New Life #411 – The Game of Changing Characters
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

How does a person develop through the game, what is the goal of the game in our lives, and how is it possible to be clothed in the character of the divine and understand the game of life?

All our lives we play characters.

Children play games, do sports exercises and the like. Teenagers already begin to play characters. Basically all of us play different characters all of our lives, at home, at work, everywhere. We don’t know who we truly are. No person is familiar with himself. The ego obligates us to play characters.

It is possible to discover who I am only if I will begin to clothe in new forms that are of benefit to others, like the Creator. Playing the character of the divine means being good and beneficent to everyone. This is the most enjoyable game.

When a person wants to play the character of the divine, he begins to get the feeling and the understanding of what that is. This is not talking about just doing good. I must learn well what it means to be good like the divine. We learn this together, in a group of players. This is the most enjoyable, most complicated and most excellent game.
This is not about thinking that you are divine like a crazy person thinks, but is about the effort to be like Him in your attitude toward others.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #411 – The Game of Changing Characters,” 22/6/14

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New Life #408 – Corruption
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

In recent years, we have seen increased corruption in high level government officials. How is the development of the ego related to the growing corruption and what can correct it?

In the past there was no corruption, by definition,  a king or ruler could do whatever he wanted. Suddenly concepts like equality, freedom, and justice emerged, a government by the people, the establishment of law and order. An ordinary person who breaks the law is punished, while the corrupt people in high positions do whatever they like! This is infuriating!

Corruption is not only with regard to money. It is any use of power, of the media, of the education system, and of the culture for one’s own purposes.

We have reached a dead end. The problem is that we don’t know how to reach a better state. Therefore, we need an educational process that includes all of society to gradually upgrade man’s egoistic nature. A corrected person who comes to power will act only by caring about the well being of others and not about himself. A person should be allowed to govern only according to the level of his correction.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #408 – Corruption,” 6/17/14

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New Life #407 –  Slander
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What is the phenomenon of slander, where does it come from, and what does it cause in the world and in relationships between people?

Our nature is a desire for pleasure, and we measure ourselves against others. Slander comes from this.  Slander is when a person intentionally wants to harm another, to lower him in the eyes of others. This affects the entire system.

Language is a connection between us. It can be verbal, meaning through words, but it can also be through thoughts.

Slander in the full sense explains the relationship that is in my heart regarding someone else, even if I don’t open my mouth to speak.

Our world has been ruined because we fill it with bad thoughts about each other. The field of connection has been poisoned.

Good speech is mutual bestowal, mutual connection, when each one thinks about the good of society.
From KabTV”s “New Life #407 – Slander,” 6/15/14

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New Life 480 – Don’t Fix A Rusty Engine
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Question: The issue of minimum wage has been on the news very often lately. This is a matter of great concern not only in Israel but in other countries as well.

We would like to examine this issue not so much from an economic perspective but from a social perspective. After all, the minimum wage in a country can tell us a lot about the society and it raises many problems that are related to the social relations in the country.

As an employment advisor, I see how the middle class is gradually falling to the category of minimum wage earners. Generally speaking, this refers to nearly one-third of the workers who receive minimum wage or a bit more. It is close to a million people, including people who have higher education: teachers, young architects, social workers, etc. Today many find it hard to make ends meet because of the low wages they receive.

There are many arguments about this issue in Israel, including the moral and social aspects. Is there a point in enforcing artificial equality? Or is it better to maintain the laws of the free market in every area?

Economists have not reached an agreement on this issue either. Some claim that high minimum wage increases unemployment and weakens the economy. Others believe that these claims are baseless. Seven Noble Prize winners, for example, deny any relation between unemployment and minimum wage and claim that raising minimum wage is beneficial for the economy.

What is your opinion on this matter?

Answer: I deal with a different kind of systems. They are controlled by different laws than those acceptable in modern society. These are the laws of nature, not the artificial laws of this world that are enforced as a result of egoistic rivalry.

Therefore, I find it hard to enter the rotten structure of society founded on “dog eat dog” and every man is despised foe. In such circumstances it is impossible to give advice on specific issues since the whole system is hopeless. The only thing we can do is to get rid of it and to create something new.

On the other hand, we have already seen how to destroy the old world without building anything better. After all, the basis remains the same egoistic basis.

Today we are subject to the market economy that exists according to its own rules. This means, as a rule, an employer would like to pay an employee nothing for 24 hours of work a day without any breaks or vacations. The employee, on the other hand, in general, does not want to work except to receive a salary in his bank account and not a minimum wage but a maximum wage.

Under such circumstances, society exists on the account of the competitive potential of its members: everyone tries to attain as much as possible by games of power, negotiations, agreements, and many other factors.

For example, between an employer and its workers, there are labor laws, authorities, trade unions, workers’ committees, etc., but all the parties involved still want to benefit from what is going on and no one wants it to end.

After all, companies, groups, and unions have an interest, and even if they fight for the rights of the workers and lower classes trying to achieve minimum wage, pensions, stipends, and other benefits for them, they still think only about themselves. These people hold good jobs and receive their share, or in other words, operate egoistically.

Therefore, there is no one we can demand correction from. It is impossible to correct only part of the mechanism. If an engine is totally rusty, we can change a certain part with a part made of gold, perfect in size and in every parameter, but this will not help. The fixed part may even disrupt the whole system and even more.

I remember when I was a student, a girl decided to clean part of the window in the dorms where we lived. As a result, we discovered we then discovered we had to clean the whole wall of huge windows. And then when the sunlight entered the room, it turned out that the whole room needed a good cleaning.

In short, if we intend to fix something, we need to take whole system into account. It is an integral system in which all the parts are mutually connected; it is impossible to isolate the minimum wage as the factor for economic success. We have to approach the whole system integrally and give it a good shake, or, in other words, to take it apart and put it back together again differently. No individual fixes will help the whole picture.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 480 – Don’t Fix A Rusty Engine,” 12/23/14

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New Life 478 – The Right To Change Our Fate
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

Question: The thing that impresses a person who hears about the wisdom of Kabbalah for the first time is that the wisdom of Kabbalah gives him a chance to change his fate. Each of us would like to get rid of his daily troubles and suffering, his financial, health, and family, and the problems in every aspect of our life. Is the wisdom of Kabbalah really that powerful that it allows a person control over his fate and enables him to change it?

Answer: I am glad that more and more people ask about how we can change our fate and whether this is really possible. It raises several questions. Is our life really in the hands of blind fate or is our fate predetermined and meant to lead us to a certain goal? Can we influence our fate? After all we feel that we are totally controlled by it.

There are people who can even foresee the future. I know several such people and I can confirm that they did actually foresee things that later came true. They had a premonition as to what would happen in the future.

This means that all the events have already been registered in a certain program above, which later descend like a computer program and begin to operate, and we are in it moving according to this program.

There is indeed fate, and today we are becoming increasingly more convinced that we are in its hands. In the past, we lived far from one another, one country to the next, one continent to the next, and so we felt we had no control over our lives.

Things are different today: humanity is strong enough and has enough knowledge, brains, ability, desire, and an inner need to control our lives, but we see that we cannot do so. It is a miracle: we do everything we can in order to manage our lives, but things only get worse.

It wasn’t so in the past, but today we realize we are absolutely helpless and unable to control our fate in any way. The question is whether we can influence our fate.

In every generation there are people who can foresee the future and who can say what will happen. Foreseeing fate is one thing, but changing it is a totally different issue. No one can do that. If someone promises you that, you should be very careful.

Question: It turns out that fate is like a finalized script of a play that we are going to act in. There are people who can foresee our destiny, but no one can actually change it. Does the wisdom of Kabbalah enable us to reveal our fate and most importantly to change it?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science that is first and foremost meant to reveal the plan of creation to us, which means the process we undergo. This process controls us and leads us to a certain goal from one generation to the next. It began even before the creation of our universe and it will bring us to the end of creation when this whole world will take on its new form, which is different from its current form.

The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us only about part of the general plan. The plan itself is much wider and includes other dimensions beyond time, motion, and space, but the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about what we need to do here while living in this world, as we call it, and how we can change our fate during this lifetime. It enables us to change our state at every given moment so that it will be for everyone’s sake: for our own sake and for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a very practical science and is only meant for practical use.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah there is fate and everything that is registered has to be fulfilled, but we can change the way we undergo these states. Suppose I am a child whose parents sent to first grade and I have no choice but to go to school for ten years until I graduate.

However, it is up to me how I will spend those next ten years: whether nicely or in a terrible painful way, whether I will feel good or bad, whether I will be punished or receive commendations. This means changing our fate.

Question: It turns out that the script has already been written and according to it I have to be in school, but it is up to me how I will feel in this predetermined state.

Answer: It is up to me how the program will operate on me to the extent that I manage to learn it and how to use it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 478 – The Right To Change Our Fate,” 12/21/14

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New Life #406 – Heaven And Hell
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What are heaven and hell according to the wisdom of Kabbalah? What does a person have to undergo during his lifetime and how can we reach bestowal unto others and feel as if we are in Heaven? Where are heaven and hell?

A person does not choose the genes he is born with and he doesn’t choose the way he is educated, so how can he be judged?

After the body dies there is neither heaven nor hell. It is about states that a person has to undergo during his lifetime. A person who is inclined to the truth relates to bestowal unto others as heaven and to what he does for his own sake as hell.

An ideal society is a society in which everyone treats others with love and bestowal. This is living in heaven.
From KabTV’s “New Life #406 – Our Attitude to Life: Heaven And Hell,” 6/15/14

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New Life #405 – An Ideal Society
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

Does a person have a conscience, what are the values of the ideal society, and how do we reach rules of ethics so it will be good for everyone?

The nature of the child operates according to what is good for his body. Later, he considers the bodies that surround him. This is already an ethic.

Some say it is not ethical to eat animals; others think that this is completely moral. So morality is something relative. Even the Nazis thought that they were building a society with high morals.

Only by transcending the ego do we achieve a higher morality. This process begins through the recognition of the evil in our nature.

Only if we change the nature of humans so that one will feel others instead of himself, will he relate to them well. This is a reversal of the worldview; instead of feeling what is good for me, I feel what is good for others.

In such a situation, society will seem like an ideal mechanism, each doing only what is good for everyone.
From KabTV’s “New Life #405 – An Ideal Society,” 6/15/14

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New Life #397 – Community Building In The Era Of The “I”
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

How to we get to know the self through community education and how do we learn to manage our lives in the best possible way through our relations with the environment?

Everyone is an individualist, but today we are all connected. We need to develop community education. Community life can certainly save us a lot, but no one wants to get close to others.

The goal of community education is to develop the ability to connect to others, the ability we had as children. An educational group is not a community yet. A community refers to the connection between people.

If everyone comes out of his corner, we can turn any simple neighborhood into a prestigious neighborhood.
From KabTV’s “New Life #397 –Community Building In The Era Of The “I” 6/5/14

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New Life #396 – The Need For Community Life Today
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

Where does the desire to live in a community stem from? What is the social trend in this respect and how do we build the right community?

The lack of social life has been felt since the 1960’s. People began to gather in different communities. Life develops us in two different directions: indifference to others, and, on the other hand, the lack of warmth and mutuality. In the future, the community will be responsible for all the services a person received from the tribe or the extended family in the past.

In a community a person feels secure that if something happened to him, he would be supported. This is mutual help. When every individual nullifies his own boundaries and is connected with everyone as one man in one heart it is a community.

Today everyone has a very big ego that keeps us part. If we connect above it, it will be heaven on earth.
From KabTV’s “New Life #396 – The Need For Community Life Today,” 6/5/14

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New Life 395 – Luck, Fate And Angels
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

How should one relate to the concept of luck and fate and how can everyone transform his life into an opportunity to achieve goodness?

Nothing is accidental in nature. From the Big Bang to the present moment, everything is managed according to fixed laws. Fate is a type of chain of situations that a person must go through from the beginning of life to its end.

Everyone has an opportunity to change his attitude toward what is happening to him and feel that everything is good. Everything in our lives is an opportunity to change our hatred into love. You begin to realize and see that this is so. Good and evil don’t exist. Bad is what is bad for others and good is what is good for others. “And you shall love your friend” (Leviticus 19:18). Nothing is bad except unfounded hatred and there is no good but brotherly love.

“Luck” consists of forces that reach a person, “fluid” from above, which arouse him to become balanced with others. If a person knows how to receive this correctly, this luck is felt as good to him, and if not, then it is bad.

The wisdom of connection teaches a person how to prepare himself to accept all events in life correctly. And what are angels? Angels are forces that influence me. An example is the force of gravity. Destructive angels are forces that give life all kinds of slaps and upsets and it is up to me to correct myself through them.

Essentially, correction is the formation of a good and balanced relationship, “And you shall love your friend as yourself.” Good angels bring love of others closer; evil angels pull one back toward egoism. Even demons and spirits are forces.

It is impossible to see them, one sees only the result of their influence. We must learn to manage them.
From KabTV’s “New Life 395 – Luck, Fate And Angels,” 6/3/14

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