Question: A samurai came to a sage and asked him if there really is hell and heaven.

“Who are you?,”  the sage asked.

“A samurai,” the warrior answered.

“You’re lying,” said the sage, “You have the face of a beggar.”

The samurai drew his sword. The sage said, “That is how the doors of hell open.”

The samurai understood and, bowing, hid the sword.

“And that is how the doors of heaven open,” said the sage.

Is it possible not to pull out the sword for any insult? Meaning, not to go through hell before heaven?

Answer: It is very difficult. I think it is almost impossible.

Comment: So, the road to heaven is paved through the hell that you are passing through. This is serious.

My Response: What can you do? This is how we were created. This is our incomparable egoism.

Question: In principle, it does not forgive anyone, it must immediately answer?

Answer: Yes. The first thought is to draw a sword because that is who we are; there is no getting away from it.

There is no way we can turn ourselves around so that we are guided by the good since, “I created evil.” It is like the words of the Creator. “And He created the Torah to correct it.” But it is evil to start with.

Question: Why was evil created in the beginning?

Answer: In order for a person to realize his nature from edge to edge. From evil to good, both manifestations fully, and then lean toward the good. Then indeed they will be guided by good over evil. But one cannot exist without the other.

Question: So, one way or another we go through hell to heaven, right?

Answer: Certainly.

Question: Then what is the wisdom of man? We say, “Man is wise.”

Answer: It is to see in advance, without going through hell at every step, that you need to act differently. But this comes from very big trials and experience.

Question: So, does the experience of constant hell lead to the fact that a person becomes wiser?

Answer: Of course, like that Japanese sage.

Comment: You often say that a person can concede. You even used the words “submission,” “annulment,” and “annulment of oneself.”

My Response: These are all very difficult states that you still must go through hell. I do not believe that a person can overcome himself in advance without having a lot of experience. It is impossible.

Question: You are now talking about rising above your egoism. What is it to rise above egoism?

Answer: That means to feel egoism in all its possible manifestations in life, even in nature, and to rise above it all the time. To bow your head, that is, to reduce your egoism, reduce, minimize, suppress.

Question: If you constantly do the exercise of suppressing your egoism, annulling yourself, will it help?

Answer: I do not think this exercise is even possible. This is philosophy. It is possible only if it is gradually, gradually exercised in a suitable society. There should be an environment where everyone wants it. They cannot do it, but they want to.

Question: Do they have a feeling that they cannot accomplish it?

There must be an awareness of evil. And then they all together, in front of each other, together can, helping each other, get out of this fetid pit.

Answer: Certainly. There must be a revelation of evil. And then they all together, before each other, they can help each other, and get out of this fetid pit.

Question: Who is responsible for the way out of there? Us?

Answer: Yes, us! We have to ask, beg, think, speak, and show examples to each other, and thus act. Everyone who has more egoism, of course, becomes higher. In general, this is the work.

Question: If this work is done in the society of those who want to get out of egoism, does it help others?

Answer: It helps others, not even only by example. It does not even matter if they see it or not because it is a force of nature, and it is thus added to the general equation of nature and outweighs egoism first, and then altruism.

Question: Are you saying that if this group manages to rise, it will begin to lift everyone after it?

Answer: Yes. We must act.
[313929]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/29/23

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Question: Recently, several films have been released about the perception of reality, which seem very close to Kabbalah. People realize that there is another reality, but no one can describe it; they can only fantasize and speculate about it. What is the use of their fantasies if a person does not really see it?

Answer: A person is like a child who plays all the time in order to become an adult. When he aspires to this, he makes great efforts and therefore becomes an adult.

At the same time he invites certain influences upon himself from the degree to which he aspires, from that reality that he does not have in him. But if it exists, he comes closer to it in this way. This is the law of nature! Even plants have an inner desire to grow, and therefore they get big.

Comment: But besides Kabbalists, no one else particularly describes another reality, mostly only those who take hallucinogenic drugs. Moreover, they describe it clearly and precisely, as a single mechanism, and very close to how it is described in Kabbalah. They probably do it due to some other reactions.

My Response: No, they cannot get to the spiritual level. They describe some internal fluctuations that occur in them under the influence of psychotropic substances. But this is not a transition from our reality into another reality! It cannot be done with any drugs!

After all, besides the fact that you must suppress your egoism, you must correctly use your egoistic desire in the opposite direction, for exiting yourself. They do not have that! I do not have a shadow of a doubt that they do not see anything. They can describe some of their inner experiences because chemical reactions work in the brain.

You can say, “But chemical reactions work for you too.” Certainly. I have them as well. But I tune them with my desire, rise above them, and feel the spiritual world not in my animalistic body.

Let us say I am in a spiritual reality. You can come up to me, shoot me in the head, and my body will die, but I will still remain in the spiritual reality because “desire for my own sake” depicts our world for me, “desire for bestowal” depicts the upper world for me, and thus I I feel this upper world without any connection with my body.

But they do not have that! They do not control their desire. Therefore, their description is completely unrelated to spirituality.
[314217]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Unreal Reality” 6/27/11

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Question: Is there mingling in spirituality like it happens now with people changing families?

Answer: There is no mingling. In our world, these are ordinary animal passions. Firstly, people simply have egoistic needs at a higher level and cannot satisfy them in any way, therefore, they calm themselves at the animate level.

Secondly, there is no feeling of the other person at the corporeal level, it does not matter to people with whom and how. They are not interested in complementing each other morally or spiritually, and they collide and scatter like billiard balls.

It is not like that in spirituality. There, the male and female parts exist in the same soul without separating from each other.

Question: Are there claims to each other, i.e., jealousy among the parts of the common organism?

Answer: No, they act in agreement with each other.
[313733]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Promiscuous Sex” 5/14/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are we made of?“

Creation consists of two forces: bestowal and reception, plus and minus.

These two forces exist in every person.

By connecting the adducting and rejecting forces between us, we discover them more powerfully and clearly, and we can then use them and incorporate in them.

The force of bestowal underwent a process of shattering within us.

Why? It is so that we would piece it back together and reach the perception and sensation of that very force. In the process, we play out our connection to each other similar to how children play with Lego.

Whatever we discover without the inner connection between us is called “this world,” i.e., the world we perceive and sense through our five senses, and which we process in our minds. That is how we perceive reality when we view ourselves detached from the force of bestowal and from each other.

When we start connecting to each other and to the force of bestowal as we had once existed before we shattered into our detached perceptions of reality, then the various views will incorporate and connect with one another.

We will then start discovering their integrality, a single and whole system with no division into galaxies, stars, planets, vegetation, animals and people—one system with a single force guiding it.

When we reveal this system in its entirety, we will then start feeling the thought that fills the world, reality, the universe and all the worlds. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, that thought is called “the thought of creation.”

Based on the video “What Are We Made Of?” with Kabalist 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 28, “What Is Do Not Add and Do Not Take Away in the Work?”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 112

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Selected Highlights

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Comment: God made a man out of clay. He made the earth, a home, animals, and birds for man. And he had an unused piece of clay. “What else is there to make?” God asked. “Sculpt me happiness,” the man asked. God did not answer anything, thought about it and put the remaining piece of clay in the palm of the man’s hand.

My Response: That is a good parable.

Question: Yes. Can we really sculpt happiness for ourselves? Is this piece really in our hands?

Answer: If you feel that this piece of clay is given to you by the upper force and He instructs you to do it yourself, then you obviously have to take this piece of clay and start thinking about how to make your happiness from it.

Question: There is still a precondition that I should know that I have a piece of clay from Him?

Answer: You said that the Creator gave it to him, didn’t you?

Comment: Yes, according to the parable He did. In general, humanity is constantly shaping happiness for itself. He sculpts and sculpts, but can’t really make a good one.

My Response: No, it is not in our life that we do it. There is nothing you can do in this life.

Question: Do we not have this piece of clay in this life, on this earth?

Answer: There is no happiness in life.

Question: Yes, there is no happiness in life. Only under the condition that I go with the Creator? And without Him I can’t make anything?

Answer: No.

Comment: We have repeatedly spoken with you that all technologies and progress in fact is that a person says that “I am above nature,” “I can,” I tried to stop rivers, something else, and so on, meaning one way or another, this is a path into the void that leads to nothing.

My Response: Of course.

Question: You talk all the time about good connections, that people should get closer to each other. And if everyone says: “Here I have a piece of clay.” And the others will say: “And I have one” and “Me too.” And then “Well, let’s make a common house for us together.” Will it work or will that not work either?

Answer: No.

Question: Does the condition you’re talking about still have to exist? It must be known that the Creator gave this piece of clay to everyone.

Answer: You have to understand what is missing in this piece of clay. There is not enough internal connection of all the pieces between them all. And then we return in our connection of hearts to the state called Adam, similar to the Creator.

Question: In what way was he similar?

Answer: Before it was shattered and divided into billions of parts, it was an angel. That is, an absolutely good, absolutely righteous, correct intention that fulfilled together with the Creator everything that is necessary for a perfect universe.

Question: Was it such a common intention for everyone? A single soul as such? Can I say that? Were all the souls merged into a single soul?

Answer: Yes.

Question: You describe what was in the beginning, and then how everything broke into fragments, and the fragments of the soul fell, so to say, into our world, into this world. And do we have to return to this state?

Answer: Yes. We must realize that we are in a broken state and that we must return to a unified state. This is called putting together the pieces of clay that everyone has.

Question: When you say “compose pieces of clay together,” what do you mean?

Answer: To merge, to join, to unite hearts. And then it will be what the Creator intended.

Question: Did he plan for us to be happy?

Answer: Of course.

Question: What is happiness in the Creator’s understanding?

Answer: Happiness in the understanding that the Creator is the connection of all, together in one single desire, in one single action, when we are all united and do not feel any gap between us. Then what we experience is called happiness.
[314016]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/1/23

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Comment: When I first came across Kabbalistic videos, you were saying the same things as you do now, but there was some energy behind your words. Then, over time, as I listened to it over and over again, I no longer had the initial trembling.

My Response: Your egoism has grown, and therefore you are no longer receptive to the same words. You are thinking: “I already know this, let’s move on. What else can you offer me? Why don’t you reveal anything further?” And grievances arise in you

And grievances are very simple, and I have them too. I told you, now you open it up within yourself. I can’t reveal anything more to you.

Question: How can we use the egoism that has grown?

Answer: But the egoism in you has become completely different. You are no longer the programmed person you used to be; it is possible to talk to you now. You already feel a little, understand and hear the world, hear our ideas, and are able perceive them from two sides, not just by cutting off and remaining closed off.

You have revealed another whole being in yourself; you have done significant work. It is not an easy thing.

Question: Does everyone have their own time frame for a specific turnover?

Answer: This is correct. It happened relatively quickly for you. There are people who haven’t been able to hear for years.
[314117]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Internal Overturn” 5/28/11

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Comment: When a person begins to study Kabbalah, he enthusiastically takes up dissemination and thinks that this is how it should be. Then he stumbles upon a barrier that breaks him and shows that he needs to be careful not to run to everyone and not “wave the flag.” He begins to realize that the fanaticism that was driving him previously is stupid.

My Response: This is the fanaticism of the crowd that was imposed on you. But now nothing is imposed on you, but gradually you are given additional intelligence, additional facts, an additional scheme of creation and the world so that you would act. Previously, on the contrary, you were manipulated.

Comment: I understand the reaction of people who encounter Kabbalah for the first time. When I began to study Kabbalah, I had a standard reaction of fear from the normal world that I had seemingly gotten somewhere wrong. There has always been such an attitude on the part of people.

My Response: No, now you can safely tell them what Kabbalah is talking about because you have some kind of conceptual apparatus and an appropriate vocabulary.
[314168]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Fanaticism!!!” 6/14/11

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Comment: In ancient times, even during the Roman Empire, Jews were treated with more respect than they are now.

My Response: At that time there was a very big difference between other peoples and the Jews.

The Jews were on a spiritual level; they attained and felt the Creator, and lived according to the principles of the Torah: love your neighbor, do not kill, do not steal, etc.

The rest were barbarians: they killed, stole, subjugated, and raped; it was not possible to travel along the roads. Several centuries ago, this was the case even in the very cultured France. They threw slop out of the windows, and so on.

In ancient Israel, there was nothing of this; everything was conducted in a completely different way. Therefore, although people were in contact with each other, the relations within the peoples were too different. Therefore, each nation developed within itself.

But many were interested in knowledge and received it from the Jews. Everything was open. Even the Romans who wanted to conquer them were well aware of all their holidays and customs. This cannot be hidden in any way.

Question: Why did Rome finally suppress Jerusalem? Why could they not live together?

Answer: The fact is that there is a course of history that had to be manifested. The Prophets said in advance that this would happen because the Jews fell from the spiritual level. Therefore, the one who was opposing it had to put this into action.
[314087]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Hatred of the Jews” 5/14/11

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