Baal HaSulam, “The Acting Mind”: “There is great diversity even within the same teaching, for if one exceeds another in even one element, it separates the spirituals from one another. But when two sages contemplate the same teaching and have the same measure of knowledge, they are in fact united, for what separates them?”

Each one experiences and perceives unity in his individual way. Two people cannot compare their feelings in any way because each one perceives within his own vessel.

If you and I say that something is sweet, it does not mean that we both feel the same sweetness. But when both of us aspire for the same goal to attain the Creator, then due to the fact that we unite not in the object but in the Creator, in our common root, we will be able to attain the state in which He will make us equal and connect us. Then we will attain absolute unity!

Question: What do Kabbalists feel? Where do they connect

Answer: Only in the root. There is no other way.

Question: We say that each one includes the other inside him. Is this true?

Answer: Yes. As in a closed, integral system.

Hence, when one contemplates another’s action and attains the mind of the sage who performed it, they have the same mind and power. Now they are completely united…

But although they are united, each one still has his own personal attainment.

“…like a man who met his beloved friend on the street, he embraces him and kisses him, and because of their great unity, it is impossible to separate them.”

Because they are united by what they have attained. They attain the great upper spiritual essence, and it connects them into one whole although they are different and the source is different, which means that the Creator is one, but each of them in their individual root holds Him as something personal.

“Hence, the rule is that in speaking, the mind is the best-adjusted force between the Creator and His creatures. It is considered the medium, meaning He emanated a spark of that force, and through that spark, everything returns to Him.”

Eventually, if people unite in order to attain the Creator, they do actually attain Him by attaining the state in which the Creator becomes their common whole, their home, the common connection between them, their common root, the beginning and the end of every state.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/21/19

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Comment: We see that people are not doing very well in the world today. They suffer, this world drowns them.

There is a letter from a program viewer about such a state.
Dear Michael Laitman, you say that everything that happens should bring joy. Teach us joy, I beg you very much!  There is complete chaos all over, and everything happening to me, to my family, loved ones, to the world is a nightmare! Only a year ago, it was impossible to imagine that it would be so.

My Response: The whole problem is in good and bad states—how we perceive them. This is a purely subjective perception. If we knew for sure that this state was good, directed toward good, toward our good future, then we would also endure this state in a different way.

When you treat a dog or other animal and hurt it, it understands that you are doing something right and good for it and it will endure your treatment calmly.

In the same way, we must understand that this is how we should relate to what we are going through. We must raise ourselves a little to the level of being aware of our common goal and look at all our changes as something that we need to go through in order to learn! Learning to understand nature or the Creator is one and the same. It is the same nature that guides us, gradually leads and teaches us.

Question: It must be painful?

Answer: It hurts because you disagree with it. As soon as you start to agree with it, there is no pain but, on the contrary, there is joy.

Comment: The goal must be very high then.

My Response: We are trying to explain this to people. Those who can be filled with this goal, they relate to life in a completely different way.

Comment: If the goal used to be, as it was said before, to build a house and start a family, now there are tons of obstacles on the way to it. A person understands that he is really being rammed.

My Response: You can do it. You are simply reminded that you must also take care of the burial place.

And therefore, when you build a house, start a family, and give birth to children, there is this place in front of you which you must also prepare for yourself. And you see the uselessness, the futility. It kills the person.

We are becoming more developed so we can no longer close our eyes to all this or take a philosophical attitude as it was treated for a while: “You cannot do anything. Such is life.”

No, it does not apply today. If “such is life,” then why should I have children, why should I learn a trade? Why all this? And then it turns out that day to day I do not serve myself but others, and such,  or children who do nothing afterward and have no gratitude. Our entire existence emphasizes our uselessness. The lack of purpose is such that there is simply nothing, and thus, apathy appears.

The time has come to realize that there is no meaning in our life. Where is it?

The meaning of life means that there is this enormous nature and there is a thought that controls this nature, launches it, creates it.

It is this thought, this design, the great design of nature, that we must reveal. And then we will know the meaning of life. Because life is everything. What do we mean by “everything?” It is still nature: vegetative, animate, and human. It all has a meaning that is above this life.

And this meaning, it twists, it organizes, it rotates everything. So we need to rise above our life.

We just need to open our eyes and understand why nature created it all. This is what nature drives us to. This is what we must reveal.

And the idea is to rise above our world because it is actually the worst of the worlds, and this is not a poetic expression. To rise above it means to reveal this plan, this force, this thought, this idea. And when we understand it, this thought, then we begin to see beyond time, beyond space, beyond everything. Then a person begins to feel himself at the level of the Creator.

Question: And still, what is this thought?

Answer: Harmony! The absolute harmony of all parts of creation! Something which is not in us. And therefore, acting in this way toward us, nature pushes us to understand this harmony.

We must reveal this. We are not going anywhere! We cannot simply destroy ourselves, we cannot refuse it, forget ourselves. We must discover and attain this harmony.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/11/21

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Question from Facebook: What is the meaning of reincarnation for us if we do not remember our previous lives?

Answer: The meaning of reincarnation for us is the gradual accumulation of feelings and sensations that will make it possible for us to reach a new level of consciousness, knowledge, and feeling of all of creation, of the Creator, of the power that fills everything.

Thus we can truly become a person of the highest state and not remain as we live today, as an animal that perceives the world only through our physiological body, i.e., through the property of reception. Rather, we will feel the world through a new, spiritual body, through the property of bestowal and love.

This is the meaning of reincarnation: the accumulation of a sufficient quantity of sensations in order to exit our world for the upper world.
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From KabTV’s “Questions about Kabbalistic Books” 3/10/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Working in Ascents and Descents”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 2, ‘Histaklut Pnimit,’ Chapter 3, Item 27″

Selected Highlights

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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My new article on Linkedin “Human Relations in the Age of Lockdowns”

A response to one of my recent posts said that on the one hand, I say that Covid-19 has come in order to make us stay at home and disconnect from one another. On the other hand, I say that it came to teach us how to be close to nature. But since human nature is to connect with others, as we are social beings, there is an apparent contradiction here since you cannot connect if you are locked down at home.

A line in a piece of Jewish poetry called “Go My Beloved,” reads, “The end of the work is in the preliminary thought.” It means that when you do something, you must think of the final outcome that you want to achieve before you begin to work on achieving it. Otherwise, you are certain to go the wrong way.

The same goes for Covid and how humanity should deal with it. It is very true that humans are social beings. Moreover, the whole purpose of humanity is to connect in a way that benefits both individuals and human society. But to achieve this goal, we need to know how to connect in a way that yields these benefits. If we connect incorrectly, we are harming ourselves, human society, and our entire planet.

Currently, there is no question that we are connecting incorrectly. A quick scan of human relations around the world reveals a frightening picture of enmity, abuse, rampant killing and murders between countries and within countries, financial exploitation, a military arms race, ambitions to obtain nuclear weapons, race related social tensions, depression, oppression, aggression, and every imaginable form of malice. Human society is rife with inhumanity.

Until now, nature has let us “sort things out for ourselves,” so to speak. But over the past several decades, it has become clear that we are either unwilling or unable to change, and in our efforts to destroy one another, we will destroy our home planet.

So, what do parents do when their children don’t stop fighting and can’t work things out by themselves? They send them to their separate rooms. Clearly, the parents would like nothing more than to see their beloved children get along and become best friends. But if all their efforts to make peace between their children fail, they have to stop the fighting by separating the children altogether. Afterwards, when the fighting has stopped, the parents and the children can calmly examine their relations and start connecting more positively. Yet, even when they are permitted to connect, the children must always remember that they can be sent back to their rooms if they misbehave once more.

Nature is dealing with us much like those parents. It no longer settles for “punishing” us locally, through natural disasters or other local crises. It has sent us a global blow that has shut down humanity’s hostile operations toward others and toward nature. Just like those loving parents from the example, the idea is not to disconnect us from each other altogether. On the contrary, the idea is to allow us to learn how to connect to one another positively, one step at a time.

As soon as we begin to want to connect positively, nature will respond positively. It does not operate like a person, but more like a machine that responds to certain stimuli. Anything that operates similar to it arouses nature’s positive response, and anything that operates contrary to it arouses a negative response.

Since nature functions as a harmonious and balanced system, as I wrote in my previous post, if we build a balanced and harmonious human society, nature will not impose any restrictions or limitations on us. But if we insist on bullying each other, well, nature is a bigger bully than any of us. I hope for all of us that we will learn nature’s lessons sooner rather than after it demonstrates its strength.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What will bring peace to Israel and the Middle East?“

Peace will come when we realize the method for correcting the human ego, which is running rampant in our day and age.

What does “correcting the ego” mean? It is the shift of our inborn egoistic attitude toward each other and nature, to an opposite altruistic attitude, where we wish to benefit others. Also, our ego’s correction involves feeling how our happiness and fulfillment in life stems from our love, care and contribution to others.

Israel holds the method for correcting the ego. It first realized the method around 4,000 years ago when Abraham led a group of Babylonians, who had a desire to discover the meaning of life and reach peace among the divisions of that time, to a state of the ego’s correction called “love your neighbor as yourself.” It is a state where everyone meshes together in a single connection, through which the positive force dwelling in nature emerges.

Since Abraham’s time, Israel lost contact with the positively-connected state it once had, and largely lost awareness of the method of correction that it once learned and implemented. In place of the connection Israel was supposed to attain at various times, antisemitism emerged as a negative goading force. As a natural phenomenon, the purpose of antisemitism is in order to pressure Israel to wake up to realizing the method of correction that it possesses. When it does so, peace will ensue not only in the Middle East, but in the world at large.

The method of correction has only recently started becoming disclosed in our current era. That is why people the world over have started taking interest in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Several kabbalists have pointed to our era as the one when there would emerge a growing need in humanity for this method, which has the power to reconcile differences, unite us above divisions, and shift the world’s course to a positive direction. A positive direction is one where we prioritize benefiting others over self-benefit, and as a result, discover a state of perfection and peace both in the Middle East and throughout humanity. On the contrary, if Israel fail to wake up to the method of correction that they possess, then antisemitism will continue rising to overblown proportions, and they can expect terrible outcomes. Moreover, the threat of destruction would sweep over the world, as a third or even a fourth world war could become an unfortunate reality.

In essence, what is now happening in the Middle East is the hotbed of a global-scale problem. If we resolve this problem, if Israel wakes up to realize the method of the world’s correction, then it will solve the world’s problems, and peace will also come about in the Middle East.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Israel Today, Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Today, practically no person in the world feels that he exists in an integral system, which is a single organism. We need as if to take the parts of the body, arms, legs, and so on, connect them together, and revive them with a general life-giving force.

When this united collective begins to feel this way at least to a minimum extent, it will be able to really make completely new decisions at a new level: how to manage the world, the country, and all the decisions humanity must make. It will have a new level of perception of reality, a new level of problem-solving.

This will be an integral collective and an integral solution in accordance with the integral nature that is beginning to manifest itself in humanity today. Otherwise, we will not be able to handle any problems.

Individual solutions contradict the integral solution; therefore, we will not have any success in solving problems with our current attitude. We will make more and more mistakes, which will lead us to great suffering, and then to the need to come to the correct solution. But this is a very long and undesirable path that includes all sorts of problems and even perhaps wars.

At the same time, small integrated teams who unite into one single system, can correctly solve problems at a new level and already today give clear recommendations for proper management.

The only question is, whom to manage? Let us say there is an integral group that produces the correct algorithms. Who will implement them? After all, this requires people who will correctly perceive these tasks, unite with each other at the level of implementation, and also solve this in an integral way.

That is, here we already require suitable performers. As a result, we are faced with the task of creating small integral groups that can solve both managerial and executive tasks.
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From KabTV’s “The Science of Management”

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Comment: Our time, the time of the pandemic, has pushed the talents of Silicon Valley to accelerate the construction of a matrix. It is a simulation of reality. They want to build a reality into which they can practically usher all of humanity. Moreover, it should not be expensive so that the poorest people can get there also.

They say: “We cannot give you a private island, a sports car, but virtual reality can. And our task is to make it cheaper, to make poor people happy.”

My Response: That is, if I have a computer, I can live in my imaginary world. It is such a drug. An imaginary reality into which I can enter and enjoy.

Question: Is it good for people?

Answer: Of course! You save people from all suffering. Sedate and forget, like in Vysotsky.

Question: So you think it will not work?

Answer: First, it is not going to work because it is against the principles of nature. And it will take us out of this state anyway.

Second, someone is going to make huge profits from this, someone is going to lose, the competition will start again, etc.

This will not stand at all. We cannot get away from going straight to the goal of creation. This is the best way, the least painful in general. And these zigzags and going into some kind of drugs will not help us. I am against it.

Question: That is, one way or another, nature will bring us to this path?

Answer: Of course, it leads us to this. We are on this path.

Comment: But we are going through suffering.

My Response: It is because we do not agree with it and do not want to know about it. This is why we suffer. We constantly run away from something unpleasant to something more pleasant without realizing why it is unpleasant, how we can turn the unpleasant into pleasant, etc.

Question: That is, in theory, if I agree with nature that leads me to its goal, then I will have the feeling that I am as if on this island?

Answer: You don’t need any island. You have the whole universe.

Question: So one way or another are we all going against the decision of nature?

Answer: We are absolutely against. We will not get anything good from this. We only prolong our path of suffering.

Question: And tell me, please, does nature punish us for not following its path or not?

Answer: Of course it does. Not on purpose, but because we do not pay attention to its hints. It always wants to give us hints and lead us to the correct conclusion and to the goal of the creation. If we do not pay attention to it, then it will poke us a little and drop us somewhere so that we pay attention to the correct path.

Question: Will we ever hear the call of nature? Or will we need to make long zigzags, withdrawing all the time? Will this ever happen?

Answer: I think it is already coming to an end.

Question: I am asking in despair, to be honest. You and I have made many clips and movies and you say this all the time. But how can we break through to humanity?

Answer: It is very hard to break through. It will be broken through not by us, but by nature. That is, we do our work and reveal the goal, the path, as much as we can to humanity. But in the end, of course, nature itself, the program of creation will do it for us.

Question: You say all the time that we need to reach compliance with the laws of nature, to good relationships, love, connection, and so on. Is it possible to split it into small steps for a person? Could you name a few steps that will bring us closer to this?

Answer: Only good connection between people.

Of course, it is hard to do. But nevertheless, if we do it in some way, at least somewhat think about it, even in theory if not in practice, then we will shorten our path, mitigate suffering on our way, and get closer to the goal, the good goal of creation.

The goal is to unite with everyone without any conditions, to reveal the true goal, the picture of nature, which is infinite happiness filled with knowledge and goodness alone.

Comment: You repeat it so calmly over and over again!

My Response: And I relive it each time. And that is why it is not difficult for me. It is amazing! Because whenever someone asks me a question, he gives me his unfulfilled desire, his acuteness, his question. And I feel the question, I answer it. I absorb this question and fill it with my answer. And I get pleasure. There is no such thing as the same question.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/15/21

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Question: A person who yearns for spirituality often thinks that he advances thanks to his own powers, but the truth is that he is powerless. It turns out, on one hand, that he is exhausted. On the other hand, there is a group that is charged with the importance of the goal. What should a person do so that he will not lose the center of the group’s desire?

Answer: You need to watch over each other, follow each other, and hold on to each other so that no one will diverge from the correct path. This is the only way you will be able to hold on in one boat without turning over, and then you will be able to move toward the goal.

What does it mean to move toward the goal? This is movement toward even greater unity in the group. The mutual closeness will attain a density that will invoke and summon the actual revelation of the Creator in the group!

So, move inward all the time, closer to each other, and you will see that this is your redemption and that you will never go wrong.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/14/19

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