What Happens to the Soul After Suicide? | Ask the Kabbalist [Painting: Edouard Manet – Le Suicidé]

Ask the Kabbalist, Episode 15, with Dr. Michael Laitman

In this episode, Dr. Michael Laitman replies to following questions from the public:

• What happens to the soul after suicide?
• Does humility help a person attain spirituality?
• What role and goal should society have, specifically in America, now that it’s facing major changes?

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Dr. Michael Laitman:  People will have to reveal the science of Kabbalah – Nature’s program and the method of correction. It will either be forced on us by Nature through the path of immense and unfathomable suffering, or we can accept it from Kabbalists who are now revealing it to the world.

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“This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation.”

–Albert Einstein

Why Education Should Be About More than Giving Knowledge

In Webster’s dictionary, education means “the action or process of educating or of being educated [schooled/informed].” But in a world where fifty percent of what we learn in the first year of college is outdated and irrelevant by the end of the third year, what good is our schooling?

Even more important, with the escalating global crisis, can we guarantee our children’s education, even through high school? Because the current crisis is global and multi-faceted, the education system must adapt itself and prepare our youth to cope with the current state of the world.

Therefore, our challenge today is not so much to acquire knowledge as it is to acquire the social skills to help ourselves and our children overcome the abundant alienation, suspicion, and mistrust we encounter today. To prepare our children for life in the 21st century, we must first teach them what makes our reality what it is, and what they can do to change it.

This does not mean that disseminating knowledge should stop, but that these lessons should be part of a larger story that teaches students how to cope in the world they are about to enter. They should be able to leave the classroom and use this knowledge to grasp the full picture of reality and the forces that design it, and to understand how they can use it to their benefit.

Competitive vs. Collaborative Education: All About Me or All About We?

In nearly every country in the world, education systems are designed to prod students to aim for personal achievements. The higher the student’s grades, the higher his or her social status. In America, as in many countries in the West, this system not only measures how students perform, but how they perform in relation to others. This makes students not only want to excel, but inevitably makes them want their fellow students to fail.

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• Half a Shekel
• The Golden Calf
• Stiff-Necked People

Half a Shekel

Half a shekel is the condition that one sets for oneself from within, in one’s own scrutiny and correction, so as to never come to a state of drawing lights for oneself, from above downward, but always receive lights from below upward, in rejection. This is how we discover Ein Sof (infinity).

The problem is that when we constantly draw for ourselves we can only see the layer closest to us, known as “this world.” All that stands behind this layer is worlds, Ein Sof, eternity, wholeness, which are hidden from us and are cut off from us. If we perceive reality not by drawing to ourselves but by exiting ourselves we will suddenly discover Ein Sof.

Is it we who determine the half shekel?

Without the half shekel we cannot begin to work with the Torah. Each of us must give the half shekel. We must set ourselves up in such a way that from this moment on our instrument for the revelation of Godliness will be the half shekel—balance, only giving, and in as much equivalence of form as possible.

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Everyone Needs Integral Upbringing

The world situation is changing rapidly, and there is a need to create an integral method of educating adults. I receive lots of various messages from developed countries: Unemployment is on the rise.

People are at a loss despite the fact that they are receiving unemployment benefits. Currently, they are still available, but what will happen next is unknown. After all, we are talking about hundreds of millions of people who will lose work because the crisis will destroy all the industries that are not vitally important. What will the people who produce what no one needs do?

We see how protest movements are growing due to the Internet, mutual communication, and our mutual influence on each other. All humanity, from ordinary citizens to governments, is interested in taking this process under control and preventing its spontaneous development because modern weapons plus an unpredictable course of events can lead to disastrous results.

In order to prevent all kinds of disasters, civil or even world wars, we need to think in advance about global, integral upbringing of the majority of the population.

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