Question: Our nature is egoism, which works according to the program “maximum pleasure for minimum energy consumption.” We probably have some choice within this framework. However, this choice is not free because there still is a framework.

For example, I can say that now I choose to drink tea or coffee. But in fact, this decision has already been made by some predetermined conditions. Can a person choose something freely?

Answer: No. Absolutely nothing.

According to Kabbalah, the only thing we can do is influence the environment that shapes us. We cannot influence ourselves directly, but we can choose the environment and influence it so that it will be like this and not different. By environment, we mean a lot of factors that affect us, shaping who we will be.

Question: Let’s say there are rich people who send their children to study at Oxford. They sort of choose this environment. But is this really a choice?

Answer: Yes, this is some sort of a choice.

Question: Again, within a certain framework. What I am interested in is whether it is even possible for a person to choose neutrally?

Answer: No. On the basis of what data will he choose neutrally? There must be primary parameters.

Question: Then what does it mean that he chooses the environment? This is not a choice either.

Answer: No, it is still a choice from several possible options. Maybe we do not know why he chose this one. Some circumstances, hormones, genes, and so on prompted him from within.

Nevertheless, we are still not free to do anything. We are free only to direct ourselves to the most correct goal possible with the help of an appropriate environment.

Otherwise, I can choose a different environment, for example, some criminals, thieves, and thus ensure a completely different future for myself.
[268711]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/7/20

Related Material:
Where Is The Freedom Of Choice Hidden?
Why Don’t We Feel Interdependence?
Freewill In Rising Above Egoism

Filed under: Free Will - No Comments →

New Life 1261 – Virtual Connections
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The virtual platform provides a more useful, practical, accessible, convenient, and palpable community experience in comparison with other forms of gathering. It costs less and pollutes less. Emotion can be expressed better virtually as well since people are more protected and committed. We can meet, play games, sing, act, and even eat together virtually just like in a family. There are no limitations to how we can connect heart to heart online.

While children will continue to gather physically for brief periods to play sports together, overall, the warm, inner thoughts and feelings that we develop for one another virtually will compensate for, cover, complete, and conceal any physical interactions we could have had. We will enter a new, pure, clean dimension of life without borders or boundaries where we feel each other through an “inner sight” and get to know the essence of others in an absolutely perfect world.
[267472]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1261 – Virtual Connections,” 6/6/20

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: New Life - No Comments →

Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “Love Covers All Transgressions” (Preparation for the Virtual Convention “A New World” 2020)

Writings of Baal HaSulam,  “The Peace,” (Subtitle: “Proof of His Work by Experience”)

Lesson on the Topic “The Obligation of Bnei Baruch to Humanity in the Last Generation”

Selected Highlights

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog - No Comments →

You will be able to ascend spiritually if you care about the Creator and the meaning of life over grievances toward others.
Otherwise you will remain in an animal state.

We need to stop perceiving current developments as a crisis. Nature operates by its own laws. And because we don’t understand them, we don’t conform to them. Therefore, the #crisis isn’t in nature, but in our lack of understanding of #nature.

The world no longer makes sense.
We have to stop seeing it through the problems stemming from the coronavirus. The functionality of all of nature is undergoing a change, and the virus is just one expression of this. The purpose of nature’s changes is the desire to change man toward the higher spiritual state
From Twitter, 8/11/20

Related Material:
My Thoughts On Twitter 8/10/20
My Thoughts On Twitter 8/9/20
My Thoughts On Twitter 8/8/20

Filed under: Thoughts on Twitter - No Comments →

My new article on Linkedin “Our Childhood Is Over”

We can get all teary-eyed over it, but it won’t help. The world we knew until the beginning of this year is over and will not return. And with it, it took our childhood. Until Covid-19, we were like kids wrecking up the house doing whatever they want while the parents are out on business. But Covid showed us that they’re not gone; they’re just invisible. And instead of showing up and yelling at us, they sent an invisible force with the odd name, SARS-CoV-2, aka, the novel coronavirus, which sent us home and told us to stay home. And every time we come out, it returns and lands another blow until we learn we must obey.

The virus has come to teach us how to be grownups, responsible for our common home, and accountable to one another. It has come to turn us from unruly children into caring adults, who tend to one another and to the world around them.

We don’t like it; we want to get rid of it, but we are gradually realizing that we can’t, and probably will never be able to, at least until we do what it tells us: “Stay apart and stop infecting one another.”

We already know that Covid-19 is affecting our brains, but what we haven’t realized is that it is affecting our hearts. It will change our hearts from alienation to connection. For now, it only increases our loneliness, but at some point, we will realize that to connect and not be lonely, we have to connect in our hearts before we connect in our bodies. Only then we will overcome seclusion, the negative influence we have projected on each other will be reversed, and this will be our healing.

The virus has come to teach us how to be grownups, responsible for our common home, and accountable to one another. It has come to turn us from unruly children into caring adults, who tend to one another and to the world around them.

Just as children do not notice as they grow until they are already adults, we will see what we have become only after the fact. And probably, only then will we be thankful to the virus, without which we wouldn’t be able to disconnect from our previous, infantile, and destructive little selves, and become mature, responsible, and caring humanity.

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization, New Publications - No Comments →

Question: In translation from Greek “crisis” means turning point. In Chinese, these are two symbols: the first is “chance,” the second is “danger.”

That is, a crisis is a birth. What should be born?

Answer: A new society. A new person. In times of crisis, there are always a certain turn in development, a leap.

Question: Why is the future described as the apocalypse in all prophetic books? Why couldn’t they describe some good states?

Answer: Because in our development the next good step is born only with the help of great pressures, wars, like a mother gives birth to a child in great suffering. A person who understands this rejoices in the crisis. But at the same time, he worries about the suffering that everyone feels.

We all understand perfectly well the process of giving birth to a child. It is a very complicated ordeal for a female body, although it is perfectly adapted to it. During labor, there is always a great load on the fetus that must get out through the birth canal under very serious, pressured conditions.

Imagine that a new society is born in the same way. Nature must put a lot of pressure on us so that we want to be born different.

It must force us to demonstrate the right direction and put a certain amount of effort to become different. We need to get to a condition when we must at all costs leave our comfortable intrauterine state and change it to a rather uncomfortable external state.

So there are a lot of problems here. To this day, under all progressive conditions, humanity looks at the birth of a child as something special and does not take it for granted.

Question: Of course, the birth process itself is difficult. But why did Kabbalists describe the final state as some kind of apocalypse?

Answer: Yes, it looks like an apocalypse. After all, those strains under which a baby is born should affect human society at its birth at a new level. And, of course, we will experience these states as very unpleasant. Therefore, we need to educate ourselves so that we feel them as necessary.

A baby is in its mother’s body with its head up, and at birth it turns its head down and exits through the birth canal. In the same way, with the birth of a new society, the consciousness of humanity, its entire worldview, is turning upside down.

Birth is absolutely opposite to the prenatal state. When a man is spiritually born, he reveals a different, upper world.

Question: But what does he see? Today I experience this world through my five senses. I have certain principles on which my worldview is based. And what will change? What will I start to see?

Answer: You will begin to see the surrounding world in a completely different way. You will see the forces that control it, and your abilities to affect this world.
[268644]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/7/20

Related Material:
We Give Birth To Ourselves In A New World
Transformation From Embryo To Human
A Conscious Birth Of Humanity

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think about suicide?“

Suicide is an unforgivable act.

It is a final statement of a person to his family, friends and relatives that he does not accept what he receives in life, that he cannot justify what is happening to him, that he deserves something else, and that he gives up on fighting for whatever he thinks he deserves.

It is an act of betrayal to those who love and care about the person. That is, instead of involving others to work on finding a solution together, the suicidal person retreats into his own self-aimed thoughts and feelings, prioritizing the elimination of his own pains and pressures over the negative effect that the act has on others.

However, there are two sides to every coin. The fact that suicidal people lose hope and see no light at the end of the tunnel is also because they feel no support at the end of that tunnel.

Therefore, as with any problem in life, we need to bear mutual responsibility for that problem. In other words, we all carry the blame for failing to actively build a society that provides everything people need in order to live healthy and happy lives, i.e., conditions that would prevent people from considering suicide in the first place.

For instance, where are the mechanisms in society that check whether people have the essentials they need, both in terms of basic survival necessities as well as psychological support?

It is true that we live in very stressful and difficult times, and we can expect them to become more stressful and difficult. We thus need to think seriously about how we can organize teams and groups that will distribute life’s essentials to people in need of them, to save people from becoming cornered into choking financial and psychological situations that often bring about insurmountable stress and depression, and also teams and groups that will be able to talk with people, providing them with ongoing psychological support.

For more on this topic, watch the following video (the topic of suicide starts at 8 min.): News of the Week with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi

Above photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

We must strive to ensure that our appeal to the Creator is as far as possible from our egoism, and we want to unite at a central point between everyone. This means that I nullify myself and treat everyone on an equal footing, and for me there are no good or bad, close or distant, all are absolutely equal.

I always take care not to think about my own benefit, feelings, understanding, or fulfillment, and I do everything only in order to build a Kli, unification, unity, the place of the Creator’s revelation, His greatness.

The Creator is called “place,” and we need to think about what the characteristic, the property, of this place is, this area that we build among ourselves. And then, according to these properties, the essence of this place, we are rewarded with the revelation of the Creator. We create this place by our own self-cancellation, by striving to build it together on equal terms.

And then the Creator will indeed have a place where He can reveal Himself. This place already exists, but in an egoistic form. And we nullify our egoism and allow everyone to be in this place. It turns out that this place is higher than our egoism, higher than reason, and we have built an area where the Creator can reveal himself. We ourselves create the Creator.

If we create such a place for the revelation of the Creator, then it really turns out that “There is none else besides Him.” Indeed, by nullifying our desires to enjoy and wanting to connect all over them together, we build something new that did not exist before. It is said about this: “You created Me.”

And from this the correct solution becomes clear for the problem we have in this material world where conflicts flare up more and more: the left against the right, some parties and factions against others. There is no end in sight to this feud, and the unrest threatens to escalate into civil war.

We must understand that all these disputes will lead us nowhere, and that there is only one solution—for each to give in for the other and recognize the right to existence of all other opinions. The Creator will not allow us to neglect our opinions or destroy others. Egoism is eternal; only on top of it can we build a place for the Creator to reveal Himself.

Therefore, there is only one solution for all conflicts in the world, between all countries. And they will grow more and more in order to lead us to this unique decision: In the end, all transgressions will be covered by love—each will make a little room and give room to everyone else.

It does not matter whether one is left or right, any most unusual opinion has a right to exist because only in the right connection between them, when everyone sacrifices something for the other, do we build a round area. There is room for everyone in this circle because it is built on mutual concessions for the sake of common existence.

Therefore, there should be no hatred of the right against the left or the left against the right, someone against others, but there should be the recognition that there is a place for any trend, and I only hate my egoism, which wants to cancel all the others. But I hate it only because it prevents me from connecting with others, and nothing more.

After all, it is above egoism that I can build a connection with others if I reduce it a little. This is how I eventually build the place that will be called “The Creator.” The Creator will open and the world will exist as a place for the Creator’s revelation.

No one should think about his hatred of others and their abolition, but give each a place in order to build a place for the Creator to live by our mutual concessions. And if there are no opposing opinions, parties, movements, people, or opponents against me, then I will not be able to build a place for the disclosure of the Creator. The Creator exists only in the place of our mutual concessions.

Therefore, we will see how hatred and opposition grow. There is no need to hope that the unrest will subside. On the contrary, it will get worse and worse. But with our correct approach, we can set an example for the rest. First of all, we need to give a place to another, and teach the other to also give a place to the rest.

So we will balance the system of our relations, balance the opposing forces, and we will keep a place between us built on the concessions of each relative to everyone else, where everyone is included. If we manage to build such an area, then we will give the world the method of revealing the Creator.
[268785]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/3/20, Love Covers All Transgressions

Related Material:
Instead Of Hierarchy, A Circle
Not Punishment, But An Integral Responsibility
Criminal Negligence Of Inactivity

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Globalization, Israel, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

New Life 1260 – A World Without Borders
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Boundaries are dynamic and relative. We move them from generation to generation and want as little commitment to one another as possible. Soon the boundaries between nations will be eliminated. People want to feel accepted as we are without any external pressure or expectations. Today, a person wants to feel that his body doesn’t limit him. We don’t want to submit to any limitation or form of control that chokes our freedom.

Humanity has reached a level of development in which we must transcend the boundaries of matter and material desire and feel true, spiritual freedom in a limitless dimension.
[267424]
From KabTV’s “New Life 1260 – A World Without Borders,” 7/6/20

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

Filed under: New Life - No Comments →