 |
 |
| |
| Departments |
Home
Columns, Special
Topics & Features:
The Columns:
Angels, Guides, &
Loving Spirits:
Angel Blessings:
with Dr. Doreen Virtue
Ask Valerie Morrison,
Internationally
Acclaimed Psychic
Trust Your Vibes
By Dr. Sonia Choquette, PhD.
Internationally Acclaimed Psychic Healer & Author
Astrologer's Notes:
Carin Martin,
Astrologer
Donna Cunningham, MSW, Astrologer
Basil Fearrington,
Astrologer
Diana Stone,
Astrologer &
Huna Shaman
Jeff Jawer
Astrologer
Glenn Perry,
Astrologer
Ray Merriman,
Financial Astrology:
MMA Market Week
Noel Tyl,
Astrologer
Daily Aspect Calendar
by Care
MoonWatching with Dana Gerhardt and Friends
Creating Bridges:
The Spiritual &
Philosophical
Act of Power
Discovering the Key to Living Your Sacred Dream
by Lynn Andrews
Avant-Gardening:
Insights
by Frank & Vicky
Giannangelo
From The Heart:
Alan Cohen
Teachings from the Western Mystery Traditions: The Esoteric "Paths of Return"
by Jacquelyn Small, Eupsychia
Spirituality in Daily Life: by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron
The Conscious Column
by David Ault
Spiritual Mastery
for the 21st Century
Dr. Gwen MacGregor
Pearls of Wisdom:
with Care & Aeon
Encounters on the
Shaman's Path with
Dr. Hank Wesselman, PhD.
Anthropologist, Zoologist, Author, Shamanic Healer & Teacher
The Divine Human
by Ornesha De Paoli
Awakenings
by Karen Johnson
Worshipping by Wondering with
Sankara Saranam, MA Founder of the Pranayama Institute
A Woman's Beauty
by Robin Rice,
Shaman & Author
Wisdom Walks
In Circles
Margaret Lewis,
Shamanic Practitioner
The Awakening Generation
by Ann Marie Judge
Crystals, Minerals
& Gemstones
My Love of Crystals, Minerals & Gemstones
by Raven,
Raven Crystals
Divination Systems:
Be Your Own Oracle
By James Wanless, Ph.D.
Creator of the Voyager Tarot Deck
In Practice:
Juliet's Marketing Wisdom
by Juliet Austin, MA Marketing Coach, Author & Consultant
Kabbalah:
Kabbalah Revealed:
Rav Michael Laitman, PhD, Kabbalalist
"Letters from Heaven:" Spiritual Guidance from
the Hebrew Alphabet
by Avigayil Landsman
Numberscope Forecast
by Vincent J. Barra
Pet Care:
Dr. Carson's Holistic Animal Care
by Dr. Kathleen Carson, D.V.M.
Tarot:
Moment to Moment
by Gigi Miner
Author, Tarot Consultant, & Teacher
Reviews:
Tarot, Cartomancy,
Oracle Decks,
Books, & Software.
by Bonnie Cehovet,
Tarot Master
Humor:
Wake Up Laughing.Com:
Swami Beyondananda
Features:
Blessings & Messages
Event Calendar
Historical Notes & Data
The MetaPersonals
Opinion-Editorial
News Briefs
Symbols, Seals,
Amulets & Talismans
The What in the
World Department
Trivia & Life's Other
Novel Moments
Interviews:
Watch for Upcoming Announcements
Healing & Alternative
Health:
"Spirit and Practice
of the Wise Woman
Tradition"
By Susun Weed
Tai Chi & Qigong
by Bill Douglas
The Holistic Mystic,
by Lonny Brown
Medical Intuition: Tune
in to Your Body and Improve Your Health
by Caroline Sutherland, Sutherland Communications
Transformational Healing through the Violet Flame!
by Eva Kettles
Herbs for Health
with Kami McBride
Lose Weight Permanently: Stop the Endless Cycle of Dieting
Rena Greenberg,
Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming & Hypnotherapist
The Directory
The Book Nook
Archives:
Past Issues
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kabbalah: The Bnei Baruch Association – Kabbalah Education & Research Institute.
Kabbalah Revealed
A United New Civilization
Lecture presented by
Rav Michael Laitman, PhD
at the World Spirit Forum,
Arosa, Switzerland
|
|
|
by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.
|
|
|
In this lecture, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD, presents the origin and the nature of today’s global crisis as rooted in the overblown human egoism. Rather than lingering on the crisis itself, Laitman expounds on the notion that “a correct diagnosis of the illness is half the cure,” and shifts the focus to how we can heal ourselves through altruism.
Laitman describes altruism as nature’s underlying principle, and that it is humanity’s goal to equalize with this principle. He envisions that uniting altruistic organizations to advertise an “Altruism is in! Egoism is out!” message will solve the crisis and create an elevated, interconnected human consciousness. Laitman also explains that a modus operandi based on altruism is failsafe, since it is founded on, and supported by nature’s laws.
I am very happy and excited to be speaking in front of such a distinguished audience. I want to thank our hosts, the World Spirit Forum, the World Wisdom Council (which we always call “WWC”), and the distinguished guests, the youth, and all the organizations present here. I hope that we will take advantage of this meeting, to move another step forward toward creating a new civilization.
We all know that we are in a deep and very serious crisis, and there is no point going into all the details. In brief, we have a crisis in the family, in education, in drug abuse, ecology of course, the increasing threat of nuclear power and basically, and we are losing control over the world we live in.
I had the honor to receive Professor László’s coming book, where I could read in great detail about the vastness and gravity of the crisis. But the most important thing is to realize the reason for the crisis, because if we know the reason for the crisis perhaps we also reach an understanding of the solution.
The matter of the world is made of something called “a will to receive”—“the desire to receive.” Within everything that exists in the world there is the will to receive within, to be internally fulfilled. This force that wants to fulfill itself, builds around it all the matter there is. When this power is weak, it builds inanimate matter whose entire nature it is to sustain itself. When this power is greater, it builds the vegetative around it that can already absorb or eject good things and bad things, and is already in contact and can sense its environment somewhat like the sun and rain, and the soil. It lives and dies, but it’s still not strong enough to become mobile. A greater force builds around it some clothing that takes an animate form, which can already move from place to place and reproduce in a special way. It already has sense, it can sense other creatures. But it still doesn’t feel the past or the future. It just feels its own life. All of these degrees—the inanimate, the vegetative and the animate—are all conducted by nature; they don’t do harm and they don’t do good—they exist. That’s why we can’t talk about the ego in the inanimate, vegetative and animate. They operate according to the precise rules instilled in them by nature.
Humans come from a still greater will to receive. In humans, even the desires that pertain to their body are excessive. Even in the desires that pertain to food, sex, and family, in all of the matters pertaining to the body, we go too far. We don’t operate like animals, we overdo it. Besides, humans possess additional desires for knowledge, for power, for wealth and for domination. It is especially these desires, called the human desires; these are the ones that make people evil, or bad, because we want to exploit society, or others, for our own good.
Moreover, we enjoy degrading and humiliating others, and using others for our own good—this is the ego. Besides the over-measure in which these desires exist in us, they constantly evolve. And that tells us that, unlike the inanimate, vegetative and animate, we haven’t finished evolving.
For thousands of years, we constantly evolve through our evolving will to receive. This propels the evolution of society to take new forms. In this way we constantly develop in education, in culture, in knowledge, in science and we always thought that these things would bring us a better life. But now we are approaching a special time, after thousands of years of evolution, now we realize that it’s brought us to a dead end.
Yet this special time is a good one because now we have to realize what nature wants of us, and where it is leading us. If we understand it and use it correctly, then we will rise to an even higher level in our present existence to a new consciousness and to a new civilization.
The way the will to receive is built, naturally, cannot be fulfilled, even though it constantly desires to be filled. All this will to receive wants is pleasure (fulfillment), but once it receives the pleasure, it disappears. This is because once pleasure enters the will to receive, it neutralizes the desire itself. For example, if I am very hungry and I start eating, I enjoy it very much, but as I continue eating, I enjoy it less and less, and by the end of the meal, I have no pleasure whatsoever; the desire has disappeared and so has the pleasure. We are all familiar with the phenomenon where there is something that we want, maybe for years, but once we have it, after a very short time, the pleasure disappears. It’s because the pleasure and the desire contradict each other and therefore neutralize each other. Therefore the more we want the emptier we become. Now humanity in general is finally beginning to discover that the pursuit of pleasure will eventually bring us no satisfaction. This is why the young generation, who haven’t really had a chance to attain anything, to do anything, they are already attracted to drugs, suffer from an inclination to depression, to suicide; they’re despaired from their prospect of enjoying life because it is impossible to enjoy directly,.
On the other hand, we can see from many examples that when a person gives, then he can enjoy. Why does it happen? Because when a person gives, he doesn’t instill the pleasure into the desire, but disconnects between the place of the pleasure and desire. They’re in two different places. Just like when a mother nurses her child, the more she gives to her child, the more her child receives, the more she enjoys; there’s no end to her pleasure. That is basically the way to a happy life, for a fulfilled person, for a fulfilled humanity. Even nature shows us that that’s the principle by which every living organism, all life, is built.
If you examine every cell in the body, each one on its own, it’s egoistic. Yet they all come together for the purpose of the life of the whole body. Elisabet Sahtouris, with her wonderful lecture in Tokyo, demonstrated it beautifully. From these few examples we can see how this can be the solution to the crisis that the world is in right now.
The crisis is really not in the world, but in our understanding of how to be happy by fulfilling others. We see that on the one hand altruism exists in every organism; without it the organism cannot exist. Every cell in the body takes only what it needs for its sustenance, the rest it gives to the body. That’s how we have to exist at the human level and that’s what nature wants of us. Nature has already made the preparations for that on all the levels, up to the animate level, but it’s missing in the human level. But, at the human level, we have the preparation to organize our lives according to the same law—the law of giving.
Among us, genetically, there are always up to ten percent of humanity who are altruists. They always exist everywhere in the world and that’s the conditions that nature has prepared for us. All that these altruists need is to understand that through their uniting and recognizing the crisis and its solution—bestowing on the rest of humanity—this is the solution for the rest of humanity. Because before we balance ourselves with respect to nature, we will always be afflicted by it. Just like the inanimate, the vegetative and the animate exist only by receiving what they need for their sustenance, we have to apply the same law among humans where we take only what is needed for sustenance and give everything else to humanity, just like one body. Because we actually do all belong to one body; and the globalization, the evolution of humanity that we are now experiencing, how we’re all connected, that comes to force us to understand that this is the way we have to exist.
This is the solution. So what we need is to come to balance with nature and the result will be that the forces of nature, which right now pressure us to be in balance with it, will no longer be pressuring us. It depends only on our own consciousness; the wiser we become, the less afflicted we will become, and the faster we will progress.
We are operated by inner information and by social environment. Some of this information is given to us by inheritance and once we are born we are placed in all kinds of systems, educational, cultural and so on, and by the time we are twenty or so, we are complete people. And by the age of twenty, we are ready, and we function according to the givens with which we were born or according to our upbringing.
So where are we? Where is our free choice here? Our free choice is when we are already grownups and there is nothing that can be done since this is how we were created—our choice is then in changing our social environment. This is the free choice of humans, because we are built in such a way, naturally, that everything we do is in order to receive society’s recognition. We think we want money, power and honor, and all kinds of desires. Basically what we want is to look good in the eyes of society and that’s what makes a person feel like a person.
So if we change the social values toward giving, then people will just have to change their behavior. If we artificially change social values so that society will appreciate a person only according to what he or she gives, then people will be ashamed of being egoists and will be coerced to give to society. If my children at home look at me and appreciate me according to the society’s appreciation of me; and if my children appreciate me according to how much I give to society; if my kin and co-workers and generally everyone will only appreciate me according to what I give to society, then I will not have a choice—I will have to contribute, I will have to be a giver.
Nature has given us all the preparations to change society, and to do it in an easy way. The altruistic ten percent that exist in the world, they’re also divided into ninety percent and ten percent. The ten percent of the altruists, or the one percent of humanity, are active altruists. They’re the ones who should act, unite their ranks, and start implementing the program and unite around them the remaining ninety percent of the altruists.
Once our message is completely formulated and built, then we can turn to the remaining ninety percent of humanity. Of course, this has to be done with an attitude of love toward everyone, because nothing was created to be broken, to be oppressed or to be eradicated from the world. On the contrary, it is only through the right combination between altruistic and egoistic forces of society that we will find wholeness and perfection in society. Even within the egoistic society, we have the preparations to step toward the altruists.
If you examine our education system, our culture, you will see that they are all based on altruistic principles. At home, at school, we tell our children to be courteous and friendly to everyone. We want our children to behave nicely, to be nice to others, because it protects them. Even if you examine our culture, in movies etc., you’ll see that altruism is always elevated; it is evaluated as something higher and noble. There is no open resistance to altruism by anyone in society. No one can say, “I don’t want to give.” On the contrary, the people who are the worst takers are the ones who say, “Oh, I give this, I give that, I always donate.” Governments and capitalistic organizations take pride in what they give to humanity.
So we can approach every person and every organization, and introduce our message to them, provided it is a well formulated message. Basically, it is all up to us. We are responsible and we are the ones who should do it, and I see here people who really care for humanity and can do it. I think that our first step should be constructing a permanently ongoing center that will deal with everything that has to do with building our message and presenting it to the world. We have to shape our ideology. Through experts, we have to learn how to approach every faction of humanity. We need television channels; we need Internet channels to explain to people the cause of the crisis. We just have to remember that knowing the illness is already half the cure. By understanding our situation and that nature is pushing us to a good state, it will give us vitality, a reason to step out of depression and drugs, because it will give us hope for the future.
I hope that we will succeed in this together and that we will build our center de facto. I thank you all, I love you all, and I hope that together we will realize this plan and we will save humanity. Again, I would like to thank the World Wisdom Council, Professor László and the World Spirit Forum for having given me the opportunity to come here and speak.
Thank you very much.
|
|
|
|
|
Kabbalist Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.,
Kabbalist, Rabbi, & Author
|
 |
World leading Kabbalist, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD has an MS in Bio Cybernetics and a PhD in Philosophy and Ontology.
Rav Laitman is the author of 25 internationally selling books on Kabbalah; his books have been translated into nine languages.
His lessons are broadcast live throughout the Internet and cable TV to tens of thousands of students the world over. In recent years he has become a sought-after lecturer in academic and learning circles in the US and Europe
His search for the meaning of life led him to the teachings of Kabbalah in the 1970’s. At first he studied Kabbalah with various teachers in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel. In 1979 he discovered his true teacher, Kabbalist Rav Baruch Shalom Halevi Ashlag (1907-1991).
From the time he met Rav Baruch Ashlag (known as the Rabash), he was never apart from him and spent most of his time in his presence, as his disciple and personal assistant. Up until his death, Rabash passed on to Rav Laitman the wisdom he had acquired from his father, Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag, known as Baal HaSulam for his Sulam commentary on The zohar (The Book of Radiance).
Rav Dr. Laitman held a successful public meeting in San-Francisco in March 2005 with leading American scientists, participants of the blockbuster hit "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Here are some of the impressions of the scientists after meeting Dr. Laitman:
Fred Alan Wolf, PhD. author of eleven books, among them The Yoga of Time Travel, Matter into Feeling: a new Alchemy of Science and Spirit, and Mind into Matter: "I admire your knowledge. I would love to sit at your feet and study for a long time."
Jeffery Satinover, MD (Psychiatry), MS (Physics) – Author of seven books including The Quantum Brain & Cracking the Bible Code: "The emergence of Kabbalah from its concealment in a genuine form is historically significant and is truly remarkable."
Rav Laitman is the founder and president of the Bnei Baruch Association – Kabbalah Education & Research Institute. Bnei Baruch is an Israeli based non-profit organization that is dedicated to spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah to all of humanity.
Bnei Baruch conducts daily Kabbalah lessons, broadcasted live on the Internet and available for free.
In 1996 Bnei Baruch created, what is now the largest and most popular Internet site on the subject of Kabbalah--www.kabbalah.info. This website provides unlimited access to Kabbalistic texts and media in over twenty languages, and hosts over a million readers every month.
Website: www.kabbalah.info.
Further information is available at www.kabbalah.info.
The following study
e-books, and resources are free,
and available in the formats listed below:
• "Attaining the Worlds Beyond",
by Kabbalist, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.
Audio book
(MP3 format): www.kabbalah.info/
engkab/
worlds_beyond.htm
PDF:
www.kabbalah.info/
engkab/
book_4/Attaining-Text.pdf
•"Kabbalah for Beginners"
Palm download:
www.kabbalah.info
/engkab/ebook/kab_
for_beginners.htm
•"What the Bleep…"
Video Discussion:
www.kabbalahmedia.info/
~video/KabbalahMeets
ModernScience/Kabbalah
MeetsModernScience_
pilot_eng.mpg
Rav Laitman's Latest Book Releases:
•The Kabbalah Experience
Never has the language of Kabbalah been as clear and accessible as it is here, in this compelling, informative collection. The depth of wisdom revealed in the questions and answers of this book will inspire reflection and contemplation.
•The Path of Kabbalah
“Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness” (Exodus 20:3). This commandment from the Bible is the basis of the Kabbalistic wisdom, for Kabbalists know that the only true reality is that of His Essence, the Upper Force.
For more information on obtaining these books and others, visit:
http://www.kabbalah
books.info/default.php
View these fascinating video clips from Rav Laitman's world lectures !!
The Needed Shift in Human Consciousness
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4Q0NsgtFMhI
05:11
Dr. Michael Laitman's speech at the World Wisdom Council meeting in Tokyo, Japan,
"Creating a New Civilization" - November 2005.
Creating a New Civilization - Tokyo 2005
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=WZF2L4CEfZc
06:23
The World Wisdom Council's 3rd meeting "Creating a New Civilization" in Tokyo, November 2005.
Israeli artists meet Rav Michael Laitman, PhD
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=-mUumQWnlGM
07:36
Israeli artists meet with Rav Michael Laitman, PhD to talk about the meaning of life, free choice, and life's basic questions.
Attaining the Worlds Beyond
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=uUWl8-WPeKk
05:14
A video inspired by text from Rav Michael Laitman's book "Attaining the Worlds Beyond."
|
 |
You'll find it in
The
Directory! |
|
|
|
|
