Audio Version Of The Blog – 3/15/23

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Return to the Creator

935Baal HaSulam writes that since the word “nature” is equivalent to the Creator, it is possible to call the laws of the Creator the commandments of nature, and vice versa, the commandments of the Creator are the laws of nature, since they are the same thing. In other words there is nothing but the system of nature, which is the Creator.

This is how we should treat everything that surrounds us, our influence on the world where we exist, and its influence on us, while we recognize ourselves as an integral part of this system of nature, which is called the Creator.

There is only one upper force of the Creator, which desires to bring us to adhesion with Him, not forcefully by coercion, but by a conscious way of good. To the extent that we understand the Creator, feel Him, and attain Him as good who does good, to this extent we will be able to get closer to Him and connect with Him. In this way we will return to the Creator—to nature.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/23, “Connecting the World in the Last Generation”

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How Can You Meet God?

962.3Question: There is a Jewish parable about a young man who asked a sage: “We hear that in the past, in the good old days, people used to see God with their own eyes. People used to meet with God. God used to call people by their first names. God was very close. What happened now? Why is He hiding from us? Why doesn’t He hold people’s hands anymore? They stumble in the dark without Him.” The sage looked at the student and said: “My son, God is still where He was, but people have forgotten how to lower themselves low enough that they can see Him.”

He says you must lower yourself. What is it to lower yourself?

Answer: Annul yourself. Your mind, your strength, your superiority, your egoism overall. Then you will see the Creator.

Annulling myself means I don’t want to decide anything. I want only one thing: to bow before the force of nature, which claims that only for the sake of others, only in connection with others, and only in mutual support can we exist. This is called lowering yourself.

The law of nature says it very simply: we are all interconnected. That is, if I think about others, and care for others everyone will be fine and so will I.

Question: Is this lowering my “I”?

Answer: Yes. But this lowering toward others, this egoism cannot be broken through. It is possible only if we convince each other that we have no other option and lower ourselves together.

Question: This word “lowering” does it frighten you, push you away? Not really you, but someone proud?

Answer: Of course, we will have to put away our pride somehow, and deal with it.

Question: How would we make purely corporeal decisions and some plans?

Answer: Precisely by lowering ourselves toward each other. We won’t survive any other way.

Question: So we cannot build one strong country. Do we also have to take care of everyone else, the whole world, everything? You give us such difficult tasks. Or can we do it?

Answer: I think this is not a difficult task. Our development will lead us to feel that we are one nation on Earth, and there is no escape from the fact that we must support each other. This will become the main law. Nature will force us.

Question: Is this the future?

Answer: Yes. I think it is not far off.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/5/23

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The Doomsday Clock Keeps Ticking

294.2Question: The Doomsday Clock symbolizes how close we are to a nuclear catastrophe (how much time to midnight). Midnight signifies the moment of nuclear catastrophe. In 1953 we were very close to that, two minutes to nuclear catastrophe. This was during the development of nuclear weapons in the US and the Soviet Union.

Today, the hands of the clock are 90 seconds away from midnight. This means there are 90 seconds until midnight. The clock readings are calculated annually by 15 Nobel laureates.

We understand and see where this can lead. We see the consequences of the disaster; we have been shown footage of this all the time. But we are not afraid of anything. Somehow it does not frighten us. Why?

Answer: It is because we live with it, we got used to it. Also we did not experience it firsthand, and whatever happened in the past was a long time ago. It is human nature to forget everything and live by today.

Question: Do you think you have to live in Nagasaki to remember and be afraid?

Answer: I think they are not afraid today either.

Question: Is there a mechanism in us that says that nothing will happen or “I don’t care about anything”?

Answer: Perhaps it is a habit. How much can you be afraid and how much can you talk about it? It is better to live and not think. I think that is how people live.

Question: And now it is getting worse; the expenditures for armaments is outlandish. Why is this arms race increasing?

Answer: It is because one cannot help but think about defense. Countries cannot think about it any other way, and are conditioned this way. One looks at the other and copies them.

I am more concerned about new countries, such as Iran and various states in Asia, getting pulled into this.

Comment: Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

My Response: Yes. They also have nuclear weapons and maybe even the means of delivery. Of course this is all wrong and misguided. The proliferation of weapons has taken on a widespread fascination, significance, and growth. Therefore, according to all this, the world indeed is very close to nuclear war, on the one hand.

On the other hand, many people understand that, in general, it is the end of this entire era, which, although marked by a nuclear arms race, was still peaceful.

Question: We always say, “The upper force, the Creator.” Why is He showing it all to us? Why is He unleashing all this?

Answer: So that we think about ourselves.

Comment: But we think about ourselves all the time.

My Response: No, we do not think about ourselves. If we thought of ourselves, we would not behave this way.

Question: What should we do?

Answer: Imagine there are two fighting factions where you live and everyone is in this atmosphere. What should they do? Naturally they would want to get rid of these two militant groups.

Comment: And live peacefully.

My Response: At least peacefully. Certainly not under a threat of war which can ignite every moment.

Question: And yet, why does the upper force, the Creator, allow such a thing?

Answer: So we understand that everything we do, we do badly. We are the ones who bring ourselves to such a state with our egoism. We do everything out of egoistic considerations that do not allow for anything other than suppressing another. Any concerns for what happens to this person are turned off.

Question: So egoism is not against its own destruction or being destroyed?

Answer: No, it is not against it because it will still exist in some form.

Question: So we have to come to understand this evil?

Answer: The evil is in the ego itself. That is the main thing. So the intensity will grow higher and higher until we realize it.

Question: You are saying that to stop the arms race we have to understand the evil of egoism?

Answer: Yes. It is quite possible that there will be a thermonuclear war. After that, humanity will gather and perhaps will even be able to adjust itself correctly in this quiet period after a nuclear war.

We will see how it unfolds. Baal HaSulam did not rule out the second, a third, and even a fourth world war.

Question: He thought the ego to be so resilient that it is the only way to destroy it or break free of it?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/26/23

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A Dual Relationship

549.01Comment: Sometimes when your students ask for your advice on this or that action, you answer that it is not worth doing, and then at some point as if you become a new person and say: “It is very important to invest in this.”

My Response: This happens because I begin to feel that people are ready for this action. There are two stages here. One is when I do not get involved and I do not feel people’s readiness yet, and the second when I feel their readiness, I identify myself with them, and start pushing them myself.

Comment: It often happens that at first you are even critical of their proposals.

My Response: No, it is not criticism. The fact is that I always go into any state that students offer me, from the point of view of denial, to checking this state, to grasping it, and in the process I tell what I see from this side.

And then, by feeling their readiness for proper implementation, I move on to the fact that perhaps it is necessary to do so and so. I go through these states along the way without hiding the fact that I see it from one side and then I see it from the other, so that they get a general overview and understand the picture.

Question: What should the student do in this scenario when you first say one thing and then a different thing?

Answer: Act in accordance with the decision being made. I do not think we should stop there. It always happens that way.

Comment: But you once said that due to strength and desire, you can push the Creator.

My Response: Naturally, this is what we do at each stage. You have to beg Him. And to do this, you must have such a strong desire to overcome His resistance.

Of course, the desire is also given by the Creator, but to what He gives you, you must add your efforts.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Tricky Laitman?” 6/30/12

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Great Opportunities

226We need to quickly reshape a person’s view of the world, and educate and raise them.

Religions, on the contrary, make people closed, fanatical, and encourage not taking anything into account: “Follow all these traditions and the future world is guaranteed to you, but on this earthly level, let be whatever will be.”

But there is no future world! The animal body dies, nothing remains of it. And a person does not have a soul if he or she has not yet attained the Creator’s properties—bestowal and love. This is the property in a human that is called the soul.

People do not understand those great opportunities when one can really become a person of eternity. Otherwise, it does not work.

Either you just live in a protein body that dies, decomposes into its original elements, and that’s it. Or while in the physical body, one acquires something new—spiritual existence, which you develop, pass into, and live in. And even when your body is dying, you do not think about it; it is as if you simply cut your hair or nails because they are of a lower level, vegetative or animate, compared to you—a person.

You are already at the next level, in the next dimension. This is the opportunity that everyone has! Why should we look under our feet when we can look at the sky? People do not understand it.

They are not afraid of wars, destruction, or suffering. They somehow support each other and forget: “Come what may. Another day has passed and it is good.”

Moreover, they pass it off as maturity, as a realistic approach to life, as strength, and pride, and they arrange all kinds of competitions of who is stronger, like wild animals in a fight for a female. But when it comes to animals, it is an instinct both to preserve and to pass on the correct genotype from generation to generation. There it makes sense! And here, for what?

Question: Why does the Creator arrange such cloudy minds for people?

Answer: It is a transition from one state to another. Birth always occurs with the fetus inverting: its head was up, it must turn down, and again, when born turn up.

Birth is such a turning point, a bifurcation, that changes everything. And when you approach it, you become insane because you must move away from your past state and come to the future. This transition is very dusky and very problematic. This is the problem of the birth of a new humanity.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Where is the human soul?” 6/16/12

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How The Book of Zohar Was Written

533.01Question: You said that Rabbi Shimon conducted pure light, and Rabbi Aba clothed it in letters. What was the function of the other nine disciples of Rabbi Shimon in this chain?

Answer: They represent a common system. If they had not been there, Rabbi Shimon would not have felt anything and Rabbi Aba would not have been able to open the upper light and clothe it in letters. After all, all these ten people are ten Sefirot, a complete Partzuf. How could anything happen without it?

Question: When Rabbi Aba clothed the light in letters, what exactly did he transform?

Answer: He clothed the light in a type of shell you need to acquire to reveal the upper light.

The rest of Rabbi Shimon’s disciples worked in this system together, in harmony, to reveal the upper light that emanated from their teacher.

Comment: Interestingly, Baal HaSulam worked independently and described all this as well as they did.

My Response: Firstly, Baal HaSulam also had his own disciples.

Secondly, when a person enters the spiritual world, he already has other students and another company: those properties, those desires, those corrected and uncorrected elements of the general system, which we simply do not detect with our five senses.

There, contact takes place at the level of desires and thoughts, and not at the level of the bodily matter that we imagine.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How The Book of Zohar Was Written” 6/2/12

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 3/15/23

Preparation to the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)”

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Lesson on the Topic “Connecting the World in the Last Generation”

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Selected Highlights

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“Why do some people find thrill-seeking activities such as bungee jumping or skydiving exciting rather than scary?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: Why do some people find thrill-seeking activities such as bungee jumping or skydiving exciting rather than scary?

Whether it is bungee jumping, skydiving, other extreme sports, thrill-seeking theme park rides and even scary movies, in such instances we want to feel the limit and how we breach it: that we reach a state beyond our capabilities.

We then enjoy the state. There is pleasure in exercising a certain level of control over fear.

The pleasure of having control over fear then becomes stronger than the instinct of fear that surfaces.

When fear dominates us, it feels like it penetrates every cell of our bodies, all the way to our bones’ marrow. That is why the pleasure we experience when we feel a certain level of control over fear is very powerful.

However, if we felt that our lives had a higher eternal purpose, and we set ourselves on a path to attain that purpose, we would then feel no need for these kinds of transient pleasures, no matter how strong they are.

We would also then not fear anything because we would see that we are controlled by the upper force, which wishes solely to develop us in order to benefit us with its eternal and perfect quality of love, bestowal and connection.

Based on the video “What Are You Afraid Of?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.