Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/29/20
Posted on April 29th, 2020
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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 4/29/20
Israel’s Independence Day often invokes reflections on the meaning of independence and whether we are truly independent. Evidently, we are not independent economically. In a globalized world, no country is independent, much less a country whose economy relies so heavily on export and import. Israel is also not independent in the military sense or in the diplomatic sense, since we are dependent on America’s support in both these aspects.
Yet, these three facets of our nationhood have never been the decisive factor in our being. Our strength was never in our economic, military, or diplomatic fortitude, but in our unity! The Jewish people formed when Abraham united people from all over the Fertile Crescent around the principle of love above all differences. The ancient Hebrews achieved independence from their innate hatred of each other and formed a nation that was based on love of others regardless of background, ethnicity, or faith. Only when Israel achieved this level of union and pledged to be “as one man with one heart” they were declared a nation. When Israel abandoned unity, they were exiled from the land of Israel.
Now that we are beginning our 73rd year of renewed sovereignty, I hope that this will be the year when we finally achieve true independence—from hating one another. Today, our very lives depend on this.
The #UN’s International Labour Organization warned that roughly half of the world’s workers, and that’s over 1.5 billion people, may end up destitute due to the #coronavirus pandemic. Nature will force us to restructure society to become one, integral.
Whether with suffering or self-awareness.
From Twitter, 4/29/20
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Question: You have relatives who live abroad. Do you discuss the coronavirus with them? You must be worried about them.
Answer: My son, his wife, and three children have been living in Canada for more than 30 years. Of course, I worry about them.
Question: As a Kabbalist, do you give them any advice?
Answer: As a Kabbalist, I do not give any advice to anyone. All the advice of a Kabbalist is in the form of suggestions: you can either do it or not.
Whatever I say, I say for everyone. My son listens to our lessons, participates in all our events, distributes books—he has a publishing company. He knows what needs to be done. Why would I tell him anything?
Question: What would you advise a person who has COVID-19?
Answer: As a human being, I cannot even say. As far as I know, this virus cannot withstand high temperatures.
As a Kabbalist, I advise you to think and act so that all the people on Earth will become closer to each other because this virus that is separating us shows exactly where we are sick: in the connection between us. And so it divides us.
Question: What measures do you personally take to protect yourself from the coronavirus? For example: quarantine, vitamins, exercise, washing hands frequently, and so on.
Answer: I wash my hands, even with a special disinfectant. I do not come in contact with other people if not necessary, as prescribed by the Ministry of Health. Everything that needs to be done, I do as an ordinary citizen.
Whether I believe it or not, whether I feel bad or good about it, does not matter. A Kabbalist always does what the government or experts tell the people to do according to the rule “Be with your nation.”
Question: Let’s imagine that you were in isolation due to the quarantine.and some mysterious computer virus hits the Internet, and you, like everyone else, were left unable to communicate with anyone over the Internet. You were left by yourself for 14 days. What would you do? What would you think about?
Answer: As long as I have books, I do not care if it is two weeks or 20 years. However, then I would not be able to convey to people the method of correcting themselves and the world, that is, the method of getting rid of all viruses in order to achieve a good, higher state of humanity. That would be a problem. But with regard to myself, I am self-sufficient.
Question: If there were no books, what would you do?
Answer: I have this all in my head. I am in a state of connection with other people, and it does not depend on connection through Internet networks. I feel humanity, I feel souls, I feel other people. I am connected with my teacher and with other Kabbalists of past centuries. I do not have any problems here. No viruses limit me.
It would only be a pity that in the absence of conventional means of information, I would not be able to convey to all people through the customary methods of communication what needs to be done to get rid of all viruses and to reach correction.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus Changes Reality,” 3/26/20
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We are now quarantined in our homes, where should we go after exiting this Egypt? First, we need to understand exactly why we are doing this and where we are going. The way out of Egypt is the way out of egoism into love between us. We are in Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh, our common egoism, which keeps us all in slavery and sets us up against each other. We want to come out of this unfounded hatred and turn face to face to one another with open hearts.
This should be revealed as mutual love, which is called the exodus from Egypt to the land of Israel, to the desire directed straight to the Creator, to the higher power of love.
Passover is a holiday of liberation from the angel of death, from our egoism. We imagine liberation as going back to the former pre-coronavirus life so that we can finally leave the house, go to a restaurant, and take a walk along the seashore or in the park. This is how we see freedom and free people.
The virus is showing us how we are not free and that we are immersed in our egoism. The coronavirus says: “Do not leave home! If you are locked within your egoism, you will be locked in your material life in the same way.” The virus shows us the true picture, our slavish dependence on the desire to fill ourselves, on Pharaoh. We meekly obey all the demands of our egoism and do not even realize it. Egoism dominates our thoughts and desires; this is called slavery.
“We were slaves in Egypt”—slaves of our selfishness, our desire to fill ourselves without thinking of others. But we are in the same integral system with all the people of this world, with all the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and people. And if my actions concern only my own personal desires, this means I work for Pharaoh. And to think about everyone else means to work correctly with respect to nature, the Creator. And then nothing, no viruses, can harm us.
During the Passover meal, it is a tradition to set a glass of wine for the guest of honor, the prophet Elijah. There was a joke this Passover that this time we did not invite the prophet Elijah so as not to infect him with the virus because he is in the at-risk group due to his age. So should we expect the prophet Elijah or not? Elijah comes to announce that the Messiah is coming. The Mashiach (Messiah in Hebrew) is the force that draws us out of our egoism, that is, from all misfortunes, and brings us to the state of universal bestowal and love, which is the Creator, and to the desire where we are all connected with one another and with the higher force of nature. It is a message that the prophet Elijah brings to us.
That is, we are not waiting for a person, but a special force that will lead us to love. Love means that I treat others as myself and even better. We have been waiting for the prophet Elijah for so many years, and he still has not come. But we have never waited for the true Elijah. Did we ever want to love someone? We expected that Elijah would bring us money, a new car, a new house, a private plane; everyone had their own interpretation. We were waiting for the wrong Elijah!
Elijah is the highest force that will bring us to such a strong unification, right up to love, that we will feel not only as one nation, but as one body and one desire and will feel the Creator within us, as it is said: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.”
The Creator is the power of bestowal and love, not some kind of material image. This power of love must dwell within us, between us. This is what we call the revelation of the prophet Elijah, liberation, exit from Egypt, and the true end of correction. Then we will feel the whole nation as one big family. To do this, you do not need to leave your house. The force of Elijah, the power of unity, acts above of all walls and borders. We will suddenly feel this whole world as transparent, without any partitions between rooms, houses, and parts of the universe. Everything will be felt as one whole where everyone is in connection with others and each person includes everyone within oneself. After all, every person is a small world. This is how we will feel the whole reality and within it the Creator.
Therefore, in this Passover, our main effort is to concentrate on the power of love from the prophet Elijah so that it would clothe and connect us with the whole world in one mutual embrace, which will lead us to the real exodus from Egypt.
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From KabTV’s “New Life – 1220” 4/2/20
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Torah, Exodus 15:26: … all the sicknesses that I have visited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I, the Lord, heal you.
Sanhedrin 101a: Our sages ask, “If I do not place the illness, what is the need for a healer?”
Rabash, Article 133, “It Is All Corrections”: We should interpret that since I am the healer, why should I place on you an illness if I must heal the illness? What do I gain by placing an illness? It must be as a punishment, and if I must heal the illness, what kind of punishment is it? It is as though I work for nothing.
For this reason, I will not place illness upon you, and what you think is illness, you are wrong about it. Rather, all the states you feel, if you attribute them to Me, are all corrections by which you will approach Me in Dvekut [adhesion].
Everything that happens in the world, even this virus is necessary for us in order to get to know this system. But we cannot work in it efficiently if we do not see its opposite and common actions.
Therefore, what seems to us to be diseases, all kinds of injuries, malfunctioning states, are only necessary in order to teach us to correctly understand the Creator. After all, everything should be built based on the knowledge of good and evil, plus and minus, or we will not understand what is happening to us and to the whole common system.
Today we are at the beginning of a very strong influence from above, the manifestation of our imbalance. There is huge nature and humanity as its highest degree. However, humanity with its unreasonable behavior takes this system out of balance and what is called coronavirus or something especially harmful appears, and we do not know how to deal with it.
In the modern world, we have never been so defeated from our pedestal of perfection, knowledge, strength, power, and influence, when in our arrogance, we considered ourselves the supreme force of nature. What can we do today? Hide in our corners like scared rabbits? What is happening to us?
Do not come close, do not sit together, meet at a distance of two meters, wash your hands thoroughly, do not blow your nose, and so on.
Can you see what nature is showing us? That you are insects! Try to throw off this pride, this arrogance, see what system you are in and what needs to be done to bring it back to normal. Stop breaking it! Why do you always hog the covers? What are you trying to achieve by that?
Nothing will happen to nature itself, but you will begin to feel that you are in a terrible, damaged system. You spoil it. In principle, nature recovers very quickly. But you will reach a state where it will spew you out.
Look what happened around Chernobyl after people delivered a terrible blow to nature there! And today, everything blooms there, animals appear that have not been around for hundreds of years. Why? Because the most harmful animal, man, disappeared and everything blossoms and smells. Therefore, we must stop harming nature.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/15/20
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Usually in Passover, especially during the holiday Seder [ceremonial dinner], there is a feeling of a common holiday throughout Israel, among all people, in all families. But this year, Passover feels different, like a dull, quarantine cloud descended on us and locked us in our homes.
We used to get ready for a Passover meal with the whole big family, and suddenly everyone had to stay at home.
But the fact is that we ourselves built this state. The coronavirus is just a way to uncover the truth and show our separation: as long as we are not one people, we do not sit at the same table and do not want to leave our Egypt today.
This year, the Seder just corresponded to the structure of the people of Israel, in which there is no unity. We did not leave Egypt, and therefore we have nothing to celebrate. We need to think about why we are in this state. Have we already left Egypt, our egoistic desire? Have we become one people of the Creator?
We think that this Passover is not real because we do not meet as usual with the whole family, with grandfather and grandmother. But just this Passover is real because it shows us how much we are not with our people.
The problem is not in the Passover Seder, but with the way we are every day, not in the relations within the family, but much wider throughout the entire Israeli society. All year we do not behave as one united people, and, accordingly, now we are forced to sit during Pesach alone at home.
We have developed to the point where it is not enough to sit with grandparents and celebrate the events that took place 3,500 years ago. The time has come to understand that we have not left Egypt.
The way out of Egypt is the way out of our egoism, a state in which we truly become united as one people, as one man with one heart and receive the Torah, the power that is revealed between us and binds us as one special people of Israel.
But we have none of this. And then a special symbol appears called coronavirus and explains to us where we are: We have not left Egypt, but live inside a huge egoism, even stronger than in other nations. We do not even have the right to be called Israel because it means directly to the Creator (Yashar-Kel), and we do not strive for the power of bestowal, for mutual love and unity.
So, we are sent to sit alone, without a grandmother, and think why we are alone and why quarantine is declared. The virus comes specifically to explain to us who we are and that we do not really relate to the Passover holiday and to the right to be called Jews who left Egypt.
Passover is celebrated in memory of the exodus from Egypt, but we have nothing to remember. Therefore, we are sitting at home with our immediate family, as before leaving Egypt, and we think what needs to be done to get out of it. This is only the night of the exodus from Egypt, but not the exit itself.
The quarantine shows that egoism left us alone in the desert: without relatives, friends, or our nation. Passover just symbolizes the desire to get out of this loneliness and connect with others as one man with one heart.
What is the difference between this night and all other nights? Not that everyone sits alone in his house, but because now we understand why we are sitting alone on this festive evening. And it is also different in that we finally thought about: Are we ready to leave Egypt? You have to face it.
Egypt is our selfishness, mutual hatred, competition. This is the essence of Passover night—it is night, but in an organized manner (seder) it prepares us to exit our egoism in the land of Israel (Yashar-Kel), that is, to a higher power, to bestowal and love. The Creator is the power of love.
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From KabTV’s “New Life-1220” 4/2/20
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After we rise from the dust, making a diamond out of sand, we again fall into the dust, even deeper than before, in order to rise from it to an even greater height. And so every time; the deeper we fall, the higher we rise. The amplitude grows more and more, and this is a sign of advancement, as it is said: “He who is greater, has the greatest egoism.”
As soon as we turn the dust into a diamond, the next descent to an even worse state begins immediately. Indeed, thanks to our compression, we gained strength, got in touch with the spiritual state, and now we have the opportunity to work with this power below, to dig in our selfish desire even deeper like an excavator bucket, and to make an even stronger and more valuable diamond from the deeper dust.
The main thing is to feel even more connected with the others, and then we will be ready for the next descent and new work. All the work consists of raising a prayer to the Creator, from below, with a request to lift us up.
The Creator lowers us together with our friends down to the ground, like miners in a mine, and we feel that we are in the depths of our desire for pleasure. All our relationships to each other are selfish; selfishness stands between us and keeps us in a dungeon. And then we squeeze back into the elevator and ask the Creator to lift us up, above the surface of the earth, back in the light, in the fresh air, under the sun, in freedom.
Now we know what it means to be inside our desire for pleasure and what it means to rise above it. It looks like a butterfly that emerges from a chrysalis. The child also goes through a difficult path through the birth canal until it is born into the world. All our work goes day and night, in the dust, in an effort to ascend from it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/22/20, “Concerning Above Reason”
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Question: On one hand, we need to reduce the ego and annul it. And on the other hand, it is said that the ego is not destroyed and even grows. What does it mean?
Answer: The fact is that we do not destroy the ego but its use for our own sake.
Desires for our own sake are called selfish desires. Desires for the sake of the Creator are altruistic desires. We must shift our intentions from for our sake to for the sake of the Creator.
So do not worry, nothing disappears or is destroyed. Understand that the ego is specially created from above to be a minus against a plus. Therefore, when minus and plus work together, we can receive the energy between them, some kind of productive effort.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/16/20
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Did God give the Torah to Moses in public? If so, is there solid proof?“
It is only an allegorical statement. Do we really think that God or the Creator descended from heaven holding the Torah in His hands?
The Creator is a force of nature that connects harmoniously between all elements of reality.
Some people have more of an inclination to reveal this force, feeling questions about life’s meaning and purpose more succinctly than others, and also feeling attracted to a deeper connection with reality.
Those who feel such an attraction, and who find a method to develop it into a new revelation of reality become Kabbalists. They engage in its attainment and revelation, and it gradually becomes a science of how to discover the Creator.
The Creator is immaterial, and thus unattainable using physical and corporeal devices.
However, if we develop a force opposite to our egoistic nature, an altruistic force, then we will start feeling the Creator completely surrounding us.
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