New Life 275 – The Ego And I, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

As of today, we are recognizing the evil inherent to egoistic development and are moving into a new approach in which we are all concerned about social connection, equality, and reciprocity. A new vision is rising that will also bring us into balance with the ecological environment we live in. The true self is one that enjoys life in all its fullness. The power to make a change like this is latent in nature and integral education is the method for locating it. This requires a higher power that is revealed when everyone is connected as in one heart.
From KabTV’s “New Life 275 – The Ego And I, Part 2,” 12/30/13

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New Life 274 – The Ego And I, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The ego is self-love. Without it nothing could exist, including both pain and pleasure. The ego develops via four stages in nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking or human levels. People are unique in their desire to exploit others for their own pleasure. We want what others have. We enjoy harming and humiliating others in order to feel superior. When people want to connect with others, they reveal resistance (the evil inclination). We have reached the peak of the ego’s development and are evolving into a new form of development based on mutual connection and harmony with others and with nature as a whole.

From KabTV’s “New Life 274 – The Ego And I, Part 1,” 12/29/13

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Question: A man, unlike an animal, can see some kind of pleasure in the future, calculate the steps and get to it, giving up on enjoyment at the intermediate stages.

Why, with such a huge intellect, can’t he rationally calculate the state of equilibrium with nature? Why do all his rational attempts to build a balanced society constantly fail?

Answer: Because he is inside his egoistic nature. He cannot calculate anything.

Comparing one egoism relative to another, in what he wins or loses more, he still finds himself inside his egoism. He is not free. He does not have the second degree of freedom. What he considers freedom is the illusion of staying under the influence of an external coercive force.

Question: Can’t he calculate: “If I use my egoism, I will feel bad?”

Answer: This is how we always try to get away from troubles. But this does not mean that we are free. I am constantly running away from egoistic blows: a stick from here, a stick from there, and this is how I tumble around from morning to evening.

Look what is happening on the streets, in buses, in the subway, in offices, everywhere. Look at all this human anthill! Where can we talk about freedom?

There is no freedom. It is possible to choose, at any given moment, at the most, as it seems to me, comfortable state of all possibilities. That is all.

I choose from what is given to me, but I am always limited. The Creator shines upon me through the corrected state, but I am not yet corrected. Naturally, I do not understand His influence on me at all. Where is he driving me? What does He want from me at every moment? If I do not know this, then what kind of freedom of will can there be?
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/12/19

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What does Kabbalah lead us to?

Bluntly speaking, everyone’s nature is to use the life of all creatures in the world for his own benefit. Everything that the person gives to his neighbor is only done forcedly, under compulsion. (Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”)

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that each uses the other in different ways. Only about 10% of people have an altruistic orientation. But still, as the Baal HaSulam emphasizes, they are altruistic selfishly, for their own sake.

What does Kabbalah want to lead us to?

Answer: First of all, Kabbalah teaches us what our nature is: we are absolute egoists at all levels. But we do not need to correct ourselves at the inanimate, animate, and vegetative levels because we are unable to do this.

We need to correct ourselves only at the human level, that is, in society. We must create a society in which we will be harmoniously connected with each other, replace each other, support each other.

Only in a network of connection between each other, in the right communication between us, can we rise above egoism. And then all other levels of egoism—inanimate, vegetative, animal—will also join the human level.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

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Obstacle to Unity

Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah) Item 12: “A wild ass shall be turned into man” (Job 11:12), because when one emerges out of the bosom of Creation, one is in utter filth and lowliness, meaning a multitude of self-love that is imprinted in him, whose every movement revolves solely around himself, without a shred of bestowal upon others.”

Question: The person is originally born an egoist. As I understand it, in Kabbalah, it is the egocentric perception that needs to be corrected?

Answer: This is a specific egoism. It requires correction.

This is not about animal egoism when everyone instinctively wants to take a certain posture, to do some kind of calculation so that he is well. This is a natural egoism, there is no need to fight it.

Our natural desires (food, sex, family, etc.) are not considered egoistic at all. People just think that it is egoism and you should fight it. No, that is wrong. We need to fight only with the egoism that disallows our unity, to be together with others in a state of friendship, connection, and love.

Therefore, the forces of opposition that arise when a person attempts to somehow interact with other people are the real egoism.

Question: To enjoy at the expense of other, to use someone—is this also egoism?

Answer: Naturally, because these are also the forces that prevent us from uniting with others.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

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The Egocentric Orientation of Desires

Question: Do all desires have an egocentric orientation?

Answer: Absolutely! I do everything just for the sake of my beloved self. Even if I do something as if for the sake of someone else, it is only because he or she is dear and important to me.

Question: So our desires have a certain intention, which is aimed at filling these desires in a person? The program of our desires, as the Kabbalists say, is maximal pleasure with minimal effort.

Answer: This is a law of nature. In other words, optimization is when I want to enjoy as much as possible with a minimal cost, and so on at every level.

See how we sit, how we do something. Any movement, mental or physical, no matter what we think or do, is carried out in such a way that brings us maximum benefit, enjoyment, and fulfillment. Maybe, at the same time, we spend a huge amount of energy, for example, as when playing football, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that I always try to optimize my efforts for my benefit.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

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Is it Possible to Level Our Desires?

Question: They say that our desires can be leveled, like it is customary in oriental techniques. What can be done to want very little? After all, the less you want, the less you suffer.

Answer: This is true, but only if I begin to evaluate my desires in terms of pleasure or suffering. Then I can come to the conclusion that I should be willing to suffer less. This is a certain volitional exercise with which I achieve a more comfortable state.

Question: So how do I control these desires?

Answer: In principle, I do not control them, but the desire to enjoy or suffer less controls and determines how much I can reduce my desires.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/03/18

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Doubly Devastated

Remark: In our desires, filling is felt only for a short time, and then disappears. This is most problematic.

My Comment: The fulfillment does not disappear, but is simply suppressed by other desires because they change in us all the time.

Since we have a huge number of desires, they are in a certain relationship with each other, and their constant correlation does not give us rest.

Therefore, we forget the past and are already thinking about the future. The impression disappears. Although we wish to return to it, we are no longer able to.

Question: That is, the filling is not static?

Answer: No! Filling exists in desire. Desires change and always overflow from one to another in all kinds of combinations. After all, a person has a huge number of desires. Therefore, we constantly feel changes in ourselves.

Question: Why, when the filling disappears, do we feel doubly empty?

Answer: If there were no filling, we would feel ourselves in its absence. Since the filling has already been and is gone, then we feel the absence of filling and the absence of this place as filling, meaning doubly empty.

Suppose if now I am at level zero, feeling a certain lack of it, emptiness, and then I am given filling, say, two million, and then this filling disappears, then I feel the lack of filling for two million plus what I had, meaning what I have lost. I do not just feel zero, but I feel “minus two million.”
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

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Historical Periods and the Development of Desires.

Question: From a historical point of view, we can break down the evolution of human desires according to historical periods. Supposedly from 35,000 BC to 4,000 BC, the inanimate level of human desires developed. These are basic desires like food, sex, family.

Then, 4,000 years ago, starting with the growing egoism in Babylon and approximately until the 5th century, the development of the vegetative level of desires, mainly desires for wealth took place.

From the 5th to the 15th century, merely a thousand years, the desire of the animate level developed—for power, and from the 15th to the 20th century, there was a development of the human level of desires—for knowledge.

The beginning of the 20th century was marked by the development of both individualism in people and of spiritual desires. That is, people already want to attain their root.

How are all these desires divided into inanimate, vegetative, and animate within one person?

Answer: It depends on the nature of a person, on what level of egoism prevails in him or her. After all, all these desires are of various egoistic levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate, human. Depending on the power of egoism in each of these components, a person is more inclined to either animate satiation or vegetative, inanimate, or human fillings.

Question: We see throughout history how our desires are constantly growing. They grow both in a person and in all of humanity. What is the reason?

Answer: This is due to the fact that we must achieve the maximum quantity and quality of desires in their widest variety. We must evaluate, weigh, find out their purposefulness in us, how it works, why, what for.

In order to be not just executors of these desires but to be able to control them, to take possession of these desires, to rule over ourselves, to reach a level higher than ourselves, so that by controlling our desires we would achieve maximum freedom from them and the ability to control them according to some kind of higher, reasonable decision.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah” 12/3/18

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Four Levels Of Desires

Question: The entire history of humanity is a process of development of human desires. Baal HaSulam writes in his articles that both in nature and within a person there are four levels of desires: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. Therefore, we see these four levels outside of us.

What are these desires and how many of them are there, in quality and in quantity?

Answer: In principle, the desire to fill oneself is common to all levels of nature. What to be filled with depends on the deficiency the desire feels and on what will give it the feeling of fulfillment and pleasure.

If this desire is at the inanimate level, then it wants to realize itself as it is. At the same time, it is not able to add or subtract anything from its desire but only acts in the same way it exists. This desire is called inanimate. It cannot develop, but wants to fulfill whatever it feels it is lacking, that is, to get closer to something, to distance itself from something. It works in this form.

Then the desire develops from the inanimate level to the vegetative one.

In the vegetative level, there are already changes in the desire itself. It grows, changes its form, creates all kinds of auxiliary desires and tools for its own realization. Therefore, it develops lengthwise, in breadth, grows, moves toward the sun, air, and water. It acquires the ability to control its initial desire in order to realize itself. This desire is called vegetative.

However, it cannot move from its place; like a plant, it grows in the same place it was planted. It can spread from there, but its initial root remains where it was planted by the upper force, something or someone external. It continues to develop from this state.

Yet, this type of desire can reproduce, influence the environment, and be influenced by the environment. It is like plants that interact with the four states of nature: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. The inanimate desire, however, does not have this ability.

The vegetative desire differs from the inanimate by the fact that it spreads, but so far, it remains at the same place it exists.

The next desire is the animate. It already can move from place to place, meaning that it has freedom of movement. Naturally, its reproduction is much more complicated and consists not of the same states as the states of a plant but requires connection with others.

In the animate desire there are male and female individuals that move, build a family between them, actively search for sustenance, and so on. There is already a fight for a place, for a species, and for a female here. That is, this desire has a whole set of tools for realizing itself in an optimal way.

The next level of desire is the human who contains all the previous desires. In addition, he has freewill in their implementation, and he can move, combine, move away, approach, and change his goal for what and how he can develop.

The human is not limited in his desires and their fulfillment, everything depends only on him. Therefore, his desires: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human, give him complete freedom. He is the leader, he is the king of nature.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah” 12/3/18

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