Comment: If we compare you and Baal HaSulam, he was not as public as you are and he did not disseminate to such a large number of people.

My Response: I am sure that if he could, he would have done everything. In 1940, Baal HaSulam published the newspaper The Nation. Can you imagine what it meant to publish a Kabbalistic, Zionist newspaper at that time?!

And the book The Giving of the Torah in which he addresses ordinary people! A Kabbalist comes out of his corner and addresses ordinary people! He was a true revolutionary!

Who am I compared to him? Now everything is open, do what you want. It is a completely different century!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who controls Laitman?” 12/27/12

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Question: Am I a puppet through which the Creator acts on the friends? Or are the friends only means through which the Creator acts on me?

Answer: I cannot control my friends in any way, in no way! By being connected with them, I can only convey my support to them.

And by not doing this in accordance with the capabilities of the system we are in, I harm both them and myself. We are always mutually incorporated in each other. If I do not transmit what is in me to them every second, I short-circuit myself and of course them.

This is an analog, integrated system. There is no getting away from it! There are no such calculations here where you constantly think about how to arrange something for someone. There is no such thing! All together! From the start!

When we understand this, everything will be fine. In the meantime, everyone is thinking about how to gain something and always at the expense of others! When the system is revealed, then everything will become clear.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who controls you?” 12/29/12

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Question: In Kabbalah, two people are considered a Minyan (group); they also make up the ten Sefirot. On one hand, there are at least two, and on the other hand, is it desirable that there are 10 people?

Answer: Two people are necessary in order to be able to understand what it means to exit yourself. For this exit to be really outside of oneself, it takes ten people. Then they form a common system.

But in principle, ten is not necessary. We just want everything to be similar to the spiritual system. In fact, it can be two, three, or five people; it does not matter. The main thing is that there should be someone outside of you on whom you can work out a way out of yourself.

As a person goes out of a space capsule into space, in the same way you should be able to go out into another. For this, the other must exist. He must be in a certain contact with you, in a certain connection, in mutual assistance, so that you can do it.

Question: Should a person do this actively so that everyone can see or is his presence enough?

Answer: Yes and no. It depends on what kind of person, at what time, in what era, and with what kind of egoism. It is not easy.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How many people should be in the group?” 12/22/12

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Question: How do we absorb the world around us and connect with it?

Answer: One can absorb the world only to the extent that is necessary to correctly explain the method of ascent to people.

What does it mean to enter this world? If I am at the next degree, then this world is just a small part in which I know everything from one end to the other. I feel it in absolutely everything: its energy, movement, and connection between all objects.

I am only interested in the part of this world that is called a person’s consciousness. I want them to acquire higher consciousness. This is what I have to do as someone who is at the next level; I help everyone who is at this degree to climb to the next degree. This act is called spiritual birth.

But to dive into this world, where to dive?! Nowhere! You have no idea what it is like. Compared to the upper world, it does not even come close to a millimeter; everything in it is so much more flat and linear.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call, What to Expect from Kabbalah?” 12/22/12

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Question: In one of your clips there was a story about a lonely whale that exists in its own frequency and makes its own sounds. The others don’t see or hear him. He wanders all by himself.

Martha writes to you: “Tell me, what should I do? I am such a lonely whale. I am surrounded by a lot of people, but I am all alone. I really want to communicate with people, but I cannot find sincere contact, I am afraid of people. What should I do?”

Answer: Tune in to the fact that there are no sincere contacts. Exist the way you exist. It is not called being a lonely whale. The whale also does not exist alone, but among many, many others, similar to and including him. So are we.

Comment: But it was said that the whale wanders around alone, that none hear it or see it. Martha thinks she is the same.

My Response: So, what? What Is wrong with that? I do not feel like a lonely whale. I do my own thing, communicate with a certain number of people, and so on. That is, it is not loneliness.

Question: Not loneliness. And if she has this loneliness?

Answer: This is how she feels.

Question: If she writes: “I’m afraid of people”? How can she overcome such a problem if it is not at the medical level? Fear of people, fear of contacts, there are the people who do not want this connection; they are afraid of it. What should be the result of their efforts?

Answer: The result is that they eventually find company in which they feel free.

Question: But we need to look from easy to difficult, with whom can I? Do not force yourself.

Answer: No! But you can join some clubs and chat with one or two women or men there.

Question: Please explain why you insist on contact. Why not tell a person: “Well, just exist the way you are”?

Answer: But she is complaining!

Comment: She complains, that is right. “I really want to communicate with people, but I cannot find a sincere contact.”

My Response: Sincere! She herself is not ready for sincere contact.

Question: Is that what you feel?

Answer: Of course.

Question: What kind of contact is sincere for you? For her, it is clear to me that she is looking for something like this for herself.

Answer: For me, a sincere contact is to find a book that would capture me. That is all.

Question: In general, what would you call a sincere contact?

Answer: When they understand you. But that is hardly good either. At the same time, a person has very little of himself left. It is true, we do not really want to open up.

Question: Yes, we are closed, of course. So, after all, what is sincere contact?

Answer: I do not know. This is when you feel comfortable with a person. But with whom can you be constantly calm?

Comment: This is also a problem.

My Response: Of course.

Question: A real contact, what is it?

Answer: Real contact is obviously when you love a person and want to make him feel good all the time.

Comment: You took it and suddenly turned everything around just like that. Instead of being good for me, you say: “So that it would be good for the other. And this is called contact.”

My Response: Yes when I feel that I want it to be good for him, create a pleasant atmosphere for him, a feeling.

Question: And if we are talking about the upper, about the Creator, what is a real contact?

Answer: This is already an equivalence of form. This is so that I can affect the Creator in the same way that He affects me. To do this, I need to change my nature, which, by the way, He made for me. So, I must ask Him to change it. This request is the contact.

Question: Can such a request be sincere?

Answer: Partly, until I really ask sincerely.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/23/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are your thoughts on pain?“

Pain is our body’s reaction to all kinds of bodily disruptions. It warns of danger and makes us act—to move toward pleasure and away from pain, to diagnose the cause of the pain, to reach conclusions and to advance in our lives to new states.

Pain impacts our ego, the desire to enjoy at the expense of others. We can feel pain when we feel bad, or when sympathizing with others who feel bad, or when the pain of envy strikes us when we see that others are better off than us.

There is pain that prods us from behind, making us evolve, and also existential pain that ultimately pulls us forward to greater fulfillment.

We would feel nothing at all if it were not for pain. Whether it is a certain kind of conflict, contact or pressure, our every feeling is built upon a certain form of pain, and we can only feel pleasure, fulfillment and enjoyment after pain.

However, we can overcome pain. When we rise above the ego, i.e. when we ascend beyond prioritizing self-interest at the expense of others to its opposite—prioritizing the benefit of others—we can then live in complete fulfillment, without emptiness, where we relate to everything and everyone out of an ever-increasing wholeness and love.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — “Man’s Freedom”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 33

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Medium published my new article “What Is the Most Important Advice You Would Give to Someone to Live a Long Life?”

In Australia, a 100-year-old woman shared what she considered the secret to her long life, that longevity stems from a calm attitude to any tumultuous life events. She recommends not holding onto grudges and to live in the here and now. Her credo is, “Don’t worry about things that may never even happen.”

A Kabbalist is a person who opens himself to the world by coming out of himself and participating in it. He absorbs the world’s desires and problems and then processes them in order to activate his correction, in order to seek the optimal response and intention to everything that he absorbs. He thus feeds back into the world a corrected response to what he absorbs.

While it might seem like good life advice, a Kabbalist views it as lifeless to not worry about yesterday or tomorrow, and only to live in the here and now. It is how the animate degree of existence lives, but not the human.

Take any animal: it lives in the here and now. It is another matter if they have premonitions, but if they do not receive that sensation, then they live with what they have. An animal’s movements are quite simple, whereas humans burden themselves with all kinds of cosmic problems. For instance, stars might be exploding in another galaxy, and there would be people worrying about it.

Our worries with where we are gives us a feeling of life. On the contrary, a calm bodily existence, where we live with only what we have, is an animalistic life.

A Kabbalist is a person who opens himself to the world by coming out of himself and participating in it. He absorbs the world’s desires and problems and then processes them in order to activate his correction, in order to seek the optimal response and intention to everything that he absorbs. He thus feeds back into the world a corrected response to what he absorbs.

Such a life is far from being free of problems. Yet, it gives the Kabbalist a feeling of happiness because he feels that he carries out a necessary duty. Otherwise, it is not a human life. A Kabbalist can live in no other way.

However, in relation to the lady’s statement about not holding onto grudges, it is indeed important. It also comes naturally to a Kabbalist because if we accept everything as coming from a single force — nature’s force of love and bestowal — then everything that plays out among us is a picture of the world that nature directs. If we hold onto such a picture, then our attitude to it becomes correct and practical.

We can then no longer hold onto any grudges because we involve ourselves in the world’s correction, in the absorption and manifestation of the world, and we engage in the system together with nature. In other words, we not only observe and absorb what is around us, but we understand that it is being done for us, and that it is processed in our perception of reality.

We then need to act in a way that justifies this picture that projects within us. Living in the here and now is thus correct, but in the sense that the “here and now” is the reality that we create. We receive our impressions from nature’s output toward us, which we process as our input. We then constantly correct our impressions and reflections of the world, and we do so in order to justify nature on all degrees of our perception.
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Question: An elderly couple that lived together for more than fifty years was asked how they managed to live together for so long? They answered that it must be because they were born and raised in the times when you fixed what was broken and did not throw them away.

Basically we are throwing away broken things today. Replacements come—no problem. If the relationship is completely broken, how can you fix it? People write to you all the time, and you insist on holding on to the end. But how do you hold on when everything has been broken and there is nothing left?

Answer: Have you lived together? Do you have children? Have your children given birth to grandchildren?

So you have to stay glued together somehow. For the sake of the children and grandchildren because they are your descendants, your consequence. Therefore, you must stay together for their sake. If only officially; it doesn’t matter how.

It means that you can live officially together. For them, you are together. You create this theater for grandchildren and children.

Question: And what does it give? Why are you so insistent on this?

Answer: This is called “family.”

Question: So family is grandchildren, children, and their parents? Is this a family?

Answer: Yes. All those alive and united with each other after all.

Question: Is there a root to this?

Answer: We have to keep this structure. It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not.

Comment: So this remains, even if it breaks me; if everything is already broken and I cannot tolerate the other…

Answer: Don’t pay attention. What’s the difference? What does “breaks” mean? You go on with your life, your wife goes on with her life, the children have their lives, the grandchildren have their lives, and so on. But you’re not breaking anything.

Question: So in a bad relationship, your advice is to act?

Answer: In any condition. You don’t even have to act; just don’t separate officially, don’t get divorced.

Comment: You are now obliging a person: “This is how you must live.”

Answer: If you are aimed at the family existing and at your descendants living within this framework, then you can uphold it. I think we must maintain this connection.

Question: What do you base this on? That this is a bad example for children and grandchildren? Now we are talking about elderly couples. Suddenly they decide to divorce, or suddenly they are in a bad relationship. Should they stick to it because it’s a bad example for children and grandchildren, and it may continue on?

Answer: That too. People should know that if they get married and have children, they should live, in a way, for the sake of the children.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/23/23

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