Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do we need to fix humans?“

The weakness of world reformers throughout the generations [is that] they regarded man as a machine that is not operating properly and needs mending, meaning to remove its broken parts and replace them with working ones. – Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “Peace in the World.”

There is nothing faulty in a person and nothing needs changing in him. Everything was given to the person by nature, so different negative attributes, and even desires to kill and to steal, were given to us by God or the Creator. (“Nature” and “God” are regarded as the same force of love and bestowal in the wisdom of Kabbalah. In Gematria, “God” and “the nature” are equal in number.)

We do not correct people by imprisoning or executing them. We can correct ourselves by placing ourselves in frameworks where we can reach the understanding that we need to correct our nature, or in other words, to positively connect above our most negative impulses toward them.

We need to rise to the next level of our development without destroying our negative attributes, and we needs to acquire positive impulses instead of negative impulses in relation to others.

When we actively apply a positive impulse above our negative impulses in such a way, then we will start feeling a new state of connection between plus and minus as between the negative and positive poles of the same field. We will then start feeling a whole new peaceful and harmonious reality.

Based on “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 7, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Homeland is where you feel good. (Folk wisdom)

If a person is corrected, then it coincides that the homeland is where you feel good. And if a person is not corrected, then he is mistaken in the definition of homeland, perhaps absolutely.

A corrected person is one for whom the goal of his life, his development, and the goal of the world are one and the same.

Question: What is that goal?

Answer: Goodness.

Question: What do you mean by this?

Answer: When everyone feels good.

Question: What simple definitions you give! Is it okay for everyone? Doing good to another?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What is to do good to another?

Answer: “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to yourself.” This is the main rule.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/5/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How come there are 7 billion people, yet we feel alone?“

Egoism, the desire to enjoy at the expense of others, is at the basis of our nature. Over the course of our lives, we constantly develop and grow. As a result, we find ourselves increasingly separated from each other, and in our time, we have reached the fact that we can no longer stand each other. We find ourselves becoming increasingly divided, isolated, detached and hateful of one another, and sink deeper into depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness and drug abuse. The growing ego separates us, and we feel that we are truly cut off from everyone and even from our very selves.

On the other hand, we also start feeling the opposite: that we increasingly depend on each other and cannot live without each other.

So how can we resolve this dilemma, where we find ourselves becoming increasingly interdependent, but at the same time, we hate and reject each other? How can we tie this problem into one?

We cannot do so in our current life. There is but a single solution: we need to rise from our current level of existence, where we all live with self-concern as our top priority, to a different level, where we prioritize the benefit of others, and positively connect to them. If we reach the understanding that our egoistic mode of existence is out of gas, and that we need to shift to a different state, opposite to the current one, then we will merit a harmonious existence in balance with nature, and no one will feel alone.

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: In chapter nineteen of the Book of Joshua (Prophets), very accurate descriptions of the names of the conquered lands are given. For whom are they intended, ordinary people or Kabbalists?

Answer: They are given specifically for those people who can understand what the land is, Eretz (from the word “Ratzon” – desire), and how they can divide, realize, understand, and feel these desires in themselves, work on each of them and on all, and connect them together so they gradually move forward and carry out a partial correction from an egoistic relation to desires for altruistic ones.

Question: What happens when a Kabbalist hears such different names?

Answer: It depends on the attainment of the Kabbalist. He begins to understand their gematria, their names, why, how, in what sequence everything happens, and so on. To do this, you need to go through almost all the states.

But there is nothing complicated about this. Simply, there is a gradual attainment of desires, their essence in working on yourself. Everything goes from easy to difficult.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/16/21

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When the spirit is added in him and he sees, then he departs from this world, as it is written, “You withdraw their breath, they perish, and return to their dust.” (The Book of Zohar)

When you ascend the spiritual levels, the previous step is mortified and egoism becomes even greater and passes only the states of your denial. According to the law of denial, of negation, at the next stage, you use it to an even greater extent, in an even greater egoistic expression.

A person sees this death, this decay, this immersion in the “grave” of his egoism. He rejoices that his egoism will rot, that he covers it, buries it.

The decay of egoism is an unwillingness to use it because it is lifeless, it does not breathe life into you.

Question: Is there any connection between spiritual decay and what is happening in the ground with the human body?

Answer: All these processes take place in the spiritual. In our world, only a weak copy of them is embodied.

In fact, the spiritual world is a huge system of levels, while our world is the smallest, dim, last, inanimate level. Compared to the spiritual fillings, there is absolute emptiness here.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #20

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #6 “What Is Support in the Torah, in the Work”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 60

Selected Highlights

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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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