Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/22/21
Posted on April 22nd, 2021
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Comment: Before leaving Egypt, the Creator gives an edict: sacrifice a lamb, keep it at home for 14 days, tie it to a bed.
My Response: All the problems that we see in the text must be understood correctly. We are talking about a person, about his inner qualities. The lamb represents the quality of Bina, which develops in us. Herbs, earth, wine, the burning bush, etc., symbolize everything that happens inside a person.
A person is a small world, he contains absolutely all the qualities of our world. The fact that the world seems to exist outside of us is actually a reflection of what is inside of us.
That is, I see a table in front of me, because its state is inside of me, and therefore it seems to me that it exists. There are my hands lying on this table right now. In fact, there are no hands, no table, nothing. These are just my inner qualities, which paint reality for me in this way.
And the same Egypt, and the same Pharaoh with all the huge pyramids—all this exists only within us.
Comment: If we take the last sacrifice, then the lamb in ancient Egyptian mythology is a deity.
My Response: The Jews bred them, killed them, and ate them.
Comment: They were sacrificed. The Creator said: “Sacrifice it in a certain way.”
My Response: Precisely because the Jews killed and consumed these lambs for egoism, that is, for the Egyptians who are in us, this is sacred, and for the quality of ascent to the Creator, on the contrary, it is an opportunity to rise above egoism.
Question: Despite the indignation of egoism itself, right?
Answer: Sure. How else can you rise above it if you do not resent it?
Comment: It is said that the children of Israel were slaves for quite a long time.
My Response: So far, we have not been able to get out of egoism, to break away from it.
Question: So they perform a sacrifice in front of the enraged Egyptians and Pharaoh, as if they take a very decisive inner step and choose the side of the Creator, to follow Him instead of Pharaoh. To do this, there must be a great inner readiness, awareness in a person. Where does it accumulate, at what expense?
Answer: This is a conscious inner necessity that gradually manifests itself in a person, naturally, with the help of the Creator, with the help of the light. By itself, it does not originate and develop in the person himself.
After all, all these people who were called Jews, came to Egypt in order to develop their altruistic striving to connect with each other and with the Creator, and therefore to manifest the quality of the Creator. By their actions among themselves, they attract the quality of the Creator to themselves.
Question: In our time, is this readiness maturing in the Jewish people or not? Should there be a cumulative measure? How do you get to this measure so that a person actually chooses the side of the Creator and advances and fulfills one’s role?
Answer: To do this, you need to spend four hundred years in Egypt, or at least two hundred and ten years, as it really was.
Question: Do they feel that this is Egypt?
Answer: Of course! Even Abraham was in and out of Egypt. It is not a problem. To be “in Egypt” means to feel oneself in the slavery of egoism. When egoism, on the one hand, gives you everything you want in this world—take it, enjoy it—and then you throw it all away and prefer to get out of it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/12/19
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The work of Amalek, of the Klipa, is to lower the greatness of the Creator, the greatness of the goal, of spirituality, as if there are more important values in our world.
The Klipa works against sanctity not in order to obscure it but only to create some disturbances on the way to it so that we notice where we are and what we should associate ourselves with: egoism or bestowal.
We are not aware of how much the evil forces help us in our lives to position ourselves correctly in this world. If we did not feel the pain, we would stick our hand into fire without noticing that it was burning. This is how adults raise a child, constantly cautioning him about dangerous actions. When the child grows up, he will understand what to watch out for and will act correctly.
This is what the evil inclination, egoism, does. We discover our egoistic intentions in every state, they are of different strength and different character, and we can work against them and turn them in order to bestow. After a few such actions, we begin to discover the Creator.
Amalek stands between us and the Creator and hides the Creator from us, seemingly preventing us from coming closer to the Creator. However, through this, he actually focuses us on the Creator but in the opposite form. It is in this opposite form that we can understand this clue, feel and depict the Creator through it. Otherwise, we simply cannot.
This is how our entire advancement happens: first, we are pulled forward by egoism, and then we begin to see how egoistic this attraction is and then it is possible to avoid it and achieve genuine goodness. There is no other way to come closer to the Creator but to recognize our evil inclination, the Klipa, and enjoy it as it was at first in Egypt during the first seven years of satiation.
When we connect with this Klipa, we see that it is good only for our belly but not for our soul and that it is impossible to come to true good in this way. This Klipa, which raised us over seven years of satiation in Egypt, brings us to the recognition of its evil, and we no longer want it. This is called “help against.” The evil inclination develops us to such an extent that we begin to despise it, to reject and hate it, to suffer from it.
This is how the whole world was enjoying its egoism. The bigger the egoistic desires of a person were, the more successful he was and the more he enjoyed life until the time of our “last generation” came and we start to reveal how flawed our entire past egoistic development was. We can no longer use our egoism because it does not bear any fruit.
We suddenly discover that the king is naked! He is not a king at all! Then we want to replace him because we cannot exist without enjoying life. If now we are no longer satisfied with the life we had in the twentieth century and it is not enough to be well-fed, rich, noble, and educated in order to be happy, if all this does not bring fulfillment, then he is no longer a king.
This is exactly the period we are in, as it is written: “And the children of Israel sighed from the work.” That is, we do not want to be under the control of our egoistic desire, under the power of Pharaoh, the King of Egypt. He has become the exact opposite and brings us evil and draws us to harmful activities.
Now, during the pandemic, we see that this whole race for egoistic goals has turned out to be a fraud. We have built huge pyramids, and we see that there is no hope to receive any fulfillment from them. We were building palaces, but they are tombs for the dead.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/21, “Amalek“
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Question: German scientists are wondering when the end of civilization will begin? Why did such civilizations as the Chinese Empire and the Roman Empire collapse? They also ask: “Why do we think that our civilization can avoid such a fate?” Why?
Answer: They have not collapsed; they have simply transformed into other ones.
Comment: German scientists have come to the following conclusions: The weak point of modern societies is that their systems are closely intertwined with each other and problems in one place cause an immediate response in another place. Disaster researchers have long advocated for vital goods, such as food, to be produced locally. They are saying: “The whole problem is that we are connected!”
My Response: I do not really want to deal with German scientists and their dialectics. I will just say one thing: we need to understand where we are and by what laws of nature we must act. Nothing will help us, even if we try to somehow accept the laws of nature or maneuver inside them to avoid blows.
We must understand what our fate depends on. Our fate ultimately depends only on ourselves. It depends only on the way we will become similar to the general law of nature, the law of the absolute connection of all parts of creation with each other. But instead, this absolute connection passes through people, and in people it gets cut off.
There is inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and all of it is also connected with human nature, which is the fourth degree. This degree does not provide the connection, it acts only for its own sake and not as a complement to the others. No part of nature does anything that kills the rest of the parts.
Inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature use each other. They eat and use each other in order to exist and in turn feed others. That is how it is done. However, we violate this law of the universal cycle. It turns out that humans are the main pests of nature.
How can we nevertheless turn ourselves into an integral, good, and normal part of nature? Only if we study this nature, understand its laws, and follow them. This means consuming exactly as much as we need at the animalistic level, only to sustain life and no more!
Because on our level, on the level of our body, we are animals. If we are animals, then we should behave like them, that is, consume no more than our animalistic body requires. No more and no less, just enough. This is the first condition.
The second condition is that we must do no harm to any of the surrounding nature in any way. This means to any of its degrees—inanimate, vegetative, animate, not to mention human. Not to harm any part of nature!
We should only consume what we need, like any nature. No more than that. If we consume more, it will be to our detriment. Plant a tree without water, what will happen to it? Plant it so that it is drowned in the water, what will happen to it? It needs as much as it needs. So do we.
Therefore, knowing and maintaining this inner balance between us and the surrounding nature is a necessity without which we will not survive. It does not matter to us what the scientists say and what they prescribe to us.
Comment: But they reason with human logic. If we are interconnected and the virus originated somewhere, then it immediately spreads around the world.
My Response: What can you do? You cannot go against the dialectic, against the fact that the connection between us is constantly developing. You cannot go against that. You just need to know how you can make this connection beneficial to humanity. That is all.
Comment: This thought has lived in people for centuries. That is probably why religions appeared that banned excessive consumption. This is why dictatorships appeared that wanted to equalize humanity. Nothing came of it. Nothing!
MyResponse: I am not proposing to suppress a person. I am proposing to teach people the integral law of nature. Then a person will behave correctly because one will see how much he affects nature for good or bad. This, however, depends on people’s awareness of the environment in which we live on this small planet.
Question: So, will we be brought to this, one way or another? We have already come close, and we will be brought to this, right?
Answer: Of course.
Question: What should be the correct education if we want to move forward peacefully, not by pressure? How to make a person use only what he needs?
Answer: Only through integral development of all people in full, correct, and good connection with each other. Without the use of any violence!
If we do not come to this, then nature will teach us in a different way.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/14/21
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Question: The Torah tells us that seven weeks (49 days) after leaving Egypt, the people of Israel, several millions, came to Mount Sinai and received the Torah. There is even an expression in Hebrew: Ma’amad Har Sinai—standing at Mount Sinai.
Why did this happen exactly seven weeks later?
Answer: The fact is that the complete exit from Egypt should take exactly so much time, that is, a person should go through so many states.
The number seven represents the degree or the most important part of any degree. After all, there are ten degrees in total, seven main and three additional ones.
In other words, in seven so-called weeks, we have to do a certain work to exit Egypt. Otherwise, what does “exit” mean? Just walk away?
This is inner spiritual work when a person must realize how he was exiled from the Creator’s quality and how he must now come closer to it. So this is a very serious realization.
Question: What is a “degree” in our spiritual development?
Answer: It is the degree of attainment of the upper world: the next revelation of one’s egoism, ascending above it, and attaining the Creator.
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From KbTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/9/21
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On every aspect we can examine, life is better today than it ever was: We have more food than ever, even too much; we have better health care; we live longer; and we have freedom of speech, at least compared to a hundred years ago or earlier. Technology has given us abundance; we can comfortably travel anywhere we want within hours, and at a ridiculous price; we can communicate with any person on the globe within seconds as if they stood right next to us, and modern medicine is performing miracles (even Covid-19 is nothing compared to plagues that killed tens of millions only a century ago). It seems as though people should have been happier than ever. Surprisingly, today we are more depressed than ever. If we look into this enigma, we will find something fascinating: Not only our lives have changed, but also our goals. We used to want to survive; now we want to enjoy ourselves and be happy. Technology is built to make life easy, but it cannot make us happy. To be happy, we need loving people, not advanced technology.
When we, as a society, engage in building positive connections, material existence will not only become effortless, but it will also become enjoyable and meaningful. We will know why we do what we do, how it helps us, and how it helps the world. We will enjoy being good to one another and find that it is far more rewarding than cold and ruinous competition. In the process, we will come to feel each other’s needs, connect in our hearts, and not only in our bodies, and our joy will grow inconceivably more powerful and meaningful.
In fact, the more technology improves makes our lives easier, the more it points us toward asking about the purpose of life. If we do not need to struggle for survival, then why do we need to lift a finger? And if we do not need to lift a finger, then are we really alive? Although still mostly in our subconscious, these questions are increasingly troubling us and spoil the party we should have been having. The sooner we shed light on these questions, the sooner we will be able to resolve them and find true happiness.
As long as all we wanted was to survive, we didn’t know what happiness was. At best, if we secured our survival, we were content. But contentment isn’t happiness. Happiness comes from heart-to-heart connection with other people, when we feel them as though they were a part of us, and they feel the same way toward us. It is not merely mutual responsibility on the physical level, but a merging of minds and hearts among all people, a state we can achieve only if we truly care about each other, love each other as ourselves, or as our sages put it, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” very literally.
For this to happen, we first have to acknowledge that our current state of mind is the complete opposite: We are strangers to each other, hostile and distrustful. We’ve moved from wanting to survive to wanting to enjoy, but how can we enjoy life if we cannot trust that people around us don’t want to harm us? It keeps us constantly on edge, vigilant, and stressed. To enjoy life, we first have to be certain that the people around us want our best. In other words, we have to become good to one another, caring. And it must encompass all of us. If one person in society seeks to harm others, it will force all the others to become wary and hostile.
There are two ways we can become good to one another: 1) by realizing that we have no other choice and changing against our will, or 2) by realizing that this is our best option, our preferred way of life, and actively pursue this transformation in our lives. Currently, we are treading the first path, desperately trying to find routes of enjoyment that do not require caring about others. This is not working. As a result, we are growing increasingly frustrated and seek all kinds of escape from the pain through drugs, violence, extremism, and depression—the most common ailment of our generation. We can keep treading this path until we feel that we have exhausted all the options, which might take decades of unimaginable suffering. Alternatively, we can give the other path a chance right now, and see how it works.
If we try the other path and commit to fostering positive connections, we will find what we are truly looking for: happiness. No one can feel sad while surrounded with loving people. Moreover, when we start nurturing positive connections, everything we do begins to make sense, since we are doing it to help others and connect with them. When we work for others’ sake, we inevitably infuse meaning into our actions. No one who has ever done something for another person asked about the reason or the purpose of the act. The purpose is self-evident and the reward is tremendous.
Moreover, when we, as a society, engage in building positive connections, material existence will not only become effortless, but it will also become enjoyable and meaningful. We will know why we do what we do, how it helps us, and how it helps the world. We will enjoy being good to one another and find that it is far more rewarding than cold and ruinous competition. In the process, we will come to feel each other’s needs, connect in our hearts, and not only in our bodies, and our joy will grow inconceivably more powerful and meaningful.
In the end, we will learn to be good to one another, as this is the only way we can thrive. But how we learn it depends on us.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does Amalek mean in the Bible?“
Amalek is a quality that is very close to us. It appears to be absolutely evil, a disturbance that needs to be destroyed, and not only destroyed, but it is written that even its memory should be erased. However, nothing was created unnecessarily. Everything in existence was created solely to benefit our development.
Amalek is a quality that helps us develop optimally, and it constantly guards us. It is as if we walk along a path, and wherever we can fall or deviate from it, thorns appear and send us a “Keep away!” warning signal. That is how Amalek stands guard to guide us in the right direction.
The desire comes from Amalek and unwillingness also comes from him.
In Hebrew, Amalek is a shortened form of the words “Al Minat Lekabel,” which means “in order to receive.” It describes the egoistic intention over a desire—to receive for one’s own personal benefit. It is written about such an intention, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah, a spice.” The evil inclination (the egoistic use of desire) is positioned directly against the Torah, which means both spiritual light (Ohr) and also spiritual instruction (Hora’ah).
They both operate on us in order to guide us to a balanced state between the two.
We thus need to relate respectfully to Amalek, i.e., to the ego, since it is a necessary quality for us to establish our spiritual connection. The evil inclination—the ego—which resists and incites us against spirituality—the quality of love, bestowal and positive connection—helps us discover our spiritual connection by showing us how to find such a connection where we initially discover the qualities of Amalek, i.e., the egoistic intention.
Amalek is thus a very cunning quality that shows us the extent to which we are immersed in thoughts and desires for self-benefit, and when we see this egoistic intention operating on us, we can then identify how we need to act in an opposite direction.
Amalek, the ego, thus develops our spiritual skills, letting us attain more spiritual qualities of love, bestowal and connection by showing us the opposites of those spiritual qualities within us.
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 18, 2021.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Question: Did the Kabbalists predict that an information explosion would take place in the last generation and people would not be able to cope with the processing and use of information? What kind of reboot should society make today for the information use?
Answer: We can say that now we are facing another revolution. The fact is that we quite often encounter such states.
When we felt the need for a million horses to transport something from place to place, we invented the locomotive. When we felt that it was impossible to drag what we needed on the ground with the help of a locomotive, we invented other means of transportation, other possibilities, etc. Nature is constantly pushing us to do this.
Today we are at an information impasse. We dirtied the whole atmosphere with all kinds of “likes.” In the end, this is all emptiness. But we are still sitting in this and cannot get rid of it. It’s like we’re stuck in the mud and unable to get ourselves out of it.
I think this will all lead to orderliness, to the fact that we will stop twitching in our information world and rise to the next level. Essentially, it will be important for us to communicate with each other. This is the solution to today’s technological, informational deadlock.
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From KabTV’s “Integral Course” 3/19/21
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is a good solution to the worldwide drug addiction problem?“
Behind every drug addict are unanswered questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
We are all born, live and die against our will, and we thus all question the meaning and purpose of our lives. Drug addiction emerges as one of the means by which several people try to turn away from these questions. However, the questions will always remain and work away at us no matter what we do to try and distract ourselves from them.
Therefore, I see no solution to the problem of drug addiction other than the need to learn the meaning and purpose of life, the process of our development, who we are, what our nature is, how nature works, what nature wants from us, regardless of our different opinions and beliefs.
If we solve the problems of meaninglessness and purposelessness by learning the answers to these fundamental questions, we will then solve the problem of drug addiction.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash.
Comment: When a person is engaged in creating artificial intelligence, he is trying to repeat some processes that the Creator Himself did to him.
My Response: Our whole life is practically a subconscious equivalence with the Creator. We are trying this way or that way, although we are not aware of it. Thus, He teaches us, as little children, through small rewards and punishments.
Then this path becomes conscious when I consciously want to be like Him. This is already beyond my consciousness and my earthly mind. I really begin to explore myself, but in principle, just my equivalence with the Creator, in what exactly I am equivalent with Him.
The entire nature is a reflection of the Creator, a reflection of the force of bestowal. We are created on purpose as a quality of reception in order to be able to deal with contradictions, black-and-white differences, and to begin to distinguish precisely ourselves. That is when our mind appears.
In other words, the middle line that we draw from the opposition and our equivalence with the Creator is our attainment.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 1/3/19
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