Human Nature: To Enjoy at Another’s Expense

Question: What ideology united the people of Israel in the times of the First Temple?

Answer: It was the ideology of Abraham who, being a spiritual leader of Babylonians in the times of King Nimrod, discovered a general governing force of nature, the Creator.

This force not only unites everything, but also acts as the opposite of itself—disconnecting. All of nature exists on the symbiosis of these two forces: connecting and separating.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that Jews gradually adopted the “ways of their neighbors to enjoy life, as their egoism required of them.” What is the problem with this?

Answer: Human nature is egoistic. Its opposite nature is altruistic. In our world, i.e., in our consciousness and sensation, only the egoistic nature of the world is revealed, and altruistic only to the extent necessary to maintain its existence.

There is another side when the altruistic nature of the world is revealed, and the egoistic exists only to maintain its existence.

Question: But why does it say: “Adopted the ways of their neighbors to enjoy life”? What is wrong with enjoying life?

Answer: In our world this can happen when you are thinking only of yourself. In general, there is no problem with enjoying life. The problem lies in the fact that you are enjoying life at the expense of others.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel,” 7/8/19

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Question: How do two opposite desires coexist in a person when the point in the heart awakens in him? After all, this is completely different from what a person felt before and has practically nothing to do with this world.

Answer: It has nothing at all to do with it. This feeling emerges quite unexpectedly, just as any spiritual level imperceptibly manifests.

And now you are already in a certain attainment, a certain connection, and even in a more or less conscious relationship with the Creator, and you feel something new. Moreover, each attainment emerges as if it happens for the first time.

Question: Why does one not follow the other? Why must there be a descent?

Answer: It is because it does not happen like in a movie where you sit and watch flickering frames. You must insert your desire and your preparation into every frame. You undergo all kinds of states until the desire fully ripens.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/2/20

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Question: Suppose I was invited to visit. I agreed with the host that I would come over and sit at the table with him. But how do I tell him that I refuse his food?

Answer: This is really a problem. But you come to a state where you simply cannot take anything from the table. The attribute of shame develops in you.

This is not earthly shame but a great feeling that you cannot overcome. It binds you and does not allow you to accept anything from the owner.

Question: What should I do next with this shame?

Answer: What will happen next, we are yet to study. But it is the shame that leads and develops us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/16/20

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Question: How did you find out everything that you are talking about?

Answer: You will know this as well. I assure you that in the next one and a half to two years from now you will know almost the same thing as me.

The methodology today can be presented in an accelerated form because people are now completely different. They can absorb a huge amount of information themselves and correctly understand it. I’m sure that you will realize all of this very quickly.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/15/19

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Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “Growing Farther – A Call For Nearing”

Writings of Rabash, “Concerning Above Reason”  (1986)

Selected Highlights

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 4/6/20

The coronavirus imposes on us social behaviors we aren’t used to and don’t welcome; it imposes mutual responsibility. In fact, the virus initiated a new phase in our development, and every new phase is better and more evolved than its predecessor; it is another step in the advancement of humanity toward unity and cohesion.

For the most part, we inherently object to changes and prefer to stay in the complacent known. This dissonance we feel between where we want to stay and where reality is pulling us feels painful and intimidating, but the biggest mistake we make as individuals, societies, and governments is to deny the arrival of the new phase and try to force reality to stay where it was. It won’t. Today, if we want to be happy, secure, and even healthy, we must embrace unity and mutual responsibility among all factions of society. The sooner we begin, the easier it will be for us to shift our mindsets from “me” to “we,” and ultimately to “one.”

(Image: NY: Thank You To Health Care Workers Set Up In Elmhurst)

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The single integral nature is becoming more and more revealed to us, and hence we feel that we are in descent, in greater disparity with the single nature. Its reaction to the disparity is cataclysms, viruses.
But this isn’t punishment—rather it is an aspiration to bring us to balance with nature!

How do we come out of #egoism? We come out of ourselves, out of our desire for self-gratification, into our connections with each other, where each one no longer pays attention to himself—but only to what is between us. Between us is the spiritual space!
This is what the #coronavirus is pointing at!

The #coronavirus is showing us the disparity between our egoism and the integral nature (altruism). Start to gradually be cured! #Egoism is turning us into one humanity, and revelation of evil in it, in the form of nature’s blows (on the animate level – viruses) will bring us to the correction of egoism.

The unified integral nature is becoming more and more revealed to us and we therefore feel that we are in descent, more out of balance with the single nature. Its reaction to the imbalance is cataclysms, viruses. But this isn’t #punishment; rather, it is the aspiration to balance us with nature!

For now we are developing by the path of suffering (Beito), natural development. But there is a path with acceleration of time (Achishena), when we carry out Kabbalah’s instructions and understand what we have to do—and we build good connections with each other learning how to become one unified humanity.
From Twitter, 4/6/20

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Can People Who Keep Up with Nature’s Plan Contract the Coronavirus?

Question: Thousands of people united at the recent Kabbalah convention in Israel. Immediately afterward, the global outbreak began. We connected and look at what happened. Did we cause this?

Answer: No, we did not cause this. First of all, the outbreak started before the convention; it just was not that obvious.

We were sure that nothing would happen to the convention participants. Since tens of thousands of people all over the world were connecting with each other physically and virtually through good efforts, there was no danger here.

I am sure that none of our friends, wherever they were, wherever they went to participate in the mirror congress, fell ill. There were no problems with anyone.

And how could there be if we were gathering in order to connect with even better connections between us. We move together with nature’s plan; therefore, we cannot be affected by the virus that affects egoistic connections between people, societies, and countries.

Question: Is it possible to deduce the following formula: people who will learn to connect with each other correctly won’t be affected by this virus?

Answer: Yes. I can give you my word for that. We just need to understand that this is not 100% because there are individual cases that we can analyze and see why this happened in our ranks. However, I do not think that we will hear about a huge number of Kabbalists being affected by the virus. It is impossible. We will just wait and see.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus is Changing Reality, Part 7,” 3/12/20

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What forecast can be given for the development of the coronavirus epidemic, will it spread further around the world or can it be stopped? There are several levels of protection here.

First of all, it depends on the dissemination of the science of Kabbalah, on the fact that people will at least hear about balance and harmony of the world, about positive connections in human society, which nature obliges us to, and that our mismatch to the laws of nature gives rise to all these viruses. This must be explained and disseminated through all social networks. Everything is in our hands.

Do not be afraid that you are small and think that nothing depends on you. It is our responsibility to do our job, to explain that nature directs us toward our goal, and we need to start acting accordingly. We cannot get rid of the coronavirus—if not this virus, then others will appear. The era of the end of correction is the time of intensified blows.

Kabbalah teaches that the best cure for the virus is unity between people. But humanity has found a different, opposite remedy against the epidemic: isolation, so as not to infect each other. It seems that there is a contradiction here, but actually there is none: Under such conditions unification is expressed in isolation.

Caring for others in such an epidemic is expressed in separation, isolation. My love for my neighbor is manifested in how far away physically I am from others. Because of this, I become closer to them internally, mentally; after all, I am caring for them, and therefore, I move away physically. My alienation action is in fact a connection.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”

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