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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Question: In the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Baal HaSulam describes how worlds emerge from the four phases of the development of desire. World (Olam) comes from the word “Olama,” that is, concealment. What should be concealed after the Creator has created a desire?
Answer: Creating a desire is one thing, but making a creation from it is quite another.
The creation must sense that it was created by someone above it, and feel what it should do to implement the actions of its maker. This is a continuation of the development of creation based on what is in it, because the last phase of Malchut consists of the previous parts and can begin to transform itself, and adjust to the form it chooses.
And it chooses to be similar to the Creator, that is, to become not a desire, but a source of desire.
Therefore, it begins to receive light in the way that the first phase wants to give it. That is, Malchut begins to transform itself to become a giver.
The creation must be a source of light, i.e., become similar to the Creator and be like Him. Therefore, all concealments are necessary for the creation to become independent, and to want to be like this source itself.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 7/16/23
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Question: People come to study Kabbalah not only because of the lack of meaning in life, but also because they are searching for answers to their problems, like for example, their children’s autism or something else. But you immediately dismiss these topics saying something like “Do not talk about this.” Maybe it is worth revealing some things?
Answer: I do not know what to answer to this because these are border areas that are not clearly clarified in our world. I do not like to talk about inexact scientific data.
I examine psychology because it relates to Kabbalah and speaks about the perception of the world in the five senses. Kabbalah also speaks about an additional perception of the world in five spiritual sensory organs.
By itself, the wisdom of Kabbalah operates with clear physical data. We dissect the desire into parts, grade it, and show in which part and depending on what, a person feels and attains reality one way or another.
But when can I talk about this with him? When can this be explained to a person? When he is already in this.
Before that, he himself does not know what he is learning. Even if he enters into The Study of the Ten Sefirot or something else, what is the use? This makes no sense because in our world there is nothing analogous to spiritual sensations.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Why are You Scaring Everyone?” 9/5/11
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Question: How can one not turn from a person who bends himself before others, into one who simply believes in the power of the Creator and crushes himself?
Answer: I do not understand this! I nullify my corporeal properties in order to find my spiritual appearance above them, to create my soul, to mold it into the likeness of the Creator by the fact that I now rise above myself.
What does this have to do with religion and everything corporeal? After all, everything that concerns the spiritual has no relation either to the body or to our world. I reveal completely different desires!
I am my point in the heart, which relates to others, to their desires, to their points in the heart. Between these desires for the Creator in you, in me, in him, and so on, I create a network. In this network, I treat everyone as “love your neighbor as yourself”; in this network I want to feel the Creator.
From the love for the other, I wish to create such a substrate on which the common quality of bestowal and love, called the “Creator,” will be manifested. This absolutely does not exist in our bodies or in the world around us! The inner area that you reveal is a new dimension. It exists outside of matter! And then you find out that there actually is no matter!
Question: But until I attain this, do I, in principle, take everything on faith?
Answer: Start to practice this and you will see that this is actually the case.
Question: What exercises do you do? How did you motivate yourself?
Answer: I have been working very seriously on clarifying the perception of reality: What is it, where is objectivity, where is subjectivity, where is the thing in itself, where is the thing outside of me? I am within myself, I am outside of myself, some are in me, and others are outside of me.
This is how I thought all the time until I really began to more or less actually feel and perceive everything. But this is not some kind of self-conviction, but work with doubts, with internal obstacles.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Entrance Into Spirituality” 8/18/11
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 23, “What Beginning in Lo Lishma Means in the Work”
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 127
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2nd part of the Lesson — Lesson on the Topic of “The 15th of Av: the Day of Love”
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Selected Highlights
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It is written: “Anyone who mourns for Jerusalem is rewarded with seeing its joy.”
That is, to the extent that we recognize the full scale of the destruction that happened to us, to the entire people of Israel and to the whole world, to the Creator’s program of creation, and to the extent that it touches our heart, to this extent we are able to understand and feel all this sorrow, understand the reason for the destruction, understand how to get out of it, and how to rebuild Jerusalem, that is, the “Perfect City” (Ira Shlema). In this way, from sorrow we come to joy.
There is no darker and more mournful day than the 9th of Av. This is the source of all judgments and all troubles. It was on this day that the Temple was ruined in Jerusalem. And we still grieve about it after thousands of years. Today we must also worry and grieve about it as if it happened yesterday, and this is everyone’s personal grief.
After all, those who do not mourn the ruin of the Temple will not be able to be present at its restoration. Therefore, we need to feel in the depths of our hearts what shattering is and what correction we should expect, in what form and with what result.
There was a terrible shattering—the Kli, that is, the connection between the created beings and the Creator was broken. And now, who knows when and how and by what actions it will be possible to correct it. That is why it is really a very sad day.
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From the Daily Kabbalah lesson on the topic of “Tishaa BeAv (Ninth of Av)”, 7/27/23
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Question: There is a parable about a fisherman transporting a person by boat. The passenger urged the fisherman: “Hurry up, I’m late for work!” Then the man spotted that on one oar was written “pray” and on the other “work.” “What is this for?” he asked.
“To remember,” replied the fisherman, ” so as not to forget that you must pray and work.”
“It is clear to everyone that everyone needs to work. But praying is not necessary. Why waste time on prayer?”
“It’s not necessary, it’s not necessary,” the fisherman replied, pulled the oar out of the water with the inscription “pray” and began to row with one oar. The boat spun on the spot.
What do you think about the combination of working and praying?
Answer: This is correct because not everything is in your hands, so there is a place for prayer.
Question: Work is seemingly in my hands, but everything that is not, I pray for. What if the work oar was pulled out of the water, would the boat spin on the spot or still somehow move?
Answer: It wouldn’t move at all. Without difficulty, where would you aim? With what?
Comment: But there is “pray.”
Answer: Well, then pray.
Question: And still there is no movement?
Answer: It wouldn’t move.
Question: Then tell me, what is the most important thing in life?
Answer: The most important thing in life is when a person works, realizes himself, but at the same time realizes himself in the right direction! Not that the work will give him everything, but that he directs it in accordance with the development of nature and humanity. Then one is born, gets married, works, and all of it together.
Question: So when you say one moves in accordance with nature, is there a prayer here?
Answer: There is a prayer here, of course. It is in the general laws of nature.
Question: So if I advance according to the laws of nature, there is a prayer in it?
Answer: Sure.
Question: What do I pray for in this case?
Answer: Our life has such opportunities and probabilities that we cannot calculate. Not because we are unable to, but because there is an upper providence, a force (the Creator). That is why we still need to do everything in our power that the Creator has left for us. But once we have done everything, the rest is left for Him.
In Hebrew it says: “HaShem Igmor BeAdi,” “The Creator will finish for me.” That is, I do all I can, and the Creator will finish the rest for me.
Comment: We usually pray when we hit a dead end or some deadlock situation, or terrible suffering.
Answer: This is incorrect.
Question: Not the right prayer?
Answer: No. This means we do not take the Creator as a force of nature that determines everything and go in accordance with it.
Question: So I have to know, while working, that the Creator will finish for me? Is this the constant movement that has to happen? Is this the right advancement?
Answer: Yes.
Question: If we bring it down to the oars, is this how to move with both oars?
Answer: We move with both oars and pray they complement each other.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/29/23
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Question: If a person wants to go deeper into the study of Kabbalah, should he know Hebrew?
Answer: No, not necessarily. A person should work on himself, this is the most important thing. He can even feel spirituality without any words and read books in any language.
I have students who do not know Hebrew, who read Baal HaSulam, Rabash, as well as my books in their native language and they are advancing perfectly.
If they study the Hebrew alphabet, they study not the letters but its design, because the letters represent a combination of certain forces.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Mother tongue” 9/21/11
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