Lesson Preparation
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic “Love Covers All Transgressions”
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Bnei Baruch as a State of Transition
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
Selected Highlights
| [media 9] | [media 10] |
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
Question: If public service advertising of anti-egoistic values were carried out from morning to evening, would it affect a person somehow?
Answer: It depends on the advertising. It should be made in such a way that the person sees that it is profitable for him, that it is worth it to be so.
For example, we show that this is the way of life of people in prison, and this is the way of life of sick people, and this is such and such, and at the same time we show the consequences of all bad habits and actions of people at all levels: women, men, adults, even children. In general, this is a preventive parenting program.
Question: In principle, there were societies where excesses were not valued, considered a sin. Is this theoretically possible?
Answer: In my opinion, this is necessary. The only question is who will do it.
Question: There is nothing more important for a person than the opinion of others. Public opinion is formed through the media. But that is in the hands of the rich. How can they advertise anti-consumer values?
Answer: In the post-coronavirus era, this issue is particularly acute.
Comment: In other words, they are trying to bring us back to the consumer society.
My Response: The rich have no other choice. They understand that otherwise they will have nothing left. If people begin to be satisfied with normal needs, then 80% of what humanity produces will be unnecessary, and it will stop producing it.
Naturally, we will save nature, the air will become cleaner, and it will be comfortable for us to live in such an environment: easier, cooler or warmer, etc. And from what exactly will the owners get rich?
Question: This is a vicious cycle. During the first wave of the pandemic, people did not learn anything. Public opinion has not changed. It is in the hands of the media, and the media is in the hands of the rich. And it is not profitable for them to change their current values because they need to continue earning. So what’s the solution? How can a person change society?
Answer: Society needs to work on its mistakes. People need to understand that going back to the past means repeating the same mistakes and inevitably leads to an even bigger crisis. Now that society has suffered such a blow, it must learn something from it.
Question: Do you think that suffering will still make some changes in a person?
Answer: Undoubtedly. They will do it gradually. Even if society does not change itself, at least it will become more receptive to the words of those who propagate the method of changing the world.
[269035]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/7/20
Related Material:
Before And After Coronavirus
What Will The World Be Like After The Epidemic?
In A Flood Of False Information
Stress is a Loss of Orientation in the Modern World
Remark: Stress is the mobilization of the body’s resources, a state of increased tension, as a protective reaction to various adverse factors. The physiologist Hans Selye was one of the first to introduce the term “stress” only 70 years ago. It seems that before this, either people did not have stress, or they just did not know what it was.
My Comment: Back then, people were not developed enough to feel stressed.
Question: In psychology, stress includes the concepts of anxiety, conflict, a threat to one’s own “I.” How would you define stress from the point of view of Kabbalah?
Answer: Stress is a feeling of great inner tension due to the loss of clear orientation.
Question: Indeed, loss of orientation is exactly what is happening today. If we turn to history, did people experience stress 1,000 to 5,000 years ago?
Answer: No, people did not feel stressed. They had slightly different preferences in life. They understood what could happen: death, starvation, suffering from cold, or some other factors.
These were very simple, corporeal problems of a completely different level of perception. People did not consider things that seem terrible to us today to be anything out of the ordinary, even when they were led to execution or burned at the stake.
Remark: In my understanding, stress is a state when I really want to receive something for a long time, but I cannot. This already causes discomfort and strong dissonance.
My Comment: Yes, this is also stress but of a different type, not an immediate, but a prolonged one.
Remark: The cause of stress can be any conflicting situation, or dissatisfaction with your appearance, or routine life, or long-term chronic diseases, and so on.
My Comment: The reasons can be very diverse when the desired and the actual do not match.
[268718]
From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/25/20
Related Material:
The Era Of Stress, Part 2
The Era Of Stress, Part 1
New Life 889 – Health: The Solution to Stress
Question: There was no violence on the screens in the Soviet Union, but I would not say that people there were less violent. Why is this?
Answer: I don’t think that in a society like the Soviet Union, the press, cinema, and theater had much influence on a person. People clearly understood that there was a huge difference between life and what the communist party and government fed them. And therefore, they did not perceive this information.
Comment: Nevertheless, according to psychological research, all media influence the human psyche. There we saw that everything seemed to be fine.
My Response: There was an iron curtain between the individual and the media. Everything that was heard on the radio and television went through a strict filter in advance, and people understood what they were being fed and what they should take from it. Maybe a small grain of information, but nothing more.
And now we are bathed in a huge stream of diverse information. It is all oversold, overbought, distorted. We have no idea how or how much. It is clear that what we read, see on TV, listen to on the radio, and so on, is all distorted information that is transmitted to us by all sorts of interested parties.
But since there are many of them, they are different, and information does not come from the same source of the party and the government, as in the Soviet Union, it is difficult for us to deal with this. So we are being influenced willy-nilly by them. We choose one of several thoughts, although that is also incorrect.
[268507]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20
Related Material:
TV Day Has Failed
In The Name Of Saving Lives
What Does Nature Demand Of Us?
Question: Why should we correct something if we have not spoiled anything through our own will?
Answer: The plan of creation is predetermined and we are invited to correct it, just like when we buy a small child a puzzle or give him the parts of a construction toy and invite him to assemble it so that he will develop, so that he will understand the world better and develop.
We actually don’t correct anything. The Creator initially created an ideal state and then destroyed it on purpose so that by reconnecting each particle with the others, we will reach the state of the absolute whole. In other words, so that as a result of our work we will attain the wholeness that was determined in the initial state.
The difference between the initial state and the ultimate state is in our awareness, in our multiplying ourselves by ourselves and attaining all the combinations, all the combinatorics between us, and thus reach the whole state, the understanding of the internal essence, of what the Creator has actually done, the reason for it, what He has filled the desire with, and what the essence of the light is.
By attaining that, a person becomes equal to the Creator in his understanding, in the recognition of the whole process of creation, and ascends above the corporeal world to the world of forces, to the state of infinity, and eternity.
This is infinite attainment and recognition, which are independent of the parameters of time, space, and motion.
[239554]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/16/18
Related Material:
The Three States Of Creation
That Is How We Were Created
Why The Soul Requires Correction
World Kabbalah Virtual Convention, “Preparation for Lesson 1”
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
World Kabbalah Virtual Convention, “Last Generation – From the Old World to the New World,” Lesson 1
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
World Kabbalah Virtual Convention, “Preparation for Lesson 2”
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
World Kabbalah Virtual Convention, “Our Responsibility As a Ten for the World,” Lesson 2
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
World Kabbalah Virtual Convention, “Love Covers All Crimes,” Lesson 3
| [media 9] | [media 10] |
World Kabbalah Virtual Convention, “From the Prayer of the Ten to Its Prayer for the World,” Lesson 4
| [media 11] | [media 12] |
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/14/20
Higher education has never been so low. From the zenith of being the sole possession of reclusive monks who dedicated their lives to delving in secret ancient texts in isolated monasteries, science has become a tool in the hands of the rich and powerful to dominate, exploit, manipulate, and intimidate rivals and the general public. Humanities and social sciences, which once debated ideologies and discussed the merits and demerits of human nature and humankind, are now used as indoctrination tools to plant dogmas in young and malleable minds.
Universities were once a place where you came to grow as a person, broaden your horizons, learn about the world we live in, the ideas that permeate society, and formulate your views about the world. But since universities have become dependent on private funding, their facade as intellectual establishments has been nothing but a front. Today, when you enter college, you can tell from day one what will be your worldview and political affiliation when you graduate.
Even history, a field of research that was supposed to be a straightforward study of the past, is subject to so many interpretations and distortions that no one can agree even on the facts. Ask a thousand historians, and you will hear a thousand views, often completely contradictory, on the same event and based on the same evidence.
To have any merit, humanities and social sciences must be disconnected from hard sciences and acknowledged for what they are: personal interpretations of reality based on personal background and personal knowledge. As things currently stand, universities are both the source of the social fragmentation that is disintegrating society, and a hub where intolerance, division, and destructive views are nurtured in the name of “academic freedom.”
An academic degree still enjoys respect, especially higher degrees. However, if matters continue to develop as they have been for several decades now, universities will lose all merit in the eyes of the public. According to the institution from which one has graduated, you will know what political view to expect, and accordingly, people will decide whether or not to listen to that person.
Worse yet, higher education institutions are failing to provide students with required knowledge for today’s job market. Already, professional trainings are far more effective for employers than a university or a college degree. Since the knowledge, training, and professional experience of applicants who have been given professional training are far more relevant for what employers need, they will often prefer them over applicants who have expansive general background but little professional required knowledge, and who require more training to become productive workers.
There are, of course, benefits to academic learning. Being able to formulate one’s thoughts in a consistent, clear manner is very important for any person. Also, the rules of academic writing allow us to go over vast amounts of material very quickly without losing essential information. Learning how to meet deadlines, handle pressure, and collaborate with peers to produce a better outcome are all desirable results of academic learning. Yet, the price tag of warping young minds in order to acquire these skills does not seem to justify it, especially since there are other ways to get them.
And perhaps the biggest loss of all is the leakage of permission to interpret into hard sciences. You cannot call something “hard science” or “exact science” if it is based on interpretation rather than on measurements and results. If you can play with numbers the way you play with words, then the numbers are meaningless as is the science you profess to present. For this reason, hard sciences must be cut off from institutions that teach humanities and social sciences, and the two latter ones should not be regarded as sciences whatsoever, since they are not.
To merit its name, higher education needs to focus first and foremost on acquiring social skills, communication skills, ability to articulate feelings, embrace conflicting views, and making room for diverse perspectives in a vibrant society. Put differently, higher education should be about elevating the level of humanness in humans. Education must be pristine in terms of political bias (as hard as it truly is to do), and focus on creative and inclusive thinking to create broadminded individuals rather than the current opposite. Unless the academia reverses course soon, it will be too late to save it.
Question from Facebook: What kind of contact with the Creator do we speak about? After all, contact is unilateral, the Creator has been silent for over 5,000 years now, why?
Answer: The Creator is silent and will continue to be silent. Of course He will be silent if you don’t connect to Him and don’t establish the connection.
Comment: But people have been trying to do that throughout these 5,779 years.
My Response: You can try, but if you dial a wrong number, or you call the wrong line, there is no connection.
So you imagine that you are seemingly in direct contact with the Creator and that you speak to Him and feel that He answers you. Here everything depends on a person’s imagination. This is what all religions are based upon.
Comment: But the connection is unilateral.
My Response: No. The wisdom of Kabbalah calls us to re-establish complete and absolute two-way sensory connection with the Creator through all our senses and even above them.
Question: And then there will be a concrete feeling that He answers?
Answer: Not only answers. It is a kind of connection that does not exist in our world. It is telecommunication, teleportation, whatever you like, which means that the Creator is inside me and I am inside Him.
Comment: People are asking for proof.
My Response: Go ahead! Come and get acquainted with the method of the revelation of the Creator and reveal Him. All the evidence will be right in front of you.
A few years ago the mathematician Grigori Perelman proved the Poincaré Conjecture. If you haven’t read about this research, look it up. It is not a big book. The first 300 to 400 pages introduce the actual theorem, and then a bit more about his actual revelation.
Here we speak about the Creator, while the theorem of the Poincaré Conjecture is merely about the connection between a few parameters that are not that obvious, while here it is about much more.
Question: So you mean to say that it is a complicated matter.
Answer: No. I want to say that even in the connections in our world, because mathematics deals with the connection between different quantities, it is a problem to link these things with each other. They may be on different planes, different volumes, and perceived differently, after all, we are also complicated elements of creation.
So we need to reveal and to scrutinize all that. But I promise you that eventually you will be able to be in direct contact with the Creator.
[239174]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/2/18
Related Material:
Be In Close Connection With The Creator
Work With The Creator
The Taste Of Connection With The Creator
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
