Audio Version Of The Blog – 11/7/21
Posted on November 7th, 2021
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are humans meant for change or to remain static?“
Human nature is a desire to enjoy, and the more this desire grows, the more egoistic it becomes. That is, the desire to enjoy beyond its necessities for food, sex and family starts becoming a desire to enjoy at the expense of others: a desire for money, wealth, control, power, honor and fame.
In our era, the egoistic desire has reached a point of ripeness for change to its opposite: altruism. Without such a change, we will experience more and more suffering until we wake up to the need for making this change to our very nature.
In order to undergo this change—egoism to altruism—we need to attract a special force dwelling in nature, which we can do by entering a process of connection-enriching education.
By learning how to positively connect with one another above our divisions and differences, we enter into a certain closeness with nature’s altruistic quality, and attract it to ourselves.
Nature consists of two forces, positive and negative, giving and receiving. Today, we are controlled solely by the negative receptive force: egoism. We can attract the positive force by engaging ourselves in a culture that influences us with values of connecting positively above our differences. Then, when we live between both positive and negative forces in such a way, i.e. the positive force in the social atmosphere surrounding us and the negative force within our very desire, we then start entering into a positive connection with nature.
That is the change that humanity is being led to, and we are at a transition point where we can either enter this process of change actively—applying ourselves to connection-enriching education and entering environments that support this change—or we can continue trying to fulfill our egoistic desires, and by doing so, the steamroller of evolution will eventually catch up to us with increasing suffering until we become ready to undergo this change.
Based on a talk “Challenges of the 20th Century” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 24, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Question: My question is about everyday life. How can I avoid the attention of people that I do not see as a part of my environment due to their potential destructive influence on me? How can I do this without offending them and by avoiding conflict? Why does the Creator send them to me on my life path?
Answer: The point is that these are not external people, they exist in you. You must streamline your inner feelings and properties, and then you will see how they cease to affect you.
All this is deliberately aroused in you by the same upper light, which fills absolutely all space so you can turn everything negative into positive. These people evoke additional critical analysis in you, you must listen and strengthen your opinion even more.
Then you will see that these people are not outside. In fact, they are within you. All of this is an outward display of your inner personal doubts and contradictions.
So, deal with them freely, only with the intention that you are willing to attain the truth. Do not lean on anyone’s side but analyze every state. If you still cannot do it, then at least you understand that you still have such unanswered questions. Later you will figure them out. Until then, write them down and forget about them for a while.
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From KabTV’s “Videoconference”
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And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued the Egyptians, according to that which I did in their midst; and afterward I brought you out.(Prophets, Joshua 24:5)
Joshua, conveying the words of the Creator, tells about the spiritual path of each person and of the entire society as a whole.
If a person feels that he is in Egypt, it means that he understands that he is in egoistic slavery and the Pharaoh rules over him. There is nothing that can be done about this, except to find a moment and break out from slavery.
When such desires develop in a person that he can no longer remain under the control of egoism, he raises a prayer and asks the Creator: “Give me strength! Get me out of here!” Then the Creator sends two forces to help him: Aaron and Moses.
Question: Is a person lowered to Egypt in order for him to cry out?
Answer: In the end yes. But not only for this. He must descend to Egypt in order to receive four phases of egoistic desire from the Pharaoh during 400 years of his stay there. Then he will feel what a difference lies between him and Pharaoh, as two opposite poles that exist in nature. In this case, he has no other option but to escape from Egypt: “And the sons of Israel sighed because of the work.”
A person needs to rise from our world to the level of faith above reason, of the quality of bestowal. Then the Creator will hear him.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/6/21
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Question: If friends leave the ten, how can we build an attitude toward them? Can we pray for them? Or should we only focus on what we have now?
Answer: We must understand that as we develop spiritually there will always be people who will leave us because they will feel that it is no longer for them.
For example, I started elementary school, but not all 30 students who started first grade reached the tenth grade; many fell behind, left, etc. And then college—how many of them were admitted? And how many dropped out of college? And how many went to graduate school after college?
That is, the higher we go, the more dropouts we have. And each one of us has their own specific level. So don’t hold them back by force. It is necessary to create conditions for everyone to go forward, for support and help.
This is possible because the system is integral and can accept any person who is annulled toward it. I can just be a baby in the arms of other friends, like a small child in a family, but I am considered a member of the family because I annul myself toward them. This is how we should act.
However if a person feels that this is not for him, he does not want it, does not agree with us, he must be calmly released, and realize that along the way we will see many such cases, and this is inevitable.
And in the end he still took something from us. We must take into account the level of possibilities of everyone in this circuit.
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From KabTV’s “Videoconference”
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Question: The power of bestowal is a characteristic of the Creator. There is a Kli (vessel) and there are Klipot (impure desires). The Klipot are egoism. What is the nature of the Kli?
Answer: The nature of the Kli is corrected egoism. There is no Kli in the beginning, there is solely and only egoism. What we can correct of it becomes a Kli, which is to say, a desire that resembles the Creator and is capable of bestowal, transcending itself.
These desires are revealed in us in ascents, in descents, sometimes they go away from us and sometimes they come closer to us, and so forth. We are dealing with them.
The group was given to us so that we can become trained in it and as much as we can, transcend our egoism. To the same extent that we can transcend ourselves, we begin to feel the Creator in us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/15/19
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Question: How can we attain the highest level of our existence?
Answer: Gradually, starting from our world through 125 spiritual levels.
There are five worlds that descended into our world from the world of Ein Sof (infinity) in each of which there are five Partzufim, and in each Partzuf there are five levels for a total of 125 levels.
We will be ascending these levels until we reach the world of Ein Sof. On each level we must reverse our egoism and thus ascend. That is, all these levels mean internal changes, higher, even higher and higher above ourselves, the egoists.
Question: Where does the count begin?
Answer: The count starts at zero. When you enter a group and begin to annul before the friends in the group, then you measure everything in relation to it. This is level zero.
At the same time, you know exactly where you are, high or low, ascents, descents, and different fluctuations along the way. And so you advance along the way.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 10/6/19
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Question: Some well-known rabbis and sages were asked, “Why do you think so many Nobel Prize laureates and billionaires are Jews?”
Their first answer was because of anti-Semitism, Jews had to work twice or three times harder than others who received the prize. Another answer was that a person should study something every free minute that he has since this rule is part of Jewish tradition and has become part of our national genome. According to Forbes, in 2019 half of the ten richest billionaires have Jewish connections. They are Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Bernard Arnault, Michael Bloomberg, and Larry Page.
How would you answer the question “Why?”
Answer: As a Kabbalist I believe that it is actually their spiritual root which enables Jews to see, to feel internally, and to receive much greater and deeper information, although they may not be aware of it. I don’t think it is a matter of IQ.
The reason is that they receive knowledge from the general force of nature that surrounds us all and includes inside it all the laws and manages everything.
Comment: But still, if this is nature, if this is the general law, then it advances them not so that they should profit in business and become billionaires, etc. After all, this is not the reason for that.
My Response: It is not for that.
Comment: But they use it for this purpose.
My Response: They do indeed use it for this purpose and nature is responsible for it in order to advance all of humanity through them to where it spreads, to where it is headed and what it is attracted to. For them this feeling really leads them to achievements.
Question: So that they will lead the rest of humanity to such achievements?
Answer: Yes. In fact this is not the reason that our special connections with the force of nature were created, not to use them egotistically; but still it is through them that humanity also advances greatly. What would we do without Google today, without Facebook, etc.? There are a lot of Jews there.
Question: Why were they given such skills?
Answer: At the moment it is in order to advance humanity to a state in which you have everything and have nothing.
You have everything, but you are still limited by planet Earth. Why should you see what is happening in the Philippines or in South America now?
You already see it. And what’s next? You receive any kind of information through your cell phone. What’s next? A person needs to be filled eventually, since after all, we all move from one filling to another throughout history.
I think that it will all end and we will remain very poor, “robbed.”
Question: And this is the purpose of this whole process?
Answer: This is the purpose of this whole progress. It should bring us to a state in which we will not want to go anywhere.
Comment: I expect such a cry out that it is the Jews who have brought us to a dead end.
My Response: Of course. It is their mission, to lead humanity.
Question: Why should they lead humanity to a dead end, to emptiness?
Answer: From one dead end to another dead end, from one dead end to another dead end. This is actually how humanity advances, because it encounters its ego and looks for another way. It is like an robotic vacuum cleaner that bumps into corners; so does humanity until it discovers: “That’s it, I am detached, there is no meaning in life. I refuse to crawl on the floor anymore. I need to ascend upward.”
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/25/19
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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah“: Kabbalists have found that the form of the four worlds named Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya, beginning with the first, highest world, called Atzilut, down to this corporeal, tangible world, called Assiya, is exactly the same in every item and event.
This means that everything that eventuates and occurs in the first world is found unchanged in the next world, below it, too. It is likewise in all the worlds that follow it, down to this tangible world.
Kabbalists discovered that there is an upgraded state of creation, which is the upper level called the world of Ein Sof. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Ein Sof (infinity) and distances are not measured by kilometers or yards, so this measurement is not really relevant for them. Therefore, this world is called upper because the highest root is there and everything stems from it.
It is called the world of Ein Sof because we cannot attain it in its ultimate form.
The next world below it is called the world of Adam Kadmon (AK).
Adam is the prototype of the corrected state of creation, and Kadmon means primary or original. So the initial state of creation, the embryo, is called Adam Kadmon.
Then the world of Atzilut follows, stemming from the word “Etzlo” (in Him). Everything is contained in the world of Atzilut.
It includes the upper light coming from above and all the efforts and corrections that come from below. It is truly a serious spiritual object.
Atzilut is the upper world in which the Creator exists and operates on us from above downward.
Below this world are the worlds of Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya.
The world of Beria comes from the word “Bar” (emerging from the boundaries of the Creator, below His level).
Yetzira means that new, lower states are created in this world.
Assiya is the world of action.
Our world is below the world of Assiya and is sometimes perceived as its lowest level.
Question: What is the upper root and what is the branch?
Answer: Basically, the root is in the world of infinity. But it is not a root in itself yet, because it is too high. Our roots are actually in the world of Atzilut and our branches are in our world.
And in between, there are different states, combinations, and connections.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 10/6/19
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