A Talk with Dr. Michael Laitman

A New life

An Integral Course in Companies and Organizations

Talk 115

December 23, 2012

Oren: Hello and thank you for joining us on the series of talks “A New Life” with Dr. Michael Laitman. We are learning the integral perception of the world and how it manifests in all areas of our lives. What this perception is, what it can give us and how it may lead each and every one of us and all of us together to a new life, and we invite you to join us. Today we would like to start a course, which we may later present to organizations, companies, to people who work in different places, through which we can develop their lives towards the next level of our evolution. Dr. Laitman is here with us and we invite you to listen together, it is going to be fascinating.

How do we begin, Dr. Laitman?

We would like to try and hold a course for a standard, common organization, somewhere out there. We bring a number of people, possibly thirty or forty, maybe more, but that should be the magnitude we should limit more or less, because we still need to hold workshops, answer questions, and that way it is manageable, maintainable, like a class. We will surely need to complete it later with various video-clips, tables, drawings, games, workshops and discussions, but for now I will only try to provide material in what seems to me the right flow.

It may be possible to add more to the explanations I give, because I am used to talking to scholars and not to people who live a standard life, I really have no contact or common language with them. So later, we will need to adapt my course in some way. However, we will try and see how to do that, later. I do not think that what I say will be ready as an actual course which could already be presented to people and suffice them.

First of all, I would turn to them with the question "Why are we here?" We are here to improve our lives. In order to improve our lives, we need to know what our lives are. How are they governed? What is the system we are in? What forces exist in the system? What influences us from the inside? What influences us from the outside? What are the risks that can suddenly appear in the system, for the bad or for the good? And overall, how can we advance towards something where we formulate for ourselves a better, easier and more effective life, for us and for the organization we work in: the office or factory where we are. How can we improve our work relationships? Perhaps not only work, as well. It is very common today to meet outside of work, and the management is usually interested in having these cooperatives, special meetings, even vacationa and so on. So let us see how we arrange our lives in a better way altogether.

Moreover, we will clarify why we see ourselves, the world and our work, as if something were wrong at times, deteriorating. There is a certain fear of the future, insecurity concerning what will happen and what is happening, here and in the whole world, too. Where are we situated? This is actually the first question. In order to clarify that, let us see what the largest system is that we are in. The largest system we are in is the comprehensive reality. This large space is full of all kinds of bodies, stars, planets, all sorts of galaxies.

What we reveal is that this thing began approximately fourteen billion years ago. It began to develop from some small spark of force, and this force is defined as will power, which is the will to maintain itself, the will to exist, and this desire began developing. It began to evolve and create from within itself, dividing, proliferating into further desires. It's just like when we say that all kinds of elementary particles, such as electrons, protons, neutrons, all kinds of particles, until they later connected into atoms and molecules, and then into a great many other particles. So basically all matter is composed of the same elementary particles, for we discover that the nature of every one of them is the will to maintain itself, the will to guard itself. That is actually the central force of Nature.

There are particles in which this desire is very strong, so then it is difficult for us to break such as materials, for example metals. There are particles which are easier to break, for they are liquids, gases of sorts and so on. There are particles that we can separate by heat, just as we can cool water and it will become solid matter, and we can heat it up until it turns into gas. Meaning, this substance which is the will to receive may appear in several forms: solid, liquid, gas, and there is also plasma, there are several additional types of substances, and plasma is the fourth particle. So basically the entire universe and all of Nature is comprised of the desire to live, a desire to exist, to maintain itself in a comfortable, good and natural way, concerning each and every type of substance.

At school, we learned the periodic table of the various substances, which make up all there is. We land on the moon or on Mars and other places in space and collect all kinds of particles; we see that everything is essentially comprised of those same parts, from the largest stars to the smallest particles. In addition, life that began on Earth, which in the meantime we do not find anywhere else, as much as we try. They also began as inanimate matter, which seems to be the form of all substances in the universe.

This substance is one that desires to maintain itself, and if there is a certain energy which explodes it, heats it or breaks it, then it breaks. If a force wills to exist less than the foreign force operating upon it, from the inside or the outside, then it disintegrates and ceases to exist in its previous form; it attains another form, according to that same force influencing it. However, the form of the inanimate matter is that it desires to maintain itself and actually does not need anything else from the outside, rather, in our words, it seemingly enjoys existing the way it exists. We take a piece of iron or clay or water, no matter what, if we want to change them we need to exercise great forces upon them, and if not, they will remain as they are. If they were not affected by anything, that is the way they would remain for eternity.

If we are speaking of crystals, they are a special form of inanimate matter which desires to preserve itself that way. Just like when we break diamonds, we polish them, giving them a unique shape, yet they try to preserve their form the entire time. It is in meteorology, in metallurgy, where we make a new metal from several metals and use it in our technique, in industry. Nevertheless, we are violating those substances by a foreign force, in order to make them into something we desire, and that is not their Nature. The nature of the inanimate is to maintain itself so that nothing foreign changes it.

And that is how Earth evolved as an inanimate, as a mass, for about four billion years, as we know to date and know how to measure. Then the vegetative began to develop. The vegetative began life in the water which covered most of the entire planet. Previously, Earth would heat up and cool down and there were all kinds of internal and external phenomena, until it acquired some form of its own, it was almost round, and had conditions for the formation of life. When these conditions for the formation of life were attained, in the meantime those conditions were ready as life began in an extremely simple form, slightly primitively, as plants, and then the animate already, animate and then human. All that took hundreds of millions of years, and that is how it evolved.

Yet, it is interesting how it evolves. If we say that the desire for pleasure, for maintaining itself, is at the foundation of creation, it turns out that the desire to maintain itself, to enjoy its existence in such a form, as a solid, already starts to evolve and does not suffice with being solid. It already desires to attain more advanced forms; it desires to receive influences from the outside, which appear positive, and extract from substances from it which seem foreign, aggravating it from the inside. Then, from solid substances, from the inanimate, the vegetative begins to evolve. The difference between the inanimate and the vegetative is that its desire to receive is further developed in being willing to change and particularly by changing, feels itself progressing. It changes itself for its own benefit, by constantly receiving essential things for itself externally and releasing the negative things, detrimental to it, and by drawing close to the benefits and distancing from the harmful, it evolves. That is evolution.

Meaning, we see that the vegetative develops, it grows, but it grows for a purpose, it grows because it constantly gets closer to the useful and distances from the harmful and then its external form grows, but inside only the desire to receive is operating. The software is the same one, only now it operates increasingly to absorb useful things and further emit harmful things. The good and unique thing in Nature is that it is not about one vegetative or inanimate; rather it is all one desire, indeed, coming from a single initial desire, from a little spark, from the beginning of a Big Bang. That is why all of Nature, stemming from the same single force, continues to be interconnected and one.

Therefore, we see that what is good and efficient for one plant, things it draws close to itself are specifically harmful things emitted by something else. And the toxic things this plant emits, another uses as effective things. Thus we see that everything in Nature is interconnected. Likewise, we are with plants; we breathe the oxygen they discharge and they absorb all kinds of toxic gases, etc. We see that these things are in a constant cycle of absorption and extraction, and so it is with all.

That is how the vegetative evolved. And when the vegetative time for manifestation arrived, meaning, when its desire to receive actualized itself in all sorts of plants, as much as possible: plants growing on the tops of mountains and in the depths of the oceans, and before us, on earth, truly very many types. We see that there are plants which hide from the sun, there are plants which specifically bloom before sunrise, some bloom at night or during the day, emitting all kinds of things, gases of all sorts; meaning, among the plants, there are many different types, some of which are very odd and strange.

There are plants that evolved, and we can see that they evolved from the inanimate. They are the corals, which on the one hand are inanimate matter; on the other hand they still develop and contain forms of the vegetative matter. Meaning, there are such forms between the inanimate and the vegetative, and in the past there were probably all kinds of other forms that evolved through the evolution of this force, the desire, but the corals are the actual transition between the inanimate world to the vegetative world.

After that, we reach the end of the evolution of the vegetative world, which covered all of Earth, evolving throughout millions of years. We all learned it somehow in school. Afterward, the same desire to maintain itself and evolve further developed, continuously maintaining itself in the best way, in the best conditions. We see how water flows and how the plant climbs and so on.

Meaning, we see that Nature always wants to succeed, it wants to attain the best state, which is optimal for developing, reproducing and maintaining the state it's in. If the conditions change, it tries to adapt itself to the new conditions according to the internal forces, and thereby develops. As the climate evolved and changed over millions of years on Earth, so have the plants attained another form. The truth is that the inanimate also evolves and somewhat changes itself, because if external conditions affect it, surely it also responds accordingly. However, these reactions are very slow ones and truly minimal.

After the vegetative, which reached the peak of its evolution, plants already started to evolve, some of which feed on animals; they catch a fly or a bee and eat them. Meaning, it is already a transition between the vegetative and the animate. The entire vegetative feeds on the inanimate world and becomes food for the animate, which evolved after it. The difference between the vegetative and the animate is great. That is because plants evolve; they are also greatly connected amongst themselves as we are now discovering, that amongst all the plants in the world there is a certain unique language, they secrete special gases, they communicate under the ground with each other and with all kinds of types of plants; if there is a unique tree, then are also small unique plants next to it, and so on.

Meaning, it is a whole world which is entirely integral, connected and dependent on a myriad of conditions, such as where each of the plants live, yet there is still a connection among all of them. It is wondrous, we can perform such an experiment, harm plants in one place, and we will feel the reaction of what we did very far away. For some reason, we still do not really understand how it takes place, yet we see that in Nature all these things are interconnected. We say it is interconnected because it is related to that initial desire which erupted, to that first burst of energy, from which the entire universe was created.

After that, the vegetative became animate, also in many such forms. Then the animate also evolved, as we learned. We were taught everything but the way we learned is the problem. We were taught that there are small primitive forms, various amoeba which evolved, and we can see them even now, how they are in the water, developing in all kinds of places.

Then those same forms developed and multiplied, later began finding that it is better for them to connect amongst themselves, so they started connecting, and in the connection, when the connection among them became greater, they found that it is probably a good thing for proliferating substances to be together on one hand, and on the other hand, to share all kinds of functions among themselves, as some began operating as a brain and others as a liver, heart, lungs and so on.

Meaning, already from stem cells, for we learn today that there are stem cells, basic cells from which later on, all the various types of cells or formed. That is how it was in the past as well, in our history, in our evolution, for there were cells, a simple life, from which later different forms of bodies evolved. They have also evolved across the planet, and then everywhere, according to the conditions, a different form evolved. We see a polar bear, a brown bear, a black bear and panda and so on, so we see that everywhere there are essentially the same creatures, but they take on a different form according to the conditions, for they have developed under different conditions. People, too-there are these and others; there are several types of people, why? Because the external conditions are different. We, by the way, also relate the human to the animate.

That is how the animate world evolved and in the animate world, as we discussed, their desire is a desire for pleasure, a desire to maintain themselves, to dominate, to develop. For this is evolution, when there is an increasing inner drive to multiply, develop and grow, which is in each and every particle of Nature. Only in the inanimate we hardly see it, we see it a little more in radioactive substances, which emit radiation. It is even said that in metals, in all kinds of things, there is also some energy emitted from them which can be sensed. Some people can even put their hands and say, this is gold and this is silver, copper and so on, meaning, they can even feel what is emitted from metal.

Then the animate world arrives. The essential difference between the animate and the vegetative is that the vegetative climbs, spreads itself, and it also reproduces by the seeds it disperses, and the animals also eat of the plants, later excreting their seeds, and that is how it develops and proliferates in other places.

The animate world is an extremely unique world. First of all it wanders, it changes location. Meaning, it already evolved much more than the vegetative. Here we need to realize that along with the desire to maintain itself, it constantly brings itself to the most comfortable form, the best form, like water flowing to the lowest place, like a plant opening itself towards the light. Meaning, something evolves within every life cell: intelligence, a brain, unique software to manage itself, to remember things from the past, to develop plans for the future and examine and see in what form and where to, in which direction, and how I can develop in order to attain a better state.

That means that the desire for pleasure, the will to receive, the desire to maintain itself, does not only maintain itself; maintaining itself in the best form, that is actually the purpose. That is why it begins to develop intelligence, a brain, alongside it. Nowadays, we even construct such computers which can actually learn from experience themselves and remember all the data, and later they can develop further.

Meaning, these things are very simple and are at the foundation of Nature, there is nothing unique about them. If we build parts out of the desire, the desire obligates itself to develop more specialized cells which are responsible for the data absorption the states it is in, to compare them and to extract a solution from it, actualizing itself according to what it found as beneficial. Within the desire, these four aspects develop, four such levels of thinking, absorption, comparison, summary, feedback, and in this way it begins to manage itself in a better direction.

Accordingly, we build all kinds of systems, but in Nature it already exists in each and every living cell, as a living cell cannot exist if there is no such software within it. This program is an element of the brain, and the large brain is composed of such small cells, even our neurons; everything exists according to it.

So when evolution attains the animate degree, here we can truly see the extent to which it is evolving, other than a desire, in proximity to it, a large brain evolves, in every form of life, how it chooses, how it views, how it arranges itself. There is a very unique program here to make a home for itself, a place in the ground or in a tree, how to breed and how to develop its own environment, to preserve its place so it is seemingly fenced in, like for a cat and all the other animals and so on. Meaning, there is already a very individual, personal form of life here.

What we do need to understand is that if it is inanimate, it is seemingly not dependent on time, if the conditions change, it changes and if the conditions don't change, it doesn't change. The vegetative is already dependent on the seasons; it has a life period and a time when it dies. A period when it is born, exists and dies. Meaning, it already has what we call "life."

"Life" means that it is in an active connection with the environment, and that we, according to this active connection with the environment, can point and say “it is alive,” meaning it is connected with the environment. We can say about a plant or a living body that it is dead, which means it is not in active connection with the environment, any longer.

So if we see that in plants, they each have a unique period, and that there are plants which live according to the seasons, some live tens or hundreds of years, others live only a part of the year and so on, but they still have collective attributes, they are all the same type. That means that if I belong to the wheat plant, then I live and beside me are billions more wheat plants in the field, and they have the same form of life as me. On one day, we start to live, and on one day our lives end.

In the animate world, there are also periods when they give birth to their offspring, but the development is more personal, and life and death are already more dependent on the environment, and therefore more personal, individual. However, we can say, more or less, about each and every one what their lives are. It is relatively easy for us to observe the animate world, we can examine it, see it, and we have enough knowledge to manage the animate world and control it.

Man belongs, according to his body, to the animate world and we truly evolved from the apes, from a unique type of apes, which are the transition between the animate world and the human world. When we evolved, we evolved in a unique way, in the same way as when a person who has a special connection with the environment. We mentioned that the desire in the inanimate depends on the environment, but in a lesser way of all. The vegetative depends on the environment, more on the sun, the seasons, and so on. The animate world depends on the environment even more and man really depends on the environment.

Because if we leave a human being in the woods and he develops with the animals, he will be as the animate. If we put him in a human society, he will develop according to the human society, and at the height of the society he will evolve to the same level, as the speaking. Meaning, with man, the dependency on the environment is truly all encompassing and comprehensive, hence he is constantly under pressure from the environment. On the one hand he has to be a part of the environment and fill himself through it, and on the other he constantly wants to control the environment, to run away from it and so on. Meaning, we have a problem with the environment, that is why we constantly struggle with it in some way.

In addition, what we also have at the human degree is that the inanimate degree barely evolves. We can find matter on the moon and matter on Earth and Mars, and we have already received matter from all of them, we see there is no difference between them, they are practically the same. It is not so with the vegetative, which exists only on the face of the Earth, so there are great differences between plants that existed millions of years ago; we learned in school what types of plants existed then, large and so on, and what plants we have now. Plants that existed then, which were ten or twenty meters high, in our world today, may grow a few centimetres off the ground and vice versa. Meaning, the plants have evolved and transformed a great deal.

The animate has evolved and transformed much more than that. It is difficult for us to find the animate, but there were dinosaurs, various mammoths, there were multitude types which became extinct and new types came in their place; that is because Earth also went through various ice ages, periods of defrosting and so on. And with man, there was even a greater development, not only in appearance, surely in that too, as people were very short, 80 centimetres tall and nowadays some are 180 centimetres tall. Even in the previous century, in the twentieth century, we grew in height by 30 to 40 centimetres.

But this is not the problem, or perhaps not a problem, yet the uniqueness is that we grew in our internal attributes and alongside them in intelligence, since our brain is advancing in accordance with our desire. And man is constantly advancing in his desire, much more than the inanimate, vegetative and animate. According to the history we study, we see how man has evolved over the past five thousand years, and the animate has evolved slightly; for sure today the cows are large, particularly as we fatten them with all kinds of foods, with antibiotics and all. However, they have grown quantitatively and qualitatively because of us, especially those who live near us, close to human beings.

However, man has greatly evolved. Now we need to see the whole universe as one great inanimate desire, within which, all over Earth, there are vegetative, animate and human desires; how they are all connected together, since they emerged from a single point, and they are truly connected. That is what science is revealing today. Still, it is important for us to know about them. We are just talking in general because eventually we need to understand where mishaps come from and how we can avoid them and attain a better life, so we need to know the system.

Hence, we have reached a human being who has been developing in his desires over the last hundreds of thousands of years. Up until thirty-five thousand years ago, man was barely separate from the animals; he belonged to the animate. Around thirty-five thousand years ago, as we see in scientific studies, he began to change, he started to develop, his desire began to demand more.

Accordingly, his desires were basic ones, which are food, sex, and family. That is actually what was supposed to be, but he began to change his environment. He began to fashion all kinds of tools for himself, reorganized himself in groups, not just a family or a tribe. That took place for quite a long time, from thirty five thousand years BCE to five thousand years BCE. That means a period beginning thirty thousand years BCE and ended five thousand years BCE, the period of our primitive evolution. It is not so primitive, we made great changes then and our first evolution took place then.

Afterwards, the period of civilization arrived, although it was an ancient civilization, yet a civilization, approximately five thousand years BCE until around five hundred years ACE. Meaning, that was a great period which we call "the period of the vegetative within man." Before that, it was the period of "the inanimate within man," that primitive period. Why? Because that is when we were only concerned with sustaining ourselves in desires of food, sex and family, like the animals. Only we were slightly more advanced with tools in order to provide us with the same desires of animals: food, sex and family, just like animals have. There were surely a few changes, after all, it was the period of evolution. Nonetheless, it was a period called "the inanimate within man."

And, "the vegetative within man" as we mentioned, is minus five thousand years until five hundred years plus around the counting point. This is actually the period of human civilization which is characterized by craving wealth; it is the vegetative period in man. For, then we see the extent to which there were wars and slavery, and humanity was very exuberant. This is the period of the birth of various religions and beliefs, priests in all nations and wars amongst countries.

Later on, the period of the Middle Ages arrived, which was from five hundred years ACE until the fifteenth century, the period of "the animate within man," within us, which is the desire for control. Meaning, we are already with desires beyond necessity, beyond the desires animals have. Previously, there were desires for wealth and now there are desires for control. These were the medieval times that ended, we think it was around the fifteenth century and then our current civilization already began to evolve.

Desire develops within man, stemming from which, pressure is upon him from the inside; man develops all sorts of things, he discovers the continents and changes the environment, and in short, the world is evolving. There is a great deal to say about it, but after all, we are not here to study history or geography, and it does not matter to us what Columbus did and what all the scientists have done from that time on.

Rather, it is important to us that evolution has always been by changing desires and within man, the desires, because they proceed to change more and more rapidly, we really see that during this period of the Middle Ages there were great changes. People started to get to know each other. They each came out of their area and started to fight, began making a living off of one another in trade, and so on. From West Africa to China, they transferred merchandise and so on. People already started to become familiar with the world, to understand things; it was a desire for money and control.

All the previous desires, which were desires for food, sex, family, remained. Then, upon them, arrives the desire for wealth. It will also remain. The desire for control also arrives and it will remain, as well. Meaning, all these desires, it is not that one comes and replaces the other. That is very important, because otherwise people think how it could possibly be. Today, I also want wealth, only today it comes in the form of engaging with the other desires.

After the Middle Ages were over, approximately in the fifteenth century, another five hundred years arrive, which is already the period of the new civilization, for it was the true evolution of man. Meaning, the Middle Ages is the period of "the animate within man,” and this new period, from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, this is the period of the evolution of man within man, which is the evolution of the character within the person. It is a desire for knowledge, for the discovery of the continents, technology, technique, sorts of alchemy, all kinds of science, the Renaissance.

Human beings started feeling they are in the centre, similar to how Leonardo da Vinci painted man "I am in the centre of the universe." That is already a great change and this is the immense struggle between the beliefs, the churches and this modern approach. For when a person is lowly, inside his attributes, inside his evil inclination, within his despicable nature, or when he suddenly feels himself in the centre of the universe: "I can, I am capable, who else but me?" And so on. Here all kinds of tendencies and responses already begin to emerge, speaking of personal development, the personality of the person.

That is until we reach the scientific revolution. Indeed, we begin discussing the period of Einstein and the discovery of radioactive material, radio and television. In short, the end of the nineteenth century, the beginning of the twentieth century; absolutely what we did here was a great revolution. We see that the reactions are very rapid. Evolution is quicker. The intensity of the discoveries is much greater. The periods are shorter. The first period was thirty thousand years, the second was ten thousand years, from the fifth century to the fifteenth century and then five hundred years. Now, the twentieth century gave us a huge leap, unparalleled in history.

Meaning, we see that we are evolving exponentially, in a sharp angle. We have reached the end of evolution in the twentieth century. What is happening to us is that we reached the end of the evolution of that same point which created the universe and exploded. It is as if that point which developed and evolved in the entire universe and on the face of the Earth, evolved into the vegetative, the animate and the human world. All of that reached a state in which today we find we have nowhere to develop. Where is the new desire? That, we do not know.

It is very interesting that we always knew where we were heading. We held revolutions. There have always been people who said ‘we should go here, not go here, in this direction, in that direction,’ there were lots of ideas. Then, through the struggle between them, we would scrutinize what is good and what is not. Even when we entered a mistaken situation, we would use it to help us discern the improved situation and that is how we evolved. There were also many opinions, hence, many countries. We could do many things at once: you develop socialism and I develop communism, and over there, slavery still exists and over there something else, it does not matter, and various other options. In education, trying different forms in parallel, in each one's culture and so on.

Whereas nowadays, in the last fifty years at least, from about the sixties of the last century, we feel that we are in some deterioration. Deterioration in that our desires are disappearing, the drive, what is called the desire, it is gone. The goals have vanished. We shut down all our grand programs, the space program, the great plans of changing Nature; it is as if we are losing our desires from the inside. It is not a result of our development with each other; we realize that it is not worth external calculations. No. I am not finding within myself any drive to continue and evolve. Where to?

It is not that I do not know where, rather I have a fire burning inside. Just like when they went out into the oceans and discovered the continents, built wings like birds, and fell and broke, and much more. There is none. There is no inner need for all those things. And then it turns out that now, we seem to be stuck in some dead end and it is independent of any external condition hindering us.

Suppose we are limited in space, but we have a strong desire to spread. So we would dry some area up, we would do something. We have no desire. Not to fly to the moon and not to space, not to go to the depths of the ocean and not to do anything in life. Even the desire for wealth, to be rich and all such things, is gradually disappearing. The last things that still hold are tourism, to somewhat see the world, to enjoy some vacation. However, this is also becoming habit and losing its flavor.

I see the same thing everywhere, wherever I go, it is almost like at home, everything is the same everywhere. So, we are in a state where, fortunately or unfortunately, we do not know what lies ahead. It is as if we have actualized that point which created the universe and developed us, and we are its outcome, and we are revealing that after all, we are with our eyes forward, as if our eyes are outside that same point and we see nothing in front of us. This is essentially the situation.

Thus, we have reached something. We need to examine what this unique situation is we have reached, and what can be here further on. What is the evolution, which seems to be leading itself out for us to assess from this situation? But in the meantime, this is what I think and here we need to conclude our first conversation; we will continue next talk about clarifying our current state and the possibilities ahead.

Oren: We have just run out of time for this talk; we will continue next talk. Thank you very much Dr Laitman, thank you Nitza. Thank you too for being with us, join us next talk, it will be equally fascinating. Until then all the best to us all and goodbye.

(end of talk)