Do You Know What Nature Is Requiring of You?
Nature is setting before us a necessary condition for our existence: We must achieve a state of perfect love. But, how we meet this condition; how can we achieve all-inclusive love among all seven billion people living in the world today? Even if we were to achieve just a part of this condition, at least moving toward it, would we see how this acts in our favor, changing our lives and the entire environment for good?
Our current nature is to care only for ourselves. We cannot think of anything or anyone else. If we study Nature, we will discover that even the slightest movement, such as moving our hand from one place to another, requires energy. That energy is at our disposal only on the condition that we receive some benefit from the movement.
The desire to feel good creates and designs our every movement, determining how we conduct ourselves; where we go; what we do; how we speak; and how we behave. Each act happens only in order to improve our situation. When we want to sleep, eat, walk, talk, or work, it is only to obtain self-gratification. In other words, we cannot think of anything except our own benefit.
In fact, our whole lives are an attempt to obtain maximum benefit, to suffer less and enjoy more.
All our connections with certain people, or disconnections from other people, are made in order to feel better. We’re constantly occupied with trying to feel better. It’s our nature; it’s the nature of each and every one of us.
The still, vegetative, and animate levels are also constantly drawn to feel better, to be in a better state that will seem to them as balanced, where they feel no pressure or pull toward either side; but rather, to feel in harmony with what seems like a better life.
Are We Able to Change Our Nature?
It follows that throughout our lives, we’re constantly honoring the law: How to feel better. We exist under this condition, and our egoistic nature constantly directs us toward that state.
This brings up the question, “If we’re so concerned with ourselves throughout our lives—internally, instinctively, and consciously—how will we be able to change our current nature into the opposite one of loving others?” True love of others is when our whole being is given to the other, when we place ourselves at the service of others with all our physical abilities, all our skills, and all the means at our disposal. It’s when we think of others and care for them to the point that we have nothing left for ourselves, only following the desire to bestow and give to them, constantly making sure that everything is the best possible for them.
We can compare true love to a mother caring for her baby. Nature directs and pushes a mother to constantly care for her baby so it feels safe and good. She sees nothing more important in her life than concern for her child. But, is it realistic to think that we need to relate to humanity with such devotion?
Also, if Nature has put this condition before us, then why has it allowed us to come to the complete opposite state where we care only for ourselves? Moreover, animals care only for themselves, and Man, even more than animals, wishes only to gain at the expense of others, imposing himself and his view on others. Man enjoys being superior to everyone, wanting to subjugate others, and to keep everyone under his control. Man even enjoys the suffering of others and likes being in a better situation than the other.
We constantly test ourselves in relation to others and to our environment. With this test, we learn what our situation is compared to others. Yet, this brings up the question, “If our ego has brought us to a situation where we need others only so we can feel superior to them, then how will we be able to invert our nature to the opposite?”
The Biggest Crisis Affecting You Has a Root Cause—Do You Know What It Is?
During the course of our evolution, we’ve become smarter; we’ve learned about human nature and realized that we can’t rise above it. We’ve learned that even if we hope for something good and special in a utopian society that places love of others as its standard, it’s impossible to build such a society, one that actually implements it.
In fact, we’ve come to place limits on our natural, egoistic tendencies through rules of behavior; this is so we will limit the extent to which we hurt each other. There are lawyers, sociologists, psychologists, and politicians who assist in creating these rules of social conduct.
Today, we are beginning to fathom the crisis we are in, that it is actually a crisis in our interpersonal relations. Even though the egoistic forms of our development led us to build a society that is more convenient for everyone, out of consideration for everyone, it is now clear that the number of those who are dissatisfied far exceeds the number of those who are satisfied, leading to a possible collision, one that could result in civil war. We now understand that we need more than rules of behavior; we need to restrain our egos in all its forms so we won’t end up destroying each other.
Warning: What You Don’t Know About Today’s Biggest Crisis Could Harm You
Egoistic development deepened over the years through connections made in industry and international trade. Businesses in developed countries realized that if they shifted their factories to less developed countries such as China or India, they could find much cheaper labor than in their home countries. Thus, gradually, plants and factories moved from the West to Third World countries, where residents were trained to become workers.
As expected, the owners of industry and international traders became richer, and their power strengthened. They made a two-fold profit, making far more than what they could make in their home countries. These profits intensified their power and once powerful, they began to affect politics in Europe and America.
So it happened that the ego rose to the top of the human pyramid; money became most important; and the wealthy began to rule over everything. At the end of it all, we’ve reached a financial, economic crisis, the last crisis that we are now beginning to experience in its full magnitude.
In this crisis, we are experiencing not just economic turmoil; we are also plunging into additional difficult situations, all thanks to the ego which is leading the way. This is precisely because those countries that were once considered favorably developed now have many destitute citizens. Society is disintegrating; education is neglected; and the entire social system is falling apart.
The crisis is inclusive, global. All the countries are interconnected—both the seemingly richer countries and the poorer ones— and through this interconnection, manufacture most of the world’s production. For everything that the Third World produces, there must be buyers in the more developed parts of the world. However, there are no such buyers anymore because even in the more developed countries, people are now penniless. Thus, we can see that the crisis is only deepening. We now find ourselves in a global world with a global crisis that necessitates beneficial, mutual connections among everyone.
The crisis manifests in people struggling to survive. The sectors that want to manufacture can still do so, except there is no one to buy their products. People living in developed countries that are now depleted and penniless can no longer consume everything. Whereas in the past, it was a closed circle, a process of production and consumption—people produced and then consumed what they themselves produced—now that circle doesn’t exist.
Today, the crisis is evident in all realms of life. We’ve come to the point where many people throughout the world can barely survive and are in dire need. This phenomenon will worsen and continue to spread because as long as we’re concerned only with ourselves and not with the rest of the world, we won’t be able to provide—even for ourselves—the most essential staples. Whereas on one end of the world, huge amounts of food are thrown out; on the other end, people are found starving. Even distribution is the obvious solution; yet, surplus food can’t reach those places that need it—not even nearby places, because the human ego doesn’t allow for it. The human ego doesn’t care for others’ wellbeing. Others only matter if they pose a sufficient threat; only then—because we have no choice, will we give, and give just enough to calm things down.
Discover the New Conditions that Must Be Kept to Have a Good Life
Now that we find ourselves in a global crisis, caused by the human ego, we are beginning to feel the connection that exists among everyone. We are beginning to feel that we are all in the same boat. If one of us causes harm through incorrect use of his ego, we will all feel it; it will be impossible to advance this way. In fact, because of this growing interconnection, we’re in a situation now where our egos return to us like a boomerang with a negative feedback.
From this current situation, we at least recognize that we must begin to be more considerate of one another. Indeed, there is a history of animosity and hostilities among us, forged by centuries of war and forceful domination of one nation over another. Yet, for lack of another choice, we’re coming to a state where it is no longer enough to be considerate.
That is, both from within and from surrounding Nature, we feel we are faced with new conditions bearing on our existence that compel us to achieve love of others and not merely egoistic consideration.
These words may sound unreal, far-fetched, even unacceptable, but we can approach love of others by building within ourselves a committing force. Instead of Nature forcing us to love others and be in mutual love—in order to avoid starvation, disease, and natural disasters, we must build another force that will compel us to approach mutual love.
That force can exist only through an environment that we organize to be more obliging than our own nature; above economy, education, and food. A society based on such an environment will be strong to resist our selfish hearts and our current nature. It will force us to change our attitudes toward others from hate to love.
Such a society will encourage us through positive reinforcement and rebuke us if we fail to draw closer to each other. It will provide constant explanations of how we should study human nature, and by this, we will continue to develop society accordingly.
Build a Social Environment that Gives You Love and Security
When we do something as easy as moving our hand from place to place, we still need energy to do it. Similarly, in our relations, we need to feel that positive encouragement is coming to us from Nature. At the same time, we need to find it difficult to feel the hatred, competition, remoteness, and repulsion that we cause others; we need to feel strong resistance to behave this way. Speaking kindly to others—with consideration, mutual guarantee, and love—will be quickly greeted with warmth, will be satisfying and fulfilling. We need to build the environment so it provides us with these two forces—the bad force in response to my ego and the good force in response to my love of others.
In building such an environment, we must take into consideration a quantitative force and a qualitative force that will convince, compel, caress, and warn each of us, and all of us together. Through joint participation in building this environment, we will build the new Nature that will affect us. We will complement the egoistic force that governs all of human nature with the good, altruistic force that is currently not felt in us, but which we must nurture and develop.
Therefore, although the environment we are building is one in which we are still egoistically connected, the mutual guarantee between us begins when we understand the extent to which the environment must teach us the necessity to shift our current egoistic connections into altruistic ones. By studying our bad relations alongside our positive connections, we will gradually achieve new awareness, which will compel us to build good connections among us.
In this way, we will understand that Nature has been promoting us for millennia toward this development, toward a situation known as a “crisis.” The essence of this state of crisis is humanity’s new “birth,” a process where we come to that internal force existing in Nature—the power of love—and find balance with Nature by being in precise equilibrium with that force existing in the world. If we acquire that power of love in our relationships, as in “Love your friend as yourself,” we will actually acquire the general law of Nature (the Law of Love), and we will realize it within us.
To implement the Law of Love, we must be opposite from it, in order to feel how bad that opposition is. Through the contrast, as we rise out of great ego into great love, we will feel the gap that exists between them. Through that gap, we will feel the wholeness, eternity, and greatness of the process we have been through. We will attain this in our perception, and we’ll understand how high, strong, eternal, and complete the Law of Love is.
Are You a Fully Developed Human Being?
To summarize, the question is how to build ourselves as humans. We ourselves must build the environment that brings about the change in our situation from hate to love. We must measure and study ourselves; study the laws of Nature and the human society; learn how we should conduct ourselves; and decide what relations should prevail among us. Accordingly, we will build the society, the environment, and adapt ourselves to it. In effect, we are “taming” ourselves; that is, by taming our egos, we become its owners and hence become “human.”
Being “human” is not another kind of egoistic development. Being “human” means that we need to make ourselves humane and to do it ourselves. We need to “give birth” to that human and raise that level within us. No one can do it for us. True, we received egoistic forces, but we’re the ones who design the systems that educate us.
We elevate ourselves through the degrees of love. As we ourselves change the environment, the environment in turn changes us. In this way we work together, at each stage checking on the development of the improved, corrected self; thus, we advance.
No one can do it alone. We can’t pull ourselves out of the swamp by our own hair. The condition for success is the construction of an outside force that will affect us, not let us escape, and will force us to bestow—either pleasantly or unpleasantly.
Nature is presenting us with a new, inclusive condition for survival. It is appearing in our consciousness as a crisis that makes it seem like we’re about to be destroyed, with no way out. Nature is presenting us with our general situation, and within it, we must build by ourselves all the good situations, by using the influence of the environment on each of us, even while we are the ones building this environment.
Therefore, first we need to establish the correct education. Everyone needs to understand that there is no other choice, just as we tell children that they must get an education in order to succeed in life. We are in the process of being born into a New World. For this to happen, each of us, and all of us together, must be persuaded to relate to one another and to the environment differently, correctly.
We can tame ourselves, by ourselves, and maximize our potential to evolve as humans by building the right environment that will compel us to “wrap” our egos with the opposite envelope, one that is good for our existence.
Each person should be aware of the key points in this new, correct education—Integral Education, that there is a special process in creating a special reality. We truly are building a human being, and we’re doing it by keeping the law, “Love your friend as yourself,” which is Nature’s inclusive law that we must realize today.
Written by Michael Laitman
Michael Laitman is a global thinker dedicated to generating a transformational shift in society through a new global education, which he views as the key to solving the most pressing issues of our time. He is the Founder of the ARI Institute, Professor of Ontology & Theory of Knowledge, PhD in Philosophy, MS in Medical Cybernetics. You can find him on Google+, YouTube and Twitter