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“Why should you care?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Why should you care?

If we fail to reach mutual care in our times, then we can expect ourselves as a humanity to regress, rather than progress, as we head into the future.

Any current progress we make is for profit purposes. If there were no thirst for money, would medicine and surgery continue developing? Nothing would develop. We would live as if in a primitive society.

However, in our times we will feel a growing awareness of the need for mutual care. For the time being, however, the modern world does everything possible in order to obscure it, even though it is crucial to its survival.

Today, human egoism—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others—undergoes immense exponential growth, and we cannot object to its demands. Our overblown egoism could lead us to such disastrous states as nuclear wars, or nature itself will trap us with its own disasters, and it would all be in order for us to reach an agreement: that we invert our attitudes to each other, to solely consider the other’s benefit without taking ourselves into account.

By making such a fateful shift in our attitudes to each other—to become more caring for each other—we would see the dark picture of the world fade away, and a new harmonious and peaceful world open up to us.

Based on the video “Here’s the CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT We’re on the Threshold of Making” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash.

“Istanbul Convention – Israel Should Make Its Own Rules” (Times of Israel)

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Istanbul Convention – Israel Should Make Its Own Rules

The Istanbul Convention is a human rights treaty that was drafted by the Council of Europe and was opened for signature on May 11, 2011, in Istanbul, Turkey. The treaty aims to prevent violence, protect victims, and end the impunity of perpetrators. The treaty is based on the premise that tackling domestic violence requires international cooperation. Recently, there have been voices in the Israeli government calling on Israel to join the treaty. Should Israel do so, it will obligate Israel to make rules that meet the requirements of the Council of Europe.

Perhaps the treaty is indeed a sincere attempt to deal with the escalating violence around the world, but Israel must decide its own rules. We should not adopt cultures or rules that do not belong to Israel, but conduct ourselves the way a Jewish state should conduct itself in every aspect of its life, including when it comes to violence of any kind—from domestic violence through abused migrants, and to every other form of mistreatment.

The people of Israel were given morally just rules thousands of years ago, which have become the basis of Western ethics. However, when our sages established them, they were based on our ancestors’ profound understanding of human nature and its whims and dispositions. When other cultures adopted Jewish law, they twisted and warped it to the point where it has become unrecognizable and, worse, worthless.

The result is that these ethics do not work. For all the rules and regulations by which the world has tried to curb violence and make people more humane toward each other, the opposite has happened. We have become more violent, unjust, and abusive.

Therefore, in order to understand how to deal with human nature and prevent abuse, we should not look outward, but into our own past. Our sages teach us how to reign human nature successfully. They tell us that we should not suppress any trait or try to eradicate it, but only use it for the common good. In this way, we become masters of our impulses instead of letting them drive us into mischief.

The social rules of our ancestors teach us how to rise above our ego and become considerate. They help us transform from individuals who feel separate from others into people who feel deep sympathy with, and empathy for every created being. People who have been transformed in this way will not hurt a soul.

This is why maintaining our unique characteristics is imperative. And the most unique characteristic we must preserve, cherish, and nurture is the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This should be the supreme law to which everything and everyone aspires. It should be the lighthouse that shows all of humanity the road to safety.

The law of loving others as ourselves is the only treaty that humanity will ever need. It pertains to all religions, all belief systems, all faiths, doctrines, and ideologies. It is the basis of any relationship and the bedrock of every sustainable and thriving society.

This should be the law that the State of Israel embraces, and in this we should be an example to the world. If we accomplish this, the whole world will be convinced that no other treaties are necessary but to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that accomplishing it is not only the ideal, but that it is an achievable aspiration.
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The Energy of Thought

226Question: How do we achieve immortality by uniting and placing ourselves in similarity with the field of common thought?

Answer: We achieve immortality because thought itself is immortal!

We go through the physical states of our matter, energy, and everything that was created from the point of the Big Bang and exit that state. We rise above matter, energy, and information to the field of thought.

Question: Is thought itself energy?

Answer: Yes, you can call it that because we need to somehow establish our feelings. But that is not material energy. We are talking about pure thought, which is aimed at bestowal, not at reception. It is opposite to all our thoughts, directions, and intentions.

When we try to unite with each other and attain this single thought, we are faced with a very interesting revelation that is opposite to us because it operates for absolute bestowal.

By its nature, this is a thought upon which energy, matter, information, and all of nature are based, the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human, our world in general, and everything that we can imagine. This thought has a nature opposite to ours—the nature of bestowal and not reception.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Secrets of immortality” 1/7/11

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Burning Thorn

294.3Question: What does “burning thorn” mean?

Answer: There are bushes that burn because they emit various oils. Both in the air and in the sun, they look like they are engulfed in flames. They seem to be burning, but they themselves do not burn out, heat and odor rise from them.

From the spiritual point of view, there is a burning desire within a person to attain the Creator, to get closer to Him. This is called “the burning thorn”—Sne Boer. Man himself becomes this thorn.

In the Passover Haggadah, the desire to attain the Creator is conveyed allegorically. When Moses returned to the people after fleeing from Pharaoh, he saw a burning bush. This symbolizes the appearance of a force in him directed toward the Creator in such a way that he can lead others.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/19/22

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The Nation of Israel and the Land of Israel

933Question: The Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael,  means “a desire straight to the Creator.” What does that mean?

Answer: Just as the Creator is aimed only at nurturing and developing His creations, bringing us closer to each other and to Himself, so should we see this as the goal of our development.

The Creator is the quality of bestowal, love, connection, and everything good that can only be imagined in expansion and getting closer to each other.

Question: What is the difference between the concepts of the nation of Israel and the Land of Israel? Both the land and the nation are called Israel.

Answer: The earth, Eretz, comes from the word “Ratzon,” which means desire.

Israel (Isra-El) is from the word “Yashar-El,” (straight to the Creator).

The Land of Israel is Ratzon-Kel (desire directed to the Creator). And the nation of Israel is Am Israel (the people of Israel).

That is, at the level of development of our desires, we must achieve such a desire when all of them will be aimed at good relations with each other, at good connection.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/26/22

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When There Is No Strength for Spiritual Work

626Question: As it is known from history that Moses came to the people at the dictate of the Creator and told them that he wanted to free them. Naturally Pharaoh began to resist. So when a point in the heart wakes up in us, our egoism begins to resist at some stage.

What does it mean in spiritual work that a person does not have the strength to work?

Answer: The fact is that when we begin to feel ourselves imprisoned in our egoism and wish to somehow get out of it, then a problem arises. How do we get out of it, and what do we do accordingly?

Here the internal struggle arises in a person between his egoistic properties and the altruistic ones.

This is what the Torah speaks of, how a person should raise his altruistic properties, which are growing in him more and more, and how he should help them grow and pull him out of Egypt (from his egoism) and raise him to the level of feeling the Creator, feeling the exit and ascent above his egoism. This is what the whole story is about.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/19/22

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Who Disrupts the Balance of Nature?

738Question: In recent years, we constantly hear disappointing reports about natural disasters, volcanoes, fires, snow storms, and so on. What will happen next? It seems that the situation is completely out of control.

Answer: Everyone says that the climate on the planet is changing. We are facing more climate, social, political, and financial changes. Accordingly, various technological disasters are possibly ahead of us.

We cannot imagine the entire problem that we ourselves arouse in nature because we disrupt its balance.

We are only talking about the fact that some species of animals and plants are disappearing, and we do not understand that with their disappearance the integral picture of nature is disrupted. Its general organism gets out of order because we live in a closed volume on this earth, inside this small sphere in which everything is interconnected: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature.

Moreover, when something changes, it seems to us: well, this has changed and that has changed. We do not see how one thing affects the other, and therefore we are not stricken with fear and anxiety by thinking of the ways it will impact us.

Question: Can it be that people prefer simply not to think about it?

Answer: You can, of course, not think up to some point, or because you understand that it is impossible to do anything. Then there is no point in asking, “What else can we do?” Therefore, we say that this is inevitable and nothing can be done.

In principle, we cannot even confirm that we influence nature in any way because environmental pollution, emissions into the atmosphere, the extermination of fish or animals, and the depletion of the earth with the use of fertilizers and chemicals affect it. But is it possible that this has such an impact on nature? There is no confirmation of this.

Of course, there is a reason for all kinds of public organizations, such as green parties and others, to campaign for the preservation of nature. Probably, it is necessary to listen to them. But scientists, completely objective people, have no absolute confidence that everything really depends on this.

If we take, for example, solar activity, then we certainly do not influence it by any of our actions on earth.

Question: Does it mean that these are irreversible processes?

Answer: It is quite possible that these are some kind of cycles through which our Earth must go through again, either a period of warming up or a period of cooling. Nature must maintain a balance.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Europe Today” 1/26/11

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What Mass Media Teaches Us

272Question: The age limit for being accountable for committing crimes is gradually decreasing. In some countries, teenagers have been responsible since the age of 12. But we see that despite the fact that this bar is constantly lowering, nothing helps. Crime is growing particularly among teenagers.

Why is this happening? From the point of view of Kabbalah is a person at the age of 14 already an accomplished person? Is it possible to change something?

Answer: What about the age of 40? Is that not an accomplished person? It all depends on the person’s upbringing. If a person is brought up in Africa, in nature, in his clan among adults, then at the age of nine or 10 he is already an adult man. He understands how others act, all their states, all their relationships, and behaves the same way as they do in this world, which is natural for him.

If in our world both a child and an adult learn completely artificial relationships and actions from the television screen and unreal circumstances and conditions are shown to them, then they do not know what sort of world they are in at all. They go outside and replay the same scenes they have seen on television. As a result, even at 20, 30, and 40- years-old, it is all the same.

I look at people on the streets, they play what they hear on the radio, see on television. They just replay what the media gives them. Is it possible to call these people adults who are responsible for their actions? No!

You can talk to them and see how much they live automatically because that is how everyone lives. They don’t even think about it. They were not told that it is possible to live in any other way.

Everything depends on the upbringing of a person, on the measure of his independence and awareness of what he is doing.

Our current upbringing is aimed at teaching a person to stick to the TV screen and learn only from it how to act, talk, think, and so on. And what can we demand from him? Exactly what we give him.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outlaw” 12/19/10

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Kindness Can Do Miracles

283.01Comment: On TV program on the topic of judicial proceedings and issues of punishment, one participant demanded even tougher sanctions. But his opponent noted that we have already exhausted all the possibilities that we have and found it does not help at all.

Obviously, we do not take into account some kind of human component, human nature, we are doing something wrong if no increase in punishment can lead to anything.

My Response: Kindness can do miracles, it is a great force. Relying on force and pressure leads only to Nazism, fascism, dictatorship, and violence, and as a result to the degeneration of society. It turns into a society of wild animals.

Not even just animals, but wild animals.

I do not imagine any other future for such a society besides its degradation, up to self-destruction.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outlaw” 12/19/10

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