Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Amnesty International are stating that Israel’s policy against Palestine is the equivalent to apartheid. Is this a gross distortion or an accurate reflection of the situation? What do you think?“

Instead of arguing whether the report is a gross distortion or accurate reflection of the situation, there are deeper factors at work in the “Israel as an apartheid state” narrative. While the report describes Israel as conducting apartheid policies toward Palestinians and also toward Israeli-Arabs, the negative views about Israel are in fact sourced in the egoistic relations among the Jewish people themselves.

Overtly, we find no reports about negative connections between Jews, but covertly, there is a deep-seeded feeling in the nations of the world that the Jewish people owe the world a method of correction of human relations up to a point of “love your neighbor as yourself,” and that the Jews are failing to provide this method. The feeling of the Jewish people failing to provide the world with a method for rising above divisive drives is then what ultimately forms as negative views that the nations of the world hold toward the people of Israel, and the “Israel as an apartheid state” narrative is one such consequence. It is as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes in his “Writings of the Last Generation”:“It is a fact that Israel is hated by all the nations, whether for religious, racial, capitalist, communist, or for cosmopolitan reasons, etc. It is so because the hatred precedes all reasons, but each merely resolves its loathing according to its own psychology.”

In short, connection is a law of nature and the people of Israel were established as a conduit through which to pass the connection in nature’s deeper levels to humanity. The solution to the increasing negative views about the people of Israel is thus for them to realize their role in the world, i.e. to implement the method that leads to “love your neighbor as yourself.” As such, they become “a light unto the nations,” i.e. a conduit for the tendency of “love your neighbor as yourself” to spread worldwide. On the contrary, their failure to realize this method holds back such a tendency from spreading around the world, and the world increasingly feels that the people of Israel are a source of darkness, up to a point where the world would feel that there is no right for this nation’s existence.

We thus have no choice but to start increasing our positive connections to each other up to a peak of love. By doing so, we would invert evil to good, and see peace and harmony throughout the world. Likewise, we would find that the world would invert its attitude to us from negative to positive.

Based on the video “Why Does the ‘Israel as an Apartheid State’ Narrative Gain Increasing Attention?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: One ancient parable says that God molded a man from clay and he had an unused piece left. “What else can I mold for you?” God asked. “Mold me happiness,” the man replied. God did not answer, and only put the remaining piece of clay in the man’s palm.

Where is that remaining piece of clay that a person can use to stop being an animal and experience oneself in perfection and eternity?

Answer: It is right here. It just needs to be seen.

Question: Where is this line? Where is this point?

Answer: I think that this is the central Kabbalistic book The Book of Zohar. All other Kabbalistic materials gather around it. It reveals how to reach happiness to us.

From the next level, the level of the Creator, we must attract the force that created us, led us through all metamorphoses through the all of history to our present state, and manifested itself in us and caused this question from within, so that we now attract this force to ourselves and begin to raise ourselves to its level.

But man himself must make the jump from the animal level to the level of the Creator. On all other levels—inanimate, vegetative, and animal—we rose automatically. Nature has constantly moved us and evolved. And now we must raise ourselves.

This is why Kabbalah is revealed. It is the instrument with which we must enter the new dimension. To become equal to the Creator is our goal; therefore a person is called “Adam,” that is, similar to the Creator. Only by achieving this will we fill all our voids and become truly happy.

That piece of “clay” that the Creator put on our palms is Kabbalah as a method of achieving happiness.

Question: In principle, can one say that the whole development of a person and his whole life is aimed at realizing the futility and insignificance of his desires?

Answer: But all these desires are correct. On the contrary, they lead us forward. Nothing needs to be cleaned up. Everything that is inside us and outside is specially created so that we can use it correctly and realize it in order to achieve the highest goal.

And then we will find that in each of us there is not a single bad quality, not one evil quality. The Creator kneaded “clay” in us with all sorts of little things inside so that everyone would occupy the most perfect state for themselves.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Summing Up” 4/7/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” 

Selected Highlights

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Medium published my new article “Here Comes Another Wave”

While the media is busy covering the war in Ukraine, Covid has returned to haunt humanity. In China, more than fifty million people are on tight lockdown; in Hong Kong, the number of dead is rising; in Israel, the reproduction number (R) is climbing fast and is now well beyond the spreading mark of 1. If we thought Omicron was contagious, the new strain, BA.2, is 30 percent more so, and hybrid variants like the Deltacron are emerging, too. New strains and new waves will keep appearing until we learn all that we need to learn from the virus.

The virus is not here to teach us about itself; it is here to teach us about us. We think of these waves as waves of Covid-19, but they are not. The original strain is virtually gone; we are dealing with a different virus because we ourselves are different. This is why the vaccines that defeated the original strain are no longer effective.

As I said from the first appearance of the virus in early 2020, this virus, or its “relatives,” is here to stay. It needs to teach us how to live more peacefully and harmoniously with each other and with nature, and it will not leave until we learn.

We may not have noticed it, but the virus has already done a great deal of teaching. Our career aspirations have changed dramatically. Suddenly, everyone is talking about The Great Resignation and the fact that so many people now prefer to work from home.

Many people have also become content with less money in return for more peace of mind. The movement toward a four-day workweek is also gaining momentum around the world. Even in Asia, known for its workaholism, big corporations such as Panasonic and others have switched, or are in the process of switching to a four-day workweek.

Traditional education is also falling from grace. “Until 2019, the number of homeschooled students had been growing by between 2% to 8% each year. From 2019 to the fall of 2020, the percentage of homeschooled students changed from 3.4% to 9%.” According to the National Home Education Research Institute, “there were about 3.7 million homeschool students in 2020–2021 in grades K-12 in the United States (roughly 6% to 7% of school-age children).”

These are not minor changes. Fewer working people means more modest consumption, less congestion on the roads, especially if people are working from home, and more family time. Likewise, homeschooled children require a parent to stay home and tend to the education and occupation of the children. This, again, affects many other aspects of society.

This is why I think that Covid is not a punishment but a correction. The only reason that we feel this correction as painful is that we resent the change, so nature imposes it on us.

At our current level of narcissism, without restraint from the outside, we might destroy ourselves and the world with us. The war in Ukraine is only an example of what pride and power-hunger can inflict. Therefore, I think we should be grateful to Covid’s restraints. We are counting its victims, but we have no idea what catastrophes its appearance has prevented.

That said, I do not think we should continue to suffer its restraints. Since nature imposes corrections on us, and we have no choice but to obey, as is clearly the case, we can impose these corrections on ourselves instead of inviting nasty bugs to do it for us.

All we need to correct is our egoistic behavior. To do that, we need to be aware that in a world that has become totally interconnected, thinking that we can take all that we want regardless of others and enjoy other people’s pain is not only reckless, but destructive to everyone, including to ourselves.

We need to understand that if we want to subjugate other people, even in thought, much less in action, we are harming ourselves and our environment. No other being but humans have such evil, narcissistic thoughts. If we annihilate them from within us, we will put an end to war, hunger, exploitation, abuse, tyranny, and everything else that plagues our world. If we are reluctant to learn, the viruses will clear out these plagues from humanity.
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Medium published my new article “Man’s Insatiable Hunger for Power”

Since the dawn of time, man has craved power. Since the dawn of time, power struggles have disrupted people’s peaceful lives. Today, too, the hunger for power is wreaking havoc and destroying countless lives. Power turns people into bullies. We cannot kill it but we can use it positively. Unless we learn how to do it, it will destroy us all.

You could say that the hunger for power is man’s primary trait. We want to control everything around us. This is true not only of pitiless rulers, but of every human being.

Power-hunger exists within us from the moment we are born. Look at how babies grab everything their hand can grip. That, too, is a desire to control, to keep. It is the fundamental state of being of our desire: to want to own and control everything I see, to bring it under my governance, so that I am in control and everything else is subordinate to me.

In other words, the hunger for power begins from the most basic needs and increases to levels where people lose their ability to judge correctly because of their obsession with power. The initial desire is natural, but in humans, it evolves into a disastrous monster.

The problem is not that we want something, but that our desires grow beyond the level where we can balance them. Eventually, they become desires not only to get what we want, but mainly to prevent others from getting what they want, and to have them at my mercy.

There are two fundamental forces in existence: attraction and rejection. They manifest on every level, physical, biological, emotional, and moral. In all of nature, the opposites balance each other out. In humans, the pulling force grows from generation to generation, and keeps growing throughout our lives until it grows out of balance and out of control. In order to maintain the balance that the rest of nature maintains naturally, we must learn how to do it.

From early on in life, we must teach children about human nature, how we can keep it in check, what goals we should set for ourselves, and how to achieve them in constructive ways for ourselves and for society. We need to show children which social environments are good for them and which are not, and why, and show them the harm that reckless egoism can inflict.

Once people have acquired control over their ego, they can use it positively and constructively. If such people have a desire to rule, once they have learned how to rule their ego, they can become great rulers. They will be able to resist the intensification and inflation of the ego, and instead of saying l’état, c’est moi (the state is I), as did Louis XIV, they will feel humbled by the privilege that the public has bestowed upon them to lead it wisely.

Indeed, a leader must have an inherent feeling of unworthiness. Unless a leader feels that other people know better, are more capable, or have more experience and wisdom, nothing will stop him or her from becoming a tyrant. However, humility and a certain sense of inferiority curb the ego and allow the leader to remain attentive, appreciative, and, above all, caring.
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Question: Various wars have taken place throughout history: civil, religious, the cold, and information wars. Is there any difference between the types of wars in terms of the correction of mankind?

Answer: Practically not. All wars are the lack of balance between the right and left lines, between good and evil, between the property of bestowal and the property of receiving. This happens all the time only at different levels.

Comment: In our world it is very difficult to figure out where good and evil are because, in principle, all of history is written by the winners.

My Response: It doesn’t matter. We are talking about what is happening, not how they judge it and what they write.

Question: So in our world there is no such thing as one side being good and the other evil?

Answer: You can still say that people who open fire and kill others are evil.

Comment: But they also have their excuses.

My Response: It doesn’t matter. A man killing another man is the greatest evil.

Question: There are even clear laws in the Torah that you can kill only when someone comes to you and wants to kill you. War always means many young people die. What’s the point in all of this?

Answer: War is also a correction, but in a very sharp, dramatic way.

Question: Does it matter how a person dies?

Answer: There are four types of killing a person: burning, stoning, cutting off the head, strangulation. But, in principle, how a person dies depends on the root of his soul.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/1/22

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Everything we attain in this world is attained in our egoistic qualities. Therefore, we must be careful not to fall into egoism at every level on the way to the quality of bestowal and love, and we must make sure that everything we feel and reveal would only benefit the general state of the entire universe, everything that the Creator created.

This device is created by the Creator and is called the soul of Adam. We must bring it to a similarity with Him. Therefore, this state or desire is called “Adam” from the word “Domeh” – “similar” to the Creator.

At each degree of our development as we develop through 125 degrees starting from our level, which is completely opposite to the Creator, to the level of complete similarity to Him, we go through two stages. First we reach the level of Bina (the level of hearing) and from it we rise to the level of Hochma (the level of reason).

Question: How is it connected to the covenant of the eyes (Brit Einaim)?

Answer: This is the covenant. When I reach this state, the attainment itself becomes my covenant. It is already in me, within my corrected qualities. Therefore, it is said that by this I make a covenant with the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/28/21

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Question: If previously the process of new students coming to your community consisted primarily in the fact that people met physically, got acquainted, and influenced each other, today this is not the case. Does it reduce the degree of connection and the impact of communication?

Answer: I think that, on the contrary, it is perceived more clearly and explicitly.

If, for example, a friend of mine is ill now, then I really feel that I am missing something, i.e., something has formed in me that needs treatment, recovery, and replenishment.

I believe that our world group in the virtual world of communication, if you can call it that, has first of all grown. If there used to be 2,000 of us, today there are already 6,000 or 7,000 of us clearly present at systematic lessons and taking part in the life of the community.

If today we made a virtual, all-inclusive congress, the number of participants would be close to 10,000 people. We see that such communication helps us. It does not oblige people, but on the contrary, does not bind them. You come in whenever you want, attend lessons, and discuss various topics through computer communication.

But time did it all. Therefore we need to actively explore virtual space.

Comment: It is quite possible that by using modern technologies we can also allow such a form of development of your community as a real virtual world in which we will sit in the same hall wearing augmented-reality glasses and study together in one huge congress hall, just as we do today sitting in front of computer screens.

My Response: It is not a problem at all. Today I feel my students from South America to North America, across the entirety of both continents. I feel students living in Africa, Australia, and Asia, in absolutely all countries. They feel like they are with us.

Comment: Imagine such a picture that other people will be able to enter this virtual huge congress hall.

My Response: We are open to everyone. We never hide or close anything. And why? Our task is to connect all of humanity to this.
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From KabTV’s “Virtual World” 2/9/22

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Question: For the past two years, your community of students who study the method of Kabbalah practically has not met physically. You conduct your classes remotely. In fact, you live in a kind of virtual community in which, nevertheless, there are real connections, a real opportunity to change yourself and the community.

How do you feel about it? Have the bonds between your students become weaker or do they remain the same?

Answer: Our ties have become stronger, they are being reshaped and becoming more virtual, and at the same time more obvious.

It is not virtuality, in the sense that we must imagine something for ourselves. We are increasingly refusing some physical contacts accepted in our world and transferring them to the realm of sensations. They bring us to a state where we really understand that the most important thing is the matter given to us in sensation.

Question: Where is freewill here?

Answer: Freewill is here as much as you want! After all, when a person is not constrained by any earthly circumstances—mechanical movements and other tools, he becomes virtual. It shows only his desire. If he wants to be in touch with you, he goes out. If he does not, he shuts himself in, and you no longer see him, you do not hear him, and you do not know him. He can change his ID and that is it, he does not exist for you, he has evaporated from your world.

Therefore, we begin to feel that it is each new circumstance, for example, with a virus and other opportunities, that helps us approach a new world.
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From KabTV’s “Virtual World” 2/9/22

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