Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do societies change, and what are the major forces of change?“

Our nature is to enjoy, to receive pleasure, and our desire to enjoy constantly grows. As a result of its development, it demands new and different fulfillment time and again. Likewise, the more the desire to enjoy grows, the more humanity develops increasingly sophisticated ways to fulfill itself.

We are currently in a unique state. Capitalism has reached its dead end. We have been trying to revive it for the past 50 years or so, but it has not worked out. Today, nature is developing us into a new state against our will.

In the past, we participated in transitions that transpired throughout society, because such transitions aligned with the growth of our egoistic desires, our nature. We developed each successive degree of our society, taking steps to shift from slavery to feudalism, and then to capitalism, which is what we now have.

Today, however, we will not find peace by remaining in a capitalistic system, and we will be unable to create the next level of development by the force of our own will, because we have reached a satiation of our egoistic development. Our ego no longer needs to grow to a new level of development, and we thus have no need to build any new state through our ordinary means, as we have done in the past.

Our next degree of development will be one that opposes our ego. We will need to adapt to our next degree of development by inverting our egoism, as well as ourselves. We will need to grow consciously, to recognize that the egoistic force that has driven our development until today is a negative force that leads us to more and more problems and crises in our current era. Through realizing the negativity in our egoistic desires, we will then need to conclude that we need to rise to an opposite state.

Today, the ego no longer develops us. Nature is developing us according to its own form, which is altruistic, interconnected and interdependent. We thus need to adapt ourselves and build humanity in harmony with nature, and no longer develop by contradicting it. We must develop ties of positive connection throughout human society instead of letting the egoistic forms of exploiting others in the name of self-benefit proliferate.

Today, we are on the verge of a whole new kind of transformation and transition. We can no longer develop by naturally following the ego’s growth, because the ego has become overblown and has satiated its development.

It is very difficult, because humanity does not understand that we have satiated egoistic development, and governments certainly do not understand. Crony capitalism is in a state where each of its proponents holds up the others, and does not wish to think about any change.

Kabbalists today feel it as their duty to explain what humanity will soon encounter, because as opposed to the revolutions we had in the past, which changed the face of humanity, we now encounter a time not of revolution, but a complete inversion. Let us hope that we will succeed in explaining this, and by doing so, that we will help understand and mitigate the changes that human society needs to undergo. Otherwise, humanity will undergo the next phase of its development through a lot of unfortunate pain and suffering.

Based on the video “Why Do Changes Happen?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Chaim Ratz. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: If I need to annul myself completely before the ten, how can I be sure that the ten does not deviate from the course even by one degree?

Answer: That is none of your business. The ten is under the rule of the Creator. You cannot start examining it to check how correct or incorrect it is and whether it has flaws or not. You have to annul yourself toward it.

I mean, if it is organized and everything in it is arranged according to the system of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, and you want to advance in it, you have only one option: to annul yourself. The one who does not annul himself falls. He goes back to his animalistic life.

Question: Why do I need to annul?

Answer: So that you become similar to the Creator. We must annul our egoism and acquire the quality of the Creator, the quality of bestowal and love. Then we will begin to feel eternity, infinity, and perfection, to feel absolute nature. The Creator wants to bring us to this.

Question: What should I do when I see that my friends awaken hatred in me that I cannot control?

Answer: Very good! It means that you need to work with this up to the point when you will like everything that your friends are doing the way you would like it in your little child.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Annulling before the Friends” Lesson 2

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Question: Is it appropriate to sign the mutual guarantee in writing or is it enough in words?

Answer: Not in words and not even in writing. Mutual guarantee must exist between us when we feel that we are all in the same Kli (vessel) together, depend on each other, and must support each other.

Only through helping a friend can I realize myself. I cannot raise anything from myself to the Creator except by carrying it through the group.

Therefore, understanding the structure of the Kli leads us to realize why we need such laws of commutation with the Creator through the ten, through mutual guarantee, and by raising above ourselves.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 10

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 127

Lesson on the Topic: “Faith Above Reason”

Selected Highlights 

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My new article on Linkedin “Another Perspective on Whoopi Goldberg’s ‘The View’ Comment”

Earlier this week, actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg, who co-hosts the show “The View” said on the show, “The Holocaust isn’t about race,” but about “man’s inhumanity to man.” The backlash soon followed and ABC, which produces the show, suspended Goldberg for two weeks. The Holocaust is definitely about race; the only problem is that the Jews are not a race. If they, and the world, knew what being Jewish means, the fate of the Jews and the fate of the world would have been very different from the current dismal state of both the Jews and the world.

Jews are not White, as Goldberg pointed out. They have no distinct color because they have no distinct origin from which they came. The first Jews were followers of Abraham, who was born in Haran—a major city in Mesopotamia, which is today within the boundaries of Turkey. Abraham was not a Jew; he was an idol-worshipper, the son of a successful idol-worshipping priest who had an idol shop.

According to Maimonides (Mishneh Torah), the Midrash (Beresheet Rabbah), and other sources, Abraham was worried about the growing enmity among his people. His concern made him ask poignant questions about life and how it is governed, or as Maimonides put it, “Who is the owner of the Capital?” and how he could help his quarreling townsfolk. Eventually, he discovered that only one force governs everything, and that what his people needed to do in order to overcome their division was to unite until they became as united as that one force.

Abraham began to talk about his thoughts and circulate his ideas. The idea of unity and oneness resonated with some people, but most people shunned it, including his King, Nimrod. As a result, Abraham and his followers were driven out of their city and their country and began to wander toward Canaan.

Along the way, Abraham continued to speak of his ideas and more people joined his entourage. These people later became the people of Israel, and their motto was unity to the point of oneness, or as they later described that level of unity: “as one man with one heart.”

After Abraham’s passing, Isaac continued in his father’s footsteps, Jacob followed Isaac, and so did Joseph. Eventually, when Moses managed to unite the divided nation that had splintered after Joseph’s death, they had become a full-fledged nation.

Their feat—building a nation out of complete strangers by sticking to the notion of unity—has remained unparalleled and unmatched to this day. No other nation had been built this way.

Precisely because of their unique background—their eclectic makeup—they were the perfect example of what the world could be like if all the people became as brothers. The Jews became a model nation for better or worse. When they were united, they were proof that people from different tribes, backgrounds, ethnicities, and faiths could unite above their differences. When they were divided, they displayed all the hatred that the nations feel for one another since the Jews are the descendants of those rivaling and quarrelsome nations.

Because of our unique background, we have been given a unique role in the world: to be a model of unity above hatred and differences. Because of our unique role, we were, are, and always will be at the center of the world’s attention. Because we are expected to show unity and be a model nation, we were, are, and always will be judged by a stricter standard than the rest of the world. Until we complete our task successfully and set a permanent model of unity, the world will keep reproving us and claim that we are bullies, warmongers, and thieves, and will accuse us of every wrongdoing that the world can think of.

Therefore, although the Jews are not a race, the Holocaust was certainly against the Jews, very specifically, and not some conflict between groups of Whites. At the same time, if we want to end antisemitism, we should focus not on silencing antisemites, but on silencing the criticism, spite, and hatred that we feel for one another.

The world will not embrace us until we embrace each other. If we remember this, our future is bright. If we forget it once again, then more troubles are ahead for all of us.

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My new article on Linkedin “No Amnesty for Israel Until There’s Amnesty Among Us”

Just recently, Amnesty International fired a quiver of poisonous arrows at Israel. One may ask, what is new? A new report by the international NGO accuses Israel of being an apartheid state not only in terms of its policies in the West Bank and Gaza, but also within its borders. This time, it bluntly questions the very nature of the Jewish State, and even Israel’s right to exist. There is only one antidote to this hateful polemic: Jewish unity.

“In the course of establishing Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages in what amounted to ethnic cleansing,” reads the 278 page report titled Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity. No more no less.

Where are the voices against other totalitarian and dictatorial regimes around the world while Israel is systematically singled out and accused of hideous crimes? Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that the Jewish state is judged by a completely different standard than the rest of the world, and this is called antisemitism. We must question where this antisemitism has its roots in order to tackle it.

In the complicated global reality we live in today, the more frequent and intense the problems are, the more humanity blames this tiny nation of Jews for its problems. Amnesty International and other haters seem to be telling us that If Israel were wiped out, the world’s problems would end.

They cannot even explain to themselves why they persistently and determinedly persecute us, but by this “special treatment” antisemites unconsciously elevate our status as a people with a special role in this world. Summarized in simple terms, their message is that the State of Israel, founded on the Land of Israel, is obligated to exist according to the laws of the nation of Israel – to be “like one man with one heart” and to act according to the rule of “love your neighbor as yourself.” If the nation does not exist in this way, in accordance with these laws, they believe that the Jews have no right to exist on their land, so they must be sent back to the Diaspora until perhaps in a few hundred years they will return and succeed to unite.

The principle of unity should be implemented first and foremost within the Jewish people in order to set an example to other peoples. Such high expectations on Israel have been expressed by some of our most vociferous critics throughout history. For example, American antisemite Henry Ford admitted in his book The International Jew: “The whole prophetic purpose in regard to the people of Israel seems to be to enlighten the world morally through their agency.”

At the other end of the spectrum are the lovers of Israel, the sages of the nation who knew how to define the meaning and purpose of the Jewish people, such as Rav Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, who explained the role of the Jewish nation in his writings: “Within Israel is a hidden sanctity of elevating the value of life itself through the Divinity that is present in Israel… With utter completeness will it be completed within the house of Israel, and from it, it will radiate to the earth and to the whole world, ‘for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations.'” (Rav Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, Ein Ayah [A Hawk’s Eye])

In other words: If we fail to maintain solidarity and cohesion among ourselves, we will continue experiencing big trouble. But if we base our relationships on love and mutual understanding, we will be a source of goodness that spreads to the whole world, and hostility towards us will vanish.
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Rabash, Letter No. 42: We know what our sages said, “As their faces are not similar to one another, their views are not similar to one another,” so how could they be as one man with one heart?

Answer: If we are saying that each one cares for himself, it is impossible to be as one man, since they are not similar to one another. However, if they all annul their selves and worry only about the benefit of the Creator, they have no individual views, since the individuals have all been canceled and have entered the single authority.

The most important thing for us is to annul ourselves, our authority. No matter what we do in the group, in the spiritual area in which we want to develop, there should be no authority of our own.

Our power should be in not having our own authority. That is, a person must control himself in such a way as to annul the egoistic desires of his heart. This is very important!

We are all different. Everyone has different desires, different intentions. But by annulling ourselves, we become similar to each other in the direction of annulment. And although we are all very different, even opposite in some things, it does not matter.

If we annul ourselves, we all become the same—annulled. And when these annulled ones connect together, the Creator reveals Himself in them because an empty place remains in them, they have opened themselves for the attainment of the Creator.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Annulling before the Friends” Lesson 2

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Question: How can we perform actions above reason?

Answer: You must imagine life in the quality of bestowal, connection, love, and reciprocity, care in a group. In this case you will be able to show your friends that you are striving for this and that you are in it. This is the obligation in order to realize the condition of guarantee or the condition of faith above reason.

A loner cannot fulfill the spiritual law in any way, it is only relative to others.

Therefore, concern for the fulfillment of the condition of faith above reason must be accepted by all the friends, each in his own measure and in the form in which he can imagine it. This will lead to the revelation of the upper world in you.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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Question: If a person makes efforts to connect, but at the same time it becomes more and more difficult for him to establish an internal connection and get closer to the group, how should he act so that this connection is nevertheless strengthened and the connection of the group with the Creator is strengthened?

Answer: Pray, ask, and act together, we have nothing else. Actually, everything is very simple. The more we advance, the simpler the method becomes.

We just need the connection between us, in which the Creator will be revealed. In fact, nothing is easier than that. It is just difficult to implement because we act against our egoism.

Yet, there is nothing difficult in the method itself. It is said that the Creator made everything very simple and people complicate it with their calculations.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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