Entries in the 'Israel' Category

Revival Of The Chosen

Laitman_043From the Sources

The role of the Jewish people, its goal, motivation, concept, and philosophy of life—is unity for the sake of discovering the Creator.

At first, this desire was awakened among a few Babylonians 3600-3800 years ago. It came from the Creator and it is not by chance that only a few were awakened.

Nowadays, this is discovered in the same way among a few and “bypasses” the others. Specifically to this is connected the concept of the “chosen people.”

First of all it is important to understand here that this is not talking about some kind of “national preference.” Initially, people who came out of various peoples and tribes united around Abraham.

Since then, essentially the Jews have not been a people in the traditional sense. People become the people of Israel (ישראל) only on condition that they yearn “Yashar-El” – ישר-אל (straight to the Creator), meaning, only if they want to discover the Creator.

Everyone Can be Chosen

Question: Does this mean that every person in the world, if such a desire is awakened in him, can join the people of Israel and be called “chosen”?

Answer: Yes, certainly. Such a person joins a group of people who directly yearn for the Creator and aspire to discover Him in a unique connection between them.

Today most of the inhabitants of Israel don’t know about their mission, that they must become a “Light to the nations,” i.e., transmit this method to the whole world by accepting among them everyone in whom this desire is awakened.

Throughout the generations many people who belonged to other tribes and peoples joined in this way to a group called the “people of Israel,” for example, Onkelos or the parents of Rabbi Akiva and many others. In other words, there were many like these who came from other peoples and stood as leaders of the people of Israel.

Immersion into Humanity

Question: But why are the Jewish people considered to be chosen even today when they are far from their original idea?

Answer: Because this task, this mission, doesn’t pass from one people to another. It maintains its original conditions.

There was a time when a strong desire burned to attain mutual connection and in it to reveal the Creator. They were actually ready to realize this role.

And after that, throughout history they passed through a multitude of stages and fell from the high level that required their connection, breaking away from this message, from this goal, and severed the intentional purposeful development leading to a mutual connection for discovering the Creator.

This happened because for a particular time they needed to be under the influence of the forces of separation, to feel the “heaviness of heart” directed against unity, where the goal was concealed until it was completely forgotten.

Only in this way was it possible to acquire the means required to work with the whole world and pave the way for them towards unity with the Creator. This is the reason that the Jews were scattered over the face of the earth and lost their original idea. First they had to discover the immense desire, the “tough temperament” latent in humanity infused with materialistic needs, and immerse into other cultures in order to serve the people correctly after this during their movement towards the goal.

This period of exile that ends in our day, “by definition,” had to be long.  It continued for two thousand years and was known in advance. And about its end, it was said that from the year 1995 the concept of being “chosen” and the discovery of the Creator in the general mutual connection would be reawakened.

This stage is being revealed and opened in front of us today. It might not be as fast as desired, but it is a historical process that is directed from above and has its own rate, its own milestones, and all kinds of situations along the way.

The Return of the Chosen

In any case, even though we don’t know all the details, we see that the concept of uniqueness lives in the Jewish community. Similar claims of other peoples are connected to conceit, arrogance, the rule of force, and other characteristics of mutual antagonism.

But with us, being chosen was based upon an opposite perception from the start: We must serve as an example of unity that is imperative for humanity today. It is unity that leads us to the discovery of the force of bestowal and love, which is the Creator.

The previous era ended with the twentieth century. The people revived their nation, and now we must return to it the inner essence, that foundation that makes it a people: unity. Moreover, the unity is directed Yashar El (straight to the Creator), based on “You shall love your friend as yourself.”

This is what must be discovered now in the people of Israel and to reform it as the “chosen people” upon whom a particular task is imposed.

In accordance with this, even the external pressure again indicates that we are a unique people who are going along a unique historical path.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/28/14

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A Secret Covenant With The Higher Power, Part 2

Laitman_167Question: What kind of a connection is there between the meaning of our existence and the attainment of the higher power?

Answer: This is the most primal force of nature. It is higher because it is specifically what manages everything; it is the power of bestowal and love that spreads around it all that is within it: its energy and fulfillments. It specifically created the power of reception to fill it and lead to a unique level of existence.

The power of bestowal is whole because it doesn’t require anything, and the power of reception that was created by it is very limited and poor because it always lacks something but is unable to get what it lacks by itself.

Question: People have become accustomed to imagining the higher power, the Creator, as some kind of personality with whom we have made a covenant and that now accompanies us. It is difficult to perceive this simply as a form of energy, as something that is inanimate.

Answer: Is it truly difficult to imagine this? Even in our physical world, there are a multitude of different forces that are unknown to us. So, why is it so difficult for us to perceive the existence of the higher power? On the contrary, besides forces, nothing else exists.

All that I see around me are forces that are shaped within my perception in the form of physical images that seemingly exist: the nature of the still, vegetative, animate, and human. However, in principle, all of these are manifestations of the same power.

Question: How do we enter into relationships with this power?

Answer: This is the power of desire. When we create a relationship with someone, in this manner, we use our energy to move away or connect, to approach, to create contact. In reality, only one force exists and nothing more besides this. This conclusion has even been reached today by physics, a purely material science.

Upon deeper investigation, matter that we observe disappears; it exists only in our perception. The entire world we feel is a figment of our imagination. Only forces that act upon and influence our brain exist, painting in it a picture that seemingly is placed in front of us. However, all of this is the result of the work of forces, like an image on a computer screen.

Question: And each one of us is also a force?

Answer: A person is only the force of reception. However, this force is composed of different forces of reception that are linked in various kinds of relationships, and therefore all people differ from each other. The force of reception is the force of the desire to receive.

A person is a desire to receive, but he has many desires for various fulfillments that are intertwined. Each one has his particular combination that is typical of men, women, children or adults. Yet, in fact, this is only a desire to receive pleasure from all kinds of possible sources.

Question: So, what do we mean when we talk about a connection of the Jewish people with the higher power?

Answer: Abraham taught people how to attain the goal of life, the general program of nature, if they had a desire for this. This is possible if a person attains the power of bestowal that is found above us, and it is possible to attain it on condition that we build relationships between us that will be similar to the force of bestowal. For this, we must attain love for others like love for ourselves, mutual love.

To the degree that we begin to discover such forces of love, unity, and mutual sharing between us, then, within them, we discover the power of bestowal.

Question: If we create relationships of love and reciprocity between us, then, within them, we discover the same higher power with which, as we say, the Jewish people made a covenant? What is this higher power?

Answer: This is the higher power of love and bestowal, a desire to do good for others from our power of love. People who have a connection with the higher power are called the Jewish (Yechudi) people, Jews, because they understand that there must be unity (Yichud) between us and the higher power.

The power of reception is given to us from birth, and it is very great specifically in these people. Therefore, they are called “stiff-necked people.” However, we understand that it is necessary only so that with its help we discover the power of bestowal. The power of egoism burns within us and distances us from each other, forcing us to search for the power of bestowal, connection.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/25/14

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An Obligation To Rise Together With The Whole World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Abraham was the first Kabbalist. He gathered people around him who supported him and developed in them an ability to see the forces that manage the world. Does this mean that they could seemingly rise above the normal flow of life to another height and from there see the forces that manage everything?

Answer: Yes, they knew how to manage the world, and so they understood how it was necessary to be included in this management and to guide the whole world in the best way towards the goal, just like pioneers who lead everyone after them. The potential was given to the Jewish people to manage the world in the most desirable way, bringing it to correction, to complete redemption.

The complete redemption means that the higher power has been revealed to its full and complete extent to all of humanity and in all of still, vegetative and animate nature. Managing the world means teaching and helping it to advance towards this final and wonderful state. This is management through the power of love.

Comment: Management is generally perceived in a negative way.

Answer: This is because they could not hold their position at a spiritual height and raise themselves to the management of the whole world. Instead they fell from this height. And so all the forces that acted on them in a wonderful spiritual form, became negative. As long as the people of Israel are found at certain height, it is higher than everyone else. But when it falls, it is below all other people.

Question: Is there hope that this people will rise?

Answer: This is not even a hope, but an obligation. The mission has not been removed from the people of Israel, and thus it is obligated to carry it out. If this were only just an option, then the Jewish people would be indistinguishable in any way from the rest of humanity. History has seen many people who were exiled from their land, scattered among other peoples, and disappeared.

But the Jewish people have remained in spite of everything, because they are obligated to fulfill their mission.

Question: You use words that are customary in religion: prayers, complete redemption, and the like. Does this mean that ultimately all people must become religious and move towards Judaism?

Answer: No, this is not about religion, but about all people connecting into a single sphere without any difference between them. Everyone must be included within it according to his nature, his internal forces, and he must connect with all the rest with ties of absolute love and complete bestowal.

When attitudes like these are revealed among everyone, then within our connections, within this entire sphere, we discover the Creator, the overall power of bestowal and love. There is no connection to religion in this. Our world in general will rise above all material and exist only on the level of desires of reception and bestowal.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/25/14

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Pioneers Who Broke Through To The Truth

laitman_749_02The Tower of Babel represents separation, lack of understanding, and distance between people. From that situation, through overcoming this separation, a group emerged that followed Abraham and later became the Jewish people. Because they wanted to discover the meaning of life, Abraham taught them how to discover the hidden force that acts in nature.

Question: This is the entire secret of the Jewish people, that they revealed this force?

Answer: They discovered this inner force in nature; the rest of the people who were around them didn’t feel it and lived as if they were in another world. For with their discovery of the higher power, the group of Abraham discovered the existence of a new world between them.

They lived on the same planet, but they also saw what was happening beyond its limits, behind the physical image. We feel the Earth and everything that exists in it by way of our corporeal senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch. Whereas, they received a new perception: an understanding and feeling of the two forces that manage the world—the force of reception and the force of bestowal.

Ordinary people didn’t understand this at all. It would be necessary to pass through the same inner transformation as the group of Abraham did in order to understand it. And this is the secret of the Jewish people; they began to recognize and obtain the forces that manage the world.

Question: And this made it possible for these people to manage the world by themselves afterward?

Answer: They could participate in this management correctly.

Question: Does it follow that this group has managed the world throughout all of history?

Answer: No, this group was designed to manage the world, but they didn’t succeed in carrying out this role. Yet this task remained imposed upon them.

Question: The Jewish people have strongly influenced humanity throughout history, far exceeding the influence of any other people. It follows that it is not by chance that even thousands of years ago this group began to obtain the forces that manage the world, while in general, it never occurred to all of the rest of the peoples that there are forces like these. Do Jews have some kind of advantage over the others?

Answer: The Jews have an advantage, but they don’t use it to the detriment of others, but rather to help the whole world and to raise it to the same level. They are not arrogant about this; on the contrary, they feel that they must prepare themselves to serve all of humanity, to bring everyone to the same discovery. For it is written: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7), “…and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isaiah 2:2).

The Jewish people were only the first group of all of ancient Babylon to discover the higher power. They were pioneers who broke through to discover the real world. But ultimately they must bring this to all of the inhabitants of Babylon.

All of humanity, at the end of its development, must attain the same vision of the world with the two forces that manage it—the force of reception and the force of bestowal. As it is written: “…for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31:33).
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/25/14

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Enough Of Being Outcasts

laitman_933Question: Despite the fact that Israel is constantly under siege, at the end of every war there is a feeling that when it ends a new and happy life will begin. Now we have a feeling that we are stuck in this war and no one knows when it will end. Where does this feeling come from? Is it true? Can we end this war at all?

Answer: It is naïve to think that we can ever settle the account with our neighbors. Their constant unchanging goal is to conquer this land and to settle here. There is no way we can keep them from aspiring for this goal with threats and fear because they will still continue to wish for it. They have everything they need in order to continue this war and to pressure us unlimitedly.

They are not willing to make any concessions. For the Arab people, and in principle, for the whole world, this land is their territory and where their state should be. If you want to live here, you should convert to Islam and stay. If you are not a Muslim, you don’t belong here and you should leave.

It is all very simple. The problem isn’t the Jews and not even Israel, but the fact that the people living here are not Muslims. Therefore they see it as an eternal problem unless we manage to find a solution for it. Moreover, the threat of Islam is spreading throughout the world because the Muslims are trying to reach every corner of the world, including Siberia.

Comment: When we were in France we were told about the rapidly spreading Islam there. And on the Internet are scattered terrible pictures of Islamization. In particular, the newly created state in Iraq of people being executed and the photographs of their severed heads published on the Internet.

Answer: This is why they are feared.

Question: Does this mean that this war will not end?

Answer: Of course not! It isn’t about that. In the past, the founders of our state naively thought that we would bring our civilization to our neighbors and that they would be very glad to build a new life here together with us and to live in peace with us. I do respect our leaders for what they have done and created, but the hope that we would somehow be able to get along with our neighbors is totally absurd.

Question: So what can we do in this situation?

Answer: We can either pack our bags and leave or continue to live here the way we do as long as we have the power to keep on fighting. We will be able to manage for a while. And then what will happen? Who knows? After all, a hundred thousand rockets can be targeted at us not only from Gaza but also from neighboring counties. If they shoot them all at once, the chances that we will be able to stand against all of them are very small. There are different types of rockets, not only homemade ones made from a piece of metal pipe.

In addition to that, the whole world is against us. All the nations and peoples no longer respect and love us or take us into account. If in the past they expressed their support and tried to justify us, today they blame us for everything, no matter what we do.

We protect the Arab population and their children and let them know in advance when and where we are going to attack so that they will be able to leave in time. We risk the lives of our soldiers so as not to kill a child or adult civilian.

On the other hand, our enemies do everything they can to kill our innocent children and civilians and we are still seen as guilty in the eyes of the world although we don’t start the wars. The world doesn’t care. The world hates us because we don’t fulfill our role in human society.

I deliberately present the problem as extreme. If I didn’t have a solution, I wouldn’t do so and I would pity the people, but it is actually in order to spare and protect them that I present the issue of the inefficiency of all our wars, becayse we can prevent all that and make our life here peaceful and happy.

Question: Does that mean that you don’t see a rational solution here?

Answer: There is no rational solution since the problem itself isn’t rational. Our whole nation isn’t rational. We have existed for thousands of years and have given the world religions, the basis of civilization, and have invested a lot in science and in culture in different countries all over the world, and what of it?

We actually see an opposite outcome. We are outcasts who don’t belong to this world. Everyone hates us and thinks that we are the source of all the evil in the world. Therefore we should listen to them to understand why it is so.

Comment: We can come up with superficial answers to this problem. The Jews are envied because they are too smart. They have been at the top of the economies of many states and have seemingly stolen a lot.

Answer: Don’t they steal in Russia now when there are no Jews? Or do they steal less in the US? This isn’t the reason. The reason emerged long before that.

Comment: I was born in the Ukraine where I felt anti-Semitism on a daily basis without any apparent reason. The word Jew was simply used as a curse word just like the word idiot or a fool.

Answer: Common folks feel this hatred, dislike, and hostility subconsciously. They don’t understand, but subconsciously they feel that for some reason you are meddling with their life. There is something about you that affects the world and their fate depends on you.

As a person who has been studying Kabbalah for forty years, I know the reason for everything that happens. We Jews have to balance the world and bring it to a state of equality and to the revelation of the system that governs the world. People accuse us of making the world go round, that we manage it, but we manage it badly.

The world is indeed managed through us, but unfortunately at the moment it is done badly because it done through great suffering and blows. Therefore the nations of the world accuse us of all their problems.

It turns out that the world receives negative energy through us. This is clear according to the wisdom of Kabbalah and is also evident to the naked eye. Can we change things so that the world will receive positive energy through us? The wisdom of Kabbalah has a simple answer to that: in order to do so we have to connect.

Comment: But we have given the world so much: science, law, innovative technologies, Google, Facebook…

Answer: This is totally unimportant since the world receives the negative energy through these things too. After all, our ego has helped the world develop egoistically. The world doesn’t need that at all.

The Jews were given different talents so that they will affect the world positively and not in a negative egoistic manner that helps people develop industry, commerce, science, and the arts; people don’t need that! Although we have given the world all that, no one has ever thanked us.

Today we begin to realize that all the great achievements don’t make us happy. Although we have the newest technology, we feel empty inside and we feel bad. People who lived in caves were happy and managed without antidepressants.

We have to provide the world with positive energy that reaches the world through us! It is all a matter of unity. When we unite, the positive energy is conveyed to the world, and when we are divided, negative energy is conveyed through us.

It is very simple. If the Jews in Israel begin to unite, the world will immediately begin to treat us positively. But we should unite not in order to attack someone or to manage egoistically in our counter attack; we should unite above our ego.

The Torah says: “love thy friend as thyself.” Our nation is based on being as one man in one heart. This is the precondition for the creation of the Jewish nation, and we have to keep it. This is the only way that a blessing will come unto the world. All the Kabbalistic sources speak about it. Why don’t we try to do so?

Whenever criminals or fascists unite it is always against something. Our unity, however, is for spreading the rule of “love thy friend as thyself,” which will gradually spread all over the world.

Imagine how nice and kind the nations of the world will be to one another if they feel that it comes from us. To the same extent, the ice between us will also melt.

Comment: You are like a storyteller telling fairytales because everything you describe is against our nature.

Answer: That’s true, it is against our nature, but the wisdom of Kabbalah spoke about that several thousand years ago because in the past we did live by the principles of this system. Rambam said that our nation was created on the basis of an idea since a Jew is not a nationality but membership in the idea of unity. Today every person can become a Jew. He cannot become French, but he can become a Jew.

Question: If we were united in the past, then why were there 12 tribes?

Answer: The 12 tribes stem from a spiritual ladder, “Yod – Hey – Vav – Hey” (ה-ו-ה-י) , where each letter (property) is multiplied by three lines: the left line, the right line, and the middle line. This makes up the whole system of 12 tribes.

Every tribe has a role, an attribute, and it was forbidden to mix them to such an extent that it was forbidden to marry someone from another tribe. However, there was still mutual help and complete understanding between them.

This is why we must build our system according to the spiritual ladder of Providence. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how 12 Lights descend unto us and we receive them in our state, and we have to unite together into one whole.

After the breaking of the first and second Temples, the ten tribes disappeared and merged into the nations of the world. We don’t know where they are, but they will reappear in the future. Two and a half tribes have survived and all the Jews today all over the world belong to them, but we don’t know who belongs to which tribe since everything has been shattered and dispersed. Today we simply must unite.
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From KabTV’s “Current Situation in Israel” 7/24/14

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A Secret Covenant With The Higher Power, Part 1

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How did the nation of Israel arise, where is it going, and what potential, which has not been realized, is inherent in it? If we understand this, then we might reach a completely different state, instead of experiencing all of today’s problems.

To understand this, we need to return to the events of more than two thousand years ago at the time when the Jewish people were in the land of Israel and hadn’t gone into exile yet. Many associate something mystical with theses people and believe that they have a secret connection with the upper force, a union. What is it really about?

Answer: We are talking about a group of people who united according to their desire to understand the essence and meaning of life: What are we living for and who governs us? That is, they were concerned with the questions of the very essence of life. That is why they united around Abraham who was the sage that lived at that time in ancient Babylon and began to teach them how to answer these questions.

In material terms, life in ancient Babylon was quite comfortable because a person lacked nothing on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. That is, the body felt well and pleasant. The only problem was in the Tower of Babel, which rose to the heavens. It was necessary to find out what they lived for and why, where the source of life was, and who managed it. That is, they wanted to know their Creator.

Abraham taught them that it was possible to do this. After all, their life fell apart for this purpose. People became estranged, distanced from each other, and no longer understood each other. But those who felt the urgent need to solve the mystery of life joined Abraham. He was a famous Babylonian sage and came from a prominent family. His father Terah was a Babylonian high priest.

Abraham taught them how to understand the force that controls nature: the force of love and bestowal. This force is opposite to the egoistic force of the still nature, of plants, animals, and people of this world, and therefore it created us in the opposite form, which is reception and hatred. This is what was manifested in them in Babylon in order to oblige them to reveal something contrary, the opposite force.

Abraham taught how it was possible to correct oneself and obtain this force in addition to that which we already possess by nature. This force does not exist in our world because our world is entirely sustained by reception and hatred. That is why, in order to acquire this opposite force of love and bestowal, we need a complete science.

The force of love is the upper force. How can we bring it closer, want it so that it is revealed to us, begin to live within it, and how can we start using this force?

If it is a force hidden in nature, then maybe we will be able to catch it through question about the meaning of our life, about what controls it. Through these questions, which in essence, any person asks, but does not delve into, we can begin to become acquainted with the upper force.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/25/14

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The Jewish people are very complicated. On the one hand, they are called “stiff-necked,” meaning that they are the most egoistic. On the other hand, they must achieve and reach love, mutual cooperation, and positive qualities. How are these integrated together? How do people look that have a connection with the higher power?

Answer: People who are connected with the higher power are unique people. They are connected as one person with one heart thanks to mutual love above the ego that separates us. There are forces among us that distance us from each other, but instead of staying separate, we connect above those forces.

That is, we are under pressure from forces of separation and build unifying forces above them. That is how we strengthen ourselves under tension. Thanks to the separation and difference between these potentials, an enormous force appears within us.

After all, there is a force that separates us from our desire to be together and another force that connects us and overcomes our resistance. As much as the tension between these forces grows, the more strongly they reveal to us the higher power, the Creator. He is discovered specifically within this pressure, in the tension between the two forces.

Within this unity and connection that is built above the separation, we discover the higher power, the characteristic of bestowal and love that exists around us. From these two forces of separation and connection we shape a new sense for discovering the Creator called the “soul.”

The soul is the condition for detecting the force of bestowal and love that is hidden in nature. Today we haven’t discovered it because we don’t have the necessary sense organ to do so. If  we  want to discover it, we need to learn like the people who gathered around Abraham did who were taught to construct this new sense based upon great separation. Those who came to Abraham were not naïve children; rather, they were great egoists demanding real explanations and discovery, an understanding of the meaning of life and the ways of attaining reality.

We see that our civilization has exhausted itself: We have reached the peak of development, but have not yet attained happiness. We are beginning to tear each other apart from desperation, from misunderstanding.

It was Abraham who taught people how to discover the force of connection that exists in nature. By studying this force of connection and unity, we begin to see that our lives on the face of the earth, in this world, are only an introduction, a preparation, for a completely different life!

In this new life we stop feeling the world of the still, vegetative, and animate, physical objects and bodies, and this universe. We understand  that we have come into this world only to create a network of connections between us built from our natural power of reception, from the ego, and from the bestowal and love from above that covers it.

Through our building a network like this, we begin to live within it. And this is called the “world to come.” It is then that the perception of our previous physical reality, which we now feel, will disappear and we will enter into a completely different reality in which life is eternal, infinite, and perfect.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/25/14

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The End Of Tolerance?

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (inoSMI.ru): “The Pope’s message for Christmas was an appeal to the rising wave of hate, oppression and violence in the world. Literally, everyone is in conflict! The world is experiencing a surge in fanaticism and extremism. Anger and hatred on religious, ethnic and social grounds are widely spread throughout the world.

“All countries and the people who live on the territory of one country are in conflict with each other, although recently, they were not foreign to mutual tolerance, agreement. Why do these people now hate each other and, taking up arms, kill those whom they consider to be their enemies?

“Leaders, heads of state, religious leaders – their mission is to suppress the instinct of hatred, hostility, violence, the general public, and to instill in them tolerance, peace and love.”

My Comment: Neither nations nor their leaders will be able to prevent the fall of the world into hatred. The key to improving the world is only in the people of Israel, in its unity for the sake of revealing the Creator.
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Year 2015: An Optimistic View Of The Future

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What kind of a year will 2015 be for the world, Israel, and the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is only beginning to be revealed to everyone? To what extent can it be revealed in the near future?

Answer: I bind these three parameters together: the world, Israel, and the wisdom of Kabbalah. The state of the world depends on the extent to which humanity will discover the wisdom of Kabbalah, the science of managing the universe.

Comment: This sounds like a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, which frightens the whole world…

Answer: There is no conspiracy. If there were, it would be very easy to expose and rapidly destroy it.

But it is true that the Jews determine the future of the world at every moment of its history and development. Here I agree with all of the anti-Semites because this is a law of nature! There can be no agreement or disagreement, whether we like it or not. This is the way it is, so there is no reason to hide it. I wrote about this in my article in The New York Times.

Anti-Semitism exists because Jews are not performing their function. As soon as we begin to perform our function, all of the nations of the world will turn their faces towards us and will help us with everything.

Question: How is it that you think that in 2015 the Jewish people will come closer to implementing the task that has been entrusted to them?

Answer: It depends on how much we reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah to the world. It explains how the nations of the world and the Jews influence the system of governance; we are all included in the  general global development and constitute a single system. So we have to know how to interact correctly so as to influence the external system of nature whose forces move all of humanity forward.

When we will really become one with the forces of nature, people will no longer be divided into religions, nobody will rule over anybody else, and we will not need to aspire to anything other than harmony with nature. Every moment of our lives we will focus only on this.

Our development will immediately be clarified by our sensing eternity and perfection. We will stop thinking about the existence of the body; it will gradually disappear from our senses. We will feel an influence that comes from outside of the system into which we will seemingly begin to dissolve.

We will start actively transitioning to a completely new level of existence, into another dimension. This sounds a bit unusual, but it is truly so. The wisdom of Kabbalah raises a person to an eternal level.

The unity that is created as a result of our connection on a physical level is our collective immortal soul—one for everyone. Within it we discover our next existence on a new level of our development.

This is because today we are still on an animate level of development, absorbed by our concern for our physical body. Food, sex, family, wealth, fame, power, and knowledge, all determine the present human level.

But when we rise above these interests to the connection between us, we will reach a next level of existence called “unearthly.” So now we belong to the animate level. But if we begin to develop the human being out of ourselves, we will then create Adam (Man), from the Hebrew word “Adameh” (similar), a single image similar to the upper nature.

I look at the future with optimism and still hope to see how my students and all of the Jewish people will become the luminaries of the world. In any case, they cannot escape this mission, but it’s preferable for us to understand it as soon as possible and begin to realize it in the world, thus reducing suffering to zero.
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From KabTV’s “The New Year” 12/25/14

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Strangers Are Part Of My Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Kedoshim) 19:33 – 19:34: And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

A stranger refers to any new desire, which at first is naturally egoistic but is ready to join several corrected desires and obey them.

It is about the fact that we should be happy to receive the new desires that appear in us and expand the soul by enabling it to discover the Creator to a greater extent.

Therefore, we should yearn for it and love the new desires that are revealed in us, although they sometimes bring along unpleasantness and great problems. However, it is actually thanks to them that we format ourselves and rise.

The Torah speaks only about desire. There are no people and not what we see around us in the form of imaginary figures that are depicted by our uncorrected senses. We all are a collection of desires.

Question: It says: “love thy friend as thyself.” Does that make the stranger the other?

Answer: Yes, You have to love him to such an extent that he becomes the other, since thanks to him, you rise higher towards the Creator. The Creator sends these strangers to you on purpose, since nothing is coincidental.

These are all parts of your soul, just like creation is part of your soul. You simply don’t see what is external to you since you cannot perceive it correctly inside you. But to the same extent that you develop the sense of love and bestowal and exit yourself in faith above reason, which means in bestowal above receiving, you discover the whole of creation as your soul.

There are no strangers here. Instead everyone becomes an integral part of your soul.

Comment: In our world there is the concept of converting to Judaism, which means to become Jewish.

Answer: Even if the strangers want to live in our country without being formally converted, we have to provide them with a shelter because there are different attributes of closeness and detachment within them.

There were special places for converts in the Temple, for both men and women. Every person who lived outside the border of the country could enter the Temple and live in it if he performed certain work.

Just as the strangers rise within you within the internal work, the new desires that you have to work on by correcting them and adding them to the corrected desires, so did human strangers have their special work.

The Temple is the accurate reflection of the soul. Therefore, there was the destruction of the first Temple, which meant that the soul didn’t stand the inner tension in order to love and bestow and so descended to the second level, which was also later destroyed.

The third Temple is the complete end of correction of all the desires in our world and their connection into one unique whole in totally equal conditions.

Question: Why does it say that there is not going to be the destruction of the third Temple?

Answer: Because it is the state of the complete end of correction. There will be nothing left to interrupt it or bring to its destruction. All of the universal ego will be completely corrected.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/16/14

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