Comment: When a person watches a movie, he becomes permeated with the desire of the main character, he worries, cries, and feels the pain that the character feels. How does this principle work?

My Response: This is an attempt to get into a different character, connect with it, imagine yourself in his place, and put on his life. Each of us has such an attempt, without which we would not be connected to each other. But for this, we need an auxiliary tool—empathy.

Therefore, theater, cinema, and video clips have a very serious influence and strong means of perceiving someone through a visual image.

Therefore, we need to show the society of the future what principles it works on, what relationships exist between people, and how they come to the society of the future in a good way.

It can be done through war, but clearly, these are terrible sufferings that will force humanity to agree to anything just to stop suffering. But to come to it in a good way, it is necessary to be aware of this process and its desirability, not even because I want to escape from suffering, but because I see a great light in it.

It would be great to implement this idea in the cinema.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Power of Cinematography” 7/31/11

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Comment: In the current situation in the world, there is more and more depression and stress and people are becoming more and more closed.

My Response: People are closed up to a certain point where they can no longer escape anywhere. They are still playing and trying to get away from problems; they are using those instinctive means that they have used for thousands of years: we will dance with spears around the campfire like wild people, get drunk, get stoned, or play war.

What does humanity do? Drugs, alcohol, sex, and also football. This is something that you can really seriously distract yourself with, not from the good life, but only to get away from stress.

When a person has a good life, when he is in ascent, he should not suppress his animalistic body. On the contrary, it only helps him to advance.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Drugs, Alcohol and Sex” 7/29/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there anything wrong with living for your own pleasure too much?“

We live within laws of nature, which develop us according to a certain plan in order to reach a destination where we will harmoniously connect with each other and discover the positive force of love, giving and connection that dwells in nature.

Toward that happy ending, nature created us in an opposite quality to its own—as egoists, while nature and its laws operate altruistically—in order for us to develop a realization of our egoistic nature as flawed, and come to want an inversion to a new altruistic nature, which accords with nature’s laws.

We thus have a period in our development when we grow through our egoistic desires, enjoying materialistically for our own personal pleasure, and another period when we start feeling increasing emptiness in our constant pursuit for self-benefit. The latter feeling characterizes our current era.

Today, we experience our egoistic desires reaching a threshold where they can no longer be satisfied like they used to. We developed through desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, and today we feel increasingly short-lived fulfillments at these levels. As a result, we bear witness to rising depression, loneliness, stress, anxiety, drug abuse and suicide, i.e., all kinds of phenomena that stem from our desires feeling emptier, that we cannot be meaningfully satisfied by the smorgasbord of available pleasures.

We are thus at a crossroad between our outdated egoistic mode of enjoying ourselves, the need to grow out of our egoistic attitude to life and to acquire a new altruistic mode of relating to each other, which is congruent with nature’s laws.

At this crossroad, we still find many people who cling onto an approach of “I have my job. I don’t steal. I pay my taxes. I’m a good citizen. And yes, I enjoy life. I travel overseas with my family, I visit Disneyland, go to all kinds of restaurants, and so on. What’s bad about that?”

We see, however, that it is still insufficient. Moreover, there is a mind, plan and laws of nature that operate beyond our egoistic minds’ reach, and according to that higher plan, we need to grow up, to learn how it works, and how we can apply its laws to our own attitudes and connections.

Our egoism, however, rejects the higher plan and laws. In this respect, we are like small children who reach a certain age where they have to leave behind their pacifier or various toys, and they want to hold onto them at any cost, crying and crying if they are taken away.

Therefore, we do not want to recognize and understand these new laws. Why? It is because in our egoistic modus operandi, we fail to see how we can enjoy life according to an altruistic paradigm, i.e., where we switch our primary attitude of self-benefit to benefiting others.

There is no problem with enjoying the many pleasures of life, like eating well, making money, traveling and going to good restaurants, and so on and so forth. It is just that while we immerse ourselves in those corporeal pleasures, we are not advancing in accordance with the higher plan that was prepared for us, i.e., to the true meaning and purpose of our lives. We fail to develop our emotion and intellect to a whole other level that nature’s laws lay out: the sensation of an eternal and perfect reality where pleasure flows abundantly, unbounded by the constraints of our narrow egoistic perceptions, and where we all experience completely harmony and bliss.

There is thus nothing wrong with enjoying the many pleasures of life. But we need to acknowledge the existence of a plan that is higher than us, and that we are in a certain stage of development where we will have to grow out of our current narrow egoistic worldviews and start feeling a new eternal and perfect reality with the positive altruistic force of nature enlivening our connections.

Based on the video “Is There Anything Wrong with Living for Your Own Pleasure Too Much?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 11, “What It Means that the Good Inclination and the Evil Inclination Guard a Person in the Work”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 120

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Selected Highlights

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Question: Why is it so difficult to feel or acquire other people’s desires?

Answer: Because we are the opposite of them! We are egoists! I cannot feel you. I do not see you at all.

I see your image the way I want to see it and immediately treat you that way because I perceive you, everything around me, and myself personally in a desire since desire is a natural material, and there is nothing else besides it.

It means that in my desire, I see your image like this, and that is it. I cannot perceive it in any other way within me! I feel you in the form in which my desires want to feel you, otherwise, you do not exist.

Question: But why is it so easy for me to become like some desire of advertising or something else, to want an iPhone or another trinket?

Answer: Because advertising plays on you. It knows in advance what image to create so that you will positively accept it. It is as if you know exactly the desire and taste of your friend, and create, say, a girl who absolutely, 100% causes admiration in him and fulfills his desire, as if you are some “Pygmalion.”
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. To feel the Desires of Others” 7/28/11

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Question: Kabbalah offers humanity to get rid of suffering by rising above egoism and ceasing to earn money for others. Does it mean that people will deprive themselves of the pleasure of receiving money, but will get rid of suffering?

Answer: People need money in order to feel secure in their lives, while it is normal and sufficient for an animal organism to have what is necessary for its functioning.

Money itself, especially in the next wave of the crisis, will demonstrate its failure; there can no longer be a connection between us based on it.

In principle, money is something I give you, something you give me, something one of us earns and wins at another’s expense. It is a copy of our internal relationship—what I want from you and what you want from me. This is expressed in the number of banknotes that we exchange with each other.

I come to an employer, I work for him, and I get paid; this is our relationship. It is the same in a store, in society, everywhere, even between spouses. It all is expressed in some kind of monetary equivalent because we constantly want to receive something from another person. Money is the equivalent of our egoistic efforts.

Today, however, our efforts should turn into altruistic ones, which at first can also be measured in money. I want to bestow to you. How much? This can also be measured in money. But it works in a completely different way! That is, we do not make any revolutions in the world, we do not change the current system itself. We only change the attitude of a person to what has been created.

But this change is drastic! It adds a soul to a person, that is, the quality of bestowal. In this soul, in this quality of bestowal, he begins to feel that he is on the next level, in the spiritual world.

Thus we do not go against those social systems that have been created up until today. We are only talking about changing the quality of the relationship between us. But with this we gain the next level: eternity and perfection.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Money of the Future” 7/16/11

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Question: Given that Kabbalists cannot influence a person against his will, how do they create a spiritual field?

Answer: When they create a field between themselves within this large, still-sick organism that is affected by all sorts of tumors and cancerous elements, an understanding emerges that there is a major positive healthy organ. Other cells of the body want to connect to this organ. These are my cells. In a way, I am healing myself.

Question: So in fact, a Kabbalist generates desires for others?

Answer: If we talk about the correct conceptual understanding, it is not the others but myself; it is within me.

By connecting between us, we create a positive field around ourselves, which on the outside positively affects the whole of humanity, supposedly just like that.

But in fact, the inner work of course takes place in another reality—the true one. First of all, you begin to understand what our world is and perceive reality correctly. Like in the movie “The Lawnmower Man” where the main character is fighting inside some white cube, as if inside himself, reflecting his thoughts.

It becomes quite clear that everything is inside you. Only it is not limited by some external cube; it is in you or you are in it, it doesn’t matter how you say it. Separation disappears whether it is in me or I’m in it.

Our task is to correct all our desires, which we perceive as external and human in relation to each of us. Correction of inanimate, vegetative, and animal desires does not depend on these desires; they are not independent. But in every desire of the fourth type, “the human in me,” there is its own freewill.

Therefore, I can correct this desire only if I integrate in it and pass a certain amount of information to it. The desire will evaluate this information, accept it, and connect itself back to me. That is, this sick cell, this sick body or organ, can make its own decision whether to connect back to me or not.

Question: Why is it when you explain that we are so drawn to visualization?

Answer: We have nothing else! We have to imagine everything in the form of some image.

But this is temporary. When you start to seriously work with desires, the meaning of time between them disappears, the sense of space disappears, only the causal relationship of desires remains. Therefore I can no longer say whether it exists in me or outside of me. It is desire!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Unreal Reality” 6/27/11

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Question: Why do I easily accept the desires of advertising, but I cannot feel the inner desires of people?

Answer: Because companies study what you would like to have and start creating ads that would exactly fit your desire using a bit of lies and leaving a little something unsaid.

Let’s say you have an initial desire for an iPhone, and the advertisers practically show you, “This is exactly what you need. This is what you really want. Think and have a look.”

They start spinning advertisements in front of you, showing successful men and beautiful women with iPhones in their hands. You start to feel like you want one too. That is, you get not only an iPhone, but you see yourself as lucky, well-dressed, and in the company of people like that. It is all psychological manipulation.

In Kabbalah we do not deceive, but turn to the more internal, deeper needs of a person. Food, sex, family, power, fame, money, and knowledge, we do not sell it. These are egoistic fulfillments. In principle, everyone has them in their natural form.

Therefore, advertisers simply shape them for a certain circle of society. They study society and thus sell unnecessary things.

If the thing were necessary, it would not have to be advertised. During a famine, you do not have to advertise bread. It is all clear. I remember how there was no advertising in the Soviet Union because there was nothing on the store shelves, one was struggling to buy anything there. But in America where there was an overproduction of goods, there was advertising, the purpose of which was to make people buy.

But now the people’s demand is gradually moving to other things. Therefore, we need to show them that we can sell such a product, that is, to give the advice they need.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. To Feel the Desires of Others” 7/28/11

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