Question: Did the great Kabbalists, whose books are sources of wisdom and ideas, speak about the intolerance of Jews toward each other?

Answer: Of course. Many sources say that the hatred that is revealed between Jews is the greatest in the world.

Question: Could this be one of the sources of anti-Semitism?

Answer: Without a doubt. The basis of mutual hatred, opposition, and intolerance that are embedded in the Jewish character are in the same way the basis of those events that have accompanied the Jewish people for thousands of years and accompany them to this day. This can be seen, among other things, in the example of our [Israel’s] government.

Question: I watched the swearing-in of members of the Israeli government. I was amazed when the representatives of the Arab part of the State of Israel not only did not take photos near the flag but simply left. How is such a state structure possible in which representatives of one part of the population are against the very state in which they live?

Answer: It is not only Arabs but Jews too. This is quite natural for our country. This is a special country that goes its own way.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations, Israel and Its Impact on the World” 11/18/21

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Question: How can we who are so small suddenly move the worlds? You said that when a little child just gives a cry, his mother immediately runs up to him and does whatever he wants.

Answer: Yes, the smallest is the strongest.

Question: Even those who are just starting their advancement?

Answer: But they are doing it! They want to get in touch with the Creator. Yes, they are the strongest.

Even though they do not understand anything, like a baby who is lying in a cradle and screaming. The baby does not even realize that he is crying—he is just in pain, and this is a natural scream. He does not realize that in this way one can call a mother who will come and give him something. He has no understanding of the chain of actions he invokes. He is screaming because it is a natural reaction to what is happening to him.

Question: Can we say that someone who is trying to read, for example, the Torah or Kabbalistic sources, begins to give this cry?

Answer: Yes, of course. But not just to read, especially the Torah. The Torah will not help here. One needs either The Book of Zohar or some other Kabbalistic books.

Comment: But I mean not the external principle of reading, but the internal one—the search for oneself, the search for what is inside me.

My Response: No, besides this, a book that can evoke the upper light most brightly is needed. The Book of Zohar is the most effective one.

Question: That is, your advice is to read without understanding?

Answer: That is my advice because I went through this with Rabash. That is my advice because this is how it works. We used to read The Book of Zohar for only half an hour in the evening before going to bed. And it was just reading without any comments.

There were 20 people sitting around the table with Rabash at the head, and for half an hour we took turns reading: the first one, then the second, the third, and so on. So, we read a page or two, and went home. This is how the day ended.

But when Rabash and I studied alone on trips, in personal conversations or lessons, there was a different attitude. We came to the park, walked around, and then sat down on a bench. I pulled out a book, and we discussed the book or just talked for about two hours. After that, we again walked around and went home. And so it was for 12 years.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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Every line of the Torah has such depth. The Torah is infinite, as if the whole sea is in one drop. As Kabbalah says: the whole universe exists in every point of the universe.

Question: How can this be?

Answer: It is like a holographic picture because everything consists of everything. Our world is only now beginning to understand this based on holography. In principle, if there is perfection, then every part of it must be perfect. How can it be imperfect if it must be equal, similar, and completely repeat the whole in everything?

It turns out that the whole and the part are absolutely equivalent. Every person and the whole world are absolutely equal.

Question: Then how did something imperfect come out of the perfect Creator?

Answer: The Creator created the creation not out of Himself, but out of nothing. The will to receive is His imprint. That is, we are absolutely opposite to Him. But our final state is equal to the Creator and perfect. We must reach it by ourselves.

We, as if, go back by the same path and become more and more perfect by returning to the source. Kabbalah and the Torah are engaged in this.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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Question: What attracts a person more: flattery or rejection?

Answer: Obviously flattery, indulging their egoism, praising, and admiring. This can be seen in the child’s behavior. Tell him something nice, stroke his head, give him something sweet and tasty and see how he will become attached to you, come to you, and smile. It is clear, such is our nature. Little animals, that is how we remain.

Question: But how to use it for correct development? There is a certain limit. After all, you can’t pamper and indulge him all the time.

Answer: If you have the right intention, for the benefit of a person, society, the goal, the Creator, then you can use it without any restrictions, and you will be understood correctly. Let’s say in a group we must behave in such a way that our friends feel our love, good attitude, openness, that we admire them, support them. And this is what we use.

Question: Suppose a person has done something good and he is starting to be praised. Is this the element you are talking about?

Answer: No, this is like a payment for accomplishments.

Question: But we are not supposed to work for a payment, are we?

Answer: Why? On the contrary. If you have done something good for society, then we are obliged to make sure that everyone knows about it. You have no right to hide that you did it for society because in this way you help others do good deeds too.

Question: How does it differ from boasting?

Answer: Everything is decided by intention. If I say to everyone: “Guys, I did such a thing today! I think it will help us all. Look how I was able to do it!”, then everyone around understands that I am not boasting. I tell them that I really did something good for them to be able to do it too, use it, and repeat it.

There is no intention on my part to elevate myself here. I do this only in order that others do the same because by looking at the good deeds of others, you get infected with them. It all depends on the common platform of relations: either everyone looks at each other as competitors or as partners.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Art of Seduction” 12/7/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is more important, compassion or empathy?“

Through empathy we come to feel the pain of others, and through compassion we feel the pain of others but are able to handle it. It is because compassion comes with love, which is the key difference between the two.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner,” and compassion means the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”

With compassion, it is as if we step into the other person’s world and feel their experience. If we foster and nurture such a feeling within ourselves, we can then enter a whole other world. However, we are not involved in such a process. Generally, at the ages of thirteen and fourteen, we can fully resonate with other people’s suffering. If we would then receive further education on how to relate to such feelings, then we could bring about immense positive change in the world.

We can teach compassion in ways where people learn how to understand and nurture it more and more. By increasing compassion in society, we can share in other people’s suffering by accepting it partially upon ourselves, and then reach a state where we neutralize suffering.

Moreover, we would not burn out by seemingly taking too much suffering upon ourselves. Instead, our increased compassion and sympathizing would neutralize suffering, allocating it into smaller portions, and bringing relief to others by doing so.

Shared compassion among all people on earth would lead to a globally-blissful state, which is exactly what we need to achieve. If we fail to increase compassion in human society, then we will encounter greater and greater problems heading into the future. It is because the human ego continually grows while nature forces us to become more and more tightly interdependent. In other words, without uniting and sharing our suffering, we will be unable to tolerate our increasing connection: we will feel greater and greater pressure upon our ego until it will become unbearable.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, compassion holds a broader definition than what is in Merriam-Webster. It divides the vast suffering that exists in reality. Reality consists of one enormous desire to receive that was created, of which we are its parts, and a great light—a force of love, bestowal and connection—needs to fill the desire completely. The more we prepare a compassionate approach upon this desire, i.e. an intention that is not self-aimed, but aimed at loving, giving to and positively connecting to others, then the more we let the light—the positive force of love, bestowal and connection—enter the desire, alleviating our suffering and bringing us to peace and harmony. In other words, the great desire to receive that bases our reality can only be completely fulfilled if our intention is aimed in the direction of benefiting others.

Therefore, by learning how to become compassionate, we can accelerate the time it takes for us to achieve balance among each other and with nature. We would then divide the difference between absolute fulfillment and emptiness among every one of us, and we would then be on course to a blissful state: feeling a contradiction, impossibility and inner cry morphing into a new kind of higher pleasure and joy. In such a state, there is no difference between pain and pleasure because they come together as one. In other words, in a higher level of reality where we are more correctly connected together, pain becomes pleasure because we balance them out.

Pain is given to us in order to invert it to pleasure. The greatest pain, as a result, becomes the greatest pleasure. If we know how to balance these opposites, we end up with a whole new kind of pleasure and sensation of reality.
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Based on the video “What Is More Important, Compassion or Empathy?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “Who Created These” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Freedom”

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Net Energy Gain – Another Gift We Won’t Enjoy”

This week, the United States government announced that one of its nuclear fusion laboratories, Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLL), has achieved what US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm described as “One of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century.” The Financial Times even declared, “US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power.”

Nuclear fusion is a process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. This is what happens in the sun. In the experiment, the scientists succeeded in replicating the process in a lab, which released more energy than the energy invested in creating it. This is called “net energy gain,” or “ignition.” Theoretically, this process could create endless energy at almost no cost.

Despite the fanfare over the breakthrough, a commercial use of the process is at least decades away. Moreover, even if it becomes commercial, humanity will not enjoy it, but only the same few who reap the benefits of every achievement humanity has ever made.

Behind every experiment and effort that individuals and governments make lies a corrupt element that does not let any achievement benefit the general public: human nature. Therefore, first of all, I do not think that the giant corporations that make billions from fossil fuels and other means of energy production will let such a gift for humanity materialize. Second, even if this form of energy production does come through, and humanity gains access to unlimited power, it will be used for what every asset is used—against other nations or other people.

Humanity’s problem is not technological. If we wanted, we could solve the world’s crises in a week. There is no shortage of food, and there should not be hunger. Likewise, there is no shortage of energy, and no one should suffer from the cold in the winter or from the heat in the summer. No one should suffer from poor hygiene and lack of medical facilities, from inadequate education, or from any of the myriad predicaments that plague the world. The only reason we do suffer from them is that we want to inflict harm on each other. It is very simple: Because everyone is trying to make everyone else suffer, everyone suffers.

The world is full of energy. We could use it for all our needs as if it came from nowhere, and it would be completely effortless. The only thing that is required is for us to change our relation toward each other because for energy to flow, there must be connection, and the only connection that is disrupted in reality is human connection. Therefore, if we fix the connections between us, we will have limitless and effortless energy.

The energy in the universe is boundless. We do not need to split atoms or fuse nuclei in order to extract or harvest it, or to derive energy through other costly means. We do not need labs, and we do not need cutting edge science. We need to stop wanting to deny each other of everything that is good; we need to stop trying to suffocate each other. If we change our intentions toward others, we will release the chokehold we are putting on each other and the energy will flow by itself, to everyone, incessantly, abundantly, and endlessly.

Energy is energy; it can be used however we choose. If we do not obstruct its flow through our blocked connections, we will be able to satisfy our every need, from the most physical to the emotional or mental.

Admittedly, we are nowhere near releasing this endless energy. However, we must remember that only if we work toward it, we will eventually achieve a state where humanity is free of energy concerns. As long as we insist on negative connections, we will continue to struggle for energy, fight over it, and deny it from each other. As long as we are disconnected, energy will simply be another means of exploitation and manipulation of the powerful few against the powerless many.
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Medium published my new article “Medium: Elon Musk vs. Twitter”

Over the past several weeks, Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has been releasing what became known as the “Twitter Files.” The “files” are dumps of internal correspondence among former execs in the company, which Musk fired as soon as he purchased the company. The dumps reveal routine blacklisting of conservative journalists and politicians, including then President Donald Trump, blocking of tweets that did not fit the company’s political agenda, and suppressing news that did not advance the liberal cause, such as the now verified story of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

I have no doubt that Musk knew what he was buying when he went forward with the deal. I am sure that not only Musk, but many other people did background checks for him, and told him what was going on in the company. This also explains why the first thing Musk did when he took over the company was to fire the top stratum of the company.

I do not think that Musk’s intention is to cleanse the world of evil or of evildoers. If that were the case, he would have already been “cleansed” by the evildoers. Nevertheless, I am very much in favor of Musk’s exposures, and the fact that he has succeeded and survived thus far must mean that either he is lucky, or that something I am not aware of is at play here.

Yet, Twitter is only one platform. There is no doubt that the situation is no different in Facebook, or in any platform that is a hub where billions of people go and can be influenced.

In the end, the name of the game here is power and control. This is why the former Twitter executives did what they did, and why all the big tech media and internet companies manipulate data. This is also why the FBI, according to the Twitter Files, was involved in the maneuvers.

The bottom line is that whoever controls the media, controls what people know, and whoever controls what people know, controls what they think. When you control what people think, there is no limit to what you can do with them. This is the end goal of the big tech companies: power and control for the sake of power and control.

I do not know if Elon Musk is after power and control or after something else. He has been a high-tech pioneer for many years, and founded Tesla and SpaceX, but Twitter is a new thing for him. Where it will take him is anyone’s guess, and it might lead him into all kinds of entanglements with various companies and people. Either way, I am always in favor of transparency and exposure of problems because this is the only way to recognize problems and malfunctions, and subsequently mend them. Therefore, whatever motivates Musk, as long as it unveils the truth, I am all for it.
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Question: You once said that in order to make a decision in life, you can even flip a coin, etc.

But one Frenchwoman named Lori came up with the following: on her Telegram channel, she conducted a survey on what to do, and now she does exactly as her admirers advise her.

She wrote: “How I act depends on you; you choose my future.” Subscribers vote, and make important life decisions for her. And she reports to them: “Thanks to you, I blocked my boyfriend whom I didn’t really like, took a helicopter tour although I’m afraid of heights, and left my internship that I didn’t like.” She writes: “I don’t regret anything, I’m terribly interested in what this experience will lead me to.”

Is it possible to trust the collective like this?

Answer: It’s good. She has something to lean on. Many of her admiring readers still give her confidence.

Question: Do you think you can rely on such group brainstorming?

Answer: No, not that whatever it says is right or wrong. But it gives her confidence! Afterward, whatever happens, happens. The main thing is that at every moment she believes that she is doing the right thing. And this feeling corrects the wrong step; that is what is interesting.

Question: So this confidence of mine makes the wrong step right?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Are our steps mostly correct or incorrect?

Answer: Any of our steps are wrong. All steps are wrong because they are egoistic!

Question: Every one of them is focused on what is comfortable for me and what is profitable for me. Is this what you call a wrong step?

Answer: Yes. When you look long-range, this is absolutely the wrong step. I can steal something somewhere in the near future or do something like that, and it will seem that I am lucky. And in general, of course, nothing good will come of it.

Question: Which step do you call the right one?

Answer: For the benefit of the majority. The absolute majority!

Question: Can the collective suggest such a step? Is it for our benefit to take such a step?

Answer: Naturally! If the collective’s thought is that you are taking a step for our benefit and a person is taking this step, then this step is more or less correct.

Question: Is there any advice you can give people on how to act so that this will be correct?

Answer: Work for the masses.

Question: And if I consider this mass to be cattle?

Answer: So what? Even more so.

Question: So I work for the masses whom I despise?

Answer: Of course. And who does not consider himself smarter than the rest?

Question: Do you think that inside, everyone considers himself smarter than everyone else? And if he who considers himself smarter than everyone else still acts for them, is this what is called a real step?

Answer: Yes. This is what I advise, and after that…

Question: But you understand that this advice is a bit… Maybe you can advise something easier to implement in life ?

Answer: I have already given you life advice. This is a credo, a life credo.

Question: I see. That is, when masses went to die for the collective and they died for other people, was it an egoistic step or not? What was it? Were these heroic deeds?

Answer: No, it was easy. They blended with the collective, and it was easy for them. When you run into battle with everyone together and you shout “Attack!” and so on, you just drown in the connection with the others; you don’t feel yourself. This is the ecstasy of a battle.

Question: And here when you say, “For others, you do it for the masses,” what do you mean?

Answer: You are doing what is for their benefit! And you don’t just do it together with them in order to merge into them and not feel like a person.

Question: What can be for their benefit?

Answer: Whatever is for their benefit, for the benefit of the majority, I do not know; each case is different. And ideally it is bestowal, love, and connection.

Question: So you’re broadcasting it there: “I live for you”?

Answer: Yes. And this is the right step.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/10/22

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