Question: Some of your students are at their workplaces during the lesson, for example, in the studio engaged in broadcasting or something else. When asked if they ever come to class, many answer: “I fall asleep there, but here I at least I am working.” How can such students behave in the correct way?

Answer: If during this time a person creates some kind of socially useful product, then let it be.

Question: And if he does not create anything, but simply sits in his familiar place?

Answer: Never mind. He nevertheless somehow participates; he is included with us in the common process. It is really hard to be at the lesson. A person is tired in the evening or wakes up early; it is cold or conversely hot, and this makes him sleepy. I understand all these problems so I am very patient with them; it does not bother me at all.

Question: But on the other hand you say that we should not turn a blind eye to this; we should take care of the friends. After all he could leave the path in this manner.

Answer: You are his friends. You should try. Talk to each other and bring it up for discussion. This is your job, not mine.

Question: But how, can you pull them out by force? On the one hand you say that you need to give a person freedom of choice, but at the same time we should pull him up and not let him fall.

Answer: The main thing is desire. Try to awaken desire in him.

Question: Do you have any examples of how you awakened desires in other people?

Answer: No. I acted in accordance with Rabash’s instructions. I took a few veteran students, trained them as teachers, put new students with them, and they taught them. We studied with Rabash, and those who dozed during his lessons were teaching newcomers and thus did not fall asleep.

Therefore, for a person who falls asleep in his place at the computer I would definitely arrange such classes for him to teach. In this case, he will have to study. Moreover, it will motivate him to work and to connect with the rest.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Revival of the Dead” 12/12/13

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When I came to Rabash, he used to write some interesting little notes, for himself. He believed that there was no one to pass them on to. Such a human condition is difficult to explain. He did not allow his students to write anything down.

As soon as I started writing something down, he would stop talking. Then I said: “I am a student; if I do not write, I do not hear. I have to go from ear to pen.” I bought him with this.

We explained to him that this is the way they study at the university: the professor speaks from the lectern, and you sit and take notes because there are a thousand books but you need exactly what he teaches. Then Rabash reluctantly agreed.

Then I slowly convinced him that we needed to record him on a tape recorder. It was a problem similar to the gradual transition from the state of exile to the state of revelation.

I saw how difficult it was for him to cross this rubicon. To give up the state of exile when you are sitting alone in a corner studying The Book of Zohar and Kabbalah, and then you start to come out. It was very hard for him!

I started making drawings, tape recordings, and written recordings. Gradually the material began to accumulate, and I was absolutely sure that I was not collecting it for myself.

After all, when a person develops, he does not need this. We never look at past material. We need the next one, the future.

Although if you look at the past material, you will see how much you reveal there. But life is arranged in such a way that each day should be new despite the fact that you can take much more from yesterday. This is how the beginning and the end of the path are formed.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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Comment: You said that only connection between students will lead them to a spiritual breakthrough.

My Response: It seems to me that today there can be no other approach to spirituality; it will not work.

Question: Why can’t it happen again that you work with one student who will remain after you and lead everyone forward as it was with you and Rabash?

Answer: Neither I nor any of my students are inclined to start such personal work.

Question: Was Rabash inclined to this?

Answer: He had no other choice and neither did I. I say this absolutely precisely.

In addition, there were prerequisites that I really, really wanted this, although by nature I was completely different. There are people who know how to “place” themselves under another and at the same time feel comfortable and good.

I am absolutely not one of those people. I am a person who creates, commands, sees ahead—wrongly or not, that is another matter—but who wants to implement and generate something new. This is not a student who adapts to the teacher and like a small fish swims next to a big fish. It happened from above.

I think that today because of the global spiritual ascent that is taking place in humanity, this is simply impossible.

I have ten, maybe fifteen people I can rely on. If they work together with each other, not each one separately but only together, they will become the spiritual center that will be able to lead the world further.

Only their common effort to work together, to manage together, and to teach humanity together will bear even greater fruits than I did.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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In the future, a person will live only for the sake of spiritual attainment, for the sake of spiritual life, which he will be revealing here and now.

It is not worth living for the sake of everything else. What is the point of this existence? Think at what expense and how much suffering a person receives pleasure in this world?

Take stock and tell me whether it is worth living when every minute you are fighting for a comfortable existence, you go through all this and you achieve just a few moments a day of some kind of relaxation and pleasure, and you spend the rest of your time trying to avoid suffering somehow.

Is it worth living like this? It is completely irrational! Look at our world from the outside, look at our existence: eight billion little people—who do, after all, have a mind—are swarming around. Look at what they do with their minds and with their nature, and yet they still cling to this terrible life, if you can call it life!

Therefore when a person’s eyes begin to open gradually, he will make a calculation and say: “There is absolutely no point in this existence. Only the fear of death keeps me here. But I will swallow the pill and stop being afraid, just give it to me.”

What is the point? Will tomorrow be better than today?! And there is still old age ahead, which means even greater torment when you are alone, abandoned, useless to anyone, and gradually dying in a cold nursing home.

Therefore people who make the right calculation with this world live only in order to attain the upper world.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Preserve Love” 12/19/13

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Question: Why did Rabash choose you?

Answer: It does not depend on the person. It does not depend on anyone, only on the general system.

Comment: You, a person with two higher education degrees who was born in Belarus, came to an old man who did not study anywhere.

My Response: It does not matter at all.

By the way, we had a common mentality. I was born in Vitebsk, and he was born in Warsaw. At that time, Poland and this part of the USSR were somehow connected. My father even had Polish citizenship since this territory was annexed to Russia only before the war.

So what do I want to say? Even the names of food, drinks, and household utensils were very close and understandable to Rabash. He liked the food my wife cooked. In this regard, we understood each other well. Our mentality was very similar.

I do not know how it would have been with Baal HaSulam because this is, of course, a completely different spiritual level. But on the physical level I am sure it would have been the same.

It helps. Still, the mentality is very important for a student who is at a small level.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is Behavioral change?“

Inside us is a model of our surrounding environment. It is where we create and feel the environment. We receive impressions from our surrounding environment, which in turn builds its systems into the inner model that we host.

People specifically can develop inner models of their environment much more than animals. For instance, a dog can feel its master, and a cat can feel the moods of people in its vicinity. A human being, however, builds a model of the environment within that includes the universe, nature and human society. We relate to our environment through our inner model, and our environment also lives in that model. Accordingly, we interact with and feel the environment, beginning life on the human level.

Behavioral change begins from our inner models, which incorporate with and feel our environments, and which develop attitudes in relation to those models. If we are critical of other people’s behaviors, we might simply ask them, “Don’t you understand what you’re doing?” “Don’t you understand…?” means that we actually ask whether the person has a certain inner model, i.e. a set of attitudes that have developed toward people and nature, and why that person cannot understand something from the model they host.

Some people are internally deaf, i.e. they cannot build these models within themselves, and likewise they have a certain level of detachment from their environment. They do not understand what is required of them. It is like babies who have not yet developed such systems within themselves. They observe other people but do not understand what everyone wants. There are many such people. Most people live their lives without the accurate inner models of the universe, nature, society and what is required of them in this vast system.

Building accurate inner models of our environment—the universe, nature and human society—is the education we need today. The behaviors that we assume depend on the measure to which we, according to our inner models, can correctly work with them. We then realize those models in practice through our behavior toward the world. Behavioral change is thus the result of our finding the correct model of the universe, nature and human society.
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Based on the video “What Is Behavioral Change?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Tal Mandelbaum. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Eduardo Sánchez on Unsplash.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “The Letter of Rav Hamnuna Saba” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Selected Highlights

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“Because the will to receive is not in our root, we feel shame and intolerance in it. Our sages wrote that in order to correct this, He has “prepared” for us labor in Torah and Mitzvot in this world, to invert the will to receive into a desire to bestow” (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 4, Item 20).

Everything that is not included in the desire to enjoy causes us impatience and difficulties. All this does not exist in the Creator; therefore, it is perceived by us as undesirable. And we suffer from this.

Question: Does it mean that we feel shame and intolerance because this does not exist in our root?

Answer: Yes. By feeling our dissimilarity to the Creator, we, accordingly, experience negative feelings.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 12/4/22

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The need and necessity for the long cascading to this world will be explained below, that this great labor of turning the form of reception into the form of bestowal can only be conceived in this world (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 4, Item 20).

Question: What is this state called our world, and how come the form of bestowal can only be acquired from it?

Answer: On one hand our world is the lowest of the worlds; it is very distant from the qualities of the Creator, the qualities of bestowal, and exists completely in the quality of reception. On the other hand, by using a mechanism called the Torah, that is, the upper light, which comes to us and makes it possible to acquire the quality of bestowal, we can gradually rise from the quality of reception to the quality of bestowal and thus come closer to the Creator.

Question: But why specifically from the state of our world? What is so special about it?

Answer: Our world is opposite to the upper world, opposite to the Creator. While we exist in it, we can act the way the quality of reception dictates to us. Then, gradually we acquire also the qualities of bestowal. First, we acquire the quality of receiving in order to receive, and then receiving in order to bestow. Thus, we become equivalent to the Creator.

Our world is a special state where we exist only in reception, initially not understanding what real, absolute bestowal is. It is from the opposite state that we can understand what it is. But first we need to fully understand what reception is.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 12/4/22

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