Not All That Tastes Bitter Is Unfit For Use

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf we cast a glance at our own history, we can see that we are continuously developing. While the vegetative and animate levels of nature hardly change in the course of centuries, we develop with each succession of the generations and even during the span of a single generation.

I, for example, started life in the first half of the last century, and with the transition into the  21st century I see how the world has changed. Back then people were tied to villages, rural communities, and small towns with their set ways of life, while today everything is dynamic, everything is different: ways of thinking, approaches to life, and so on.

A question therefore arises: Is it not enough that we are born and live our life from year to year? Why do we need to change? It’s obvious that a newborn baby needs to grow in order to start living a meaningful adult life, start a family, have children, and pass his acquisitions to them so that they would continue his path. But why do people need some additional development, aside from the chain of generations inherent to the animal world? Where does this opposition come from? What is the goal of human development? This is something we don’t see.

Still, we can draw an analogy with a baby who is not yet ready for life. A lengthy development is required for a child in order to acquire reason, strength, and feeling until he or she actually learns to understand life, to arrange and alter it. Perhaps it’s the same story with us? Maybe the thousands of years of our development are comparable to the life of one person? Maybe every century of human history is like one year for a child?

However, we don’t yet see where we’re going. A child’s development proceeds on a well-trodden path, and we know how to secure for him all the necessary means, including exercises, games, and a specialized environment. And yet the goal of the universal human development is unknown to us, and that’s why we don’t notice the progress of the generations. It appears to us that this progress is random.

Like some clueless parents, we are looking at the baby and don’t understand where it came from and what for. We don’t have any idea about how to raise it, what exercises to give him, or what environment to place him in. As a result, our little one will tread through a thorny trail, lacking the necessary natural desires that would nudge him towards a true path.

With our own children, we give them knowledge, instill feelings, we teach them reading and writing, music, and drawing. They live in an artificial world in comparison to which the external world of adults seems like a feral prairie.

But where are the caring parents and educators of all of humanity? They are absent, and that’s why every generation, despite all the progress, is more miserable than the previous—it lacks more. On one hand, we achieve ever more, while on the other, we become more and more empty.

So what exactly have we come to today? What have we achieved? What did all our development give us? We went into space, walked on the Moon, but this topic isn’t especially popular these days, it’s hackneyed and superficial. We’ve achieved impressive results here on Earth, but we still haven’t found happiness, still haven’t discovered how to arrange our life.

The global crisis is escalating, families are collapsing, both parents and children are suffering, society is suffering, drug addictions are thriving, terrorism thunders, and depression is becoming the most widespread illness. Where is the joy? Where is the good mood?

It turns out that humanity doesn’t have kind parents to surround us with concern and raise us correctly.

In the meantime, we see that nature zealously cares for the correct development of each of its parts. When we become parents, we experience immeasurable love for our children, we want to give them only the absolute best, we dedicate our entire life to them. The best experts, enormous resources, and top technologies are placed at the service of children and their development.

And despite all that, we are not achieving success even though nature supplied us with all the necessary means. It gave us love without which we would remain indifferent to our children. In the same way the animals also love their offspring.

Ultimately, it becomes apparent that nature, while caring for the development of all creatures, demonstrates towards them a rather peculiar attitude. On one hand, it creates secure conditions for correct growth by inducing in parents this instinctual love towards children. As a result, we don’t have any other choice, we are simply obliged to care for them. But on the other hand, we see that the human species fails to attain any success.

A fruit on a tree is born bitter and unattractive, but in the end it ripens and appears in all its glory, juicy and fragrant. What if we are similar to this fruit? What if right now we’re undergoing transitional stages of development and simply haven’t ripened yet? It’s possible that our current state is akin to a sour, hard, unripe apple that hasn’t yet acquired its full colors? Without knowing it in advance, how can one foresee the happy finale of its development?

Similarly, looking at a little senseless child who still has a lot of growing up to do, it’s difficult to imagine that someday he would merge with the grownup life, act independently, and learn new things, changing the world. In contrast, an animal hardly develops at all beyond the few weeks past his birth. Acting on instinct, it doesn’t change itself or the world.

Hence the following conclusions can be drawn. First of all, our development occurs in phases. Moreover, the more “sour” the creation is at the beginning, the “sweeter” it will be in the end. And the further it develops, the more states it undergoes, the more magnificent is the finale of its development, and the more exalted are its achievements.

By collecting all those examples that Nature is showing us into a single picture, we can conclude that we are going along a path of particular development. From generation to generation we are developing as one being that hasn’t yet completed the transitional phases. This is why we’re so “bitter,” so unsuccessful. However, at the end of our development, a wonderful, perfect state undoubtedly awaits us.

We see that the human species dominates over the vegetative and animate world. A human being is the crown of creation. This is why the development of man takes the longest time. This is why he undergoes the most extreme states on the way, which seemingly do not relate to the same species.

And as far as nature that develops us is concerned, we can draw conclusions about ourselves and nature’s relation to us only when we will see the end of development. Otherwise we would err just like with the apple, whose early ripening stages don’t seem to promise anything useful. Only in the end we see with what wisdom nature nurtured it, forming a wonderful and delicious fruit.

According to this law we need to acknowledge that we, too, are undergoing a similar development, and its goal is to undoubtedly bring us at the end of the generations to a kind, wonderful, healthy, absolute, “sweet,” and beautiful state.
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 2, 12/28/11 

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