Question: All Kabbalistic primary sources speak of internal wars, but we see the manifestation of wars in our material world. Is this process inevitable?

Answer: This process is inevitable and it is constantly moving forward. Its formula is very simple: the opening of the right line, the opening of the left line, the appearance of the middle line between them, and its disappearance. Then again one line rises above the other, plus over minus, minus over plus. This is how development goes on all the time.

Question: If everything in nature is determined, then does it mean that the course of its events cannot be changed and all wars must manifest themselves, including the third and fourth world wars that the prophets wrote about?

Answer: Yes, unless we apply forces to constantly bring these two opposing forces into balance with each other.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/1/22

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You shall not curse a judge, neither shall you curse a prince among your people (Torah).

Question: Where does respect for judges come from? After all, an ordinary person cannot know the level the judge is at or how much he has distanced himself from his ego.

Answer: The issue is that a judge is not a person but a certain inner quality that allows one to judge himself. The beginnings of this quality are inside each person, and everyone should develop it within themselves. Without it there is no point in even thinking about rising to the spiritual degree.

It is also said: You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you… (Torah).

This means that if I want to get out of Egypt, i.e., out of the prison of my ego, I must cross the Red Sea (Yam Suf – Final Sea) that separates egoistic desires from altruistic ones and begin to develop altruistic desires in myself.

However, I must develop them in accordance with the instructions, calculations, and qualities that I find in myself compared to my former egoistic qualities and rise above the ego and thus constantly judge myself about how to rise again and again. All the states I pass through are the “period of judges.”

Question: What are the cities where one sets up judges and law enforcement officials?

Answer: You can enter the upper world, the quality of bestowal, connection, and love, only if you meet the condition of not being controlled by the forces of the ego, but by the the forces of love and bestowal you receive from the corrected egoistic qualities.

Then a completely different, new world opens up before you. You are building it and creating it.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/11/22

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Comment: Some scholars profess that we should understand that war is the normal state of humanity at all times. What do you think about this statement?

My Response: We see throughout history that peace cannot exist without war and that there are periods of peace and periods of war.

If this is what happened historically, then we must accept this as given.

Comment: But I do not want to accept this!

My Response: Then you need to find a method in which war does not take place in the form it does now. It will take place within the world. This is what Kabbalah says, that a person should fight with himself a little every day. And then he will have no need or no inclination to fight with others.

Question: With what should I fight in myself?

Answer: Fight with your egoism with which you want to conquer the entire world, tie everyone up, and so on. On the contrary, all this is unnecessary.

Question: Does it mean that it is egoism that bursts out into wars?

Answer: Of course it is our egoism that forces us to fight each other. Here we need to understand that we can slowly balance this egoism, and this should be our daily work.

Question: And then it will not burst out into wars?

Answer: In no way will it burst out because it will not be necessary. I will fight with myself every day, and thus I will not have to fight with someone.

On the contrary, I will need to take everyone as a helper against my egoism.

Comment: This is very practical advice!

My Response: Tell it to those who start wars.

Comment: How can we tell this to all of them? After all, this is really how wars arise, over pride, over egoism, over the statement “I said!”.

My Response: We can clearly see that.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/24/22

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Question: Many famous people claim that in the pursuit of such fulfillments as fame, wealth, etc., there is nothing but emptiness. Can it be that life itself shows us by example that we should strive in a different direction?

Answer: It does not matter. We can even see this in the lottery, with its horrendous statistics. Most people who won millions ended up very badly: financial ruin, divorces, robberies, violence, and accidents.

See how nature plays with us. Who would not want to win today after all this? There is no such person who would refuse to win. If a person who knows what happened to the previous hundred winners is now given a lottery ticket and asked: “Will you be the hundred and first?”, he will answer: “Yes. This will not happen to me.”

Question: Why? Where does this idea come from?

Answer: Because no one is wiser than the individual who has gone through all these tests.

Question: So a person must still go through it personally, pass through it himself?

Answer: One must! Otherwise, one will not have this impression, he will not listen to you anyway. We must go through all these states, and only after they roll over us like a steamroller that kneads us, do we become wiser. It is impossible to become wise without practice.

But if a person can attract the upper light to himself, then he will pass through these states not physically under blows, but internally, rationally, spiritually. We must give him this opportunity. If he does not use it, then on the level of our world he must go through all this, as they say, to feel it on his own skin.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Summing Up” 4/7/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Love of God and the Love of Man” 

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is most important in life, love or money?“

FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried has become known as a generous billionaire. Before reaching 30 years of age, he made $22.5 billion dollars, but he lives and dresses modestly, and donates a lot of money to charities. Such an example raises the question: Does giving money and donating to various charities actually help the world?

No matter how many dollars a person throws at the world today, the world does not enjoy a penny of it. The world has no need for money. What the world needs today is love.

We live in a world of materialistic abundance, yet when it comes to love, the same world is a desert.

I very much hope that in the near future, people will discover a different attitude to what is important in life. We no longer live in times where we need to struggle our entire lives just to survive, or even to become rich. Today, we have different conditions that present us with an opportunity to discover a deeper and more internal fulfillment. Moreover, genuine happiness depends on discovering such fulfillment.

And that fulfillment is love. Love is much stronger than money because its fulfillment is inclusive and completely fills us when we attain it. Thus, what we truly need is love.

Based on the video “Does Donating Billions of Dollars to Charities Actually Help the World?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do we lose control all of a sudden?“

There was an unfortunate case recently of a 20-year-old calling the police multiple times in severe mental distress. Eventually, the officer on duty who took her calls lost patience, telling her: “Kill yourself quietly already.” Weeks later, she committed suicide. The officer who took her calls claimed that he felt deeply ashamed, and became immediately removed from his position. Each of us seemingly has a certain limit before we totally lose it and no longer are in control of our actions. Why are we made that way?

We are made with a certain limit beyond which we lose control in order for us to be able to eventually change our nature from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow.

When we relate to others out of an attitude of bestowal, where we purely wish to benefit them without any self-interest intertwined, then we understand them and their pains. Then, instead of losing our patience with them, we discover opportunities to help, support, praise and elevate them.

We should thus focus on increasing our sensitivity to each other, which is achieved first and foremost by listening to explanations of how interconnected and interdependent we are. By increasing our inclination to positively connect throughout human society, then we attract upon ourselves the positive force of connection that dwells in nature, and by doing so, we eventually start feeling that we live in a single system.

Such is the shift from the corporeal animate level of existence that we currently live on, to an awakening into a whole new human level of existence, where we feel ourselves as parts of a single whole. In such a state, we would feel close to each other, and we would have no sensation of others stressing us out or pushing us out of balance. Instead, we would seek opportunities to help, support and encourage others.

We would then view people who approach us with requests for help as doing us favors. It would no longer be difficult for us to connect with others, to feel and serve them. The more people would call us and nag us, then the more we would feel that such people help us rise from the animate level of existence to the human level—where we are in a mode of constant giving without a shred of selfish interest intertwined—and we would thus realize the purpose of our lives through this egoistic-to-altruistic transformation of our attitudes and relations.

Based on the video “Why Do We Lose Control All of a Sudden?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Since ancient times, especially in ancient Greece, people noticed that the abuse of power leads to mental disorders. There are many different symptoms that result from a person staying in high positions for a long time. The ancient Greeks called this phenomenon pride and said that divine retribution comes for it.

How does Kabbalah relate to such a phenomenon as a thirst for power?

Answer: The thirst for power is the main thing that is in a person who wants to rule over what is around him and to manage and retain power.

See how a child grabs everything, holds it, pulls it to itself, and takes it into its mouth. This is the thirst for power, our basic state, so that everything I see and feel is in my power, in my strength, in my desires, states, and possibilities. I want to conquer all this, suppress it, and bring it closer to me.

In principle, the lust for power is necessary for our existence. If we don’t desire something, we won’t be able to breathe, eat food, and so on. The thirst for power begins with such elementary actions and ends with the fact that a person loses his mind because of his irrepressible desire to rule over everything, to suppress and control, and not knowing where to throw himself so as not to miss something.

The desire to dominate begins with a natural state and can acquire monstrous proportions.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/22/22

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Question: The ideologists of education, such as the philosophers Rousseau and Diderot raised the question of the structure of society to achieve peace, with the cornerstone of political freedom, equal rights, and civil equality.

Can equality of all be the foundation for peace?

Answer: There can be no equality of all because if there are two people, then it is already implied that they are not the same, somewhere in some ways they are not equal.

The concept of equality implies that there is still a contradiction inside that can be balanced. However, this equilibrium will exist in a dynamic state of inequality, which must be constantly addressed and corrected.

That is, equality cannot be reached in such a way that I achieved it once and that’s it. It must be reached and then constantly maintained and developed. There can be no such a thing as done and gone in the world at all.

Question: Is it possible that there is one point at which everyone can be equal?

Answer: No everyone cannot be equal. Then it will be just one person.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 3/4/22

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