Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/9/21
Posted on April 9th, 2021
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Rabash, “He who Hardens His Heart“: It follows from the words of The Zohar that Pharaoh means within reason, that it seems irrational that they would be able to exit their authority, unless through faith above reason, for this power cancels all the powers in the world.
We cannot, with our egoistic mind, realize what we must come to: from one stage to understand another stage. Just as a child cannot understand how adults perceive the world, but we force him and he agrees because there is still a natural tendency in him to accept what adults tell him even though he does not grasp it.
It is impossible, while at a lower level, to understand a higher level. Therefore, our entire path goes, as they say, in faith above reason, when we accept the properties of the higher levels as the highest and wish to absorb them in ourselves to become like them even without understanding their greatness and peculiarities.
Question: Reason cannot operate because it is under the power of our egoism and obeys it?
Answer: Reason is a derivative of egoism. Therefore, based only on reason, it is impossible to get out of the animate state we find ourselves in.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/26/21
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My new article on Linkedin “Pure Passion for Power”
A few weeks ago, a startling headline on the Daily Mail announced, “The British schools selling out to Beijing: Not only are private institutions being bought by Chinese firms but some are giving communist-approved lessons that are a threat to free speech.” The story stated that “Hundreds of independent schools left in dire financial straits by the coronavirus pandemic are being targeted by Chinese investors,” and “Experts anticipate a ‘feeding frenzy’ as firms, including some run by high-ranking members of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, seek to expand their influence over Britain’s education system.” To date, “Seventeen schools are already owned by Chinese companies,” nine of which “are owned by firms whose founders or bosses are among China’s most senior Communist Party members.”
Suspicion and enmity the world over are intensifying to the point that we are approaching another world war. No one can win this war since we are all dependent on each other, but unless we understand it, we will go to war anyway and everyone will lose, terribly.
This revelation should not surprise us. The Chinese are not even shy about their intentions. According to the story, “One firm admitted its acquisition of British schools is aimed [at] supporting China’s controversial Belt And Road strategy, which aims to expand Beijing’s global influence.”
In fact, I think there is much more to it than that. The Chinese agenda is very simple: Conquer the world without destroying it. Because they’re not European, or even American, they have to take some detours, such as going through the education system, but this will not stop them. The Chinese want one and only thing: Chinese hegemony. There is no ideology behind it, not socialism, not communism, and not capitalism. You don’t need to give up anything in order to give them dominance, which is why their ambition is so elusive. They don’t power in order to promote some idea, but power for the sake of power. Once they buy something, they know it’s theirs, and that’s the end of it; they’re happy that it’s theirs.
What does this mean for us? It’s a display of the ego, very simple. For centuries, the Chinese ego had been latent, and now it is bursting out.
In all honesty, if I can get what I need, the service or the product that I want, I don’t care who owns it. This is why I don’t see any real issue here, as some are trying to make of this stealth invasion. If they buy a company but it continues to work as before, then what difference does it really make? Ownership is not something that troubles me.
I think that the more important point is that we need to know that if we want to use something correctly, we can do it only through mutual connection and mutual dependence. The owner’s name makes no difference. We should shift our attention from power struggles to a struggle for connection, for bonding among all of humanity.
Suspicion and enmity the world over are intensifying to the point that we are approaching another world war. No one can win this war since we are all dependent on each other, but unless we understand it, we will go to war anyway and everyone will lose, terribly.
Therefore, if we want security, we should shift our focus from a passion for power to a passion for connection. And the more people join the movement, the faster it will spread.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can singing benefit your health?“
According to various scientific studies, singing lowers blood pressure, cortisol levels, and stress, and increases the level of dopamine that creates feelings of pleasure and increases motivation.
Singing helps sync ourselves with our feelings and hopes. Animals also sing, and it is an activity that has been around before we developed language.
Singing generates a certain reality because it stems from the innermost places of the heart. We cannot sing what we disagree with. We can lie when we talk, but we cannot lie when we sing.
When we sing together with other people, we connect our hearts, sharing a connection in a common activity.
Singing can connect the hopes, aspirations and emotions of a whole nation, and even the whole world.
Singing together with others gives us a boost of energy and strength as it involves the mutual participation of several hearts, desires, intentions, aspirations, disappointments and hopes.
My new article on Linkedin “The Waning Memory of the Holocaust”
I was born in Vitebsk, Belarus, right after World War II, when the memory of the war was vivid. Not far from my town, which was home to many Jews before the war, were a concentration camp and an extermination camp where many Jews perished, including most of my kin. I grew up hearing about my relatives who had died from the survivors in my family, and those stories left a deep mark on me.
The question of Jew-hatred is not one of race, or religion, or nationalism, or any other reason that hateful minds have conceived. Jew hatred persists because there is a unique demand from the Jews, which few have observed. Nevertheless, until the Jews meet that demand, antisemitism will persist.
But today, when so many years have passed since the end of the war, it does not surprise me that the memory of the Holocaust is waning. The survivors are passing away, and today’s young people feel disconnected from the past. It is only natural that people, especially young people, will occupy themselves with the present and with the future more than with the past, and besides, who wants to keep such bleak memories in mind? Nevertheless, since tomorrow, April 8, is the Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel, it is a good time to reflect on what we have learned from this tragedy, so we can prevent it from recurring.
The going narrative in Israel emphasizes the wrongs that were done to the Jewish people for the “sin” of being Jewish: the mass execution by gas, the concentration camps, the mass shootings, starvation, tortures, and countless other horrors that amass to the murder of six million people from my fold. Still, if you focus only on telling what had happened, you miss out on the chance to talk about how not to let it happen again. This is what I believe we should focus on today: prevention rather than preservation.
To understand how to prevent a second Holocaust, we must first understand the root of antisemitism, why it persists, and why it becomes genocidal in some nations and not in others. Clearly, one essay is not enough to explain it. I have written two books that explain the matter in greater depth. The first, Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour, elaborates on the root of Judaism, emergence and development of antisemitism, and its consequential solution. The second, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, focuses more on the history of the Jews and the apparent correlation between the level of their social cohesion and the intensification or subsiding of antisemitism. In this essay, I will outline the picture in broad strokes, but I highly recommend reading the books to get the full picture of how history demonstrates the place of the Jewish people in the world.
Antisemitism is not a new phenomenon. It came to be when the first Hebrew came to the world, namely Abraham. Since then, it has cloaked itself in myriad personas, but the bottom line has always been the same: The Jews are to blame; therefore, the Jews are to be punished. Today, for example, many people think that opposing the existence of the State of Israel is not antisemitism. They believe that if only the Jews were to return to Europe, from which the first settlers had come, antagonism toward Jews would vanish. Regrettably, this growing disposition, both among political leaders and regular folk, conveniently ignores the fact that the parents of the settlers who had established the State of Israel were gassed to death in Europe precisely because they were Jews.
Therefore, the question of Jew-hatred is not one of race, or religion, or nationalism, or any other reason that hateful minds have conceived. Jew hatred persists because there is a unique demand from the Jews, which few have observed. Nevertheless, until the Jews meet that demand, antisemitism will persist.
The demand, as the titles of the books imply, has to do with Jewish unity, or solidarity. It dates back to the onset of the Jewish people in ancient Babylon. At that time, when Abraham was still an idol-worshipper in Harran, a large city in the Babylonian empire, he noticed that people around him were growing hostile toward each other. He observed that they were feeling increasingly entitled, arrogant, and spiteful toward each other to the point where they did not care for each other’s life, and often even slew their dissenters simply for disagreeing with them.
When Abraham tried to convince his people to treat each other kindly, they mocked him, children hurled stones at him, and even his own father, a high-ranking spiritual authority in his country, renounced him. Unable to help his people, Abraham left Harran and headed west, toward Canaan.
However, Abraham did not leave alone. His family went with him, as did many people who followed his advice and tried to put kindness and friendship before arrogance and cruelty. As the company wandered westward, more and more people joined them, until, as Maimonides describes in his composition Mishneh Torah, tens of thousands had joined Abraham’s group. Thus, the pariah had begun to form a nation.
Abraham’s troupe was of a special kind. They had nothing in common but the belief that kindness is preferable to cruelty and friendship is better than enmity. If they forgot it, they would immediately become strangers again, so they had no choice but to keep fostering their solidarity. On the one hand, that solidarity gave them their strength. On the other hand, it put them at odds with their birthplace, the Babylonian empire, which grew increasingly self-centered and extolled ego-centrism. That was the core reason that prompted the Babylonians to expel Abraham and his followers. That enmity was the first manifestation of the hatred that was to later become antisemitism.
However, the unity of Abraham’s group not only set it apart from all the nations; it also made them powerful. The unity they formed among people who were previously complete strangers had to be so strong that it projected outwards and made them palpably different and formidable, but only as long as they were united.
In Egypt, while Joseph was alive, the Jews were united and successful. They were the de facto rulers of Egypt, ran its economy, and Joseph was Pharaoh’s viceroy. But when Joseph died, the Jews began to separate and assimilate. The Mishnah writes that they wanted to be like the Egyptians, and as a result, the Egyptians began to hate and despise them. When Moses appeared, he reunited them at such intensity that they were able not only to emerge from Egypt, but they became a nation in its own right. This completed the process of turning complete strangers, who often came from rivaling clans, into a nation whose members love each other to the point where they feel “as one man with one heart.” That, indeed, was the miracle of the Jewish people.
Since then, any nation that achieves greatness, and as always, begins to disintegrate from within due to hubris and growing arrogance, also becomes antisemitic. It is people’s innate feeling that there is a cure to their mutual hatred, that the Jews have it, and that they are not sharing it.
Thanks to the level of unity that the Jews had reached under Moses, they were given the onus of being “a light unto nations”—to share with the world their unique method of turning aliens into the closest of brothers. Since that time, approximately 3,800 years ago, any nation that falls victim to conflict, whether internal or with another nation, blames it on the Jews. They do not blame Jews because Jews are setting them off against each other, but because Jews are not showing them how to make peace with one another.
In this way, the boon of the Jews, their unique unity, has become their bane when they do not practice it.
People often wonder why the most developed nations also afflict the most horrendous blows on the Jews. They ask why specifically Egypt (Pharaoh), Babylon (ruin of 1st First Temple), Rome (ruin of the 2nd Temple), Spain (1492 expulsion of the Jews), and Germany (Holocaust) wrought the worst torments on the Jews, and precisely when they were at the height of their strength. They do it for the same reason that drove the Babylonians to expel Abraham: intensifying ego. The more egoistic a society becomes, the more it resists unity. And in Jews, even though today the majority of Jews do not feel it, lies a cinder of that special unity their forefathers had once forged. That cinder, however frail, is both the reason for their woes and the key to their deliverance from the bane of antisemitism.
Our forefathers persistently nurtured their unity because they knew that they had begun as strangers, and if they did not nurture their unity, they would disintegrate instantaneously. Regrettably, we do not have that clear vision. Nevertheless, the same condition is as true for us as it was for our ancestors. Since the ruin of the 2nd Temple, we have not been able to unite. Even the establishment of the State of Israel did not unite us, and internally, we are as alienated from each other as before. This is why antisemitism still persists. This is also why the pattern of the most developed and egoistic nation becoming the most antisemitic and inflicting the worst blow on the Jews is bound to return. Nevertheless, if we unite, we will immediately project the light that the nations seek to find in us, and the hatred of the Jews in all its forms will cease.
This year, and every year, when we remember the slaying of the six million of our coreligionists, we should remember the message they had left for us: Unity is the salvation of the Jews, because unity is the salvation of the world from egoism. If the Jews bring it to the world, the world will thank them for it and love them. If the Jews remain splintered and project disunity, the world will hate them for it and despise them. Then, it will seek to get rid of them and set off another Holocaust.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are good ways to solve mass unemployment?“
The solution to mass unemployment is in providing basic income to all people on condition that it is received for a certain contribution that each person makes to society.
In other words, basic income, i.e., receiving a regular allowance, cannot work on its own. On the contrary, if basic income was implemented in society without the need for incentivizing people to contribute to society, then society would stagnate. This is because the factors of competition and social responsibility that drives us to succeed, progress and perform in all kinds of ways would be removed from our lives, and we would find ourselves vegetating more and more.
Therefore, in a system providing basic income, we need to be concerned that elements of competition and social responsibility find a new and positive form.
This is doable through education of prosocial values.
As we head into the future, we will increasingly see that we need to positively realize our increasing interdependence and interconnectedness. If we fail to upgrade our attitudes to each other the more we become connected in an external manner, then the more we can expect all kinds of stresses, pressures and tensions to negatively affect us. Therefore, society will need to be infused with a new kind of education that teaches and promotes how to positively connect in our new interdependent and interconnected age.
Mass unemployment provides an opportunity for us to connect these pieces together. The more we will see automation and AI taking jobs that we traditionally needed people to fill, then the more we will need to provide solutions for such people. Basic income coupled with connection-enriching education, which encourages positive contribution to society, is a solution that aims to ensure an increase of people’s happiness, confidence and motivation as it will aim to direct society to increasingly positively connect.
Thus, instead of being motivated to succeed on account of others, as we currently do in our times, our success would become redefined as the extent to which we can contribute to society and positively connect above differences and division.
Based on “Universal Basic Income: Pros and Cons” by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Fabio Bracht on Unsplash.
Question: How did Rabash teach you to feel and sense the material of the structure of the upper worlds while reading The Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah (Pticha) or The Study of the Ten Sefirot?
Answer: He did not. He simply patiently taught me until I started to feel something, not in any other way! He did not push me forward.
And I am pushing you. And I have a reason for it: the world is developing alarmingly fast and forces us to conform to those wrong and distorted forms that it takes on. If it were not for that, I would not feel this urgency.
You are right, we are hastening our study a little and you do not understand what is required of you. But you will overcome. If the world is in the state it is today, it means that you can.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/4/19
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Comment: Before discovering the wisdom of Kabbalah, I lived in Israel for nine years and during all this time I did not learn or speak Hebrew. It was only the need to penetrate into the sources that prompted me to learn the language.
My Response: Yes. Only those who practice Kabbalah break themselves because they begin to understand that Hebrew is a code through which one can learn a lot and enter the spiritual world.
Comment: And the main thing is that Hebrew is constantly expanding. We read the sources so many times and they always sound different. Everything flows and merges.
My Response: Exactly. If we begin to see in which combination the letters are in every word, you suddenly feel the melody that conveys the inner meaning of that word.
Question: What would you wish for your students in 2019?
Answer: First, I wish them a happy new year! Still, 2019 will be very complex. Humanity does not hope for anything particularly good.
Let us firmly hold onto each other, and through the letters, through the heartfelt connection between us, let us invite the upper light so that it embraces us and makes clear even without letters and words everything we need to understand about our eternal existence. We will then swim eternally in the vast upper light, which will gradually be revealed to us through these grand letters.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/6/19
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Question: Is there a fundamental difference between human and artificial consciousness?
Answer: I think artificial consciousness is just a mechanical augmentation of our natural abilities. It does not lead to a more advanced understanding and sense of the space around us.
I do not think that the true space in which we exist, call it spiritual, is subject to some mechanical consciousness.
For this, we must develop our inner qualities, the quality of bestowal, the quality of reception, and they are not inherent in any mechanical device. This applies only to man because it is in him that the desire to receive and bestow is embodied.
Let’s say you create some external mechanical element that does something. But it will do it because you created it that way. No matter how much it improves itself later, its quality will not change. This can only happen in man because this feature is only in us.
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From KabTV’s “Integral Course” 3/19/21
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Question: Why do men and women today not want any obligations to each other?
Answer: Why? In the past cycles of life, I was born with a new egoism, much greater than in the previous cycles. Selfishness in a person grows every day, every minute, and therefore we develop. We are constantly creating something new in the world, pushing forward in science, art, culture, building new relationships, making revolutions. Animals do not have this; their egoism is constant. Take an animal five hundred years ago and today, they are practically the same thing.
If you take a person of the previous and today’s generations, there is a huge difference. Our children no longer understand us. Even if we compare ourselves with ten years ago and today, we will not understand each other.
The egoistic foundation, which is changing in us all the time and requires developing ourselves in search of fulfillment, is qualitatively different. For example, in past generations we lived in what is called the animal state—as we were born, this is how we should be.
Let us say I was born into the family of a plowman, blacksmith, tailor, or shoemaker. This means that I will also inherit my father’s occupation, his tools, and even his clothes, I will build a house nearby, I will marry the daughter of a neighbor.
Everything fits. A man felt that he needed it and it helped him. He felt, this is my framework, it provides for me, it protects me. He felt good.
I remember even my grandparents did not have any marriage registration. They were married according to the national custom, they made a chuppah, and that was all. Then, when my grandfather died, and it was necessary to rewrite the acts of civil status, they took several witnesses, the same old people, and they testified that they were husband and wife.
Marriage was not a human obligation. It was a natural environment of communication for him. He created around himself his home, his family, his yard, his garden, next to his parents, some kind of community, city, maybe even a country, state, and so on.
That is, a person at that time wanted to create some kind of shell around himself in which he could exist. This is how an animal acts by creating protective systems around itself. But suddenly, over the 20th century, we broke this framework and began to move from the animal level of development to the human one. It was said in Kabbalah several thousand years ago that such a revolution would take place in the 20th century.
A person is one who does not tolerate any frameworks, he must get out of them. Therefore, a new culture, science, relationships in the family and in society appear. Now, all are equal, there are no boundaries, I do not listen to anyone. Man is trying to break free from everything. Even going into space is the realization of our desire to go into a higher state, into the outer dimension.
Although we still do not feel it, this is the direction of man’s aspiration, to go beyond the framework of our life, those seventy years in which we exist. They constrain me, I see the beginning and the end, and therefore this whole life is like a prison. I have to find something higher, outside of this life.
If a person does not reach the answer to the questions: why and what for?, then he neglects everything else. For him, everything else is no longer important. Exist as easily as possible, and that is all.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Common Law Marriage” 8/11/09
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