From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 1/30/20

As obituaries, tears and heavy mourning continue filling the world in the aftermath of Kobe Bryant’s unexpected death, the grief is accompanied by a very deep question: How does such a person, a cultural icon who had everything considered valuable in life—respect, fame, health, wealth, looks, NBA titles, an Oscar award, a multi-million dollar business empire, a bright future as a brand-builder, an investor, a coach to other athletes and mentor to company founders, as well as a loving and caring family and many friends—one morning come to such a sudden end?

Most in our society follow the news and social media that reports on deaths, accidents, tragedies, people who die under unfortunate circumstances, in addition to reporting on success, sports, entertainment, arts, stars and superstars—people to admire, who make strides to rise to the top of everything that we value in life. When one of our superstars suddenly enters the dark side of the news, we become frozen in shock. How could it be?

Kobe Bryant’s tragic death is a painful reminder to us mere mortals that life is short and temporary. It shows us how, even if we reach the highest levels of success in life, it can all be lost in a split second.

The day Kobe Bryant’s private helicopter crashed, there were other accidents in the world and deaths of people under sad circumstances. Various people, young and old, left behind grieving families. However, we neither know their names nor recognize their faces. This shows us an aspect of our nature that esteems people according to their projection of our life values—our natural desires for money, respect and control—people able to work with determination, discipline and motivation, who grab our attention by outcompeting their way to success, honor, wealth, fame and dominance. We then create systems that advertise these people to us, making them larger than life, embodiments of everything we could possibly want.

Then, when such a person’s life comes to a sudden end, we become jolted. How could such a superstar die? He was immortal to us. He shouldn’t be in the part of the news that focuses on grievous deaths and accidents. That part of the news is for the nameless and countless unfortunates, not for superstars. The Kobe Bryants of the world belong in the sports, entertainment and business sections as positive symbols of accomplishment and success, the winners with fairytale lives who inspire us with hope.

Kobe Bryant’s death is a sign of just how ultimately equal we all are. In the face of death, there is no difference between a great king and an ordinary working man. The naked truth is that the body of the king and the worker ends up buried in the same ground and turns to ash and dust just the same.

Above all of Kobe Bryant’s achievements, perhaps the greatest legacies that his remarkable life can offer us is a reminder of our equality before the certain fate of death, and a powerful call-to-action to treat one another accordingly, with tenderness and love, while we are here. In addition to sharing positive memories about Kobe and comforting his wife and family, we can honor his legacy by using his untimely death as a reminder to increase love and a spirit of unity among humanity. Among his numerous successes, that could well become the greatest achievement that Kobe Bryant can still bring to the world, something which rests in our hands to implement from now onward, and which would truly be larger than the life we have known until today.

If such a spirit of love and unity were to spread throughout society, then maybe we would all be able to reach death pleasantly and naturally, and prevent many future violent and abrupt deaths from happening. Maybe we could then feel that we are all parts of a greater whole, a body of humanity in balance with an even greater nature. And then, just as nature never leaves us, we would never leave it.

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KabNet published my new article: “Nature’s Life-Giving Secrets That We Can Learn from Chernobyl”

On April 26, 1986, one of the world’s worst-case scenarios materialized. The Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded as a result of a failed experiment, releasing ten times more radiation than the amount from Hiroshima. A vast area became deadly for 350,000 residents.

Despite the Soviet regime’s attempts to hide history’s most severe nuclear accident, within days, the place became a ghost town. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes, and scientists estimated that the affected Chernobyl area would be uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years.

Against human logic, a decade later, vegetation began sprouting from the ruins. Chernobyl became a kind of evolutionary laboratory for the world, where a flourishing nature reserve emerged from nuclear ruin. The fields blossomed, trees of the forests restored themselves, and a variety of animals began to appear in the area: reptiles, poultry and various mammal species, some of which had not lived in the area for many years before the disaster.

“If we repair human relations, building bridges of positive connections above our innate rejection, divisiveness and even hatred of each other, we can then experience our reality as perfect.”

Through the lens of nature’s laws, the regrowth at Chernobyl is akin to many new planetary states that surfaced from their opposites. The earth has developed through states when its surface was molten, when it was mostly coated in ice, and also when it was completely covered in water. However, out of every era, our planet emerged stronger and healthier than its preceding version.

What Happens When Humans Don’t Interfere With Nature?

The universe has endless healing and balancing forces. When humans do not interfere in the inanimate, vegetative and animate levels of nature, there is total harmony.

We operate in a network of forces of which we have little understanding, so even our seemingly benign thoughts and actions might result in unintentional harm. It follows that when the selfish and destructive human spirit abandons an area, it becomes filled with life.

Chernobyl provides such an example: When the radiation began fading away and there was no human disturbance, new species of plants and animals emerged that we thought were extinct. Where did these new species come from?

How New Species of Plants and Animals Emerged in Chernobyl After the Disaster

Nature is comprised of many forces, visible and latent, and myriad combinations between these forces bring about an infinite variety of forms. When humans exit the picture, leaving these forces alone, they act and give birth to every manifestation that needs to exist according to the current developmental stage.

It is a law of nature: every intersection in the network must be fulfilled and generate something new, whether on the inanimate, vegetative or animate levels. At every level, nature operates according to different and contrasting attributes of connection in order to create harmony and balance, enabling ever more advanced life forms to evolve. In other words, nature always evolves to higher states of unification.

Nature’s inanimate, vegetative and animate levels obey its laws and operate harmoniously. Every object and organism on these levels extracts exactly what its sustenance requires and passes any surplus back to the larger system in which it exists.

This is how a well-oiled integral system is created. Only the human being can, for a limited time, resist such laws. Human nature has a tendency to act oppositely: we contribute what we must, and take as much as we can without considering the system’s other parts. We do so without understanding that we rob ourselves by doing so, because in reality we are interdependent parts of the natural system like cogwheels in a machine.

What Humans Should Take Away from the Chernobyl Regrowth

The Chernobyl example demonstrates how human nature is opposite to nature itself. The human ego, i.e., the desire to enjoy at the expense of others, which gives rise to exploitation, manipulation and abuse in the midst of our relations, generates toxins that radiate throughout nature. It is thus imperative for us to learn how nature works, and by so doing, we will know how to fix the problems we cause.

If we raise awareness of our function as humans within nature, understanding how its inanimate, vegetative and animate levels depend on our relations, then we can work together to become harmoniously integrated with, and beneficial to, nature.

If we repair human relations, building bridges of positive connections above our innate rejection, divisiveness and even hatred of each other, we can then experience our reality as perfect. By correcting human nature, we will feel how our relationships blossom and breathe afresh, and how every moment is renewed and recreated.

Our planet will then become paradise, nothing less than heaven on earth.

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Zohar For All, “Aharei Mot,” 65: How good and how pleasant. These are the friends, as they sit together inseparably. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill each other. Then they revert back to a state of brotherly love.

By studying Kabbalah and striving to unite in the ten, we begin to feel how separated we are from each other, how opposite we are.

At that, when trying to connect in the ten, we receive something for a while. But as soon as we reach some good state of connection, there is an immediate breaking, cooling, distance, and fog between us, to the point we do not want to look at each other or talk to each other.

And again, we need to work to connect together. After all, if we want to receive the Creator’s help—and without this help we will not advance—we must be together in one system.

So, we need to work on ourselves again. The importance of the goal, the importance of attaining the Creator, the importance of achieving the opening of the soul determines our aspiration for each other. In the name of this, we begin to draw closer, and we again move forward until the next breaking.

So, we are constantly moving toward the goal: rise-fall, break; gentle rise-sharp fall, and so many times.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 12/29/19

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Do Kabbalist fear death?

Question: What is the correct attitude to death?

Answer: I think that the best attitude is to not think about death but, rather, believe that we exist infinitely, eternally. We must make sure that we attain this eternity and infinity, at least partially, in this life, in our corporeal state.

After all, during our life we exist in order to reveal bestowal and love as a means for attaining eternity, perfection, and the Creator, the upper force that controls all of it. Our advancement should consist of this.

In thinking about animalistic life and death, check yourself, do you really care about this? If you do, then you are not yet seriously aspiring for spiritual qualities. When you are engaged in spirituality you absolutely do not care about anything that happens to your body, whether it is alive or not. You exist and want to exist in the quality of bestowal and love.

Question: Does a Kabbalist care about his protein body? Through it, one contacts other people who are not yet in spirituality. If he did not have this body, he would not be able to communicate with his students.

Answer: Yes, he takes care of the body but in a minimal sense, which is called “the necessary and sufficient” condition.

Question: Does a Kabbalist think about what will happen to his students and to his family after his death?

Answer: Family is a usual corporeal concern. Students, however, are a completely different thing. He has to prepare them so that they will remain with a good reserve of knowledge and methodology. It is necessary to organize a lab-like environment so they can test themselves and advance.

Question: Does it mean that a Kabbalist has a fear of death but not in an egoistic sense?

Answer: It is not the fear of death but a desire to leave behind a world that is maximally directed at the goal of creation, and in no other way.

What else can you leave? There is nothing else. We are approaching the state where a person begins to understand that the only way to leave something behind is in the form of good deeds. These good deeds are recorded on his or her account and are one’s major gain in life.

Question: As far as I understand the good deeds are to bring other people to the revelation of the Creator. Are there any other good deeds you can do with respect to another person?

Answer: There is nothing else: only to bring others closer to the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/14/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does Kabbalah support the idea of reincarnation?“

A person is born with a particular spiritual potential and can choose whether to realize it in our world or not.

When the body of a person dies, this spiritual potential passes to another body that is born, and that is how it continues until it is fully realized. This is what Kabbalah considered as reincarnation, i.e., it is relevant only in relation to our spiritual potential.

Therefore, according to a person’s interests, it is possible to understand the level of his or her spiritual potential: if one still finds satisfaction in corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, or if one finds less and less satisfaction in those desires, and finds oneself contemplating the meaning and purpose to life more and more.

If it’s the latter, then it’s a sign of a person’s spiritual desire awakening, which Kabbalah calls “the point in the heart.” The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for developing this desire until we can perceive the eternal reality of the soul through it. When we reach the full realization of this spiritual potential, we no longer need to reincarnate in our world.

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Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “Bestow Contentment to the Creator” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,”  Item 74

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Gatehouse of Intentions,”  Item 2

Selected Highlights

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According to a poll of 4 mln people by the Univ. of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Democracy: democracy is ill, not coping with the main problems of our time, its efficiency and hence popularity has fallen. Egoism has exhausted all its forms, although it can repeat. The solution is to transition to altruism.

Similar to the Greeks who did so with mythology, the Romans turned Kabbalah into religion with elements of the earthly world, physical observance, for the sake of egoistic reward. All of this is a reflection of Kabbalah, spiritual actions, in the #egoism of our world.

The ancient Greeks adopted the Jews’ concepts of divine forces and began depicting them as statues and mythology. Ever since they parted ways with the ancient Jews, they have not invented anything else. All of their wealth lies in the past contact with the Jews. Having taken Kabbalah’s beginnings, they translated them into the language of our world.

Quran: “The Almighty needs no helpers.” This is correct since man takes no part in the right and left lines. Man’s participation is expressed in realizing the right and left lines, building a middle line out of them—in ascending to the degree of partnership with the Creator, becoming the same as Him.

#Peace between Israel and Arabs doesn’t depend on #Trump, but on the nation of #Israel. Israel’s mission is: in its unity, to connect all the parts of humanity’s common soul with the Creator. Israel’s prayer for connection of opposing forces will bring peace to the whole world.

With the new wave of #Antisemitism in the world, articles about its “causes” are appearing. The causes are silly: as if people hate Jews out of envy. But during times when the Jews were downtrodden, during pogroms and murders, the hatred was just as great. The real cause of the hatred lies in the inner sensation that the nations are dependent on the #Jews!

The light always appears only from the darkness (confusion weakness, anger, despair). And the greater the darkness, the greater is the expression of the light (clarity, energy, understanding). The group: how can we never forget about this?
How can we always stay connected with each other and with the Creator?
From Twitter, 1/29/20

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No one has any special protection from above; there is only one privilege: the opportunity to engage in the correction process yourself. Some might be for it and others against because the modern generation is obliged to clarify this issue. We must move forward with understanding, consciously, by our own consent. And consent always comes from disagreement, like the revelation of light from the darkness.

One thing is clear, if we do not go along with the development of the generation happening now, we will not be able to realize our spiritual development, neither personal nor general. Even such an exceptional person as Baal HaSulam was honored with spiritual attainment because the generation was ready for it and needed a certain process that he had to direct.

And now, such a duty is assigned to our Bnei Baruch group. Nowadays it is no longer possible to advance at the expense of one person as it was before with Moses. Now we need a group and even a world group—everyone should give an example of how to move toward correction. Only with such a power of our connection will we be able to advance.

No one will be able to realize his correction and achieve the desired goal by himself. You can forget about it. But if we act together as Rabash and Baal HaSulam advise, then all paths open before us.

Therefore, we must study our condition in order to see how progress from one day to the next, one moment in the left line, then in the right. We are always thrown from left to right, from right to left, and we ourselves must build our progress in the middle line.

The ship of humanity will roll to the left, then to the right. And if with the help of our efforts we can turn the steering wheel, this huge ship will go in the right direction. This is our work—we need to see this, feel our responsibility, and lead the process of correction.

To steer the wheel means to strive for the middle line so that all crimes on the left side are covered by love on the right side. The middle line is then lined up in the middle. We do not destroy the left line, do not erase those who are against, but we watch how this criticism awakens those who are in favor, helping to make the right evaluations. And then we are in the middle line, we turn the wheel correctly, and it should always be focused on the central point: the unity of Israel, the Torah and the Creator as one whole.

Israel is us, striving for the Creator, the Torah is the whole upper light that guides us and all of humanity around us, and the Creator is the force that is revealed in the center of the group, in the center of our efforts.

Baal HaSulam knew what would happen in Germany and tried to save the Jews. But the Jews themselves did not let him do this and they all died. He could not change anything: a certain time is given for clarification and free choice in order to make a decision. But when the decision is made, the power is transferred to the executioner to carry out the correction through suffering.
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/4/20, The Jewish Choice: Unity Or Anti-Semitism
 Minute 4:20

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Question: All citizens of ancient Babylon worshiped many gods. What does polytheism mean?

Answer: Polytheism is a natural evolution of man. We can see that even today such beliefs are preserved in the world, especially in the East.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam originated from Abraham. All other beliefs are based on polytheism, i.e., the existence of a host of gods, a multitude of supposedly all kinds of forces of nature, each of which has some special influence on nature and the destiny of man.

Question: Can we say that each of us is also an idolater? That is, if a person does not discover one force behind all matter, then one is an idolater?

Answer: I do not think that we deify these forces to such an extent. After all, idolaters were not stupid people; rather, they just saw that they were greatly dependent on various properties of nature but could not bind them together. Neither can we.

It was believed that the god of rain, the god of the sun, the god of night, the god of day, etc. were all great forces of nature on which a man is completely dependent and must worship to maintain good relations with them. After all, along with the fact that man deified nature, he felt his dependence on it.

Remark: People believed that there are certain forces that could be appeased and it could be best appeased by different priests who know exactly how to do this.

My Comment: Yes. Imagine an uneducated, ignorant peasant. He would rather submit a bag of grain and be sure that he will no longer have any problems either with the crop, or with drought, or with flooding rivers.
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From KabTV’s “System analysis of the development of the people of Israel,” 6/24/19

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