Entries in the 'Free Will' Category

The Keys To Life That We Pass On To Our Children

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is an adult’s obligation to teach a child and to give him all of the necessary preparation for adult life during childhood. And the same thing happens in the spiritual world: The upper level gives the lower level all of the “keys,” all of the means for continuing to build itself.

The lower level just has to figure all of this out and make a free choice to keep going. There is nothing else to do but this. All the forces are already at our disposal.

Therefore, the small state (Katnut) is considered fundamental, while the great state (Gadlut) is an addition that sometimes appears and sometimes disappears, depending on the efforts of the lower one. But he always keeps the small state, which serves as a good, healthy foundation for creating the next great state, which is new every time.

Therefore, the small degree, called Hafetz Hesed (one who desires mercy), fear of the Creator, the level of Bina, “artistry,” or faith, is what has to be transmitted to the next state, from the fathers to the sons, from the upper level of the spiritual ladder to the lower level.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/08/11, Writings of Rabash

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Personal Participation Required

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere is a desire to receive and there is a desire to bestow. The whole creation is nothing but an opposition of one to the other. The desire to bestow manages the desire to receive in order to bring it to the identification of itself and to make it equivalent to the desire to receive.  That is the initial program of the desire to bestow.

The nature of the good, according to the science of Kabbalah, is benevolence (doing good). As the Creator is perfect, to that extent he has a program of improving the creation. And there exists just one path toward perfection: The creation has to feel the Creator’s state. He created the creation as opposite to Himself, separated from Himself, and He guides the creation through a sequence of states through which the creation attains the wisdom of the Creator and feels what there is in the Creator.

But it is not enough just to understand and feel, the creation attains the Creator’s nature by itself including everything that is in the creation and its management. So, the force of giving is called “Light” and the force of reception “a vessel”. Similarity in their qualities is called “an intention of bestowal” or “a screen“. Due to the altruistic intention and by the nature of its action, the desire to receive becomes the one of bestowal. If it receives to please somebody, it, in fact, commits an act of bestowal using reception as a means: It doesn’t have any other way to establish contact and give anything to anybody.

How can we participate in the process? How do we gain more understanding? How do we reach the degree of the Creator? How do we feel His actions? In short, how do we become like Him? After all, this is the goal—to become like Him.

We still don’t understand what it means “to bring pleasure to the Creator,” but “equivalence to the Creator” is closer to our current egoistic understanding. To be like Him means to bestow, to understand bestowal, to take upon oneself, to govern the creation… Everything is in that.

But in fact, to be like Him is to understand the whole program and the complete course of actions assumed by it from the beginning to the very end in the first place. Such an understanding requires the whole to be disassembled and then put back together. In this way, we reveal the gap between the Creator and the creation together with the connection that brings them into equivalence. In that, Light and darkness, plus and minus, positive and negative connect on every level.

In the process of our development, under constant influence of the Light, a vessel acquires various shapes until it reaches the “final stop”—complete equivalence of qualities with the Creator. But the vessel has to go through these states of sequential changes with understanding, in agreement, by desiring them, and even acting independently.

Thus, we need to realize our oppositeness to the Creator, want to change and become like Him, understand the program that will change us, enact it by our own desire, and carry out the whole chain of sequential actions ourselves, upon ourselves and at the same time upon all the levels of the creation under us: inanimate, vegetative, and animate.

This ascent from the breaking to the correction, we must realize with our full personal participation. According to the changes required at the moment, we have to gain mind and feeling, become included into the common program, and make the actions to invoke and guide the necessary forces.

Only in this way will we reach equivalence of form with the Creator and become like Him in force, understanding, and everything else. That is the highest degree of our development.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/11,  “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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The Third Force

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe will have a hard time until we acquire one more force besides nature, meaning the Creator, who influences our receiving desire and drives it forward like a train moving down a set track. Without an additional force, this process is entirely predetermined. Everything in it is set, including the deadlines and the final point. Sometimes I even notice that life rolls along of its own accord and does not depend on me at all.

But the science of Kabbalah enables me to evoke a third force that helps me control my own development. The force of the Light still drives my express-train forward, and nothing can be done about it. But I can use an additional force to advance consciously and sensitively, understanding the process and knowing what kind of train this is, where and why it is rushing, what drives it, and so on. By figuring all of that out, I see what auxiliary force I need and what I can change with its help.

Thus, we don’t have any chances of changing anything until we understand what our nature, our egoism is and until we realize its evil, until we reach the force of nature that pushes us forward without asking our opinion or our agreement. First of all, we must learn the real state of affairs.

That is why Kabbalists call the science of Kabbalah the root of all sciences. It’s because it researches the essence of matter, as well as the forces that influence it, control it, and develop it. Besides, Kabbalah allows us to independently attract the third force, which will make our path easier.

By means of the science of Kabbalah, I establish a connection with that force. After all, it is not present in me initially. This is not the Light under whose influence the desire evolves towards the goal. This is another force, “the Light that reforms,” which is something completely different. It comes only when I evoke it. Otherwise I am still driven by the opposition between the Light and the vessel.

“The Light that reforms” is a special, additional force that first and foremost, provides the human level for me. It does not do anything on its own. I control it and activate it to the extent I have figured out the process and learned the mechanism. And even if I don’t know exactly how it is activated, I still want it in spite of my desire, in spite of the standard development, in spite of the train that moves along without my participation.

Precisely the science of Kabbalah gives me a connection with this third, alternative force, with the Light that reforms. And then I really am able to move forward as a person who is similar to the Creator, controlling the process and looking at it from above. From a bird’s eye view, I look at the matter of my desire, at the force that pushes it down the pathways, at the program that is guaranteed to bring it to the final point in due time by combining the forces of the Light and the vessel. Similar to the Creator, I look down from above upon the two forces through which He controls creation.

But at the same time, I desire for the third, additional force to rule inside of me, the middle line, the screen. This is the human being whom I build inside of myself. And I want to advance only with its help. It contains my decisions, my actions, and their results. Everything is present there, in the middle line. We move in two lines like animals that are drawn to goodness and run away from evil; but the third force is the true mind by virtue of which I first make a restriction on everything and check or analyze the situation. I realize evil and good, and then I reach a decision. Next, I already “press on the pedals,” knowing how much and in what way I will advance in this third line.

I set the necessary restrictions myself, and they all come down to activating the general program of the joint evolution in my own way. I halt it, I control it, and precisely this control over the evolution makes me human. But first I have to understand what it turns me into.

That means that the giving of the Torah, meaning the method of correction, is intended to enable us to ascend above the natural process of development and rise to the human level. Today this is happening to all of humanity, which is discovering that it is completely subdued by the program of governance. Everything we have ever done in the world was actually not done by us. The systems we formed are essentially fruits of our egoistic nature. It was nature pushing us forward, forcing us to build our society and all of its subservient mechanisms in a very certain way.

And now we are discovering that this process is not enough for us. A situation has come about where it is necessary for us to rise above this process, to understand that until now, it was realized by nature, but now we must learn to control it ourselves. The egoistic methods no longer work because the time has come for us to learn the program and upgrade it ourselves.

Each of us received a personal awakening, but humanity will receive an awakening on a global scale. We were driven by qualitative blows and disappointments on the level of the inner search, while humanity will receive the necessary reasons on the material level, from problems with security, food, ecological catastrophes, the climate, and so on. And all of this is intended to bring people to the search for the alternative force that will enable humanity to control itself. The crisis is growing worse, the disasters are gaining might, and there is nowhere for us to run until we find this force.

This will be the general ascent. Therefore, all people will need the science of Kabbalah. After all, they won’t find the third force anywhere in the world. It is not present in their sciences or methods.

In the meantime, we have to help them. Even if they can’t find the solution yet, we must nevertheless go towards them.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Freedom Is Voluntary Dependence

Dr. Michael LaitmanKabbalists put a lot of emphasis on the group, and the entire question of spiritual attainment is related to this notion. This is because the group is a method, an instrument, for the attainment of the Light. It is the well, the source, of Light in our world.

The Light is the only thing that works. It does everything, awakening all the desires. Hence, if we wish to change reality, we need the Light that shines in its usual direction, but we can add our own efforts to it and accelerate our development, as well as make it desirable and good.

If we wish to be masters in the spiritual art, the Light must become the method, the instrument in our hands, and make these changes. We can only attract the Light that Reforms in the group. This is why the purpose of the group, the environment, is to reveal the Light contained in it and to let it act upon yourselves and the entire world. And the Light is revealed in our world through the group.

The direction of the Light’s influence depends on us. We cannot change its influence at all; we can only accelerate our development, make the Light shine more strongly than it naturally does. In other words, we can only increase the velocity.

However, changing the velocity means to agree with its actions and change our sensation from development. Then, development will stop being forced and undesirable; it will no longer happen under the steamroller of evolution. Instead, we will develop according to our desire and aspiration to advance.

This way, group work becomes the main work that the revelation of the Light, the Creator, and the speed of development depends on. It does not matter that we, of course, do not understand in which direction we are developing and what we need to demand. After all, once the Light becomes manifested, it will explain and illuminate everything to us, clarify our thoughts and desires, and turn us in the right direction.

We completely depend on the Light. This is why we depend on building an environment, a group. In reality, this is the only thing that we have the power to do.

In regular life, we develop the obligated way, and no one asks us where, how, and why they should turn us. We simply turn as we should, without even realizing it. The Light either turns us in a concealed way in our world or openly in the spiritual world. The only difference is whether we understand this.

In the spiritual world, we act because we agree to act, and we want the Light to operate and do all the work with us. Let it do whatever it wants with us. We are ready for it, and we cancel ourselves before its actions.

In our world, every person cancels themselves before the actions of the Light, even though they neither understand nor realize it, like a small child who plays and thinks that he is given all the freedom in this world.

I do not have freedom in the spiritual world, but I already know that I am not free, and I agree with it. However, we are given freedom of choice in the middle, between that world and this world, in the so called “middle third of Tifferet,” for us to consciously choose to want to be under the influence of the Light.

In other words, here, I always remain independent, although we do not think that this is the condition of our independence— making the decision to put ourselves under the influence of the Light that Reforms. We do not understand what the point of our freedom is—to the extent we do not feel and do not understand what it is to be free. We exist in absolute darkness and are controlled from Above.

In the spiritual world, we also exist in the Light that controls us, but here, in Klipat Noga, in the middle between the forces of sanctity and impurity, we build our path from all these states, the points of freedom that, one after the other, add up to make a line. We follow it to absolute independence and at the same time to absolute adhesion and similarity to the Creator, something that is hard for us to understand now.

All of this is analyzed and realized in the group, in society.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Everything Is Ready For Correction

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe preparation has already been made from Above, on the part of nature, the Creator, for every person according to the root of his soul so that he will be able to connect with other souls, to correct the shattering, and to reach his individual correction. This is how each of us fulfills all the preparations made for him or her, included in the root of his or her soul.

According to this preliminary preparation, people find themselves in different situations: Some awaken to spirituality more, some less, and there are those who don’t awaken at all.

It makes no difference whether in the meantime a person worries only about his corporeal desires, or whether he is lost in imaginary ideas about spirituality, which take him off the road of truth; whether he is closer to spiritual work, or whether he is already on the right track and has started rising on the spiritual ladder. We were each given the same conditions that were initially prepared from Above. They were created as a result of the descent of the worlds, the shattering of the desires, and their incorporation in each other. Thus, every person, at every given moment, has free will.

The system of the upper worlds spreads from the world of Infinity, and through the world of Adam Kadmon and the shattering of the vessels reaches the world of Atzilut, creating the worlds of BYA. Then Adam Ha Rishon (the First Man), the one general soul, the internal part of the worlds of BYA, the internal desire of all of creation, is born in them.

Then Adam Ha Rishon is also shattered, and all his parts get intermixed: The desires to receive and the desires to bestow, Galgalta ve Eynaim and AHP, are incorporated in each other and fall. All this happens to allow the best conditions for work.

When the process of mutual incorporation of the souls is completed (which the Ari told us about in his time), the correction of the world begins. Thus, we should understand that all the events in the world are only the result of our lack of correction, our failure to exercise free will on time, and our refusal to use the conditions that had been prepared for us in advance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/2011, Writings Of Rabash

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Wander In The Fog Or Go With The Flow?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is the law of mutual guarantee concealed from us? Why can’t scientists discover it?

Answer: You would like to place a person before irrefutable facts: Think badly of your neighbor, and a boulder falls on you from the sky; cause harm to someone, and you receive a threatening notice from the bank. You want to have an immediate response to your every action: reward or punishment. It would be a law of nature, an indisputable fact for you.

However, a person must be given freedom of choice. If we acted instinctively, there would be no problem. Nature would pressure us into becoming one whole. It is very simple: If you show me that I lose by disconnection with others, I will smile and be nice to everyone. I will build friendly relationships, take care of others, and make sure no one is treated unfairly. If we were programmed with mutual responsibility from Above, we’d gladly implement this program.

But the truth of the matter is that we must arrive at mutual guarantee by our free choice; we have to build within the human degree on our own. That is why the message of unity is hidden in the fog and we are lost in it, deprived of a sense of direction. The moment we begin to realize and feel it, it vanishes. Otherwise, we won’t be able to develop the human within ourselves.

The fog is not important. It doesn’t matter if we are slow or clever, clumsy or graceful. We must do only one thing: build an environment. Like a child building a house out of blocks, we should construct an artificial environment as an example of who we would like to be if we desired it.

If a person sits idle, Nature will oblige him indirectly, through blows and sufferings. But blows, too, will never force man to surrender his own nature because by this a person descends to the “animate” degree and builds the environment instinctively in order to survive. It would be a Soviet model of socialism with the Creator instead of the KGB behind your back. And you would become an animal living in unity with other animals in the herd. What kind of created being is that? Can we reach the level of the Creator like that?
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/12/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Truth From The Belly

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Baal HaSulam’s words sound like a utopia. Clearly, if every person works for the common good, then everyone will be well off. But do we have the means to create that kind of society?

Answer: Of course we do. There is a set of elementary means that make it possible to do this easily and willingly, while being imbued with enthusiasm and providing enormous reward for yourself. Even from the purely egoistic point of view, it’s worth it because you will get rid of all the troubles of this world, will set up good relationships with other people, and in them you will acquire a new world, full of goodness. So what more could you want?

“But how can this be done?” you ask. The answer is: by realizing your free choice through creating an environment around you that will constantly brainwash you and press on your feelings with the profit of bestowal.

So what’s the problem? Everything is very logical. And if we don’t want it, then several disasters in the near future will change our priorities. When you lose work, when your fridge goes empty, when your children will demand something that you can’t possibly do for them, when your wife starts putting pressure on you, then not finding any alternative, you will discover that there is correction for this world, after all.

In reality, you evoke Nature’s harsh attitude to you yourself. You put yourself in conflict with it by not corresponding to the demands it is presenting to you. And these demands are clear: a global, integral, equal unification for all. We have to take an example from nature. On this path we will reach success, and on any other—only suffering. That is how the law of equivalence of form is expressed which operates in physics, biology, and all other fields. Until today only human society posed an exception, but today the time has come to observe this law in society as well, and to do it by our own desire.

So go ahead—try it. If you can’t do it, then you will suffer due to violating the law until it forces you to observe it. This is what always happens in the process of natural development. Previously you also received blows of differing intensity, which pushed you forward without you even being aware of it most of the time. You experienced pressure from different sides and solved the problems that emerged. Sometimes you had to wage wars and revolutions, which are greater impulses toward appeasement, when things were simply unbearable anymore.

That is how you developed until now and that is how you will develop from now on. You will always have an opportunity to take the next step. After all, you are matter that feels, a desire for pleasure, and this desire can be turned into anything. Just press in the right place with the right force, and it already shouts, “I want!” It shouts because it does not wish to suffer. Through this escape from suffering, you can be taught greater wisdom and be brought to bestowal as the desired redemption.

We know from our own experience that we can easily change our opinion depending on the circumstances. It’s enough for the circumstances to change and we immediately make a different calculation, raising a new truth onto the pedestal.

“What kind of truth is that? You just have greater profit there.” But you object, “No, it’s the truth!” And you say this from the bottom of your heart, even though it’s the sincerity of the belly, which forced you to rethink things. That is how the desire for pleasure operates in every one of us.

Therefore, if we don’t want to advance consciously, with awareness, then Nature will force us to do it. By our disagreement with its program of development, we create the future unpleasant states ourselves. Previously evolution led us “on a short leash,” but now everything is different. It’s as if you have been transferred to “standby mode” and given the opportunity to advance independently: Try to do something, activate your free choice, start organizing an environment.

However, if we don’t do that, then some time later, negative occurrences will be expressed in society, which will force us to budge. For example, today we are discovering that people cannot begin correction yet and cannot hear us. We are also guilty of that because we haven’t yet learned to disseminate materials that are clear and that warm every person’s heart. As a result, the next state is being revealed: The world feels bad, and we feel even worse. That’s because at the end of the day, the work is our responsibility.

If we do not wish to unite in the good way and turn to the world with the force of our unity, then we will desire it from the bad way. We can’t run away from this mission, just like Jonah the prophet could not escape his predestination.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/11, “Peace in the World”

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Asking The Light For Acceleration

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: By our nature, every one of us tries to use others to the utmost, without taking the common good into account. So how can a regular person start taking others into consideration?

Answer: This can only happen with the help of the Light that Reforms.

You are forgetting that there is a force operating in creation which drives us. We are puppets. I cease being a puppet when I ask the Light to change me. I do not do anything on my own. The Light makes the actions in the vessels. However, I can influence it with my desire, with my request, “Change me more, accelerate my development.” This is the only thing I can ask from it.

If I attract it, then I advance by the path of acceleration, and this is my only possible personal contribution. Development unfolds one way or another. The only difference is in the extent of the troubles and suffering. I can either advance quickly, consciously, with awareness, by my own desire, or slowly, with “a lot of blood spilled.” But one way or another, I evoke the Lights that change me.

Naturally, I want to use the other for my own benefit and I will never want to unite with him. Why would I? I don’t have some hidden button that can switch the egoistic desire to an altruistic one.

However, if I use the environment and the study, if I persuade myself, if I form a “desire without a desire,” “a prayer before a prayer,” then all of my requests accumulate and work, even if they are insincere, and gradually I truly do begin to deem the quality of bestowal, love, and unification important. “There’s something worthwhile there, after all. I shouldn’t let it go by. It’ll come in handy.”

Sometimes I want it and sometimes I don’t. Later the desire no longer disappears, but it is small. And eventually, from the distant states, I reach a firm, decisive desire: “I want it, and that’s all.” Why? “Because.” What will you get out of it? “I can’t explain that. You wouldn’t understand anyway.” But still? “The Light is working on me. It has changed me and now I want this. The Light changed me because I resorted to all kinds of tricks and contrivances. I did everything I could, I made efforts, and I found.”

We should never forget this principle: Everything is done by the Light, and we can awaken it. Therein lies our free choice. Don’t look for an opportunity to change yourself directly and don’t eat yourself up for being weak. To achieve inner changes, we always have to turn to the Light. And that means constantly raising our prayer to the upper one.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/11, “Peace in the World”

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The Economy Of Global Mutual Guarantee

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe economic system of today’s world is the most obvious demonstration of our connection with one another. That’s because we are primarily connected through the economy, production, and trade. And we see that there are several thousand large corporations in the world that are interconnected, that envelop the whole world, not giving us a chance to move.

But they also can’t move! And now, to their shock, they are discovering this and don’t know what to do. They don’t have any freedom of movement in relation to one another.

This is how the common, global system of mutual guarantee is being revealed to us. But we don’t desire it, we don’t aspire to it from our end. Yet nature, the Creator, is showing us the mutual guarantee, our connection with one another. Under these conditions, how can my mind possibly help me?

The mind can only help me in one regard: to leave my animate mind and start learning, becoming familiar with this system.

However, this system is not built according to my earthly mind because my mind is personal, individual. It helps me exist in this egoistic world, showing me how to win more and do more for my own benefit, thinking that others were created to serve me.

But now, when I am revealing a system with which I am firmly connected and on which I am fully dependent, my previous mind stops working. I have to adapt to this new system! It’s as if I come to some unknown place and first of all I try to take a close look at what’s around me, to learn the customs of this place in order to adapt to them. And once I get to know it well, I can start acting in it and improving my state.

But how can we get to know this global system in which we have found ourselves if we cannot figure it out with our earthly mind? Even all of these huge corporations which seem to control the world, are in reality not in control of anything. And this is now being revealed to them. The mind of every particular person individually does not work just as the corporate mind does not.

It turns out that I now have to discard my animate mind and acquire a new mind—an integral way of thinking. This will be the creative mind, the mind of the common system, meaning the mind of the Creator.

It won’t be easy for us to acquire it. We will have to develop ourselves, turn ourselves into one, connected whole, try to feel ourselves as one person, one system. Then we will attain this single, connected system and will thereby “wrap up” our own egoistic desire and connect with one another. That is how we will gradually build our common vessel, reuniting the parts of the broken Lego.

Within the connection between us, we will reveal the upper mind, the program, its essence, and then we will understand what is happening! Only in this case will our state be corrected.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/11, “The Acting Mind”

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Nature’s Special Element

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn Kabbalah, nature implies forces, thoughts, matter, and everything that exists. It is still, vegetative, animate, and human matter pierced with a thought, a certain plan, according to which we develop.

Looking at history, we see that there is a certain plan that was implemented in life. We might say that it was an accident. However, it would be an “accident,” if for instance, a primate could write War and Peace.

But in nature everything is determined and tied to certain laws. If we were to “blow the thinnest layer of dust” off even the smallest, most superficial part of nature, we would see how wise and interconnected everything is in it. So why do we consider ourselves to be above nature? After all, we are just its creation, its part, and not the most perfect one.

For this reason, based on the things we learn in this enormous world, we see that it was made in a very wise, consecutive manner and develops according to a certain program. This program works for us. We are part of it and participate in the process of evolution.

First, still nature appeared on Earth. Then, the vegetative, animate, and then humans appeared, who also are part of the animate world because man is a biological, protein compound, subject to further development.

However, very strange things are happening to man. Unlike the other biological species, he seems to be developing independently, as if “from within.” His development assumes the development of the mind and feelings, meaning the development of the instruments for attainment of nature.

All this comes from the development of his desires. Desires beget thoughts in him. This means that man really is nature’s special element, even though he also falls under the same program of development.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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