Why is it customary to visit the grave of Rabbi Shimon (RASHBI), the author of The Book of Zohar, as if there is some special energy there? Such a place serves as a “point of connection” with RASHBI, who was the greatest kabbalist.

If a person seeks to establish a connection with him, places like this give him a greater chance. Those who truly desire to connect with RASHBI’s soul and make the necessary effort can achieve this.

Connection is possible from any location, not just at the gravesite, but the opportunity is greater there according to the spiritual law of “root and branch.” When a Kabbalist is freed from his biological body, which added egoism to him, he becomes even holier, even closer to the Creator. That is why people come to the grave. This applies to all Kabbalists, but RASHBI is beyond comparison; he is far above the rest.

Connection with the soul of a Kabbalist can also be established through studying his writings, and what will work more strongly depends on the root of a person’s soul. But of course if one never studies the Kabbalist’s works and only visits his grave, no true connection will be made. A connection to the original source is necessary.

If a Kabbalist is no longer in a physical body, a person can go to his grave and ask to draw closer to him. The same request can be made while studying Kabbalistic texts. How powerful the result will be depends on a person’s spiritual root and on the intention behind his desire to connect with the Kabbalist.

The root of a soul is determined by the Creator, but it is up to the person how sincerely he prays and strives to reach the point of connection. Only prayer can help persuade the Creator to actualize the root of a person’s soul. One should ask for the opportunity to connect with the spiritual root of RASHBI.

There are many Kabbalists, but RASHBI is a unique soul, intimately connected with the Creator and related to all souls. If you pray and form a special spiritual Kli (vessel) within yourself, you may receive illumination from his unique spiritual root.

Much depends on the root of a person’s soul, his connection with the Kabbalist, with his writings, with the place of his holy burial, but how can one know the root of his own soul? Ask the Creator for understanding, and perhaps you will receive an answer and reveal the root of your soul.
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From a conversation with the students 5/30/2025, “Conversations on the Road”

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Question: What does it mean that intention is not connected to our body? What is the intention?

Answer: Essentially intention is the way I relate to the Creator, to this one and only force acting in the world. Do I distinguish it? Do I wish to see and feel it? And finally, do I wish to relate to Him the same way He relates to me?

The only problem is how to get along with Him; there is nothing and no one else to get along with. In order to match Him in qualities, I need the whole world! That is why the soul was shattered into many parts.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Why do you need corporeal life if you are below the level of intention? To reach this level by your free choice! Therefore, before attaining the correct intentions, you must be in a state where you have nothing in common with them.

At the same time, you must have some sense of existence, and with this sense, you gradually come to understand intentions and enter what is called the spiritual world, that is, into the development of intention, and continue to engage with it.

You are the one who does this. That is why there must be a certain preliminary reality, called “this world,” from which you begin your independent movement.

But once you’ve acquired this tool having the Rosh, Toch, and Sof of a Partzuf, you continue onward with them, and you no longer need this world. Can any physical actions here still help you? Regardless of whether they can or not, the existence of this world does not interfere with your living in intention, in the spiritual world.

Even now, you can sit here with everything you possess and, at the same time, be in Atzilut with a fully functioning Partzuf. And conversely, you could be only there, without your physical body.

That already depends on your role in relation to all other souls: How much you must be in contact with them, what your function is with respect to them, and whether you must remain in a physical body.

If you must, then even if you yourself no longer need to reincarnate, you will still do so. These are different kinds of calculations.

This is what happens with great Kabbalists. You see, one and the same soul from Adam, through Abraham, Moses, Rabbi Shimon, the Ari, and Baal HaSulam keeps reincarnating. Does it need that for itself?
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/12/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: Why is intention not related to the physical body?

Answer: It is because the physical body is the desire to receive. The desire to receive cannot give. Thus, its action can be one of two things: either to restrict itself and not receive, or to receive. What happens to the desire to receive when the property of Bina is added to it?

Comment: The ability to give is added.

My Response: How is that? Can the desire to receive give? Can the desire to receive start giving when the second stage enters the fourth stage? It can make a restriction, but it can never give! Only the intention behind the action is added to it.

Therefore we say that in both education and correction, we in fact pay attention not to the desire to receive, but only to intentions. That is what is important to us. To the extent of our intention, we take the desire to receive and combine them together.

I use the desire to receive only to the extent that I can increase the intention. What does the world exist for? For the intention or for the desire to receive? For the intention! To constantly nurture it. At the same time, the desire to receive is matter, raw material. As it belonged to the Creator, so it does now. The creation is the one who builds an intention above the desire to receive.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2025, Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: When a Kabbalist transitions to another dimension, can he observe what is happening in this world without his body; meaning, can he observe the process from the side and influence it?

Answer: Naturally! But not in the form of bodies, but in the form of forces.
You see bodies. For example, right now you see me on your computer screen. But what if you could see me, not on the screen, but inside the hard drive? That is where all the information is!

Why do you need to look at the monitor at all? Look straight at the hard drive! That is all. Why do you need five senses? Why do you need these “casings and coverings”? Inside the electrons, that is where the upper spiritual life is. That is how a Kabbalist sees.

There is a complete picture, and it is all in spirituality. Our world is included within spirituality.

For example, when we talk about small children, we speak about their desires, efforts, and qualities and not their outer appearance. We speak from the level at which they are relevant to us, the level on which they connect with us.

So all the attributes of our world are completely absent in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, we perceive only egoistic forces.

Comment: But on the other hand, you always bring the spiritual world down to the level of our world.

My Response: That is because there is no real difference! The only difference is in how a person perceives: one sees this way, another sees that way. But the worlds themselves, they do not exist.

Question: Right now, we are speaking through a screen, not telepathically. We are communicating, and this information is somehow reaching others. Why must it be this way?

Answer: So that we understand the necessity of the connection between us and begin to truly want to unite!
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Kabbalist out of Body” 9/7/10

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Happiness is the fulfillment of a person’s deepest desires. As a rule, it arises in contrast to a sense of dissatisfaction.

For example: hunger brings pleasure from food, separation leads to joy of reunion with a loved one, and so on. In other words, we are built in such a way that we can only experience the positive through the negative.

This raises the question: “Should we even strive for happiness if we must first go through suffering to later feel happy?”

The fact is that the Kabbalistic method allows a person to experience happiness simultaneously with the feeling of lack. That is, at the moment I taste something, I feel both longing for that taste and its fulfillment.

I do not have to separate this in time, first suffering and then receiving. This is why for people engaged in spiritual practice, there is no question of time. They exist beyond it, simultaneously experiencing states of suffering and fulfillment, hunger and satiation.

This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is: the wisdom of receiving! It teaches a person to receive what is desired, not in a month or a year, but at the very moment of desire. At the same time, two seemingly opposite states, minus and plus, coexist in harmony.

In our world, this does not exist. Here, there is one big minus, and we almost never receive the plus. But according to the Kabbalistic method, the very act of receiving pleasure awakens in us both the desire for it and its fulfillment.

Question: But how can we achieve this? How can we truly become happy in this world?

Answer: This is possible only when I am fulfilled, not independently, but through others. This is the patent for happiness, because I can never truly fulfill myself. However, if I feel and absorb the desires of others, then by fulfilling them, I fulfill myself, since their desires become mine. It turns out that I fulfill myself by existing in others.

The secret is that I step outside of myself, discover desires beyond me, accept them as my own, and fulfill them. That is, both the desire and its fulfillment exist outside of me, but this is precisely what constitutes my soul.

Question: Does this mean we also fulfill a person’s corporeal desires?

Answer: We satisfy all of a person’s desires but only to a certain extent. Corporeal desires are fulfilled only to the degree necessary for existence and no more. But spiritual desires are fulfilled to the extent that we strive to rise together, since my ascent and his ascent are interconnected and complement each other.

Thus, fulfilling the desires of others gives us a sense of happiness.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/22/14, Part 2

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We are getting to a state of radical re-evaluation of values. That is, what was valuable to me, for which I fought, lived, died, tried to put aside and pass on to future generations is all losing its value and is worth nothing today.

Question: What will truly be worth life or money?

Answer: Only thought.

Question: Doesn’t that seem too abstract for a person?

Answer: But what does a person have that is not abstract if he lives and dies? The most valuable is what he can take from one state, when living, to the state when dying, beyond death.

Question: Can he take his thoughts there?

Answer: Of course, he can. Thought is what remains with him.

Question: What kind of thought should one develop now so that it is valuable and necessary?

Answer: A positive attitude toward the world and others. It does not disappear. It stays with you constantly because it is not in your egoism, which dies with your body and decomposes, but in altruism, in the good qualities that you acquired during your earthly life. And then you fly away with them and enter a different space, the space of positive qualities and forces.

We exist to accumulate such positive emotions, thoughts, desires, urges, and aspirations, and leave the world with them.

I leave this world, having conveyed, as much as I could, a positive attitude toward the world, people, and life to my children and grandchildren, and to everyone possible.

Question: Do you think this is your mission and that of all of us?

Answer: Of course. But this is my opinion.

Question: But is this also the opinion of Kabbalists of all generations?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: And what I see now, as everyone writes in comments: evil, horror, hatred, division…

My Response: This pushes us to evaluate what we really need to reveal in our life, to collect and pass on, to teach the next generation.

Question: Is it like pushing away from this darkness and moving toward a good thought?

Answer: Yes, everything will be fine.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/15/20

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Question: Every 40 seconds a suicide occurs somewhere in the world. More than a million people take their own lives each year. Many of them are young people between the ages of 15 and 30.

They do not die in wars, although the grief from the loss of life is no less. Just look at how much of it there is today. This is not death from hunger or disease. Here a person who outwardly appears well-off and successful ends their life. What is this?

Answer: Emptiness. Emptiness—there is nothing. And such emptiness that it crushes you, tears you apart, and keeps you from sleeping. You cannot push it away, not even with drugs. And a person simply has no other way out.

We need to look at life correctly. We must take up the task of proper upbringing.

Question: What should a person come to?

Answer: To the meaning of life. And the meaning of life is understood when you cross the border between life and death. Only then can you truly weigh what is worth living for, when life itself means less to you than what it stands for. That is when you can rise above your egoism, above your own life.

Question: So when I do not cling to it, do not hold on to every desire?

Answer: No! Not just not holding on, you live by rejecting your egoism every moment and rising above it.

Every moment, you are above death, as if experiencing it. This is what it means to detach from our world and enter the upper world.

Comment: That is very difficult.

My Response: It is not difficult; it is a happy opportunity for all of us.

Question: So should I not value my egoistic life?

Answer: No! By no means! What is there to value?

A person who wants to attain true existence must despise life as it is in itself and value it only as the foundation, the base upon which to build a higher life. And a higher life is one that is beyond death—when at every moment you die in an animalistic sense and grow in a spiritual one.

Spiritual growth happens when you live outside yourself. Not for yourself, but beyond yourself. Whether for the Creator, for the system, for humanity, it does not matter. The main thing is to break free from your “self.”
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/12/18

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Question: What is the purpose of being born?

Answer: The purpose of being born? In principle, is unclear to a person. And so one sees neither a beginning nor an end. People perceive themselves only on an animalistic level: the birth of the physical body, the suffering of the physical body, some pleasures of the physical body, and the death of the physical body. Nothing more.

If we cannot rise above this, then we do not understand the meaning.

Question: So if we cannot rise above it, then this is the entire history of humanity: people are born, suffer, and die. But if we can or want to rise higher, then what does the history of humanity become?

Answer: Then we must detach from the physical body, rise above it, and not live by its desires and aspirations. Only then do we begin to feel what our spiritual body demands of us.

Question: So what does this formula turn into? If being born means rising above egoism, then what does suffering turn into?

Answer: It becomes separation from egoism, an ascent above it, and a perception of reality in a different way through bestowal, love, connection, and mutuality. Not through reception, as in the physical body, but through bestowal, as in the spiritual body.

Comment: It is very bitter for me that our earthly formula is “born, suffer, and die.”

My Response: And without this, there would be no other one. We would not be able to reach an eternal form through our own efforts and capabilities.

Question: So there must be an initial formula for us to realize it and want to break free from?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: But this has been going on for millennia! Millennia upon millennia we write volumes of history!

My Response: These are souls! What are history and books in comparison? They are nothing!

Question: So in the end, a person is born to live eternally. Is that right?

Answer: Of course. I believe we are gradually coming to this realization.

Comment: You seem more optimistic today. Do you really see that we…

My Response: No, my optimism comes from absolute pessimism about our world. I believe humanity will awaken and realize that this life alone is not worth living for.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/5/23

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Question: What is the difference in the perception of life by a Kabbalist and by an ordinary person?

Answer: The difference is in the point called “death.” For any person on this earth, everything is perceived below the level of death: he lives, and lives, and dies.

If he could imagine himself living in his body and at the same time living outside his deceased body, then he would roughly grasp that two layers of existence are simultaneously revealed to a Kabbalist: our world and the upper one, the next dimension, which exists end-to-end in our world on a different frequency.

And then naturally, the entire philosophy of life changes, the attitude toward oneself, toward others, toward the purpose of creation, toward human ideals, and toward his plans.

In principle, we do not understand that the most important thing that subconsciously exists in us and determines everything is the fear of death. It constantly drives us toward something. We create culture and science in order to forget ourselves and find some kind of salvation from fear.

We are constantly trying to escape from this question because if it arises in us, then life loses its meaning. Why give birth to children if everything ends, if everyone dies, because a birthday is also an approach toward death.

The most important question for humanity about its life and death is solved by Kabbalah, which reveals to a person the eternal, perfect existence during this animalistic life.

When he ascends to the next level and exists on both levels at the same time, that is when he can do magnificent things! He can truly exist correctly also on the earthly level, rationally, and relating to others in the right way because nothing restrains him anymore. The sensation of eternity completely covers all problems! Absolutely all of them!

That is, you begin to understand why everything exists. It is so that you could delve deeper and deeper into this eternity, into the sensation of the Creator, into the sensation of this unified, eternal, perfect, harmonious nature, to be able to merge with Him even more, to come to know Him, to become like Him. Then you begin to perceive your earthly existence as the realization of some higher possibility given to you.

There is no afterlife. If you have attained the spiritual world during this lifetime, you have attained it. And if not, you must return to the same state you are in now and continue your path.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Life or Death” 4/10/10

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