Comment: Why do altruists very often cause not gratitude, but resentment? Experts say, it is because we doubt their selflessness and see the calculation behind everything. Thus, the good deeds turn into a fat minus. Psychologists call this mass phenomenon “the syndrome of do-gooder derogation.”

It is believed that the most reliable way to avoid belittling good deeds is to do them in secret. If others accidentally find out about them, and this will eventually have a positive impact on your reputation, just consider it a bonus. Oscar Wilde said very beautifully: “The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out.”

My Response: Yes. Others “accidentally” find out, in quotation marks.

Question: Does it mean that our world is built in such a way that we cannot do any altruistic action?

Answer: We can’t in any way. This is our nature. We can only make a mess everywhere, we use, break, and violate. We cannot act in any other way. Therefore we must think about the way to limit ourselves reasonably to such an extent that we violate everything around us as little as possible.

This is possible only through educating a person.

Question: Does a good deed at the level of our world exist?

Answer: A good deed at the level of our world is when we treat our world as our home, common to all of us, and we are like one family, and we take care of everyone.

If a person has such an attitude, then of course we will put this world in order. We have passed some peak of excessive consumerism, destruction, and distortion of everything possible, and now we have to put it all in order a little, i.e., limit ourselves in everything that is not necessary.

Question: Can a person come to this?

Answer: Nature will force him. There is such a thing as necessary and sufficient. Mutual restriction by all of us, which is voluntary and accepted by each of us in order to make our planet comfortable for ourselves and future generations, is necessary.

Comment: But people say: “This is what we want.” There are many such movements.

My Response: They do not really do anything. We cannot do it by force and we cannot do it by shouting in the squares either.

Question: How can we do it?

Answer: By educating people! All these environmentalists and Greenpeace only create a lot of noise and cause hatred and distrust.

Question: What should be the basis of this education?

Answer: To turn all of humanity into a family and the entire Earth into one comfortable apartment for everyone, into our home.

Nature will force us to do this. We are in such a state. Perhaps we will go through something else. For example, there could be a world war and half of humanity or most of it will be destroyed. It will come to this anyway. Nature brings everything to balance.

Question: Do you realize that this is a very long educational process considering who a person is?

Answer: This is a long process, but it depends on the understanding of the need for it.

Question: Who can be a teacher in such schools, such universities of life?

Answer: One who has risen a little above his egoistic natural level can be a teacher.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/2/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the main aim of education?“

The main aim of education should correspond to the main aim of our lives.

Why do we exist? We exist in order to achieve a certain goal. As individuals, we each picture a smorgasbord of goals to ourselves, but outside our individual worldviews, there is a much larger universal goal that involves us exiting our individual worldviews and entering into connection with the entirety of nature. Likewise, unlike the transient sensations we could feel whenever we might achieve various individual goals we picture to ourselves, when we achieve the universal goal of connecting with nature in its wholeness, we attain the complete sensation of eternity and perfection. We can and must achieve this goal while we are here in our world.

Therefore, education should provide every person with the method, means and guidance necessary in order to achieve this goal, to ultimately guide us to become happy, fulfilled and complete beings living in a perfectly-connected society.

Unfortunately, our current forms of education have no such aim. We teach people similarly to how animals teach their offspring: to survive, to raise a family, and to produce more offspring. We thus fail to progress beyond the animate level of existence.

While it might appear that we make sophisticated progress in areas such as science and technology, since we make no progress on a deeper level, to discover the eternal and perfect reality, then we remain at the animate level of existence. Our progress is thus no more than efforts to make our animal existence more optimal and comfortable.

Rising above the animate level of existence and becoming human in the fullest sense of the term means rising above our narrow egoistic desires and attaining the same overriding altruistic intention that exists boundlessly in nature.

Therefore, education should aim at elevating us to a new level of existence by showing a different perspective of life than what we are used to: that there is an exalted purpose to our being here—to become balanced with nature—and it is worthwhile aiming ourselves at that purpose.

While we raise ourselves to become more sophisticated individualists, nature gradually reveals to us that it has different plans: it brings us to tighter and tighter interconnectedness and interdependence. The more we progress without developing altruistic ties in our growing globally interdependent world, the more we will find ourselves suffering and intolerant of our lives.

Therefore, nature gradually brings us to the realization that we need to revise our educational aim, and together with it, the method and the means to implement it, because we increasingly see how our past approaches to education no longer help us navigate in a world requiring us to realize our mutual dependence in a positive and balanced fashion.

Based on KabTV’s “Close-Up” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on August 24, 2009. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic: “Faith Above Reason” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 112

Selected Highlights 

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My new article on Linkedin “From the Body to the Mind”

The current wave is causing more confusion than ever. If previously, experts believed that mass vaccinations were necessary in order to curb the spread of the virus, now there are experts who believe we should let go of all the guards since the current strain will turn the pandemic into an endemic disease like the common cold. I really don’t know how it will end, if it will end at all. Either way, one thing is clear: Our woes will not end. A new menace will come, which will not affect our bodies but our minds.

To begin with, the whole problem is in our minds. It is our minds that are sick, and they sicken our bodies and the rest of the world. For this reason, I believe that future woes will be more complex and more sophisticated, more subtle. They will not attack our bodies but our brains. As a result, we will begin to think differently and see things differently.

The sickness in our minds has to do with our attitude toward others. We are so abusive to others that we cannot stop even when we know we are harming ourselves in the process. There is an anecdote about a man whose jealousy of his neighbor overcame him. One day, the man found a lamp. When he rubbed it, a genie came out and promised to give him anything he wanted, but with a caveat: “Whatever I give you, I will give twofold to your neighbor.” The jealous man thought about it for a while and finally said to the genie: “Take out one of my eyes.”

This is what we are doing to ourselves. Our minds seek dominance, power, and wealth at the expense of others. In the process, we are destroying the very sources of abundance that make our world livable. We have become so absorbed in overpowering others that we cannot stop attempting to destroy them even when it eventually means destroying ourselves.

This attitude will be the target of the new bug that will infect us. I hope it happens sooner rather than later, but I cannot be certain. What I do know is that when it comes, we will begin to recognize the damage we have been causing our surroundings.

Regrettably, we learn only through pain. Only blows open our eyes to see we have been going in the wrong direction. If we use our intellect to learn more quickly, we will spare much of the pain, but it depends on our willingness to learn. For now, unfortunately, I cannot say that we are in learning mode.
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Question: What factors can harm us in advancing in the ten?

Answer: Absolutely everything. The only factor that can benefit you is rising above everything harmful to the connection between you. That is all.

Everything that appears in you is against connection, against the ten, against the Creator. And all this is in order for you to rise above in mutual connection with each other.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Deriving the Greatness of the Goal from the Friends” Lesson 4

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Question: How can we enhance our aspiration for connection with the Creator?

Answer: Only if we learn this from the friends; I must see them above myself.

If I do not see them that way, then I am not in a good state. This means that I must exert more and more in my studies and in the connection between us until I detect that I see them above myself. And then by yearning to connect with them, I begin to feel the essence of this connection, that is, the Creator.

Within my desires and my aspirations for the friends, I will begin to feel the property of bestowal and to some extent the property of love, and this will be the Creator.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/6/22, “Approaching the Creator Through the Network of Connections Between Us” Lesson 1

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Rabash, Article No. 1 “Purpose of Society-1”: …the Creator has given us the chance to be in a society where each of us has but a single goal: for The Shechina [Divinity] to be among us.

The Creator gave us the opportunity to create such connections between us, such relationships that would be similar to Him in properties.

We do not want anything else! If we do not want to remain at the level of animals that live for a certain number of years and then rot, but wish to rise even egoistically to the level of the Creator (if we have such predispositions, that is good), then we must understand that the entire ascent means revealing the Creator between us!

This is the very first condition that a person must understand, realize, and accept and that initially, a priori, will be in all his actions: I want to reveal the Creator between us.

As soon as a person begins to realize that he must move only in this direction, he already enters into mastering the science of Kabbalah because he begins to draw closer to the property of connection with others and rejects properties that alienate him from others.

Both those and other properties remain in us and between us, they are all necessary. It is upon the oppositeness of these properties that we reveal the Creator, as it is written: “The advantage of light from darkness.”

Therefore, the most important thing is to approach the Creator and His revelation, which is the purpose of our existence and the existence of everything on Earth. This is the ascent from the animate level we are at now to the level of Adam. Not just “man,” but Adam from the word “Domeh, similar to the Creator.” To the degree of this similarity to the Creator, which we create in the connection between us, we will move forward.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/6/22, “Approaching the Creator Through the Network of Connections Between Us” Lesson 1

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We should always check ourselves regarding the opinion of the group: do I agree with what I receive from the Creator or not? Do I agree with what I have in my life, in my spiritual advancement? Am I able to annul myself at every moment and say that I am receiving a full envelope right now?

And if I am dissatisfied with something in life, it is because I have eyes but they do not see. In fact, the Creator gives me a full envelope. And so I go and advance each time in joy and in faith. Despite the fact that every time I may see that there is a shortage: first one dollar from $1,000 is missing in the envelope, then two, then $100, and then $999.

And then I open this envelope and see that it is completely empty. There is nothing in it! And this is what I have received from the Creator? Of course because who else can you get it from except the Creator—there is none else besides Him.

And what is left for me? To be in joy! And this will mean that I have risen above the restriction and have adhered to the Creator, to His opinion, to His mind in full measure.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/22, “Faith Above Reason”

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Question: With what eyes do we see the true world?

Answer: We see the world that surrounds us through our egoism, but we want to see it not disturbed by our ego, the way it really is. We are approaching this state gradually, step by step.

How can I do this? I am trying to work it all out in the group I am in, i.e., trying to see it better and higher. If I grasp this, then I will see the world more deeply and transparently as the place where the Creator gradually manifests Himself to me.

Question: If in the corrected state the world is perfect, then why do we constantly say that it is degrading?

Answer: We speak according to how we see it. But this so-called degradation is designed to push us to our own correction so that we see the world perfect through ourselves.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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