Entries in the 'Collective Soul' Category

From Internal To External

Dr. Michael LaitmanHumanity can be divided into circles that have a common center.

The internal circle, the source, is made of Abraham’s students who left ancient Babel and whom many other people from other nations and from different parts of the world joined. Today, after four exiles, on the verge of the fourth redemption, a circle of “those who left the current Babel” is formed of all of humanity. Such people want to fulfill the same goal and together according to their yearning they are called “Israel,” which means straight to the Creator.

Besides that, there is another part that belongs to the category of “Israel,” which is those in whom the same Reshimot (reminiscences), the same “signs” that were left from the past when they were in spiritual ascent, are rooted. The three lines are hidden in their basis; they have experienced ascents and descents going through a series of reincarnations, and they have to correct themselves in our world since they belong to the students of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So there are three types of people who belong the group of “Israel” these days:

  • Inside is Bnei Baruch (BB).
  • Around them, there are our friends from the nations of the world, from all over the world.
  • On the outside, there are those who are called Jews, who are divided into two parts: religious and nonreligious.

They all have to fulfill the correction whether they want to or not. Some of them are being awakened today; these are our friends, the world Kli (in red). But on the whole, everyone is obliged to do so.

On the outside the whole world, all of humanity, or the nations of the world surround us.

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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Nation”

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Resurrection From The Dead

Dr. Michael LaitmanAll of humanity exists in a system that resembles our body, which is comprised of interconnected parts. This connection already exists. The problem is that it doesn’t operate correctly.

After the breaking of desires, each fragment began to operate for the sake of self. The connection between them remained, only it became opposite to what it should be because each one only wished to receive for itself.

This is how the system developed after the breaking, becoming worse and worse. Because the desire to receive started to reveal itself with greater force and people thought that even though their connections were egoistic, it still helped them to develop. Today’s economists still believe that competition is good because it leads humanity to prosperity and success.

But it only appears to be good on the surface because a person feels comfortable in his egoism. However, in essence, all of our development is designed only for the sake of revealing the evil contained within our egoism, and we will reveal this at the end of our egoistic development.

Throughout the course of history, the egoistic connection between people (or broken souls) has been growing constantly. Among them, there are certain souls, which reveal themselves here and there, who do not wish to exist in accordance with the laws of receiving and competition, but who wish to exist in mutual bestowal and to help one another. These people are revealing the method of a new, altruistic connection that allows them to elevate above their egoism to a state of bestowal.

By correcting themselves, these people become a positive part of the general system. These are the Kabbalists, special people that have revealed the force of bestowal, and thanks to them, it flows into the general body or the general soul like fresh blood. This flow will cause the general soul to come alive and awaken.

This entire mechanism is beginning to awaken from the dead. After all, it was completely destroyed, and now there are parts of it that are starting to heal by connecting between each other. These parts are becoming more active within the system and strengthening their connection to each other, thereby awakening the entire system and injecting it with the force of bestowal through the natural connections that exist between all its parts: the broken parts, the corrected parts, and those in the process of correction.

As a result, all parts of the system are receiving a small energy boost and inspiration from the parts that are correcting themselves. For this reason the righteous are called the foundation of the world.

Even if we don’t disseminate widely, our work and efforts in uniting still will affect the parts of the system that aren’t able to discover the method of correction for themselves. After all, we exist in a single field, a single organism, but, in order to accelerate the process of development, we have to include external dissemination.

Baal HaSulam wrote about the necessity of revealing the science of Kabbalah in his article, “Time to Act,” as well as in his newspaper, The Nation. This helped to awaken people, which corresponds with our incredibly accelerated times.

This gives each part of the system the opportunity to awaken and to see that our crisis state is not accidental and that we aren’t doomed for suffering passively our entire lives. The crisis is a sign that we must accept the method of correction as soon as possible.

The Light, the power of correction, fulfillment and bestowal, enters the general system only through its corrected parts. The corrected parts of the system are called Israel (straight to the Creator), and their numbers are growing because more new parts are awakening to the correction.

They are called the inner part of the general soul. The rest of the parts that aren’t yet correcting themselves are called the external part or the nations of the world. Ultimately, everyone will unite and reach full correction.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/12, Shamati #69

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The Image Of The Group

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can one imagine the group in its ideal state?

Answer: A group is one whole. This is its model, its image. Suppose we have some common desire, a common intention, common thoughts, and ideas. Where are they? They are between us. This desire, intention, thought, begins to guide everyone. We begin to support it, and we see that our existence is in that.

With the help of creating this image, we then will transform the whole of our life in order to support this image. We will relate to each other differently, build family and social connections, transform industry, and relate to nature, based precisely from the fact that we have created this united whole, the image of Adam, the image of one person.

Humanity will become free of excess work, will cease polluting the Earth, will stop messing with being a society of consumption of completely unnecessary things. It will be forced to free many people from unnecessary work since nature is purposely leading us toward our dedicating five to eight hours of our time per day to the studies of integral connection, the creation of an integral society.

We will be obliged to do that, and, on the scale of the whole of humanity from young to old. Absolutely everyone, from pensioners to small children, must go through this level of re-education.

Question: In order to build this image, some kind of energy is needed. Where can we get it from?

Answer: Nature gives us energy! It pushes us with a stick toward happiness. Of course, we need introductory explanations, courses, understanding the necessity of these transformations, realization of the fact that, otherwise, each one of us will enter his or her own personal crisis and the crisis of society.

See how the ecological crisis is approaching. The Earth is being depleted. How will we warm ourselves? What will we eat if within the coming couple of decades, we will completely deplete Earth, including uranium, fuel, gas and other natural resources? We must stop at the right time, and nature is slowing us down in advance.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 2/29/12

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When People Refuse To Listen

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “The Nation”: The only hope is to establish a thoroughly new national education for ourselves, to discover and ignite once more the natural national love that have been dimmed within us.

Question: What should we do with the part of the nation of Israel that is not ready to listen to us, that don’t want to have anything to do with us?

Answer: We should try to reach them from another angle and then from another one, in different innovative ways. We have no choice since they are like your own child. There is nothing you can do: He has been born and he is tied to you in unbreakable ties. So whether you want to or not, you carry your load and try to do everything in your power, looking for a remedy for every illness that he may have.

Besides, we should understand that it is a replica of us; it is our vessel and not something foreign to us. We cannot discard the world, reality, or any part of it.

People refuse to listen to us and it is perfectly natural. It is worse when they want to, since then they mean something that is totally different from what we mean. We should be more creative with the “fans,” in order to turn them in the right direction. If a person just rejects us then this may be the simplest case.

One way or the other, we shouldn’t give up and leave. The easiest thing to do is to say: “Let them suffer.” But these are your parts, your self that is spread throughout humanity, but you only feel a tiny part of it, 80 kilos of your weight and nothing more than that. Gradually you will discover additional new parts of yourself. So just imagine what pain you would feel if you found out the truth; would it be possible to dump people then?

Question: So what can we do? It is as if we are bumping into a wall unable to penetrate it…

Answer: We are not trying enough. If we tried enough there wouldn’t be such problems. It all depends on us. A person judges himself and the whole world to the scale of merit. Try to exert yourself in the group, in connection. Try to do your best there, and then go out to the external circles.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Better Less But Together

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can I do for the group while reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: Connect with everyone and to be in the same intention. Rabash says that all the sparks in the hearts of the friends unite into one big flame of love. Therefore, we should try to connect all the small desires, passions, inclinations, and intentions.

There is a great difference when there are thousands of people with us here and all over the world connecting by reading the text and thinking about how to connect with spirituality, and the fact that each one thinks about it separately.

If everyone’s separate request rises, it is a lie. It isn’t a lie in the corporeal sense when people deceive one another, wanting to use one another, which is natural.

Here it is about you wanting to relate to the Creator falsely. What does that mean? If you do it alone, then you undoubtedly do it since it is your nature. However, if you do it by connecting to others, you are already giving up something, you take them into account and you cooperate mutually.

So if millions of people yearn for spirituality, but separately, the outcome is very weak and is practically negligible, although they make efforts, study, and do something. We can see this in those who study the revealed Torah.

If we connect by wanting to attain spirituality by mutual bestowal, we are immediately in equivalence of form with spirituality, and if you ask for something, your request immediately arrives in a vessel of bestowal, since it goes through the connection. Accordingly it evokes the Light that will return to you from the Creator, the Light that Reforms.

So to yearn for the goal by yourself is a waste of time. These are futile attempts. To yearn ten times less but through the connection with others is a million times more efficient.

This means that our work is not quantitative but qualitative, better less but with the right intention.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/9/12, The Book of Zohar

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In A Single System

 Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we transfer the sensation of the new values such as friend, teacher, and group to the 99% of the population?

Answer: When the Light will become revealed, it will give us additional weight, feeling, and importance of each of each of these terms. For the time being I perceive it something abstract.

I will begin to see that these are the components of my soul, the state of my soul, parts of my soul, and that the entire world is one general soul. There is only Malchut and no one exists outside of it. Today we exist in a state of illusion called our world, thinking that we exist outside of the general soul.

The first spiritual state is the minimal sensation of existing together with everyone  in a single system .
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From a Virtual Lesson 7/29/12

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I Am One With This World

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 68: Do not be surprised that one person’s actions bring elevation or decline to the whole world, for it is an unbending law that the general and the particular are as equal as two peas in a pod. And all that applies in the general, applies in the particular, as well. Moreover, the parts make what is found in the whole, for the general can appear only after the appearance of the parts in it, according to the quantity and quality of the parts. Evidently, the value of an act of a part elevates or declines the entire whole.

From the perception of reality we know that the world that I see is me and that my spiritual vessel is divided, shattered, and distant from me in my senses and my recognition and is spread in different directions. There is no world, it is all me. If I collect its parts and bring them closer to one another on all levels: the still nature, the vegetative, the animate and the speaking; if I connect them into one general integral system in which they are connected in whole mutuality, then their mutual connection, the mutual interdependence, the mutual incorporation, enables me to discover to the same extent the force that connects and that keeps them alive, and the currents that flow between these organs.

A doctor who implants an organ attaches different organs to a body and they connect to the general systems. In the same way I too, to the extent that I create new connections, feel the upper force that flows between my parts and which brings them life. I begin to feel who the Creator is by the vitality of the body, according to the principle of “from your actions we shall know you.” He is revealed gradually in my corrected body, until I am totally corrected and reach full adhesion with Him.

By correcting myself with regards to the whole world, I summon the general correction of the world of course. Since eventually I and the world are the same.

The question is why shouldn’t all the others just wait if I already correct the world? Why should we all connect and participate in the process?

The point is that everything depends only on the mutual incorporation of the vessels (the desires) that help each other, as it says: “Every man shall help his brother.” I connect with others and others connect with me and we all connect with the Kabbalists from previous generations and with those who have not reached the desire to be corrected and to connect yet. If we actively care for everyone, if we act with regards to the upper and the lower, if we are equal, as it should be among friends, then everyone corrects his own whole world.

You cannot correct what I correct and what you correct another cannot correct. But this doesn’t annul the main principle according to which by correcting himself a person corrects the whole world. Everyone has his own world and by connecting to others I pass the Light to them through me, like a blood vessel, in different possible ways and in different connection systems. No one will do it for me.

On the contrary, if a person corrects the world, it obliges him and brings him to correction. Thus, widespread dissemination helps us correct ourselves according to the same reason: A person and the world are the same thing. So you shouldn’t leave the corrections of the world as a whole. Baal HaSulam says that the more a person advances, the greater and higher he is, and his concern for the world is also greater and wider. First it is the family, then the town then the state, and eventually he embraces the whole world and it is impossible to avoid that.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/7/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar

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On The Way To Infinite Adhesion

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I better understand that the world depends on me, and how can the group feel that everything depends on it?

Answer: The easiest way is to remember that there is no world outside myself. It is only because of the shattering that I imagine that everything around me is not me. As Baal HaSulam says, there is only one soul in the world. In the real state of Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity) we are all connected and there are no barriers between us. No one is isolated, we are in perfect mutual connection and everyone feels only the others and not himself. This is the real picture and we have to reach it independently since today we see it in its opposite form.

In the last, fourth phase of the Direct Light the created being feels that the Creator loves him and that He does everything for him in absolute love without any self-calculations. On the other hand, the created being feels the opposite feeling of the self that is accompanied by such great impatience and suffering that he is ready to do anything in order not to feel that.

After the restriction the created being discovers that he can attain the same thing and reach an equivalence of form with the Creator. Then he decides to find a place where he can be independent. He has detached himself from Malchut of Ein Sof, but has not become independent yet and has continued his search—how to break free of the Light and still acquire its power in order to change himself and become like it.

Then comes the descent from phase one to phase two until our current level. Today only the spark is evoked in us, some vague knowledge, and from this moment it is only by our exertion that we can attain the two forces: the desire to receive and desire to bestow so that they will dwell in us. Then we will be able to manage ourselves and bring ourselves to the initial adhesion by ourselves.

Before the Light, the Creator who created this state provided our full adhesion. Now on the way to Malchut of Ein Sof, I climb the levels of adhesion by my own efforts, by my self recognition, by my self feeling. I determine my state and thus attain infinite adhesion which I feel 620 times more strongly than before because I have done this work by myself; I understood by myself; I felt; I have acquired; I have earned it. This will be the final third state.

I follow this path by attaching to myself all the parts that seem like strangers, that are hateful, distant and opposite from me. I attach them to the absolute love among us and by that return from our world to the word of Ein Sof.

Today we don’t hate the external world, but we are indifferent to it. Later on, however, we will discover such sources of hatred that are called a “shell” against the Holiness, against bestowal. We will encounter things that we cannot even look at, that we will find hard to hear. Imagine that someone destroys something that is important and dear to you and now by rising above that feeling you have to love him and thank him. Is that possible?

Compared to those terrible states it is as if we are in a “kindergarten” today. We are not “playing” with the real discernments yet…

So before the correction, everything is revealed in its opposite form. Therefore the world, which today simply seems distant and detached from us is actually the parts of the general vessel, of the one soul.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/7/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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An Endless Road

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” item 55: This is because he attains the Lights and degrees of his soul, called NRNHY, according to the measure of the purity of his will to receive. And with each degree he attains, the Lights of that degree assist him in his purification. Thus, he rises in degrees until he achieves the amusements of the final aim in the Thought of Creation.

Question: Is the level of “to receive in order to bestow” meant for every soul?

Answer: Yes and no. It can also be attained indirectly by incorporation, since we are talking about an analog system that is perfect and integral in which everyone is connected to everyone else and the general pattern is in everyone like in a holographic picture.

The whole point is what my role in this picture is: Am I part of the “leg,” of the “head,” the “heart,” or another organ in the general “body”? I will definitely attain everything, but I attain my part in the system actively by operating independently.

I have my own deficiency and also the deficiency I acquire from everyone else. There is myself that stems from my element and there is everyone else. So our attainment is not identical. Everyone attains the whole system as a whole and is in Ein Sof (Infinity), but at the same time everyone “envies” the others since everyone has a different starting point. This also requires work and correction.

Then we rise to such a level, which in the meantime, we know nothing about. The development continues and disappears somewhere. The vessels will have to grow and turn into something that we don’t know…

Question: Why does a person have to attain the thought of creation?

Answer: Because this is the desire of the upper, of the Creator, since the thought of creation is the Creator.

Our words are inaccurate, but we have to use them. It says that there is an unattainable reality called the Creator. He is unattainable, but there is the thought of creation, which means His attitude towards us.

As a result of His thought about us, something was done. He created a desire to receive and did different things with it. But the point is not that we should stay in this desire to receive. The desire and the Light are the only two attributes—receiving and bestowal, which He has chosen in order to eventually raise us above both of them.

This means that we rise not only above receiving, but also above bestowal, because one will not be able to exist without the other. We have to understand His thought of creation and rise even higher to what we cannot speak about today because we don’t know what it is.

This is the way of attainment that leads us to an unknown end. In our desires we cannot even attain anything higher then them, while here we speak about something that is beyond Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction). Still we have to understand that this is where the goals that truly match the Creator are. By clarifying the process we go through, we have to say that His attitude towards us is not below the level He is on and about which we know nothing, since even the roots our branches stem from are not derived from it.

So by knowing this we should also understand where we are today.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/01/12, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar

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The Commonality Of Spirit And Imitation

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Ana Tajadura-Jiménez, Stephanie Grehl, Manos Tsakiris, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom): “Psychologists at Royal Holloway, University of London, have discovered that sharing a synchronised experience with another person may change the perception we have of ourselves and make strangers appear more familiar and similar to ourselves. …

“Dr Ana Tajadura-Jiménez, one of the researchers: ‘… synchronized events between individuals might act as a form of social glue that makes people feel closer and more similar to each other.’

“The researchers point out that several of our everyday social interactions involve synchronised events, including walking alongside people where we tend to synchronise our steps and the power of dance, sports and rituals seems to rely, at least in part, in synchronised sensory experiences. ‘Our participants shared a simple sensory experience with another unfamiliar person, and yet we show how this experience changed their representation of how they look, and made this other person appear more similar to themselves. This finding shows how the sense of who we are, our sense of identity, is given to us by our interactions with others, and is, eventually, reflected back to others,’ says lead researcher Dr Manos Tsakiris.”

My Comment: The source of this is that we are all connected by one inner network of connections in which our complete internal communication occurs. We are one whole, filled with the upper Light. But this state is hidden from us by our egoism, and that is why even in external similarity to our egoism we find pleasure: the illumination of the upper Light.
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