Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Which factors make a country resilient?“

A country’s resilience depends on each country’s character and the kind of resilience that they would like to achieve.

Everyone has different inner conditions and characters. For instance, we cannot compare a nation from the north with a nation from the south, located next to the ocean, which has different natural conditions. The nation’s character is different. For instance, there are more and less connected nations. There are nations whose people live tightly together, like the Hindus, and nations where many people live miles apart from each other, like in Sweden and Norway. Their connection gives them no sense of resilience, so they cannot be compared.

A nation can acquire and build true resilience only to the extent that a nation is connected within itself, the extent to which people in that nation feel that they share connection to the same root.

Based on the video “What Makes a Nation Resilient?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Nitzah Mazoz. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Why does the law of natural development, as Baal HaSulam calls it, push us forward through suffering?

Answer: This happens according to the law of “negation of negation.” When I no longer want to stay in the previous state, then I accept the next one.

And the next state is always more complex, more unattractive. Why should I go from first grade to second, from second to third? It is better to remain a small child.

Therefore, it is very difficult to move from egoistic existence in this paradigm to the completely opposite one.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes: “And each good state is nothing but the fruit of the work in the bad state that preceded it. Indeed, these values of good and bad do not refer to the value of the state itself, but to the general purpose: Each state that brings humanity closer to the goal is considered good, and one that deflects them from the goal is considered bad.”

So no other goals are taken into account? But in our state, we do not even know that there is a purpose of creation.

Answer: That is the problem—that we do not know the final goal. And all our actions, everything that happens to us is only in relation to approaching the final goal. Nature directs us this way every moment.

But when we want something else, nature, like a mother, drags us by the hand like a stubborn child and if he resists, she drags him in the same direction more forcefully. And we resist all the time and try to go in different directions. This disparity between us and mother nature is called suffering.

Comment: You said that all the states that a person has to go through in our world are predetermined, one cannot change anything.

My Response: Mother nature will still drag him wherever is necessary. But he, feeling suffering, will scream and swear at it all the time like a little child.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Fire Island” 1/1/10

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Question: What is the tent of meeting?

Answer: The tent of meeting is a common screen that is located above the assembly of desires directed to the Creator when they connect with each other and, in common unity, are directed to the Creator.

Question: Who are called elders?

Answer: Elders are people who have reached the level of Hochma. Only they can make decisions because at a level lower than Hochma, you cannot decide anything. Therefore, when they say “the court of elders,” they mean the court of sages.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/27/21

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Question: Why, despite the desire to realize ourselves, do we use only 2% of our brain and 98% remain, so to say, free?

Answer: The point is that we do not know ourselves. We use 2% of the brain because it only serves our animate part. And as soon as we begin to reveal the spiritual part—our soul—and develop it, we will need all the remaining 98%.

In principle, we have enormous reserves of memory and internal properties. We simply cannot imagine how each of us is infinite in possibilities. But we do not use it in our world.

Imagine a simple peasant who lived in a village a hundred years ago who herded cows and existed at that level. He had no television, no radio, nothing.

And now this peasant has developed, lives in Manhattan, works in a large company, travels around the world, sees, hears, understands, and uses everything. His brain works a little differently than that of the shepherd whose brain was at the level of the cows he grazed.

That is, the brain always serves the desire. Therefore, if our desires are constantly raised to the level of the Creator, then naturally, the brain will open its reserves in accordance with them. So, instead of two percent, we will use a lot more.

In humanity, there is even a desire to explore the brains of great people to find what was so interesting about them. We cannot understand this because we do not know that the brain is triggered by desires. And when a person dies, desires disappear.

Therefore, we do not understand why their brains worked in a special way. After all, their desires launched huge layers of consciousness, analysis, and memory.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Individualist” 1/15/10”

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Question: What kind of actions should a person conduct so that nature does not correct us with harsh methods?

Answer: Let a person correct himself. Correction is the movement toward mutual assistance, mutual understanding.

A man to a man is a friend, a helper, an empathizer. The most important thing is a good connection between people! With our negative attitudes, we cause constant explosions in nature.

Question: All primary sources write only about the spiritual states of a person. What is a volcanic eruption from a spiritual point of view?

Answer: It is an explosive movement toward balance when there is tremendous pressure. This is how it manifests itself externally.

But we can make all of nature beautiful without any problems that are observed today with the environment and everything else.

It depends only on our good relationships with each other. Therefore, I hope that humanity will still suffer a little, but then it will begin to listen to what Kabbalah says.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/24/21

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Question: Kabbalists say that all of humanity is in a state of sleep today. Isn’t the state of eternal harmony illusory, isn’t it a dream?

Answer: By exploring our current state and developing with the help of Kabbalah, we come closer to the spiritual state and begin to see two worlds—our world from the side and the spiritual world in which we become clothed.

When we see how they match each other, merge, and form one common space, that is, we see the cause and the consequence of everything we go through, we have no illusions about the spiritual world. We have a question: What is next? This is because the spiritual world is a world of development.

We should develop to a state where we fully attain it, connect with it, fill ourselves with it, and fill it with us. This is called adhesion with the Creator. Moreover, the spiritual world, including this world, is within me and I am completely within both of them. Achieving such a state is called final correction, it is the complete awakening from this illusion, from this dream.

That is, we see the objective of what we have to achieve—final correction (Gmar Tikkun), complete equivalence, complete adhesion with the Creator (or nature). I reveal that it is reasonable, eternal, and perfect because according to this I myself become eternal, sensible, and perfect.

Then I get an absolutely clear question to the Creator, to this common nature that created me: “What is next?” But there is no answer to it. This question does not have an answer. Because all of us, absolutely all people on Earth, must reach final correction. Only after that, when we all correct ourselves, the next perspective in this development will be revealed to us.

That is, Kabbalah does not evade the answer, it reveals to a person what may happen, and what is next we do not know.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Individualist” 1/15/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #117 “You Labored and Did Not Find Do Not Believe” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #187 “Choosing Labor” 

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

Selected Highlights

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My new article on Linkedin “The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Most Intelligent Species Does the Most Harm”

Humans are the most intelligent species on the planet. Why then are we also the most injurious to ourselves, to all other species, and to the planet we live on? How come our superior intellect concocts plans that are supposed to improve our situation, but always end up making it worse? The answer is simple: Our minds are great, but our hearts are polluted with so much malice that they corrupt the way we think, and our corrupt thoughts create a polluted and corrupt world that reflects the malevolence in our hearts.

Every plan we draw, we base it on the failure of previous plans, or we would not need to draw new ones. But since we haven’t corrected the root that causes all the failures—our corrupt hearts—we draw new plans with the same foul mindset with which we drew the previous one, but with an intention to “speed up” the correction. The result, therefore, will be an acceleration of the corruption of our world.

If there is any benefit in the plans we draw today, it is that they will expose our incompetence. Because of our corrupt hearts that seek to exploit everything and everyone, our intellects devise plans that have nothing but the destruction of others and the advancement of ourselves as their goal. Since this is the nature of all humans, to varying extents, our plans collide with one another and destroy everything—the ground we stand on, the plants and animals that nourish us, and ultimately us. An ego-based civilization can’t help but cause destruction.

The fundamental difference between humankind and all other species is that they want to survive, while we want to defeat. This is why we developed our intellect: to surpass and displace others, to deny others glory, subsistence, and to either enslave or destroy them.

The only way to save our planet and ourselves, then, is to use our superior intellect to change our hearts so that our intellect serves our true interests rather than our selfish hearts. We can do this by learning to think of one another, by learning to value those who are considerate rather than those who promote only themselves.

It may feel unnatural, but our own nature is clearly leading us nowhere. So it is time we put our minds to work for something that actually benefits us.

It’s not enough for each of us to try to be a better person. Our social environment is stronger than we are and will impel us to behave like everyone else. In order to succeed, we must make a concerted effort.

There is nothing we cannot achieve if we work together. Even the obstinate human nature is no match for our collective power. If we understand the significance of consideration and empathy not only for our society, but to our very lives, we can move mountains.
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Truth is always in demand, but in practice it is completely not accepted by society. Truth is too complicated for practical application because it obliges everyone in society to be equal so that everyone gets their share according to their efforts.

Here we are facing the egoism of each and every individual and his inability to do anything for the benefit of others. He is ready for this only out of desperation—when he expects to get even more for his own benefit in return.

Therefore, it is impossible to establish human relationships on the basis of truth.

People are all different. Some have strong qualities and others are strong in quantity. And there is always tension and misunderstanding between them caused by differences in human nature. There are people who are smart and energetic and some are lazy and mediocre. And of course, the energetic and persistent will eventually become managers, and the masses are ready to remain passive and follow the leaders.

However, we do not need to “correct” nature. We will not be able to be equal because this condition was given to us initially. As a result, we must come to the point when differences between us would work for our benefit, meaning, they would help us attain the Creator and become like Him.

In what form can we connect with each other to benefit from this connection and not increase tensions that lead to wars, revolutions, and conflicts that we witness again and again?

We need to organize such relationships so that we derive pleasure from our differences: from the fact that one is smart and the other is stupid, one is weak and the other is strong, one is lucky and the other is unlucky, someone was born in a special family or in a special country. It is not necessary to fight against these differences revealed by nature, which means they are given by the Creator, but it is necessary to understand that by using them correctly, we can achieve the biggest correction.

From each person: both strong and weak, stupid and smart, lucky and unlucky, you can draw common benefit so that everyone will be happy.

Instead of breaking the nature given to us from birth, we need, on the contrary, to look for how to connect with each other so that everyone feels good, not one at the expense of the other, but precisely by using the differences created by the Creator. If we know how to use this creation with all the differences inherent in it, we will reach an absolutely good state.

But how can a person be demanded to rise above his nature? There have already been attempts to force a person to give up his egoism, like in Russia, and collectivize everything. But nothing happened, and after a few decades, there was no trace of these experiments left.

And yet, on the part of nature itself, there is such a law that obliges us to rise above our egoism, unite, and completely fulfill each other. The question is how to connect two opposites: to bring our nature, which is against connection, to feel our neighbor as ourselves?

What means are there for this? History has proven that neither hunger nor suffering could make people connect. No Marxism-Leninism could bring people closer to each other. Our egoism continued to rule anyway.

Where can we get the strength to properly unite people in practice and not in fantasies so that everyone can keep this connection and enjoy it? The bitter experience of history shows that we must receive this power from above, and for that we need the science of Kabbalah.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/21, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”

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