Question: The world today resembles people that are in Egyptian exile. And what is happening today is similar to the Egyptian plagues. Because the Torah is the source of all religions and all spiritual practices, please comment on a very universal quote from the Torah that refers to the world as a nation.
It is written: The Torah, Exodus, 3:17 “And I said, ‘I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey.’”
The word “you” implies the world. What does this mean?
Answer: That the Creator will lead us out from under the control of our common egoism, which, in principle, He created and supports in order to show us the real exit to a kind, mutual, correct existence. This is our immediate good future.
Question: It means that we are under the control of egoism. Is this the Egyptian slavery?
Answer: Yes, all of humanity is in it.
Question: Is it only the Creator who can bring us out of this state?
Answer: The same force that created the negative force inverts itself and turns into a positive one. That is, the force that drove us there will also lead us out.
Question: Further, it is written about the process: The Torah, Exodus, 3:19: “However, I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go, except through a mighty hand.”
What does it mean for our world today?
Answer: If we do not put pressure on the egoism that the Creator created and supports in us, if we do not apply even greater force to it that will force egoism to begin to change, to retreat, then this will never happen. The Creator holds it. It means that the Creator must defeat and overcome Himself. This is how we get out from under the control of egoism.
The fact that we are suffering now, that the world is suffering, is the natural state of the world that it must go through in order to clearly assess what is good and what is bad.
Question: Is this what the Creator is doing to us?
Answer: Yes. We should read the story “The Little Son Came to His Father” in our childhood and actualize this study within ourselves.
At the moment, he feels that he is a tiny toddler and that he has to figure out how to live. Therefore, he asks his father: “What is good and what is bad? I do not know where I am. I take every step and it seems to me that it is good, but it turns out to be bad.” And he receives an explanation.
Question: And his father explains to him that the king of Egypt will not let him leave. But I will make him do it with a mighty hand.
Who is the mighty hand aimed at: the king of Egypt or me?
Answer: The mighty hand is aimed at the king of Egypt that is within you, at the egoism that is within you so that you want the good force of nature to conquer the evil force of nature. All of this is only within us.
Comment: Then there is this sentence: The Torah, Exodus, 3:20: “And I will stretch forth My hand and smite the Egyptians with all My miracles that I will wreak in their midst, and afterwards he will send you out.”
My Response: All the evil that exists in egoism should be revealed and a person should see it, sense it, feel it, in the present and in the possible future. Then he will see how the Creator changes it all to the opposite, and by this a person praises the Creator.
We are talking about the ten plagues that tear a person away from his egoism. These are the ten qualities we call Sefirot, from which we break away.
Question: Can we break away without plagues?
Answer: If you yourself will want to break away without them, then you can.
Question: Will I be able to want it?
Answer: To do this, you need to engage in self-education; that is, convince yourself that even the little evil that is now revealed in you is revealed in you relative to others, and you must do everything in order to hate these qualities in you. Then you will gradually distance yourself from them, up to complete separation.
Question: Who are Moses and his brother Aaron to the world? What is this?
Answer: These are two forces that lead us out of the state of egoism into the quality of connection and love between us and between us and the Creator.
Question: How do they appear in a person? At what point?
Answer: A person begins to extract them out of himself. They exist within him. In general, everything exists within a person. A person is a small world. The only problem is that we need to tune in so as to find these forces in ourselves, extract them, start working with them, and treat everything around us in this way through these two qualities.
Then the world changes. If I look at the world through them, it becomes different.
Question: Moses and Aaron come to Pharaoh. The Creator told them: “Go,” and they went. They say: “Let my people go.” And Pharaoh said: “Who is the Lord that I should heed His voice to let Israel out?” What is this?
Answer: People is a person with all his qualities. A person should get out from under the control of egoism under another control. This is called “let my people go.”
And the Pharaoh answers: “And who is this God?” because Pharaoh as if does not know that for certain. Pharaoh’s task is to trick a person so that he does not understand at all where he is. So that later he could clearly determine what is the Pharaoh, the Creator, Egypt, and outside of Egypt.
Pharaoh is our egoism that says: “I do not want to know any Creator. I do not know Him.” Because “to know” means to understand and obey.
Question: Will egoism always resist nature, the Creator?
Answer: Absolutely! We can never exit our nature while remaining in it. One contradicts the other.
Question: Pharaoh’s reaction to the request of Moses and Aaron to let the people go was simple. Pharaoh said, Exodus, 5:9: “Let the labor fall heavy upon the men”—upon the ones they want to lead out of egoism, upon these desires—“and let them work at it, and let them not talk about false matters.”
All this is empty speech for the Pharaoh. He is as if taking revenge; he says: “Do you want to lead the people out? We are going to burden them with work now.”
Can we compare this with the fact that in our world we are currently overwhelmed with work?
Answer: What does it matter whether they want or do not want? They only prolong their suffering by this. What else can be done? Piling even more work on them is what the Pharaoh does. Lock them up in some petty worries. Lock them up in such social, family, and other states that they will be just like little bugs.
Question: So these worries and problems that exist in the world now, the crazy amount of news, is this the empty work that is piled on us? Will all our actions at the level of this earth lead to nothing?
Answer: I think people already understand this. And in addition to this, there are wars, sufferings, fears, and anxieties.
Question: Is it in order to take us away from all this useless work?
Answer: Yes. It is such a state that a person is just like a bunny sitting under a burdock and shaking. This is such a pitiful state for such a great, potential being as human.
Question: Do you think a person is already beginning to understand this?
Answer: He already hears it in some things. He does not know how to exit this state, but he understands that “yes, this is me, this is us.” And what is next? He cannot see what is next.
If he had at least a tiny bit, a little bit of some small vision ahead, if he were able to see through a crack that there is still an opportunity, then, of course, he would have strength. Not in himself alone but in the unity between them. This is what needs to be revealed here! After all, people are right: “Where did we come from, what are we, and where are we going? Nothing. Everyone is for himself.”
Question: Yet, you are saying that the whole secret is in connection. Can you reveal this to us?
Answer: It is impossible to get out of this state we are in now. We will continue to turn sour in it until it as if cements us in the pyramids of Pharaoh.
This is what Pharaoh wants from us. So that we voluntarily agree to enter together with him into this huge tomb and lie down there nicely, the way they lie there. And so continues our eternal path in egoism. Without changing—like those mummies.
But if we go on the path of connection and unification, then we will be able to break this strong egoistic cloak that covers us, encloses us, shuts all our senses, and we will be able to rush out of there and escape.
Question: Is this what humanity is now facing? Are we, as if, under this “cloak”?
Answer: Yes, and we will definitely come out of it. We will definitely come out.
Comment: Then it is written: The Torah, Exodus, 5:22-5:23: “So Moses returned to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Why have You harmed this people? Why have You sent me? Since I have come to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has harmed this people, and You have not saved Your people’”
My Response: A person does not understand what else he needs to do in order to exit the egoistic state. But for Pharaoh, this desire of a person to exit egoism is not enough. He needs an extra, additional great desire. So that a person will turn to him. And not with reproach but with a plea that the Creator would go ahead of them and lead them all out of Egypt by hand. This is what is still missing.
Therefore, the Creator sends Moses back. He says: “You go and ask.” And ten times back and forth in this way until Moses already feels that this is it, all forces, all intentions, and all possibilities have dried out and only then do they succeed in escaping Egypt.
Question: Is it when the last, tenth plague comes that Pharaoh says: “You can exit”?
Answer: Yes.
Question: The last plague is the death of the firstborn. What is it from the Kabbalistic point of view?
Answer: It is the condition that man had when he existed in the world even before all these revelations. That I exist in an egoistic world, I am in it, I am under the control of the upper force. This is how I develop and live.
The death of the firstborn means that I tear off all my original, primary egoistic foundations and break away from everything that connected me with the past.
Question: Why is it so scary for Pharaoh?
Answer: Because the connection with him, with Pharaoh, is really getting torn. That is it, a person refuses to be under his control and to be connected with him. A person is ready to rise above himself no matter what! Whatever happens, just not to be under the control of Pharaoh!
Only then Pharaoh lets the person go. This is what he exists for, to bring a person to such a state.
At the moment when this thought, this desire, “Come what may, no matter what, just not with Pharaoh, not under him,” appears in a person, then everything happens. This is called the “death of the firstborn,” i.e., of the entire basis of a person’s egoistic existence.
Question: Does humanity need to reach such a cry, such a scream, such a state? Is it only possible then to escape from the control of egoism?
Answer: Of course.
Question: Is it possible for every person to come to such a state?
Answer: For every person, according to his measure. It will happen.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/18/22
Related Material:
Passover for the Whole World
Disasters In The World Are Modern Egyptian Plagues
Firstborn—The Next State Of Man
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