Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

A Name That Forces The Heart To Contract

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is a “drop of unification” a state that exists on every level?

Answer: There is nothing but a “drop of unification,” the point of contact, and a person provides everything else. The Light has no measure and all the measurements are done by the vessel.

A drop of unification that comes to us from the Creator or a sea of unification is the same thing if it refers to something that comes from Above. All the measurements, the limitations, and the expansions always depend only on the one who receives. A drop of unification is renewed on every level, of course, but all the changes with regard to that drop of unification are in the vessel itself.

Question: What characterizes the first contact with the Upper?

Answer: You begin to care about hearing the word “Creator,” as if you hear the name of your little daughter, and you immediately respond and are filled with a warm feeling. This is exactly how you perceive the word “Creator.”

Before, you heard “Creator” and felt nothing, and didn’t link it to any image. Now it summons a response in you, like a name of a dear one. This response already signifies contact, some connection with your desire. You have filled your measure in doing a certain work, and then the Light already touches the flesh.

Only persistence and constant efforts will help you here. First you have to develop such sensitivity towards the friends in you . But your attitude to the friends is more general, and it only softens your heart. Your heart is a heart of stone and you begin to melt and to soften it with the help of the society. Then a new feeling towards the Creator is born inside your soft heart. The society only melts your heart and changes it from a heart of stone or wood into a soft and flexible heart, like rubber.

The heart already begins to beat: It expands and contracts and in between the contractions and the expansion there is a point where you begin to feel the Creator and that you belong to Him. You already feel that the Creator is not a stranger but that there is a point for Him in your heart, just like there is for the name of your beloved daughter.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/14

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A Science Of The Transition Period

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What needs to be the right use of science to correct the crisis we find ourselves in today?

Answer: The only thing you need to do is to bring humanity to the end of correction as quickly and comfortably as possible. And then this world will stop being felt with our senses, it will withdraw and transform only to provide a material level found under our primary spiritual state. We will begin to exist in a world of forces.

There is a need for science only for this transition. In principle science is a very primitive idea that studies and investigates those spiritual forces that came down and are found on the physical plane, in the material connection between them, meaning in the egoistic connection.

Since we are found on the physical plane ourselves, on this level we also discover connections. We ourselves are egoists; therefore, we identify the forces of nature as egoistic on that plane in which we ourselves exist, and this is called our “science.”

When we rise to the next higher level and become spiritual people, then, instead of material investigations, we will be involved with spiritual science. Why do we need to dig through this material and draw conclusions about all of these laws? These laws will cease to exist. Completely different laws operate in the spiritual world. In the power of bestowal there is unlimited, constant energy that is independent of distance and time. In this manner we go out to another space in which the old science loses all meaning.

This science has meaning and exists only as long as we exist with egoistic characteristics, so we learn about what is happening within us, about the material lawfulness of the function of the ego. But at the moment we go out to the spiritual space, everything will be transformed precisely into its opposite: All limitations of time, movement, distance, and the potential energy of reception and bestowal will disappear. We won’t need anything of what is now in this world.

There is a value for science only during the transition period, in order to free humanity and to convince it to be involved with integral education. And for this purpose we don’t need many, a few thousand people will be enough to supply all the compulsory needs for the whole world.

If a person needs clothing, he will press a button and a printer will print what he wants, a shirt and pants. If he wants to eat, then he will press on the button in that printer and from that material a tasteless steak will come out for him, like the pants. Science will reach such advancement.

All of this will exist as long as we are on the egoistic plane. But the moment that we correct ourselves and move to the world of forces, we won’t need such things as a steak or shirt. We will live within a completely different energy.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/9/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Sure Cure Without Side-Effects

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can we bring harm to the world by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah like the harm caused by the egoistic use of external science?

Answer: Through discovery of Kabbalah it’s impossible to do any harm because there is a natural filter that transfers only good influence from us to the upper world, to the system of forces that manage reality. Bad influence can never go there.

But when the time comes that you must have a good influence on that system and you don’t,  then you have a bad influence on it, not directly, but indirectly. You don’t damage the system willingly, and don’t even know it.

But this is speaking only about your lack of correction. You cannot intentionally cause destruction in the higher system. Deliberately you can only correct. You cannot add your efforts to provide a good influence, but a bad influence is impossible.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/09/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Loyalty Test

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf we want to come near the Creator, we have to be equivalent in form to Him. In the place where we reveal the Creator, we will reveal His humbleness, His mercy, His descent to us.

He diminishes, minimizes, annuls, and subdues Himself before us, just as we do before our children when we play with them. We have to lower ourselves before children in order to connect with them, to play with them, and to serve them, although we also maintain all the options as adults.

The point is that if we received a certain portion of feelings of a certain revelation during our convention, some new feelings, it is only thanks to the fact that the Creator descended to us, was revealed before us on lower levels.

We have had great success even thanks to this minimal contact with Him, which brought about some positive changes in us. We don’t feel them yet, but we will feel it as negative changes in the future since this is the way we advance until the full revelation, until a person feels that everything becomes worse and worse, further and further away from spirituality. Unfortunately, many are caught on this hook, feel disappointed and leave.

This is the test of our unselfishness: Why do I want to attain the upper world? Is it in order to feel good or is it in order to really help all humanity ascend and thus delight the Creator? This is why we have to accurately clarify the reason we are on this spiritual path.

When we feel certain changes internally, it means that they occur because the Creator is getting closer to us, which means that He is lowering Himself. The point where we feel His intensified feeling inside us is the place where we reveal His descent, and we only have to exert ourselves so that this descent will not seem too free to us, and that we already know and understand everything. If this nonsense comes to a person’s mind he only loses as a result.

So we mustn’t forget that we have only started to feel what real advancement is at the point that we have attained: in the unity between us and in the collective work on ourselves in order not to be separated.

We must understand that we are constantly being played with, but with a good intention. No one wants us to fail, no one wants to push us downward, even what we call “the guards that are at the top of the King’s mountain,” are not actually trying to push us so that we will roll down. They are trying to hit us qualitatively, so that we will not fall but so we will simply discover the attributes that we still lack at the current point of our ascent.

If the Creator touches us with a certain question it makes us feel that we descend and encounter different problems in life, but it is only so that we will ascend and make the next step. There are actually no descents but rather a gradual revelation of opportunities of the rest of the ascent, and the guards are the Creator’s great helpers.
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An Invitation To Ascend

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the world there is nothing bad except for our wild stubbornness, which we must correct within us. I would say not to correct even but to use it in the right way.

In a place where we find the Creator we discover His descent to us, and we need to thank Him for this, to embrace this characteristic and to try to go forward together with Him by accepting every disturbance as an invitation to ascend. The main thing in our work is the deed.

Now, when we are scattered throughout the world, we integrate with our groups, mix with those who are not with us, with our work, the study, with all the problems of life that pop up all the time. The main thing is to accept all of this as an invitation, that in spite of all the changes in the surrounding conditions, and to remain in the state that was at the convention. This is our first goal.

You are traveling from here to the airport, boarding the airplane, flying, and landing: your country, the language, the noise, the commotion, all of this is only intended to help you to connect even closer with the friends. Suppose that as of today we have attained a particular level of connection. We cannot attain a greater level. Therefore, we now need to add to it all kinds of disturbances in order to process them afterwards and to become even closer with their help.

It’s not important when our next approach will be, it doesn’t have to be the physical meeting of the next convention. But it will already be enough to discover not the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) but the Inner Light (Ohr Pnimi).

What we have attained now is something great. We have truly reached a single whole. We understand each other; we have no need for any further explanations. The gaps have closed with us, shared thoughts have appeared. All this is becoming something unified even emotionally and intellectually on a level that already speaks of an understanding of going forward.

We are together within the group for the Creator. And we are together outside of the group for all of humanity. If you talk with anyone in the world who doesn’t study our system but is involved with Kabbalah, with meditation, with mysticism, with Torah, it’s not important with what, you will discover that none of them have a clear understanding of a method for advancement towards the goal of creation, of the correction, like we have.
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The Point Of Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, Letter #8, “Fruit of Wisdom”: “They say that there is a sublime purpose for all that happens in this world, and it is called “the drop of unification.” When those dwellers of clay houses go through all those terrors, through all that totality, in His pride, which is removed from them, a vent opens in the walls of their hearts, which are tightly sealed by the nature of Creation itself, and they become fit for instilling that drop of unification in their hearts.”

Question: The Light is whole when it is revealed, so is it called only a “drop of unification?”

Answer: You need no more than a point of connection in order to attain unification. It is like the birth of a new life, in which the father gives the whiteness, which is merely a drop. In fact life is created from one sperm cell, from one point of life, and there is no need for anything more than that. The drop of unification comes from the Creator, it is the photon, that particle of the Light, and there is no need for anything but that. Everything else comes from the created being, from his readiness, and then he reaches complete adhesion.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/11/14

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Truth And Benefit

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the beginning our work is tiring, and after that it keeps us busy and overtakes us….

Answer: This depends upon your skill. If you become an expert in your occupation, then work is a pleasure for you. When you enjoy what you are doing and your work is not felt as a burden but as pleasure, as self-expression,and then you don’t feel tired, like true artists who fall asleep at the easel from physical exhaustion and not because they detached themselves from the work.

Question: Sometimes I am so tired that without connection to the spiritual uplift and the group activity I feel that I am like a servant who doesn’t need anything. How is it possible to pass to a state of mutual cooperation?

Answer: We need to work together with everyone, and this is all. I know that there is no other way, and it seems to me that I cannot agree with this, it’s difficult for me, I would do everything differently, but there is no choice, it’s necessary; a higher goal exists.

It cannot be that I will advance towards truth because I gain some benefit from it. Truth and benefit don’t exist together. Benefit is only for my ego.

The higher goal forces us to advance. We give contentment to the Creator with this; we raise ourselves to His level.

Look for obligations with regard to the group, with regard to the friends, responsibility for everyone; rise to this level, don’t lower yourself. The Creator will give you all kinds of side-effects. Suppose that you are doing something good together now, He will push you towards a better job, better pay, better conditions, and so forth.

It’s impossible to accept this as charity or pay. There is only one payoff: I want to discover the characteristic of bestowal and love as a result of my work. Therefore, try to pull yourself closer and closer to the property of bestowal all the time.
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An Abandoned Child

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: While reading The Zohar, why do I suddenly have feelings which are opposite my efforts to hold on to the right intention and think about the friends, a feeling of actual hatred?

Answer: It turns out that I think and worry about the friends and suddenly I feel how the hatred towards them is evoked in me. This indicates that I don’t find the work desirable yet and that I simply force myself to think about them, and so this type of work is eventually nullified.

But it is a good thing since it is already a clarification that I lack the foundation. Indeed, why should I worry about them all of the sudden? It is as if I were given some strange baby and am forced to take care of him, but I feel indifferent towards him, and actually have no feelings towards him at all. I worry about him as much as I can simply out of compassion and pity, and then I lose patience and demand that he would be taken from me. He made me feel so tired that I simply began to hate him.

However, if he were my baby, I would endure anything and take care of him infinitely. This means that love gives us power. If I don’t have the power to worry about the friends in the group, it means that I lack love. It is a nice revelation!

If I worry that all the friends advance and that we will all be rewarded with a revelation while reading, if I worry about them gently and lovingly like I worry about my baby, I can actually measure to what extent I advance towards the goal. It is a very accurate measurement. This attitude towards the friends comes from the Light that Reforms, of course, and not just like that. So I should thank the Light that illuminates and gives me such support.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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An Individual Is Worthless Without The Others!

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen I think about the group I don’t see specific people and I don’t remember faces or names. This is especially true since people change a lot, not externally but internally. So I don’t see individual people but rather the general desire of the group that has to be given a form that is as real as possible.

So we shouldn’t think about specific friends but about the whole group, which I have already added into one integral sum. Individuals remain on the left side of the formula, under the integral, while I already think about the right side of the formula, about its result, and this is where I start working.

Question: But this generalization seems like some abstract concept.

Answer: It isn’t an abstract concept but a live one! This general concept of the group is actually full of life, while every individual is dead. It is like the elementary particles, atoms, that begin to connect by some upper force that is not among them. Suddenly these atoms turn into something that is alive, and then a process of metabolism suddenly begins between them, which means life is formed!

One cell receives from another, absorbs things that it needs and extracts materials that are bad for the connection between them. They begin to look on the outside for whatever is good for the connection and helps them connect. All this stems from the connection, without which they would be dead, still, merely particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, ions, etc! These are only elementary particles in which there is no life, and suddenly by the connection between them they reach such a developed form.

Then an inner and external feeling begins to develop by connections that are increasingly more complex. The connection between the organs leads to such an unusual complex combination because each one is ready to take on a special role with regard to the others and worry about nothing else. The liver, for example, cleans the blood that the heart pumps and conveys to the other organs, but what can the liver do without the heart or the heart without the liver? All these organs reach such a loyal connection between them that each one is ready to sacrifice its life for the sake of the others.

The body wouldn’t be able to function without one of the major organs, without the lungs, the liver, the heart, the kidneys, or the brain. One is worthless without the others. Notice how close and connected they have become, ready to sacrifice their life for one another and not worry about it. Each one worries only about the mission it was given and feels 100% responsible for everyone else. This is called mutual guarantee.

Before that there is no body. So the general concept of a group is not an abstract concept but actually the only thing that lives and exists!
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/10/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Unconditional Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I have heard that the love and the hatred that we feel should develop qualitatively and that in an ideal state we should reach unfounded hatred and from it advance to unconditional love.

Answer: The terms unconditional love and unfounded hatred need to be better and more accurately clarified.

Unconditional love is love that is above all reasons. I want you to listen to this carefully! This means that I have been over all the reasons against this love and I feel love that is above all these reasons.

It is the same when it comes to unfounded hatred. I have many reasons to love, and still despite all these reasons, I hate everyone for no reason. This is the state we should reach.

In fact, the reason that I hate a friend is meaningless since it is given to me on purpose from Above each time. I have to build up love above this hatred, despite the hate! Even if I don’t like the friend, I try to serve him in some way, to give him something, to support him somehow. If I invest in him, I will discover a positive attitude towards him since I invest myself in him.

Besides, we also have to clarify the friend’s actions: Perhaps he performs great actions, perhaps he does great things, and I hate him because he picks his nose. We have to penetrate into one another and then the hatred we feel towards a friend will transform into liking and even love.

Then you will suddenly see yourself in him, and him in you, and that you are actually one whole general vessel.

Question: In the last couple of days I have felt shame, love, mutual guarantee, the Divinity, and, at the same time, that I hate the friends. I can’t understand, is it momentary hatred or real hatred?

Answer: Hatred is certainly revealed on every level. It becomes more real on the upper levels, like we are told about Rabbi Shimon and his students. In the states that we now feel it is very small. It isn’t the hatred we read about in The Book of Zohar, but rather disrespect, some kind of indifference. In short, it isn’t serious yet. So don’t worry, everything is still ahead of you.
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