Entries in the 'Nations of the World' Category

When Sanity Leads To Chaos

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In what case will the method of Abraham, which still is portrayed as irrational, be accepted?

Answer: Today humanity is ready to accept anything illogical because it is beginning to understand that our current rationality is actually beastly and doesn’t work on the level of society.

Oddly enough, now there is a total disappointment in the logic, in the ability of the modern consumer “sanity” to overcome problems that keep on rolling along. Egoism itself has finished; Marx was right about this, and there is nothing to even talk about his perspicacity.

All that remains is to act on the level of elementary logic, to explain abstractly to people from the side: “Is it good for all of us to be connected together by good threads?  Good. Is it good to earn only as much as is necessary and any more we simply don’t need?  Good. Is it good to have a single optimal standard of living for all?  Yes. How about no hunger and sickness, no huge chasm between the rich and the poor? Good. The whole world cares about ecology? Good.”

But how do we do this if we are all so bad?

Here we need to show people that a power exists that can realize this. In any case, sooner or later, we must come to this state and the sooner it will be, the less suffering there will be. If we succeed in conveying our message correctly, humanity will already be ready to accept this logic.

Question: Do all the Jews need to return physically to the land of Israel?

Answer: I don’t think so. I suppose that it doesn’t matter at all where one lives. It is said that the land of Israel will expand to the edges of the whole world. Figuratively speaking, it would extend over the entire globe.

Points of spirituality occur worldwide. It doesn’t matter where a person is located. Furthermore, these people must become teachers for the whole world. After all, humanity yearns for some method for the right existence. We see that now it doesn’t exist anywhere; everyone lives only for today, fearing to consider tomorrow or simply not thinking about it. Nobody has a realistic long-range strategy and there isn’t even a normal tactic for reciprocal connection for the sake of some common goal. Instead we are witness to the totally chaotic movement of each and every person. And so our logic will be clear to humanity.

Along with this, there is a little trick here: Humanity will be able to accept this logic and realize it only after the people of Israel become the first to apply it to life. That is how the general system is organized; it is specifically these people, hated, stubborn, egoistic, and so on, who must first and foremost realize the method in themselves and provide an example. As soon as they do, at least somewhat, everyone will begin to study with them.

This is because the readiness to learn from the Jews is latent in all the nations of the world. The basis of their hatred is not respected, but there is a basic awareness that in this people there is something higher, which is specifically what they want so much to annihilate. This doesn’t let the nations rest, as it stands in their way. This is a natural reaction, but on the opposite side, there is an inner readiness to adopt what is new and to learn it. So our only problem is in the making of the correct society.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

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Being Like Everyone Else Isn’t Our Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is the current return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel a natural phase?

Answer: Of course.

Question: Why should they return to this land in particular?

Answer: We don’t understand it yet. However, people who are on a spiritual level understand the differences and the uniqueness of the spiritual root in each of the created beings, including animals, and moreover, of the different regions of the earth.

So despite the fact that the land here is not fertile and there is nothing “holy” about it, it is still dominated by certain spiritual forces, just like a branch that grows from a spiritual root.

Question: What should we do about the strong Arab resistance?

Answer: It is perfectly natural. After all, if we have returned to this land, we have to return to our spiritual roots. In other words, we have to fulfill the condition of love thy friend as thyself. It is on the basis of this condition that we came here ages ago. Moses brought us to the borders of this land and passed away on its border. Then his disciple, Joshua, led us.

We reached this land and when we settled here, we had to set an example for all of humanity, and to show what a nation that lives correctly in its land should be like. Then we began to build the Temple and fulfill this mission.

However, our actions today are totally opposite from what we have to do and consequently, of course, we are constantly confronted with troubles from our close and distant neighbors.

Question: Why was the Arab environment given this role?

Answer: This was written ages ago when Abraham fathered Ishmael and sent him away with Hagar. From that time onwards, there is a kind of “competition” between the two brothers Isaac and Ishmael. There is nothing we can do about it; the conflict will be even greater, but it should be fulfilled on the spiritual level.

This means that as a nation we have to ascend to the level of love of others, be in good relations with one another, and set an example for all of humanity. In that case, we will immediately see how everything around us calms down. First our cousins the Arabs and then the whole world will quiet down and the anger and hatred in the world will cease.

The nations of the world will then understand that there is something that they really need here and that they can receive the method for the revival of the soul from us, which is the knowledge that can make them eternal beings. They will begin to realize that we can lead them to a better life, not just in this world, but to exit it to a totally different dimension, beyond the frameworks of this world. It all depends only on us and I think that we will reach it.

Question: Does this mean that there is one meaning to all the complaints we hear against us?

Answer:  They are only meant to unite and connect us. If our neighbors didn’t pressure us, we would destroy one another and never unite, even on the level we are on today. The external pressure on us, the rigidity and hatred, all depend only on the mutual repulsion we feel towards one another. Generally speaking, we actually determine the level of hatred that the nations of the world feel towards us.

Question: So unconsciously the nations of the world want to oblige us to be the teachers of humanity?

Answer: Yes. This is how all of humanity relates to us. All their hatred is only so that we will eventually understand that we have to do something and that wanting to be like them, like everyone, is a silly “trick.” This philosophy, this approach, takes us completely in the wrong direction.

Spinoza’s origin, the rebellion against the independent uniqueness is not our root. Of course, it was forbidden to remain on the previous level in those times, since the time had come for the spiritual development, spiritual not in the sense that humanity imagined but according to our roots.

Comment: But on the other hand, you spoke about the fact that the Jews also led the conceptual development of all of humanity in Babylon.

Answer: They should have led it a long time ago, during the exodus from ancient Babylon. If everything had gone smoothly, spirituality should have spread widely after the First Temple, and gradually all the nations of the world would have accepted the method of the revelation of the Creator. They would have united and everything would have ended there. But that was impossible because the Babylonians didn’t yet have the root that humanity needed. They had to receive it and it was possible to receive it only when the Jewish nation was shattered and dispersed among them.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

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Short Stories: Crossing The Egyptian Border

laitman_749_01After Abraham’s group worked on unity, they began to discover a new level of the ego and began to draw apart again, just like they did in Babylon.

They were dominated by the power of Pharaoh, a giant ego that pressured them, the relations between them, became “the slavery in Egypt.”

It was at that time that the next leader of the nation Moses appeared. Moses was brought up at Pharaoh’s home from a very young age, but nonetheless, a great desire to ascend above his upbringing awoke in him. He escaped from Pharaoh and turned to the people, calling them to leave Egypt.

The people, however, were very weak. On one hand, they understood that they had to leave the egoistic slavery, otherwise there was not a chance that they would connect and unite to reproduce Abraham’s idea that helps them advance in the connection between them, to reveal the Creator.

On the other hand, the Creator is concealed from their feelings. So the slavery in Egypt is like nighttime for them since they don’t feel the spiritual life at all. But they have already tasted and felt what a spiritual state means: life without any limitations, a feeling of the outer space, a different dimension.

Therefore, they were rather passive at first and Moses had to aggravate Pharaoh (the ego) to such an extent that the people would feel his rigid domination. Only then did they see the afflictions that the ego caused them and were then ready to leave Egypt because they didn’t want to identify with their ego anymore. They had no power to break away from it but they suddenly felt the desire to do so.

By showing them the ego’s cruelty and slyness, Moses raises the people and takes them out of the egoistic state. Now they are ready to overcome all the fights, disputes and conflicts and to ascend above them according to the condition of “love covers all transgressions.” Then they break away from the slavery in Egypt, rise above it, and leave Egypt.

Every whole spiritual level is made of ten sub-levels. Every sub-level should be seen as a source of loss, pain, sufferings, and terrible diseases. Sufferings that gradually accumulate in the recognition of the egoistic slavery and convince people to break away from the ego (even at night, in the dark, when nothing is understood and nothing can be seen); the main thing is to keep the connection between them.

The situation before the exodus from Egypt and afterward is similar to crossing a border. In Egypt we depend on one another, hating one another, but the moment we take upon ourselves the law of mercy, of altruistic bestowal, of mutual incorporation, we can cross the border and break away from Egypt.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/22/14

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Short Stories: Jacob And The Development of Abraham’s Group

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe correct restriction of the ego that leads to the mean between Abraham’s attribute of Hesed (mercy) and Isaac’s attribute of Gvura (power) is necessary in order to advance spiritually and to take what they have in common.

What they have in common is the next phase in the development of Abraham’s group called Jacob, since the connection between the right line (Abraham) and the left line (Isaac) gradually depicts the middle line (Jacob).

It is actually at this point that we can talk about the beginning of the real fulfillment of the method of Kabbalah because now it includes the two lines, right and left, the attribute of Hesed (bestowal) and the attribute of Din (receiving), which create a third force that connects them correctly. The third force is called Jacob.

The formation of the middle line (the attribute of Jacob) in the Kabbalistic group that came out of Babylon is the basis for the development of the wisdom of Kabbalah. Every movement in spiritual development is gradually fulfilled and it is possible to ascend to the next level only when we add the left line to the right line.

If I am on a certain level, I have to add the left line and different kinds of egoistic desires and problems and rise above them in order to ascend to the next level. This is the only way I can understand the next level. In other words, the flat areas on the steps of the ladder are the attributes of goodness and the ascent from one level to the next are the attributes of domination, respect and power, above which I ascend.

This is how the ladder of the spiritual ascent called Jacob’s ladder is built. Jacob includes both good and evil forces and correctly connects them by internally fulfilling the method of the gradual ascent up the ladder. Jacob is actually the beginning of the spiritual development that is purposeful and correct.

This explains the existence of the left line in our world. It stems from the Creator who gives it to us so that we will ascend higher above ourselves until we attain His level.

The right combination between the right and left lines, the attribute of Abraham and Isaac, are included in the attribute of Jacob that is also called Israel. If we take these two forces of nature and connect them correctly and ascend Jacob’s ladder, we thus become Israel (Yashar- El), which means straight to the Creator. When we use these two forces, we can accurately focus on the goal and constantly aim, place, and manage ourselves exactly on the middle line.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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A Generation Whose Idea Awaits It

laitman_259_02Question: Russian-speaking Israelis have gone through a lot and have radically changed their entire lives. Around a million of them have gathered here. Is there something unique about them?

Answer: I truly think we must seriously begin to work with them. Essentially, they always have been the vanguard of humanity. Russian emigrants who scattered to various countries developed culture and science wherever they were. Everywhere, they served as an engine of the progress.

Question: This means that you suppose that they can become the foundation for a breakthrough all over the world?

Answer: I hope so, but it will not be the generation that immigrated. Among them, only a few are ready to make a breakthrough, hundreds, maybe even thousands, but not millions. However, even though it doesn’t seem that way in the meantime, I think that their children will become specifically those among our associates and colleagues who actually will lead the nation and the world forward.

As of today, many still have not “passed through the illness” of former ideals. They still think that aggressive superiority, technological knowledge, weapons, money, and so on, as critical.

This generation has not yet been completely disillusioned with the previous frameworks. They still are concerned about formation. They still need to see finally that there is no more development; they need to think about another, not ultimately pragmatic, but an ideological foundation, not based on the force of matter, but the spirit. And then you can talk to the people.

In the meantime, the spirit of small, primitive capitalism still lives in part of them, and the grip of a simple life and narrow-mindedness kills. I don’t blame anyone for anything. I feel this both in myself and in my relatives that took the same route. However, in spite of it all, there will be a need to rise above this.

This is because we are the people of an idea, and I hope that their children will be able to accept this idea expanding their horizons beyond their ordinary daily needs.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today,” Part 8, 9/24/14

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The New Barbarism

Dr. Michael LaitmanWho would have thought that the atrocities and anti-Semitism like we are witnessing today could take place in the 21st century and lead humanity to such a miserable state in which it seems to be sinking into a dark abyss once again? It is as if our ego is dropping and our mind is totally lost, thus annulling all of humanity’s experience and its whole existence for ages.

Savagery is raising its head again. It seemed there was a time when we learned something after so many centuries and so many mistakes! But no, barbarism is once again revealed and moreover, it is on a totally different level and disregards anything else. This is taking place together with an unprecedented development of weapons that can destroy all of humanity. Will we be able to achieve order by using them now?

Why is it so? The age of enlightenment has passed and everyone  saw the way to future happiness. But today we have descended much lower in the level of our values and expectations.

100 to 150 years ago studying, science, art, and culture in general were valued and respected. People in their sixties still remember masterpieces of poetry and literature and evenings of discussions and debates. If a person wasn’t interested in that, he was considered ignorant. He was ashamed to admit that he didn’t read or participate in these activities.

A young person’s goal was to absorb all the pearls of humanity and its cultural achievements. Science may not have attracted everyone, but there was a general acceptance of the demand for culture, which appealed to everyone.

Moreover, absorbing culture was supposed to be in such a way that it would make something out of you and educate you so that people would see that you were intelligent. While in the 1930’s this was shameful, it was respected in the 1960’s.

At the same time it, was shameful to show that you were physically strong. On the contrary, if a person was skinny and weak, but looked like an intellectual, he was a model for others. Girls admired him and not other types.

When I was a student, authors like Vazenski and Yavtushenko were still young and new. Literature was on the rise, and poets like Akodjeba and Wisotzky were born before our very eyes.

I was also part of a small group in Leningrad and participated in literary, artistic, and musical clubs. Looking hopefully at the bright future of humanity, we couldn’t imagine that barbarism would return and that people would kill one another without even counting the casualties.

In short, not long ago, everything was just the opposite, but the following decades brought about terrible imbalances. Half a century has passed and everything has totally changed in a way that no one could ever have thought possible.

We see that the laws of nature are fixed. They are revealed to us alternately, displaying the same pictures so that we will learn from all these transformations and see what is important: that we must understand these laws and use them correctly. We cannot simply flow with the current, but rather we must apply these laws and not wait for a better brighter future. We must build it with everyone beginning with oneself.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

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Short Stories: The Spiritual Father Of Humanity

Laitman_115_04The name Abraham (AB-am) means “father of the nation.” Abraham is actually the spiritual father of all of humanity since he was not only the founder of many nations but the creator of the spiritual method of the correction of the world. The main idea of his method was the indication that the Creator is the only one unique and united force of nature, which manages all of creation, that “there is none else besides Him.”

The Creator’s attributes were determined by him as the “good that does good.” According to his teachings, the role of humanity was to obtain adhesion with the Creator according to the rule of “love thy friend as thyself.”

He passed on this method to his Babylonian students who joined him and called their community “the house of Abraham” (Beit Abraham), which refers to his students and to his family. Later Abraham took his group of students out of Babylon, which means that he detached from all the other studies and obtained the Creator and established an independent method that he expressed in the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira), which largely complemented the work of Adam, Angel Raziel (Raziel and Malachi).

Abraham placed the foundations of the method for the right attainment of the Creator, for obtaining His level and adhering to Him. All the other Kabbalists only developed his theory by adding their practical work to it. Because the ego kept on growing in every generation, this enabled the development of Abraham’s method on the next levels according to the conditions in a certain time.

Therefore, we cannot say that we have something new today. Everything that is revealed is revealed by Kabbalists starting from Adam until our times, but the right path begins with Abraham, although there is the unique spiritual birth on every level along this path called the “sons of Abraham.”
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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Dr. Michael LaitmanAncient Babylon was the cradle of different streams and spiritual methods. Before the age of Abraham, the Babylonians lived in peace, love, and friendship as Noah’s followers taught them. However, after the growth of the ego, they began to draw away from one another and broke up into many groups.

Every group began to worship another god (attribute or force) as a result of its inner inclination. It wasn’t the simple worship of stones and trees but of the forces of nature. Thus, many gods that included black and white magic, astrology and other methods appeared and exist to this very day.

Abraham experienced a real tragedy when he realized that he needed to stand apart from everyone and create a radically new school. The difference between his school and others was huge because its methodology was based on the use of negative powers to attain positive elevation. The teachings of all the other schools were built on a method to placate the negative forces of nature and live in agreement and harmony with them.

Abraham believed that there is nothing negative in the world. If something seems negative, it is only because we use it incorrectly. The moment we begin to use the negative forces correctly, by ascending above them with the help of the positive forces, we immediately begin to ascend. Thus the negative forces are actually essential since they all stem from the Creator who is good and benevolent. It is only our use of these forces that is wrong. The spiritual system obliges a person to work on himself in order to position his negative and positive attributes correctly.

By disseminating and explaining his method, Abraham encountered very serious periods of conflict with his countrymen. As a result, he had to leave ancient Babylon and totally detach from everything in the heart and mind that he knew on the previous level, i.e., to totally renounce polytheism and all kinds of spiritual practices. He knew that there is only man, the society in which man wants to resemble the Creator, and the Creator himself.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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The Illogical Foundation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThanks to their energy and ingenuity, the Jewish people are always found in the first ranks of social and technological development, seemingly showing the world in which direction to go. But in the meantime, the task and mission of the people of Israel is completely different. And if we knew exactly what it was, we would attain peace and happiness for everyone and bring the world to an optimal state.

One way or another we are a people of an idea, people who are teachers. Everything revolves around this, and this pushes us to move things. In the Torah it is said that we will be a nation of priests, in other words, we will serve as a transitional link such that through us the knowledge of the general system of creation will be transmitted to the world.

To this day, we feel this hidden irrationality from which there is no escape. The latent problem in this is that we are not teaching humanity the correct way to live. Within our nature, there are the buds of that inner structure required to transform humanity into one and make it a harmonious society.

Nobody else has this, only the Jews. This is because they have already gone through this once and so can return to this again. Moreover, they must return to this in view of all humanity.

This previous experience has been stamped into them forever, and as a result of this, all of humanity feels that they are strangers, aliens, and they feel that the Jews: “Have something that isn’t in us and cannot be.”

Even if they went through another 2,000 years, it would all be the same. The Jews are separate and everyone else is separate from them. No matter how much they try, they will not mix with others. This is like a suspension (a solution containing substances that cannot be mixed with each other).You can dissolve them, scatter them, shake them, do whatever you want, but this essential characteristic will not be mixed. Through the generations, in spite of it all, they will still grow in the original state in which they were created.

This is because what is latent in them is irrelevant to mundane factors. Integrate them with whomever you want on the material level, replace them all with others, this point will pop up in them again. It is illogical. It doesn’t belong to the nature of our world, to physical bodies. In every case, it will sprout in their descendants in the same form as today. Everything will come out as if nothing had happened.

Let’s make a gross calculation, solely and only for a general illustration. Before 700–800 BC, with the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish people lost ten tribes, five times more than the remaining two tribes. Throughout all the time that passed since then and up until today, these two tribes grew, let’s say, to 15 million people.

Considering the mass extermination of Jews throughout history brings this theoretical number to 20 million. From here it follows that the descendants of the rest of the tribes, who were five times more, they would need to total 100 million. This is quite a considerable sum, right?

And so, in a particular amount of time, we will see that these 100 million will suddenly be discovered as if out of nowhere. It will be discovered that they are Jews in different nations with completely different customs and different characteristics, no matter what and where. Suddenly it will be discovered that they are here, there, and everywhere. Moreover, when they are discovered with their Jewish traits, in them that same illogical something will be found. And again, the familiar picture will be repeated: The nations will look at the Jews and see that there is something in them, but what it is, is unclear. Even though they have the form and character of local residents, it doesn’t matter.

He could be an American, an Australian, a European, but you see that this is a Jew. It is as if he arrived from outer space, settled here among the inhabitants of the earth and lives in their clothes, whereas his interior is different. Living in him is a spark that connects him with the upper world. This spark remains; it is impossible to be released from it.

Hitler tried to exterminate all the Jews, but it is impossible to exterminate this spiritual point through physical annihilation. In any case it will grow in other people without any connection to genetics or the generations who were annihilated.

I repeat: The illogical foundation that exists in these people cannot be annihilated. History itself testifies to this.

And so the stock that is composed of the ten tribes that exists somewhere among other peoples has yet be revealed.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

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Periodic Table Of Nature

Laitman_709Question: Since the ‘30s of the previous century, the world has become one big village and from that time should we have related to humanity as one family, with one government, with one world “Ministry of Health”?

Answer: It should have been done even before then, from the ‘20s! World War I was a reaction to our disregard for the general system that connects everyone together.

It is not important that there are regions in South America, Africa, and Asia where they live as if it were a thousand years ago. In a family there are both adults and children, less developed and more developed according to age. But our attitude towards everyone must be equal.

Such unity should have been reached by humanity at the beginning of the 20th century, but was not. And so it got the first and second world wars and today’s Ebola epidemic.

Question: And if we relate to the whole world as one family, would the virus not spread? How is this connected, and how does the system work in relationships between people, countries, and nations? How does the Ebola virus know when it needs to spread and when not to?

Answer: A viral epidemic is the result of an imbalance. We violate the balance in the system, and on every one of its levels some kind of deviation from the balance that we must forcibly reconcile appears. In order to forcibly reconcile the lack of balance and restore the system to a state of balance, the Ebola epidemic has broken out.

The human level is above the entire system, this being the relationship between individual people, nations, and countries. And its highest stratum is determined by balance among the people of Israel.

Israel is found at the highest part of the human pyramid in the sense that it is inside of it and requires balance first; particularly in the State of Israel balance is required. And so the removal of imbalance and accordingly the Ebola plague is primarily dependent upon the people of Israel.

Question: What is not clear is what the relationship is between the upper level, where we communicate with each other as one family or as strangers, and somewhere below how it is infested with viruses?

Answer: Well, this is a unified system that includes within it all of the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. All of nature is a single system outside of which there is nothing.

Nature includes various levels of matter, beginning from the still, where atoms connect with each other and form the chemical elements: carbon, oxygen, copper, silver, gold and the like. After that comes the vegetative level with the myriad of different plants, then the animate level, and then the human level.

The human level does not refer to a bipedal mammal, rather it refers to human intelligence, knowledge, evolution, and consciousness that allows him to see that he belongs entirely to a single system. Man begins from his determining that he is found within a single unified system of nature and depends upon everything and everything depends upon him.

He sees that he perceives a higher level and through his behavior and relationship with people he determines everything that happens to all the rest of the levels of nature.

When he ascends and descends, the human raises and lowers the entire still, vegetative, and animate nature along with him.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/19/14

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