Description

Human interdependency is intensifying on all levels bringing us to the awareness that we are united in a single living system. To understand our unity and its purpose necessitates studying the whole of humanity on a molecular level as a collection of biological cells swimming in a soup of connection. However, our interdependency is cancerous because, rather than cooperate, our cells are consuming each other out of self-interest. How do we teach these selfish cells to transcend self-absorption and cooperate in a reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving? Kabbalah teaches us how to bring a higher force into play that can change us, correcting our connections and restoring the organism to perfect health.

Transcript

TV Program with Dr. Michael Laitman
"20 Ideas"

"One Living System, One Man"

With participation of Max Golovkin

June 29, 2009
New York

Dr. Michael Laitman: That interdependency is an egoistic one, where we all want to use others in a closed system, in a system which is entirely interdependent, like a single body, a single organism; we said yesterday, the whole of humanity is like that.

Each part, when it thinks of itself, it becomes like a cancer consuming itself and its surroundings. At the end of the day it puts to death its environment and eventually itself. We're coming to a point that somehow we have to change our conduct, on the one hand; on the other hand, our substance is about wanting to receive, to enjoy, to absorb, to only consider ourselves.

How do we...? We're already at such a tight level of connection and it's only going to intensify. As we evolve, our interdependency will increase on all levels in one another and throughout the world. We'll feel like one family with nowhere to escape. You can't divorce, like in a family, when you start hating each other.

What are we going to do? Now we have to search, not for an ecological solution or for other solutions, but just for a single solution. How can we teach people to transcend the ego; to be considerate of each other? Because if the world is global, if it's integral, with the butterfly effect, we have no choice; we have to be connected to each other like in a living organism.

This is why we have to search in nature. Is there a force in nature that can change us? Here, through Kabbalah, we come to a solution where it is possible to find a special force that exists in the world, and that force is called the Upper Force, the force of the Light, the force of the Creator (whatever you want to call it) that can change us.

Max Golovkin: I think I felt the answer, at least from the point of view of a genetisis, I realized that from the moment you said "global," I just realized that quite possibly the answer is there, because we're individuals; we have genetical codes, some differences. Nevertheless, we are the same species, we're homo-beings.

But on this planet, once we will feel as one, which is on the global level as human beings, we will overcome the natural genetically built egoism in us and we will come to a kind of global altruism at this level. That's probably the answer, but the question is, do you think that humanity, all the people, are ready for that? Or only a very small part of people will be enough, so we will kind of break through this spiritual level?

Dr. Michael Laitman: I think that gradually everyone will have to join in, and I think we haven't come to a point where we study not an individual... We have to study the whole of humanity as a single organism, to study it on the genetic level, biological, molecular level, so we will see this entity.

Currently, we think, "These cells belong only to my body; your cells belong only to your body." We are still not at a point where we can say that these two bodies are not two bodies; they exist in this kind of soup, and they're like two cells in some kind of a plasma or some kind of a general fluid.

Max Golovkin: Cell suspension?

Dr. Michael Laitman: We haven't found that connection. And so, we haven't reached this level of biology, to study our organisms as parts of a general, bigger body. But it seems to me that it'll come. We will discover some kind of lack in our lives, in the research, where-without taking into consideration the whole of humanity like a collection of biological cells, like a single organism-we will not be able to understand life in each and every one of us. It'll just force us to study it this way.

Max Golovkin: You realize that from a genetical point of view, because egoism is built in us (it's on our animal, genetical level, on a molecular level), that essentially coming to the spiritual...

Dr. Michael Laitman: But how do they connect? How do they connect? These selfish cells do connect within us and they work together.

Max Golovkin: That probably brings dissemination into the picture. Just connecting through us, like individual cells, makes it possible for us...

Dr. Michael Laitman: But how do cells in each organism... Are they selfish, each cell? It absorbs, it wants to absorb, but to live it understands that it has to reciprocate with others; so you have this duality too. On the one hand, I want to take care of myself; to take care of myself I have to take care of everyone else. So in this mutual way it creates balance between what's for me and what's for others. You come to the formula... It's a formula of life.

Max Golovkin: I see the point.

Dr. Michael Laitman: If this balance is broken, the body dies; it deteriorates, disintegrates. If I lose the ability to maintain that formula, I perish.

Max Golovkin: Where are the single cells? As individuals, we're single cells, but we're in unity, we are in... Okay, I see the point.

Dr. Michael Laitman: Yes. We just have to find the kind of connection that exists between us. We understand that in our own bodies we have a single mechanism that contains us, but that mechanism of the body that contains us is also higher than each and every individual cell. Now, among us, we have to find the mechanism, the network that connects us, and what is the general body.

Max Golovkin: Then, spirituality, is it the force which drives to that or is it the final product of the process?

Dr. Michael Laitman: We just think of it as humanity. It is a single atom that was created, that exists, that emerged, and it's just our imagination that it was divided into seven billion cells. It's how we picture it. It is the same single body and nothing happened to it, really.

Max Golovkin: Maybe the number...it's really large now, it's what? Ten billion people-the whole body on this planet of human beings? It's huge. It's probably easier when it's fewer people. They can come to an understanding and to raise the level, but with such diversity and the number of people, maybe it's harder?

Dr. Michael Laitman: I don't think so. I think that life, the more complex and different cells you have, and at the same time united, they provide you with the ability or with a more expansive meaning to life. The more a person is complex... Look at how complex a human being is compared to an ant, for example. The more billions we have, it won't be a problem to provide for them. But the more, on one hand, people are egoistic and on top of that unite, we'll discover a life at a higher level.