Kabbalah says that there are strict laws in nature. In addition, there are even higher laws, laws of bestowal, which supplement our laws.

Our world is based on the laws of reception. The whole form and matter of our world is egoistic and constantly manifests its egoism: electrons and atoms attract each other and interact with each other, chemical elements grab and attract each other, vegetative nature accumulates all good and squeezes out all bad, animate nature consumes everything for its own benefit, a person mentally does everything for himself, and so on. We are exploring egoism. This is our earthly science.

There is another nature, bestowal, which is to give to others, to fill them as much as possible. This nature is absolutely opposite to ours; it is the anti-world. And this is what is researched by Kabbalah.

But who can explore the anti-world? A scientist who himself, with his properties, is in it. To the extent that he develops his tools of cognition, he can explore it. Otherwise, the upper world does not exist for him, it is hidden from him.

If you ask me to show you something from the anti-world, I will not be able to do it. How will you discover this “something” if you do not have a single spiritual quality?

If you have it, you will see the upper world because you will already have a new sense, the quality of bestowal, and you just need to be taught how to use it and how to control it.

The most important thing for us is to find this quality, to see it in ourselves, to develop it. We do everything together, although it is very difficult. The main thing is to reach the first degree, and since you do not yet know what it is, it really is revealed as a miracle. As if something is close and understandable and at the same time completely unforeseen and unpredictable, so is the quality of bestowal to all our desires and thoughts.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is a Miracle” 3/6/11

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Question: How should your students annul themselves before you? What should they do?

Answer: I am not asking them to do anything for me. I really do not like it when people try to serve me, give me something, and so on. That is why I push such people away.

I say only one thing: “If you want to do good to me, you should do good to each other.” Imagine that instead of me there is a group in front of you, and what you would like to do to me, do to them, and even twice as much. That is all.

I am inside the group, I teach, and I am around all the time, but I do not accept such an attitude toward me when someone serves me.

In general, if everyone does it a little bit, it is fine. There are people who go for a walk with me, there are people who bring lunch, and there are people who clean my office. I usually prefer women because this is natural for them and they do not have any other opportunity to help.

The men, my students, help me in preparing materials and presentations, but in no case do they serve.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. To receive from the teacher” 4/13/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why we need to work?“

We need to work so that we connect and serve one another, as it is written, “Go and make a living from each other.”

Our lives are arranged such that we are forced to connect to each other: I give to you, and you give to me. For example, I give you shoes, and you give me clothes, and another gives me bread and wine, and I give them one or another thing.

We thus see that, out of a survival necessity, we are made to communicate with each other.

Then, as our desires grow over time, we develop more and more goods and services that increasingly connect us. This process of increasing interconnection and interdependence is a subconscious correction that we undergo.

We need to learn why this process unfolds the way that it does, and where it ultimately leads us. For the time being, we can see that our desires’ development over history, from small individual desires for food, sex and family, through to more and more egoistic desires where we use others to benefit ourselves—social desires for wealth, honor and power—lead us to a state where we find ourselves becoming increasingly dissatisfied.

The human ego that wishes to benefit itself at the expense of others finds more and more sophisticated ways to make shovels for digging its own grave. In other words, our scientific, technological and cultural progress brings us to our inability to satisfy our ego’s growing demands, and we remain empty.

What do we truly want out of this entire process?

Our true desire is to gain a sense of the meaning of life. Although we constantly chase transient pleasures that slip through our fingers, our innermost desire is for an eternal and perfect sensation of life.

We subconsciously forget ourselves in life so as not to think about its end, because it is terrible to consider that we part with everything we did. And we did everything just to maintain our animal bodies. Why do we live like that? What is the point? At least an animal does not ask such questions.

It turns out that our life without an answer about its ultimate meaning is pointless, insignificant and empty, worse than the life of animals. At least animals do not suffer from existential inquiries. And we, in order not to let questions about our lives’ meaning and purpose bother us, constantly try to engage ourselves with all kinds of toys.

There is no happy ending for our egoistic desires, but there is a happy life above the ego. The entire purpose of seeing how our ego leads us to a dead end is in order for us to, through the helplessness of trying to satisfy our egoistic desires, come to feel a stronger and stronger need to discover the meaning of life—an eternal and perfect existence.

We will then become ready to shift our egoistic approach of trying to satisfy our desires at others’ expense, to a new approach: Instead of working primarily for the sake of self-benefit, we would work first and foremost to benefit others.

Shifting the place where we feel pleasure—from inside to outside ourselves—is the key to discovering the meaning of life: a new perception that is completely connected with the surrounding reality, where fulfillment expands eternally, and where we sense perfection and wholeness.

Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What Is Work?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on March 6, 2011. 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 — Writings of Rabash, Article 11, “A Real Prayer Is over a Real Deficiency”  

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 67

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Selected Highlights

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Question: How do you define talent?

Answer: Talent is a special ability for a certain kind of creativity.

Question: Do you think all people have talent?

Answer: No, not everyone.

Question: Does one need talent to study Kabbalah?

Answer: We need a special type of soul. Those who have it, feel the desire for this kind of activity and this knowledge. Those who do not have no intention or aspiration to Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Talks” 5/18/23

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Question: What do children and elderly people have in common? After all, at some point in their lives, they become exactly the same.

Answer: Children and the elderly feel the simplest common values of this world. The main thing is that the body is comfortable, and everything else is the meaning of a small life.

Children try to find meaning in their games, in anything. And elderly people are like that too. That is, both of them “descend” to a state where they need very little from this world.

Children are still not interested in many things because it goes beyond their desire. And for the elderly, this has already gone beyond the scope of desire. Children have not yet experienced the peak of egoism, and the elderly have survived it and are not pursuing anything anymore.

A Kabbalist is in this state almost all his life. He is not running after anything. Let’s say you offer me a huge limo instead of my car or some huge apartments instead of two small rooms. What for? What will it give me? Basically, I do not need anything from life anymore. The child does not need it either, he has his own toys and he feels good.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is Childhood and Old Age?” 4/24/11

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Question: Did you say that one can receive from the teacher by bestowing to him?

Answer: You are obliged to. You can receive when you connect with the teacher; otherwise, you will have no place to receive. But it is possible to connect with him only to the extent of the equivalence of qualities.

You cannot come to him and say: “I want, I want, I want!” It will give nothing but rejection between you. To the extent that you bestow to him, you can receive from him.

Question: What exactly am I bestowing?

Answer: Desires, qualities, feelings, and even some actions in our world. Why have I been with my teacher for 12 years? I was his driver, deputy, and assistant; I took care of him like a nurse at a hospital bed. For what? Naturally, only in order to receive from him. Would this old man be dear to me if I did not want and appreciate what is in him? Of course not! A person should be aware of what he is doing everything for.

In our life, we instinctively treat only children with love, and everything else, on the contrary, with rejection.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. To Receive from the Teacher” 4/13/11

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Comment: We are used to the expression “reading someone’s thoughts.” You replace it with the words “know the roots of movement.”

Answer: Why should I read a person’s thoughts?! Do I not understand what kind of device it is? A small biological device that is engaged only in maintaining itself in the most convenient form. Its body strives for homeostasis because all inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature strives for it, and it egotistically reaches for maximum fulfillment. What else do I need to know about him?

Question: But in order to convey information to a person, don’t you need to absorb his understanding? If you feel it much deeper, you could find greater communication with him.

Answer: Yes and no. So what if I understand how he lives? For example, there is a small child in front of you. How will you find communication with him, at what level? You still have to go down to his level, make yourself small like him. Communication can only be on one level.

Question: But an adult has his own world. Let’s say he goes to work, goes out somewhere, to the child it seems to be something unusual, he does not even understand what it is about. For a Kabbalist, what seems to be like miracles to a child are a natural process that takes place around him.

So there are some things that you cannot explain even on our egoistic level?

Answer: There are things that I cannot explain and that you cannot feel. I can take you, like a small child, to my work, I can take you into the big world, and you will see something there and perhaps understand a little because you have five senses like in an adult, only they are not developed.

Therefore, I will be able to explain something to you a little, that is, I can develop your five material sense organs. But if they are developed in you, and spiritual ones are not, what can I do with you?! Nothing.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is a Miracle” 3/6/11

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