Method

When Abraham’s descendants and followers achieved a sufficient level of unity, they were declared a nation, after committing to unite “as one man with one heart.” For more than a thousand years, they struggled with their growing egos and overcame them, all along improving their method of unity above hatred.

Yet, 2,000 years ago, the Jews succumbed to their egos. Awash with unfounded hatred, they helped the Romans overtake the Land of Israel and were exiled and dispersed. But worst of all, they have forgotten the true meaning of Judaism—to exalt love over hatred, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Today’s world has become worse than Abraham’s Babylon. We are not only killing one another like the builders of the Tower of Babel, we relish our selfishness and take pride in our narcissism. We want more of everything not because we need more, but because we need to have more than others! The need for superiority is the sovereign of our hearts. And as we are fighting one another, we are destroying ourselves just as cancer destroys the healthy cells around it until it kills its host and at the same time itself.

Despite its widespread damage, the WannaCry ransomware is but a tiny sample of the harm the human ego can inflict. It is a warning sign that no one is protected. All of humanity is in this together. The more humanity becomes technically interdependent, without correcting our attitude toward each other, the more suffering our interconnectedness will cause us.

We have failed at suppressing our egos, so now we must learn how to use them to increase our unity, just as Abraham did almost four millennia ago. This may seem like a formidable task, but the history of the Jews proves otherwise. If we rise above our cynicism and resignation, we will achieve such powerful solidarity and mutual concern that our unity will dwarf even that of our ancestors.

In the process, we, too, like Abraham, will reveal the unity that drives all of nature into harmony. We will find that meaning in hatred can be found only when it is turned into love of others, and that love of others does not exist unless through our efforts to unite above our hatred. If we choose to meet the challenge, we will emerge united and triumphant over our egos. If we capitulate, we will be tormented beyond belief.
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A Kabbalist And His Students

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: As a Kabbalist, do you feel the current state and the corrected state of each of your students at the same time?

Answer: No, I don’t penetrate this matter so deeply because in a usual lesson, there are about 500 students sitting before me, and another 2,000 connected virtually.

I cannot feel each and every one of them, and I don’t do it because I have a totally different mission. I must feel the general vessel and guide it toward the goal, and this is the mission I focus on. To the degree that each student connects to the general vessel, he is connected to me during the lesson.

The word “lesson,” “shiur” in Hebrew, means measure, magnitude. To the degree that the students can connect between them, they can receive what I insert into that vessel.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/29/17

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Phobias In Kabbalah

Laitman_049_01Question: What do phobias mean in Kabbalah? For example, I want to ask a question, but the fear of being criticized or ridiculed stops me from asking.

Answer: People have many phobias, over 800. But what do these phobias have to do with Kabbalah?

When you engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah and you are in contact with your friends, you begin to sift through yourself, all your inner phobias, uncertainties, all kinds of preconceived notions, subconscious and conscious perceptions, and from this assortment, only the most necessary will remain.

Of all the negative feelings, you need to leave only fear, which helps you advance, to not stop, and to not fall out of the framework in which you can move along with the group. The doubts remain, and you can only be sure of yourself when you advance together with others according to the correct methodology and by maintaining constant contact with the teacher during the lessons.

Then, all of your phobias, insecurities, and all sorts of depressive states obtain a proper form. They form your advancement.

Question: What is the basis of fear?

Answer: The basis of fear is very high: “Will I be able to reach a state of the Creator being pleased with me?

In our world it is the opposite; it distorts and turns into fear: “Will I be able to satisfy myself?” It has to be inverted. We also rise through these changes.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/15/17

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Lifting Twice

laitman_571_06Question: Why is it considered that a person who is in a spiritual descent can only be lifted twice?

Answer: This is a law of Torah. The first time you should try to lift him; even if you fail, your attempts still connect with him..

The second time, you really are working with him, knowing that you have common desires, common Kelim (vessels). When you try to rise together and you feel that you are unable to pull him, you have to leave him. It means that a “human being” has not sufficiently developed within him in order to pull him together with his “donkey” (his animal part).
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 10/19/16

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Remembrance Day For The Fallen In Israel’s Wars And The Victims of Terror

Laitman_417We arrived in the land of Israel after 2,000 years, after the Holocaust, after extermination and after pogroms. We returned to our historical land to establish our nation, our homeland, our people here, and we must do everything possible so that what we have gone through will never be repeated.

Wars come and go, there is no end to them. Just as one war ends, preparation for the next war begins.

We need to understand how we can achieve true peace, such a peace where all nations will not feel hatred and rejection toward us and will begin to accept the nation that was established by our hands, as a nation, will stop thinking that we have no right to exist as a people, like every person, as Jews and as a nation.

Why does everyone think that we should disappear from the face of the Earth? We must understand the reason for this, for those who gave their lives for the sake of the existence of the people and the establishment of the nation.  And then we will understand that we are not carrying out our special role on Earth, that we are a special people.

We must be the people of Israel. And the people of Israel are a people that were created on the basis of mutual responsibility, mutual connection, friendship, love, and unity, “as one person with one heart.”

If we become a people like this, we will succeed in establishing a different nation, not like the Western nations. It will be based on spiritual foundations. And then, as a people and as a nation, we can also provide an example to all other peoples and nations who are earnestly seeking ways to a better future but cannot find it without us.

We must be a “light unto the nations” (Isaiah 48:6), an example for them. I very much hope that we understand and implement this. And then the aversion and hatred toward us, the accusation that we exist only to cause harm to all the nations of the world, will naturally disappear.

Let us think about this and carry out our mission together for the sake of those who gave their lives so that we could exist today.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 4/19/17

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The Education Problem

laitman_245_09Question: I don’t quite understand why I have to feel all of humanity. I have no need for it. I am even ready to overcome my egoism, but I can’t say that it is for all of humanity.

Answer: You should start gradually. Can you imagine how the whole world would change if Europe were made up mainly of educated people?

What not only Europe but other countries and continents would be like? There would be mutual cooperation, mutual help, and mutual support. The world doesn’t need anything else! Our only problem today is education and nothing but that.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/8/17

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Islam, Spain, And The Entire World

laitman_437In the News (Breitbart): “Hundreds of posters displayed in a migrant-dominated part of Barcelona are urging Muslim men to marry Spanish women in a bid to spread Islam, and inviting members of the community to an ‘information meeting’.

“The posters, which are derogatory about Christians but call on ‘Brothers’ to marry women of the religion to ‘strengthen’ Islam, have been plastered through the neighbourhood of El Raval. Official data collected in 2014 found that 56.7 per cent of residents in El Raval were born abroad.

“’It is permissible and encouraged that the Muslim man marries honest and chaste women who belong to the People of the Book. Even though they have distorted and altered the tradition, they are still suitable for marriage.

“’Brother, enter a partnership with a Spaniard, teach her that Islam is the true religion. …

“Local media reports that El Raval is a key target for Muslim supremacist groups who say followers of Islam have a ‘right of return’ to Spain.”

My Comment: Spain was once conquered by Muslims and stayed under their rule for a long time.

According to Islam, the lands that were once Muslim for some time, first of all, are obliged to return to Islam, not to mention the entire world.

Question: What is going to happen to Spain?

Answer: The same thing that will happen to the entire world: Islam will cover the entire world. Of course, there will be big problems with Christianity, especially with Orthodoxy. But they will settle it. This is what the Torah says.

Question: What about us? Will we be able to handle it?

Answer: When they come up against us, they will become ill. But first they will conquer Europe.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/27/17

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My Thoughts On Twitter, 5/18/17

twitter

#EU is talking about changing the EU foundation agreement. That will not help. Via education, EU population needs to become as one nation.

#Elites in all countries are divided by hatred without compromise.The solution is above their relationships, through influence of Ohr Makif.

#Trump: No US politician has even been as mistreated as me! Me: It’s precisely the criticism that will turn you into a PRESIDENT!

#WannaCry An extortion virus threatens the world | A global cyberattack.

#Happiness is achieved by overcoming misfortune via the middle line, as Kabbalah teaches. Otherwise, it becomes an endless pursuit.

#Trump leaked secrets? Relax! Only the power of the upper light changes the world, & the power of the light hinges on unity among the Jews.

#WannaCry Only by the unanimous consent of all countries can we defeat evil. This is precisely what Nature is pushing us towards.

A memo to #Trump in honor of his visit to #Israel @JPostOpinion

From Twitter, 5/18/17

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 05.19.17

Preparation for the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic: “Awakening the Need for the Help of the Creator” 

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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