Question: You constantly use the phrase “rise above your body.” What does it mean?

Answer: To rise above the body means to rise in your qualities, desires, and feelings so that there is no connection between what you feel in the body and what you feel in your “I,” in the spirit. No connection at all!

In this case when the body really dies, the “I” remains to exist independently because it managed to break away before the death of this body, it managed to get out of it. And until we realize the exit from the body, we will always return to it and thus regenerate in it.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Theater of the Absurd” 7/18/10

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Question: Question about the truth. Where is it?

Answer: Truth is the best state of creation because, with regards to creation, we can speak. The perfect state of creation can only be in full equivalence with the Creator.

If we take, for example, a foil and begin to apply it to some statue, then the full equivalence, the full form, the absolute form that the foil will take when it is completely dressed on the statue will be the truth, the verity. Such is its state.

Question: Does it mean that we, dressed on the Creator are the truth? Then, do I need to know what the Creator is?

Answer: Of course! What the Creator is. You do need to attain some element of the truth to measure everything relative to it.

Question: But what is it? What does it mean that I dress on Him?

Answer: To be dressed on the Creator means complete equivalence to the Creator. Relative to us, we cannot give this any other practical definition.

Question: What is the Creator?

Answer: The quality of bestowal and love emanating from my absolute egoism. It is when our complete egoism, precisely created by the Creator, is totally, to the full extent like the Creator.

Question: Does our egoism become material?

Answer: Yes, it becomes a foil dressed on the image of the Creator.

Question: Do I take my egoism and start sticking it on the Creator to become like Him?

Answer: Yes, part by part. In this way, you conclude that, in principle, this is the only thing you need.

Question: What does my egoism turn into? What does the foil turn into if it is stuck in such a way?

Answer: Into the form of the Creator. That is why you are called Adam—like the Creator. That is, this material from which you are created, you must put it on the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/7/22

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Question: Today it seems to us that it is me who decides and me who thinks. Does a person really decide anything?

Answer: No, a person doesn’t decide anything, one only executes.

But there is an illusion that I decide, I do things, and I act a certain way. Such ideas about one’s independence are characteristic of people,  but only because the whole universal system is concealed from us.

So who decides for me? Who is acting in my place? Why am I led to believe that it is supposedly me who thinks, I decide, I make? That is the problem.

This is needed for us to come out of our current state, rise above it and above the fact that we do not make decisions, we do not implement them ourselves.

Question: So in our current state, can we say that we don’t exist?

Answer: In our current state, we exist relative to ourselves. We exist, we must take this as a given, but only within the confines of our time-bound sensations. Therefore, the real mind has nothing to do with it.

Our mind is a vast system of general interconnection of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human natures of our world and all worlds, all other levels. All this is absolutely interconnected and obeys one single program, one thought, called the Creator or nature.

Question: What are the other worlds?

Answer: Other worlds are the possibilities of existence that we gradually come to as a result of our internal evolution when we finally begin to realize that our world, our existence is finite, faulty, and limited.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Dissenting Opinion” 8/29/10

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Filed under: Free Will, Perception | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Medium published my new article “The Folly of War”

There has been a lot of talk lately about war crimes. The definition of war crimes is very broad, so there are many injustices that fall under the category of war crimes. What used to be customary for past conquerors is now often considered a war crime. To eradicate war crimes, we must abolish war. Since this is currently unrealistic, we should at least spare those who are truly uninvolved, namely children, women, and elderly men. That would be a first step in the right direction.

In ancient times, a victorious king would plunder and take for himself everything his rival king had. It was considered an inalienable right of the triumphant king, and a reward taken for granted.

As humanity’s morals evolved, it determined that such behavior was unacceptable. Since a large part of the population does not make any decisions or take part in the fighting, that part should be excluded from punishment. Particularly, this referred to children, who do not even understand what the war is about, women, who do not participate in the war, and elderly men, who cannot participate in the fighting. All in all, some 70–80 percent of the population should be exempt from punishment or retaliatory actions. This population is also the main focus of the rules that define war crimes, in order to protect those vulnerable and uninvolved populations.

In previous times, wars were largely over territory, since land meant crops, and crops meant provision and wealth. Today, however, territory does not have any role in determining a country’s wealth, so the only incentives left for war are prestige and self-glorification.

While it is understandable that someone would win renown for being a great commander on the battlefield, today’s wars are often fought in cities, in civilian areas, and the majority of casualties are precisely the populations that have nothing to do with the war: children, women, and elderly men. How will a rocket that demolishes an apartment building help the one who fired it win the war?

The self-centered mindset that paying soldiers to fight my wars and blowing my budget on high-tech weapons proves that my ideology is completely irrational. What connection is there between my ideology and killing other people, who may believe something else or believe in nothing at all and want only to live, have children, and lead their lives in peace?

If anything, such a mindset makes my ideology fundamentally flawed. After all, if the result of my ideology is the aspiration to annihilate all other schools of thought and wipe out the people who believe in them, then my ideology is inherently unjust.

The solution to the folly of war will come only when we overthrow our king: our own egoism. We are gradually approaching the realization that egoism is leading humanity to the edge of a cliff. The question is whether we will realize in time that if we let it keep ruling, it will destroy all of us, or wait until we see with our own eyes that there is no limit to what the ego can do. If we wait, the atrocities we have seen so far will be heaven compared to the hell that the ego will bring upon us.
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Filed under: Crisis, New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Today everyone is demanding punishment; this cry rises from all sides. What really is punishment?

Answer: I don’t think there is an understanding of punishment in our world at all, as people think. There is no such thing.

I believe that a person should reach such a state of empathy, critical empathy, so that all his aspirations and prayers are only about becoming similar to the Creator. And with respect to this similarity, he would measure himself. And the revelation of the difference from the Creator would cause a state of repentance in him, and only this he would like to destroy.

Question: So the punishment is that I do not come closer to equivalence of form with the Creator? That I’m not moving in that direction? Is this the punishment?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/7/22

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do we live in order to die?“

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we live in order to develop our soul. We understand that we have an animal body that lives and dies here on this planet. However, our purpose is not to die in the animal body, but to develop the soul while we live here.

What is the soul?

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is written that the soul is “a part of the Creator from above.” What this means is that we have a part of a certain “absolute” within us, and that absolute—called “the Creator,” and which is given other names as well in Kabbalah, such as “nature,” “upper force” and “upper light,” among others—is essentially a quality of love and bestowal.

This part of the Creator from above within us emerges as a small point, called a “point in the heart” or a “desire for spirituality,” among our corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge. Developing this point into a soul means wishing for it to become formed such that the quality of love and bestowal becomes born in us.

When it writes in the wisdom of Kabbalah that a person is a part of the Creator, it is speaking on the Creator’s behalf. However, the person requires a great effort in order to develop and attain such a reality.

Therefore, we live not in order to die, but to discover true life, i.e., to attain a life of eternity and perfection through the development of the soul—the quality of love and bestowal—while alive in our animal bodies.

Based on KabTV’s “Close- Up, Beyond the Last Line” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on May 3, 2010. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: When does Israel, as a country, have the right to exist?

Answer: Only when we give the world the key to the happiness of mankind.

If we do not take the science of Kabbalah and don’t begin to disseminate it and present it to all the nations, we won’t become a light for them, we will lose the right to our existence here on this land as a nation, and we will be forced to leave here again.

We got the opportunity to come here just to set an example for the rest of humanity.

Comment: But even according to Kabbalah, there can no longer be exile.

My Response: But this is not exile. We haven’t even returned from it yet. In Kabbalah it is said that if we do not realize the dissemination of Kabbalah in the right way for all mankind, we will have to leave this place.

It has been given to us, but we have not received it yet, so our stay here is not considered a return from exile.

We have not received the Land of Israel, we have not created a Kabbalistic state here the way it was before according to the same principles. We have taken from the English and Turkish mandates the laws on which our state exists to this day. We judge people not by our ancient codex, but by English law.

Question: The State of Israel is a state that exists without a constitution, without a main law. What, then, should be its primary law?

Answer: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”! And nothing else. If we go from the highest point and then begin to arrange from the end to the beginning, then the highest point is to love your neighbor as yourself. As it is said: This is the most important, basic law of the Torah.

By the way, no one in the world argues with this, they just don’t want to implement it.

In principle, this should become the basic law of the state. And based on this, we have books that clearly describe how to implement the law “love your neighbor” at all levels: in education, culture, science, government, judicial, and legal activities—in everything.

Otherwise, we are not a nation. Otherwise, we are not a state. Because we were created exactly on this principle! After leaving Babylon, this is how we formed our society.

And the fact that Jews are now trying to imitate other nations of the world, to follow their path, does not lead to anything good.

We see that this causes anti-Semitism. We want to be like the others, and they subconsciously expect something completely different from us, wanting to see in us an example of how they can be like us.

But I hope, after all the dissemination that we have achieved in Israel, that we will be able to convey to people what we are really doing, what our national, vital, state credo is and how all this should live and work in the world.

Moreover, we see millions of students of our world society, including non-Jews, and there are many of them, and see to what extent they perceive this principle with understanding, joy, and respect. We have something to demonstrate: why and how this should happen.

We just need a little more time to make more efforts on our part. And we will reach a good state where the world realizes that it really has great perspectives and there is a key to happiness.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, The Formula of the Creator” 7/18/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Pesach (Passover)” 

Selected Highlights

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

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My new article on Linkedin “If You Can’t Beat Them, Fear Them”

The terror attack at a restaurant in downtown Tel-Aviv last Thursday evening killed three civilians and injured fourteen others. But terror attacks do much more than kill innocent people; they terrorize entire populations. The recent spate of terrorist attacks in Israel inundated emotional support call centers with people suffering from anxiety. The atmosphere is so tense that centers remain flooded with calls even on days when there are no attacks. So far, the terror seems to be winning. But it is not because terrorists are good at what they do; it is because we are not doing what we should.

If we cannot, or will not deal with terror and with terrorists the way such people should be dealt with, we should at least offer emotional help at every turn. Either we fight the terrorists, or we fight the consequences of terror, or both. ‎At the moment, I see us doing neither.

We need to understand that Palestinians have no desire to cohabit with us, let alone live in peace with us. They want us out of here, and they will go to any length to get what they want.

We should not be so naïve as to think that we can live like all other nations. We are not like other nations, and the rest of the nations will painfully remind us every time we forget that.

Our calling, which we have spurned for two thousand years, is to unite among us and set an example of unity above all the differences, divisions, disputes, and hatred. Our calling is not to unite with other nations, but among ourselves. If we forget this and offer them our hand in piece, they bite it to prove to us that we have nothing to expect from them.

Those who disrupt us from uniting among ourselves should be expelled from the country. However, if we try to hit back at those who attack us without working on our unity, we will not be able to repel our attackers. On the contrary, they will grow stronger, more brazen, and more determined, while we will grow weaker and more indecisive until we are driven out of Israel by fear. In fact, this process is already underway in Israel.

There is only one way to resolve the situation positively: to think and act confidently on the military level and on the spiritual level. On the military level, we must kill those who come to kill us, plain and simple. On the spiritual level, we must work with all our might to strengthen our unity. We will earn the world’s approval only when we approve of our being here for the sake of forging an unbreakable union. When we present the world with such a resilient bond between us, the nations will support our presence here, and we will find peace and security, not only for us, but also for all our Arab neighbors.
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Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel Today, New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →