Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Far Right Is Close to People’s Hearts”

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy right wing party has won Italy’s general election, and left wing media in Europe and beyond are up in arms with worry. CNN described Meloni’s party as “the most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini.” France 24 declared that “A ‘seismic’ shift” was happening in Europe. Vox announced, “The far right is having a moment in Europe. Actually, everywhere.” And the Wall Street Journal is concerned that “Right-Wing Populism May Rise in the U.S.”

There is certainly a shift in Europe. Besides Italy, Sweden also recently elected a Right leaning Riksdag (Swedish parliament), which will likely elect a right leaning prime minister. Bulgaria, too, just had its general election, and there, too, the Right seems to have won the majority.

Even where the Right has not won majority votes, it is gaining popularity. France, Spain, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, and several other European Union countries are seeing rapid strengthening of the Right.

However, I think that what the left wing media, as well as some politicians, describe as “far right” or even leaning toward fascism, is neither “far” nor fascist. It is a natural outcome of people’s resentment to Russia, and a natural shift that is happening anyway. The weakening Russian influence in Europe will instigate more changes and shifts, as many arrangements that were put in place after World War II are disintegrating, so we can expect many more changes to happen. These shifts may well initiate renewed border debates, and conflicts that have been latent until now may resurface.

That said, the newly elected right wing leaders do not see themselves as fascists or extremists. Rather, they regard themselves as conservative and more inclined toward the nation-state than toward the pan-European idea. Either way, I do not see a Mussolini-type leader rising in Italy or in Europe; too many forces would impede such a development.

Europe is facing many challenges: social problems, unabsorbed immigration, economic challenges, shortage of gas, and many other challenges that should worry Europeans more than the political affiliation of this or that leader. By and large, Europe should stay united, but it should improve the unity they are already in and not break it apart. They should work together on their future, or they might find themselves on par with Third World countries.

To emerge from the crisis, Europe must establish real union, unlike the “union” that currently exists, with one or two domineering countries and the rest being forced to obey dictates. Real union means that people in different countries feel united despite the differences in language, culture, and sometimes even faith.

It should not be unity against an external element, such as against Russia’s military or against the American economy. It should be unity because unity itself is a noble value that makes life easy and safe for everyone. Borders, eventually, should be all but eliminated, and economies should be integrated.

Also, the US should become more involved in Europe, but not in an authoritarian manner, but more as an assistant in bringing Europe together. I realize that this is not an immediate scenario, but the direction is clear and the sooner Europe heads toward it, the better it is for the Europeans.

Another interesting point is that the newly elected leaders, and generally Right leaning people in both Europe and the US, maintain more favorable views toward Israel. I believe this is so because they see Israel as a partner in what they would like to do in Europe, namely consolidate the nation states rather than disintegrate them, which is where the Left seems to be headed in recent years.

This does not mean that the Right leaning parties strive to break up the EU, but only to cure it from the excessive power held in the hands of a few at the expense of the nation states. Ironically, it seems as though the Right is the one aspiring for equality these days, while the Left is headed more toward endowing a few dominant figures with the power to govern the rest of Europe. For these reasons, I think that the Right is not far, but actually nearer to people’s hearts, to people’s real sentiments, and presents a healthy process that Europe is experiencing.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “On the Possibility of Nukes”

Last Friday, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of four regions in Ukraine. A day later, Ukrainian forces recaptured the key city of Lyman in the region of Donetsk, one of the annexed regions. In response, Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s region of Chechnya, said that Moscow should consider using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon in its war against Ukraine, Reuters reported.

This was not the first, or second time that the idea of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine came up. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, also warned that Russia might use nuclear weapons, but Kadyrov’s statement is the most explicit and presents an escalation in the level of aggression.

I am not surprised that the idea of a world war is on the table, or that it is expected to be a nuclear one. My teacher’s father, the great thinker and kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (aka Baal HaSulam), wrote shortly after the end of World War II that humanity has learned nothing from the past, and that a third, and even fourth world war was possible, and that they will be atomic wars. Clearly, Baal HaSulam’s ideas were not accepted and people thought that humanity would not dare repeat the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just as clearly, people were wrong, and the possibility of nukes seems very real today.

However, I do not think that humanity has forgotten World War II altogether. Even if nukes are used, it will probably not be an all-out nuclear world war, but more along the lines of tactical weapons, and the horrific results of even these nukes will revive the trauma of the past. Hopefully, this will be enough to stop humanity one step before destruction.

Additionally, people are more aware today that the root cause of our woes is our division, the mutual hatred that infests people and nations. The notion that our survival depends on our unity, or at least on the level of our solidarity, is gaining ground throughout the world. This, too, at least somewhat inhibits people’s passion for blood.

In his writings, which he titled The Writings of the Last Generation, Baal HaSulam detailed why solidarity is the key to preventingV a third world war. Now that it is clear that democracy, international agreements, treaties, and sanctions are helpless before hatred, perhaps people will be more open to try the only antidote to mutual destruction: mutual construction, or in simpler words, solidarity and unity.

Everyone realizes that there will be no winners in an atomic war. I hope and believe we have enough sense to remember this before we pull the nuclear trigger.
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Comment: You said that drama makes a person go through all the experiences himself, but comedy does not.

My Response: But in comedy you can go through more states than in a drama. In a drama, you stand still, freeze, and kind of stop. In humor, on the contrary, you roll forward and can go through a great number of states. We think humor is light and drama is deep, but it depends on your point of view.

Why is everyone really afraid of comedians and satirists? Because humor can be very deep. This is the deepest digging of human nature or all kinds of social phenomena.

The humor I have in mind is very deep. It is a certain attitude to our flaws. But they can be opened in such a way that we simultaneously understand how they can be corrected.

Tragedies, however, suck you in. You become petrified, cemented in this very phenomenon, and in the experience when you sit and just devour yourself. This is silly.

I think humor is smarter than tragedy, not humor such as all sorts of stupid jokes, but real subtle serious humor designed for connoisseurs, for smart people. It is always kind.

These are not some tricks and hints, but very deep expressions of our secret, subconscious feelings and thoughts. In general, a very useful thing.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Comedy or Drama?” 5/22/13

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Question: Why do we read The Book of Zohar?

Answer: We use it as means of spiritual advancement of the group.

First of all, the acquired desire manifests itself in the form of a certain group of people. Individual broken desires appear to each other in physical form and, because of this, are able to establish an initial connection between themselves. They gather in a group and study The Book of Zohar.

At the same time, the broken desire seems to strive for something above it. A joint study of a higher degree under the guidance of a teacher, given everyone’s correct participation, brings changes to the friends. They try to acquire the vessels of a straight line, then the surrounding light in the vessels of the circle around them is ready to enter them. But for now, it comes from the circles to the voids of their desires from afar, in the form of surrounding light, until they take a straight form.

This, in fact, is the purpose of studying. Then, in the corrected vessels, they will be able to study the same texts and the same lights that have turned from external to internal and have passed from vessels of circles to vessels of a straight line.

Thus, The Book of Zohar is a special tool we use without knowing exactly how it affects us. But it doesn’t matter, it still works.

Question: Why is The Zohar more powerful than The Torah in this sense?

Answer: The Book of Zohar has a stronger effect than the Torah because it is written in a style and form that is dictated by the period following the destruction of the Temple.

Previously, the people of Israel were at the height of Mochin de Haya, their personal end of correction, and then fell from it into concealment. As a result, Kabbalists are in a broken state among everyone and at the same time rise above all. This difference between the two “ends” of reality, between the world of infinity and our world, has opened up in them.

The sons of Israel fell to the bottom, into the heaviest egoism, while the Kabbalists of Rabbi Shimon’s group were at the top. As a result, the gap, the rift between them, the nation ran from negative infinity to positive infinity.

After that, throughout exile until its very end, the vessels of the people of Israel should mix with all the others and bring spiritual sparks into them.

The Torah is another matter. Moses wrote the Pentateuch at the height of final correction. He himself was above all, but the people were not in the same state. After all, they had just come out of Egypt, and Egypt is not yet a breakage.

In Egypt you only reveal your small degree rather than the entire breakage, in the course of which sanctity enters into defilement, “rattling” it and allowing for the correction of flaws, “expanding by leaps and bounds.” So, since the people had not yet reached such states, Moses could not reveal or express in the Pentateuch all the processes of correction. He reflected only what had happened up until then.

In general, each level includes all the others. The individual and the whole are equal. Therefore, the Torah of course, contains everything, but in such a form that it is impossible to use in its entirety for the correction of souls. You cannot extract light from the Pentateuch that returns broken souls to the source because the exodus from Egypt occurred before the present breakage.

In ancient Babylon, only a small part of it was revealed, which made it possible to unite the GAR, “forefathers ” to weigh their hearts down and, upon leaving Egypt, produce “sons” from them, the tribes of Israel. Then, followed the era of the two Temples and the last exile.

Thus, The Book of Zohar was written from completely different polar states with a maximum difference between the height of 125 degrees and the final breakage of the sons of Israel. Let’s not delve into the details or the spiritual circumstances of that era; what is important to know is that this book corresponds perfectly to what lies in nature.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What advice would you give to someone who just won the lottery?“

To build something good for children and the elderly.

Children and the elderly are always in need of support, so giving the money in that direction should give the lottery winner a feeling of satisfaction that they contributed positively to people’s lives, and that they made meaningful use of the prize money.

We derive a lot more fulfillment and happiness from helping other people than from pleasing ourselves, indulging in luxuries.

Why? It is because what we give others lives on in them.

Whatever we receive for ourselves, we immediately bury in the spiritual graveyard, whereas what we give to others passes from us into the ever-expansive collective soul, the collective consciousness, which increasingly advances in a state of eternity, wholeness and perfection.

The key to happiness is to live outside one’s self-aimed desires, in the desires of others.

Based on the video “A Kabbalist’s Advice for Lottery Winners” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: In one of the articles we studied, it was said that it is safest to be in a society that has nothing to do with your views at all. But from the point of view of Kabbalah, we can receive the importance of the goal most of all from people who are close in spirit, and at the same time, you can get more harm from them, you can literally move a millimeter away and that is it. You said that a person could learn from Baal HaSulam, but at the same time he could literally harm a new student.

Here, we have two sides at once: both the importance of the goal and the poison that can turn everything upside down. How can one protect oneself from the poison?

Answer: I think that today my students are definitely not in danger. On the contrary, I see that those students who used to be quite dangerous because they could go astray and even drag some more friends along with them are different today.

We have organized a serious, strong group, a spiritual association that already holds them together, and they represent a single structure. I do not think that, at least for now, it can be destroyed. I hope that after me it will not collapse and the world will have a need for them.

We are moving at a very fast pace to a state where the world will no longer have any ability to lead and the ability to somehow keep itself at least at some level. Yet this group will be able to show it how to go forward. In a state of absolute lack of understanding, helplessness, and confusion of humanity, it will firmly set an example, and this will be very necessary for the world.

Question: You stress all the time that we need to show each other the importance of the goal and not in any case show a sour face. But what if someone says something kind of nasty that goes through the network inside the system itself?

Answer: I think that there are many departments for this, working with the masses and so on. In general, the system will hold itself. It is all in the hands of upper forces. I am doing my job, I have nothing to worry about. I build what I can, and then…

We are all parts of the system that leads us to the goal. My task is to teach people to go to it faster and easier for the correct connection with the upper force, and to enjoy the fact that you bring contentment to It.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Poison or Medicine” 6/28/13

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Question: How does a Kabbalist attract spiritual reality to himself?

Answer: He does not attract it. He needs to build it in himself. Spiritual reality does not exist! There is no spiritual world, there is no heaven, hell, there is nothing! You have to create all this yourself. Then it will exist. The one who does not create it for himself does not have it.

Question: But there is some form or formula. How is it created?

Answer: There is a formula by which it is created, but not a form.

Question: Do all Kabbalists, using this formula, perceive reality differently?

Answer: No. This reality is felt as one single whole, and they feel themselves existing in it because they have an equivalence of qualities with it. But everyone feels it in his own way, as each of us feels this world in his own way.

Comment: The point is that it does not exist, but still its perception is automatically given to us in our heads.

My Response: It is because instead of you, nature itself forms an egoistic image within you, an egoistic desire in which you feel it. However, a spiritual, altruistic desire, you have to form by yourself.

Question: How do we all form some kind of reality together when, let’s say, there is a congress?

Answer: We must gather together, help each other with our thoughts and aspirations, and make an effort so that we would want to reach the quality of bestowal and love. Then, in this common quality, we will begin to feel the upper world. Each one to the extent that he has invested in it.

Question: This is a cumulative process. Nevertheless, some amount of effort should be accumulated inside a person. What should be the limit so that a person is ready to just burst?

Answer: He receives what he wants just before he bursts. But only if he is bursting from the desire for connection and love, from the desire to bestow and fill others.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Reality on the Other Side of Perception” 7/18/13

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Question: Baal HaSulam wrote the article “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” in which he explains each phase in great detail on dozens of pages. This is the basis of all Kabbalah.

The language of Kabbalah was revealed from nature itself. For the first time it was attained by the great Kabbalist the Ari. Is it because no one before him had operated with such terms as “restriction, surrounding, departing,” and “equivalence of form”?

Answer: Yes, the Ari revealed all these phases, qualities, and emanations, and he described it for the first time, which gave the basis for the wisdom of Kabbalah.

In principle, they were also known to Rashbi, the author of The Book of Zohar. But Rashbi could not describe it the way the Ari did. It is not that he knew less. He just lived at a time when all this could not be unfolded. He could not receive the apparatus of explanation yet. These Kabbalists were separated by almost 1,500 years.

Comment: As far as I understand, the most special thing is that when people read these definitions, which they do not quite understand, this already affects them.

My Response: Yes. It is very important. Even if a person does not do anything but just listens, some changes already take place in him because we are talking about things concerning our roots.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 9/4/22

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Preparation for the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)”

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Will Russia’s attempt to invade Ukraine and the subsequent consequences show that war is a 20th century idea that is no longer feasible in a financially interdependent and globalised world?“

Today, we have more interdependence between people, societies, cultures, economies and countries than ever before. And the ongoing Russia and Ukraine conflict presents a very sharp and painful example of our tightening global interdependence. The fact that mass starvation and other massive supply deficits could quickly impact entire populations as a direct outcome of the war already shows how we have no lack of food or supplies; we only lack positive human connection.

Through such suffering, nature wishes to teach us about our globally-interdependent state: that we can cultivate anything we want, but if we lack positive connection, then whatever we do acts negatively upon us and will lead to suffering.

Nature thus gradually teaches us, by coupling our tightening global interdependence with increasing suffering, that we need to perform a 180-degree flip of our attitudes to each other: from our inborn egoistic attitudes where we prioritize self-benefit over benefiting others, to its opposite—a genuine desire to benefit others over self-benefit.

Impacting a shift from a path of suffering to a path of increasing understanding, fulfillment and happiness in today’s globally-interdependent world requires positively connecting with each other above our differences, and feeling ourselves as a single global body.

Based on the video “The Infeasibility of War in a Globally-Interdependent World” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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