Comment: You said that a strong sex drive remains in people during the entire long spiritual path.

My Response: Yes, but they treat it in a completely consumer-like way, just like food and everything else. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between sex and love, sex and affection, and sex and caring for a friend, lover, or partner. These are completely different feelings.

The sexual need arises naturally without any object of attention. At the age of 11 to 13 hormones begin to come to play in young people, and suddenly a person begins to love someone.

What does it mean to love someone? If there were no hormones, would he look at anyone? No. There is nothing else here except hormonal dependence on the opposite sex. Why add love here as well?

For a Kabbalist, love is something completely different: affection, family, duty, and just human love.

These are completely different things. That is, ordinary people have this confusion. Even in our system, we can see how much all this is being reassessed now.

Look at what is happening in modern society: divorces, people cannot live with each other. Do they require love? They cannot sort out the relationship between themselves, between sex and love, mutual dependence, friendship, and so on. Humanity always revolves around this and does not know what to do. The Kabbalist, however, has it all in its place.

Question: But a certain period passes and sexual attraction no longer interferes. The pleasure from it is kind of slowly annulled. Or not?

Answer: No, it is not annulled. It just becomes a real, ordinary pleasure. You do not give it some kind of idealized state, but treat it like a physiologist or a doctor.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Sex”

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New Life 199 – Passion And Intimacy
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

What is love and what distinguishes it from passion? Sex is a natural desire like the desires for food, family, money, or respect. Sexual desire takes on different forms according to the development of our ego and societal influences. Love, on the other hand, is an internal, emotional, and soulful connection based on mutual security and friendship. We are born with a need to be loved by our mother to begin with and eventually by a partner, by society, and even by the entire universe! We develop our unique sense of individuality when we feel loved and connected. In order to create loving relationships, we need to invest in our partners and be open. As a society, we should develop workshops so people can get in touch with their innate desire for love and start to imagine how we would feel if we attained it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 199 – Passion And Intimacy,” 6/23/13
This summary was written and edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman

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Question: If a friend is allegedly in a descent, then we need to help him with the methods of the Kabbalistic teaching. How do we not interfere with his state that he must experience?

Answer: We should only show him a good example. And then whatever happens, happens.

Question: But how can we determine what is good and what is bad for a person when he is in a state of descent, cannot attend lessons, or, on the contrary, when he is active and always cheerful? Visually, it seems that he is in the subject, but maybe if he is in a descent this the best state for him?

Answer: There is no better state when in a descent! The descent is only in order for us to get out of it as soon as possible. There is no need to be a masochist. If you love descents, then you are just an egoist, and you like it. It is said: “The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.”

A descent means that you have lost the importance of the Creator, the group, the teacher, and the advancement, you do not want any of this. This is called a descent.

Comment: But people are often in a bad mood.

My Response: That is not a descent! It is just a bad mood! You must clearly understand what a descent is. If it is precisely in the descent in importance of the means to achieve the goal and of the goal itself along with the means to achieve it, then you really are in a descent. Then you need to work on it. It has nothing to do with your mood.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. To Hate the Teacher and Friends” 12/29/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is it possible to reduce overconsumption?“

We can reduce overconsumption and overproduction only if we change ourselves—to start feeling why life is truly worth living.

We cannot change the world, but we can change ourselves to be content and happy with life’s essentials. We would then put an end to the planet’s destruction, the overproduction and overconsumption of so many goods that are beyond our necessities.

Each person has their own definition of their essentials, which is influenced by each person’s specific upbringing. Everyone would thus need an individualized form of learning about self-transformation.

While it might seem utopian that human society would do away with its surplus activity in order to be happy with what we each truly need, our other option is simply self-destruction—a forceful stop to the process where we stop having children and stop our production lines, stalling the planet completely.

That is the choice before humanity as we head into the future: either we learn to get by and be happy with what we truly need, or we will face self-destruction.

When we discuss self-transformation, we are not talking about changing human nature, but the change of human character, i.e. how we each apply our natures.

In simpler terms, our desire that demands “I want!” within each and every person would remain the same, and the change would unfold in the desire’s fulfillment: that we would feel as if we receive everything we need from the world, and that we need nothing else. We can feel such fulfillment when we mutually fulfill each other.

As we head into the future, we will have to figure out how to not destroy ourselves and instead bring ourselves to the realization of the need for change.

Based on the video “Can We Reduce Overconsumption and Overproduction?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, on The Times of Israel: “What was Antonio Stradivari’s secret to making the best violins in history?”

Indeed, whether it is the latest technologies being unable to recreate the Stradivari violin sound, nor the International Association of Violin and Bow Makers, which has repeatedly attempted to discover the master’s secret with no luck, there have been all kinds of logical explanations such as the wood being different, or the times being different, and so on, but no one really knows the secret.

We first need to understand what happens inside our ear, why and how it is possible to elicit the kind of reaction that Stradivari’s strings derive, and how the sounds enter us.

There is indeed a secret at play, but I think that even Stradivari himself was unaware of it. He was simply working according to a certain intuition.

The secret lies in a special combination of sounds that influences the heart, and we need to think about how the heart responds first, and the ear follows. The primary role of the heart is of utmost importance in this area, yet nobody knows about it.

Even Stradivari did not know about it. He was unaware of such internal mechanics. He and his hands were generally driven by an inner intuition, and of course, the guiding higher force played a role in that interaction.

We are talking about a person who was really just an ordinary person with a certain profession, but at the same time, he became chosen to perform a certain role, and this secret became conveyed through him.

As such, the secret of Stradivari’s violin sound applies to everything beyond musical instruments. The sound has to enter the heart first, and only then does it reach the ear. Of course, this runs against what we commonly think, i.e., that we do not hear with our ears, but with our hearts.

Words also have such a quality, and it is how words are formed. When we speak or write, we have to find a word that enters the heart, and we hear it only afterward.

It is actually very easy to find such words in the wisdom of Kabbalah. My teacher, Rabash (Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag), said about this, “Michael, haven’t you heard what it says in the Shema prayer? It says, ‘Shema (Hear O) Michael.’” I was surprised, thinking why is he saying “Michael” and not “Hear O Israel”? “Israel” is a general name, but in reality, we can insert our own names there. That is, this “Hear O Michael” speaks to the heart, and the composition then begins.

The Shema prayer is considered one of the loftiest prayers, and a prayer is heard by the person’s heart first and only afterward by the ear—if it is even heard at all.

We say in the wisdom of Kabbalah that the prayer of an ordinary person is more exalted than prayers composed by sages and Kabbalists. This is because the person feels it; his heart resonates with the word that is rooted in a spiritual sensation. When a person thus pronounces the prayer with his feelings, he first hears it above. It is not something born within any of us.
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Question: There are many couples in our Kabbalistic group who really want to build their relationships on a new level of connection. They work in their own groups and watch the program “New Life” about family life together.

They want to build the family of the future that you talk about all the time. How can they check that they are moving in the right direction? What is the family of the future?

Answer: It is when a husband and wife are very close companions to each other. They don’t impose themselves on each other. They understand that they have a long life.

Comment: Together.

My Response: Together is relatively together. Together is impossible. We must accept our mutual states so that they are not double-edged, so that they complement each other.

Where we feel that we are doing something pleasant, we get closer. Where we feel that there may be some problems, we move away. We behave selectively. And then we will be fine.

Question: But we do not run away? Is this what it means to build a family?

Answer: We don’t think about building all the time. We just feel where we can help the partner, and where it is not necessary to interfere.

Comment: And this, you say, is called “partners.”

My Response: Yes. This is the most important thing in marriage.

Question: And everything else: love…?

Answer: There is love between a mother and a child. And there is love between man and the Creator. There is no love between people. There is a possibility of creating a very kind, close, mutual connection, but it is still not love.

Love appears, manifests, is created, and is born where there is a connection from nature, from nature itself, like a mother with a child, and as a person arises with the Creator.

It is a natural connection. This can be called love. But just between a man and a woman, even if they understand the importance of each other and try to somehow complement each other, it is not love, it is still mates. And this is the family of the future.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/14/22

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Question: A mistake is an important part of the path, but it is better to make mistakes in potential than in practice. What does that mean?

Answer: In potential means that when I advance, I see mistakes in my advancement, aspirations, and efforts. Then I reveal egoism as evil, not by the blows it overtakes me with that force me to go and satisfy, but by the obstacles that it puts on my path to the Creator.

Instead of blows from behind, I discover egoism in front of me that pulls me back and prevents me from moving forward. In this case, I deal with it faster, I understand its nature relative to the Creator.

After all, when I yearn for the Creator, egoism begins to interfere with me, and I see how much it directs me in the opposite direction from itself to the Creator. That is, I start to feel that it is really help against it.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. It Is Very Important to Make Mistakes” 1/4/13

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Question: Does a person engaged in Kabbalah, when he receives any state and does not bestow from it, feel only himself?

Answer: If a person is in the quality of bestowal, then he feels others instead of himself, and if he is in the quality of reception, then he feels only himself.

There are only two possibilities: to feel your own desires or the desires of the other.

Our world is built on the fact that we feel only our own desires. We can feel the desires of the other only to the extent that we want to use him to fulfill our desires.

The spiritual world is built on the opposite principle, to feel the desires of the other and to feel your desires only to the extent that it is necessary in order to fulfill the desires of the other.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Erasing the Past” 1/22/11

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Question: What is life?

Answer: Material life is a form of existence of protein matter.

Spiritual life is a feeling of being filled with light, not just with light, because there are many different colors in the spiritual world. For example, the light of Chaya is the light of life, a very great light of receiving, feeling, filling with life–giving power, and knowledge. It is called life.

In the spiritual, our protein matter is not considered life at all because, in fact, it does not exist. In the spiritual world of bestowal, there is nothing that we feel with our five senses in the material world.

Everything that we are observing now is not in the spiritual world at all because it exists only in our imagination, in our egoistic desires.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Life” 1/2/11

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