Entries in the 'Society' Category

“Dressing” Into Someone Else

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is the path to love so difficult and confusing?

Answer: It’s us who are confused.

I am ruled by the egoistic desire and everything I feel and think is only inside of it, for the sake of my own benefit. So how can I make a different calculation—not for my own sake?

Imagine that you “dress” into someone else and begin making a calculation from his perspective. It was a mere 100 years ago that people began to grasp such concepts. It’s not an accident that this period was epitomized by Freud and Einstein, who not only made seminal discoveries, but also had friendly connections with each other.

After hundreds of thousands of years of development, it was a mere century ago that the greatest minds of humanity finally invented psychoanalysis—or in other words, began to analyze man internally on the material level. Only then did they begin to research human perception, “Me and the surrounding world, me and the neighbor.”

This is not simple. It took a very long period of time to approach man’s animate soul, and that’s not even close to spirituality. The entire problem is that we cannot and do not want to dress into others. Society has to ensure that every person will do this, that every person will try to do it and start discerning how he appears in the eyes of the neighbor and what the neighbor wants.

This is very difficult even though it only involves psychological exercises in the plane of our world, which don’t even relate to spirituality yet. Do you want more? Go ahead. Organize an environment that will finally begin to influence you.

The path is long precisely because no one influences you. There is no progress without social influence. Where could a person get the spiritual details of perception? Only from the environment.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/11, Shamati

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You Can’t “Fall Asleep” And Then “Wake Up” At The End Of Correction

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: As far as I understand, the Creator is playing a game with us and this game has a specific purpose. But every game has an end and that means that this game will end in about 200 years. Is that right?

Answer: Actually, I hope that it will end even sooner. I am telling you with total confidence that we can complete it in several years. There are no obstacles.

Question cont’d: If this “game” will end and we will get where we have to get in any case, meaning that we will correct our soul, then what is the difference between the left and right lines? And what will happen if we choose the path of the left line?

Answer: The purpose of creation is for every one of us, with each of us being a small point of the common Kli or desire, to attain perfection, meaning the same kind of unity with all the other points of this Kli as the one existing among the cells of a perfect, healthy organism.

In order to reach this goal, we have to understand, feel, and attain this entire common, huge system because in essence we are one single organism in which we are united with one another. Even our physical body functions by virtue of being permeated by a certain informational field. It’s not just a lymphatic system, a cardiovascular system, a nervous system, and so on, but a certain common informational system. Therefore, it is impossible for me to take a sleeping pill and fall asleep, or freeze myself for 200 years and then have someone wake me up and I will be at the end of correction. That is impossible!

I have to develop my mind and heart, my ability to understand, realize, and attain. After all, in one hour we cannot shove into a child all of the knowledge that he has to acquire over 20 years of study. And in exactly the same way, we cannot teach a person who grew up in the jungle everything that he has to gradually receive over the course of several decades. We have examples of this.

In other words, every person has to go through his personal path of development, gradually and persistently raising himself. The only difference is whether he will be nudged forward by a “rod” at every step of the way, or if he will advance forward out of his own desire.

We have to go through specific phases of correction and every one of us has to go through them one after the other. And with every step, I am like a child being forced by his parents to read one more word, then one more, and so on. I suffer greatly because I am forced to study, until I understand that I will have to do this one way or another.

But if I am smart, then I understand that I can develop a desire for reading. For example, when looking at my friends who have already learned to read well, I begin to be ashamed of my inability and I get a desire to “catch up” to them. Then I don’t need anyone to scold me but I move forward by myself.

This is the difference between the left and right lines—the path of suffering, when “blows” come down on you from all directions and the “sweet” path where you are in the right environment which awakens the feeling of envy in you. You look at them and envy that they have something you don’t. And this forces you to move.
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From the 3rd lesson at the WE! Convention on 4/1/11

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The World Has Lost Its Head

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the biggest problem in the world?

Answer: The absence of a global government is the biggest threat to the peace in the world, and it is this absence in particular that causes all modern crises.

The G20 demonstrated that the parties cannot reach agreement on major issues. The world governing body does not exist, while a global, integral world demands it.

Question: Do you think that after the recent events in the Arab countries, the North Caucasian (Muslim) regions of Russian (Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria) will also demand change, that is, independence?

Answer: I don’t think so because, as someone put it: "I could take it in pieces, but I need everything." Meanwhile, what’s wrong with receiving funds and everything that’s needed from the future victim and preparing to completely overtake it at its own expense? Why leave if the goal is to take over everything, the entire world?

Question: What stimulates the development of the Kabbalistic society?

Answer: Competition drives the development of a democratic society. The stimulus for the development in an autocratic society is power and then corruption, the use of power not for social interests but for personal benefit. Corruption gradually buys up the state, officials, and infiltrates government agencies with their people.

But a corrupted government is unable to rule the country because corrupted officials are motivated only by their personal interests. This is why such a government will be replaced by a Nazi, nationalistic, regime, which will lead to a world war. Alternatively, it will be a government motivated by maintaining equality of all members of society and then the world.
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Being Determined On The Path

Dr. Michael LaitmanEvery person has an obligation and there can be no excuses or indulgences about carrying it out: One has to take care of the feeling of joy, confidence, and the force that is contained in our environment. One should not express the weakness indecisiveness inherent in him, even though no one has “surfaced from the fog” yet.

One should not express disregard, which comes to us again and again as our egoism grows. I have to work above my ego, constantly radiating confidence, decisiveness on the path, and joy as a sign of the fact that I am in a perfect state.

It might seem like I don’t have anything, but I don’t need anything. I only want to be in the state of pure bestowal. After all, no matter what I acquire, it will belong to my egoism. Only when I detach from it, when I am happy that it is empty and don’t demand any fulfillment for it, then I begin to acquire the spiritual world. This transition is called “spiritual birth.” I very much hope that we won’t forget about this.

Rabash writes the following in the article “A person will help his neighbor”:
Every person has to pay attention and think about how he can help his friend by evoking an uplifted mood in him. With regard to mood, every person can find a place of lack in his friend, which he is able to fulfill.

And in the article “The Purpose of the Group” he writes:
In the society people have to pay extra attention to ensure that carelessness will not enter their environment because it destroys everything.

Whoever disregards anything on the path, at the studies, or in realizing the greatness of the friends and the teacher, that person makes us weaker. Therefore, you should immediately throw him out of the group. He is your greatest enemy. Don’t leave him alone. Let him think about what he is doing, let him apologize, let him understand his problem, and then it will be possible to take him back.

A person who weakens us on the path should not be kept in the group even for a second. By observing this rule, we will definitely reach the goal quickly.
From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention on 4/1/11

Nature Is Above Logic

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are being given an example of how the world can change. A half a million people gather at the main square of a nation’s capital and demand a new government. Their protest causes the government to collapse. Could anyone believe this would be possible? After all, this is above logic!

This is a very good example of what can happen to any government. If this happened with the dictatorships in East Africa or in Asia, then it can certainly occur in Europe and in the US. It merely seems to us that is won’t come to pass.

Currently our nature is revealing a new means for social change, and it will lead to a great deal of turbulence. We think: How could people switch from an egoistic consumer society, such as it is in the US, to a society based on equal distribution? The government can’t do it because it is tied down by obligations toward everyone that supports it. It has to provide them with the promised standard of living and therefore can’t change itself or its life philosophy.

But when a half a million people come out to protest, a government collapses. It’s not due to the lack of power because the dictators have enough power to destroy the protestors with a couple of bombs. However, they’re unable to do so because nature has already changed, the society has evolved, and the times are different. There’re things a person can’t do not even knowing why.

This is how it happens and hence great changes are awaiting us.
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From Lesson 2, WE! Convention 4/2/2011

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Everything Depends On The Right Focus

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe do not realize that our entire worldview passes through the prism of human society. The difference between the animate level and our, human level lies precisely in the fact that we build an environment.

We used to live in herds, just like animals. But then we started organizing special relationships among us, arranging people according to a hierarchy, and distributing functions. Our development thereby took on a social character even though it still unfolded egoistically, naturally, instinctively, by nature’s command. Yet we were becoming human.

We cannot even imagine what it would be like to live completely alone, without any memories of human society. In this situation a person would live by himself, on the level of an animal.

From this it is clear that we do not perceive reality the way it is, but through the environment. Society has raised me, endowed me with habits and models dictating how to look at what is happening, how to evaluate things, and how to accept everything that I see. My mind and feelings are programmed according to the value system that society has conditioned me to have over the course of the first 20 years of my life. I do not see the world the way it is, but the picture imposed on me by society.

Likewise, in the spiritual society we have to give a person our view of the world, funneled through the prism of love, the aspiration to bestow to others instead of personal benefit. Bestowal has to acquire the greatest importance in every person’s eyes.

At the same time a person’s worldview will still be built on the program “installed” in him by society. This is natural because it is the only way he can look at the world. A person by himself is just “an observation point,” whereas the analysis and understanding come from the norms of society, which tells him: This is important and this is not, this means one thing and that means something different. It’s as if we build a matrix in front of a person through which he sees the upper Light. Otherwise it would be impossible to see it.

On the other hand, right now we observe the upper Light through the matrix of human society. This is our world.

Thus, we have to become maximally included in the group, using the materials of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. That is how we build a new vision of the world inside of us. This is seen very clearly when looking at beginners. They come to the lesson or lecture as if they were coming from another world, but gradually they adopt a slightly different direction, a different perspective, and different values. Gradually we come closer to them and they change their point of view, the “polarization” of their picture of perception. In the same world, a different form of being comes through before them.

Then the lecture ends, the connection with me becomes severed, and everything disappears. Next time they return defocused again, with a distorted “resolution.” At every lecture it takes time to focus them anew, to bring the details that diffuse in their eyes back into one.

I am unable to do this all of the time. You have to focus on your own by uniting so that every mutual action will constantly keep you in the spiritual focus. It has to become focused a bit more and then a bit more, as if you are adjusting the resolution on binoculars by turning two lenses so they would come together on the spiritual goal. When you achieve this, you will immediately reveal the spiritual world.

Everything is determined by the love between friends. This is the “focus” that enables us to see the Creator. The friends bring together my feelings and mind in one direction, toward love for the neighbor, and then demand that I look only at them and that I think only about how to help them. I constantly concentrate on this and by means of the group I focus my attention into the thinnest line. That is how I reveal the Creator.
From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention 4/1/11, Purpose of the Group

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A Real Virtual Environment

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe have to organize an inner environment among us instead of the external, common human environment. Then our environment will offset the external influence and will influence us of its own accord, “brainwashing” us and intensively “advertising” spiritual ascent as the most important thing we have to accomplish in life.

Otherwise I will leave this world without any use. An animal lived and then died. The body has “strolled about” as long as it was allotted and then it decomposed, and in the meantime nothing was accomplished. The point instilled in it from the spiritual world remained a mere point and did not develop.

Everything depends on the importance of the environment. There is nothing more important than organizing a virtual environment that is warm and heart-felt. This is the most important thing. Otherwise my thoughts will disconnect from the right direction at every second and maybe the next time I disconnect, I will never return to it again.

After all, if I am given over to my own power, then I will never return to thoughts about spirituality. I stopped to think about it for the first time because the Creator, the upper force awakened me. The upper Light awakens Reshimot and that is how my spiritual Reshimo awakened, causing me to feel a desire that turns toward the Light. But this only happened once. Maybe the Creator will awaken the person once or twice more, but all the rest depends on us. I have to build an environment as fast as possible which will become a womb for me to raise my soul.

The spiritual environment has to be as numerous as possible, but more importantly, it must be as powerful and close-knit as possible. Baal HaSulam writes about this, and so does Rabash. The main force should be quality, not quantity. Quality determines everything.

The quality of the influence depends on how much we worry about one another, how inspired we become by one another, how much we return to the fundamental principles of the environment and take care to ensure that no one forgets about the goal. The thoughts of the friends are passed over to me and therefore, the more I inspire them, the more they inspire me in response.

I will not be able to awaken to spirituality unless I awaken the group to it. The group will inspire me also if I aspire it. We must always work in this closed circle.

That is why the virtual environment is important for us. We have to create a portal that will enable us to maintain unceasing contact with one another. It’s not accidental that communication means have been developed in the world enabling us to constantly stay in touch, to constantly see what is happening in our virtual environment.

I am dreaming about a virtual environment in which I will be able to constantly communicate and be in touch with you, to feel you by means of speech and music, 24 hours a day, non-stop. Then we will constantly give each other the realization of the importance of the goal, love, connection, and the right direction, and that is how we will hold ourselves in spiritual ascent and consolidation all together until we become a single vessel, one soul.

Let us hope that we will implement this platform and will stay in constant connection with it.
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From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention 4/1/11

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The Only Use Of This World

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe don’t even realize how deeply immersed we are in the egoistic nature. Our cells, our bodies, our world, our thoughts and desires, and generally everything that exists is just egoism and nothing more.

Everything aspires only to receive, to absorb as much goodness as possible for one’s individual self. This is the nature into which we are born and in which we live, not having the slightest inkling that there is a possibility for anything to exist besides this.

Nevertheless, we have to go from one world to another, or in other words, to acquire an additional, new world, to grow through from the point in the heart, to develop it into a new spiritual “body.” In essence, it is analogous to our current body, which only appears flat to us, but in reality it is depicted by forces and vectors. But instead of seeing this image on a computer display, we see it on the 3D screen of our consciousness.

We perceive reality on this screen of the receiving desire. Everything we are able to receive or perceive falls upon this screen and stops there, creating the picture that we see.

However, the forces of bestowal are entirely different. We cannot stop them with the screen of the receiving desire and therefore we do not perceive them. Only by creating a screen in the bestowing desire will we reveal the second half of reality. In truth, we won’t feel half, but nearly 100% of everything that exists. Whatever amount of Light this new screen, the intention of bestowal, will stop, that is the kind of picture we will see on it.

It is very difficult to start raising a second “body” from your point in the heart. To do that you have to enter a group, like a mother’s womb, and start growing inside it. This looks very repulsive and unreal to a person. The whole world is against it and therefore he does not think about it or attribute any significance to it.

That is why it is very difficult for us to focus on the group. Whatever the environment deems important, that is what’s important to us as well. If the world considers work in the group to be unimportant, then we also forget about it at every second. Even if we try to extend a thread of connection, to listen about it and to maintain it in our thoughts, it still seems infantile, unrealistic, and naïve to us, and that is because it is not important to the greater world. And vice versa, if the most unrealistic thing becomes important to everyone, then we would think about it, talk about it, and aspire to it.

That is why we need the “social opinion,” the confidence, the mutual influence that convinces us that we are doing something real and that our world is really not worth a thing. What do we have here besides a fleeting life full of suffering? If it weren’t for the unique opportunity to acquire eternal, perfect life during this time, then there would be no use from this world for us or for our children.
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From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention 4/1/11

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We Have Gathered Here….

Dr. Michael LaitmanWritings of Rabash, 1984, “Purpose of Society”: We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam, the way by which to climb the degrees of man, and not remain as a beast… And this is why we gather here—to establish a society where each of us follows the spirit of bestowing upon the Creator.

What is “bestowal to the Creator”? Everyone gets confused by these terms. And in general, Rabash wrote his articles in a language that we are not used to. We have to rewrite these words so they will sound clearly. “Bestowing to the Creator” means awakening the general force of nature (because the Creator is nature) and acquiring the force of bestowal in likeness to nature, in equivalence of form.

Baal HaSulam gives an example of the situation with a guest and a host. I can reveal the host’s bestowal to the degree that I with to bestow o him. But how can I desire this? After all, he is invisible to the eye and I will not reveal him until I reveal my inner desire to bestow to him.

I can only reveal him inside of the aspiration to him. With my desire to bestow, by attaining equivalence of form or the same “style” as the host, I remove the concealment and “open up the veil.”

To do that I have been given the society, the group where I can practice bestowal. Then, in the same place, among the friends, I discover the host, the Creator, and continue bestowing to Him through the group and together with the group. That is how we reveal Him.

This is our work: We want to unite among us in order to reveal the general force of nature, the bestowing force that is inside of us, in the group. There, inside, it becomes revealed to us, and in it we discover the spiritual world consisting of five levels or five worlds. In it we discover Partzufim, levels, Sefirot and much more.

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From the 5th lesson at the WE! Convention, The Purpose of the Group

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The Cure For Depression Is A Connection With Other People

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe “Globes” newspaper has published a comprehensive article about the “happiness industry,” which is making us more and more unhappy. The rate of depression in the West is constantly on the rise, while the average age of its victims is decreasing. According to data from the World Health Organization, by 2020 depression will be the second cause of disability and death in the world, surpassed only by cardiovascular diseases.

The modern person is sinking in loneliness, but society does not throw him a life-buoy. With the exception of Islam, the role of religion as a source of support is dwindling to nothingness. Communities are falling apart and the concept of a big, happy family in the Western countries is becoming nonsensical. As people shift to the space of virtual communications, they mistakenly suppose that from now on they can manage without a real, caring environment. As a result, a person looks for the solution to all the problems one on one with himself, inside his shell, perched by a computer screen.

The life of a society that suffers from attention deficit flies by at lightning speed. People twitter short trills hoping to have the time to express something that won’t be heard by anyone a moment later. Anything requiring inner efforts, persistence, and time is rejected at the root. When a person is empty, having no true goal, then worry and depression settle in. So where can he get that goal? Where can he find meaning?

Today all serious researchers assert that happiness lies inside contact with others, in bestowal, and that real meaning can only be revealed in the interconnection between us. Viktor Frankl, the famous Austrian psychologist, says that a person sitting at home and trying to find meaning on his own is like someone trying to break into an open door, not understanding that it opens inwards instead of out.

“You won’t find happiness in a shell,” says one of the interviewed experts to the “Globes” newspaper. By focusing on himself instead of extending a hand out to others, a person only increases his narcissism and depression.

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