Saving our planet has become a key issue on our global agenda. But to avoid further destruction of Earth, we must answer a much deeper question: What is life for?
The meaning of life
The oneness concept was first discovered by ancient Kabbalists some 5,000 years ago, but is today a proven scientific fact. This concept tells us that life’s purpose is not a personal thing; it is a comprehensive, “panoramic” perception of all that exists. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, only when we transcend our selves, our egos, do we achieve life’s meaning, since only then do we see the “big picture,” that is, our own place in the comprehensive picture of creation. It is only then that we understand why we are born and what we need to do in this life.
To understand the meaning of life, we need to achieve such a sensation of the universe that there will be no difference between life and death, and existence as physical entities or spiritual entities. If we could freely live in all dimensions, earthly and spiritual, and not just in our present perception, we would know that we truly are eternal. more…
Everyone’s Pursuit of Happiness An article linking themes from the film The Pursuit of Happyness to everyone’s life.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Thomas Jefferson, final draft for the United States Declaration of Independence.
“The idea that it’s ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ and not ‘life, liberty and happiness’ is that the elusive nature of happiness is such that all someone can ever give to you is the opportunity to pursue.”
Will Smith on Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
The Pursuit of Happyness is a film about Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith), a man who in unfortunate circumstances (homeless and financially insecure) struggled to earn financial and domestic stability for himself and his son. The Pursuit of Happyness has been received warmly by the American public as an inspirational tale of determination, courage and hard work (i.e. the pursuit of happiness), that by using these qualities one can achieve a better life (i.e. achieve happiness).
“Happiness” is portrayed in this film as a better state than what we already have, and “the pursuit of happiness” is the path we must endure to achieve happiness. In particular, Chris Gardner defines happiness as a state of financial and domestic stability for himself and his son. We can all relate to this goal, especially if we already have these comforts, and look upon being homeless as a lesser standard of life that must be overcome.
The Problem with the Pursuit of Happiness
A major problem with us today is that many of us already have these comforts, but still aren’t happy. We have our security, and simply living securely isn’t good enough and we want more.
Ironically, if Chris Gardner were already living securely, with a comfortable home, good job and family, and strove to make more money for a bigger house and a flashier car, and then if he continued fiercely striving for more power and respect, we would no longer consider this an inspiring story of determination and courage, but one of ambitiousness and greed.
Such a story is more characteristic of The Godfather than The Pursuit of Happyness! However, in both cases and in every area of human life, we can conclude that everyone is involved in this very same aspiration to a better state of life, in the pursuit of happiness.
What is at the Source of the Pursuit of Happiness?
This common pursuit of happiness is that we all view our current situation as lacking something, and need to work (we need to pursue…) in order to fulfill this lack (we need to pursue happiness). Right now, take a moment to think about what you want. Just by thinking about it, you’re already feeling that you are lacking this thing and you need to do something to achieve it.
This brings us to the question: What is at the source of this pursuit of happiness? What makes us happy?
That one person pictures to himself a secure family life as happiness, and another pictures love for another person as happiness, and another pictures a huge amount of wealth and power as happiness, and for another it’s a new dress, CD, car or gadget… to all this we can pose a conclusion: that it is not the money, the respect, the power, the food, or anything that we picture to ourselves that makes us happy… that before all these things, we have desires for them—we want them—and only the moment when we fulfill our desires is when we feel happiness.
Now that we understand that it is not money, food, family, sex, knowledge, honor, power or any physical thing we can picture to ourselves that makes us happy, but the act of fulfilling our desires, we can start learning how to also take part in this pursuit of happiness, directly at its source—desire and its fulfillment.
Where am I and Where are Others in the Pursuit of Happiness?
The thing with all these desires is that none of them leave us with a true feeling of happiness. Why? It is because precisely at the moment when we fulfill them, they disappear. New desires then enter us and force us to pursue their demands. It is as if we are constantly in the pursuit of happiness, and we either never reach happiness, or the moment we do, it immediately slips through our fingers.
The reason for this is because the whole time we are only trying to fulfill one person—me. In other words, our desires are all self-aimed, and can never be lastingly fulfilled. However, we constantly find ourselves yearning toward something better, something lasting and eternal, and feel that somehow, somewhere, it has to exist.
The trick to achieving true happiness is precisely the opposite of what we’re accustomed to thinking: we cannot achieve true happiness by trying to fulfill our own desires, but only through pursuing the fulfillment of others’ desires. In other words, we need to feel that the more others are happy, the more we are happy. We need a desire that grows and expands when it is fulfilled, drawing more and more fulfillment, and through this desire I feel happiness from making others happy. This is a desire for unlimited, endless happiness. We all have this desire, but we just don’t know how to fulfill it yet; we don’t know how to pursue it.
If we return to what Will Smith said at the beginning of the article, that “the elusive nature of happiness is such that all someone can ever give to you is the opportunity to pursue”—the wisdom of Kabbalah is the method which gives us the opportunity to achieve unlimited happiness. It is a time-tested method of discovering happiness fulfilling others, and guides us in learning how precisely to fulfill others so that they will become happier and happier. Our happiness then multiplies by the amount that we are able to fulfill others and make them happier.
To find out more about this desire for unlimited happiness and how to fulfill it, check out the following videos and links:
Why Am I Never Satisfied? 04:37 Our inborn egoistic state never allows us to be completely satisfied. Perceiving Reality describes what we should do with our ego in order to experience boundless, complete and ever-expanding satisfaction. Click here to view the video at Kabbalah TV
Peace in the World - Correction of the individual and the correction of the whole of humanity are discussed with the aim of actualizing world peace in the soonest time possible. Commentary by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD on Baal HaSulam’s article “Peace in the World.”
Q&A with BB USA Students - Rav Laitman answers question from BB students digging into how to cross the barrier between this world and the spiritual world, determining truth against falseness, the role of mistakes in the spiritual work, what it means to achieve the level of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” dealing with Klipot (shells) in the correction process, and other inner-work-related questions.
Lishma - An investigation on what it means to work in Lishma (i.e. for the sake of the Creator), and advice on how to attain this spiritual degree. Rav Michael Laitman, PhD teaches based on Baal HaSulam’s 20th Shamati article.
The Profit of a Land - The work of attaining the Creator’s nature - bestowal - through the discovery of the creature’s opposite nature - reception - and the request for its correction. Commentary by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD on Baal HaSulam’s 34th Shamati article.
The Fear of God is His Treasure - The work of cancelling oneself before the Creator and the obstacle of pride in the spiritual work, with advice for how to correct its use. Commentary by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD on Baal HaSulam’s 38th Shamati article.
Love for the Creator, Love for the Created Beings - Creation’s final state of the reconnected soul of Adam ha Rishon, bonded in eternal adhesion with the Creator, with the quality of absolute, unconditional love as the quality needed for the attainment of this state. Commentary by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD on the article “Love for the Creator, Love for the Created Beings” by Baal HaSulam.
Millions of young people suffer from suicidal tendencies, depression and drug addiction because they’re hopeless. A medicine cabinet filled with anti-depressants isn’t going to help; they need real answers.
According to the World Health Organization, someone around the globe commits suicide every 40 seconds. In the year 2000 (a long time ago, but things have only worsened since), 815,000 people lost their lives to suicide — more than double the number of people who die as a direct result of armed conflict every year (306,600). For people between the ages of 15 and 44, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death and the sixth leading cause of disability and infirmity worldwide. Also, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, “Combined 2004 and 2005 data indicate that 8.88 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 and 7.65 percent of adults aged 18 or older experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year.”
Millions of people the world over, and especially the younger generation, are committing suicide or suffering from suicidal tendencies, depression, drug addiction and violence because they’re hopeless. They have real questions and they need real answers, and there is no one to provide them with answers except us — the parents.
In his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl quotes Friedrich Nietzsche as saying that “He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.” more…
One man’s search for meaning in life. A personal story by Bnei Baruch student Ed Stedman discusses the desire to find meaning in life, or what Kabbalists call “the desire for spirituality,” as the final stage of desire emerging in humanity today.
Three years ago I was riding a subway train in Toronto when a short announcement in the newspaper caught my eye. There was to be an introductory Kabbalah lecture at my local library and although I was totally unfamiliar with Kabbalah, I somehow felt that it was an ancient wisdom that might have something to offer me.
This initial lecture by Tony Kosinec (lecturer for the ARI Online Kabbalah Education Center and spokesperson for Bnei Baruch USA) was a mixture of technical diagrams and an assertion that there was some sort of potential power in a unified group of students. I felt compelled to check out this assertion.
That was three years ago and my life has now changed so radically that it seems like another lifetime. What have I learned in three years? more…
Kabbalists explain that the only role of the Jewish people is to reveal to humanity how it can achieve the highest possible level of existence, and that the Jewish people have no choice in the matter. more…
Listen to the Kabbalah Today Issue 4 podcast by clicking on the Flash player’s button below:
A Kabbalah Today Issue 4 podcast compilation has been created containing the following playlist (the links are to the articles in the paper, containing the audio files for the articles alone):
From the Kabbalistic perspective, terrorists are the headache that makes us go to the doctor for treatment. If we don’t go, we will have to go when it’s a migraine.
Fighting terror the right way is an oxymoron: You can’t fight terror, so there is no way of doing it “right.” Why is it impossible? Because terrorism is here for a purpose. Hence, whenever the victims find new ways to defend against it, terrorists will find new ways to terrorize, murder and generally wreak havoc, disorder and fear.
The purpose of terrorism is no different from the purpose of every “evil” element in our world: to force us away from complacency when we are inclined to be idle, and to force us to re-examine our situation. If you look at the world from the Kabbalistic perspective, the whole of humanity is one system, and terrorists are the headache that makes us go to the doctor for treatment. If we don’t go when it’s a mild headache, we will have to go when it’s a migraine.
As is confirmed by science, and has been known to Kabbalists for millennia, the universe is a single, interdependent system, whose well-being depends on constant reciprocity among its elements. These interdependency and reciprocity are sustained by the system’s care for each of its elements, while each element devotes itself to the well-being of the system. Thus, the rule “All for one and one for all” is the mechanism that sustains everything, including life on Earth.
However, humankind is the only species that can choose to act contrary to nature’s law of reciprocity. People can choose to care for others, or for themselves. By choosing to care for ourselves, we place ourselves in total opposition to the modus operandi of the whole of nature, and thus invert the law to “All against one and one against all.” Conversely, by choosing to care for others, we are automatically in sync with the reciprocity law. It is our choice whether or not to act like the whole of nature, but there is really no one to blame but us if our choice to be opposite from nature makes us unhappy.
All this does not mean that terrorists are good-hearted people who are trying to make us see the truth. It means that wanting to work only for ourselves will eventually cause — at least some of us — to justify doing whatever we feel like, as long as it pleases us. From a self-centered perspective, it is perfectly justified to drop an atom bomb on America if I don’t like its president, put a bullet through my neighbor’s chest if his dog poops on my lawn, or murder dozens of innocent college kids because I got up on the wrong foot today. But will this make anyone happy, even the wrongdoer?
To be happy, we need to be synchronized with nature. There are several benefits to that:
1) Nature itself will support us, instead of going against us, as it is doing now.
2) Humankind, like the whole of nature, will work to guarantee the well-being of every person on every level — physical, emotional, and spiritual.
In this spirit, Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote in his article “Peace in the World“: “First, everyone must thoroughly understand and explain to his surroundings that the well-being of society, which is the well-being of the state, and the well-being of the world are completely interdependent. As long as the laws of society are not satisfactory to each and every individual in the state, and leave an unsatisfied minority from the government of the state, this minority … will seek to overthrow it.”
Thus, well-being of the individual, well-being of the state and well-being of the world are all interdependent. Only if we all decide to work together to achieve the kind of society that Baal HaSulam describes, will we succeed.
3) If we choose to behave as does the whole of nature, and dedicate ourselves to our fellow person, we will become similar to nature’s law itself. That is, we will be working in the same way as nature — in reciprocity and interdependency, veering away from self-centeredness. This will grant us much more than a comfortable life: Because this modus operandi will stem from our own choice, we will also have the knowledge that begets that mode, the knowledge of the whole of nature, the Creator of the universe. After all, in Gimatria (the numerology of Kabbalah), Elokim (God) and “The Nature” are the same.
Bestselling novelist Edward Topol interviews Rav Laitman on topics ranging “What is God?”, the Bible code, smoking, human evolution, judgment, body and soul, freedom of choice, and Rav Laitman’s personal life. The following is a section from the interview:
What is God?
Edward Topol: I’ll tell you honestly. I’m not at all prepared. You are on one level and I’m somewhere there. My questions are simple, from the very first lower level.
What is God?
Rav Laitman: The general law of the universe which surrounds us, and in relation to us reveals itself as absolute and total love, is called “God.” This is felt on all of the inanimate, animal, and vegetative levels in the capacity of the universe. We don’t feel this because our nature is opposite to that of the Creator.
The Creator is the quality of bestowal, the quality of love, a totally altruistic quality which surrounds us. This quality is invariable and constant, like the tremendous love of a mother towards her child. The child feels it to the degree of either its corruption or its correction. This is the relationship we are in with the Creator.
In Hebrew, the Creator and nature are described by the same word Elokim, the same word. The Creator and nature are one. There isn’t anything outside of our surrounding nature, the nature we perceive as well as the part of nature which we don’t perceive. There are higher layers of nature which are concealed from us, but are still within our scope. All of them together are called “nature” or “Creator.”
Edward Topol: If the Creator is love, if the Creator is something that surrounds us, then why do I have to move towards Him? He’s already right here, inside of me, and around me. Why do I need to study Kabbalah or other methods of attaining or comprehending the Creator? more…
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Student: If I understood the previous paragraph correctly, does it mean that the higher spiritual level we are in, the more technology will decline?
