Question: On Rosh HaShanah a person decides to start a new life, and despite the fact that he needs to rise above his nature, he still wants to test all his qualities during the ten days before Yom Kippur.

By comparing them with the qualities of the Creator, he sees that he cannot be like the Creator in any of them and on Yom Kippur he decides to make a restriction on them, which in our world is expressed in five limitations.

After that, after the five days symbolizing the five Sefirot, the holiday of Sukkot begins. What is the essence of these holidays?

Answer: The New Year (Rosh HaShanah) is preceded by a series of days when people ask for forgiveness. They sort of evaluate their actions, what good and bad they have done, and in general, they understand that they have not done anything particularly good.

This is how a person checks his actions and comes to the conclusion that he is obliged to obey the upper will of the Creator because “There is None Else Besides Him.” He accepts the upper will as the only ruling force in the world. From this state, he begins to evaluate himself. He really does a very serious analysis of his actions and deeds, which continues until Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is the inner state of a person when one realizes that only continuous egoism acts in him and that he must rise above himself. After all, the main commandment of the Torah is “love your neighbor as yourself,” and he is absolutely far and even opposite to it. Therefore, he asks for forgiveness.

This is the principle of Yom Kippur, when a person is ready to stop using their egoistic desires. There are only five of them in a person. Therefore, they are represented in our world by five restrictions: the ban on eating, drinking, etc.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/7/19

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Prophets, Joshua, 14:13 – 15: And Joshua blessed him, and gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance.

Hebron, therefore, became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he fulfilled the will of the Lord God of Israel.

And the name of Hebron before was Kirjath-arba (the city of Arba); Arba was the greatest man among the ‘Anakim.’ And the land had rest from war.

Question: Hebron is probably the most turbulent place on Earth. What is in it? Historically, this is the first capital of King David, the second holiest city after Jerusalem. The cave of the Patriarchs where our forefathers are buried is there. But why is it such a turbulent place?

Answer: Because it is for this place that a symbolic war between Israel and the rest of the world is waged because everyone wants a connection with the Creator.

Connection with the Creator happens through the forefathers. Thus, Hebron is the point that connects every nation with Him. Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, are all serious bonds between the Creator and a man only if he would symbolically conquer Hebron.

However, he will conquer from the point of view of connection with Him, at least an external connection, because all those who misunderstand the connection with the Creator believe: “If we reign there, then this place will be ours.” They do not understand that only internal unity, which can be reached by rising above egoism, gives this connection.

Therefore, for as many years as Hebron has existed, and it existed even before the people of Israel entered there, there were wars over it. The Turks, the Crusaders, and the Arabs all wanted Jerusalem and Hebron.

Question: You have also been to Hebron. What do you feel about this place?

Answer: Absolute emptiness. It is possible to say that there is some kind of connection, but this feeling is very vague. The only feeling that I have and have always had awakens on the grave of Rabbi Shimon. I could see it even in Rabash. I could really feel there that he was physically close to the Creator. How to explain this, I do not know.

And in other places, there are absolutely no feelings. Not at the Wailing Wall, not in Hebron. However, when Rabash asked Baal HaSulam: “Why did you go to Hebron,” he answered: “Because it is said that a person should try to reach the degree of his forefathers.”

Question: Will there ever be peace in Hebron?

Answer: Only when we are done with all our uncorrected desires.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/9/21

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Question: Ariel writes: “I do not understand anything you say, but there is a feeling that this is the truth. How do I deal with this?”

Answer: Let it be. It is simply that this is really the truth; this is actually how it is. It is about what is happening in the world, it is what Kabbalists have predicted for the world throughout history. So let’s not try to rewrite history to suit ourselves, but understand that it is unchangeable. What is written must happen.

All we need to do is use our mind to try and make this history happen a little above us, a bit over us. In other words, we hear how the Creator scolding us, how He is directing us and showing us where and how to change. And this should be enough, His pointing His finger should be sufficient for our advancement.

Question: Ariel writes that he does not understand what you are telling us, but he feels that it is true. Is it good or bad that a person does not understand?

Answer: It is good. This indicates that he has a correct, normal perception.

Comment: Actually, a person is usually guided by knowledge. He understands that he cannot grasp what you are saying within reason. He only has a feeling that it is true. So he stays and listens.

My Response: Yes. That is enough because a soul is a feeling and not knowledge.

Question: When you met your teacher, how did you feel? Did you understand what he was talking about?

Answer: Virtually not. Practically, I did not understand it. I felt that it was the truth. That is all. But what the truth is, I did not know.

Question: How can this be? This goes completely contrary to this whole world.

Answer: It is how it is from above. There is nothing you can do here.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/22/21

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New Life 633 – Governance By International Corporations
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Today, corporations are stronger than governments and they practically manage the world. They help us to see that the world is totally connected, but we are nevertheless alienated from one another.

Europe is the modern Babylon. Although Europe currently benefits from the system economically, the United States has organized for migrants to flood it and are interested in creating chaos there. Europe’s culture will be erased and it will face collapse. Israel will teach Europeans how to connect above all their religious and cultural differences according to the rule, “Love thy friend as thyself.”
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From KabTV’s “New Life 633 – Governance By International Corporations,” 10/12/15

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Question: When the Chernobyl disaster happened, people were evacuated. People vanished from there, and suddenly, sometime later, nature began to recover.

Animals that had not been there for 100 years returned to this place. And so everything turned out good, beautiful. But there is also a tendency for people to begin to return to the exclusion zone, although this is not allowed.

And around the zone, 20-30 kilometers, houses are starting to fill up. People are leaving their lives in this world and returning to where there is radiation, radioactive water. Mushrooms are picked and pickled, they grow their own cucumbers and have their own gardens. And that’s it!

They are asked: “Why did you come here?” They say: “This life, this silence, this forest is much better than what is out there. I want to be here.” Someone says: “I want to die in the village where I was born.” And recently there was an interview with young girls, they said: “We go to the forest and listen to the silence.”

What is it all of a sudden? Why aren’t they afraid?

Answer: People are tired of being afraid. They want to end it already, and that’s it! A person does not want to be under the yoke of fear, it humiliates him! It overwhelms him. In other words: “Who am I actually, that I have to be a slave all the time to who knows what conditions, to some kind of forces? I would understand if it came from heaven, but when all sorts of ministries and bureaucrats dictate that to me. They themselves steal, they themselves do not know what they are doing!! From day to day, all sorts of intrigues and everything else are revealed. I do not want to obey these people! ”

Comment: That’s interesting! A person leaves to where there are no pharmacies or hospitals.

My Response: You don’t need anything. We will eat what we have and live as we are.

Comment: And they live. The old woman is 84 years old, close to 90. There are such powerful interviews with them!

My Response: And they will still live; that’s what is interesting!

Question: Is it possible to live under conditions where there is radiation?

Answer: I am not an expert and I do not want to be an expert, but it seems to me that a person can do anything! He can go inside and outside of a reactor, and nothing will happen to him. It all depends on his inner preparation, on the strength that is in him.

Question: What strength must be in him in order to live in conditions in which it is impossible to live?

Answer: He must be above his animal nature. And that’s what they decide. These simple grandmothers say: “We will be here. This is dear to us. I want this life.” And that protects them.

Comment: Of course, it sounds like a fantasy that a person can even be in places with high radiation.

My Response: And we will see in a couple of years. And so it will be. A person can do anything. Absolutely everything. He can be in outer space without a spacesuit.

Question: It depends only on his inner intention?

Answer: Yes!

Question: What should the intention be?

Answer: If he does not think about his animal part, he can be everywhere. As they say about Abraham, who entered the “Kivshan Haesh,” into the oven.

There is no limit to our ability if we wish to rise above our animal nature.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/14/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does globalization promote democracy or consolidate dictatorship?“

Globalization shows us the extent to which we are interconnected and interdependent when humanity becomes a single whole. It demonstrates that we belong to a single organism or body. It does not lead to greater democracy, a dictatorship nor greater development, but to a key dilemma that we will increasingly face in our era: On one hand, we find ourselves in globalization, becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, and on the other hand, we see the extent to which we become increasingly detached and divided from each other.

In other words, globalization reveals an imbalanced and unreliable world that needs to completely change its self-organization, as well as a need for a major change in perception. We need to reject our egoistic attitudes to each other and to nature and apply a new mutually altruistic approach. The interdependence unraveling today shows us that we need to do just the opposite of our egoistic makeup: like cells of a single body, we need to depend on each other and unite with each other as a single system. As such, globalization, which develops and today becomes revealed to everyone, can bring humanity to the realization of evil—that we run on an egoistic operating system, one where each person prioritizes self-benefit over benefiting others and nature—as well as to the realization of good, which we will find in a shift to altruism, where we will each prioritize benefiting others and nature over self-benefit.

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

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

Everything in spirituality is initially built on the equivalence of two forces: the force of bestowal, love, fulfillment, and creation, which is called the Creator, and the opposite desire upon which this force works: the desire to receive, accumulate, and absorb everything inside.

The influence of the force of the Creator generates all states that the creation goes through until it reaches its full similarity to the Creator. In this metamorphosis, the creation constantly feels it is under the influence of the upper light. It is forced to go through these states: the best, the worst, and all kinds of descents and ascents in order to imprint within itself various impressions of the influence of the light.

As a result, these impressions evoke various forms of desire. The desire itself, created by the Creator, is like formless clay from which all sorts of forms, states, and impressions must be created: close-far, low-high, wide-narrow, light-dark, red-green, musical sounds, etc. That is, all categories that distinguish a place, time, space, and movement.

Therefore, the light acts on this amorphous desire, this piece of clay, this shapeless piece of earth, dust, and makes something similar to the Creator out of it.

Imagine to what level you need to elevate this creation! And it must be aware of its ascent, be impressed by it so that it achieves independence in the likeness to the Creator.

The Creator is working on this initial desire, which is not even an embryo and has not yet been born. This is what we study in the science of Kabbalah and what we practically go through ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #19

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Question: How is it possible for the strong and the weak to realize themselves in the same way in our time?

Answer: Only by revealing the general system of our interaction through attaining the wisdom of Kabbalah. Today, if we reveal to mankind the system we exist in, like in science fiction movies, suddenly Boom!, and it is revealed that you are inside some space that affects you, and it turns out that you are under the influence of some forces that hold you and do not allow you to rush anywhere, then from this moment onward we would become good kids.

Comment: But we do not yet see this system of forces.

My Response: To do this we need to disseminate Kabbalah in order to reveal this system with its help. A person who studies Kabbalah suddenly begins to feel it, and by feeling it, he becomes different.

There are no coercive measures here, no illusions or mysticism. He begins to see the forces that stand behind matter, organizes it, holds it, and connects us. By clearly seeing this system of forces, he involuntarily behaves correctly in accordance with nature. It is not that one politician invented something, then another one or someone suggested something or something seems to somebody today.

We need to reveal the truth of nature, and from there we will learn why we are created in this way each with certain properties and background, why everyone should optimally realize himself in a certain way and not in another way. Then everyone will be happy.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Hope for Peace” 9/9/09

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #5, “Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?”

Writings of Baal HaSulam: “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 51

Selected Highlights

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