Question:For almost 1,000 years, from the construction of the First Temple to the destruction of the Second Temple, there was a period of prophets. How should we relate to their texts that are accepted in all religions?
We know that the Torah is written in the language of allegories, the language of branches, which describes spiritual forces in the words of our world. Can we interpret the prophecies in the same way?
Answer: Undoubtedly. In the Torah, that is, in the general texts of the Tanakh (The Torah, Prophets, and Scriptures) there is nothing that a simple mind can understand. All of them are intended for people who want to rise above our world and see the forces and systems that control it.
Question: This means that if a scientist, for example a university professor, reads these prophecies, studies them, and makes a comparative analysis of the texts, he will still not be able to determine whether it is correct or not. So, is it impossible? Is it necessary to rise to the spiritual level in order to understand what it is about?
Answer: Of course. Both the one who speaks and the one who listens must be on a spiritual level. [291767] From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/21/21
Question:Biblical prophecies are predictions of events that are going to happen in the future. This information is received from the Creator by special people called prophets.
Predictions are information about events that are more likely to occur in the future. Moreover, predictions are divided into rational and irrational. Rational ones are predictions of some risks, financial indicators, weather, and so on. Irrational ones are all sorts of clairvoyance and fortune-telling.
What is the difference between prophecies and predictions?
Answer: Predictions can be attributed to the fact that people have some knowledge about the development of society, technology, science, and culture, on the basis of which they make assumptions about the future.
They do not have firm confidence in their assumptions, they just know all the technological, cultural, historical, and political moments of human development and by relying on their scientific experience, they can forecast the future.
In principle, this is the usual work of scientists that we turn and consult with for advice for the future. These are not prophets, but just smart people who predict the future with some kind of probability coefficient; since they also do not know it, but have knowledge of the current state of affairs, they can roughly say what may happen tomorrow.
Prophets are people who can immerse themselves in the system of governance of our world, feel the forces that control it, and can to some extent align themselves with these forces. Therefore, they do not predict what will happen based on some calculations, but simply say what should be and will be.
We see stories about such people in the sources and we call them prophets because due to their spiritual development, they rise above the limitations of our world, above time, space, and motion, and thus tell us what can happen.
There are no prophets in our time. We are at such a level that we are no longer waiting for them and do not believe in them. Yet, in general, prophecy does exist.
Question: It is interesting that for religious people all biblical prophecies seem to come true. For skeptics and non-religious people on the other hand, of course none of this happened. In principle, the prophets wrote so ambiguously that it was possible to interpret both ways. Why?
Answer:The fact is that the prophets wrote or spoke from the spiritual level. Those people who were at this level understood them and therefore accepted and saw what was happening. And those people who did not perceive the spiritual level, did not hear and did not feel either the prophets themselves or what happened according to their prophecies. [291655] From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/21/21
It is the human ego. We do not want to be suckers, and when we take advantage of bargain prices, we feel as if we get the upper hand. However, what we fail to realize is that we are being toyed with.
The sales toward the end of the year that excite people to buy double is done on purpose in order to make people feel good about taking advantage of all the shopping, but really who fools whom?
It is the human ego that makes us restless.
We would be better of sitting down and doing nothing, without looking at all the products in the shops.
Instead, we need to feel whether we truly need something, without any external stimulation, and then consider whether it is correct to buy it. If we discern that we need it, then we can go ahead and buy it. Anything that we buy beyond that, buys us instead.
Based on the video “A Kabbalistic Take on Black Friday” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
The suffering that we experience expands to our consciousness through the brain, and our attitude to the suffering, how we relate to it, equates to the intensity of the suffering.
Therefore, in order to cope with suffering, we have to realize, in our minds, that nature makes us suffer according to its plan, which is ultimately in order to lead us to a bright and positive future. For the first time in humanity’s history, nature takes us by the ear, so to speak, as if we are schoolchildren, and guides us to realize positive relations, where we will discover a world of light and warmth.
When we reach the final destination that nature is leading us to, we will no longer experience suffering, because suffering hinges on the fact that we see no goal ahead of us. If there is a goal, then the goal absorbs the suffering.
When we apply certain efforts, we can experience those efforts as enjoyable or as painful. There is no difference between pleasure and suffering in the sensation itself, but the difference between the two lies in the idea that we adhere to. If we feel a lack of purpose in a certain effort—that we are headed toward an abyss—then we experience suffering. On the contrary, if we imagine that a certain effort leads us to a goal where we benefit and enjoy, then we become ready not only to endure the effort, but to prolong and even enjoy it.
If we, as a society, calibrate our attitudes to think that nature leads us to a harmonious future, to stability, and to a problem-free life, and we create inputs in our social environment, such as media and art, which projects such an idea to us more and more, then we will be able to further progress in our lives with relative ease. We will then experience an end to suffering.
Whether sooner or later, we will develop to a point where we actively progress in such a direction. We have already engaged in several wars and conflicts, where we fought to the death for the sake of the future, under the guise of certain imaginary values that people invented. Today, however, we have exhausted our man-made ideologies, and all that is left for us to do is work out how we can adapt ourselves to nature’s own form of development.
By fighting for the prominence of various man-made ideologies in the past, we ended up with a lot of suffering and disappointment. Today, however, if we progress toward matching nature’s interconnectedness and interdependence, we will finally end up with a positive result, free from suffering and disappointment.
We will then find ourselves in the most comfortable and blissful state, similar to being in our mother’s womb, but which is in fact billions of times greater. It is a state where we feel completely taken care of. If we attain it in our lives, then it is much greater than the sensation in the mother’s womb because in the womb, we are unaware of the care that surrounds us. By developing such a state in society, then we will experience the sensation of total care with the additions of understanding, awareness and a feeling of achievement.
We will then experience how nature, humanity, and everything in the universe and in all the worlds, envelops us in an all-encompassing kindness. We are approaching such perfection, and if we had no experience of suffering, then we would never gain awareness of it.
Based on the video, “Why Do We Experience Pain?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Comment: Man has always looked for a way to prolong life. He believed that his life should be eternal.
My Response: We need to achieve this! We just need to go to a different level of life. Man really should be eternal. We must be! We have a need for this, and Kabbalah can help us.
But for this man must rise above the animal level. An animal cannot be eternal. Two thousand years or three thousand years of existence is still not eternity.
A person must think about how to achieve eternity during his life. It does not depend on how many years he will live, but on the intensity with which, when working on himself, he will correct himself in the right way, rise above his egoism and reach his spiritual state above the egoistic animal state.
Then the level of man will develop in him and he will feel his eternal perfect life, which actually exists.
I think we will come to this. We will have another medicine that will correct us from the inside and raise us above the level of egoism, above all problems. As a result, we will become completely healthy. [291602] From KabTV’s “Close-Up—Anamnesis” 2/19/10
Question: Do genetic Jews have a spiritual predisposition?
Answer: No, it is just a biological group of people that has existed for a long time, created families, and reproduced. Therefore, there are some natural biological processes in it.
Their various internal crossings are of interest to biologists and geneticists. My daughter, a doctor of biology, is researching such processes. This is interesting information that helps scientists learn more about the animal development of our organisms, and nothing more.
It has nothing to do with the soul since we cannot investigate the soul by any biological means or apparatus. [291472] From KabTV’s “Close-Up—Return” 19/2/10
Question: The modern education system is arranged in such a way that up to thirty people study in one class, and the teacher sort of commands what to do. You say that such an arrangement is completely wrong.
Answer: Absolutely wrong. It does not give the student the right role model. The student is not a member of the group, he or she is not in contact with the teacher, and the teacher is not a friend to the student.
Children do not sit in a circle, but face the board. They are given such and such data, remember this, and that’s it. A predisposition to raise oneself, to formalize one’s relations with others, with the world, and with nature is not created in a person. And this is the most important thing.
We see why there is a crisis in science, because all this knowledge does not give us anything and certainly does not bring happiness. Even what we do with this knowledge only exacerbates our problems.
Therefore first of all, the formation of a person is necessary. For this there must be small groups of students with instructors, teachers, who are practically at the level of students, as their friends. And gradually, by giving examples and organizing the right relationships between students, teachers should develop them.
Kabbalah says a lot about this. This is how we educate our instructors who are already working with our children. We see the benefits of this. Moreover, this is clearly a tangible benefit when children do not leave their parents, do not run away from home, and do not participate in any “pajama” parties.
A completely different person is being formed. You do not close him, you do not make a prude, but rather direct him to the right goal.
Society must take care of this and rebuild itself. And it doesn’t matter who to start with because both parents and children and all generations are in this state.
Nowadays if you look at the whole society, at people of all ages, none of them understand why they exist, since they are in a state of mutual dependence and mutual influence on each other. All of them need to be taught the correct perception of reality. [291837] From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Generation” 8/24/09
Once again, the United Nations exposes its antisemitic face. A few days ago, the UN General Assembly approved permanent and robust funding for a committee established by the Human Rights Council to investigate Israel’s alleged human rights violations and “war crimes” against Palestinians in the wake of “Operation Guardian of the Walls.” That military operation was launched by the Israeli army in response to last May’s massive rocket attacks on the Jewish state.
Just recently, rockets fired at Israel from Gaza struck the coast of Tel Aviv. Consequently, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) carried out retaliatory airstrikes to hit Hamas targets. According to the UN’s ongoing criticism of Israel’s actions, it asserts that Israel does not have the right to defend itself.
It is already clear that hatred of Jews sets the agenda at UN. It clearly is not based on visible reality, but springs from uncontrollable antisemitism that leads the member states of the UN to set up committees, compile documents, and organize meetings that will eventually lead the organization to reconsider the establishment of the State of Israel. They will say, “We reverse the same decision we agreed to and hereby abolish the State of Israel. We have no idea why we agreed to the establishment of the Jewish state in the first place, but the last few decades have convinced us that it was an historic mistake. So all we have to do is decide what the process of abolishing the state and returning the land to the Palestinian people will be.”
This is what I expect to happen in the future. The international community will happily take Jerusalem and the surrounding areas from Israel and hand them over to the Palestinians. Exactly how soon will this happen? It’s hard to say, but with the support of the UN it could happen very quickly.
Everything is ready, the departments are ready, and the forces are ready. There is no problem at all. The truth is that I fear that many Jews in Israel will not lament the decision, but will even support it wholeheartedly.
How can such a phenomenon arise? It is because we lack education and awareness of our role as the people of Israel. We do not have a clear educational plan that makes it clear to everyone who they are, what their heritage is, and what their role is. We give up our principles and roots until one fine morning someone in Israel gets up and thinks, “The UN decisions are democratic and liberal, we have to take the other people (the Palestinians) into account. They deserve the land, and us? We can handle it, we will give them the land they claim.” Any Jew who gives up this piece of land is not connected to Israel and does not feel that it belongs to him or her.
Not all Jews are like that. There are many good people who love the land and will try to stand up and fight against anti-Israel decisions, but the question is how strong they will be. When the UN decides, armies of the neighbors will come here, and then what will we do? How will we fight when the whole world rises up against us?
Ultimately we can triumph over any threat and prevail only when we use the help found in our people’s, the Jews, special spirit. We can tap into it only when we connect together and really become Israel (Isra – El—Yashar Kel [straight to the Creator]). When we fight together for the Jewish ideology and spirit and awaken the forces of connection between us, we forge the connection with the upper force, the supreme power. And then the war from below will be a “war from above,” the war of the evil forces against the good and benevolent power that rules the world. [291872]
Question: For almost 1,000 years, from the construction of the First Temple to the destruction of the Second Temple, there was a period of prophets. How should we relate to their texts that are accepted in all religions?
Michael Laitman, On Quora:
