Audio Version Of The Blog – 06.06.17

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“One Shall Not Take The Lower Or The Upper Millstone As Security”

laitman_629_3Torah, Deuteronomy 24:6: One shall not take the lower or the upper millstone as security [for a loan], because he is taking a life as security.

You cannot give something to others and demand from them as security tools of production or other things without which they cannot survive.

Everything that concerns collateral is a whole system. The entire Talmud speaks about interactions between people on different levels of their communication.

Everything in it is spelled out very clearly and demonstrates once again that it is not a person that changes, but a connection, because a person manifests in connection with others.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 10/26/16

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The Wisdom Of Kabbalah Is Pure Science

laitman_209Question: Is the science of Kabbalah a scientific part of the wisdom of Kabbalah along with other parts? Is there also an unscientific wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: No. You can turn to books of Kabbalah like the Tree of Life by the Ari, or the Talmud Eser Sefirot by Baal HaSulam and you will see how much these are serious textbooks. You will not encounter the word “God” there, but only information about managing the forces of creation and drawings of their classification.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science about the physical forces of our world that are not in the range of our senses and feelings. For example, in our world, we don’t feel subatomic forces, but we have reached being able to operate them. In the wisdom of Kabbalah we are talking about the next level of nature.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/22/17

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“So That He Should Not See Anything Unseemly Among You”

Laitman_049_03Torah, Deuteronomy 23:15: For the Lord, your God, goes along in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you. [Therefore,] your camp shall be holy, so that He should not see anything unseemly among you and would turn away from you.

There are many laws in the Torah forbidding a person to be naked. During both day and night, he must be covered with clothes and undress only when he enters the Mikva (the pool for bathing). However, even for this, there are special rules.

It is not about being clean physically; although of course, this also matters. It means that everything should be in strict accordance with the spiritual ablution of the body. “Body” is a desire. Therefore, the Torah speaks about the way to purify the desire from various impure layers of egoistic intentions so that the desires will have a correct intention for bestowal and could already be used.

Therefore, we are told to squeeze all “excrements” out of the desire, bury them into the ground, and wash yourself. It was preferable to wash and not to wipe yourself. By the way, this law remains to this day among many Asian peoples in Russia and in southern countries.

I often visited Baku, Azerbaijan where there is a container with water in each toilet. This is very correct because whatever corresponds to spiritual health corresponds to physical health as well.

Therefore, we cannot say that a spiritual action can harm the physical body. For example, in the nations that do not circumcise, men are 20-30% more likely to have cancer. All of it is naturally connected.

Question: Is Kashrut [the body of Jewish religious laws concerning the suitability of food, the fitness for use of ritual objects, etc.] also beneficial for health?

Answer: I believe that Kashrut is an absolute benefit. So far we cannot understand because we do not have enough knowledge as to why it is forbidden to eat artiodactyla animals (pigs, camels, and so on), although there is nothing harmful in them from a scientific point of view. However, since this is a consequence from the spiritual root, we will eventually discover the reason for this phenomenon, if it is at all necessary.

Everything comes from the spiritual world and, therefore, if you violate spiritual prohibitions, it gives direct, incorrect consequences in our world.

Question: Why is it forbidden for a person to be naked?

Answer: A person should be dressed all the time, even under a blanket because clothes symbolize the correction of the body. After all, clothing is a shell, like a screen.

The body represents desire that should have a screen. Therefore, some parts of the body (desire) can be exposed, and some should be covered. A required cover for some of them means that there should be a screen for these desires of the soul.

The face of a person is always exposed because it represents the three upper Sefirot and emits the light of Hochma. The head should nevertheless, in principle, be covered.

The Kippah has a small likeness to the spiritual attributes. In fact, previously, all men tied a handkerchief on their head or covered it with all sorts of cloaks such as tallit. And women dressed in oriental style with everything long and closed but white, not black.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 10/19/16

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Haaretz: “Survival in the Age of Willing Joblessness”

In my regular column in Haaretz, my new article: “Survival in the Age of Willing Joblessness

The old era, where a job is a necessity, is ending. A new, jobless era is dawning, and we had better be prepared.

Last April, the Census Bureau released a study that found a worrying trend: Many young people have no desire to work although they are perfectly healthy, and the trend is only accelerating. The poll has discovered that “1 in 3 young people, or about 24 million, lived in their parents’ home in 2015.” Additionally, “In 2005, the majority of young adults lived in their own household … in 35 states. By 2015, the number of states where the majority of young people lived independently fell to just six.” But perhaps the most alarming is this: “Of young people living in their parents’ home, 1 in 4 are idle, that is they neither go to school nor work. This figure represents about 2.2 million 25- to 34-year-olds.”

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said that we should “consider universal basic income for Americans.”

Instead of work, millennials often prefer to simply pass the time idling away. Many of them, for instance, choose to stay home and play video games rather than go job hunting. They are not inept or unintelligent, and it is not that work is hard to find. Today’s young adults simply have no interest in finding any. They have lost interest in what this world has to offer.

These data should warn us that there is a different story developing under the surface. The old era, where a job is a necessity, is ending. A new, jobless era is dawning, and we had better be prepared. If we prepare ourselves correctly, we will go through the transition peacefully and pleasantly. If we stall and wait for joblessness to catch us unprepared, the transition will be far more painful.

Basic Income and the Threat of Radicalization

In his recent Harvard Commencement Speech, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said that we should “consider universal basic income for Americans.” As I have written before, I have no doubt that in the foreseeable future, it will be necessary to provide a basic income to all.

Yet, while a basic income solves the physical necessities, it does not provide purpose and meaning to life. Video games and cheap cannabis will not numb people for long, as it is human nature to search for a purpose. If people cannot find meaning in their lives, they will turn toward the extremes. This trend is already underway, and many young people are undergoing radicalization in their quest for meaning, making them hazardous to society (see the recent Manchester terror attack). Without a solution, the trend will spread and violence and terrorism will make normalcy obsolete.

A Drawn Sword with Poison at Its Tip

In order to shift seamlessly and painlessly from the self-centered modus-operandi we have nurtured thus far into the new era, we must understand the nature of the era at our doorstep and how we should approach it so as to reap its potential benefits and avoid its pitfalls.

When I first started learning with my Kabbalah teacher, Rav Baruch Ashlag (the RABASH), he introduced me to an allegory written by his father, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, known as Baal HaSulam (Author of the Ladder) for his Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar. In his introduction to Tree of Life, Baal HaSulam wrote that the ego is like an angel holding a drawn sword with a drop of sweet, poisonous nectar at its tip. This angel, our ego, forces us to open our mouths and drink the sweet nectar until it puts us to death.

The drawn sword, the weapon of our egoism, threatens that terrible things will happen to us if we do not tend only to ourselves. It promises us happiness if we indulge in self-absorption, but the nectar at the tip of the sword (the brief moments of contentment in life) only makes us crave more of the nectar. Eventually, we become so narcissistic that we lose all touch with reality, as though we have died.

Today, we know that Baal HaSulam was right, but until recently it was not clear that we must find a practical way to shift from the nectar of egoism to the new incentive for existing—the pleasure in positive connections.

A Remedy from Antiquity

Throughout history, only one nation has ever had the privilege of living under a paradigm of positive connections. This nation, the Jewish people, emerged from the group that Abraham the Patriarch established when he saw his townspeople of Ur of the Chaldeans growing perilously self-centered.

During Abraham’s time, people became progressively more selfish all over ancient Babylon (of which Ur of the Chaldeans was a part). The book Pirkei De Rabbi Eliezer (Chapter 24) writes that when Abraham walked by the Tower of Babylon, he saw the growing alienation among its builders. They became so uncaring toward each other that “If a man fell and died, they would not pay him any mind. But if a brick fell, they would sit and wail, ‘Woe unto us; when will another come in its place?’” As their alienation grew, “they wanted to speak to one another but did not know each other’s language. What did they do? Each took his sword and they fought each other to the death. Indeed, half the world was slaughtered there, and from there they scattered all over the world.”

Abraham realized that the Babylonians were unable to overcome their egos. To cure his society from selfishness, he adopted a simple approach: Instead of fighting separation, nurture giving and connection.

Abraham’s followers and descendants continued to develop their unity above their growing egos until they forged such tight bonds that they became what the great commentator RASHI termed “as one man with one heart.” Only then, after forging this profound unity, Abraham’s descendants were declared a nation—the Jewish nation. This is why the book Yaarot Devash (Part 2, Drush no. 2) writes that the word Yehudi (Jew) comes from the word yihudi, meaning united.

Over many centuries, the early Jews developed their method by matching their unity with their growing egoism. Every time their egoism prevailed, they strove and bickered with each other. And every time they matched the discord with connection, they rose to new heights of unity. This is why The Book of Zohar (Beshalach) writes, “All the wars in the Torah are for peace and love.”

Shifting Focus toward Positive Connections

The ancient Jews bequeathed to the world the values we still hold dear today. Historian Paul Johnson wrote in A History of the Jews: “To the Jews we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.”

Yet, instead of being “a light unto nations” by lifting the world to the connected level of existence, the Jews have fallen into egoism. Since their decline, humanity has not been able to establish sustainable social structures based on positive connections.

For this reason, now that our egos have exhausted their charm, we have a real chance at reestablishing a society that provides both happiness and meaning to our lives through positive connections and mutual responsibility.

Now that society can provide each person with a basic income, we can focus on enhancing our connections. Since careers no longer interest young adults, they will look for meaning elsewhere, and deep and lasting meaning can be found only in positive human connections.

In a famous TED talk titled “The hidden influence of social networks,” acclaimed sociologist Prof. Nicholas Christakis detailed what science has revealed about the impact of human connections: “Our experience of the world depends on the structure of the networks in which we’re residing and on things that ripple and flow through the network. The reason that this is the case is that human beings assemble themselves and form a kind of superorganism.”

A Whole New Set of Industries—Around the Heart

To shift from individualism to positive connections, we should take advantage of people’s increasing free time to give them training that will help them establish such relationships. Moreover, to guarantee that everyone partakes in these trainings, we should provide basic income only on condition of participation in them.

Mandatory participation as a condition for reception of basic income will serve two purposes: 1) A person who receives free money with no strings attached does not feel obligated to society and will likely become increasingly narcissistic and anti-social. 2) As I wrote above, people without a purpose in life will necessarily search for one, and could possibly be radicalized. The trainings will teach them how to foster positive connections, which will give them the meaning they seek in life.

With today’s technology, providing these trainings can be almost cost-free. Through online meetings with guided workshops, people will learn to connect above their hatred just as Abraham and his disciples did almost four millennia ago. Even the most notorious anti-Semite in American history, Henry Ford, recommended learning from the early Jews in his book The International Jew—the World’s Foremost Problem. In his words, “Modern reformers, who are constructing model social systems, would do well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized.”

This, indeed, is what we have to do. Governments, municipalities, and other organizations should now engage in forming such trainings for people whose time allows them to participate. Once enrolled, the trainees will no longer be regarded as unemployed or jobless. Instead, they will be regarded as employed individuals whose job is to nurture positive connections in society. In the near future, this form of connection will become the most sought-after product on the market. Positive connections are the basis of every sustainable society. Therefore, “production workers” who create connections will become invaluable to their communities.

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said in an interview with Tucker Carlson on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show: “Connecting people to people will be a huge job. …I think that the
best jobs will be people-to-people jobs. We’re going to see a whole new set of jobs and industries around the heart, around connecting people to people.”

While Friedman is correct, without a technology at the basis of this new industry, its products will be flawed. This is where Abraham’s method comes in. In my book Completing the Circle: An empirically proven method for finding peace and harmony in life, I detailed the technology of fostering connection over alienation. This technology is applicable for both individuals and organizations, and is very simple to apply as long as you keep this one rule in mind: Every quarrel emerges only so that we can strengthen our connection. This is the modern interpretation of the words of The Zohar I quoted earlier: “All the wars in the Torah are for peace and love.”

In conclusion, the only remedy for the disintegration of our society is basic income for all, contingent upon participation in making new, positively connected and mutually responsible communities, achieved through trainings that will take us from the egoistic era to the age of positive connections and mutual responsibility peacefully and pleasantly.
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My Thoughts On Twitter, 6/5/17

twitter

Europe will need to learn from Israel in fighting internal #terrorism. Yet again these Jews must serve as an example for the world!

The breakdown of #society will force the building of a new model–emulating the Jewish people in Babylon 3500 years ago.

From Twitter, 6/5/17

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New Life 855 – The Cyber Threat, The True Solution

New Life 855 – The Cyber Threat, The True Solution
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

How does progress make us so vulnerable? Who is the true enemy in the cyber war? And if the use of the network depends on man, how can we ensure that it is used properly? The general field of love and connection will make sure that no one will harm others. This is the perfect antivirus.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 855 – The Cyber Threat, The True Solution,” 5/16/17

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 06.06.17

Preparation for the Lesson

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Preparation for the Congress in Kazakhstan 2017, Lesson on the Topic: “One Soul”  

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Giving of the Torah,” Item 13

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