Stuff. It fills our closets, our garages, and our lives. We gauge success in life by the stuff we own, and spend incredible amounts of time shopping for it. A new documentary, The Story of Stuff, shows how our entire lives have been taken over by “stuff.” And the wisdom of Kabbalah shows what we can do about it. Read the Full Article…
Journalist and anchorman Vladimir Molchanov interviews Rav Michael Laitman, PhD on the purpose of egoism, the situation with Israel in relation to its neighboring Muslim countries, the restoration of Nazi regimes, the behavior and practise of religious leaders, the increase of hatred, Kabbalah as a supranational concept, how Rav Laitman began studying Kabbalah, the laws of nature, the use of science in the world and its relation to Kabbalah, the spiritual root of political unacceptance of drug legalization, Kabbalah’s view on new-age gurus and movements, Zephath as a Kabbalistic center, Kabbalah’s view on amulets and icons as symbols of faith, the upbringing and education of children, the reason for Kabbalah’s widespread dissemination today and the sixth sense.
This is a section of the interview, on the laws of nature:
V. Molchanov: You claim that there exist objective laws of society, and no one, including Bush or Stalin, can do anything. What are these laws? Are the millions of people who were destroyed by Stalin and Hitler a consequence of these objective laws? Do they fall into these laws?
Rav Laitman: Unfortunately, yes. If we talk about laws, we need to part from our feelings. We just need to learn what happens with the forces that influence our world.
The picture is the following: a single, all-encompassing and absolutely altruistic force directing humanity toward equivalence with it. Like any physical force, it performs actions without taking our feelings into account. This is the state we are in.
You are talking about a kind God, feelings, and the fact that He takes care of His creatures. There is no such thing. Objective laws of nature are described in Kabbalistic sources, as well as in my books and our translations, which are all recitations of old books. A scientific description of Kabbalistic knowledge was first done in the times of ancient Babylon, when Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation) was written. This whole conception, the whole scheme of Upper governance, is already described there.
If we look at what is happening to us from aside, not like creatures that experience various feelings and suffering, we will see that it is the influence of forces. And they will continue to lead us further ahead in this manner. If we don’t come to understand them, and if we don’t begin to know precisely how to act, like in physics or chemistry, how to implement and realize these laws with a benefit to us, we will continue to suffer further. more…
In today’s lesson on The Arvut (The Bond), Rav Laitman discussed the relationship between the individual and the whole in relation to a student’s question (11:00).
Student: Do we correct the world at the same time as we correct ourselves?
Rav Laitman: Yes. We correct ourselves and of course, in the correction of each and every one of us we correct the whole world. This is because it is a closed system, and as such, you can only correct yourself through your participation in every single person. Moreover, through your correction, you already prepare corrections in all of the souls, because you are integrated with everyone.
Therefore, if you correct yourself, then that corrected part of yourself exists in all the other souls and, as a result, they already begin to feel something.
This is because there is no single “I.” “I” is integrated in everyone, and there is no “you”—“you” is integrated in everyone. So if, let’s say, a million people correct themselves, and you are integrated with everyone, you therefore start sensing that same part from those little million people who are incorporated in you. How do you sense it? You suddenly get thoughts and desires about things you’ve never ever dreamed of previously, things you’ve never been attracted to.
That is the interconnectedness. We are in the same system of Adam ha Rishon (The First Man), we can’t escape it, but it’s broken, and that’s why those who correct themselves sentence themselves and the entire world to a scale of merit.
In this new article, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD discusses altruism as Nature’s law, and introduces the idea that by changing social values to appreciate altruism, we can discover altruism as the source of perfect and unbounded pleasure. Click here to read the full article
From the article:
“When society values a person solely by his or her devotion to society, we will all necessarily strive to think and to act in favor of society. If we eliminate the awards we give for individual excellence, and appreciate people only for their concern for society, if children judge their parents by these standards, if friends, relatives, and colleagues examine us only according to how well we relate to others, we will all want to do good to others so we can win society’s appreciation.
Thus, we will gradually come to feel that expressing altruism, or unselfishness, toward others is a special and sublime value in and of itself, regardless of the social recognition it grants. In doing so, we will find that this attitude is actually a source of perfect and unbounded pleasure. Moreover, we will find that this attitude—altruism—is the comprehensive law of Nature, the same attitude that controls and sustains us.” more…
Related Video: Rav Laitman first introduced this message in his 2-minute speech at the 3rd World Wisdom Council meeting in Tokyo. The following video contains this speech:
The Needed Shift in Human Consciousness. Rav Laitman’s speech at the 3rd World Wisdom Council meeting “Creating a New Civilization.”
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