Question: You say that there is a moment in every person’s life when he is given the opportunity from above to realize his individuality, his soul, meaning to come to a higher, eternal level of existence. What is this moment?

Answer: There is a moment in every person’s life when he feels that he must find the meaning of existence, find out why he lives. Moreover, not necessarily from a bad state. He just feels that he has to find himself, that this is not real life, there is something besides it. It can’t be that it is like that.

It’s some kind of game, some kind of dream, something that doesn’t really exist. And everyone plays it, everyone seems to pretend: Now I was born, I live, now I have a family, children, now I work, now I’m running after some special purchases. A game. This is the same kind of a game that children play. Only for ourselves we have elevated it to the rank of special seriousness. And what is the seriousness here? There’s nothing here.

And it turns out that when I start to feel it, the question arises: “What to do next?” Where is there something in me that I would not pretend, not play? Something actually so internal, deep, and gentle, that it’s even scary to touch—it will be very painful.

When a person reaches such a state, he gets the opportunity to start exploring the meaning of life.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Individualist” 1/15/10

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Question: It would be wrong to treat a person only as a protein body. Why are we originally created so that there are two levels in us: “animal in man” and “man in man”?

Answer: The fact is that we have been developing for many thousands of years. But this development in us is, in general, primitive. See what the media is filled with today.

We do not know how to raise children. I do not see that a good world has been prepared for them. Why can’t we do this? We are, after all, human!

But we are worse than animals. Animals try to equip themselves and their offspring as much as possible. We deliberately create an uncomfortable, inconvenient, unsafe world for our offspring, and we generally don’t know what will happen tomorrow. We, parents, are preparing bad conditions for the next generation. Is this rational?

Question: But you say that in man everything is inherent in nature, he is completely controlled by it. So does nature push us to take such unreasonable actions?

Answer: Quite right. Nature pushes a person to unreasonable actions in order to bring him to the understanding that he needs to do something with himself, with the environment, and with the nature that dominates him and leads him to self-destruction.

This is where the “human” level begins in a person. When he realizes that his nature is evil, that he is ruled by evil forces, he will begin to ask the questions: “Why? What for? Why is everything arranged this way? What is the meaning of my existence? After all, it is useless, imperfect. I personally would not design it that way for my son or grandson.”

This suffering and awareness accumulates in us from generation to generation and leads us to the understanding that we need to understand this life, we need to do something with it. People start to engage in terrorism, using drugs, getting divorced, and breaking up families, they are unable to create anything. But all this is accumulating suffering that will ultimately lead to the need to find a true solution.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Centaurs” 1/15/10

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Comment: A person looks for his individuality and tries to express it through objects of this world and through his body. For example, many religions are against organ transplantation. They say that if a person’s organs are replaced, he will lose his individuality.

My Response: This, of course, is nonsense. If we believe that the person in us is our animal body, then we do so. If, for example, I needed a part of some organ and I can take it from an animal or from some other object, so what? Will I get its qualities? These are the same barbaric ideas as “You must drink the blood of the enemy and you will become stronger.”

Question: So Kabbalists do not see anything out of the ordinary in organ transplantation?

Answer: Our body is an absolute animal. What difference does it make what to do with it: Will they cut off a meter of my intestines if necessary or sew someone’s leg to me? If I walk with it normally, then why not?

A person should think about the soul, and the physical body just needs to be maintained, cared for like an animal, so that it gives you the opportunity to develop at the human level.
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rom KabTV’s “Close-Up. Individualist” 1/15/10

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Question: Who determines the fate of a person? You write in your blog that fate depends on the root of one’s soul. Even the Creator does not determine this, but everything is written in the root of the soul. What are we talking about?

Answer: The root of a soul is the initial normative data in a person that he must implement.

These initial data, the so-called Reshimot, force a person to act in a certain way and lead him to his ideal state. What depends on a person is only the time he spends on the realization of this path: faster, slower, in a more comfortable way, or through suffering. In other words, the fate of a person is predetermined, but it depends on him how he will go through it, how long it will take, and how he will feel in these deterministic states.

Our freedom lies only in how to perceive the deterministic path of our development and how to implement it in the best way.

Question: So, I am just changing my reaction?

Answer: But this means a lot, because depending on our reaction, we influence the upper force in a positive or negative way.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/26/21

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Question: Do stars affect our destiny? If so, is it worth studying astrology or cosmology to somehow influence it?

Answer: There is no point. It is written, “You shall not act on the basis of omens or lucky hours.”

We need to have a correct attitude to our lives. Apart from getting closer to other people, apart from learning to behave correctly with each other according to spiritual laws, which are the laws of connection, love, and friendship, nothing will help us to improve our destiny, avoid world war, or get closer to a good future.

Question: If we live in a volume called nature, the universe, then is it not logical that the stars affect our body, our thinking? After all, we are created from the same matter, from atoms.

Answer: The fact is that a person has a soul. It is said that this is a part of the Creator above, which is within us. It is not subject to any changes and metamorphoses, to anything that happens in our world.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/26/21

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In the News (BBC.com): “In 1965 Jeanne Calment, aged 90, sold her apartment in Arles to her lawyer, Andre-Francois Raffray – a man half her age. It was a viager deal, and Raffray agreed to pay her 2,500 francs (about $500) per month. But Calment went on to become the world’s oldest living person, dying 32 years later at the age of 122.

Comment: She outlived the lawyer and his family continued to pay her 2,500 francs per month for two more years. She died at the age of 122.

My Response: Not bad. Precisely due to the fact that she signed such an agreement? 🙂

Comment: Maybe. 🙂 Maybe it kept her going.

As a new study shows, after the age of 108, in a statistical sense we stop aging. This sheds some light on the aging mechanism itself. Some animals, such as mussels, do not age at all. Gerontologists say: “We are about to discover the anti-aging cure.”

My Response: I had a friend who died at the age of 106. He lived not far from me. When I saw him and asked: “How are you?” he would say: “You know, I am tired of living.” And he would walk dragging his feet along the sidewalk. He used to walk a lot.

Question: And dragged his life along with him?

Answer: Yes. He was set financially, in every way everything was fine. He was just tired.

Question: So you are saying scientists don’t need to research this?

Answer: What for? Let a man live out his 70 years. I think that in general this is a decent number. You just have to live them well, normally, and then lie down quietly and not wake up. Like that, nice!

Comment: That is a good ending, of course. The ending of the righteous, they say.

My Response: It is said so: 60 years or in special cases 70. That’s it.

Comment: But many will disagree with you.

My Response: Let them disagree, but this is what is written.

Question: So, actually, this science is not needed. What should a person proceed from?

Answer: From the fact that one can still feel life actively and can still bring some benefit to those around him or her. Not that he will be looked after and that’s it. I would surely not want to wake up.

Question: When you say “benefit to others,” what do you mean?

Answer: That there are people who are happy that this person lives.

Question: And then he will live?

Answer: Yes.

Question: That is beautiful. Will this bring him and others happiness?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And the moment it is not possible?

Answer: What is there to live for? To keep this animal alive? For what? You descend to the level of an animal (the body is an animal) and only think about its existence. And it exists not even like an animal any more but more like a plant.

Question: And if a person finds a goal in life that stimulates him all the time?

Answer: That is a whole different thing! Then he lives for this goal, exists for that purpose. But he must create. To create means that he brings something useful and new to the world.

Question: What do you mean by that?

Answer: Improving relations between people, this is the most important thing. What else could there be?

Question: And then he feels alive and is able to keep going?

Answer: Yes. Because then he really brings goodness and innovation into the world. This not only prolongs his life, it perpetuates him. That is, it puts him above humanity because he thinks about it all the time.

Question: It turns out that he is beyond life?

Answer: Beyond life, of course. This is a worthy way to get old. And everyone can do it.

Question: Does he age while doing so or not?

Answer: Physiologically, of course he ages. But everything he does, his soul remains in people.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/30/21

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Question: Can artificial intelligence acquire a soul?

Answer: First, this is not intelligence. Let’s agree among us what we will call intelligence and what we will not.

Is a machine that can correctly calculate different moves intelligent? We have no possibility of creating a machine that will be as intellectual as a human. I am telling you this as an expert in biocybernetics, which was the first profession I acquired. I graduated from a university in the profession of Biological, Medical Cybernetics.

Biocybernetics is about devices, cybernetic apparatuses in a living body.

We can make machines that are smarter than us, that think much faster than us, but if we are defining the concept of “intelligence,” it seems that this is impossible because intelligence is a characteristic that is given to us from above and we cannot precisely create the same characteristic in a mechanical or biological material.

Therefore machines will never be wiser than humans. Yes, they may be smarter, but they will not be wiser. They will perform calculations faster, will operate without errors and the like, but they will not be able to be more intellectually wiser than a person.

Comment: Accordingly they have no soul.

My Response: Certainly. A soul is a part of the Creator from above.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/15/19

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Question: Is it possible to heal loneliness?

Answer: Yes. Loneliness is actually a blessing, but we just need to make sure that loneliness doesn’t lead us to all sorts of unnecessary and undesirable consequences. Because if lonely people suffer from their loneliness, they are ready to do anything. They can become radical extremists and so on, and they can also engage in drug abuse and commit suicide.

We need to look at different kinds of loneliness. If it is intellectual loneliness, it is a blessing for a person and for humanity. If it is not intellectual but scientific, it can also be a blessing, although today’s science is conducted increasingly more in groups. But if it is psychiatric, psychological loneliness, it should be looked into and we need to help a person balance it somehow.

Everything depends on whether a person feels comfortable being lonely. When my loneliness is invaded, it is very hard for me. I can stand a person for a while and then I can’t do it anymore. I need to leave, to retire, to be by myself, to be alone.

Question: What is correct loneliness?

Answer: Correct loneliness is that which leads to one’s internal development.

I understand a person as an entity, each one spends part of his time totally on his own, inside himself, contemplating and reflecting on different matters. He spends a small part of his time with others. On the whole he “lies” when he is with others, and tries to make a certain impression and thus acts and presents a different person, not himself.

How can a person not be lonely? It is possible to make him not feel lonely if you educate him correctly. It is possible to educate a person at any age. It means that you need to show him that he can gain from the right form of loneliness.

If he understands that only by the right connection with another person can he reveal the upper world, transcend the boundaries of life and death, of his own existence, it already sounds enticing.

Question: What does the right connection with another come down to and how can it be attained?

Answer: The right connection is when one person seemingly dwells in another. This is what is referred to by “make your desire the desire of another.” By doing so, when I exit myself and dwell in another, which means that I begin to work on the desires of another and to fill them instead of filling my own desires, by using my whole physical and creative potential in order to fill another, I seemingly move to dwell in him. I seemingly begin to feel that life flows through him.

This is a totally different life; this is spiritual life. Why is it spiritual if it is a person like me? It is because I become another by trying to feel him instead of myself, which means that I exit myself. It is as if my body dies, and I with all my intellect move to dwell inside him. This is where a person can exit his own body.

Question: Can it be any other person, like a donor, in order to feel that I am alive, happy and fulfilled?

Answer: Yes. By moving to dwell in another you roam in a totally different space.

Question: And this is the remedy for loneliness?

Answer: It is not only the remedy for loneliness, but the remedy for death. It is a remedy that makes you immortal, in order to attain perfection and to ascend above yourself, above your ego.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/27/19

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Question: “Psychology,” translated from Greek, is the study of the soul. In Hebrew, it sounds like Torat ha-Nefesh. Kabbalah is studying the concept of Neshama (soul). Still, there is a difference between Neshama and Nefesh. I would like to know what is that difference?

Answer: Neshama is a common soul, the totality of all our desires that raise a person to a level opposite to the nature of our world, the level of bestowal, love, unification. Kabbalah deals with the opposite of the originally created egoistic quality of man.

Question: Can we say that Nefesh is something of my individuality and Neshama is something in common?

Answer: If you do not consider that there are levels of Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida in Kabbalah, but simply take the feeling of a person within the framework of our world, then this can be called the nature of Nefesh (soul), i.e., the egoistic soul of every person in our world.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/15/21

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Question: Could you please explain a couple of your unfinished Kabbalistic haiku. What thought did you put into them?

Constantly waiting,
holding my breath,
here it comes…

What is this “it”?

Answer: It is different for everyone. Let’s say inspiration.

Inspiration to rise to the level of a muse. In order to fill up with fresh air. And from there you are already able to embody some of the rudiments of thoughts and feelings that would open up more and become more tangible, with the ability to express them, put them into words, and clothe them in something.

Question: Do you mean that when you write or speak, you need this living air to be filling you?

Answer: What would I write otherwise?!

Question: Is there no point otherwise?

Answer: It is not that there is no point, it is impossible!

Question: What is the living air that makes you write and gives you the ability to write?

Answer: If I feel an inner pressure within myself, then I write.

Today I cannot write, already for several years I cannot write. No one needs it. What is the point? When everything is already clear, what needs to be done, but people are downhearted.

Question: You cannot write, but you can speak. I see it in the way you speak and the way people react. People hear more and more of what you say. Maybe one quality has turned into another?

Answer: We live in a time when, of course, people are changing involuntarily. I am sure that we are now at a stage where, maybe, in another year or two, they will feel that they have to fly out of themselves, that it is impossible to keep within themselves like this anymore.

Question: A bird in a cage?

Answer: Yes. They will feel the need to fly somewhere out of this body, out of this limitation, out of all this.

Question: When you say “fly out of the body,” what does it mean?

Answer: It means that I want to live with other goals, other symbols, ones that are not limited. Our egoism suffocates us. We do not understand this, but it suffocates us. We just have to break away from it completely! But this is not possible.

This is not possible in the usual ways. But if we really want to, then we will blow up whatever is holding us back, these forces, and break out of them. We will break out.

I am sure that this will happen. However, not through our own efforts, but with the upper force of nature, which we will be able to summon after all so that it would break our limits and pull us out.

This is like birth, the way a newborn comes out of its mother. After all, this is practically an animalistic action, and she pushes him out because life can no longer remain inside her, it must already be free and exist outside. I hope that we will get through it all.

These are labor pains. This is what we are waiting for, and we do not have them in ourselves. We are waiting for when they will come, appear, and begin to squeeze us out of this world into a new world.

Comment: You really are a poet. And a romantic.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/5/21

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