Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is fate?“

Fate is what we go through in our feelings, our lives and our conditions. It is an outcome of nature’s influence on us and our interaction with nature.

We have the ability to learn what our fate is and also manage our fate if we apply a certain amount and quality of effort in doing so. In other words, we can both reach a clear understanding of our fate and also take control over it if we wish.

In order to understand our fate and control it, we need to discover our operating program. By doing so, we gain a clear comprehension of the process we are in and how it urges us, from one generation to the next, to reach a final destination.

This process began with the beginning of creation, before the emergence of our universe, and gradually develops to a state where it will transition into another form completely to the form it is now in.

While we exist in our current reality, called “this world” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, we have the ability to change and influence our fate. Through the study of Kabbalah, we can attract the forces that let us influence our fate at every moment, and by doing so, change the nature of the myriad states that we undergo.

For instance, if a child’s parents sent the child to first grade at school, then that child has no choice but to undergo several years of schooling before graduating. The question is whether the child will enjoy these years learning and achieving, or feel them as a burden, getting punished.

Based on “New Life” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi on December 21, 2014 and “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on October 26, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: Today’s world seems hostile and unpredictable to people. Scientists believe that as a result of this, people have shifted toward black-and-white solutions, without halftones, what is moral and what is not, whether there is a God, whether the death penalty is necessary, the answers become unambiguous.

Researchers say that we are on the verge of serious hardships and will need wisdom, and people needing to negotiate with each other, and not shooting from the hip. We have to learn to live by the rules of living together, yet we are less and less able to live like this.

My Response: This is true.

Question: What will happen to us?

Answer: There are sharp, dramatic methods of influencing humanity. Probably, there is no getting away from them.

Question: Do you think they will be applied?

Answer: Yes. Baal HaSulam, who is a famous Kabbalist, also writes that a third and even a fourth nuclear world war are quite possible.

Question: Is this in order to bring a person to some wisdom and gentleness?

Answer: We do not understand otherwise. Only disaster, only blows, can change us if we do not listen to what Kabbalah calls for.

Question: What does nature want to make of a person?

Answer: Nature pushes us to recognize the evil of our nature in order for us to begin changing it.

Comment: You will never get tired of talking about this.

My Response: This is a law of nature. How can I get tired? It will not change. It will only manifest itself more and more before us.

Question: Am I obliged to feel on my flesh, on myself, that there is evil in me? Is it not possible to skip over this?

Answer: No, it is impossible to skip over this. Nature will be combing us with a rake on our flesh, cutting like a knife. There will be nothing we can do about it. To agree immediately, as if we are ready to sit up and wag our tails, will not help us either.

It is because here we will have to recognize the full depth of our terrible and selfish nature, agree, understand, and even voluntarily want, without the influence of nature, to change ourselves.

That is, there must be a change. Although it will occur under the influence of external suffering, we still must realize this internally in our mind, in our inner qualities. We must ask nature to change us.

Question: Can we still avoid this? You started very harshly: “A person must go through this.”

Answer: The more I get to know people, the more I love animals.

Question: Do you see that a person is so stiff-necked?

Answer: The worst of all. He himself will not go and will not be able to do that. The only question is why nature drives us into such a trap. After all, it is relatively easy to recognize the inferiority of our nature and to draw conclusions from this.

Almost everyone will agree with this, from terrible monsters, murderers, and so on, to normal people. Everyone will agree that our nature is cruel, that we cannot get along with each other in any way. What can we do? “Let’s be good!”

No, we cannot! To do this, we need a systematic Kabbalistic education that will explain to us how to attract the good forces of nature upon us. These good forces will gradually, slowly change us over the years.

We definitely cannot do it ourselves. Nature can, but it depends on how much we can attract it upon ourselves, and beg it to change us.

A happy ending exists, but we cannot jump into it. Then what can we do? We can look soberly at what is happening and try to add superhuman awareness to human awareness with small inclusions, small injections.

There is nothing else. It will grow. However, it still requires a lot of time and a lot of effort.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/21/21

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Question: In the article “The Freedom,” Baal HaSulam writes that the law of development pushing us toward its goal makes us captives because a person is always drawn to pleasure and flees from suffering. Is there any freedom within this?

Answer: No. And what kind of freedom can there be if I am just a desire to receive pleasure? There are always a certain number of options for pleasure and suffering in front of me, and I, according to my understanding and mood, choose for myself seemingly the best option. In this state, I am like an animal that simply chooses to escape from bad to good whenever possible and as soon as possible.

Question: Baal HaSulam and you too often use the term “animal” in relation to a person. Why? It sounds harsh.

Answer: This does not mean that we reduce man to the level of an animal.

The point is that our nature controls us absolutely rigidly, specifically, according to a certain formula, and thus makes us choose at every moment the state that seems the best for us. The only problem is that both animals and we choose these states according to our understanding of what is revealed to us.

A person, seeing a certain number of possibilities in front of him, chooses the best: partly instinctively, partly reasonably, by calculating his options. The animal does the same. However, it makes fewer mistakes because it has more developed instincts, which are in a smaller set of variations and possibilities.

But, in principle, it is the same program. And there is nothing a person can do here. Therefore, if we just live our life in the usual way, then we are led by nature, and we have no freewill at all.

How then can you define what freedom is? Freedom from what? I have no freedom from my desire to receive pleasure. The only thing is that I can choose a certain kind of pleasure for myself. In this case, I substitute one for the other.

For example, I can enroll in a weight-loss group. They will “brainwash” me there, and I will behave differently—I will choose other forms of pleasure instead of eating sweets. Or, I might prefer to do art, science, etc.

Thus, I can fall under the influence of certain external factors, and they will give me a different scale of values. That is, I can say that now I choose a certain activity it becomes important and for me, now I derive pleasure from it. But still, someone pushed me to it. In any case, I am within the same nature that consists only of pleasure and suffering.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Fire Island” 1/1/10

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Question: What does practicing Kabbalah give a person?

Answer: A person falls under the influence of completely different, higher forces.

By practicing Kabbalah, we attract upon ourselves what is called the surrounding light, a certain force that begins to shape us. It makes a man out of a man, and woman out of a woman, but gradually because this is a lengthy process.

We live in a transitional period now. For the first time we are trying to put the Kabbalistic methodology into practice. I hope that already in this generation we will be able to make such an ascent to the next degree where men and women will attain nature and be in harmony: men with the male part of nature and women with the female part of nature.

Then they will be able to give their children, the next generation, the correct upbringing based on their corrected nature.

We need to educate people. Now they receive education, but not upbringing. We do not educate a person; we do not give him any concepts about proper social, family, or personal life.

I often give the example of how as students we went to the maternity ward for the first time and saw childbirth. I was seventeen and a half years old at the time. I was shocked! My attitude toward women changed. Forever! After that, us boys started relating differently to everything.

We need to make upbringing right for both men and women. It will change the world.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Two-headed eagle” 1/1/10

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Question: What is MAN?

Answer: From the point of view of Kabbalah, MAN is raising the desires of a person to the Creator and a request to correct them. However, according to the description in the Torah, it seems to be the answer of the Creator from above to people. Basically, it is the same thing.

When a person raises his desires to the Creator, then in fact this is the Creator sending him such help. It turns out that a person’s food, MAN (manna), the quality of Bina, as it were, comes from the Creator. Although everyone is filled with the same MAN, everyone has their own sensation.

When the people enter the land of Israel, MAN (manna) stops falling because they no longer need it. They have received the land, now they must properly cultivate and use it, that is, correctly combine Malchut and Bina.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/27/21

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #241 “Call Upon Him When He Is Near”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

Selected Highlights

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My new article on Linkedin “Omicron Is Nature’s Precise Spanking”

We haven’t finished with Delta, yet here comes Omicron. The new strain of coronavirus is said to be five times more infectious, but there is as yet no evidence that it causes serious illness in vaccinated people. Nature’s precision is astonishing. Like a skilled judge, it punishes us for our sins. However, it feels more like the educational admonition of a school principal than the wrath of a vengeful God. Its lesson is unity. To the extent that we refuse to learn, the admonishing virus will grow more adamant.

Since the dawn of civilization, we have tried to overpower nature. That’s about as smart as a fetus trying to overpower its mother. But then, we have never been smart except in our own eyes.

So while all of nature works harmoniously, we interfere with every process, disrupting and disturbing the natural order of things instead of joining it in our attempt to make the rules. When things do not work the way we thought they would, because a machine cannot work right after you break it, we try to fix it and prove our superior intelligence.

These “feats” are tearing nature’s intertwined threads, shredding the tapestry that sustains us all, and triggering the numerous adverse phenomena we have been experiencing. The most recent of these adverse phenomena is Covid, but if we continue to ignore the basic rules of nature—reciprocity and balance—it will not be the last, and certainly not the worst “spanking” that nature will deliver.

If we want to change course and truly improve our situation, we must begin with our attitude. We cannot maintain a self-centered attitude and expect it to work in an environment designed for the well-being of the community.

Nature is an integral whole. Its parts are interconnected. If one part is dysfunctional, all of nature is dysfunctional. This is why nature maintains the well-being of all its elements, and not just this or that species of animal, plant, or mineral.

All species obey this law of reciprocity except for man, which means that we are the only dysfunctional element in nature. In other words, all the negative phenomena we are experiencing are our own doing, created by our egocentric mindset.

Therefore, to live a good life, we needn’t change anything in reality itself; we need to change our thinking. If we think unity rather than individuality, we will benefit everyone, ourselves included. If we see the well-being of humanity and of nature as an integral part of our own well-being, we will see reality as it really is, and our actions will be equally successful. A collective mindset is the only way to thrive in a world that is built as a collective. Our current attitude will bring nothing but doom.
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My new article on Linkedin “In America, Einstein Discovered the Omnipresence of Antisemitism”

You would think that someone as renowned as Albert Einstein, whose contribution to science in general, and to the US in particular, is unquestionable, would escape the plight of antisemitism. He did not. In a recently discovered letter from 1936, he wrote to a friend about his situation in the US: “A tremendous degree of antisemitism exists here,” he confessed.

After fleeing Germany in 1922 for the exact same reason, the scientist discovered that antisemitism knows no boundaries. It affects all Jews, regardless of social, academic, or political status. These days, wealthy Jews in Beverly Hills and at the top of Biden’s administration are making the same grim discovery.

In Einstein’s days, antisemitism in the US was overshadowed by the horrors of Nazi Germany. The scientist wrote that Jew-hatred in the US “never takes the form of brutal speech or action, but simmers all the more intensely under the surface. It is, so to speak, an omnipresent enemy, one that is impossible to see, and whose presence you only perceive.”

Today, antisemitism in the US is already brutal in both speech and action. There have been several massacres in recent years, violent incidents have become ubiquitous, and hate speech is more prevalent than ever. For example, a few days ago, antisemitic fliers left outside homes in Beverly Hills declared, “Every single aspect of the COVID agenda is Jewish.” Moreover, the flier listed more than a dozen Jews in key positions related to the American health system.

There has always been antisemitism in America. It used to be easier to ignore it, and governments had an interest to conceal it since Jews were regarded as major contributors to the economy. In a country where money sets the tone, those who have it are the powerful. But when too many people have too little, as is happening now, the wealthy become targets. And when the wealthy are Jewish, it is a sitting duck, and the duck will be shot.

No one is impervious to antisemitism; it is a law of nature. Just as you cannot escape gravity, if you’re a Jew, you cannot escape Jew-hatred.

In fact, the root of antisemitism goes even deeper than the most basic laws of physics. The ancestors of the Jewish people waved the banner of altruism. They coined such terms as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “that which you hate, do not do unto your neighbor,” and established their society on mutual responsibility and mercy.

Moreover, they did not build their society for themselves, but in order to be “a light unto nations,” to set an example for the world to follow. They were a chosen people, chosen to pass on the message that man can rise above self-absorption and form a thriving society without disparaging competitiveness and oppressing leaders. Is it any wonder that no one wanted their success? At the same time, if they fail, who will show the way out of the darkness of egotism?

Indeed, Jews represent the struggle between good and evil. When they succeed, they are a bright light that shines as a beacon of hope for the entire world. When they fail, they are worse than any selfish person on the planet. Not only do they wallow in self-centeredness, they also deny the world the necessary example in order to emerge from it. Therefore, when they are selfish, they are hated more than any nation, person, or being in existence.

The Beverly Hills flier we just mentioned targets such high profile individuals as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, Secretary of Health Xavier Becerra, his assistant Rachel Levine, and founder and president of the American multinational investment management corporation BlackRock, Robert Kapito. There is a good reason for mentioning such high profile individuals. It shows that we cannot argue in our defense that we are contributing to the community; people want something else from us, and when they do not get it, they hate us.

Specifically today, when greed, selfishness, and narcissism set the tone, a different voice must rise—a voice that champions consideration and social responsibility. It is a far cry from the exemplary society of the ancient Jews, but it is a step in the right direction. Naturally, the ones who are expected to lead the way toward it are the Jews. It is our legacy and our obligation to the world. For its part, the world expects nothing less from us.

Now that the people of Israel are scattered around the world, we must grow and develop within the world. We must show the world that we place unity above division, that our society is an example they can follow, an example of unity above division, and care rather than alienation. Only a united people of Israel can lead humanity toward unity in its struggle against egoism, and the world will not forgive us if we fail it.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Miracle We Celebrate on Hanukkah”

Every Jewish holiday has deep spiritual meaning. Hanukkah is no exception. On Hanukkah, we celebrate the miracle that happened to the Maccabees, who defeated the mighty Seleucid Empire and its allies, the Hellenistic Jews. After their victory, they cleaned the plundered Temple and found just enough oil to light the menorah for one day. But lo and behold, the oil lasted eight days. By then the Maccabees had procured more oil and the candles on the menorah could keep burning.

However, in all the festivities, we overlook a very important message in the holiday. The candles on the menorah symbolize our struggle with our egos, our hatred of others. The burning of the candle symbolizes our triumph in using even our most depraved desires for the benefit of others.

Traditionally, a candle consists of three elements: 1) the oil, which serves as fuel, 2) the wick, the thread that is dipped into the oil and carries it to the edge of the wick, and 3) the fire, which uses both the wick and the oil (mainly the latter) to burn. RABASH, my teacher, explains that the oil is a pool of bad thoughts and intentions toward others. The wick is a single thought or intention emerging from that pool. The miracle happens when we determine that we do not want to follow our corrupt intentions, but rather develop love for others.

If we succeed, it is regarded as lighting the flame, and this is considered a miracle. The flame needs a constant supply of bad thoughts or it will have no thoughts to “burn,” to rise above, so bad thoughts are necessary. However, given the extent of our self-absorption, it really does take a miracle to rise above our wickedness and turn it into good thoughts about others.

It is an even greater miracle when this transformation occurs not in a single person, but in an entire nation. The people of Israel established their nationhood precisely by performing this miracle when they pledged to love one another as themselves.

Today we need an even greater miracle. With the whole world interconnected and all the nations engaged in constant power struggles, the miracle we need is for the whole world to rise above hatred and suspicion and use them as fuel, as oil, to light the flame of love.

The chronicles of the Jewish people are not stories about people who lived in ancient times; they are lessons for humanity. The Jewish nation formed from people who came from all over the ancient world, so it is only natural that their annals should pertain not only to themselves, but above all to their original nations.

The union that our ancestors achieved was a “pilot” for a program that the whole world must implement today. The more we shun the idea of rising above hatred and wallow in our mutual odium, the more shaken we will be when we finally realize that we have no choice but to change our attitude toward others, just as our ancestors did back then.
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