Entries in the 'Daily Kabbalah Lesson' Category

The Choice Is Yours

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe have to get used to the correct perception of reality. Either we perceive it as it appears today, as though there is some external world out there, or we realize that all of reality is inside us.

This is a huge difference, because in the first case, I perceive all of reality from the perspective of using it for my own interests, and only in this egotistic way do I feel and understand it. And if I perceive reality through this egotistic filter, I feel what we call “this world” in my desire. However, if I perceive the world in the opposite way, which is called bestowal, not according to the formula of “everything is for me,” but rather that “everything is for them,” I feel a different reality called “the upper reality,” “the spiritual world.”

A person should check very carefully in what position his internal switch, the one that directs his thoughts, is: Is it for me or for all of us? Herein lies his free will each time.

The switch is in the middle position, just like an on/off switch, and I can turn it towards me, and then feel this world, or I can turn it “towards others” and feel spirituality. I’m like a switchman who turns the switch and feels either the upper world or this world in his desires.

The switch is in your hands, and how to turn it is your only choice. If you disconnect yourself from your ego and direct your thoughts toward others instead of yourself, you will advance toward bestowal and see the upper world in the same place, in the same desires.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Demanding Bread And Education

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur main objective right now isn’t to erase the differences between the richest and the poorest layers of the population. This is the goal for the future.

Right now, we face two urgent issues: The first is to raise everyone’s standard of living above the poverty line, and the second is to oblige everyone to learn about mutual guarantee, the new world, the new economy, the new relationships between people, and the changes that nature is obliging us to make. A university that will teach these things must be built, and studying there must be obligatory, just as it’s obligatory for children to obtain a secondary school education.

I consider these two conditions to be essential. After all, it is written: “If there is no flour, there is no Torah.” But on the other hand, if there is no Torah (the knowledge of the new world), there is no flour. For this reason, people must be educated and given flour, meaning the necessary income. For now, this is all that needs to be done.

I’m often asked what practical advice can be given to a person that has suffered enough and is ready to accept mutual guarantee. How can such a person enter into a new world? This is only possible by gradually educating a person. We can’t just wake up tomorrow and, by some miracle, be in a new world. Everything begins with a person’s inner correction. He has to learn to change by means of studying and through his environment. If many people study, they will come to this state by correcting themselves and influencing one another.

It’s the government’s duty, first and foremost, to provide the nation with the flour and with education. The nation has to demand that the government elevates everyone above the poverty level and educates everyone in the spirit of mutual guarantee. Without these two things, we won’t be able to go forward.

I don’t know where the government will find the necessary funding. The government could take it from the rich or begin saving for it by cutting back on their government officials, it’s up to them. Let’s calculate how much money is needed. It may not be such a large sum. One way or another, the government must provide the nation with the necessities. It won’t be able to play with people as has been done in the past, so it would be better to begin planning ahead of time.

I don’t think it should be an unrealistic amount of money. They should calculate it and figure out whose taxes should be raised and whose should be lowered. There may be a need for a new tax for everyone, except for those below the poverty line. This must be done. How could it be that there are people that don’t have enough for food?

It’s also necessary to teach people, through television programs or workshops, how to manage a household. No matter what their income, people can’t live thoughtlessly and do whatever they want. People have to learn to manage their means. Quite often, people don’t know how to do this.

There are specialists, scientists, economists, and psychologists who can explain how to properly manage money. If one has a certain amount of money for a family to live on for a month, these specialists can calculate how much could be spent and on what. There is an entire academic discipline called family and consumer sciences.

People will listen and become inspired gradually; they will suddenly gain a different attitude toward life. After all, people don’t think too much about what will happen to them tomorrow. We don’t feel it, and we aren’t taught this. Our schools are so removed from real life that they don’t teach the necessary things such as how to treat people, your future husband, wife, and children or how to manage a household so that there would be enough money for the month. All these things must be learned.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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How To Bring The Light To Everyone

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe structure of the world can be pictured as a pyramid with several layers. On top, there are the people with a point in the heart. Such people lived throughout all times aspiring toward bestowal because there is “a point” (a spiritual desire) inside their “hearts,” meaning in the desire to receive. With the help of these two “reins,” they can move forward using the environment to invoke the influence of the force of bestowal upon them.

All the others have no point in the heart; their desires are directed toward regular self-enjoyment. However, after those with a point in the heart are being filled with the Light, it passes through to the next layer as well.

This layer consists of different people, including scientists who can accept the message about the integral world. They see that we are right from their research. A knowledgeable person sees what is going on and understands the need to sustain an integral approach because nature presents us with this inescapable fact. And there are many thousands of people like that: scientists, economists, sociologists, political scientists, and so on. We have to cooperate with them by all means.

Apart from that, there are “the rich and the powerful of this world,” such as politicians and tycoons. We can only reach them indirectly with the help of scientists who will confirm the dilemma facing the world: wars and fatal fights on one hand and unity by necessity on the other. It’s in this way that we’ll get another audience that can be addressed: the financial and political elite who have something to lose.

In addition, politicians and the rich have a new problem: People start to hate them. After all, the crisis on streets is happening while they are at the wheel. Not so long ago having wealth was a cause for respect, but now wealth has become hated. This phenomenon will escalate to the point of brutality, and they will feel its heavy pressure.

Together with scientists, we can suggest a solution to them: Because there is no other choice, it’s necessary to start with gradual changes in society. Don’t do any sharp moves, only introduce global education. It’s essential today.

In this way, we can reach the main layer of the pyramid: the public, the masses, who need to “sit at school desks,” meaning they have to be introduced to a system of education about the laws of the new world. This could be easily done because unemployment will reach unprecedented levels very soon, and the economy will halt, except for mechanisms providing basic needs. Many people have already stopped spending money on luxuries. A great number of people will be left without things to do, and they will have to be sent to study. For them it will be a job as well. A person working in the sphere of basic needs will not be any different from a person receiving global education.

Gradually, a new system will be built. Suppose that everyone will be working for half a day, and the other half of the day will be dedicated to studies, and from that, a salary will be accrued. Such a pyramid will be in sync with the demands of the evolving global network of the world.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/2011, “One Commandment”

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125 Degrees Of Our Mutual Guarantee

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can the mutual guarantee be used as a coefficient in a formula? Is it really possible to measure human relations: 50% or 75% of mutual guarantee?

Answer: Of course relationships can be measured: There are 125 degrees of mutual guarantee (the same 125 spiritual degrees of which you have probably already heard). Everything can be measured precisely because according to the way that a person relates to others, every soul consists of Rosh–Toch–Sof (head, inner part of the body, and limbs), and here are parts that he restricts and parts that he uses partially, half, or quarter way.

There is no problem with measuring the mutual guarantee in spirituality—it corresponds to your degree. And are you are asking how we should evaluate the mutual guarantee in the economics of our world? Mutual guarantee does not and cannot exist in our world. The first degree of mutual guarantee is a spiritual degree.

Right now we are in a transitional period called “the time of preparation,” preparing for the entrance into the spiritual world. When I say that the mutual guarantee needs to be entered as a coefficient into the economic formula, I mean that the entire problem with the breaking and the crisis we are now experiencing is the fact that we lack one parameter from a higher degree.And when we acquire it, we reach peace, fulfillment, and balance for a certain time. And after  each time, we will feel like we have lost this balance—the lack of mutual guarantee and economic instability.

This will keep happening on every new degree, until we reach a state when every person suffices with the necessities needed for living, which he himself will determine. At the same time, every person will give the maximum to the extent of his abilities, and he will also determine this maximum himself. This is how corrected everything will be.

But if a person has not yet reached this state, the desires that he is not yet able to work with are being guarded. And this protection is not imposed by his forces since he is not yet capable of it; it is done through the environment, which pressures him. Baal HaSulam explains that the society of the future will be evaluating how much every person needs as well as encourage people by giving them medals, influencing people with encouragement or judgment.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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Seven Billion Worlds

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are in such concealment that we don’t even feel it. We perceive all of reality only inside ourselves, and everything that we feel is impressions inside our egoistic desire that actually doesn’t exist at all.

In the spiritual world there is no such notion as the desire to enjoy that receives for its own sake. If the desire is aimed towards itself, it cannot receive anything and stays in the dark. Our egotistic desire, however, is on such a low, base level that we are allowed to feel some kind of reality in it, an imprint of what seems to us as reality.

When we begin to develop and gain greater desires and intentions for the sake of bestowal, we start sensing the upper system. Before it happens each of us is like an unconscious person in delirium who feels some kind of an imaginary world in which he seems to exist, like someone in a coma, who sees various images running through his head, as it sometimes happens in a dream.

When we wake up and come back to our senses, our desire is already on another level and has the intention for the sake of bestowal. Thus, we become aware that we feel everything inside our desire and that there is nothing on the outside. Everything that previously seemed to us as external was also a sensation inside the desire to receive.

We attain the spiritual world in our desire to receive too. The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, all the people, all this big world, and everything that’s happening in it are merely changes in my desire to receive, which make me feel that the world is changing. I discover the other souls, meaning foreign desires so that I can connect them to myself with the intention to bestow, and then they become parts of me that help me measure to what extent I am in bestowal.

I’m kept in the fog purposefully, so that I won’t be able to feel the others while I try to bring them closer and feel them as inseparable parts of me. If I try to bring all of what seems like the external reality closer to me, I can correct my vessel to bestowal.

The extent to which I bring the external, foreign desires: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking and unite them into a single whole, into one spiritual organism that consists of “brain-bones-tendons-flesh-skin” (Moach–Atzamot–Gidin–Basar–Orh) or of “root-soul-body-garments-chamber” (Shoresh–Neshama–Guf–Levush–Heichal) is a measure of my approaching the truth. Indeed, there is no one but me who feels all of reality inside myself and thus builds a vessel within so as to perceive the Creator in it.

I have to bring all the parts together until they all become as “one man with one heart” and all the people that seemed to me as strangers become part of my soul. Thus, each of us advances without disturbing anyone. Each of us builds his own world on his own plane, in his own cut, attaining it as his inner world. And the Creator fills this world, which means that a person is in adhesion with the Light, with the Creator Who fills him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.18.11

Writings of Rabash “And the Lord Appeared to Him by the Oaks of Mamre“
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” “The Name Mem-Bet and AB,” Item 273, Lesson 12
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 6, Chapter 15, “Praise the Lord from the Heavens, Answer 288” Lesson 14
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Item 158, Lesson 68
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Peace in the World,” “The Well-Being of a Certain Collective and the Well-Being of the Whole World,” Lesson 9
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The Will Of The Integral System

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Do not be surprised if I mix together the well-being of a particular collective with the well-being of the whole world, because indeed, we have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society. Meaning, because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and care for the well-being of the whole world.

We have proven above that the total subordination of the individual to the collective is like a small wheel in a machine. He draws his life and his happiness from that collective, and therefore the well-being of the collective and his own well-being are one and the same, and vice-versa. Therefore, to the extent that a person is enslaved to himself, he necessarily becomes enslaved to the collective.

Does this mean we have been enslaved? Will it be necessary to subjugate every person and country to the demands of a specific regulation? Then where is freedom of the individual? Where are equality and justice, if they will coerce others to do something?

The issue here is that a new, all-enveloping system is gradually “dressing” upon our world and we are compelled to submit to it. There is no other way to go. We have to accept this global, integral system that is being revealed everywhere today. We have to help each other do this and even obligate one another because we depend on each other. No one can fence himself off from others and communicate with them “at a distance.” The world has become very small. We are drawing our resources from the same sources, we are all “knitted together.”

The system of global interconnection is imposing mandatory circumstances on us. However, it is not imposing arbitrary rule, but the principle of mutual guarantee. We have to take care of one another and at the same time we have the right to obligate one another to observe this principle. No one can use the advantage of force to impose his own will and laws on another. This is not talking about someone’s personal whims, but the will of the general, integral system that is expressing itself and imputing common obligations to all of us.

Because we are all totally interconnected, we have to get organized according to the universal system that nature is demonstrating to us. If someone does not accept it and does not leave us with any other alternative, we have to take care to ensure that he will nevertheless desire to adapt to the new conditions, if not by his own desire, then against his will.

How? Very simply. We will sever all connections with him, will isolate him, leaving him one-on-one with the global system. Today we don’t need wars or atom bombs. It’s enough to deprive a country of the vital arteries, to close off the channels through which it exports and imports goods and raw materials. We won’t buy its production and won’t trade with it, and the country will fall apart, including its industry, energy, and other systems.

Today not one nation can manage without others or shift to autonomous mode. That is how interconnected everything is. Therefore, we have to explain to societies, countries, and governments what they don’t understand yet: The only way we will survive is by observing the law of mutual guarantee, and in no other way.

Thus, the well-being of the whole world depends on the well-being of every society and every country, and vice versa. All of this leads to far-reaching consequences, which we cannot even imagine. Every person will feel that he depends on everyone in every way. Even when I prepare a cup of hot tea, the whole world participates in it together with me.

This situation is dictating a completely new worldview, a new sensation of the world to us. From here on I am entirely and fully under the power of others, directly dependent on them. And if I am aware of this, like an animal that cannot put food and drink into its own feeder, then the understanding of the system of mutual guarantee allows me to take my place in it like an obedient boy.

That is why it is so important to start educating people today. We all have to open our eyes to where we are.

The path there is not easy. We see this by Europe’s example, which is fighting the financial crisis. It’s leaders are having a very hard time understanding the meaning of what is happening. They blame one another, but in reality no one is guilty. It’s just that until now everyone behaved egoistically, but now we are being deprived of that possibility.

The same thing goes for our group. For the world the issue at stake is material life, whereas for us – it is spiritual life. We have to understand that spiritual life depends on the revelation of the system of mutual guarantee. We will begin to live spiritually only in it and thanks to it when we establish interconnection, harmony, fair distribution, and single-hearted relationships among all of us.

Then, from our degree of spiritual interaction, we will be able to pour this knowledge, this educational method into the world, onto the degree of material interaction, giving the world all of the abundance that will pass through us. With the help of upbringing, we will give people the vessels, while the Lights coming from us will fill them with the sensation of life.

In principle, the world already understands that it really has become “round,” but on the other hand, it still does not feel the entire extent of its interconnections. In the near future we will see with our own eyes that every person opposing mutual guarantee will be subject to very powerful blows. All of the “smart-alecs” who don’t want to create good relationships with others, who don’t aspire in the direction of order, interconnection, and mutuality – be it separate people or entire nations – will experience the negative consequences of their own gambles boomeranging back at them.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/11, “Peace in the World”

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It’s Unacceptable, But It Is So

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can you explain to people the integral system we have entered?

Answer: Everyone should feel in his mind and heart that the whole world is his family. Of course, at first it seems inconceivable or worn-out, but let’s look at the facts: Do we have a choice? The state the world is in today simply demands a “family approach” from us.

So how can we advance in this direction? After all, without it we won’t be able to make any right decision. Let’s take Europe, for example, which is desperately and unsuccessfully trying to come out of the financial crisis. And it isn’t that they lack money. They are ready to invest as much as needed, but they don’t believe it will have any effect. The same is happening in the United States. In the next few months things will become clearer: Our calculations have to correspond to the integral, analogous system that doesn’t operate according to our present mind and emotions at all.

Can I act in favor of the whole world and balance the coming storm with a gradual, general ascent? I am unable to feel this approach and estimate it because I myself am not like that. As a result, having discovered themselves in a global interrelated system, the world leaders still make the same narrow egoistic decisions. They simply can’t take into account that fact that “my own benefit” does not exist any more, but only “our benefit.” This is contradictory to human nature.

We also feel this. Do I think about the group? No. I first of all think about myself. Do I worry about my friends and their unity? No. I think about how I myself will reach spirituality. If I reach it, I will change and will begin to worry about them, but in the meantime I don’t. We talk profusely about unity and raise toasts to mutual guarantee, but inside everyone thinks: “What about me?” and not “What about us?”

Yet, we follow the path of free will, and so the crisis is revealed to us “softly,” but the masses are discovering it in a very hard form. If we don’t provide them with the right explanation, they will come to us, and we won’t just feel that there is some abstract global crisis—we will actually experience it personally.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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From Captivity To Freedom

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Does the upcoming return of the imprisoned Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit signify a new level of unity in our nation?

Answer: Certainly we have to be joyful that this finally happened. Our nation cannot tolerate such a situation when one of its people is tormented in captivity. We can see that it is not easy. On the other hand, this is not the end of our problems.

Let’s be glad about the happy end for Gilad. It is not a matter of how many terrorists are freed in exchange. He is coming back and this is good.

I don’t think that this will make a big difference in the unity of the nation. The saga has ended and we will forget about it in a month. We only have to understand that we have to care about each and everyone at least as much. After all, we are imprisoned by our egoistic desire, and it is time to come out of this captivity.
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From 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, “One Commandment”

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Let Us Meet In The Sukkah Of Peace

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn our world we all understand why children play games and what will happen when they grow up. But our world is a copy of the upper world, and this game symbolizes the fact that we have to advance slowly towards the truth, constantly choosing it from the opposite situation we are in.

The spiritual work begins with the fact that we are attached to false pleasures and actions that are totally egoistic. Yet we understand that we can grow only thanks to them, in order to have free will and to choose, to clarify our vessels, our attitude to the upper one by ourselves.

There is no other choice. Every time we fall and rise again, and thus we advance, as it is said: “A thousand times the righteous will fall and rise again.” This is how we move forward, and we have to be patient and to understand that this is the only way we will build a perfect, independent vessel. Whoever continues succeeds. The main thing here is consistency.

We see a copy of all spiritual processes in the corporeal life too. This is why we are born into it as small, brainless children; we play meaningless games and are unable to take care of ourselves, until gradually, thanks to these games, we grow up and proceed with more serious corrections. Many years go by until a person “stands on his own two legs” and is ready for life in this world.

Hence, after the Selichot (the ten days of Repentance), Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the five days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, and the seven days of Sukkot, we reach the level of Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth day of Assembly): the unity with the Light. Gradually, day by day, we perform clarifications, the symbol of which is the covering of the Sukkah (Skhakh) made of “the waste of barn and winery.” That is, it is made of what a person disrespects and thinks nothing of, believing the food that we get from barn and a winery is most important, and not the waste.

But namely what seemed to him as worthless waste becomes the most important thing now. If I raise this “waste” above me and use it to cover my ego, if I hide myself under this covering, then I’ll be able to enjoy its shade. This is how we discover the upper Light, which is not revealed directly, without the shade. Thus, we reach the Sukkah of peace (Sukkat Shalom), under the perfect (Shalem) covering, the screen.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/2011, Writings of Rabash

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