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Men And Women: The Structure Of Humanity

laitman_627_1Question: How should a woman study the wisdom of Kabbalah correctly?

Answer: Spiritual and corporeal concepts of the male and female parts differ profoundly from each other.

A soul is a person’s yearning for love and bestowal above his egoism.

Thus, we cannot say that a man in our world is the part that bestows and a woman is the part that receives. There cannot be a distinction here because, in our world, both are egoists.

But whoever acquires the attribute of bestowal and love of others is called the male part in the spiritual sense, the one who bestows, and whoever is still in the egoistic desire to enjoy, to be filled, is called the female part.

Therefore, we are all women from a spiritual perspective. Those who transcend to the spiritual world, through what we call the Machsom (barrier), will be called men. Above the Machsom, everyone is a man. There, everyone has a female part, a desire, and a male part, a Masach, an intention, because you cannot have one without the other.

If I read a Kabbalistic book, and something is written about men and women, then it must be specifically imagined that a woman and a man mean the property of receiving or the quality of bestowal—in any of the people, regardless of gender.

As for our world, the physiological attributes are different, and we have a big problem with that.

It comes down to the fact that in our world, a woman differs from a man in her corporeal egoistic attributes. And so her entrance into Kabbalah is special, not like in men.

She should achieve the same state as a man, but move to this in a different way, providing great help to men, fulfilling her role as the one who continues the generation, takes care of the family and the home. A man should be the provider.  He must study, and a woman is responsible for the home. That is her work.

I am explaining how humanity was created, and there is nothing we can do about it. We cannot swap a man and woman, or destroy gender. No matter how developed we are, the male and the female natures differ externally in our world and we must take that into account.

We have different thoughts, different worldviews, different feelings, and different needs in the family. This is the reason that we must act accordingly, and not imagine that we are living above our world in a state where there is no distinction between the genders.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/4/16

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You Cannot Feel Sweetness Without Bitterness

laitman_627_2Question: I sometimes think that it might be better not to know about the wisdom of Kabbalah, but there is no way I can forget. Why are we given such states that are so bitter?

Answer: So you will decide each time and determine again and again whether you need the wisdom of Kabbalah or not. You may feel that you don’t need it, and then you could live your life peacefully. Then we will meet again some other time.

A person needs to check himself again and again, many times during his lifetime. The wisdom of Kabbalah only offers itself, but you have to pay with your efforts, with your serious exertion, so that a sensor of the upper world will be created in you.

The main efforts are in establishing a group through which you will be able to summon the Surrounding Light unto yourself in which you will begin to feel the Creator. You will actually discover the whole creation in the connection between you and others.

Question: Do I have to feel that I will not be able to hold on by myself?

Answer: Not by yourself, only with others. Then you and the others become one whole, which is called a soul or a man (Adam) who is filled with the Creator. This is what you should reach, and it is yours, eternal and whole.

Question: So how can I avoid the bitterness or is it an inevitable phase?

Answer: You must feel bitterness along the spiritual way, otherwise you will not feel the sweetness.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/20/16

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From Emptiness To Emptiness

laitman_424_02In the News (The Guardian): “Jonathan Safran Foer: ‘Technology Is Diminishing Us’

“Most of our communication technologies began as substitutes for an impossible activity. We couldn’t always see one another face to face, so the telephone made it possible to keep in touch at a distance. One is not always home, so the answering machine made a message possible without the person being near their phone. Online communication originated as a substitute for telephonic communication, which was considered, for whatever reasons, too burdensome or inconvenient. And then texting, which facilitated yet faster and more mobile messaging. These inventions were not created to be improvements on face-to-face communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished, substitutes for it.

“But then a funny thing happened: we began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It’s easier to make a phone call than to make the effort to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someone’s machine is easier than having a phone conversation – you can say what you need to say without a response; it’s easier to check in without becoming entangled. So we began calling when we knew no one would pick up. Shooting off an email is easier still, because one can further hide behind the absence of vocal inflection, and of course there’s no chance of accidentally catching someone. With texting, the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and another shell is offered to hide in. Each step ‘forward’ has made it easier – just a little – to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity.

“The problem with accepting – with preferring – diminished substitutes is that, over time, we too become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little. Or just feeling what’s been designed and sold to us to feel.”

Question: Where do you think modern technology, artificial intelligence etc., is leading mankind?

Answer: To the recognition that we have to give all that up and start working from heart to heart, to actually give up everything that is not related to the feeling in the heart. Everything else will reach its peak and then disappear. We will not need to connect through long lines and web networks, the highest technologies in space or in new cities, nothing.

We will not even need TV with giant screens and thousands of channels. No one will want to clog his head with all that. We see that young people are gradually turning their backs to that. It will take a few more years and we will also get rid of all the phones.

Comment: Futurologists say the exact opposite. They believe that an interstellar communication will be developed…

Answer: Nonsense. Nothing will happen.

Question: Are you saying that all this will disappear and man will want to feel warm affection again?

Answer: Today, for example, a car is a means of getting from one place to another, not the goal itself. Imagine that you had a spaceship and ten stars, and that your mother-in-law lived on one star and another relative or a friend lived on another, and you could get away from them all, get your own little planet and live there peacefully.

But we already realize that all these things lead to nothing. A person has to fill himself, and he cannot find a filling in all that, so we keep chasing different fillings and eventually see that although we have the means for that, it doesn’t justify itself. A person feels more and more empty.

Comment: It turns out that our whole life and future developments are merely a race actually a race after fillings…

Answer: Of course! See how writers depict futuristic pictures: we are moving from one place to another at such great speed, where to? From one empty end to another empty end, but at least they are writing best sellers.

Question: Jonathan Foer says that we are drawing away from the hearts. He actually fears that. Do people feel this fear as a result of progress?

Answer: No, they feel that because there is no way out. If humanity does not discover the reason and the goal of the creation, it will sink into drugs and sleeping pills.

Question: Why do we go through such a long way? Why do we need all these technologies?

Answer: Because we have to recognize the evil part of our nature. If we don’t get to fully know it, we will not be able to correct it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/1/17

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“I,” “We” And Social Systems

Walking through the WallQuestion: In the past, did people feel “we” but not their “I”?

Answer: That is what was happening in ancient Babylon before the crisis and what was called the confusion of languages (building the Tower of Babel). But it was not because people were connected and united but because their egoism was very small, on the level zero.

The ancient societies in which everything was shared, lived under a primitive communist regime.

With the growth of the ego, five systems (configurations) of rule gradually appeared until capitalism. Now the time has come for socialism, and after that the time of communism will arrive.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/30/16

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My Thoughts On Twitter, 3/27/17

twitter

I just published “THE HAPPINESS WE (WISH WE COULD) HAVE”

happinessTwit27

Who wants a lifetime of #happiness? (Full clip: http://bit.ly/lifetimeofhappiness … …)

RavTalktwit27

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From Twitter, 3/27/17

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Spiritual Development

laitman_222_0Question: Why is it necessary to attainment the spiritual world from the corporeal world?

Answer: Because this is the only way you can rise above yourself and feel your gradual development. Only through gradual attainment are we able to grow new properties and facets within ourselves.

You can’t imagine how much work you are doing in the meantime. For example, you’ve been studying the wisdom of Kabbalah for two or three years. You say to yourself: “Why is it taking so long? All of this material could have been explained in a few months.” But the fact is, you are developing certain inner properties that you are completely unaware of now.

This is similar to the development of a small child. What does a child understand? In the first years of his life, he has no idea what’s happening. He simply exists! And how much he is developing all kinds of properties and how he perceives them—this is incomprehensible to him.

Similarly, when studying Kabbalah, we don’t understand what properties, new functions, and new internal blocks of perception and understanding are developing in us. Later, they all become revealed at once. As, for example, a boy in adolescence suddenly becomes a small man; the entire ripening period suddenly breaks through and reveals itself like a flower.

It’s the same with us, only much brighter. Childhood suddenly ends and real life begins in comprehension and sensations, and everything that has accumulated is revealed in a genuine, practical form.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/20/16

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What Are The Sefirot?

laitman_608_02Question from Facebook: What are the Sefirot?

Answer: A Sefira is something that shines . It is all very simple. Our ego, wanting to swallow everything into it, is an absolute black body that cannot illuminate. But, if it closes itself and begins to work in the opposite direction, with the intention in order to bestow, it begins to reflect the light and everything that comes to it.

A black body, for example, which swallows the light, doesn’t reflect the rays of light, so we cannot see the body itself either. But if it shines and doesn’t swallow the rays of light, but rather reflects them, everyone can see it.

A Sefira is the corrected ego to a certain degree, in a certain way. Therefore , it shines and is called Sefirot (which comes from the Hebrew word “sapphire”)—luminous.

We are arranged such that there are ten parts in us, and we have to make them shine to the fullest. This state is called “a person’s complete end of correction”; it is when he becomes a man of the Light.

Question: Is that what is meant in the Torah when it says that Moses shined?

Answer: Yes. Rays of light came from his head. But unfortunately, in translation it sounds like “horns” because “ray” and “horn” are two meanings of the same word.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/6/17

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Sacrifice For The Sake Of The Union With The Creator

laitman_221The Torah, Deuteronomy 17:1: You shall not sacrifice to the Lord, your God, an ox or a sheep that has in it a blemish or any bad thing, for that is an abomination to the Lord, your God.

A person must become aware of and analyze his egoistic desires to the extent that after the various procedures he performs on himself, he corrects only the purest of them, and becomes equivalent to the Creator. This means sacrificing them, i.e., getting closer to the Creator on the basis of these desires.

Blemish means that there are remnants of egoism in the desires, the so-called “serpent.”

Becoming similar to the Creator is possible only with the help of the Upper Light, which extracts this snake from us, which means that it corrects desires from reception to bestowal.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/24/16

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New Life 826 – What Does The Kippah Symbolize?

New Life 826 – What Does The Kippah Symbolize?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

There is a deep internal meaning behind all the Jewish symbols that we don’t know today.

The kippah symbolizes our recognition that there is someone above us and the acceptance of the burden of the kingdom of Heaven, the upper domination. A head cover is the major symbol in Jewish clothing; it is the covering of our head, of our thoughts. We are under the domination of the Creator, there is none else besides Him, who controls every thought we have and every desire.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 826 – What Does The Kippah Symbolize?” 2/9/17

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