Question: What happens to the soul when a person sleeps?

Answer: During sleep, there is a reboot in various parts of the brain, meaning the work during the day continues in it. Nothing else.

Question: It is like there are two systems. One system is the soul in which some spiritual processes take place. The other is the physiological body, which, let’s say, is sleeping now, and its brain activity is suspended.

So, at this time, can the soul continue to conduct some kind of active action? Does it even matter that the owner of this body is sleeping?

Answer: It always happens that way. A person can be distracted, do something, or be busy with something, and his soul continues to function as it should.

In Kabbalah, a dream has a special meaning. During sleep, there is a reboot of the brain and even partly of the soul. In this way, a person prepares for his next state.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/28/22

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Question: How can you show someone else the importance of spirituality when you only fantasize and have never felt it?

Answer: The importance of spirituality should be presented in the form of something higher, better, general, as a state of interconnection, friendship, love, and mutual understanding. You can imagine this in more detail by disintegrating it into some compound parts.

For example, spirituality is full interaction, full incorporation in each other. Love is mutual pliability, lowering oneself, elevating another, understanding what he needs, helping him move forward. This is a lot of all kinds of interactions: receiving from another because he wants me to receive; how can I help him and fill him, and so on.

This approach leads to close interaction, to the point that we stop seeing where I am and where he is. And at this point where “I” and “he” disappear, there is a feeling of the upper degree.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Play the Importance of the Spiritual?” 11/3/09

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Question: It is said that the Creator hates bodies. Why? After all, these are His creations.

Answer: In Kabbalah, the body is called the egoism of a person. And since the Creator is an absolute desire to bestow, above our egoism, it does not coincide at all with the egoistic intentions of man, and therefore it is said that He hates “bodies,” meaning He is the opposite of the ego.

The Creator created egoism on purpose so that, proceeding from the opposite quality, man would attain Him. After all, everything we attain is attained on the basis of opposites.

And our biological bodies are at the animal level. The Creator has no complaints about them. You satisfy your animal desires, please, it doesn’t matter.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/21/22

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is freedom?“

Freedom is a state where we rise above our restrictive limits and give everything we can for society’s benefit. Doing so gives us the opportunity to feel absolutely free from every restraint.

How does it work that we become free when we give everything possible for society’s benefit? It is because we then feel no limits from our egoistic nature—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature—because we use it with an intention to bestow, i.e. a desire to benefit others and nature.

Acquiring an intention to bestow upon our egoistic nature, which can be achieved through exercising giving and positive connection in society, is our life’s purpose. When we acquire the new intention to bestow upon our inborn desire to receive, we gain access to a state of eternity and perfection: unlimited fulfillment, complete perception and total connection with others and nature.

Based on the video “Kabbalah Express” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Israel Shimshon on June 24, 2022.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “The Ruin as an Opportunity for Correction”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Meaning of Conception and Birth” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3,” “Inner Observtion,” Chapter 7, Item 1

Selected Highlights

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Question: There was another tragic school shooting in America; an 18-year-old resident of Texas opened fire at an elementary school, killed 19 students, two teachers, and seriously wounded his grandmother before that.

“President Biden on Tuesday evening urged Congress to end the ‘carnage’ of gun violence after more than a dozen elementary schoolchildren were killed by an 18-year-old in Texas.

“’As a nation we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’ Biden said in an address to the nation. ‘ … How many scores of little children, who witnessed what happened, see their friends die as if they’re in a battlefield, for God’s sake?’” (Washington Post)

If you were given all the powers, that is, if they told you: “Dear Michael Laitman, here is the money, here is the power, here is the law, here is the police, here is the army, whatever you want, just change this situation,” what would you do?

Answer: I think it is unrealistic to confiscate weapons from hundreds of millions of people. (And each gun has a couple of barrels.) I remember, I went into a basement in New York—there is a gun! And everything else as well—please, in bulk, take it away.

“A gun? Please, take it.”

And what can you do? It cannot be changed in a split second. For this it is necessary to educate people; it is not easy.

Comment: That is, for example, if you were given all the authority to forcibly take the weapons, pull it out…

My Response: It would not help. They can buy them in any alley.

Comment: Close all stores, close the alleys.

My Response: There is no way to do that. Anyone who wants—specifically wants to buy a weapon in order to kill someone—can do so anywhere in the world.

Question: This problem of America is well-known. What is the solution?

Answer: There is no solution except for gradual education of society.

Question: What should society come to?

Answer: Society must come to the conclusion that it is not good to kill another.

Question: This is the basis of all religions, all spiritual practices. What you said is repeated: killing is not good, only peace. But humanity is not improving in any way, and it is getting worse and worse. You see what is going on, right?

Answer: Naturally. Egoism is growing, people around me are getting worse, so I take a gun and start “correcting” society.

Comment: The “correctors” of society are a terrible thing.

My Response: Nothing can be done. I do not see anything else except what Kabbalah says: education, serious education, universal, from a young age and throughout life.

Question: What should it lead to?

Answer: To the fact that there is no place for violence. He who raises his hand against another must receive punishment.

A person must understand that he has no right to rule over the life of another. Only good, kind things can he do to another. Just set a good example. And he has no right to show violence; this is not his authority. To act against the wishes of another is not in his authority.

Question: Why have all the practitioners that talk about the same thing not succeeded and Kabbalah will succeed if you conduct education according to Kabbalah?

Answer: It is true that no practices have succeeded in this, and many are talking about it. But they talk, and they do it differently.

And Kabbalah will succeed because it uses the upper force. It causes the influence of the upper positive force on a person, and then a person changes.

I do not see any other way out. It says what needs to be done. It is necessary to be accustomed to “love your neighbor as yourself” from a young age. Literally each and everyone. If it happens on a daily basis and on the scale of, say, a country, then it will have an impact. This together with the media and everything else.

Question: So you say the whole task is to summon this positive force upon yourself. To do this, I have to understand that there is nothing positive in me or around me? Is that what I need to understand as a student?

Answer: Of course. This requires very serious explanatory work. Very serious! Who we are, what we are, and what is happening around us, with us, and where we are going. Everyone suffers from this.

Question: How can we invoke this positive force? What should I say, think, do?

Answer: It is invoked by constant patient explanation. Movies, clips, anything else, television, the Internet, all this should be filled only by what educates a person for good. Otherwise, we are going nowhere. It is nature. Go against it?

It is necessary to direct a person’s thinking only to the positive, and people will gradually get used to how to speak, how to address, how to think. At least, such excesses will not occur, and people will not be able to realize them because they will not exist.

They will not want and will not be able to do it because there will be nowhere to get firearms and so on.

Comment: You are talking now as if you are taking the supreme law and connecting it with the practice of this world. A simple law that you cannot get weapons and so on.

Answer: One by one. It is necessary to limit people from this. According to their own desires.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/26/22

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When you take care of humanity, you not only do not lose strength, but, to the contrary, you receive spiritual energy from it.

In the corporeal realm, another law applies: there, the more you give to others, the more you lose strength. And in the spiritual—the more you give, the more you feel strength and progress because in spirituality everything depends on the intention, and in the corporeality everything depends on the action.

Bestowal in intention is when I want to give to the host and I am filled with what He wants to give me. After all, the whole source of energy is concentrated in the Creator, and I receive energy from Him to the extent that I want to give to Him. It turns out that by doing this I open a channel to receive all the good from Him, and I am fulfilled by it.

The one who gives in spirituality, he receives and does not lose! I want to give, but I have nothing to give except intention, and it turns out that in practice I receive because by this I open a channel toward myself.

It all starts with my desire to give to the Host, and I am ready to do anything for this: to receive, to give, to make a restriction on everything I have, and to take into account only the interests of the Host, to be incorporated in Him, to see how to fill Him. Just like a mother who feeds a baby and wants him to get as much milk from her as possible and this fulfills her. It is such a pleasure for her to see how the baby eats that she feels that she is receiving and not giving.

We see such an example even in the corporeal world, and the same relationship should be between people and between man and the Creator.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/22, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Meaning of Conception and Birth”

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Connection Between Ice Cream and Self-Hating Jews”

When the multinational corporation Unilever recently announced that it had sold the rights to produce Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to the current licensee in Israel, it was thought the deal would end the year long pro-Palestinian boycott of the product sales in Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, as well as in East Jerusalem. However, then the Jewish founders of the ice cream brand—the main promoters of the boycott—reminded the world that they will not rest until Israel is isolated by concocting a new way to cause trouble.

The frozen relationship between the Ben & Jerry’s Jewish founders and Israel again became evident. As part of the company’s independent ideological board, they decided to sue Unilever to block the sale to the Israeli licensee that would allow the unrestricted distribution of the product in Israel as a whole. They claim that selling their brand in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is inconsistent with the company’s values and integrity.

This division between Ben and Jerry’s Jewish founders and Israel exactly highlights our main problem as a Jewish nation: the separation between us Jews. It is our separation that weakens our foundation and portends gloomy ramifications for our future. It is our internal division that invites attacks and boycotts and gnaws away at our strength.

Why can Jews be antisemites? It is because we Jews have a point that connects us to humanity’s corrected and unified state—“love your neighbor as yourself”—which we once discovered under Abraham’s guidance some 3,800 years ago. Together with that point, we also play host to the shattered egoistic desire, which opposes the point of unification, detaching us all from each other.

Every Jew accommodates this duality: an egoistic desire to receive, which seeks personal benefit at the expense of others, coupled with the altruistic point of unification that is attached to humanity’s peak unified state of development.

Whoever feels closer to the central point of unification is drawn to develop differently than those swept into the rat race of the masses, to positive connection in society. Whoever resists such development, letting the ego determine his or her goals and pleasures in life, is against unification, and is thus, according to its deeper definition, an antisemite.

Beyond differing political views, there are disputes about Jewish practices, legitimacy of certain denominations, distribution of funds and donations, and more. These are all weighty issues worthy of serious discussion. However, above and beyond all our disagreements and differences we must agree on this: No matter what, we need to stick together as one nation.

If we want to advance good causes, we need to start by setting an example of unity to humanity and by doing so, we will spread harmony to the entire world. It will give us the taste of our lives, as it is written in the book Maor VaShemesh, “When there are love, unity, and friendship between one another in Israel, no calamity can befall them and by that, all the curses and suffering are banished.”
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My new article on Linkedin “Our Folly Has a Purpose”

One of the most perplexing questions haunting humanity is why the most intelligent species on the planet cannot manage its life intelligently. After every self-inflicted cataclysm, we analyze, reflect, and draw conclusions in order to avoid its recurrence. Yet, every time, without fail, we fall once more into the same pitfalls of vanity and shortsightedness that lead to yet another cataclysm. Why is it that the most intelligent species must keep treading this march of folly?

The surprising answer to this question lies not in our makeup or in our intellect. The answer lies in our purpose, the purpose of our existence.

If we were developing according to Darwin’s laws of evolution, meaning naturally, we would not be making any mistakes in our behavior, just as animals know when to do what, and their species survive millions of years with very few changes.

But for humans, there is another goal besides physical existence. We are destined to become omniscient, knowing and understanding everything about Creation: why it exists, how it persists, and how it will achieve its goal.

To understand how everything works, we need to consciously connect with everything. Just as evolution advances from the simple to the complicated, from single-celled creatures to trillions of cells working in unison to sustain large bodies such as ours, our consciousness must gradually evolve from focusing only on ourselves to focusing on all of humanity, then on the entire planet, and finally on all that exists.

We are already connected, but we are unaware of it and behave as if we are not. While animals follow their instincts, and therefore do not break the connections between all parts of reality and cause no harm, we follow our whims and whatever comes up in our minds. Since our minds do not perceive the connectedness of all of reality, and even resist perceiving it because of our ego, we act as if we can ignore the rest of reality and do whatever we want. The result is the chaotic world we live in, where each one is trying to impose one’s will on everyone else or destroy them.

The purpose of the chaos, therefore, is to make us acknowledge our folly. It is to make us see that whether we like it or not, we are responsible for everyone, and each of us is responsible for all of us. Unless we acknowledge our connectedness and begin to behave with due consideration, we will destroy everything.

Moreover, unless we acknowledge our connectedness and begin to act the part, we will not perceive what we are intended to perceive. We will not be able to understand the world we live in, how it persists, and why. Indeed, we have come to a point where our physical existence and our spiritual development are interdependent. Only if we develop our minds will our bodies be able to survive.
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