Question: What is the most important thing for you to convey to your students?

Answer: The correct worldview: a view of the world, life, a person, and an epoch.

This is the most important thing for me—to position a person toward the right view of his life. To do this, I need to more or less explain to him the picture of the world in which he exists and how it can be changed in the best direction, with what, by what means, and to what this picture of the world should be brought—because it depends on us.

The world is a derivative of our perception. It turns out that we don’t live in the world, but the world lives in us. And this is what you need to convey to a person—that you make your world, you create it, you paint it inside yourself! It’s not easy to get to this point. To start relating to the world like this is a revolution, a person’s very serious internal, spiritual revolution.

It is necessary to bring people to this, to draw their attention to the fact that the world is not what they feel. The world is a derivative of how they relate to it, that is, you can remake and readjust yourself to the perception of another world. The world does not have its own shape, its own form. This is a picture that you can program. And so you can build the world you live in.

Question: And will the world I live in immediately change for me?

Answer: Of course. It will change according to your wishes, your qualities, and your efforts. That is, you create the world.

Comment: Now, in your daily Kabbalah lessons, you have put aside for a while such texts as The  Study of the Ten Sefirot and The Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, and we are studying articles of Baal HaSulam, currently “Peace in the World,” “The Peace,” and so on. Please explain this turnaround.

My Response: This is necessary in order to understand that indeed the world is purely a reflection of our attitude to it.

We exist in a world of upper light. And to the extent that we approach and adapt to this light, we will feel it and feel it in various forms. And these forms should progress depending on our inner change and self-improvement. That’s what I need to bring a person to.

Do you want to see the world differently? Let’s do it!

But for this we must first acquire some knowledge and some tools in order to understand how we perceive the world and how and to what kind of world we can change it.

Because the world itself has no particular quality and no particular form. If we do not interfere in it, then all of us people see the world the same because we all have an egoistic desire and it tunes us to this mutual picture of the world. Therefore we have a common perception, a common language, communication, interaction, and so on.

But if I begin to understand that the world is what I draw in myself, and in this way I see it outside of myself, then I can already work on an individual picture of the world, the arrangement of the world. And here we are already entering a completely different area. That is, we begin to understand why we are in such a deteriorating world, why it is felt by us in this way, and what we can do in order to begin to feel it differently.

To do this we must readjust internally and come to a state where we will feel in our five bodily sense organs one picture of the world, like everyone else around us.

And in the five organs that we will gradually create in ourselves, we will feel another world, the so-called upper world. We will be able to feel the difference between them, how the upper world paints a picture of this world in us, and how we can rise from this world to the upper world. These are the states that we must begin to realize in ourselves; they should gradually become closer and closer to us.

Therefore our most important task is to go through certain stages of spiritual preparation, and then begin to change ourselves, and correspondingly observe how we change the picture of the world around us in accordance with our internal changes, as a consequence of our internal changes.

The fact that this world is given to us in such a state is a certain picture given to us, perceived by us in our primordial egoistic qualities, which are also gradually changing. They change for everyone, more or less, at the same time. Therefore we observe humanity and inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature as gradually changing. But this development is very slow, over thousands of years, and it is purely egoistic.

If we rise above our egoism, we will begin to enter into completely different sensations of the world, and we will already see a different world, a different picture, different interactions in ourselves, as it were, independent of the external picture.

We will no longer see inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and man, but rather the world of forces—that which actually exists. And our world is also the forces that influence us and create such projections of this world in us that seem alive and existing to us as given in our sensations.

But in fact it is important for us to start interacting with the world of forces; that is what I have to bring people to. They don’t know it yet, but they need to be prepared for it. Preparation takes many years. I think that today it is already possible to talk about this, and we should come close to it literally within the next short while, maybe even in a few weeks.

Therefore I do not want to engage in sheer mechanics or some kind of abstract science where we draw some charts on a piece of paper to depict interactions between physical forces that we do not understand.

And when we are able to reproduce and realize these forces in ourselves, then what we study will be our theoretical part, which is necessary for the implementation of our spiritual actions. That is what I want to bring people to.

Therefore I am in no hurry to break into the very science of Kabbalah. In order to break into it practically, we need to hold certain forces of nature that are not yet in us today; they are not yet manifested. We need to start revealing them and learn how to really work with them.

This is the answer to what we must come to.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/9/21

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Question: How are we able to see friends as great and join them?

Answer: It is no problem because everyone except me is great. To the extent that I annul myself in relation to them and take on their thoughts, views, and attitudes, to that extent I draw closer to them and enter the property of mutual guarantee (Arvut). Thus I move toward the goal.

I have to place myself in the group, like a drop of semen in the womb, and develop all the time. But this seed can develop only to the extent that it will form this womb around itself. This is how we should grow ourselves spiritually.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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Rapprochement of friends in the group means getting closer to the Creator. Only in this way can we realize our connection with Him.

And the Creator reveals the quality of our aspirations to the extent that we correctly aspire to each other and we reach the state where He begins to reveal Himself as the quality of our connection, as light, as the power of unification. This quality of connection that we acquire is called the upper light. This is the Creator.

We always feel only the connection between us, we originated from it, and everything except for the point of connection between us was shattered. And from this shattering we must again restore our connection.

When this happens, we attain the initial state called Adam HaRishon (the first man) who was created by the Creator as 620 times stronger than it was initially created.

This is the difference between our work and the work of the Creator. That is why it is written: “My sons defeated Me.” The Creator seems to be saying: “I created a relatively small initial state that existed only in the light of Hassadim, and they took all the egoism from the desire I created, turned it into the property of bestowal, and thus revealed Me 620 times more.”
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/6/22, “Approaching the Creator Through the Network of Connections Between Us” Lesson 1

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 16

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 134

Lesson on the Topic: “Faith Above Reason”

Selected Highlights 

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Medium published my new article “Rethinking Evolution”

For many decades, we have been taught that evolution is random, that mutations just happen and the ones that contribute most to the survival of the species remain while the others disappear. But science is gradually accepting that evolution is not random but directional.

Researches in one study, for example, which focused on a small, flowering weed called thale cress, stated that “It turns out that mutation is very non-random and it’s non-random in a way that benefits the plant. It’s a totally new way of thinking about mutation,” they concluded.

Another study, which examined hemoglobin mutation that protects against malaria, found that it appears more frequently in people from Africa, where malaria is common, than in people from Europe, where it is rare. “Mutations defy traditional thinking,” said the lead researcher. “The results suggest that complex information that is accumulated in the genome … impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond … to specific environmental pressures.”

If we look even deeper than the apparent phenomena, we will find that the environment, too, is evolving in a specific direction: toward increasing integration. We are evolving toward a state that already exists, though we have not perceived it. It is a state where species separate from one another, but in harmony with all of creation.

Earth is a balanced system. Its parts are in perfect harmony among them, which guarantees the survival of Earth’s plants and animals. On the face of it, there should not have been evolution. If everything is perfect and harmonious, there should not have been any changes in the species.

The reason that evolution still occurs, despite the balance among all creations, is that underneath all of creation lies a desire for constant improvement of one’s personal state. The more evolved a creation is, the more intense is its desire. In humankind, this desire manifests as egoism and narcissism, as a craving for control, to be superior, even Godlike. In the animal kingdom and in plants, it is expressed in a constant effort to strengthen oneself against one’s natural enemies, but not in a desire to dominate and control. Therefore, on every level besides the human level, the balance remains, though it is dynamic and evolving.

In humanity, the main “evolution” is in our perception, not in our bodies, although physical changes happen in us, too. As our understanding of the world evolves, our perception of reality changes and becomes more aligned with the interconnected world around us.

Because nature is utterly integrated and all its parts are inextricably intertwined, human society is also growing more interconnected and interdependent. Accordingly, settlements have grown over the centuries from nomadic clans to sedentary towns, to cities, countries, and empires.

Along with the growth in the size of settlements, we have grown increasingly interdependent economically, in provision of our food supplies, education, and in every aspect of our lives. Now, the whole world has become connected to the point that even entire countries, including superpowers such as China or Russia cannot sustain themselves alone. Globalization has made the whole world one village, but one whose residents are reluctant to accept their neighbors and constantly clash with one another.

The development of human society toward increased integration is no coincidence. Because we are living in an integrated universe, where everything is interconnected and interdependent, we, too, are being developed in that same direction. This is why for all our efforts to supersede others, in the end, we are still dependent on everyone else, and no country can maintain its preeminence indefinitely. Against our will, we are being dragged into cooperation.

But our evolution toward an interdependent society aims higher than society itself. It is intended to reveal to us the interdependence of all of creation, that everything is harmonious and all the pieces of creation complement one another. The final outcome of our evolution is complete awareness of the universe where we exist on all its levels: physical, mental, and spiritual.

If we voluntarily direct ourselves toward cohesion and cooperation, we will advance toward the final goal more quickly and less painfully. It is like swimming downstream as opposed to trying to swim upstream, which is what we are doing now. It is hopeless and painful.

The shore that awaits us down the stream is serene and peaceful. If we swim toward it, by voluntarily increasing our cooperation and mutual consideration, we will reach that pleasant riverbank quickly, pleasantly, and easily. If we resist, we will still get there, since we cannot go upriver, but we will get there only after we are exhausted, defeated, and tormented.
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My new article on Linkedin “Killing ISIS’ Leader Will Solve Nothing”

On Thursday, February 3, a US counterterrorism raid in northwestern Syria killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Al-Quraishi had led the group since the death of its founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in another US raid in 2019. I have to admit that I only found out about this today. Normally, I know what is happening in the world, but in this case, the killing makes so little difference that the story completely escaped me. Also, we have no idea who will follow him and what he might do, so I am not at all sure that eliminating al-Qurayshi at this point in time was wise.

In general, terror groups do not just pop up; behind every terrorist organization are powerful countries that use them for proxy wars. In the past, countries fought each other and killed tens of thousands of people. Economies were ruined and the devastation was disastrous. Today, countries use proxy paramilitary armies, which we call “terrorist organizations,” to fight for them.

On the one hand, it is better to fight proxy wars than to start an all-out war. On the other hand, we cannot consider terror a positive development. We should aspire to live without both.

In the past, it was hard to imagine a world without wars. But since the end of World War II, the Western world has in fact been living without war on Western European or North American soil for nearly eighty years now. Likewise, while today it is very hard to imagine a world without terrorism, it is not impossible to achieve. Just as the West resolved never to fight again because it realized what war can do, the world will eventually come to a point where it resolves not to allow terrorism, and for the same reason that the West abolished war.

We will get there when all of humanity resolves to correct the heart of the evil in this world: human nature.

There are two ways we can get there: The first is that nature will force us to recognize each other, to take each other into consideration and eventually even develop concern for one another. The second way is to develop this sensitivity toward each other voluntarily. In either case, we will have to develop care and concern for one another.

Realistically, the road to this ideal state will probably consist of a mixture of the two possibilities. Nature will probably force us to approach each other a little, to become a little more considerate through natural blows or violence, and as we approach each other we will realize that this form of relationship is preferable to hatred and distrust.

Subsequently, we will fall back into our mean ways, and nature will again painfully remind us of our interdependence. Eventually, the pain will have etched itself deep enough into our collective memory that we will not return to violence and self-centered views.

We can also make the journey shorter and less painful by reminding each other before we suffer further blows from nature or from people, but that depends on our willingness to listen. The choice is ours. Human society will have a happy end, but the question is whether our way there will be happy or whether we will let suffering lead us to the happy end.
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Question: Is egoism our enemy that unequivocally hinders us or a friend who helps build a ladder of ascent to the Creator?

Answer: Egoism shows us how opposite we are to the Creator, and it helps us a lot in this.

Question: When I find that my selfishness does not allow me to annul before the ten and see them above myself, how can the ten help me in this?

Answer: It is already helping you by showing you how selfish you are. And then you can only annul yourself in front of them and pray for help, from both the group and the Creator.

Question: How does one keep a balance between selfishness and the greatness of friends?

Answer: Keep it up so that all egoism gradually begins to work for unification, for the Creator.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/7/22, “Adhering to the Friends” Lesson 3

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Question: When we are in the state of descent and concealment, how can we keep mutual guarantee between us?

Answer: If we are in the state of descent and concealment, then we ourselves need to hold on with the help of the friends. And when I am not in a descent, I need to think about the ways I can support my friends.

This is how we work gradually, alternately, in waves: I for the friends, friends for me, and so on. We always position ourselves in such a way that all our negative and positive states mutually add up, and we advance straight to the goal.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/9/22, “Working in Mutual Responsibility” Lesson 6

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When the evil inclination brings us foreign thoughts, this is the time to take these thoughts and raise them above reason. (Rabash, “The Whole of the Torah Is One Holy Name”)

Foreign thoughts are everything that separate me from the Creator, that is, egoism. These thoughts awaken in us on purpose so that we would rise above them and reveal the spiritual state.

At that time, we must ask the Creator to give us love between us in which, according to the law of equivalence of form, He Himself will be revealed. This will be the revelation of the Creator to the created beings.

Question: How can we rise above foreign thoughts if they constantly come back and try to distract us from the lesson?

Answer: This is actually wonderful! This means that you are given the opportunity to make another small correction every minute. It is impossible to enter the same river twice. Every time it is new conditions and new corrections.
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From the International Convention “Rising Above Ourselves” 1/8/22, “Going with Faith above Reason” Lesson 5

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