Question: There are great villains in the world like Hitler and Stalin. There is a feeling that there is an invincible force behind them as if it were the Creator, and then they lose this power. Why do things happen this way?

Answer: If a person is not led to connection with the Creator, he is simply managed by the upper force, especially such great negative people like Hitler and Stalin, or great positive people.

A person has no control over this. From the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah, all of humanity is enslaved, they are operated by animal egoism, except for those who reach contact with the Creator or who want to be aimed at this contact. So, we cannot demand anything from them. After all, they do not know how to act, how upper providence manages them, and why they are forced to do things one way or another.

Of course the evil they can inflict on the world must be limited, but we cannot condemn them for that. We need to show and explain to them how to correctly reveal the true force of nature that manages us so that we will reveal it.

We cannot relate to them differently. I understand that on the corporeal level you may hate them and might be ready to destroy them and cannot wish them anything good. But on the other hand, we need to understand that a person is enslaved and controlled by the forces that the Creator inserts into a person that operate in him. A person is the creation of the Creator.

Only if, in addition to the terrible attributes the Creator has given a person, one acquires the method of correcting these attributes, which means the ability to correct them, is it possible to ask and to demand from such a person: “What have you done with what you have received? Do you implement the method of correction? Do you use it correctly under the conditions you were given?”

But if a person has not been given the conditions to correct himself, how can you demand anything from him?

If we look at the world from the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we need to relate to this person differently. We need to see such people as the creation of the Creator. We all have the basic attributes that we did not choose. We did not choose where to be born, how to be brought up, etc. Perhaps I also would like to have been born and raised in a different family, in a different society, in a different country, at a different time.

No one can choose that, so why should anyone come to me with a complaint: “Why do you do things one way and not another?” I do it because this is how I was brought up and this is how the attributes that the Creator has given me developed, that is all.

This is the reason that the wisdom of Kabbalah guides us to a totally different perception of reality so that we will not have any complaints to anyone but to ourselves. Do you want to correct the world? Aim at the Creator and try, demand, ask, and act through Him to correct the world.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 7/21/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “If you could give one piece of knowledge that you have to everyone in the world, what would you choose? Anything as long as it is something specific.“

We began developing in our ego 6,000 years ago. This ego constantly pushed us to develop and severed us from the truth. In the past, like animals, we were connected with nature and instinctively carried out its laws. However, our ego separated us from nature. We thus found ourselves out of balance with nature and we became egoists. This is because nature is altruistic and operates by altruistic laws.

We thus became increasingly egoistic and separated from nature. In our era, globalization has revealed the great extent of our interconnectedness and interdependence, and the degree to which we hate each other. Today, we start seeing our shaky egoistic base as the base of our misfortunes. This is why we need to understand that there is no way out other than to invert our ego to bestowal, to altruism.

This is the knowledge that I would like to pass on to people. It exists in the wisdom of Kabbalah, which discusses the fact that by means of the method called “the wisdom of Kabbalah” we can change our nature, and save ourselves from extermination and disasters that are increasing in our time. This is how we provide a good future for ourselves, our children and the world, and it is how we elevate our existence from the materialistic level to the spiritual, eternal and perfect level. Unless we do so, and do so quickly, then we will reach the same outcome by means of suffering. The global crisis will nevertheless obligate us to undergo our fateful transition from egoism to altruism.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: You say that a person can come to the opening of the upper world only with the help of Kabbalah. And what about other methods that claim that they have achieved the opening of human consciousness?

Answer: Just like me, don’t trust anyone. Why on earth should you trust me or anyone else? One will have a bigger beard, the other will speak more beautifully, the third will manipulate something else. You have to check everything.

And first you need to make sure that you are checking correctly, that is, you need to calibrate your senses, your thoughts, your apparatus, with the help of which you carry out the test like any scientist.

What else? Let’s say you now start to trust someone. This is how your whole life will pass and in the end you will be convinced that you believed in the wrong thing. The next time you are in our world you will believe and follow another teaching with your eyes closed.

Kabbalah says: “No, first we need to check what we are actually using to make sure what is experienced, that we are forming it correctly and analyzing it correctly, and only after that should we correctly approach this system.”

When I came to Kabbalah as a budding scholar, this was the only way I felt about it. I didn’t even imagine I could believe in something. In what? What I am told about the existence of God? I don’t want to believe it! I want to know!

Kabbalah is engaged in revealing knowledge for you. You comprehend the upper world, that is, an additional system that stands behind our world and controls it. You enter it and you begin to see it. It shows through this matter. You see how this matter works, how all its parts are interconnected. All methods only speak about it, and the Kabbalist sees it. He operates with it.

Every person who asks about the meaning of life must go through it all himself. Nobody can do anything for him.

And if he finds comfort in some other technique, then let him stay there. Kabbalah in no way pulls or agitates anyone. For many millennia it was hidden because humanity did not need it, people did not have an urgent question about the meaning of life. But then humanity was not so interconnected with each other as it is now.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Seekers” 9/16/09

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Question: We are living through a difficult time, people have clearly matured, many are reconsidering their lives and thinking about the future. Against this background, sociologists asked a simple question, “What would you prefer: to search for the meaning of life or to win 10 million dollars in the lottery?” 85% chose money.

In the near future, we will open Kabbalah courses. What would you say to people? What will they find in these courses? The meaning of life or the equivalent of money confidence in the present, the future, or something else?

Answer: You understand our world is a small ball and we are flying on it, riding it like Munchausen [in Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia] on the core through airless space, dark space, dead space, which is absolutely not ready to revive us, support us, feed us or water us.

In this state, we exist only due to the fact that there are special conditions on this small piece of our universe. Moreover, no matter how many such conditions are searched for in the universe, they do not exist!

This blue planet is special. And if we do not take care of it, then we will end our existence there. Therefore, I think the most important thing for us is not money. The most important thing for us is to protect our planet.

But in order to protect it, we need to know the forces that exist that it depends on. And that is why this small living organism called Earth is a living organism! It is thanks to it that we exist; it must exist. Therefore, first of all we should think about it.

When I hear that trillions of dollars are spent on weapons of mass destruction every year in the world, I feel very bad. Because today one strong, modern atomic bomb is enough for this globe to be carried in the wrong direction. Simply the wrong way!

Its orbit shifts a little, something happens, and that’s it! Life changes not because of some small pandemic we are experiencing, but because environmental conditions are changing so much that we suddenly cannot breathe, we cannot exist with such a level of radiation, and so on.

This, I think, is the most important thing. We must, through the necessity of the sustainable development of the Earth and the conditions we exist in, first of all take care of the atmosphere, the environment we live in. Kabbalah speaks precisely about this, how we should properly take care of our future.

Question: And you put this blue ball as the basis for everything?

Answer: Yes. It is blue because it still has a small oxygen pad on it. But there will be no oxygen cushion for it to lie on, then that will be it! It will turn red like Mars, or blue like Venus, or something else. He will turn red, turn blue, and that is it.

Question: So what? Kabbalists are not ecologists, they do not say, “Let’s save the ecology.”

Answer: No. But I am addressing people who just want to continue to exist, to live on this Earth. That is why I say that instead of $10 million, you can do much more for your life, security, and development.

Question: Will they find the meaning of life in this?

Answer: They will not find the meaning of life in anything unless they begin to properly delve into the science of Kabbalah. Then they will find not only the meaning of life, but a connection with the source of life. And through it, they will already find the meaning of everything that exists in general: the universe, the Earth, themselves, everything that happens to them every minute, what has been, and what will be.They will find all this only if they begin to understand the world correctly.

Question: Do you think they will come to this in our Kabbalah courses?

Answer: Yes. They will not get this anywhere else. I think this is already provable and there is no need to try to find anything anywhere else. The science of Kabbalah in comparison with all other sciences, theories, philosophies, and so on puts forward such a practical methodology and invites everyone, regardless of gender or religion, to master it and rise above the question of the meaning of life, that is, to the source of life.

And then absolutely all the questions that arise in a person become clear to him, even before he asks the question.

I invite you to take courses. I believe that if a person in our time cannot answer these questions for himself, then he cannot properly equip himself.

Question: What questions?

Answer: The meaning of life. Why is this happening? How can I fix it all? Those are the most fundamental questions of existence.

So we must master this science. It is not difficult. I’m not talking about being in it, starting to work in it, like a scientist in a laboratory, and so on. No.

This is in the form, to the extent that a person can be the creator of his own destiny.

Question: And you can become the creator of your own destiny?

Answer: Of course! Be a creator!

Question: Is it a great thing to become the creator of your own destiny?

Answer: Yes. We must. The Creator did everything, prepared, created, and gave us the opportunity to know, comprehend, change, and correct everything that is needed, and thus live in a world that we can make as comfortable as possible for ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/4/21

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My new article on Linkedin “Volcanic Eruptions Are Corrections, Too”

For several weeks now, there has been a series of seismic events in and around the Mediterranean Sea. First, Mt. Athena in Italy erupted. Next, a series of earthquakes struck Crete; and currently, Mt. Cumbre Vieja has erupted a little farther south, on the Spanish island of La Palma off the coast of Morocco. Nothing happens without a reason. If we know that reality is moving toward balance, then these events are on the way toward it, too. What we need to learn is how to achieve balance without going through upheavals and disasters on the way to peace.

Biologists call it “homeostasis”; physicists call it entropy, or a “state of thermodynamic equilibrium.” Either way, nature’s final, healthy state is balance, harmony. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, massive storms, and other menaces indicate nature’s level of imbalance. These are the valves through which nature releases excess pressure on the various levels of nature. The more intense the pressure, the more intense the natural disaster.

When we look around us for the cause of nature’s growing pressure, we will not find it. It seems to erupt for no reason. In the past, humans thought that to appease the gods, i.e. nature, they must sacrifice other human beings, sometimes even children. When they became more “civilized,” they started sacrificing animals, then plants, until man has abandoned sacrifices altogether. But nature’s wrath is still very much a part of our lives.

The thing is that there is a reason for nature’s apparent fury, which today we know is imbalance, and there is something that we need to sacrifice in order to “appease” nature. However, that something is not outside of us, but within us: It is our own ego, our self-centered nature, which is engraved in us at birth.

Currently, we worship our ego. We cater to its whims and wish nothing but to satisfy it.

Yet, if we keep worshipping it, we will destroy our planet and destroy ourselves in the process. The only way to secure a good life for everyone is to think of everyone rather than only of ourselves.

If we start cultivating more inclusive thought patterns, more caring and mutual responsibility, we will change our lives dramatically. The only element that is out of balance with the rest of nature will disappear, nature’s wrath will subside, and peace will reign supreme.
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Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can anybody destroy his desire?“

Desires cannot be destroyed.

Desires are the matter of creation. However, above every desire, the intention should be changed from a self-serving intention to one that is aimed at the benefit of others and nature.

Likewise, by ceasing to work with intentions aimed at self-benefit, then our egoistic desires die off. Once our egoistic desires are dead, we can then revive our desires to operate altruistically.

While we cannot destroy the desire, we can remove the desire from the self-aimed egoistic intention upon it. The desire then remains in a completely amorphous and suspended form, and its egoistic intention disappears.

It then becomes possible to work with the desire again, however with an altruistic intention.

Based on “Secrets of the Eternal Book 7” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur, on August 2, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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My new article on Linkedin “Playing in a Nuclear Sandbox”

The AUKUS Nuclear Submarine Deal, in which the US and the UK will sell nuclear submarine building technologies to Australia so it can build its own nuclear subs, has made big waves over the past two weeks. There has been much ado over France taking offense with Australia for walking out of a nearly done deal with it to buy similar technology. A lot of money is involved, but pride is more a factor here than money. The frightening thing here is not the nuclear submarines themselves, but the fact that the parties are behaving like kids in a sandbox squabbling over a toy shovel. But in this case, it is a nuclear toy, and the ramifications of these games will impact all eight billion of us.

The bad news is that you cannot stop this madness. If you don’t have nuclear subs, you are powerless and cannot stop those who have them. If you do have nuclear subs, you are powerful and you don’t want to stop.

If an alien came to Earth and watched what is going on here, it would say that our only interest in life is war-games. Moreover, war defines our life here, and the fact that we could end our existence at the press of a button is no one’s concern as long as we can keep playing.

In the 1950s, Baal HaSulam wrote that if humanity doesn’t understand that we cannot live in such a state indefinitely, that we must shift to a considerate way of life where we are responsible for one another, then more world wars will follow and teach us the hard way. “If the total ruin that [nuclear and hydrogen bombs] are destined to bring upon the world is still not evident to the world, they can wait for a third world war, or a fourth one. The bombs will do their thing, and the relics who remain after the ruin will have no other choice but to take upon themselves this work where both individuals and nations will not work for themselves more than is necessary for their sustenance, while everything else they do will be for the good of others,” he wrote in The Writings of the Last Generation.

In the 1950s, everyone was still in shock by the devastation that Little Boy and Fat Man inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (respectively). But eighty years down the line, the possibility of another nuclear episode seems increasingly plausible. Those two monster bombs may have shocked the world then, but they are nothing compared to the nuclear arsenal that countries have developed since. Moreover, so many countries already possess nuclear weapons that I am not even sure if or how many of us will survive a nuclear world war.

The options are clear and simple: Unite, or the Earth will explode.

If we consider the level of animosity among nations, ethnicities, cultures, religions, or even among regular people, it seems impossible to unite. But this is so only because we are letting our baleful egos drive us to this state. We can decide to let another attitude drive us, a more responsible and considerate one.

If we think only of ourselves, there is no question that a total collapse is just a matter of time. Now that we are approaching it, we can see where we are going and change course. We can determine that we have learned the lesson and start looking at the needs of the entire society as well as our own.

No one says we need to go hungry or deny ourselves the things we need. But if we all strive to take as much as possible rather than as much as we need, we will end up having nothing.

Caring for the well-being of the collective, as well as for our own, is neither an altruistic approach nor an impractical one. It is, in fact, the only realistic and practical approach. This is the only tactic that will allow us to avoid a war that will destroy humanity.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is the current economic system inherently corrupt? If so, how do we go about dismantling it?“

We need to reveal the egoism present in each of us as the source of evil, to reach a desire to use everything that we have from nature solely in order to reach a positive state, and to understand that a positive state depends on our society.

Through globalization, we see the vast extent to which we depend on each other. Our global interdependence will become increasingly apparent up to a point where every one of us will feel complete dependence on everyone else, down to the fact that if other people who are not under my control will not want to be benevolent toward me, then I will have no right to exist.

If we will all understand the tightness of our interdependence, then we will want to correct ourselves, i.e. to invert our egoism to altruism. If we will each know that we depend on everyone else, then we will want everyone else to be kind to us. Also, we will know that others will express kindness toward us only on condition that we express kindness toward them.

If we succeed in understanding our mutual dependence, the law of mutual guarantee, then we will be able to arrange our lives such that our economic system will also change and start providing everything for us in the best and most effective way possible. Our interactions, including economic ones, will then change to be for humanity’s benefit.

This change depends on one condition: for us to open our eyes and see that in nature there is a law of equality between everyone. Just like the physical and chemical laws of nature’s still level, or the biological and genetic laws of nature’s animate level, there is also a law of life—the law of altruism—in the nature of humanity. Our body’s cells merit life on condition that every cell rejects any excessive benefit beyond its necessities and lives together with the entire body, providing it with everything necessary. Similarly, like a cell, a person in society must provide everything for society.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Prophets, Joshua 20:1-20:3: And the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying,”Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘Prepare for you cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses. To which a slayer that kills any person unawares, unwittingly, shall flee and they shall be for you as a refuge from the avenger of blood.

One of the first laws when entering the land of Israel is the condition to build cities of refuge because the sons of Israel work against their egoism. In this work, contradictions will inevitably arise, wars with egoism, its demise.

Therefore, one must know how to work with desires that one cannot manage and correct them even if not from the first attempt, but from the second or third.

Question: Who decides that a murder happened unintentionally, inadvertently?

Answer: A person reveals all this on the background of working with himself and with society. Because the upper light shines on him and forms all the desires in him, it turns out that as he moves forward, desires are sorted within. You can work more with some desires, less with others; you made a mistake here, there you did not even make a mistake, but deliberately used them egoistically.

This all exists in every person and in his work with people around him. Therefore, the Torah foresees all states.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/16/21

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