Question: Do you ever get tired of that pressure of the egoism when people ask you questions? Do you have some kind of limit?

Answer: As soon as the relevance of the questions disappears, I immediately stop answering.

Question: Let’s say an evening lasts five hours. You cannot answer questions for five hours straight, can you? Do you have some kind of resource limit?

Answer: No! Usually the questions end by themselves. There is a certain limit to how much the listeners can be filled, and then there is no point in continuing.

It is the same with lessons. Our lessons run according to time: three parts of 45 minutes each. But sometimes I break this barrier and give, instead of 45 minutes for one part, two consecutive blocks of 45 minutes because I see that there is a serious emptiness there that can be filled.

At our congresses, I first give a lecture for 40 to 50 minutes, and then another 40 to 50 minutes answering questions. After that, the listeners are no longer able to absorb the material. Even that is already too much for them. In other words, if I were to give a lecture lasting an hour and a half, they would not absorb it.

Only if we are trained to study for three hours straight (it is possible to study for five or six hours as I once studied with Rabash for eight or nine hours straight, that is a different matter), then there are no problems.

When you enter your own world, and within it you develop your own qualities and feelings, you live in it and communicate with it from different angles, that is a completely different matter. Kabbalists can remain in it without limit: for days, for a lifetime, for eternity.
[352330]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call.The Limit of Egoism” 9/12/10

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First of all, a person must understand the state he is in. He is sent a very low, even humiliating state. He discovers that he is a creature for which there seems to be no need at all, and such a condition is by no means honorable; it has neither cause nor purpose.

It is precisely from this moment that a person should use his freedom of choice. That is, he must nevertheless find strength in the environment because without an environment we are like animals. If not for the environment, I would live with my wife in the forest, produce children, obtain food for them and for myself like all animals and beasts.

But unlike animals and beasts, my desire to receive keeps growing, while theirs does not increase. It is said: “A one-day-old calf is already called an ox.” A newborn calf already knows how to walk; within a day or two it stands up and walks, it already knows everything it needs, and it will never harm itself or cause itself injury. The calf is still small in size, but its mind is the same as that of an adult cow.

With a human being everything is different. The desire to receive constantly grows and rises above the animal level. There is nothing one can do about this desire.

Therefore methods appear that claim that one must suppress the desire within oneself, become like an animal, and then one will not feel any suffering. Live like an animal.

Food? You will always obtain a bit of nourishment. Shelter? You need some corner, some hut—no problem, you will always find a place to sleep. Family? You will find a suitable wife, have children—everything will work out. If you do not demand much, you descend to a very low level. You are told that dieting is good, breathing less is also good. In general, reduce your needs, and you will become righteous.

By acting this way, you begin to feel good. You descend to the animal level, limit yourself strictly to what is necessary for life, and you have no troubles. An animal has far fewer problems than a human being. We say, “a dog’s life.” But it is a dog’s life for a human being, not for a dog.

However, there is another method: not to endure deprivation, but on the contrary, to learn how to use the desire to receive. Then you must take it fully and completely, not suppress it, but learn how to use it correctly. For this, you need a specific method, not methods of suppression, which usually include Eastern teachings or various religious approaches based on suppressing the desire to receive, but the method of Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is the only method that claims the opposite: do not suppress the desire to receive, but use it as much as possible.

It is true that the world has always preferred to reduce the desire to receive just in order not to suffer, since that is more convenient, calmer, and easier. This was possible in previous generations, when the desire to receive did not burn so intensely in a person. “He who increases knowledge increases sorrow”; this is understandable.

In our days, when the desire to receive already burns so strongly in a person, and in the coming years will grow even more, a person will not be able to restrict it and descend to a natural, simple way of life like the one proposed by yoga and other methods that say “Go to a monastery, sit quietly and peacefully in your cell, and be content with little.”

We live in a transitional period in which all methods of suppression become untenable. They no longer work, and then there truly remains no other choice but to turn to the method of Kabbalah.
[352385]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/26/26, Rabash, “Lishma and Lo Lishma“

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Question: Do you think a person asks the question himself, or is a person like a mechanism that must ask it?

Answer: Of course he is not asking the question himself. This is a common, great desire created by the Creator.

Just as, let’s say, you look at porridge boiling in a huge pot that is bubbling, boiling, and shifting layers, so too are we, all the souls, digesting and connecting with each other, and questions arise; that is, new unfilled voids that are able to rise, rise to the top.

In other words, by rising up, these voids are trying to get some kind of filling, to come to some kind of balance, and therefore, a certain question is being asked.

That is why I always connect not just with those who ask questions or even with the huge audience that listens to me all over the world, but with the whole soul. After all, we are talking about its balance, its fulfillment, bringing it to full correction, and revealing the perfect state in which it exists that is hidden from itself.

I always feel what tremendous work we are doing in this process and how it affects the whole creation. It is not pride, arrogance, or vanity, but the feeling and realization of the opportunity to participate a little in the certain time, in the minimum share that we have been given in the movement towards perfection.
[352699]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Answer to Any Question” 9/12/10

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Question: When we disseminate, do we become correctors of the world?

Answer: Of course, we are. It is true. What does it mean, correctors of the world? The Creator gave us a corrupted world, and by bringing the Creator into this world, we correct it.

The Creator created an uncorrected, egoistic world. If we bring the quality of bestowal into it, then in this way, the world is corrected. Therefore, our action is called correcting the world (Tikkun Olam). That is what the Creator says: “I made the world faulty, I spoiled it, and My children fixed it,” that is, “My sons defeated Me.”

Question: What does it mean that there is nothing missing in the world and nothing needs to be changed?

Answer: There is nothing to change in the world except to bring the presence of the Creator into it. With everyone else, we only spoil the world even more: we pile up flaws upon flaws and only aggravate our path. The only thing we need is to reveal the Creator in the world. Nothing else.
[246695]
From a Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 4/9/19

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World Kabbalah Convention, “Preparation to Lesson 3”

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World Kabbalah Convention, “What Stops Us from Truly Connecting,” Lesson 3

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World Kabbalah Convention, “Arvut in the Ten,” Lesson 4

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When building the correct environment, there are many details, but in general, this action is called love.

Why is it not called authority, command, compromise, or agreement? Why is it called love? After all, this is the least concrete of all the things one could hold on to.

Choose a group in order to love it? I do not feel that I am doing something fateful, that through love I can reliably change my friends and influence them so that they influence me. Love seems too soft a force for governing my destiny, my life.

All this is because we do not know that I do not have to govern anything except my attitude toward those around me. And the precise governance of one’s attitude is exactly what is called love.

This is very different from the love familiar to us in this world between created beings on the animate and human levels: between parents, between people. This love is entirely different, and therefore, it is not felt. We do not see that a Kabbalist sitting in some corner has love toward humanity. It is hidden, just as the Creator is hidden with respect to humanity.

These qualities are spiritual; they can be seen only when one is similar to them. Any phenomenon of nature, material or spiritual, we perceive only when the receiver has the same property within. To the extent that he resembles what is in the environment around him, he senses it.

And if a person has no connection with a certain phenomenon, he or she cannot perceive it. Therefore, we do not perceive the relationships and the forces that exist above this world. We do not understand what it means that the Creator loves the world with absolute love. We do not know what this word “love” means.
[352647]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/26, “For Man Is the Tree of the Field – 1”

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Question: Does the evil eye exist or not? What do you think?

Answer: It does. But it is not the kind of evil eye where I simply look at you like this.

By our desires, we are all connected together into one common, enormous desire that the Creator created. And therefore, by our desires we can influence one another each from his own level from the root of his soul. Thus, when I think badly of others, I harm myself and I harm them. I cause harm because I act through my desire.

Question: Does this happen involuntarily?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: I have no free choice.

My Response: People do not know this. But why is our world so bad? Because people think about one another in this way!

Question: Because they as if cast the evil eye on another?

Answer: Of course! Does anyone wish good to another?

Comment: That is, of course, a question.

My Response: It is not a question at all!

Question: No one wishes good to another at all?

Answer: Of course not! And it turns out that our entire world lives only on the evil eye, on rejection, on people repelling one another.

Question: Is this what you call our world, the one in which we live?

Answer: Yes. The eye is the highest organ: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

Question: The five senses, and sight is the highest of them?

Answer: The highest. And therefore, we must be concerned with looking correctly at one another.

Question: When you use the word “to look,” what do you put into it?

Answer: To relate.

Comment: What you have just stated—that our entire world is built on the evil eye—is quite a statement. It is built on the evil eye.

My Response: Where have you ever seen a normal attitude of one person toward another?

Comment: Well, not to such an extent.

My Response: It does not matter to what extent, but only in a negative direction!

Question: Is this because I exist? Because my thoughts are only about myself?

Answer: From the outset, we are not directed toward good. From the outset, we are not directed toward a correct attitude toward one another. We set this only under certain conditions—if he behaves in such-and-such a way, then I will also relate to him correctly, and so on. But initially, I have no good toward another. Why should I?

Question: What do you mean, “Why should I?”

Answer: How could it be? Why should I relate well to others? I am asking you as a normal person in this world. Such a thing cannot exist!

Comment: But inwardly, I very much do not want to agree with you that all my thoughts are only to cause harm.

My Response: You are a Komsomol volunteer from the 1920s!

Comment: Yes, but still, one wants to believe that a person at least makes an effort.

My Response: A person is made in evil! A person is evil! There is no getting away from this. Only education can raise him out of this egoistic, envious swamp—pull him out by the ears, wash him, dry him well, hang him by the ears in the sun so that it thoroughly evaporates him. And only after that can one begin to fill him with something good.

Question: Then this entire science of correction, which is called Kabbalah, is it about how to transform these evil thoughts, this evil gaze on which our world exists, into a good gaze?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: That is, how to raise a person from this world into a world of a good gaze, goodness, and so on.

My Response: Yes. That will already be the spiritual world, the upper world, the spiritual world.
[352235]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 1/21/226

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Question: How does a person know that the environment he creates is the right one?

Answer: A person knows nothing. This is the work he must do: get confused and check, investigate and get confused again, understand something a little, and turn to the books, the teacher, and the friends.

This is how a person gradually comes to know the system called the governance of the Creator over him and begins to use it by their own decision. This means that he or she begins to govern the world.

Question: Is there any kind of verification on this path?

Answer: Verification is necessary every second. It must be carried out in parallel with the work. Without it, it is impossible to succeed.

If a person does not perform verification, he stops being a person. He does not feel where he is pouring the water that he was given throughout the year. “Water” means the property of Bina, the upper force, with which you correct yourself, but you pour it out for nothing, even though it is precisely measured.

That is, right now, you are given every opportunity to reach the final correction. At this very second, your personal Rosh HaShanah arrives; this is what a person must tell himself, and it does not matter when it happens. It might be in the middle of winter or summer.

What does your Rosh HaShanah mean? It means that inside you are all the forces, all the data, all the systems, all the sources and opportunities to reach final correction. You only need to carry out a certain number of actions within you to put the entire system in order; this is your free choice.

You must take this data and use it correctly.

If you do this, it means that you are similar to the Creator. You have learned the system of governance from Him,  both the checking and the execution.

This means that you are merged with Him: “From Your actions we shall know You.”
[352635]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/26, Rabash, “For Man Is the Tree of the Field – 1”

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Comment: In our world, we see examples of love, but they are not very convincing.

My Response: In our world, we can take a group of people and through psychological exercises make them so devoted to one another that even death cannot separate them. The group is worked with in such a way that during a collective action no one thinks about themselves; everyone thinks about the group and cannot imagine life without it.

There is a known case of a submarine crew that suffered an accident and had to abandon the vessel. Not everyone had a chance to escape, and the part of the crew that could have left chose to stay and die together with everyone else.

On the corporeal level, we see that spiritual roots are realized in branches without any problem. And this is a human force; animals do not have it. A mother can give her life for her child, but animals cannot. If a predator truly threatens life, the female abandons the offspring and runs away. Such an addition exists only on the human level.

This indicates that we possess all the branches of the spiritual roots. But we want to attain those roots. And there, they exist in such a form that you cannot reach them directly from your ego. You must build yourself into such a form from scratch. That means you must ask to become like that.

You are not required to have the strength to become like this, nor a plan of how to achieve it, but you must have the desire to enter such a state, to acquire it so that it becomes your nature in some form; you are obligated to find it.

This is precisely where the problem lies. If you were offered to build a group modeled after a submarine crew, you would build it. But to realize this on the level of the spiritual world, you have no ability.

To rise from the branches to the roots in love for friends is possible only through our request. Not through execution, but specifically through a request.

Question: When do we come to such a request?

Answer: When the group shows you that this is how it truly is. It tells you that by exiting love for oneself, we acquire something great.

And even though for you this is not true, the group can influence you in such a way that it will become true.
[352650]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/26, Rabash, “For Man Is the Tree of the Field – 1”

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However, there is a natural law that there is none so wise as the experienced, and before one tries to actually do all he can do, he is utterly incapable of arriving at true lowliness, to the real extent, as said above.

This is why we must toil in Kedusha [holiness] and purity, as it is written, “Whatever you find that your hand can do by your strength, that do,” and understand this for it is true and deep (Baal HaSulam, Letter 57).

While working on unification in order to form a vessel for bestowal, a person falls into despair. Then a genuine request arises in him in response to which the vessel arrives. In other words, the correct need for unity also comes from above. We ourselves are unable to attain it.

No matter how much we try, no matter how much we desire it, we are only preparing ourselves for a cry, and the Creator gives us the desire. In this world, a person does not have and cannot have a need for unity, no matter how hard he tries. Efforts are needed only in order to ask.

I revealed this truth to you only so you would not weaken or give up on mercy. Although you do not see anything, for even when the measure of labor is complete, it is the time of prayer, but until then, believe in our sages: “I did not labor and found, do not believe.”

When the measure is full, your prayer will be complete and the Creator will grant generously, as our sages instructed us, “I labored and found, believe,” for one is unfit for a prayer prior to this, and the Creator hears a prayer (ibid.).

Overall, the result of our work is to reach the right request. And then the vessel arrives, the correct desire for unity.

As a rule, in this world we wait for fulfillment. But in spiritual work, fulfillment is the effort. If I can work for bestowal, make efforts, that itself is my fulfillment. And therefore there are no restrictions or limitations on it.

However, in my current state I am unable even to consider such a thing. After all, all my efforts are needed in order for me to want to perform bestowal to others, not even to begin bestowing, but to feel a need for it. Is this possible? And yet, this is precisely the spiritual vessel.

That is why in our work we go through several stages of preparation. Kabbalists have written about this more than once: in spirituality, what seems to us as a reward is in essence work, and what seems to us as work is actually the reward.

However, as a result of our efforts, that very vessel is revealed to us, the correct desire.
[71937]
From the Congress in the Arava, Lesson 6, 2/25/12

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