The Table of Free Voices

Posted by Mark Zimmerman Nov 21, 2006

On September 9, 2006, 112 world representatives met as part of The Table of Free Voices global dialog in Bebelplatz square, Berlin.

Each participant, chosen for their ongoing social or creative contribution, answered 100 questions that were selected by the event’s organizers as humanity’s most important questions from hundreds of thousands of entries.

This event really served to sharpen the focus of asking questions aimed at improving ourselves and the world’s crucial state.

All attendees were there for one purpose: to raise the awareness that humanity is one, and we need to look beyond our differences and somehow come to feel this interconnection and love between us; that the solution to all our problems lays in raising our awareness to this level.

Why is this being mentioned in a Kabbalah blog? Despite the fact that Kabbalist Rav Michael Laitman attended the event, the love and interconnection between us (which was the subject of much discussion) is what is claimed by Kabbalists to be sensed as a result of attaining the highest level of spiritual attainment.

However, it’s not as simple as just saying a lot of nice words. Work is needed to achieve it; to overcome our nature, which is absolute egoism, and attain the perception of our interconnected, altruistic interrelationships, which are hidden from us in our current state.

Put simply, we have to change human nature into its opposite—from egoism to altruism—and then we will start feeling this love and interconnection we all seek. Kabbalah provides a method for engaging in this process of inner transformation.

In Rav Laitman’s words (from “The Table of Free Voices” event): “By rising from an egoistic level of relations to an altruistic level we will understand that the whole world is one system, and that we all belong to one body, and that this is how we must relate to one another. By doing that, we will truly become civilized, educated, good and modern people. But as long as we act as egoists toward each other, and as long as we only keep thinking of ourselves, we haven’t really yet emerged from our caves.”

• Dropping Knowledge: The Global Dialog Platform – all 11,200 answers from the event are archived here, as well as forums for further dialog open to the public.
• VIDEO: The Table of Free Voices – an 8-minute video by ARI Films on the event, as well as pictures from the video.