Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does Satan exist?“

The word for “Satan” in Hebrew stems from the word for “deviation” (“soteh”), i.e., that it is a force that diverts us away from the spiritual path.

This force is the human ego, which is a desire to enjoy on account of others and nature. It exists within each and every person, and incites us at every moment with the desire to receive for personal benefit alone.

Essentially, this is a force at the basis of our entire corporeal world. It governs over us until we correct this state. Moreover, we cannot get rid of this force; we can only correct it.

Correcting this force means rising above it by drawing the opposite, creative force of nature: the force of bestowal, love and connection. Performing such a correction requires a method.

The method for undertaking this correction is called “the wisdom of Kabbalah.” It explains how and why the egoistic force appears in us, where it is leading us, and the purpose for all the suffering and pain that it gets us into. It also provides a method for how we can rise above it in order to enter into a new harmonious reality.

Based on the talk, “News with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman” on November 23, 2020. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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

Question: Psychologists believe that a person always looks back, agonizes over his past, and cannot break free of this. People dwell on their mistakes and what they should have done differently. They feel the pain of it over and over again and are unable to break free from this vicious cycle.

We have a letter from a lonely, elderly woman who writes about how frightening and lonely it is to live particularly in this pandemic. She is home alone unable to escape the thoughts of her past: her divorce and two abortions, one because of her career and the other when she decided she was too old to give birth. She writes, “And here I am alone; it is cold outside my window, cold inside, and I feel terribly cold in my heart, and the thoughts of my sins and mistakes, there’s no escaping them.”

What can we say to her, after all she is constantly looking back to the past and lives in this past? Why are we given all this suffering?

Answer: The fact that a person agonizes over the past, this too is a correction. Don’t worry, there was nothing personal about it.

Question: How can a person understand this?

Answer: It is impossible. Here you need to work on yourself. It is practically impossible for an ordinary person to agree with the Creator.

Comment: But it will make my life easier if I understand that this was not done by me, that I was led this way.

My Response: You cannot just do it, turn on some kind of switch.

Comment: True, you cannot.

My Response: This is given to her on purpose. These are not her thoughts, not her feelings. All these sensations must pass through her system, through her body. And in this is her redemption, in a way.

Question: Is this given to a person for correction? One must go through it, relive one’s life again, come back, and realize that he’s made many mistakes. Although it wasn’t him who made them.

Answer: It was not him who made them, and neither is it him who is now trying to condemn or justify all this with his consciousness. None of it is him! Never mind. But it all goes through him, so let it happen.

Question: Why is it considered prohibited to look back to the past?

Answer: Because there is no sense in it.

Question: Can people convince themselves that there is no sense in looking back to their past and stop doing it?

Answer: You will still look back until you correct yourself. Until when? Until one fully agrees with the Creator! And this is complete adhesion with the Creator, for everything: for the past, for the good and bad, for absolutely everything. When one justifies the Creator absolutely in everything, this is the final correction of a person.

Question: You mean a person must come to this truth? To fully justify?

Answer: Yes. To completely agree.

Question: With what has happened and what is happening now?

Answer: Yes. This is called the “complete correction of one’s egoism.”

A person should not look back. He should not agonize or reproach himself for something he did, and at the same time, not praise himself for anything. In other words, one should not keep account of when he did something well or of times when he did not do so well.

Question: So my life was either of a hero or of a sinner?

Answer: My life is not mine. And now, finally, I can say that what I have lived was not lived by me. It went through me. But it wasn’t me. That’s how I was led. My life, this is how I saw it in my dreams. It wasn’t me, it all passed like a dream. Therefore, we have to agree with it; nothing else is required. Only to agree.

And this too doesn’t matter either. Whatever is done to a person is done. And what he feels during it is what he feels. It is not him who feels it, but what is felt for him, in a way.

Question: Then tell me, please, in conclusion: what is our life?

Answer: Our life is a form of existence of protein matter. 🙂

Question: Really?

Answer: We still take from this life its Reshimot — memories, impressions. And we keep going. A great number of small grains of egoism, that is, corrupted desire that the Creator created, gradually go through purification, correction, and unification.

Question: So these little egoisms, the 7 to 8 billion that are out there, they live their lives precisely in order to come to this?

Answer: Hell, purgatory, and paradise, like Dante’s.

Hell is a feeling, a recognition of one’s egoism, its insignificance. And everything else that we can add here.

Purgatory is when a person tries to correct it, to purify it. And paradise is when one turns one’s egoism to work in the service of others.

These are the three stages we have to go through.

Question: So with all our lifetimes we are approaching this last, third stage?

Answer: Yes. Therefore, if people understand what these three stages are: hell, purgatory and paradise, that is, the comprehension of egoism, its correction, and its proper usage, then everything is fine. We will keep trying.
[276829]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/14/20

Related Material:
There Is No Turning Back
Evil, Hell, Love
“Do Heaven And Hell Really Exist?” (Quora)

Filed under: Body and Soul, Egoism, News | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Comment: It has been said that lies are in the foundation of creation, in our desire to receive.

My Response: Sure. If I think about being happy, I have only one goal in mind. I don’t care if it’s true or false, it’s important that I feel good. I have a completely different orientation, a completely different attitude. And so in this state, everyone is with their own truth, and everyone seems to be right.

If we try to figure out what is more important to each and every one, then everyone will have something different.

Comment: Indeed, for some, freedom is more important, for others, equality. Therefore, it turns out that there are right and left in the world.

My Response: And the most important thing is that they do not understand each other. They don’t understand that there is something in common. They don’t want to come to this common ground.

Question: What does Kabbalah say? Is there something in the middle?

Answer: There is an upper.
[276920]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

Related Material:
Why People Lie
Lie And Truth, Part 5
“Why We Lie”

Filed under: Crisis, Globalization | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Does one need to read the Torah only in the original language? Is it pointless to try to understand the meaning of the Torah and The Book of Zohar as it is translated in Russian?

Answer: It is pointless to read the Torah both in the original or in translation because man will not understand what it really wants to tell him.

In order to study the Torah in any language, one must first study Kabbalah. Then we will understand the meaning hidden in the Torah.
[276716]
From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 3/20/19

Related Material:
We Should Know How To Read The Torah
Write It On Your Heart
The Oral Torah Is A Key To Penetrating Inside

Filed under: Torah | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Which state is deeper relative to the previous ones: crossing the Machsom or final correction?

Answer: Final correction, of course.

Crossing the Machsom is a very serious stage, a breakthrough in the development of a person, in the development of the soul, but you cannot compare it with what comes later. The Machsom is what is now before us, the first degree.

And deeper and higher is that which is closer to the Creator.
[276819]
From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 12/31/18

Related Material:
The Gates Of Final Correction Are Open
The Machsom Is A Psychological Barrier
The Path To The Light Goes Through Evil

Filed under: Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “Breaking the Barriers to Spirituality”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” ‘Histaklut Pnimit,” Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 14, Item 2

Selected Highlights 

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment / Ask Question →

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

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog | Add Comment / Ask Question →

My new article on Linkedin “The Biggest Worry about US-Israel Relations”

Today, Wednesday, January 20, 2021, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be inaugurated as President and Vice President of the United States. The US has been in decline for decades, but recently, it has accelerated to such a pace that it is threatening to bring about a complete collapse of the once mighty superpower. It is rarely acknowledged but Donald Trump did a lot of good for the American economy under the conditions he was in; I doubt that another president would have done better.

Be that as it may, Trump is going and Biden is coming, and the world is in for some very tough times, and especially Israel. How tough? Suffice to say that in my view, the question of continuing the reception of $3.8 billion in military aid from the US is not Israel’s biggest worry, and not because three quarters of it are spent on US made products. Israel’s biggest worry is that the incoming administration has no interest in the existence of the State of Israel whatsoever. This is our biggest worry, and with our wobbling government, I’m not sure how we will be able to handle it.

Yet, since there is no bane without a boon, the approaching plight might actually present a great opportunity for Israel. This is our chance to realize that we cannot rely on foreign aid indefinitely, that we must find within the strength to repel outside enemies—through our unity. In other words, I hope that since we have no choice, we will finally realize that only our union is a lasting pillar we can rely on, that this is our only weapon against aggressors. When you look at the world today, with all its “enlightened” nations, you will not find one country that does not hate us, including those who haven’t verbalized it, but soon will.

Moreover, if we were connected, we wouldn’t be facing the predicament we’re facing now. Instead, there would be more peace agreements such as we have seen recently, and no one would even want to interrupt or cripple them.

But now that the US is collapsing, Israel will dive down with it. Without America’s support, we will go down in a freefall right alongside America.

That said, if we had spiritual powers, the spirit of unity would fortify us and no harm would come to us. We would not need any foreign money or aid of any kind.

After we fall, the collapse is certain to awaken us, the price we will have to pay over many years is too high to express. I truly hope that we will still manage to awaken people so that they want to achieve correction in a calmer way. My true wish is that they will see the necessity of connecting without the suffering that’s lurking right around the corner, but for now, I don’t see that it is even possible to talk about it, that anyone is listening, understanding, or feeling anything in that direction. No one understands that we have no choice but to unite. The obtuseness in people’s hearts and minds is so thick that it seems impossible to penetrate.

We’re like a child standing baffled in the middle of a highway with a truck speeding toward him and with no sign of slowing down. I am screaming for the child to get off the road but he can’t hear me. This is the state of our nation; this is the state of our people.
[277231]

Filed under: Israel Today, New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →

My new article on Linkedin “Europe’s Collapse—a Reflection of the World”

Look at what is happening in Europe: The Dutch government resigned in its entirety over a childcare subsidies scandal; the Italian government is on the brink of collapse; Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is stepping down and the political future is uncertain; and Estonia’s Prime Minister, Juri Ratas, resigned over a corruption scandal and his government collapsed. If this is not enough, in Belgium and France, violent riots broke out as immigrants and members of radical political groups smashed windows, torched cars and a police station, and injured dozens of law enforcement personnel. Besides all the above, the coronavirus is spreading like never before, claiming thousands of lives each day despite the vaccines and the closures.

This is not a coincidence. We are experiencing the integrality of the world, its inexorable interconnectedness. We are dependent on each other on every level. Covid-19 forced us to acknowledge that contagion anywhere is contagion everywhere. Now we have to advance to the next phase in our awakening and realize that a crisis in anything is a crisis in everything. The coronavirus wrecked the global economy, tore up the society in countless countries, and as a result, governments are falling apart. This is all part of the same process: the collapse of the old, individualism-driven world, which is now crumbling in a global domino effect.

The crisis is everywhere. The global interdependence behooves global coordination and collaboration. It only makes sense that if we are dependent on each other, we will cooperate in order to make things better for all of us.

While many have already realized that we are dependent on each other, this is not enough. Now we must also realize that we are responsible for one another! Currently, countries are behaving like mountain climbers scaling an impossibly steep cliff. They realize that they are all tied together, but instead of using their mutual dependence to help each other to the top, they are trying to tear the ropes that hold them together and climb on each other’s head on their way to the top. Any novice climber will tell you that there is only one result that such an attitude can yield, and it is not a good one. The only way up is together, by watching out for one another, making sure that everyone has a good grip on the rock, and that if someone slips, the others will hang on until he can find his footing again.

The escalating global mayhem should teach us that we are in absolute interdependence and there is no point trying to take down any country because we will all go down with it. Look at what happened in the presidential election in America: Suddenly, we realize that everyone is meddling with the election in America: Russia, China, Ukraine, Iran, as well as other countries. There is no point pretending that we didn’t know. It can’t be any other way! If what happens in one country influences all the other countries, naturally, those other countries will want to influence what happens everywhere. Everyone does it to everyone so there is no point pretending that it doesn’t happen.

The problem is that such a game can last only so long, and we are nearing its end. The spiraling collapse of governments and societies indicates that we are nearing a total breakdown. When that happens, we will be left with one of two options: The first, and less likely, is that at the last minute, governments will get a grip on their power hunger and agree to establish balanced connections that are acceptable to everyone and guarantee the well-being of all the countries in the world. The second, and regrettably more likely option, is that the ruthless tug of war will end in total destruction, a nuclear world war. The local collapses of the past months have been warning signs. If we don’t heed them, the big one will follow.
[277195]

Filed under: Coronavirus, Crisis, New Publications | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Each of us has a point in the heart, a part of the divine from above. That is, this point in us is connected with the Creator by a very thin thread, and we need to try to enliven this connection.

If I use all my desires, qualities, and all situations in order to strengthen this connection, to expand and make this thread thicker and stronger, and to make this channel active each and every moment, this demonstrates my devotion to the soul.

We need to look for our connection with the ten and the connection with the Creator so that all this comes together in one single point. This will be the real center of the ten.
[277059]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/21, “Love Covers All Transgressions”

Related Material:
How Can One Measure The Soul’s Devotion?
In The Desert There Is No One To Cry Out To – Only Heaven
We Feel Better When Others Feel Worse

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work, The Tens | Add Comment / Ask Question →