Evolution is built on the law of “negation of the negation” when in order to rise to the upper degree I must negate the degree on which I currently am. It should already seem bad to me, I can no longer stay in it, I must make a revolution, i.e., rise above it.

Question: What is the essence of negation based on criticism?

Answer: If this is criticism that helps me create or attain something, then I agree with it, I love it. I really need such criticism. If not for it, I would not know how best to change my attitude toward students, toward the world, and so on. But only if this criticism is serious and not just, as they say: “you yourself are a fool.”

Comment: I do not mean external criticism, but self-criticism.

My Response: Self-criticism is a very difficult thing. After all, a person is always bribed by his egoism. No matter how much I want to criticize myself, I will always subconsciously twist it through ten different levels so that in the end I will calm down, it will be beneficial for me.

I will take pride in my self-criticism, and that will be the end of it. Well, what do you want from me? I criticize myself. Stay away from me with your criticism.

Kabbalah, however, reveals in this a very wide field of activity for each person.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Where is the Truth?” 8/27/11

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Question: How do the four stages of development of desire manifest themselves in our daily life?

Answer: The four stages are fundamental in the construction of the entire system of nature. These are its inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels.

Each of them is divided into several more, and then another and another. That is, what we see in front of us in the world around us is a consequence of the increasing division of nature into four stages.

Thus, we distinguish four seasons of the year, four types of human psychology, and so on. Everything is interconnected, and all this comes from the four stages of the development of desire.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 7/16/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Who is God?“

God is the general integral force of nature that operates upon our planet and our universe, which is behind the existence of everything and everyone.

God wants to teach humanity as His children, for us all to recognize His greatness, uniqueness and love for us, that He made everything perfectly for us. Moreover, He suffers even more from our suffering than we do, because He needs us to undergo this learning period.

When we get through this learning period, we will reach a state about which it is written, “My sons defeated Me.” In such a state, we rise above our egoistic desires—desires to enjoy at the expense of one another—that He created to start with.

Why did He create us in egoistic desires that are the opposite of His altruistic desire to love and to bestow goodness?

It is so that we would become even stronger than the ego He created, that we will exercise our freewill to enter into a positive connection among each other. By doing so, we will reveal His quality of love and bestowal in our connections, and we will then come to truly enjoy everything He prepared for us: a harmonious state of eternity and perfection.

Based on the video “Who Is God?” 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 38, “A Righteous Who Is Happy, a Righteous Who Is Suffering”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 134

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Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Do You Think About the Evolution of Humans and How Far Can Humanity Go?”

The evolutionary process we undergo is in order to adapt us to the upper world, i.e., to lead us to a state of harmonious connection “as one man with one heart,” one humanity functioning as a single system.

We exist in an integral system with interconnection and interdependence among its parts.

In the process, we need to experience that we are enslaved to our egoistic human nature, which makes us want to enjoy at the expense of others and nature, to a state of freedom from this egoistic servitude.

It is a place where we discover integrality, a deep connection from one end of nature to the other, which emerges from the upper force’s desire to love and to bestow.

The upper force of love and bestowal guides and relates to us as a single entity, and leads us to a stage where it will grant us mutual connection, where we will each primarily consider the benefit of others and the whole system we exist in.

In other words, from living in servitude to our egoistic desires, which we are currently locked in, we develop through various crises on personal, social and global scales, through which we gradually obtain the possibility of exiting the egoistic network that controls us, and entering into a new altruistic network of connections.

Why do we need to endure various crises in order to exit our egos?

It is because the human ego is very cruel, and we are incapable of rising above it with our own strength. That is, we lack the ability to convince ourselves that it is worthwhile to be positive, kind and loving of one another all over the planet. It is simply impossible while our egoistic nature constantly pulls us in an opposite direction—to self-benefit at the expense of others and nature.

Therefore, in order to show us how our egoistic attitudes make us suffer, nature sends us various crises that oblige us to face our connection, and the need to realize it positively. Accordingly, we then come to see that we have no choice but to correct our attitudes to each other, from egoistic to altruistic.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Is Tisha B’Av?”
Tisha B’Av is a very important and prominent state in the development of creation.
According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Tisha B’Av commemorates the ruin of the Holy Temple, i.e. the shattering of the vessels, the state when we lost consciousness (i.e. the shattering or ruin) of our connection as a single entity (i.e. the Holy Temple).

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, we learn extensively about this state of shattering and how important it is, because there cannot be correction and connection without corruption and shattering. Therefore, on one hand, there is great joy in the opportunity for correction that the shattering brings us, and on the other hand, there is sorrow and crying from foreseeing the oncoming shattering, knowing that we needed to resist it, i.e., to maintain our connection as a single entity despite the forces emerging to shatter this connection. This coincides with the spiritual principle that, in spirituality, we always encounter two opposites in the same place.

Therefore, together with the joy at the opportunity for correction that the shattering brings us, we need to simultaneously be sorry about all the ruins that have taken place, out of necessity, due to their spiritual root. However, what is the destruction that we need to be sorry about today? It is that today, after the 16th century, the time of the great Kabbalist, the Ari (Rav Isaac Luria), which marked the beginning of the opening of the process of correction to humanity as a whole, then all we need to be sorry about is our negligence to willfully engage in this process of correction. That is, we shouldn’t be sorry about ruined Holy Temples from 1,000s of years ago, but that each day we fail to actively engage in the process of correction, we fail to build the new Holy Temple—a correction of the shattering in our connections. That is what is truly considered the ruin of the Temples.

Therefore, what do we need to take into consideration during Tisha B’Av? It’s why we cause the ruin and shattering of the Temple today. We shouldn’t cry about what happened 2,000 years ago. We don’t really know what happened back then. By crying about it, it’s as if we position ourselves as great righteous people and think poorly of the people back then, and that they lost the rule of the Temples. What we need to understand is that this ruin played out according to a necessity for a certain order to unfold. However, since the time of the Ari, the 16th century, when we position ourselves against the process and the method of correction—the wisdom of Kabbalah—then the ruin is the shattering of human relations, the division that is spreading worldwide among humanity. We thus don’t relate to Tisha B’Av as a historical occasion, but as a state that is playing out in our daily lives.
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Question: In order to look adequate for the general mass of people, do you have to assume an image of an ordinary, regular person? Is there another nature within you?

Answer: The other nature that resides within me is an image parallel to me, which is in a state of love and connection with all human souls. There is no way to see it. You can imagine anything you want, each one to the extent of his development.

Comment: The spiritual is opposite to the material. If you are in spiritual attainment, then there are some things in you that can appear very strange to people.

My Response: It is possible. Quite right.

In an event that might seem frightening to ordinary people, I can see, on the contrary, the revelation of the next stage. For example, I greet the global crisis with great anticipation and great hope.

I want everyone to accept it correctly and adapt to it quickly. For me, this is truly a tremendous turning point for humanity; it is when it begins to change itself. It is the revelation of an already outgrown stage! Such an unknown state, uncertain time, marks the ascent to the next stage.

And the next stage is revealed to us as a global, integral, interconnected one; it obligates us to think about everyone together. It begins to show its new laws in the world. And we already see that our previous laws are no longer valid. It is necessary to adapt to some kind of next paradigm, and it is already beginning to manifest.

Kabbalah explains the methodology and practice of the new life that helps us ascend to the next state.

This state has never existed throughout billions of years of the existence of our universe and millions of years of human development.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Laitman ((as They don’t Know Him)” 8/27/11

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Question: Igor asks: “Dear Michael Laitman, I have a direct question to you: is it possible to lie, and if so, in what case?”

Answer: You can lie in the case when you save a person’s life.

Question: Is it definitely so?

Answer: Definitely.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/17/23

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Question: Why is there a parallel between self-annulment in Kabbalah and totalitarian suppression of personality? After all, both paths are very similar.

Answer: In totalitarian suppression of personality, you are not offered a different personality! You are being suppressed against your will.

On the spiritual path, you have the freewill to annul yourself at each next degree and thus ascend to it. This is called the law of equivalence. When I wish to ascend to the next degree, I am obliged to take its form, and then I leave the previous form of the lower degree and ascend to the next one.

At the next degree I become completely filled with it, recognize it, understand it, feel it, analyze it, and synthesize it within myself. Once I finished it and became it, I have to voluntarily, consciously, and by my own effort, annul myself before the next degree, before the higher mind and sensation. This is how I grow each time.

Otherwise, I will never become a human being from a cat. If I like being a cat, I use its brains and feelings. Therefore, I have to annul this degree in myself and want to become a person. That is, by annulling the cat’s states in myself, I take on the image of a person and rise.

This is not totalitarianism! I force myself to do this, no one else does. This is how it is set by nature. You want to accuse the Creator that, allegedly, He forces us in this way! Offer me another way to climb from degree to degree. How else will you rise if you do not annul your present degree and accept the next one as necessary, in advance, before you ascend on it?!

However, the desire for it you develop by yourself, no one can force you. You yourself realize that the state you are in now has worked itself out. Like in a rocket, that stage should fall off and burn, and you fly on.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How can We Trust You?” 9/16/11

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