February 16, 2012 at 10:28 pm · Filed under Education
Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: The Internet has been in existence for several decades by now. In Europe and America, an entire generation has already been raised on it who are now 40 years old. As a psychologist, I encounter these people and I know that they have lost the elementary skills of natural physical communication. Therefore, I feel cautious and am wondering whether man will lose these skills if he becomes immersed in our virtual game system?
Dr. Michael Laitman: Development does not depend on us. In the best case scenario, we are observers, if we are even able to observe and properly assess what is happening, because it depends entirely on the development of our nature.
We have created the internet because our development from within pushed us to do this. We did not create it 100 or 1,000 years ago because our inner, egoistic consciousness and desire did not yet push us to it.
The time has come, so the necessary technological conditions have been created. The need for this kind of communication arose and that’s why it emerged and came about. There is no point going back or trying to go against this flow. On the contrary, I would look ahead. After all, through this system humanity is discovering itself as more connected, and not in the physical sense. Besides, what does a connection through our bodies give us?
Today we are not using this connection to the full extent, except to fulfill our petty egoism, to make a profit or manipulate people.
What if we started using the internet as a good, virtual community, which will then elevate us from the virtual connection to the integral, spiritual one? Then, with people’s spirit and proper communication, they will acquire a completely different sensation of togetherness and of each other. This is impossible without the internet, so I look at all of this as positive.
In general, I don’t see anything negative in humanity or its progress. Of course, this progress could have been much more productive and merciful, but that depends on humanity’s behavior in this process, the extent to which we do not resist it, understand it, and participate in it to the best of our ability.
In my opinion, the exit from the physical contact to the virtual, egoistic contact, followed by the transformation of the egoistic, virtual contact to the altruistic, integral one, will bring us to a completely different state. Gradually, we really will lose the sensation of the still, vegetative, and animate world, and will cross over to a state where everything is determined by energy, information, and our thoughts and desires, instead of the comfort of our animate bodies.
This is the next phase of human development. This is where Nature is pushing us. The phases we have gone through clearly show that humanity has to climb to the level of thoughts, desires, and information where we are all interconnected. This, strictly speaking, is what defines a community as human. The human community is not our bodies, but precisely the inner filling.
The above points were taken from the book The Psychology of the Integral Society by Dr. Michael Laitman and Dr. Anatoly Ulianov. Also available as eBook (PDF, Kindle & ePub formats).
May 15, 2008 at 9:52 pm · Filed under Notices, Q&A
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Kabbalah and the Meaning of Life: Michael Laitman’s Personal Blog
Read a Kabbalist’s personal impressions of the spiritual world, his take on current events, ask whatever you like, and much, much more.
Ask the Kabbalist
One of the features of Michael Laitman’s personal blog is the ability to ask him whatever you like, and also, see the questions he is answering from people like you all around the world. Here’s a sample…
* A question answered on April 6th: Why do you reveal all of this secret knowledge to gentiles? Go To Answer>>
* A question answered on April 4th: How did man evolve on Earth? You wrote that millions of years ago a primitive man appeared on Earth. How did he get here? Go To Answer>>
* A question answered on April 3rd: What do you mean by saying that sex is the root of all our desires? What does Kabbalah have to say about everything that’s going on today surrounding sex, like pornography, prostitution, and so on? Go To Answer>>
* A question answered on March 31st: Do you think increasing availability of information instantly over the Internet and the advent of mobile devices such as the iPhone will increase interest in Kabbalah, and how do you perceive the future of human technology as a vehicle for attainment of the Upper Light? Go To Answer>>
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April 6, 2008 at 10:03 am · Filed under Technology, Video
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZPT6nQCkKg]
By the end of 2007 there were over a billion Internet users (about 20% of the world’s population) world wide, not bad for a population of almost 7 billion. That’s a growth of 265% from 2006. [Source]
Today, the whole world is accessible by means of our keyboards and computer screens. These now not-so-new tools give us full access and with it the sense of freedom of thought, speech and movement.
With the Internet as the main tool for communication it seems that today we are freer than we have ever been before. On the other hand, through the virtual connections, networks, communities and realities that we create we become enslaved to the “black box.”
In his lesson on “The Future Generation” Rav Michael Laitman explains how we became prisoners within our own freedom.
Looking at the use of the Internet by both adults and children Rav Laitman explains that the Internet and its development is a replica of the current state of our society.
View/Download the Lesson “The Future Generation”: wmv video | mp3 audio
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* You Have a New Message 🙂 – U can communicate in codes like youth do on chats; u can remain unexposed behind a computer screen and a user-name, but not for long. Sooner or later we will have to leave our masquerades and make room for each other in our hearts, not in our chat rooms.
* Facebook: What’s All the Fuss? – The obsession with Facebook expresses a deep rooted desire within each of us—to feel connected with everyone. But does the largest virtual community really deliver the new and improved social world we seek?
* Better than the Virtual World!? – Second Life – You can find anything here, or at least anything the human mind can think of. An entire world of 3-D figures living a virtual life in the palm of your hand. All you need is a mouse, a monitor, and plenty of imagination. But what’s really the deal with this “virtuality” trend? What lies behind the passion for the virtual?
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October 18, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under News, October Tour 2007
TORONTO (October 17, 2007): Without the Internet, studying Kabbalah every day would be more of a chore for Susan Morales, who already leads a busy life teaching and checking up on her nursing students.
But by going online, her class with her teacher Rav Michael Laitman, which is webcastlive every day from Israel, is just a click away for the Toronto resident who lectures at Ryerson University.
“The miracle of that is just fantastic,” said Morales, 58, who has been doing Kabbalah every day – a requirement for all students – for the past six years.
Laitman is the founder and president of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education and Research Institute in Israel, which has branches all over the world including Toronto.
Kabbalah, which is Hebrew for reception, is an ancient “method of spiritual growth and development offering an inspiring path of self-discovery and spiritual elevation,” according to the centre.
It aims to answer life’s deepest question: What is life about?
In an interview during a visit to Toronto, Laitman said the Internet plays a major role in getting the Kabbalah message out.
“When I started building the academy in 1991, the Internet was basically non-existent,” he said in Hebrew as he spoke through an interpreter.
Laitman went through some difficult years using “snail mail.”
The web improved communication, and, “as a result now today we have approximately two million students worldwide – about 200,000 in Canada – using the Internet from 47 countries in 26 languages,” he said.
Thousands more practise it through The Kabbalah Centre, another Israel-based organization that uses the web and has branches worldwide.
Through Bnei Baruch, said Morales, classes can be done any time because it has one of the largest archives of downloadable lessons.
“If I wanted to sit in front of my computer and listen and study 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, I could do it and not view (the same) lesson again.”
Rob Taylor, 56, a project management consultant in the power industry, says he’s up at 3 a.m. to study Kabbalah.
Generally he either studies texts or takes classes online with Laitman. Then throughout the day he’s always working on what he learned.
“You start evaluating yourself,” said Taylor, an eight-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and a former undercover cop who lives in Toronto.
“Why do I see it this way? Why is it affecting me the way it does?”
In 1984, when he first learned about Kabbalah, there wasn’t a lot of translated material, he said. Until the late 20th century, it was closed to all but a few select and serious students.
“There were commentaries but nothing you could really get your teeth into, to really understand it,” he said.
Then in the late 1990s, things began to change, he said.
“I started coming across material mostly put together by Laitman,” author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Kabbalah.”
Now, more than 5,000 books are available on Amazon.com, most written after 2000, according to the Idiot’s Guide. As well, more than 200,000 lessons are available online.
Besides books, such as the Idiot’s Guide, making it more accessible to people, interest really ignited after pop singer and actress Madonna became heavily involved.
“When she went public about it, more people were asking about what this is,” said Jacob Kessler, 25, who helped established the Kabbalah Club at the University of Toronto.
“More people started coming out to study meetings or … taking a class here and there at The Kabbalah Centre,” said Kessler, who was introduced to Kabbalah by his parents when he was a young child.
Kessler, who is working on a bachelor’s degree in Judaic studies with a focus on mystical Judaism and Kabbalah, says lots of students are interested in Kabbalah – sometimes classes are full.
But Madonna is only part of the reason why Kabbalah is being studied by so many people these days, said Laitman.
“Humanity is in a global crisis: Divorce rates are soaring, drug abuse, depression. Globalization causes us all to be interconnected and at the same time we’re all hateful to each other,” he said.
“When you lose hope … you start searching. Instinctively people are discovering that the answer to it probably exists in Kabbalah,” he said.
“That’s why kabbalists for the first time in 5,000 years of Kabbalah’s existence are now exposing it to the whole world,” he said. As a result, “we see that Kabbalah is a method for correcting and for restoring balance.”
People of all walks of life are finding it helpful, said Morales. She has met devout Christians, Orthodox Jews, observant Muslims and agnostics studying it.
At the core of Kabbalah, she said, “is the correction of oneself.”
How does one become more like the bestowing creator, or God, said Morales. That’s how spirituality is defined in Kabbalah.
In Kabbalah, correct intentions will lead you closer to God, or the creator, who is a giving force, a bestowing force, said Laitman. “The whole of nature is a giving nature, a loving nature.”
Each organ in our body functions to benefit the body, he said.
If one, however, begins “to pull towards itself to consume the rest of the body” it becomes cancerous, he said.
“This is why Kabbalah states that if humanity rises above its egoism it will not be cancerous towards the whole of nature.”
Today’s interconnectedness “should compel us to rise above our personal egos and achieve the right harmony and connection among us in giving to each other.”
“When Kabbalah opens up the picture of the world to us it kind of forces us to become good,” he said.
Taylor says he gradually turned to Kabbalah during his stints in the Marines and with the police out of frustration.
“You spend a lot of time in those environments because you want to fix things,” he said. “Then you reach a point of understanding that you can’t.”
Finally, “you come to realize that the whole structure begins with individual correction,” he said.
“We have to fix ourselves internally before we can even think about going out there and correcting something else.”
That, he said, “has probably been the biggest change” in his life since he began … studying Kabbalah.
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