Question: How did Abraham teach the tens of thousands of people who gathered around him if there was not yet a Pentateuch that set out the commandments?

Answer: At that time, people were at a level where they understood it from within themselves.

Comment: Abraham wrote several books of which only The Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira) has reached us. I have read it many times, but it does not say anything about connection.

My Response: In The Book of Creation, Abraham wrote about the upper force that influences people. He wrote this book so that we could understand the upper force the way he described it.

To do this, we must have the appropriate tool. This tool is connection with other people in which the upper laws are revealed.

Question: However, it was not written anywhere specifically about connection. Was it obvious to them?

Answer: Yes. This is called the “Oral Torah,” which Abraham explained to his followers.

Question: Rambam wrote: “Abraham sowed this great principle in their hearts and wrote books about it.” However, these books describe what a person feels in connection with the Creator, with the upper force of nature. Does it mean that communication between people was passed by word of mouth?

Answer: This is a practical wisdom that Abraham passed on to his disciples Isaac and Jacob.

Question: Were they not his children?

Answer: You can call them “children,” it does not matter. However, Kabbalah refers to the disciples through whom the method of correcting human egoism was passed onto the entire nation, to the entire group of people who gathered around Abraham in Babylon.

All this is described in the Torah through one person. First what happened to Abraham, then to Lot, and so on. Where are the other tens of thousands of people that gathered around him?

The fact is that description does not take into account the number of people Rambam spoke about, but only their spiritual level. The spiritual level is already 70, 50, 10 people, and so on—it does not matter because in spirituality we do not count the number of heads, but the strength of their connection with each other.
[259139]
KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 6/24/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is optimism better than pessimism?“

There is a point of view that being optimistic is more beneficial than being pessimistic, that optimists live longer, and that they are more successful. However, this is not what we see in reality.

Naturally, every quality has its opposite, e.g. left and right, light and darkness, men and women, and so on. Each quality balances another, giving it a premise for future development.

Our society is a locked interdependent system. If we want to be healthy and progress in this system, then accordingly, we need to be both optimists and pessimists.

We all have optimistic and pessimistic qualities embedded in different proportions. Some people are naturally more optimistic while others are more pessimistic. Despite being unable to change our innate characteristics, we can learn how to use them in specific ways so as to make a meaningful impact on both our individual lives and on society in general.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to do so.

Optimism and pessimism manifest only in relation to something or someone. In order to balance these opposite qualities within us, we have to create a kind of resistor or management tool, which provides us with an opportunity to select when and where each quality needs to be used and in what proportion.

A single person is incapable of doing so. Therefore, in order to create a regulating device between optimism and pessimism, we need to participate in the creation of a society that provides each member with an opportunity to train such a fusion in a common network of interaction, aimed at a common goal of harmonious social connections. I always have a part of a person I have to contact within me, and he has the part of me within him. Interaction between us helps to reveal those properties and start working with them.

In today’s modern society, where various characteristics that are distributed among humanity create rich diversity, we need to understand how to complement one another, and how to use the method of connection that leads us to succeed in building a complete system. If we stick optimistic and pessimistic attitudes and together for a common goal, we will see a perfect picture.

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Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “Continuing the Congress With an Ascent” 

Lesson on the Topic “Serve the Creator With Joy” 

Selected Highlights

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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Rabash, Letter 8: After acquiring love of friends, sparks of love shine, the heart longs and yearns for them… I come out of this world and its corporeal desires … and it seems to me that there is nothing in the world besides me and the friends… and then the I is annulled as well and dissolves in the friends.

Rabash, Letter 40: When one feels the friend’s love, joy awakens in him. Since he always knew that only he cares about himself. But when he discovers that the friend cares for him, joy awakens in him and he can no longer care for himself.

Baal HaSulam, 600,000 souls: A sign of the complete correction of the desire is when a person feels that his soul (desire) dwells in everyone and in each one. And he does not feel that he is a part separated from others, but a part that depends on everyone. And he becomes perfect, with no defect, and the light of the soul shines in him.

Mutual inclusion has a unique quality: I possessed a single strength in the system of Adam, but after the breakage I include myself into each person above the power of rejection. Each one of us becomes many times stronger than the one unit of strength in the system of Adam.

If we include our friend’s strength in us, everyone will be able to overcome their evil. Our evil comes from the broken connections between us in the system of Adam. Once the connection was broken, all that was left in us was the force of the benefit of evil.

Turning to the Creator is a prayer, a request for Him to correct what He’s broken. We’re using the fragments of a purposely broken vessel in order to learn to build it out of pieces, like children do with Legos, developing through it and growing until we receive a spiritual Kli.

The work of man is to cause the work of the Creator. We are obligating the Creator to do this work. So He does. “My sons have defeated me.” The Creator acts like we do fulfilling requests of our children. Kids plead with their parents, we need to plead with the Creator. He is awaiting our plea.

Fighting rejection, we’re building our common appeal to the Creator, demanding that He unite us. If our request reaches the needed strength, deepness, and quantity of those asking, the whole ten, once we are able to make such a request, the Creator will do the work!

There is no hidden palace of the Creator—it will become revealed if we create it. We’re building one vessel from our egoistic desires. Everyone feels mutual rejection and doesn’t want to unite. If we demand the power of unity from the Creator above it, He will bring us closer together and will become manifest in the vessel created by Him.

The goal is to unite between ourselves in the corrected tens like cells of one body, forming a benevolent influence on the Creator. This part of the broken soul of Adam will come to life and pull all the other parts with it, causing the correction of all systems of the common soul.
From Twitter, 3/1/20

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/30/20

When Austria refuses to treat patients from Italy, Germany forbids exports of medical equipment, France refuses to provide masks, and the rich northern countries want no burden of dealing with southern debt, we are in trouble.

In addition to the friction between countries, there is a sudden increase in unemployment, and if it reaches a situation where food can no longer be served on the table, then we are in serious turmoil.

Will Europe or countries in other continents descend into another world war?

In the future, a war is indeed possible, even though we definitely hope it will not happen. But in the meantime, war is highly unlikely.

The coronavirus sets appalling conditions for war. The need for social distancing during a pandemic counters the circumstances needed for war, which requires flexibility of motion and the ability to mobilize armies.

Other than risk from the enemy, soldiers would be endangered by the coronavirus itself, as they would need to gather frequently in tight group settings.

Therefore, while the idea of war can be put on hold while we try to deal with the coronavirus, we still bear witness to bitter resentment cooking between countries.

And if we fail to rise above the divisive atmosphere separating us, then we can expect another form of crisis to wake us up to the need to unite above our differences.

Today, the coronavirus shows us a prime example of how it doesn’t discriminate between different people and countries.

If we as a human society step up to the challenge of relating to each other as equally as nature relates to us, where on one hand, we recognize our innately divisive drives that try to separate us, and on the other hand, prioritize unification above our divisions, then we would overcome the tendencies that would otherwise lead us to more suffering, wars and crises.

Moreover, by building positive connections upon our differences, we would discover a new and harmonious world where everyone becomes friends and family. It would be a world where love and care increasingly spread virally from one day to the next, and instead of needing to tighten our lockdowns to be protected from a pandemic, we would willingly tighten our connections to each other, protecting ourselves from any kind of harm.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/1/20

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/1/20

3 days.
150 countries.
26 languages.
5,000 participants.
3,000 virtual connections.
World Kabbalah Convention 2020.
Thank you 🙏🏼

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Question: Our mind refuses to accept the inevitability of death. When one receives information that associates him with death, something tells him that this data is unreliable. We can sometimes predict the death of others, but will almost always be wrong about predicting our own.

Experts tell us that subconsciously we ignore facts and perceive ourselves as someone who will have a lengthy existence, if not eternity. Why do we feel this way?

Answer: It is because no living being can or should understand that he is mortal at all. Everything in this world should propel us forward. We must create, execute things, and leave something after us.

Question: To acknowledge one’s mortality, to have the fear of death, does it have an effect on us?

Answer: The fear of death is the fear of nonexistence. How can I imagine a world where I no longer exist? This is a terrible rejection of egoism.

What is a world? It is I who exist, I know the world, understand it, and feel it. I am in it, in the center of it. But here, I suddenly disappear.

What remains in the world? I can only perceive it through my senses. If there is no “I,” then this is the end of it all. Our ego cannot conceive of the notion that the world can exist without it.

The only solution is to explain to people that the world is eternal, endless, and perfect. It is completely different from the way that we perceive it. In order to see it differently, we have to rise up to the level of the quality of love and bestowal.

Question: Does it mean that we will break free and rise above our egoism?

Answer: Yes. We will see it in the quality opposite egoism.

The fact that we are created in a particular quality should not limit us. We have to see the world differently, multilaterally. We will then be able to see the world and ourselves in some sort of connection.

Question: Are you saying that if I rise above my egoism, I will reach the quality of love and bestowal and see the world as eternal? Thus, I become eternal too?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, it follows that death does not exist?

Answer: Death does not exist in the quality of bestowal.

Question: Will people come to perceive themselves as eternal?

Answer: Yes, the science of Kabbalah explains this to us. We can only do it if we have the desire for it.
[258803]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 10/24/19

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Question: A ten is a mini-model of society. Instead of working with all of humanity, which, in principle, is not yet possible, did the Kabbalists take, like a hologram, the most minimal cell in which it is possible to implement the method?

Answer: That is absolutely right.

Comment: Kabbalists say that two people are also minimal for a society.

My Response: In principle, for lack of anything else, there can be two. After all, then a person begins to feel the difference between himself and the other: Who is “I” and who is “he?” But in fact, you can only achieve the altruistic quality of bestowal quickly and correctly if you are in the ten.

Question: There are many things written about the ten in the Kabbalistic sources. Kabbalists have always been studying in such a way. Was there no learning for two people?

Answer: This was at the beginning of the foundation and development of Kabbalah. However, in those days there were special souls and special conditions.

Question: Is it possible today for a Kabbalist teacher to teach just one person? Do we teach privately?

Answer: There can be private teachers. When my friend and I came to Rabash he gave us his disciple as a teacher, a man of advanced years, and the two of us studied with him for six months.

Question: There were no people who wanted to study Kabbalah back then? Is this possible today?

Answer: No. I do not think that this is even useful. The group is best of all. In Kabbalah, everything is so tied to the connection between friends that other ways of studying are not effective.

Question: What about the initial stage, at least to understand what this is about?

Answer: It is possible. There may be private lessons at that stage. However, that is not movement toward the goal but filling with knowledge.
[259527]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/20/19

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