Question: How can we always be in search of the Creator? We are constantly looking for something, and some things lead us away from the search for the main thing in life. How can we not make mistakes and look only for the Creator?

Answer: I think it is necessary to talk more often with your friends about the need to unite with each other in such a desire, in such an intention, in such a thought that you could attract the Creator to yourself.

What for? So that He fills you and raises you to His level. This is what you desire.

Take all your friends, even the entire world group, connect them all mentally and turn to the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/4/23, “Revealing the Glory of His Kingship”

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Question: There are states in the ten when you feel ascent, joy, and love for friends. It seems that everything is fine. But suddenly friends leave with great criticism. Does it mean that we do not see the real state of the friends in the connection but only our egoism?

Answer: It happens in different ways. How can we rise above egoism without revealing it?

Question: How do we step over our states and see what friends really feel?

Answer: You have to imagine this even if you do not see it. You have to justify them.

Of course, you may not notice that a friend is feeling bad. Therefore, we need to talk about it and try to think good about everyone.

Question: In developing sensitivity to friends, we experience two polar states: either you are completely insensitive or, to the contrary, you are very worried and overreact about anything. How can one control this sensitivity?

Answer: I cannot advise anything. Keep going and you will see that you will still come to the correct result. Just continue, every day, so that there is something new in your relationship and in your appeal to the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/6/23, “My Heart Is Slain within Me”

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New Life 253 – Why We Help
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Why are there differences in the tendency of people to help others? What are the factors that influence the behavior of people toward their environment? How is this connected to the development of the ego?

All human behavior is the result of human nature. No matter what, people are always working for their own benefit. Even deeds that seem altruistic are motivated by covert egoism.

Humans are social creatures. Education regarding the value of relating well with others and protecting the environment is already required from an early age. If courteous behavior were implemented today, it would become unpleasant for a person to go crazy on the highway.

A person is a desire to enjoy; the ego is a mechanism that calculates cost versus benefit. So far we have been educated that it is worthwhile for us to relate well to the environment and to others. More advanced integral education develops a person’s ability to feel dependent and connected with everyone.

There is a professional process that relies upon expert guidance in integral development. We need to ask what the process is by which the ego of a person moves from the personal to the general—from “I” to “we”— so the person will act for the good of all. Blocked people are built from the same material as everyone else, but in them the ego is simply more developed.

When a good connection is formed between people, they begin to feel a unique, additional, shared power within it. If we smile at someone, we transmit good energy, and it causes that person also to want to behave positively. A person learns to enjoy his good relationship with others. This fills him with satisfaction, and gives him the strength to keep going. All of us are connected. When we treat someone aggressively, it will cause him to also relate to others in this way. If I don’t treat everyone well, I will have caused irreversible harm to all of us
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From KabTV’s “New Life 253 – Why We Help,” 11/15/13
This summary was written and edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do natural disasters help bring people together?“

We see people coming together and helping each other out more during crises. Nature sends such situations precisely in order for us to wake up to our connection, and to the idea that we need to consider the benefit of others as our own benefit.

Nature is a live system. It is round, connected from beginning to end and vice versa. In other words, it is an integral system, which is in a constant reciprocal connection.

When we change our attitudes to each other, we accordingly change the way the system of nature relates to us. If we relate positively to each other, we then feel nature’s influence on us as harmonious and peaceful. In other words, nature influences us the way we influence it through our attitudes to each other.

Therefore, when we change our attitudes to nature on the human or social level, even though nature seemingly influences us on the biological level, then our response on the human or social level influences the entire system of nature. The way we then feel nature on the biological level also changes to one that feels harmonious and peaceful.

Based on the video, “Why People Help Each Other During Times of Crisis [The Core Reason]” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Saikiran Kesari on Unsplash.
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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “What Is the Meaning of the Purification of a Cow’s Ashes, in the Work?”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Last Generation”

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Selected Highlights

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Question: If we talk about intellect, then today there is no single definition of this concept. There are several directions according to which classical science defines intellect.

First, intellect is a quality consisting of a person’s ability to recognize new situations, the ability to learn and remember based on experience, understand and apply abstract concepts, and use their knowledge to control himself and the environment.

Second, intellect is a general ability to recognize and solve problems, which combines all the cognitive abilities of a person and his ability to understand various situations.

The third definition is very short and concentrated. Intellect is, first of all, the basis of goal setting, resource planning, and a strategy to achieve the goal.

How would you define intellect?

Answer: I am closest to the third definition. The most important thing is still the goal setting and the way to achieve it.

Question: If you dive into this definition of intellect, then scientists expand it a bit and consider that it operates on three levels.

For ease of understanding, let us call intellect an agent that does something.

The first level is the agent achieves the goal, but everything is controlled by a person. For example, a calculator or a computer. A person sets goals for it and fully programs and controls it in every sense.

The second level is the agent has a goal set by a person, but the intellect chooses the ways to achieve it. For example, an artificial intelligence that learns from some data. The formation of neural connections takes place in it, and on their basis, it can offer something new. That is, this is not programming, this is the creation of something new.

And the third level is an animal or a person who sets goals and develops algorithms for achieving them. Animals set some simple goals and methods to achieve. A person sets more complex ones.

But is it correct to say that a person sets goals for himself?

Answer: As part of our activities, life, and communication, we, in principle, whether we wish it or not, set goals for ourselves throughout life and everything that happens to us.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 7/31/23

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Question: During life, a person acquires life experience and learns from examples and abstract concepts. This is similar to the training of an animal when we set some tasks for it, give examples, and some kind of reward for performing them. Based on the results of these actions, we evaluate whether the dog is smart or stupid. Is a person trained in the same way during his life?

Answer: Of course, we evaluate ourselves and everyone else only in relation to our tasks.

Question: Some information is constantly entering a person. There are some calculations going on inside him that are concealed from him, and he acts on their basis. How can he catch the reason for these actions in order to justify them?

For example, with artificial intelligence, it is clear that a person sets goals for it, gives it a database for training, and even evaluates what is good and what is bad in its actions. How can this be determined in relation to a person?

Answer: There is nothing we can do about a person because the higher nervous activity is also taken into account here. So this is harder with a person. And it will get harder with machines. If we are talking about self-learning algorithms, then it will be difficult for us to establish the right attitude to the machine. And to a person too.

Therefore, we treat each other purely externally, one cannot go inside the other. It is unclear how and what to do with this person inside himself because he is a thing in itself.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 7/31/23

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Question: In the Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah it is said that there are two systems: the system of holiness and the system of Klipot (Impure forces). What are they?

Answer: The fact is that the desire originally created by the Creator as a desire to receive can be corrected to a desire to bestow. If the desire to receive is opposite to the quality of light, wants to receive everything into itself, and be filled with light, then the desire to bestow, on the contrary, is similar to light.

And to the extent that it resembles the light, it comes closer to it.

Thus, from the desire to receive created by the Creator, the desire to bestow is formed as well, and we work with these two desires.

Therefore, the system of holiness and the system of Klipot work against each other. The desire to receive and the desire to bestow are opposite each other and play out between themselves either a direct or an inverse relationship to creation.

Question: Does the person not exist here yet?

Answer: The system called Man appears after everything is created and distributed. A person is someone who begins to consciously work with the systems of holiness and Klipot from down below, up.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 7/30/23

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Comment: From a letter:
Dear Michael Laitman, I am asking for your advice. We raised our children, gave them everything, and they disappeared and do not even call. They are not in our life. My husband started developing dementia. I take care of him by myself, I literally fall down  from exhaustion. I have no strength anymore. Our children are gone, our children have abandoned us.

Why are they so ungrateful? What did we do wrong? Why couldn’t we instill some basic respect for us in them?

My Response: We are not talking about basic respect. Maybe children are somewhere far away, busy with something, they have families, they have everything. But old people demand care and attention. I mean, I understand both parents and children.

The modern world is not made in such a way that we live together as several generations under one roof. Even children do not get attention, let alone the elderly. I do not expect anything else from the world. In no way.

Perhaps it will happen so that people will work half a day, and they will have a lot of time and will really devote part of it to parents, part to children, and part to themselves.

Question: Are you saying that we need to understand our children who are distancing from us with their families?

Answer: We ourselves have prepared such a life for them.

Comment: But this is not exactly how we lived; I remember that.

My Response: We did not live like that because we were in a different world.

Comment: By the way, you yourself have always said that it is good when three generations live together.

My Response: It was so, but now it is impossible. So, let’s stop talking about fantasies.

Question: Then the question about the future is: what will we come to in this way?

Answer: We will come to the point that we will have to really rebuild this world in order to make it more human.

Comment: You are still in favor of these good human relations one way or another.

My Response: Everyone should understand what they have to create, what kind of world they want to see. But, of course, this will not happen today or tomorrow yet.

Question: What should enter a person? What kind of world should he want to create?

Answer: A person must be imbued with desire, compassion, love, and concern about others. About others in general and not only about their relatives.

When he understands this whole system we all have to participate in, then together with others, with strangers, he will be able to create such systems of interaction, support for infants, children, youth, and so on, up to the elderly and all others where everyone feels good.

Question: You have just said a key phrase. You said that a person should understand in general this system in which we exist. Then will everything start falling into place for him?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: This is the most important moment! We do not understand this strategically.

My Response: No, we cannot depict this picture for ourselves.

Comment: We can say that the world is interconnected, but we do not imagine this picture. But the world is like that.

My Response: The world is like that.

Comment: And these connections are good ones.

My Response: These connections are good, and they do not end in this world! They continue in the next world! Therefore, in addition, we must understand where we are and how we are included in each other, where such a combinatoric takes place between us that we cannot escape anywhere, we need to have a good attitude to each other all the time.

Question: I am leaving and coming back, I am leaving again and I am coming back. Does all this take place in this system?

Answer: Yes, everything is in this system. This is called that there is no death, as it were,  and everything is infinity.

Comment: This is beautiful! I wish people would understand this!

My Response: There is no need, this is very hard.

Question: But will we come to this understanding?

Answer: Yes. But we have to be ready for it, and on the other hand, we have to be ready to do it and understand that it will be better for us. We should not look at it as a huge responsibility.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/31/23

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