Entries in the 'Group Work' Category

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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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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Agree With It And It Will Be Revealed!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I personally affect the process of the emergence of worlds?

Answer: You already exist in the world of Infinity; you only need to discover yourself in it. We all exist inside the circle of the world of Infinity—all of us! We automatically exist in this system in an ideal state. Right now we also are in the world of Infinity in a completely corrected state, but not in relation to us. This state of absolute bestowal, love, and the full interaction of every person with everyone else is completely opposite to us.

It is gradually revealed to us to the extent that we are able to tolerate it. It is the most repulsive, hateful, and odious state I could imagine. And this is why it is revealed to me to the extent that I am able to potentially agree with it ahead of time.

In Baal HaSulam’s “Peace in the World,” “The Freedom,” as well as other articles, we study that we are all interconnected like wheels in one mechanism where they are all locked in together, linked in an ideal manner. They are so tightly connected that the tiniest movement of one of the wheels causes the entire system to move. Everyone depends on everyone else, and everyone must move harmoniously. We are in this system initially.

We are all so different, and we exist in this picture (see the box in the diagram below). This image can be two or three dimensional, it can be anything. In it, we are tightly linked like in a Rubik’s Cube: Every one of us consists of 613 desires, together with everyone else, where every individual also consists of 613 desires. In other words, we are completely “knit together.”

But thankfully, this image is not revealed to us because we are unable to tolerate it. However, we exist in it, and we automatically perform all our actions, including the current ones as well. And all these actions are righteous. In reality, all we do is bestow to one another. But we do not see it. Instead, we see an opposite picture, the one we want to see.

Kabbalah attunes us to gradually reveal our ideal state so this image will begin to live in me, so that I want it to live in me. And then it becomes revealed.

There is nothing new in the world. Simply a state initially created by the Creator and where you exist from the beginning becomes revealed. This is why our entire wisdom is wisdom about the revelation of the Creator, this entire system, and no more than that. All that is required of us is to want for that what exists to become revealed. But we must change ourselves and agree with this image in order to want it and to reveal it. This is our work.
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From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 10/2/2011

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Approaching The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanDuring the reading of The Book of Zohar, each one needs to demand what seems to him to be most important. But one needs to understand that by reading any Kabbalistic book and especially The Zohar, we awaken the Light that Reforms. This Light works on us to the extent that we are similar to it.

Suppose a wind blows on me. If I move straight towards it, in exactly the same line as it does, it influences me to the maximum. But if I move towards it at an angle, then according to this angle, I lessen its influence on me. If I am at a 90 degree angle in relation to it, I feel the influence as if it throws me aside. If I oppose it, meaning turn my back to it by 180 degrees, then it influences me in the opposite direction.

Everything depends on my position in relation to the Light. If I connect to it, the Torah for me is the elixir of life, but if I oppose it, the Torah becomes the potion of death for me. The Light itself operates all the time.

Thus Kabbalists warn us not to open Kabbalistic books without the correct intention. It was forbidden in Kabbalah, and Kabbalists frightened people because they didn’t want to inflict any harm on them.

But now we are already in a state where it is permitted for everyone to study the wisdom of Kabbalah since we are all becoming mutually connected and different laws are operating here. But when we want to reveal the spiritual world, we must position ourselves directly towards the Light. Will it be the Light that Reforms or the opposite? Each person has to decide for himself.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, The Zohar

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The Building Blocks Of Creation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Book of the Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” Item 157: The waters rise and fall in the chairs, illuminating from below upward and from above downward. Those who descended mine the deeps and break them. Those who rise enter through those holes in the stones, in the Masach de Peh de Rosh ZA, rising and filling for seven days, which are the seven Malchuts from Chazeh and above.

The Zohar only talks about the connection of the desires: how they come together, what combinations of connections are created as a result of this, and what Lights are revealed according to the equivalence of form between the connections of desires and the Light, with the Light being the attribute of bestowal they discover between them.

To the measure that you correct the general system and connect different desires and their groups together, to that measure you enliven the system. And you discover that the attribute of bestowal, the Light, vitality and life, is flowing in it. There is nothing else but this. Outside of this system, neither the Creator nor the created being exist; everything is within it. It stands before us as broken because this is the way we discover it from within our uncorrected attributes. This is in order for us to attain, though our connection, its attributes, trends, and parts, and how they work together.

We deal with live “building blocks”: You join the separate parts, they become alive. Thus, gradually, as you join more and more parts, you revive the entire system. It begins to operate, and you discover the various phenomena in it.

We have no other work. Now, at this time, we approach the practical work of uniting our desires, our thoughts. They reveal themselves before us as more and more connected from day to day. Thus it seems to us that the world is confused, but it is us who are confused. We don’t understand that the world is becoming more connected than we are. We are shown that there is a breakage between us, a crisis.

We must understand that this breakage is in our perception. We have to begin to connect, to unite our desires. Kabbalists talk to us only about this, about one only place that needs to be corrected: the ties between us.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, The Zohar

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We Are Educators

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A lot of people in the world advocate cooperation and caring for others. How can we connect to them?

Answer: We don’t connect to them. There are quite a few “good-hearted ” individuals who volunteer in hospitals, help the needy, or establish different charity organizations and funds. They help people and that’s very good. According to Baal HaSulam and sociological surveys, about 10% of humanity are altruists.

Today, however, for the first time in history, we have reached a crucial point in our development, and people need to be taught the laws of the world they are entering. Our goal is not another egoistic sweetening, not help for the poor, or a cosmetic redistribution of resources in their favor.

No, humanity is about to enter a new dimension in which we have to be connected among us globally and integrally. Nature starts giving us hints, as if saying: “This is how you should be from now on—connected organically, as one man with one heart, like all my other parts. Stop developing inside me like cancer.”

No one besides us truly understands what is happening. Therefore, we have to teach people. We are an educational organization whose only goal is to teach the laws of the global world.

The mutual connection is appearing everywhere. We can’t separate, even if we wanted to. The only way to cut off our connection is by war, but that won’t help either because the inner ties between us will not disappear. The war will soon be over, and we will have to resume the connection, only under much more difficult conditions.

Today the crisis destroys all aspects of life. We have to see this situation as a springboard to the next level. The evolution of nature compels us to move on to the new stage.

What will we gain by that? We will gain the new system. By this mutual work, by mutual connection, we will discover nature’s internal force, its internal mechanisms—and will rise to a new level of existence. First we will get rid of all the daily problems, and in addition, we will reach the next dimension.

So there is no other choice: Nature compels us to reach that. This is why we don’t give out gifts for the holidays. We leave that to other organizations. We are only busy with the new, integral education. Just as kindergartens and schools prepare kids for life in our world, we now have to prepare all of humanity to life in the world that has manifested to us in which we are all globally connected.

The upper, single, integral system is coming closer to our human system destroyed by egoism. If they clash, there will be a horrible explosion.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/2011, “One Commandment”

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Circulating Materials With The Correct Intention

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should we attune ourselves for the circulation of materials?

Answer: We all ask the Creator to give us strength to unite with one another and thereby bring the entire world to unity. We hope that by this we will bring Him contentment and discover that we act for His sake. We want to feel that all our groups and individual students from around the world are united into one heart, one desire—and He fills us. And the whole world unites around us, and we all become a single spiritual vessel.

This should be our prayer directed at the giving and correcting Force.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, “One Commandment”

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