Question: There is an individual thought and there is a collective thought. How can we correctly form a single thought in the ten?

Answer: The single thought should be the result of the whole ten aiming at unity, aiming at everyone dissolving in one single whole called one, single, and unique.

So when the friends gather in such homogeneous unity, it is possible to speak about the right connection between them and about preparation for connection with the Creator who is revealed between them.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/3/19

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Question: When the Jewish people approach the Final (Red) Sea, Yam Suf, suddenly this sea opens up. Behind, the army of Pharaoh, in front, the sea, and it parted. What needs to happen for a person to suddenly see the sea or water mass is his salvation?

Answer: The deep sea can only do one thing: kill me completely. And I agree to this state, to die spiritually, physically, no matter how, just not to remain in the captivity of my egoism. Egoistic slavery is worse than any other condition, so I throw myself into the water.

Question: We are not referring to the suicides that occur in our time, are we?

Answer: No! What does that have to do with it? Is there any movement toward this in our time? Does it come from the same reason? No! In our time, it’s all out of boredom.

Question: There is an opinion that not all Jews came out of Egypt. Were there Jews in Pharaoh’s chariots that chased the Jews?

Answer: These are the so-called Erev Rav (mixed multitude). These are the Jews for whom being in Egypt was a blessing. They want to stay in their egoism and believe that they are right. And they have the Creator in this egoism, and He does not need to be approached by correcting themselves to love others, and through love of others to love the Creator.

We don’t need any of this: “We can live here, calmly, well. We do not need the land of Israel, and we do not need to go there at all; when the Creator wants, He will lead us there himself, but in the meantime we will sit here and wait.”

Question: In the story of the exit from Egypt, we see that chariots are destroyed, although someone is saved. They say that some strange people joined the Jews and then chased them through the desert. How does this happen? All the same, these people who do not agree to follow the predetermined path, this goal, will be destroyed?

Answer: This is Erev Rav, the “mixed multitude.” There are a lot of them, they surround the Jewish people from all sides. By their origin, they are Jews, but they do not feel that they should go to the Creator with their thoughts, with their motives, in “love your neighbor as yourself,” in unity with each other.

Throughout Jewish history and today too, they see their mission only in preventing the movement of the Jewish people to build a temple, that is, to create such a connection between themselves in which the Creator would be revealed.

Question: Who will win in the end?

Answer: In the end, of course, they will not win. But looking at what is happening today in the Jewish people, we see what power they have.

Question: How can a person at any given time, being in the environment that he has, correctly distinguish between Erev Rav and Jews who are going to the goal?

Answer: A person who strives for connection with others, for love for others, and from love for others to love for the Creator, he is a Jew, he is really going to the Creator.

The most important thing is the connection, because in it egoism is gradually destroyed and a person rises above his egoistic nature into the quality of bestowal, to the quality of love for one’s neighbor.

And for people who believe that they can exist without connection with others, you can immediately see that they are, in general, sole proprietors, loners. They invent a completely different lifestyle for themselves. Everyone who follows certain rules believes that for him there is already the meaning of life, and paradise prepared for him, and so forth.

In fact, this is absolutely not the case. “Attain your world even in this life”—this is what the Torah, the wisdom of Kabbalah, calls for. And so all their attempts are a big mistake and a disappointment.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/12/19

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My new article on Linkedin “Understanding the Point in the Heart”

One of the first things people learn about when they first come to study Kabbalah is a concept called “the point in the heart.” We are told that those who come to study Kabbalah, especially those who persist with it despite difficulties and hurdles, are people with a developed, or a strong point in the heart. Those who have it, kabbalists tell us, are more likely to succeed in their learning and advance on spiritual degrees.

Among my students, there are people of all races, faiths, ages, and nationalities. Some of them are highly educated, and some are laypeople; some are sophisticated and eloquent, and some can hardly express a thought. Yet, the one thing they all have in common is a point in the heart, that burning question about the meaning of life. And that point unites them above all differences.

But what is it really? Rav Yehuda Ashlag, aka Baal HaSulam for his Sulam [ladder] commentary on The Book of Zohar, wrote that the point in the heart is really a question. In the beginning of his introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot, he writes that the point in the heart is an “indignant question that the whole world asks, namely, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’” Baal HaSulam further asks, “These numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily, and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them … who is it who enjoys them?”

These days, many people ask this question, but not many people are driven to search for answers. Many despair and turn to escapism of all sorts. When someone’s point in the heart is strong enough, that person will begin to search rather than give up and sit by the wayside.

Among my students, there are people of all races, faiths, ages, and nationalities. Some of them are highly educated, and some are laypeople; some are sophisticated and eloquent, and some can hardly express a thought. Yet, the one thing they all have in common is a point in the heart, that burning question about the meaning of life. And that point unites them above all differences.

There is a good reason that people with points in the heart easily unite among them. When one studies authentic Kabbalah, one discovers that the meaning of life is found only when connecting heart-to-heart with others. In other words, if we remain confined within our personal space and concerned only with ourselves, we won’t discover anything. This is our initial state of being, and if we don’t develop beyond it, how can we discover anything? Therefore, those who find the meaning of life, find it in their connections with others. When they rise above preoccupation with their own needs and start thinking of others, they discover new worlds, new realms of existence that they didn’t know were there. When this happens, the question of the meaning of life receives its answer. The bonding that people achieve makes them wise and sensitive, and cognizant of all of life. When they achieve this, they understand why they were born, why they live, why they will sometime die, and even what happens afterwards.

In addition, a person who is busy giving is never sad, never dispirited, and is always hopeful and excited about life. Such a person always seeks more people with points in the heart with whom to share that they will find the meaning of their lives in connecting heart-to-heart with others.

Every person has a point in the heart. In most people, it is dormant. But today, more and more people are seeking answers to life’s trials and tribulations. This is why kabbalists have opened the wisdom to everyone, so that anyone who asks, like Baal HaSulam, “What is the meaning of my life?” will find the answer and find peace and happiness.

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My new article on Linkedin “To Change Our Earth, Change the Human”

“This is suicidal. We must end our war on nature and nurse it back to health,” said UN Secretary-General António Gutierres to mark International Mother Earth Day. There is not much to celebrate anymore—climate change, emerging pandemics, extinctions of animal and plant species, and rampant pollution are only some of the symptoms of an extremely distressed planet. How can Earth be healed? The remedy is to change the egoistic exploitive attitude both between humans and toward our environment.

“Restore Our Earth” is this year’s slogan of what promises to be the world’s largest annual awareness and educational event for environmental issues affecting the planet. But it is flawed thinking to assume that the Earth can be thought of like a broken machine we can fix in a repair shop. It is impossible to talk about restoring it with this skewed vision of our situation. We need to aim at a deeper transformation, a real change that is only feasible through changing our destructive human nature.

“Restore Our Earth” is this year’s slogan of what promises to be the world’s largest annual awareness and educational event for environmental issues affecting the planet. But it is flawed thinking to assume that the Earth can be thought of like a broken machine we can fix in a repair shop. It is impossible to talk about restoring it with this skewed vision of our situation. We need to aim at a deeper transformation, a real change that is only feasible through changing our destructive human nature.

Let’s take a look at current attempts to take the stress off planet Earth through changes in human diet, as an example of our incorrect responses to the problems we face. Animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse emissions, a contributing cause of global warming, according to official data. But new initiatives such as the production of artificial “meat” that claim to be more environmentally friendly will actually be more costly and less beneficial in the long term, similar to the consumption of processed products as replacements for what nature directly produces.

In other words, we will not improve our ecosystem by creating artificial solutions, through specific diets, or through international committees and global summits. Only an in-depth and holistic approach to the way we relate to one another as human beings and toward our environment can cure what ails the Earth.

We should not wait for great torments and environmental disasters to shake us into action. If we do, we are at risk of extinction ourselves, like the dinosaurs who disappeared from Earth. We have not yet realized that our planet is our common home and whatever happens within it has an endless chain of reactions that will eventually affect us. Someday, we will have to come to terms with the fact that the problems we face begin with the selfish nature of man who operates from an individualistic, me-centered, exploitative and narrow vision that wants to gain everything for self-gratification. Until we transcend individual and national borders and start thinking globally, nothing will help. We humans, for our part, need to comprehend that the state of nature depends on the relationships between human beings, as well as on the willingness of man to adapt to the integrality of nature, that is, to take only what is necessary for survival and to guard with care the good functioning of the entire system instead of considering only egoistic calculations.

How are human relationships connected to what happens in nature? There are four levels in nature: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. All levels except man exist in accordance with nature’s laws of reciprocity and balance. The other levels have no free choice in anything; they act instinctively and take only what is needed for their survival. It is only the human level that is different. Only humans commit atrocities on Earth and do so intentionally, consciously, sometimes just for the sake of causing harm. All of the negative blows we receive from nature are just its reaction, the natural consequences of our actions. Simply put, we bring these calamities upon ourselves.

The comprehensive solution to the ecological and social dangers we face is in our hands; the key is in our efforts towards global connection. If we try to build a harmonious system of human relations, all of nature will calm down. As we begin to feel how dependent we are on everyone else, we will think twice before engaging in the ill-treatment of one another. Only through mutual responsibility will we attain the necessary attitude, the right frame of mind, to save our common home and live safely and happily under one roof, our planet Earth.
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Question: Three-dimensional space plus time, do these four dimensions exist or are they an illusion? Are they there or not?

Answer: This is the illusion of our structure and that is why we feel space this way and divide it this way.

Question: Why are we given this illusion?

Answer: We cannot exist in an open space in which there is no basis for measurement, for the expression of something. Therefore, the three axes and the fourth, which is time, are what we need in order to talk about our state at all.

Question: But these three axes, in principle, characterize the current position of a person in space. The fourth axis is time. There is a past and a future. Do they even exist or not?

Answer: They exist in relation to a person. Everything is only in us, just like these axes. And what is outside of us, we cannot say.

Question: If I remember the past or think about the future, is it something that affects me in the present moment?

Answer: Naturally. In fact, no time exists. This is purely our subjective feeling, and we divide it into the past, present, and future.

Question: Then I am in the past; is it my illusion that I am in the present and this is how I feel, and I feel this way?

Answer: We always measure one thing relative to the other.

Question: Did dinosaurs even exist?

Answer: We cannot talk about what existed and what does not exist now, because it is all about a person’s feeling. A person makes excavations, takes out some bones from there, takes them for dinosaur bones, makes up their skeletons. Everything is beautiful, good. But this is all about our perception of the world. We cannot imagine anything other than the past, present, and future, and the person who observes all this attributes some vectors to these states.

Question: If everything is characterized in relation to a person, then in principle, he can move from place to place, change places, and in general everything revolves around him? Can we say that it is not man who is on the earth, but the earth and the solar system that revolves around him?

Answer: No. Everything is in the person, in his sensation. No man—no world.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 4/12/21

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Question: Let’s say a person came out of Egypt (out of his egoism). What should he correct next?

Answer: He must understand what he is facing, what he needs to come to. Gradually, it is revealed to him what it really means to come out of egoism.

This is not just breaking away from the ego, but transforming it into altruism, that is, transforming all the desires with which a person existed in the state of Egyptian exile. This is a great egoism that has grown in a person under the influence of his existence in so-called Egypt.

In spiritual slavery, he realized how far he was from the truth, from the correct perception of reality, from the attainment of the Creator, and this pained him so much that he cried out, not agreeing to remain in this state. From this moment begins his spiritual liberation, the exit from Egypt.

A person gradually rises from spiritual slavery, agrees to undergo a complete separation from egoism. This is called the “crossing of the Red Sea.” Then he goes further. It takes what is called seven weeks that pass from leaving Egypt to approaching Mount Sinai for a person to come to an understanding, which means to change himself completely, and this period represents the elevation of a person above his past state.

He agrees to adopt a methodology that will change him. Although it is complex, and its implementation is not easy at all, a person is ready for it. That is why he is in such a long transition of seven weeks.

Seven weeks of seven days is 49 days. It is only on the 50th day that he reaches Mount Sinai. In the Torah stories, Mount Sinai and the desert are all allegorical images. However, in reality, this is a person’s recognition of his inner state. Mount Sinai is nothing more than his great egoism, and he stands before it and can do nothing.

At the top of the mountain is the Creator who Himself created this egoism, controls it, and, if necessary, develops it in a person, so that he eventually realizes how to work with it and transform egoism into the opposite quality, the quality of bestowal, love, and connection.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/9/21

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Question: What is the difference between the Egyptians and the mixed multitude? What do the Egyptians inside us want? Are they also egoistic desires?

Answer: The Egyptians just want a good life without any connection with the Creator. This is the usual consumerist attitude toward our world, like with most people. But there are also people who say: “No, we will do what the Creator wants from us,” that is, all kinds of commandments. The Creator’s desires are called commandments.

“We will fulfill these commandments, but not to be similar to the Creator, not for the sake of bestowal and love (after all, all the commandments boil down to “love your neighbor as yourself “), but in order to earn the future world by ourselves.”

Question: When the counting of the twelve tribes was taking place, the mixed multitude was not included there. Are they not related to correction at all?

Answer: No, the mixed multitude is those desires that we do not want to take with us from Egypt, to raise them from there. We cannot lead them across the Yam Suf, Final Sea (Red Sea). Although they chase us and try to bring us back to Egypt by force, we go on further and they either drown at theYam Suf (Red Sea) or return to Egypt.

Question: In the Midrash Raba (Great Commentary) it is written that the mixed multitude provided horses for the chariots of Pharaoh to catch up with the Israelites. What does this mean in spiritual work?

Answer: This means that they give everything to any egoistic forces so to stop those people who want to get out of Egypt.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/2/21

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My new article on Linkedin “What on Earth Are We Doing to Earth?”

This week, the world marked Earth Day 2021. The theme was “Restore Our Earth.” Indeed, Earth has suffered the punishments that humanity has inflicted on it for far too long. Regrettably, we cannot restore it, not right now, and not in our current state.

You restore what is broken, and seeking to restore Earth means that we acknowledge that Earth is broken. But Earth didn’t break of its own accord. We broke it! We, with our broken attitude to Earth and to each other, have done all the damage that we are now purportedly trying to fix. How can we restore something if the thing that broke it is still breaking it, and even faster and more intensely than before? Unless we fix ourselves first, any statements about restoring Earth are hot air, at best, if not a deliberate deception. This is why for years, our organization stated the motto: “To change the world, change man.”

Unless we fix ourselves first, any statements about restoring Earth are hot air, at best, if not a deliberate deception. This is why for years, our organization stated the motto: “To change the world, change man.”

A recent study by an Oxford University research center, Our World in Data, has found that since humans have become the dominant species on the planet, “wild mammals have declined by 85%.” We have not been less egregious toward the soil, toward the air, or toward the water and Earth’s flora than toward animals. In fact, we are so injurious to life that wildlife around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which exploded in 1986 and created a radioactive no-go zone for humans, has thrived like never before despite the radiation. Researchers who studied wildlife in the no-go zone were so impressed with the increase in wildlife population and the robust health of the animals that they concluded that humans are more deleterious to nature than radioactive pollution.

Therefore, we will not be able to restore Earth until we transform ourselves from the self-centered beings that we are into caring and connected individuals, who live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. We must self-educate ourselves away from narcissism and toward an approach that rejoices in connection, bonding, mutual responsibility, and balance. Reality is an integrated mesh of contradicting elements, and only humans try to be the sole rulers of the universe.

While the rest of reality celebrates sharing, we despise it. Not all of us, but as a whole, as a species. We exploit and deplete not only Earth, but first and foremost one another. Therefore, with one another is where we have to start. Only when we learn to treat each other with consideration, when we understand that the well-being of others affects our own well-being, even if we don’t feel it tangibly, we will learn to rejoice in the well-being and prosperity of others. When we achieve this, we will find that we are finally happy, and that everything prospers, including our poor and tormented home, Planet Earth.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do we improve spiritual health?“

Spiritual health is a state where we positively connect among each other in order to draw closer to spirituality, i.e., to a state where we are united with a common intention to love and care for each other.

It is a state where we establish a connection with the upper force of love, bestowal and connection that fills reality through our common intention to connect as a single soul with such qualities in our connections.

By doing so, we evoke the upper force of love, bestowal and connection, a force that in the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “the reforming light,” into the connection between us, and this force binds us together with a common intention to love, care and bestow to each other.

Several people try to reach a state of spiritual health and well-being on their own, assuming that it is possible to do so. However, it is impossible to attain anything spiritual alone.

In order to attain spiritual health and well-being, we need to feel that we are in the field of the upper force, a force of love, bestowal and connection, and that we depend on this force. If we understand the extent to which we depend on this force in order to hold any sort of connection with spirituality, then we will aim our requests, demands and prayers at this force, similar to how a child holds its parents’ hand, not letting it go. We will then turn to this force in order to make improvements and corrections on ourselves, that whenever we discover anti-spiritual egoistic thoughts and desires in ourselves, i.e., thoughts and desires that prioritize self-benefit over benefiting others and nature, then we will request a change the direction of these thoughts so that they will be loving, giving and positively connecting, similar to the bestowing direction of the upper force.

We thus move toward a state of spiritual health and well-being by learning about spirituality, participating in a environment that supports our spiritual progress, and drawing the influence of spiritual forces (the “reforming light”). Such a process takes place until we discover where we are spiritually unhealthy, i.e., by reaching a state called “recognition of evil” in Kabbalah, where we see how our egoistic nature opposes and resists spirituality. Through such states, we gradually develop a true demand for spiritual health and well-being, a state called “correction” in Kabbalah, i.e., the correction of our ego that brings about division and hatred among people, to its altruistic opposite, which brings about unity and love among us—the qualities of the soul.

This is how we become spiritually healthy. We place ourselves in the place of the upper force of love, bestowal and connection, and become more and more like that force until we completely discover spirituality.

Thus, we should consider how to strengthen human connection and make it more positive, with bonds of love, care and giving. We will then eventually discover the great single soul that we are all parts of, perceiving and sensing how we are all like its cells and organs, mutually complementing one another to sustain the spiritual health of the entire system.

For the time being, we are still far from such a state. We have yet to begin a process of realizing our interdependence and interconnectedness in a positive manner, where we each aim to love, bestow and positively connect above all the egoistic forms of indifference, apathy, division and hatred that surface. We would thus be wise to learn and scrutinize the laws of mutual guarantee and mutual responsibility that bind the spiritual system together, which should lead us to actively seek how we can draw the spiritual forces into our connections and establish a spiritually healthy, peaceful, harmonious and balanced state among us.

Based on a Kabbalah Lesson at the World Kabbalah Convention in New Jersey, on May 12, 2012. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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