Question: The story of Purim is told in the Megillat Esther (The Scroll of Esther). What does this name mean?

Answer: “Scroll,” “Megillah” from the word “Gilui” means revelation. Esther means concealment. That is, Megillat Esther is the revelation of concealment.

The fact is that the entire creation is concealed from us: why, for what, and how, what forces act in it. Why do we have to go through the states from one absolutely shattered end to the other end, which is assembled and perfect? What is it for? What forces can we use?

We do not know anything! We do not understand anything! All this is “Hastara,” meaning concealment.

However, gradually we will be able to reveal this. After all, from a certain stage of human development we are given the wisdom of Kabbalah. “Kabbalah” is from the word “receive,” meaning to receive the upper knowledge, the forces of our development, where we can already begin to advance consciously.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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We need a serious reform of our attitude toward children—not just a reform of the educational system of teaching itself or of upbringing, but in general, of our whole life in which children learn from us, take all kinds of examples from us with which they cannot agree and cannot implement on themselves.

Once upon a time, a boy would look at his father, a girl at her mother. If the father was a shoemaker or a tailor, no matter what, a child knew: “I will grow up and also be a shoemaker or a tailor.” Back then, children did not have internal demands.

Crafts have been passed down from generation to generation. Children lived with their parents. They did not yearn to be different. In those days, the whole way of life, all the examples that parents gave them: how to live, how to communicate, all this was normal, all this suited the children.

Today—no! Today, children look at us and feel in an empty world. They have nowhere to get examples from. They have to invent their own world. And we, fools, don’t understand why they are engaged in all sorts of fanaticism, use drugs, and everything else. It all happens because we are not ready to give them examples of living correctly.

We do not agree that they are different. This is our most basic point. We need to take into account that they are different, that they have different souls. And we must live for them, not for ourselves. By living for them, we will correct ourselves as well. So it is said: “Lo, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, that he may turn the heart of the fathers back through the children, and the heart of the children back through their fathers-lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction.” Meaning, children should teach us.

When a woman becomes a mother, the child as if requires her to grow up so that a completely different attitude to life would appear in her. It is the same here. We must understand that by having children, we have to be more responsible. And they should dictate to us what we should be like.

First of all, we must study the next stage in which our children should live. They ask for it, but we do not understand it. We are in such a generation, in such “scissors,” in such a transitional process, that we stand as if between two epochs.
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From KabTV’s “Close-up. Depression in Children” 8/24/09

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Question: Why should we study the Creator’s control?

Answer: First, so that we will feel better. Second, we will not be able to escape it in any way no matter what.

We will live this life, we will exist, feed our corporeal body, grow old gradually, and die. Everything will repeat itself over and over again. What is the point in that if we do not eventually begin to impact the general system and to gradually balance it?
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/17/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “To Bestow Contentment to the Creator”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1, Table of the Answers for the Meaning of the Words”

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How will society keep human labor relevant in an era of increasing automation?“

In an era of increasing automation and mass unemployment, we will need to readjust our concept of work. We are developing to a state where we will first and foremost need to learn how to live harmoniously as a single collective. The most important factor that will hold us together as a society will be positive attitudes to each other, which we will need to develop upon growing divisive drives and egoism that will naturally make us increasingly distant from one another.

We will thus need to learn how to become satisfied with what we need for our sustenance, and this will be possible if we emphasize the need to unite positively as a single human society. In other words, as the need for a human workforce will lessen the more that we automate labor, then instead of trying to make new jobs that we do not need, we should instead set up a system of education that upgrades our knowledge, awareness and feeling of the world we live in. This new system of education should prioritize the establishment of positive connections throughout society.

Ideas of universal basic income that are being explored more and more today would serve such a system well, with one caveat: that basic income is not given on its own, but that it is given in exchange for a certain level of participation in a unity-enhancing educational system.

Basic income given on its own would stagnate society. It would demotivate people to work because it would eliminate the competitive work atmosphere that makes people thrive to advance when they see others progressing.

However, if we start prioritizing unity as society’s leading value, and do so through extensive connection-enriching educational activities, then through such a framework, we will fulfill our competitive drives in a new way: we will increasingly understand the need to unite together with seeing more and more unifying examples emerging within society. Then, as we enter into a new drive to want the best for other people, and to relate altruistically, kindly and with care toward each other, then we will start feeling a new positive force surfacing within this new attitude we apply and nurture.

Therefore, we would be wise to view the era of increasing joblessness and automation as key moment of transition within human development, one in which we will need to get used to positively connecting to each other in society as our principle work.

Based on KabTV’s “Challenges of the 21st Century” on April 24, 2019.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash.
For more information on this topic, visit the following page: Universal Basic Income: Pros and Cons

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Two Versions of Waging War

Comment: Baal HaSulam writes that there are two versions of waging war against egoism: either it will take place at the level of thoughts, clarification within each person, or if we do not do this, it can somehow manifest itself on the corporeal level.

My Response: Then it will manifest itself much worse to shake us up and make it clear that we must begin to get closer to each other.

Comment: Indeed, Baal HaSulam writes that there could be a third or fourth world war.

My Response: But everything can run in a gentle and short manner. This is the problem. If there is a force called Israel (straight to the Creator), then it is said that Israel shortens the time of correction. This is what we are trying to do within our organization, with all the people in the world.

Question: What does it mean to fight your ego? And what kind of egoism to actually fight?

Answer: With the one that is directed against the other.

Question: Is it precisely this narrow egoism that is against connection with other people?

Answer: Yes. Only connection with others is what we must accept as the only direction of our development.

Israel, the Jews, must prove themselves in this. That is why they are so selfish. But if they do this, they will be able to lead the whole world with them.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/30/21

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Question: There are different types of war: civil war, cold war, information war, religious wars, and so on. This is how war manifests in our world. You often say that war is a remedy. What is the difference between all these wars as a means of correction?

Answer: They occur at different levels of egoism. The fact is that you can simply fight our egoism “head-on.” If it is small, then this is how it is done. For example, we force children or ourselves to get up and do something, do certain things, use forceful methods to replace bad relations between us with good ones, and force a person to get closer to other people.

Although initially one does not want it at all, we create such conditions that he wants to, because if he does not listen to the instructions for good and peace, then the resulting loss will be much greater.

Therefore, wars that have been fought at different points in history for thousands of years replace each other. But we are in a constant war.

Question: So are we constantly at war with egoism within us because it is our nature, and as a consequence of this, all kinds of wars also manifest themselves in the outside world? We are arranged so that we see our inner egoism outside. So if we do not cope with our internal egoism, then we have to fight with an external enemy?

Answer: Yes, we are forced through all sorts of external reasons, shells, and influences to do this work against our egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/14/21

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Question: We all know what a war is. It is an armed conflict between rival parties that is expressed by the imposition of one side’s will on some other country or nation. And what is the war in spirituality, in particular, the “Jewish war”? Who is at war with whom?

Answer: We are created in the quality of egoism, which is well known to all. According to the thought of creation, we must rise from the egoistic level of existence to the altruistic one, from mutual hatred to love.

This is an absolutely incredible transition from one quality to another. It is performed by the influence of a special force that exists in nature and is ready to help us overcome egoism and rise to the level of love for our neighbor. We can do it only if we will understand and want it.

The implementation of the condition of our ascent in spite of egoism, against it, in the fight with it, to the level of bestowal, love, and connection is the “Jewish war.”

The fact is that we are within the program of nature, which affects us and requires us to gradually implement it. Each moment we must make our transition from egoists to altruists, from hatred to love between us, and demonstrate this to the nations of the world as a possible state.

If we do not implement this program, then nature puts pressure on us and helps us understand that we are in the wrong state, in the wrong attitude to it. And then, thanks to nature, which pushes us to fight with our own egoism, we gradually rise above it and can even replace it with altruism.

Question: It turns out that there are two forces in nature: a plus and a minus, negative and positive. All matter, the entire universe, is built on the juncture of these two opposing forces. At the human level, is this manifested as the forces of good and evil, that is, egoism and altruism?

Answer: Absolutely correct. This is exactly what is written in Kabbalistic sources about the war of the forces of good and evil.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/14/21

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Zohar for All, VaYetze [And Jacob Went Out], Item 15: Solomon made three books, corresponding to the three lines: The Song of Songs is an interpretation of the right line, Hesed; Ecclesiastes [Kohelet] is an interpretation to the left line, Gevura; and Proverbs is an interpretation to the middle line, Tifferet.

Question: We know that the middle line comes after ascertainment of the right and left lines. And according to chronology, Kohelet (left line) was written the last. Why?

Answer: Frankly, I have many answers to this. These lines enter a person and are realized in him in their full combination. They all come from above: left, right, and middle.

The uppermost Sefira Keter is the middle line. Hochma and Bina come from it. Keter is above, Hochma and Bina are below. Then from Keter, Hochma, and Bina, these lines descend down to DAAT. And they descend down to Hesed and Gevura. From DAAT, they descend down to Hesed and Gevura and then together to Tifferet.

Here, there is such a confluence of the three lines both from top to bottom and from bottom to top, and in general, that you cannot say which of them appears before and which after.

You cannot define one line without the other: the right without the left, the left without the right, and the middle without both of them. That is, all three lines are included in one another. This is repeated many times in The Book of Zohar. So, you have three lines on the right, three lines on the left, and three lines in the middle.

In addition, the middle line comes first and then the right and left in the same plane. And then again the middle line and the right and left in the same plane. They intersect not only in lines, but also in levels.

Therefore, speaking about what comes first or second in infinity, in eternity, in the perfection of the Creator, there is no such thing. In the direct light it will look as one thing, in the reflected light it will look exactly the opposite.

If it manifests with the right line, the left one will look different. In the left line, the right line will look different. In the end, everything depends on the observer because when perfection and absolute harmony are in front of you, then with your properties you will see completely different things every time and you will always be in oppositeness and contradictions.

And the permanent, eternal, perfect state comes as a synthesis. In it, there is no longer any right, left, or middle line and their specific order.

Thus, when a Kabbalist ascends, he does not have a clear internal demand that there would be the right line first and then the left, because depending on his own change, he immediately enters different perspectives. Therefore, such a question is inappropriate.

Comment: But this question can be asked, for example, by scientists if they start reading The Book of Zohar.

My Response: With their earthly reasoning, they will, of course, be very confused by it, but this is good. I want to tell the listeners and viewers: “If you get confused, read The Book of the Zohar anyway no matter how you understand it. By reading, you are already stimulating the upper light, that program, that information field in which we exist.”
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #13

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