Audio Version Of The Blog – 7/12/23
Posted on July 12th, 2023
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Question (from a letter): Why do you formulate the golden rule in the interpretation of Rabbi Akiva’s “love your neighbor as yourself”? Rabbi Akiva said that all the commandments of the Torah converge to this one, single commandment. But the sage Hillel said that the main commandment is “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you.” Isn’t this second, more passive formulation the key to success? And besides, it’s more realistic.
Answer: That is right, I totally agree with that. But the fact is that “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you” is not a complete, passive fulfillment of the commandment. The second part is active—love.
So, the first one does not solve the problem. It only seems to distance people from each other. But they tend not to harm.
Question: So do no harm is the first condition? Should there be some kind of attack next?
Answer: Active.
Question: “Love your neighbor as yourself” is like an attack on yourself? Can I do it only after I have fulfilled this first rule?
Answer: Of course.
Question: Can’t I jump over it, right away to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Instead of proceeding from the rule “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you.”
Answer: Try it. But on the way you’ll still be doing it.
Question: So, it turns out that “Don’t do to others what you don’t want to be done to you” is included in “love your neighbor”?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Is it possible for an ordinary, simple person to come to this and not to do to another what you don’t want to be done to yourself? Or will you still do something wrong to someone?
Answer: A person cannot restrain himself. He faces his own kind all the time and constantly sees where he wins and where he loses.
Question: And they annoy him all the time. So why do they offer things that are unrealistic for a person to do?
Answer: It is realistic, you just have to work on yourself.
Question: The result should be the fact that I need to work on it?
Answer: Yes.
Comment: And until this arises in a person, he is not capable. Because a lot of people write to us: “I already live by this rule,” “I have been living by this rule for a long time.”
My Response: 🙂 I believe that it is impossible without the Creator. But, on the other hand, I believe that we will come to this.
I am optimistic because it does not depend on us. Nature moves us, and we will inevitably come to this rule.
Comment: All these rules of both Rabbi Akiva and Hillel seem to say to a person: “Do it!” And you say that one cannot do it without the Creator.
My Response: One cannot. Man cannot change the laws of nature.
Question: Which are only for themselves, only egoism?
Answer: Yes, a person is not able to do it.
Question: So, the question is if a person wants to follow these rules, what should be his steps? What is step one?
Answer: The step is very simple. You have to come to a society that will be occupied only with correcting the connection between them. There you will be able to see how they work on loving each other and at the same time study yourself, as far as you are capable of this at all.
So, one way or another, you have to connect to this breathing machine.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/5/23
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Question: What is the selling point or advantage of spirituality, of raising a person to the next degree?
Answer: It depends on which society you turn to because there are several civilizations in our world. The selling proposition can be either equality, security, friendship, or connection. It can be getting rid of depression, environmental problems, or any family or social problems, i.e., everything that you protect people from within our world.
In addition, people not only get rid of something, but also get eternity and perfection. After all, in any case, even if I make my life on this earth as comfortable as possible that I will be filled and happy without limit, it will still end within some limit, in 70, 80, 90, even 100 years, but it will end.
And here I am invited to be filled in this world with the most kind, pleasant, safe, correct way of life and start from it, right now, to feel my next life and be born in this next life, in this new feeling. It is easy, simple, and not for me alone, but for everyone together. I am invited to feel such a slight intoxication when you rise and begin to really attain the next degree, the next state.
But the next degree, the state, is built on society, on the fact that everyone feels like one whole—we. This is not the feeling of each one where he feels only his small world and his small individual life. It is a feeling when we all add up to one common organism and feel the life of this organism.
It is eternal and perfect because it becomes like the upper force of nature, the Creator, because it is all in bestowal. And we become not a scattered organism, but gathered together in its parts into one huge great whole. And this organism exists forever because it is built on bestowal, and we feel it. It is called “the soul,” and there is one soul for all.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Advertising Image of the Spiritual” 7/16/11
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Question: Hypnosis is the imposition of one person’s desires on another. If everything is programmed, then why are there such factors in nature when one controls another through hypnosis?
Answer: We are all connected together in a common system. But there are people who see more, people who hear more, and those who communicate better with this system.
Look what Wolf Messing could do making others think in a certain way or catching their thoughts! How did he do it? He did not know himself.
The fact is that he was connected to some other system in which the past, present, and future already exist connected into one. It was as if he was traveling along this axis or rising to a level where his thoughts and the thoughts of another person were together. And because he was stronger, he imposed these thoughts on the other, good or bad, any thoughts.
Is not that clear? What do the various secret services do? How many such developers and specialists do they have? A huge number! I have seen it myself: one can point his finger at you in such a way that you will feel a blow.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Power of Hypnosis” 7/24/11
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Question: Is it possible to go through the entire Kabbalistic methodology according to The Book of Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot?
Answer: Of course not! Even if Shamati, Baal HaSulam’s letters, and Rabash’s articles are included, it is still impossible; a teacher is needed for this. And those who do not have one are engaged in currents revolving around Kabbalah such as Hasidism, New Age, and others, and it seems to them that they are already in it.
The realization of texts themselves, clear, internal, Kabbalistic ones, cannot be realized without a teacher. After all, he works on you more than you work on yourself. Just as a mother and father work on a child to raise him and it seems to him that he is growing by himself. Only later, when he has his own children does he begin to understand this.
No one can reach the spiritual degree by himself! Only if there is someone who teaches you all the time, “slips” you all sorts of actions, knowledge, questions, and guides you. Why do I always give an example with children? This is an exact copy of the spiritual growth!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. You Cannot Advance Ahead Without a Teacher” 7/23/11
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Question: According to Kabbalah, collective thought is very effective. For example, if we have some important meeting related to dissemination, we ask everyone to think about it. What is happening at this time?
Answer: There are not some secret or mystical forces that begin to work, but desires that are connected together because our thoughts and feelings connect with each other.
Imagine if all the people on earth thought about one thing at the same time, what a power it would be! Especially here, when we need to think about bestowing, of course we need each other’s help.
It is written about this in all Kabbalistic articles about the group. What else is the purpose of the group if not strengthening my desire due to the fact that the desires of others are adjacent to mine because by them we are connected with each other?
There are many scientific studies on this topic today that prove all people are connected in desires and thoughts.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. A Thought” 7/23/11
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Question: When a person goes against his will by force, does it mean that he is doing some spiritual work? And if he does what he likes according to his desire, then does he not advance at all?
Answer: Why should he do something against his will? No.
Perhaps there are such moments, but in principle, nothing should be forced. It all depends on the importance of the goal. If the goal is important and I feel it as important, then for me it is just a song, a fairy tale, I move forward with joy.
Question: Very often I hear the phrase “go against your will.” Meaning, is it recommended to organize such games so that a person supposedly goes against his will?
Answer: These games are needed only so that we can speed up our journey, so that I can see how much I am under the force of these desires, how weak I am, and that should join the group faster, rely on my friends, get strength, elevation, and greatness of the spiritual goal from them.
Question: What is the solution? To go, but effectively with the desire? Or go against the will, and do unusual work?
Answer: It is this way and that way. It is impossible to go only against desires by force.
If you can overcome yourself, it means that you have found a more important goal in yourself than the one that exists at the moment. That is the point. If I am lazy, I do not want to do anything, then I have to enter into an environment that would give me the importance of the spiritual goal and spiritual development. Then it will not be hard for me to do everything.
And if I do it only involuntarily, physically, then this is a preliminary stage, a very weak inclusion in development.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Against my Will” 7/16/11
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why does it feel so good to buy things?“
It feels good to buy things because it fills our ego.
We are made of egoistic desires to enjoy through acquiring, buying and receiving, and when we bring desirable things closer to ourselves in such ways, our egos enjoy for short periods of time.
The fulfillment is short lived because our ego is interchangeable. It behaves like a taxi meter. The wheel keeps turning, and our satisfaction diminishes with every passing second.
And what happens after the enjoyment fades away? We then need to work again in order to buy again. Our entire lives then look like an endless cycle of working and buying, working and buying, ad nausaem, and we never remain satisfied.
We cannot stop this process because our ego constantly grows. We always move away from a prior state where we had felt some fulfillment, enter into a feeling of emptiness and lack, and this lack forces us to seek fulfillment once again.
Moreover, since our ego constantly grows, then the pace of this process constantly accelerates. The time shortens between one purchase, i.e., a moment of pleasure, and the next such moment. Every successive pleasurable moment is half of the previous moment.
For instance, if we needed to travel on vacation for a week once a year, we now need to travel for a month in the summer, and then a month in the winter, and we continually need to find new and different ways to satisfy ourselves due to our constantly growing ego never letting us be completely satisfied.
Why do our lives operate in such a way? Why does our ego constantly grow, making us feel empty after every fulfillment?
It is because our ego grows in order to make us want the greatest fulfillment and force that we could possibly ever feel.
If we do not reach the final complete form of fulfillment, we leave our ego empty, and its vision remains fixed on the complete and continuous form of fulfillment beyond the smaller pleasures that enter it time and again. Therefore, it is as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes:
Since all their possessions are for themselves alone, and ‘he who has a single portion wants a double portion,’ one finally dies with only ‘half one’s desire in one’s hand.’ In the end they suffer from both sides; from the increase of pain due to the multiplicity of movement, and from the regret at not having the possessions they need to fill their empty half. – Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Reflection.”
Therefore, our life story is that we chase pleasures more and more, buying more and more, and the enjoyment we receive from this chase becomes lesser and lesser. Moreover, the intervals between each pleasure become shorter.
We can see an example of this loop in the rise of drug legitimization: that the usual pleasures people could once fulfill themselves with no longer satisfy them, and the ego demands ever more pleasure in shorter intervals.
We thus see that we are in a process of constantly-diminishing pleasures and a constantly-increasing feeling of emptiness, and it is in order for us to eventually reach a final state of despair—a state where we will want to bury our ego and shift to an entirely new and different form of fulfillment: not of receiving—but giving—pleasure.
This transformation from enjoying through receiving to enjoying through giving can be thought of similarly to how we become parents. As parents, we shift to a mode of enjoying from giving to our children.
It is a purely psychological inversion, a new mode of sensing pleasure. Instead of receiving pleasure into ourselves and experiencing that pleasure disappear, leaving us empty, we rather feel pleasure in a new attitude, where the more we give to the world, the more pleasure we feel. Moreover, we can feel the latter form of pleasure continuously, without it fading away.
Based on the video “Why Does it Feel So Good to Buy Things?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 35, “What Is the Help in the Work that One Should Ask of the Creator?”
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2nd part of the Lesson — Lesson on the Topic of “The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction”
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Selected Highlights
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