Entries in the 'Spirituality' Category

A Place You Won’t Find On The Map

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe worldwide WE! Convention that was held in New Jersey was the first convention where we already felt that it doesn’t matter where we are. People felt the same thing no matter where they were.

And it wasn’t because we learned to do this in some way, but because we ascended above the net of our material, virtual connection, and through the virtuality that connects us, above it, we started feeling the spiritual net of connection.

Now we continue this convention further from the same degree that we attained. We attach all the difficulties and problems that become revealed to us to the same ascent. There cannot be an ascent without difficulties because it is always difficult to ascend, just like climbing up a mountain. That is why we are now revealing various problems, depression, confusion, various questions that demand to be resolved, and work among us that has to rise to a qualitatively new level.

We are about to have a large convention in Moscow, and before that two meetings with our groups in Italy and Spain. It is necessary to prepare for this convention. Otherwise, why have it at all? We have to develop a great, powerful desire and at the next convention to already see ourselves on a completely different qualitative level compared to the previous.

What we attained at the convention in America is good. But the next convention has to give us the sensation that we are in one place, rather than in different places in our sensation. This is our goal.

At the previous convention we sat by our computer screens, slightly ascending above this virtual connection. Almost all of us felt how in every corner of the world, at all the mirror conventions, people had the same feeling of joy and inspiration, and the same thoughts. But nevertheless, people felt that they were in different places—in Israel, in New Jersey, in Toronto, in Moscow, in Sao-Paulo, and other cities and countries, as if they were all together.

Now we have to attain the sensation that we aren’t located in different places, but in one spiritual space, where we are connected together. We have to turn off the “as if,” the virtual illusion, and attain the state of being all together. There are no boundaries or distances for sensations and this is what we have to achieve.

This is our goal at the next convention: We have to completely separate from the geographic locations and from the virtual connection. True, all of this does exist. But above all of this, we will very quickly attain the sensation that we are in one spiritual place, rather than in any material location. This is what we should attain at the next convention.

And now we have to work on this. If this is the goal we have placed before us, then we must form a common desire, the need to attain it. We have to talk about this, work in this direction, and maybe write several songs and organize several events and friends’ assemblies.

Everything has to be done for the sake of this goal: to be in one place, meaning in one desire, because “place” in spirituality means “desire.” This is already called “as one man with one heart.” This is what we have to reach, and it happens gradually, step by step, from one convention to the next. This is the goal.
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From the lesson on 4/8/11, “Preface to Pticha”

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The Creator Is Known By His Actions

Dr. Michael LaitmanKabbalists begin telling us about creation by saying that “before the creatures were created, the simple upper Light filled the whole existence” (beginning words of the ARI’s book, The Tree of Life). In other words, reality had already existed, which is the desire of the creature to feel pleasure that was filled with Light.

The plan of creation is to delight the created beings. And this gift that the Creator wishes to bestow can be accepted only by having met two conditions: the creature must become like the Creator and at the same be independent of Him.

The best state of existence is feeling the presence of the Creator. It is the greatest delight, and it must be felt regardless of anyone else. The created being must be completely autonomous and equal to the Creator.

Therefore, the upper force is concealed. At this moment we are surrounded by various radio waves, yet the only person aware of them is the one possessing a radio capable of receiving something that can be recreated within, in one’s properties. We are surrounded by white light, but we perceive it as blue, red, and all other colors. While the light itself has no color, the color is created by the one receiving it, absorbing only certain waves through one’s own prism.

Hence, light seems to us as yellow, blue, and red. Actually the reason for this is the glass which stops and reflects these waves that thereby seem as colors. But there are no shades in the light itself.

And in the same way we perceive the Creator. To the degree that we can equalize ourselves with Him, His property of bestowal, in each of our 613 desires, in that very desire and degree, we will perceive the Creator. So we gradually get to know Him in small portions.

In man, there are always 613 desires acting, which are the foundation of our perception. Yet, we can strengthen the power of this spiritual vessel, having risen on the 125 steps of equivalence to the Creator, until all of our 613 desires have become completely identical to Him. Thus we attain the Creator, and this is regarded as “know Him by His actions.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2011, Writings of Rabash

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What To Ask From The Creator?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Each person reaches a point where everything that used to help him advance and develop becomes completely useless. What should his plea to the Creator be in such a state?

Answer: Ask for anything you want but it won’t help! The Creator is a perfect force of nature. It isn’t an old man or a force that can be influenced. Not at all! The Creator is absolute and therefore does not change. If the Creator changed, that would mean He was different before and now became better or worse.

To ask the Creator means to develop new desires within me. The reason I sense change in His constant influence over me is because I change. The Creator never changes! He doesn’t hear or see anything from us. He is simply a great, eternal, existing, and perfect force of nature. We are the ones that must change until we become similar to Him.

Our prayers are self-judgment, self-evaluation, and the desire to change. There’s nothing to ask of the Creator, otherwise it’s as if you are saying: “You are not that good. Please be better!”

Gradually we will discover that we are dealing with nature. The Creator is nature. And within this nature only we can change. A human being is the only one who can change himself. Then a question arises: What state do we have to reach and how do we reach it, in order to feel eternal and perfect, like nature?
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From Lesson 3 in Moscow 1/16/2011, Questions and Answers

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Rising Above The Problem In Order To Solve It

Dr. Michael LaitmanAt the human level of this world we can study, know, and somewhat control the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. Albeit not in the best possible way, we nevertheless are able to understand and change nature to a certain degree.

However, we cannot control humanity, the human society, and today it manifests increasingly clearly in everything we do. We are unable to raise a new generation, our own children, correctly. Previously, we didn’t think of it, but today we are facing a problem: The young generation is completely detached from us, and we are unable to do anything with the young.

If we could turn them into reasonable, good people (though we ourselves don’t know what it means), then at least our children would have a good life. All generations hoped that their hard life will pay-off with the success of their children. But today we are in a transition period: We as if rolled over the peak of expectations and started to descend, having lost any hope that the life of the next generation will be better than ours. This is why people no longer want to start a family and have children.

Essentially, we face the following problem: If we want to build a normal life for seven billion people on a simple, corporeal level, we need to exist at the spiritual level. By being at the human degree (4), I can rule over the lower levels: the still (1), vegetative (2), and animate (3). But in order to keep my own degree under control, I must rise above it, to the spiritual level (5). Then from it, I will be able to govern my own human degree (4).

So the state of affairs is very simple: To repair education, family, interpersonal relations, business, ecology, economy, to deal with new diseases and viruses, I must know where all of it stems from, for what reason, where the forces that govern the human level are. These forces do not exist here, and it means that I must rise to a higher degree.

This is why Baal HaSulam rejoiced in the opportunity to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah to the entire world, and not just to himself, to a handful of disciples. And although this “handful” grew to a few million people who follow our lessons and materials, we nevertheless talk about everybody in the world.

Soon we will reach a state which we can’t even describe. Without an elementary knowledge about how to govern this world from the fifth degree, man won’t be able to succeed in any area of social life. Even today the programs humanity initiates to benefit family, country, and the world get stuck and fail.

Hence, Kabbalah is needed not just to help you and me enter the spiritual reality. Massive crises accumulate into one multi-system crisis that pushes the entire world toward the ascent to a new degree.

We stand out from the rest of humanity by the fact that, being at the fourth level, we received the “point in the heart,” the desire to enter the fifth level. We are motivated to move forward by a good impulse, while the rest of the world is being pushed toward it by enormous suffering that hits it from behind. We are being lured with a “candy,” the aspiration toward something good, while the rest of the world moves out of hopelessness, being pushed with a “stick.” They are like animals that do not know where to go, how to cope with disasters that occur everywhere. And it is only the beginning.

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From Lesson 1, WE! Convention 4/1/2011

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The Whole World Depends On These Three Days


Question: What inner work do we have to perform during this Convention, considering the entire weight of the responsibility for the whole world that is incumbent upon us?

Answer: We really do bear enormous responsibility for the whole world. But there are two components to this.

The most important thing is the connection between us. We have to understand that since the whole world is interconnected, then it doesn’t even matter how successful or not our address to the world is. First of all, the unity among us is definitely transferred to everyone.

That’s because all of humanity is connected as one. Baal HaSulam writes in the article “600,000 souls” that there is just one soul in the world. That means all humanity, all seven billion people, are connected together into one whole, into a single organism, the body of the common soul.

This organism grew to the extent that all of its parts, the particular souls, developed. Each of them developed until its ten material Sefirot. But now we have discovered that the entire organism is connected into one, as if the connection among everyone has closed up.

That is why people in whom the point in the heart has been revealed serve as the brain of this whole system. This is written at the end of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar”: The whole world divides into the inner and outer parts. The inner part is we, people with the point in the heart.

If we connect with each other through a good, proper connection, this will expand to the whole world. Then, as Baal HaSulam writes at the end of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” this will splash out into the whole world, like when the right command comes from the brain to the whole body. Then everyone will take this command and start changing. This is called internal dissemination.

Whether we want it or not, our unity is transferred to the whole world and the world changes for the better. All other people also advance toward unity. After all, they simply live their earthly lives, not knowing where their thoughts and desires come from.

That is our inner dissemination, which happens without any words and without coming out to the world externally. However, in order to prepare people to be receptive to this so they will react to us faster, and besides, to give them the opportunity to work and act together with us, which will unite us even more, we also work on external dissemination for everyone.

It turns out that through our inner dissemination we intend for our unity to also be transferred to everyone else. This is enough. In the external dissemination we organize among ourselves and this gives us a field of activity, as well as unites us by giving us an additional, external reason to unite. That is how we act in the world.

However, without any doubt, the unity among us determines everything and in this regard it cannot be compared to anything else. Let us hope that over the course of these three days we will attain a new degree of unity. I don’t have any doubts about this because even now we are in this state and will be able to feel spirituality at least for a short time, to feel what it means to be connected in our hearts and thoughts.

All of this depends on every person’s inner efforts. Try to think that we all already desire to feel the unity between us, not to be in the bodies, but to immerse deeper inside, into the realm of our desires so they will all unite together into one whole desire. If we attain this, then we will feel the Upper Light that reigns inside of this desire and will experience the eternal flow of life. This is up to us.

Perhaps we will attain this only temporarily because the first time it happens, it really is difficult to hold on to this sensation constantly. But at least we will receive the first impression of spirituality, will “taste” it, and then we will already know what to aspire to.

I very much hope that we will attain this and that the taste of spirituality will remain with us forever.
From the 1st lesson of the WE! Convention on 4/1/11

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Did You Order A Tour To The Spiritual World?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should I experience all of the Kabbalistic terms that we study in Talmud Eser Sefirot, for example, NHY and Nefesh?

Answer: When you attain the spiritual world, you will feel the Light that is called NHY or the Light of Nefesh. You will feel it! And then you will also understand what Kabbalists write.

This is called, “a person’s soul will teach him.” You will feel it, and from your sensation you will also understand what it is called. It’s like you find yourself in an unknown city where you look at some buildings that cannot be recognized from the outside, and you say, “This is a theater that was built 300 years ago. And that’s a museum.” Thus, you describe everything you see. As you recognize things, you reveal their names, their essence, and absolutely everything.

This is called spiritual attainment and it means that a person’s soul teaches him. It’s as if there is an instructor inside of you who teaches you. This is your soul. That’s because you tune into the same sources. Where did Kabbalists get this knowledge from? Only from their attainment. Where did Adam HaRishon get it from, being the first person who attained spirituality? He revealed his inner world, the spiritual world.

This is not an imaginary world that appears as our world in this external shell of our body. When we enter inside, we see the spiritual world. There, Adam revealed everything and he began calling all the parts of reality by different names. He gave them names. That is how you will also know what every element of the spiritual world is called.
From the lesson on 3/25/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Raising The Contrast Of The Picture Of Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanNature is absolute good and therefore everything must be evaluated by the final state to which it is leading us. In general, “nature” and “the Creator” is the same thing. So why did nature arrange things so that in the process of our development we have to go through so many unpleasant, problematic, and atrocious states on the path to the good finish line?

The answer is simple: Goodness as such does not exist. We reveal it only in comparison to evil. There is no good without evil, and therefore we must reveal flaws along with their compensation over and over again. That is the only way we can acquire depth of sensation. The contrast between good and evil brings us understanding, and on the path leading through a procession of states, we gain experience in transitioning from evil to good.

In this constant movement we accumulate all the evil inside of us, and above it all of the good, and then we become aware of the gap between them, the abyss between infinity with a minus sign and infinity with a plus sign. All of this fits inside us, is absorbed in us, and becomes our vessel or volume.

Good and evil, plus and minus cannot exist in us separately. There is no Creator without creation. We talk about the Light only in the context of a vessel that is already present inside. We do not view the Creator separately from creation, which He created. It is impossible to say whether anything existed previously because the very notion of time, the very basis of perception disappears. There is no one to say anything and no one to say it about. Everything is only attained by creation. Even though it is secondary in relation to the Light, it is so only in terms of cause and effect.

The Ari writes, “Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created, the Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence.” In other words, the Light already fills reality, exists in it, and is subject to perception or sensation. Having attained that reality, a Kabbalist tells us about it. We will never be able to discuss anything we did not attain inside our vessels.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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