A question I received: Changes are taking place at the White House, a new President has come to power, and the pressure on Israel has increased. This can lead to the intensification of conflicting views in our nation. Maybe we should concentrate our thoughts on this particularly?

My Answer: Politics is unstable and nonlinear; the public’s expectations of political figures very rarely match politicians’ plans; instead, they are aimed at particular goals. It is a complicated matter, which we shouldn’t try to penetrate.

However, it is necessary to understand that, to the extent that the nation of Israel delays carrying out its mission, the pressure on it will increase. We must lead people to understand and feel the need for correction. They must agree to play their role in the spiritual development of all of humanity. The nation of Israel should understand and accept this duty and realize its fault for what is happening.

The pressure on us will grow in order to wake up the nation of Israel. This is precisely what has happened to us over the course of history – starting with the Egyptian pharaoh and on present time. Prophets wrote about this; they said that if we don’t come to realize what responsibility is placed on us, we will need to go through very difficult trials.

The pressure that we experience is nothing more than the states that we have not yet corrected, and although we need to, we have not taken advantage of the opportunities that have been presented to us. To the extent that the pressure increases, we can judge our uncorrected states. However, the states themselves are revealed only to the extent of a person’s development.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Being “Chosen” Means Having the Responsibility to Spiritually Serve the World
Laitman.com Post: Why Does Everyone Hate Israel?
Laitman.com Post: The Topic of the Herzliyah Conference Should Be: How Can Israel Restore “Love for One’s Neighbor’?
From Chaos to Harmony: Part II. Israel’s Role- “The Role of Israel”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”

Filed under: Politics - No Comments →

A question I received: What will people feel when the Creator reveals Himself between them?

My Answer: Imagine being a day-old baby.  Your first sensation is that someone is taking care of you. It’s a similar feeling, as there is someone big that treats you with kindness, care, tenderness, and warmth. You are unable to understand Him, but you are completely in His power.  You know that it’s Him and no other that cares for you, and provides you with all the good things.

Gradually, the whole of humanity will begin to feel the caring and governing influence of the Upper force – the only one in the world. They will feel that they reside inside this single Force, desire, program.

We have only one critical point, of which King David wrote in Psalms.  He did not know why we are given it. This is the rift between what exists eternally (“yesh mi yesh“) and existence out of absence (“yesh mi eiyn“). From that vantage point a person can already be outside of himself and observe the Creator’s actions as well as his own. A person will then exist in the sensation of the spiritual and attain, within his heart and not his reason, that he is united with the entire system. He will feel his fellow men not as strangers, but truly as his close friends.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Let Us Open The Faucet Of Love For Each Other
Laitman.com Post: The Revelation of Godliness (Baal HaSulam)
Laitman.com Post: The Intention To Unite Corrects Our Desire
Talks: “Finding the Creator Within”
Introduction to the Book of Zohar: “Items 6-12.”

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

A question I received: How do you picture the next blow?

My Answer: All the prophets spoke exclusively about our time. None of them described their contemporary epoch. All their predictions refer to the time when humanity would begin to unite. This is because our only opportunity to realize our freedom of will lies specifically in this action. At all other times and in all other actions, we are robots.

If we refuse to realize (to correct) ourselves, suffering (catastrophes, misfortunes, epidemics) are in store for us, in accordance with our common ego. Kabbalah discusses the possibility of a world nuclear war if we fail to reach a proper connection among ourselves. It is the same egoistic connection between people that manifests as their illnesses, wars, and other misfortunes.

Personally, I am confident that, with the opportunities that are available to us now, we will make it on time. We will be balancing during a dangerous state, but it will turn into a corrected one.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Unity Among People Is Unique In Nature
Laitman.com Post: For The First Time In History, We Have The Conditions To Realize Our Freedom Of Will
Laitman.com Post: Prophets Are Those Who Help Us Find A Way Out Of The Labyrinth
Shamati #195 “Rewarded – I Will Hasten It”

Filed under: World - No Comments →

In the News (translated from Finiz.ru): The outcomes of a study looking at the causes of global warming reveal that humanity has no more than a 10% effect on it, and that there is absolutely no relationship between greenhouse emissions and environmental warming.  Is it possible that even here, someone’s huge business and political agenda is getting involved?

My Comment: Absolutely! Climactic fluctuations are normal phenomena but the changes that are now endangering humanity are the result of egoistic relationships between people.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Need for One Global Educational Program
Laitman.com Post: It Is Not the End Of The World, But The Beginning
Laitman.com Post: “Green Technology” Harms Us Twofold
Kabbalah Revealed: “The Dark Before the Dawn”
TV Program: “Natural Disasters”

Filed under: Science - No Comments →

Albert Einstein: Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?

Rabindranath Tagore (The Nobel Prize in Literature, 1913): Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the truth of the Universe is human truth. I have taken a scientific fact to explain this. Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them, but matter may seem to be solid without the links in spaces which unify the individual electrons and protons. Similarly, humanity is composed of individuals, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living unity to man’s world. The entire universe is linked up with us, as individuals, in a similar manner – it is a human universe.

… Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centres of electric force, also belongs to the human mind. In the apprehension of truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, and in our ethics. In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to humanity, then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Reality We Feel Is Like a Dream
Laitman.com Post: All of Evolution Is Aimed at Making Us Attain the Upper Level of Consciousness
Talk: “Perception of Reality”
Article: “Soul as a System in the Model of the Universe”

Filed under: Perception - No Comments →

A question I received: I don’t know if Kabbalah views Obama as the coming Messiah, but I believe that the world looking to this man as the Messiah is a major mistake. His preacher for 20 years hates whites. He is friends with Farrakhan who openly hates the Jews. I don’t know if you believe in the Anti-Christ, but Christian belief teaches that this may be the man who leads the world to destruction.

My only question is: is it possible to avoid being part of the destruction that is heading our way? I read The Book of Zohar and have developed a screen. I have a Sabbath meal with my family, I constantly try to do Mitzvahs and, being born Catholic, I follow the Catholic religion to a point. I am very fearful as to what is in store for humanity and I want to avoid it. Any suggestions?

My Answer: The way you practice religious observance is your own business. As for your fears, if you are thinking about love for people, and about how to connect their feelings similar to how they are connected by Nature, through a global, integral connection, then you have nothing to fear or to worry about.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Coming of the Messiah
Laitman.com Post: Obama Will Have to Change Along With Life
Laitman.com Post: Live Your Life as Usual, and Study Kabbalah

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

In the News: The Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya will be hosting the 9th annual Herzliya Conference, on “The Balance of Israel’s National Strength and Security” on February 2-4, 2009. The program includes:

– Coping with Hamas

– Dealing with Asymmetric Islamic Terrorism

– Iran on the Nuclear Threshold

– Israel’s Legitimacy under Attack

– Weathering the Storm: Israel and the World Economic Crisis

– Why Do Israeli Students Fail? Can the Digital Revolution Change the Educational Reality?

– National Sustainability and Israel’s Green Safety Net

– From R&D to Commercial and Economic Application as Part of National Policy

– Reconnecting Israel with its Expatriates

My Comment: For the time being, not one of the problems is nearing a solution, and the problems are only becoming worse. The Israeli people’s lack of understanding of their role in the world is bringing about further deterioration of the state and its people.

The nation of Israel can only exist by the principle of, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was created under this condition by Abraham, 4,500 years ago, and was comprised of his students. But as soon as they fell from that level into “unfounded hatred,” they ceased being a nation and were exiled from their territory.

They returned here in the 20th century, but – as explained in Kabbalah – they can stay here only under the condition that they will restore themselves through the rule, “Love your neighbor.” This is how we will become a nation once again. However, if we won’t carry out this condition, then we will once again be expelled from the land of Israel, since we will not be suitable for it.

This should be the topic of the Herzliya Conference. By the way, at the same time, on February 2-4, we will also be hosting our Congress, where we will actually unite into a single mini-humanity. This will create enormous changes in the world, because qualitatively speaking, this will be the most powerful and influential unity in the world.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Preparations for the 2009 International Kabbalah Congress

Filed under: Israel - No Comments →

In the News: (from Fayette Front Page): Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., today introduced legislation to create a Financial Markets Commission that will be charged with fully investigating the near collapse of the banking system and the loss of tens of trillions of dollars. “If our nation is going to learn from history, we must know exactly what happened and why. We need to take a long hard look at how our financial system spiraled downward so far so fast,” Conrad said. “The final report of this commission will help make sure this does not happen again.”

My Comment: We cannot understand any phenomenon in our world from our level. Even Einstein said that in order to solve a problem, it is necessary to rise above it – to its source or initial origin. I hope this commission will be created, and even more than one – that it will be created in all the countries, and that it will be common, international. And I hope these commissions will somehow hear Kabbalah’s explanation of the reason, course, and purpose of the crisis, as well as the way to control it.

Kabbalah reveals that if we want to control the crisis through our actions, there is only one single opportunity in our world for us to influence the events: by continuously creating a better and better environment (society) that will influence every person. This environment will change everyone’s priorities from corporeal (receiving and using others) to spiritual (bestowal and love).

There are no other free actions we can make, because the rest of our actions are dictated by our natural egoism. They are elicited in us by egoism’s constant growth and change, without any participation on our part. Therefore, the reason for the crisis is the qualitatively new egoism that is being revealed in us.

The goal of the crisis is to bring us to similarity with Nature, the quality of bestowal and love. The means of attaining this goal, which is mandatory for all, is to change the environment that surrounds each and every one of us, or in other words, to change the external influence on every person. And to do this, we have to engage all the mass media channels and begin a broad action of worldwide education about the new reality of a united humanity.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What the Global Education System Should Teach People
Laitman.com Post: The Crisis Will Turn Advertising Into Education
Laitman.com Post: The Media Must Help Turn Our World Into a Giant Classroom

Filed under: Crisis - 2 Comments →

In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “His Empire in Tatters, German Billionaire Takes Life” Adolf Merckle, one of Germany’s wealthiest men, committed suicide. Mr. Merckle’s body was discovered Monday night near train tracks… In a rare interview last month, Mr. Merckle told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he had survived “many so-called stock-market crashes” but that he “couldn’t calculate a banking and financial crisis of this dimension.”

My Comment: He’s right: there’s never been a crisis like this in all of human history, because the current crisis is “qualitative.” It was caused by the human society’s opposition to Nature. Society has become global and interconnected like a “small village” where everyone is completely interdependent (“the Butterfly Effect”). However, our mutual egoistic hatred destroys all the connections. The effect of broken connections in a single system manifests as a crisis in the system – a crisis in all areas of our activity.

The crisis will not end until we find a solution – a way to be together, united by bonds of bestowal and love. This is what is required of us by the system that we have found ourselves in. We cannot escape these closed connections. We will have to observe the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We can do this through suffering (as we always have) or by realizing that it’s necessary (the method of Kabbalah). The choice is ours.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: People Don’t Realize That We Are Living In a New World
A Conversation about the World Crisis
Article: “The Law of Love”
Kabbalah for the Student: “What Does Love Thy Friend As Thyself Give Us?”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”, Item 4

Filed under: Crisis - 1 Comment →

In the News (translated from Lenta.ru): A hotline offering emergency psychological help for people affected by the global financial crisis is now operating in Moscow. People can receive free consultation from a certified psychiatrist over the phone. The phone calls will be answered by specialists from the national center of social and forensic psychiatry.

My Comment: In addition, there should be a “hotline” that will disseminate the global (anti-crisis) education for the whole world. Instead of just offering people consolation, it will explain that this problem is shared by all humanity, and that the transition from disconnection to unity is embedded in the foundation of Nature. We must go through it, either under Nature’s pressure (via the path of suffering) or consciously (by using Kabbalah). Moreover, we have to come out of the problem together. Then it will be easy, because it will happen in harmony with Nature’s movement, rather than by isolating ourselves and being opposed to each other.

You can start doing this on your own, without waiting for it to happen: just by thinking about everyone and about our common connection, while studying our materials (available free of charge online), you will not only feel more relaxed, but also cause an improvement in the world, as this will bring us closer to balance with Nature. As a result, it will improve people’s health and well-being.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Family Gives Us Consolation from the Worries of the Big World

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →