Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/20/23
Posted on December 20th, 2023
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Question: A person fights with his ego for connection with the friends. I just do not understand why I should pause here, and what happens at this pause. Will I fall if I pause?
Answer: No, at this pause neither retreat nor cessation of military activities take place.
You simply begin to better understand where you are, who you are fighting with, and why. This is a forced pause to reassess your strengths and goals. This is Hanukkah.
You must realize that with the understanding that you are now gaining, you again need to connect with the Creator and with all your friends in one single desire for love, bestowal, and mutual assistance, and with this go to war against our common egoism.
Question: What if you do not fight the war, but pray constantly?
Answer: This is, in fact, conducting the war, because we choose between two forces of nature: egoistic and altruistic. Any fight occurs only in our desires, intentions, and internal and spiritual actions.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/23, Writings of Rabash “Greeks Have Gathered Around Me”
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Michael Laitman on the Times of Israel: “On Saadi Shīrāzī’s Verse at the UN Headquarters in New York”
A verse by the Persian poet Saadi Shīrāzī is written in gold letters and adorns the pediment of the building of the UN headquarters in New York.
All human beings are members of one frame,
Since all, at first, from the same essence came.
When time afflicts a limb with pain,
The other limbs cannot at rest remain.
If thou feel not for other’s misery,
A human being is no name for thee.
“All human beings are members of one frame” is similar to what we say in the wisdom of Kabbalah, that we—all of humanity—are a single soul, wholly connected “as one man with one heart.” This soul is called “Adam HaRishon” (Heb. “First Man”) in Kabbalah, a state where we are completely connected like cells and organs in an organism.
Our perception of separation and detachment comes from our egoism. We emerge from “the first essence,” as the text writes, which is our common nature, the desire to receive that we all emerge from.
Likewise, we can interpret, “When time afflicts a limb with pain, the other limbs cannot at rest remain,” that even if one part of our body is affected by egoism—the desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone—then our whole body gets sick, similar to how a cancerous cell acts in a human body.
We can say about humanity today that it is all affected by egoism, and this is actually good. What is good about it? It is that it is very close to the full recognition of egoism as an evil quality that negatively affects us all. There is a saying that the diagnosis of an illness is half of its cure, and accordingly the recognition of us being affected by egoism, feeling it like a cancerous tumor that sickens us and brings detriment to our lives, leads us to seek its cure.
Similar to how an illness in one part of the body affects the whole body, likewise the correction we need to make is one that spans the whole of humanity. It is insufficient for only a part of humanity to heal; it must be global today, since we are a globally-integrated humanity.
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Question: Due to what in Hanukkah do we get additional strength to work with the vessels of reception?
Answer: It is due to the fact that once people fought for it, and now we use it. We try to connect and rely on the upper light that our ancestors were honored with during their Hanukkah. Therefore, no special actions are required of us.
We continue our usual work in the ten, remembering that we are in the days of Hanukkah, and thus attract the upper light that they revealed at the time.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/23, Writings of Rabash “What Is Hanukkah?”
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Question: Hanukkah is a break in the war against the ego, when we set ourselves up for victory. But if we don’t win this war, what can we expect next?
Answer: We will definitely win the war against the evil inclination because everything has already been calculated from above. So, there’s no problem.
But to do this, we must come together in one heart, connect with each other, work together, and support each other only out of a common, mutually united desire. Then we will defeat egoism. There are no other options.
Question: Can we consider that in fact our job is easy, and thus calm ourselves down in order to go into battle?
Answer: We can. It is said that this is not hard work. Only those who develop a love for their friends see how easy it is.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/23, Writings of Rabash “What Is Hanukkah?”
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Question: What do we lack to attract the force of the Creator?
Answer: You only need to open your hearts in the ten, connect them into one big heart, and turn to the Creator so that He fills it.
Question: Supposedly, a small child throwing a fit in a store understands what toy he wants. But we do not know what connection we demand from the Creator.
Answer: That is why Kabbalah is called a concealed wisdom
Question: Should we ask for this feeling to appear to us?
Answer: It will not appear clearly anyway; it will be somehow concealed because the main thing for you is the connection with your friends and not what you receive in it.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/23, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Concerning the Revealed and the Concealed“
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Question: Vlad asks a lot of questions.
I know that the Torah is the greatest miracle that has happened in the world. Thanks to the Torah humanity has learned what morality, ethics, and humanism are. The Torah has become the source of life for the whole world.
And I was surprised when I suddenly heard that the Torah could be the elixir of death. It is written that it can be either the elixir of life, which is understandable, or the elixir of death, which is absolutely incomprehensible.
Could you explain how this is possible? I think something else is implied here. It cannot be death! I am sure of it!
Answer: It depends on how you use this methodology. You either come closer to the Creator, and then it is the elixir of life. Or you can move away from the Creator, become more and more opposite to Him, and then it is the elixir of death.
Question: How can one move away from the Creator?
Answer: Man does not want to come close to the Creator! He does not want any rapprochement with the Creator at all.
Question: Meaning that initially, when beginning to study, or read, or go through this methodology, I have to set a goal: I study and read this in order to get closer to the Creator. What is rapprochement with the Creator?
Answer: Getting closer to the Creator means constantly awakening the desire for bestowal, love, and connection with others in oneself.
Question: In what case does the Torah become death?
Answer: It is if I do not think about others, about anyone, only about myself, and I egoistically perceive everything around me.
Question: So it is if I study the Torah while thinking about myself. Could it be in order to become famous, to know everything by heart? Does this all lead to death?
Answer: Yes.
Question: “Everyone reads the Torah in their own way,” says Vlad. Someone sees laws in it, someone sees the history of the nation. You are talking about forces, that there is power behind every word and name. Why does everyone see something different in the Torah?”
Answer: Because it is based on themselves. Everyone has their own special, personal spiritual root. Everyone reads it in their own way. You see how it is being interpreted.
Question: Yes, there are many different interpretations. And I, an ordinary person, read this interpretation but interpret it on my own? Or am I already proceeding from this interpretation?
Answer: You interpret it the way you were created. If you want to interpret it differently, you have to work on yourself, make yourself more giving, more loving, and so on.
Question: Then will I accept, for example, the Kabbalistic interpretation?
Answer: Then you will have to take it upon yourself.
Question: And will I interpret it in my own way or how the Kabbalists interpret it?
Answer: There is no other way, only as the Kabbalists say. You will see that this is the only way it works.
Question: Is this the elixir of life?
Answer: Yes.
Question: “When will the Torah become the elixir of life for everyone?”
Answer: This is a problem. It is when the Creator shows everyone how the world really works.
Question: You mean when there will be a revelation for the whole world?
Answer: Yes. Then, involuntarily, all people will come, agree, bow down, and want to master the Torah.
Question: Even if I held completely different opinions, lived in a different way, suddenly the Creator will reveal Himself to me and everything will turn upside down?
Answer: Everything! It is not you who turns it upside down, everything is turned upside down in you.
Question: As if all these lives and years did not exist?
Answer: Yes.
Question: How does this happen?
Answer: We will find out soon enough.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/6/23
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Question: Can you give examples of or describe the spiritual world?
Answer: It is impossible to describe it! I have no words to describe the spiritual world! Therefore, Kabbalists invented their own language or used the language of our world to describe spiritual roots.
But then you still imagine that there are objects from our world in the spiritual world. When I say: “Man, woman, children, and trees,” you imagine them in the spiritual world as the same as they are in our world.
First of all, we need to break away from earthly images, similar to Abraham when he smashed his idols.
Therefore, I should not describe what is happening in the upper world. It is said: “What you attain, you and no one else will feel.” This is impossible to convey! You have to get to it yourself and attain it.
Then you and I, feeling the same picture, will be able to exchange our impressions. It will be clear to us from our common language what we are talking about.
We need to start working with ourselves to expand the range of our sensations. Until then, you cannot do anything. You will look at the others and say: “How small they are! How stupid they are! How limited they are! How they lead themselves to even greater suffering!” And you will not be able to do anything either.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call Limitations of Vision and Hearing” 11/29/11
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Now we are in the world of infinity in which there are an infinite number of images, connections, and all kinds of properties. But we perceive it as our world. We build some kind of “toys in it, and do things because we do not want to expand our perception of it.
We have fenced ourselves off from the infinite, special world we actually live in, and instead of expanding our perception and feeling what it is, we keep ourselves busy with playing and talking to ourselves, practically lying to ourselves, and that is how we exist.
We are given some segment of existence called our life. Within this framework, we are given the opportunity to expand the boundaries of our perception so much as to go beyond the limits of the bodily sensory organs and begin to perceive the world around us differently from how it is depicted to us through the five corporeal senses. Our vision and hearing are so limited that they give us a very small picture, which we call our world.
Kabbalists do not consider it to exist at all. They say it is “an imaginary world, a contrived world,” because in fact, it has nothing to do with the true picture, which is revealed if you begin to expand your perception and reveal the real universe.
But what do we do? We deceive ourselves throughout our lives. Inside the small picture of the world that we perceive, we begin to play with all sorts of toys and movies. It is a pity!
But since there is a program of creation from which we cannot escape, in this limited picture of the world, which is screened to us through our five senses, we gradually begin to feel an acute lack: “It is not enough. We want more. We feel bad. We need to get out of this state.”
Yet we are trying to somehow talk ourselves out of it, spinning around in order to stop feeling the crisis. In fact, this is a crisis in our perception of the universe. Nature pushes us to rise, expand our perception, and begin to feel the eternal perfect picture of the world that exists outside of us.
But we do not want to do that; we resist until we go through such suffering that will no longer let us remain in this picture, and we begin to associate our suffering with the limitation of our perception. Then we will have to change ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Limitations of Vision and Hearing” 11/29/11
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Question: What does it mean that there are commandments that could previously be fulfilled, for example, those related to the Temple, but now cannot?
Answer: There is no Temple, and there are no such commandments.
In past centuries during the time of the Temples, we kept the commandments concerning them. But today, there is no need for this. That is why the Temples disappeared. Now, we can do something else that was not necessary in those days.
Question: It seems to me that there may be confusion here between internal action and physical action. As explained in Kabbalah, the internal action of the commandment is a change of intention from reception to bestowal, right?
Answer: Baal HaSulam writes in one of his letters that when the Jews received the Torah as one man with one heart, they first observed the most important commandment: Love your neighbor. But their egoism constantly grew and they were unable to stay in this state; they replaced it with external manifestations.
But the fact is that without physical actions, the intention is dead. Therefore, we must understand that we need to fulfill the commandments physically and internally in our attitude.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/21/23
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