Question: There is physical pain, torture, suffering, solitary confinement, and still a person gets out of prisons, out of these tortures, and can live up to the age of 120 as a healthy person. And then there is this mental stress, and that is it, life ends. What is it, why is it so?

Answer: Because our body is adapted to physical suffering, but it is not adapted to sensory and moral suffering. We can’t stand it.

Question: Why? After all, the body is healthy.

Answer: Because it is above our natural way of life, our body.

Question: So some higher function is disrupted, but the earthly function remains in order?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So I’m leaving with a healthy body, roughly speaking?

Answer: People existed in conditions that we cannot imagine.

Question: And then bam, that’s it. Is there some higher component in us?

Answer: Yes, life can be lived if you have a purpose; if you can raise this goal above suffering and limitations, then you can exist.

Question: So you’ve grabbed hold of this spirit and hold on, but your body can give up?

Answer: The body will not give up if you hold on to this power above life.

Question: So you connect it?

Answer: Sure, a person should see a goal ahead of him and what he is suffering for, in short.

Question: Will the body hold up then?

Answer: Yes. The problem with us in our lives is that we don’t see this goal today.

Question: Does this also apply to a simple goal? For example, centenarians live somewhere, they have some simple goal, they hold on to it, and the body holds together with them. Does this apply to a simple goal, not just a high one?

Answer: Yes, he has his sheep, goats or a dog.

Comment: The air, nature.

My Response: Yes and all that.

Question: And does he live?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: There are a lot of films about old women, old men who live to be 100 years old, living somewhere in a forest, in the mountains, who knows where. And how do you think they’re holding up? And they’re holding on. And somehow, they work that way.

Amazing! And there is no need for hospitals or doctors.

My Response: No, if she gets up and knows that she definitely needs to do different things, then all this overlaps.

Question: Even to feed yourself?

Answer: Yes.
[340206]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/23/24

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Comment: Science has debunked the concept of death. According to science, a person’s life does not end with death. Some scientists say that consciousness persists even after death.

My Response: Where can this be proven, shown, understood, or felt?

Comment: They say the cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, emits waves for about 20 seconds after death.

My Response: So we live for another 20 seconds. Big deal!

Question: Why study the experience of death if all paths ultimately lead to nowhere?

Answer: It is very intriguing. What if I find something that tells me I am immortal? Then I would see my life in a completely different way!

Question: Is there a concept of death in Kabbalah?

Answer: No, in reality, there is no death. There is no time. How can there be death? There is only a transition between states, nothing more.

Question: How does a transition from one state to another occur in spirituality? Is it also cyclical, like life – death – life?

Answer: In spirituality there is no such thing as we see in our world! Living, biological matter has nothing to do with spirituality. It may live or die in our perception, but it is entirely unrelated to the spiritual. We do not sense spiritual matter, and it is not connected to the physical. Does the death or life of the physical body say anything about the spiritual?!

Question: Is there such a concept as a “spiritually dead person”? What does it mean?

Answer: A person is spiritually dead because there is no spirit in them. Spirit refers to the quality of bestowal to others, not the quality of receiving from others.

Our earthly life is about the desire to receive from everything around us, in every form—on the still, vegetative, animal, and human levels.

Spiritual life, on the other hand, is when we do not take from outside, but give from within, when we try to share, help, and radiate outward. This is called spiritual life. Change one life for the other and you will discover what immortality is.

Comment: Physicists say that a part of you will live on for a very long time. And that part is your energy. They say that according to the first law of thermodynamics, the energy that sustains life is preserved and cannot be destroyed. Beautiful, is it not?

My Response: Very beautiful, but it does not exist at all. This is because our world does not exist; it exists only in our imagination. Therefore, everything we perceive as bodies, our lives, birth, development, death, all this is only our imagination, within us, and nothing outside.

Everything we see around us, all this vast, solid existence, is only our imagination.

Question: Then what is a person?

Answer: A person, too, is the same. Within us is a kind of mechanism that we program in a specific way. It spins the images of our world in which we supposedly live. Just as you sleep and see a dream in which you seem to have experienced something, so, too, this life is like a dream.

And then you wake up: “Oh! Was it a dream or life?” No, it was so-called life, which is, in essence, a dream.

That is all there is. Our current life is simply a state from which we have not yet awakened.

Question: Then perhaps people in their quest to uncover the mystery of death are searching for real life?

Answer: That is exactly what they are doing. They just do not know how to find it. They are seeking new adventures within this dream.

Question: What, then, is true life?

Answer: To wake up. And you can only wake up when you start to rise above your egoism. This is what Kabbalah teaches—how to uncover the secret of life, how to wake up and truly live.

Question: What then is the secret of immortality, not of the physical body, but of the spiritual?

Answer: The physical body does not exist either. It exists only in our imagination, just like this entire world. That is why the world is called “Olam” from the word “ne’elam” (hidden), and the word “ha’alama” (concealment), a shadowy state. That is our current condition.

Question: How then can a person pass through these “holograms,” uncover this life, and achieve immortality?

Answer: To do this one must engage in the method of their own resurrection.

When a person begins to see life not in themselves, but in others, themselves in others, this is how they awaken.
[253196]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/22/19

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My teacher, Rabash, passed away in my arms. I did everything I could to keep him alive, but what is beyond our power is simply beyond our power.

We must help a person because we never truly know the final verdict concerning them. That is why we are obligated to make every effort to ease their life. But the moment they are gone, that is it.

After his passing, I shut myself away for several months, dedicating myself completely to the study of Kabbalah, cutting myself off from everyone except him. Though, to be honest, I was always only with him anyway.

I didn’t feel, and still don’t feel, a significant difference whether he is physically near me or not.
When I was a young student, it was very important for me to be physically close to him, to listen, to see, to ask questions, to feel my connection to him. It gave me a sense of security, a way forward, confidence in myself “at his expense,” so to speak.

But over time, I became more or less independent, relatively speaking, of course. Still, I have no illusions about the fact that even today, we are in contact. I feel it absolutely clearly, just as one can feel a close person nearby, perhaps in the next room or standing behind you.

The thing is, there’s an image you form inside yourself from his physical presence, impressions, and expressions toward you. And then, there is his spiritual presence in relation to you when you create his spiritual image. In this way, you remain connected.

Question: But when people say, “I’m still in contact with my teacher,” it immediately brings to mind an image of a ghost hovering around, whispering, “Tell him this… Let him do that…”

Answer: That’s all just human nonsense.

Your next level, where you connect with him, exists within you just like everything else.
You cannot connect with him unless you yourself rise to the level of souls, unless you reveal the collective soul from within your own point in the heart. In it, you feel all other souls, absolutely everything!

To what extent depends on your level, but you do begin to feel it, like a small child feeling the world around them. There is still some contact.
[340442]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Death of Rabash…” 4/10/10

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Question: You once said that a friend is an obstacle in me that appears to me as someone close to me. What does it mean?

Answer: I do not know in what context this was said at the time. I probably meant that all the people I see existing around me are actually pieces of my soul.

And when I achieve my final correction, and my perception of the world is corrected, I will discover that there is no one but me and the Creator. And everything that I feel today as inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human will turn out to be parts of my desire that represent a desire created by the Creator, a desire in which I will be completely similar to the Creator.

In the same way, you will reveal the entire universe within yourself as your integral part. And so will absolutely each of us without in any way preventing others from achieving the same feeling and revelation.

Perhaps this is what I meant when I said that my friend is my obstacle. In other words, until I discover him as my integral part, he is an obstacle to me because my still uncorrected state divides us into me and him.

Comment: But you were talking about my attitude, not toward any person, but specifically toward a friend. Let us say he may physically look a certain way, but it is my distortion that depicts him. That is how we perceive each other at the moment.

My Response: How is this so?! Am I interested in your hair, eyes, and everything else? What does that have to do with what is inside you? Am I worshiping idols?!

I strive to connect only with a person’s aspiration toward the Creator because it is his true, eternal, innermost desire that will not change and will only grow. And everything else in him will change. And in general, you should not relate to a friend based on some earthly information or passport data.

If I want to discover the true creation for myself, to enter the spiritual world, then I am dealing only with a person’s soul and in no way with his body. What difference does it make to me what kind of body he has, whether he has arms and legs, or not? I want to reach a state where it does not matter to me whether he is in his animalistic body or already beyond it.
[339500]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. The Whole Problem Is in Me,” 4/13/10

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Comment: Thanks to digital medicine, we will become healthier and live longer. Artificial intelligence will take over burdensome household chores and work functions, and if we want, will be able to travel through virtual worlds, and so on.

We are developing artificial intelligence, robots that take on a human appearance, adaptive control systems, etc.

On the other hand, humans are adapting themselves to artificial intelligence—implanted chips, programs, and artificial body parts. Along with the development of machine technologies, humans are also being turned into a machine. Will there be any difference between them?

Answer: And how does a robot differ from an ordinary person in our world who also behaves according to certain canons acquired from nature or from the society in which he grew up and developed? How does one differ from the other? I see no difference. You can make a mechanical toy that will be completely human-like. Only if you cut it open will you see wires there.

We can program absolutely everything. I can create a suitable spouse for myself, one who will fully meet all the parameters of a person and of a woman. Only she will not have a soul.

Question: Will a person still have the desire to develop what is called the soul?

Answer: I think that after the period of revealing the robot in himself, when a person realizes that he is no different from a robot, he will start to wonder what makes him different.

And then he will begin to uncover the existence of a special substance in himself called “soul.” It has to be revealed. It is in its embryonic state, but it is in every person. And he will work on it. And everything else will be provided. For some, pizza and Coca-Cola will be delivered at home by drones. And someone else will connect to a power outlet to fill up instead of pizza and cola.

But living people will differ from artificial ones in that they will need to correct their soul. And this will become their inner need that calls out from the depths of their being and demands realization.

Question: That is, after playing with toys enough, will they come to the genuine question?

Answer: These are not toys. They must put their external animal life in order. We develop through the levels of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and humans. Only then will it be the turn of the development of the human. In the meantime, we are not yet at this level, because we can nurture the human in ourselves only when we begin to develop the soul.
[221615]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/7/18

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Kabbalah and religion are completely opposite concepts. Kabbalah teaches that one must change oneself, whereas religion suggests that performing external actions is sufficient to achieve everything necessary in life and you to attain paradise and all kinds of blessings in the next world.

According to Kabbalah, heaven and hell are states experienced by a person in our world while being in the body. However, one has the opportunity to rise above his body so that it no longer controls him. In this case he will perceive reality beyond the body and will not need to die to experience this.

If one does not reach a state above the body, his death only leads to the most minimal spiritual state, which cannot even be called spiritual. It is merely a state of some detachment from egoism but not the possession of a spiritual quality.

The focus is on the soul of a person who desires to correct it. In our world there is nothing higher than this, and if a person strives for it, you cannot prohibit him.

This is the issue between Kabbalists and the religious who put up a barrier: “Follow the rules up to this point, but do not engage in the development of the soul.”
[337921]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Comment: Scientists have often asked people who know they are about to die: “What would you change in your life?” Reflecting on their lives, people are ready to change everything: relationships, actions, even thoughts.

Is it worth reaching the end to confess one’s own mistakes to oneself?

Answer: On one hand even in the last minutes, reevaluation and reflection on the path taken makes sense. But on the other hand, what prevents us from periodically conducting such self-assessments?

Such exercises would help us and change us for the better. After all, a person would have time to “work on the mistakes.”

We need to draw conclusions in advance, at the beginning of life and not at the end when we can only regret. This is what the science of Kabbalah invites us to do.
[224116]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/27/18

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 19

What Is Correct to Seek: Recognition of Evil or the Feeling of the Creator’s Greatness?

The most correct course of action in order to progress is to attach, cling, and bond with the upper force, the Creator, as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes in his article “There Is None Else Besides Him.” He also writes that half an hour each day should be spent in self-reflection, not looking up, but looking within. Also, even when looking within, we should check what we have sensed, examined, and seen in the Creator.

A routine inward focus on ourselves is called “a complete descent to the level of this world.” It brings about despair, not progress. We are where our thoughts are. Who are we? Our thoughts. If our thoughts are focused on materialism, we are in materialism. If we are focused on Godliness, we are in Godliness. That is what we call “ascents and descents.”

It is thus beneficial to be as attentive as possible to Godliness. As Kabbalist Baruch Shalom Ashlag (RABASH) writes, the group should work to elevate Godliness constantly and focus on how to raise the Creator’s greatness. We should not think about ourselves but about the greatness of the Creator. Why? It is because we become inspired by what we receive from above.

Certainly, we should not neglect the inner goal and the desire for self-recognition of evil, but we should not linger in the negative for too long as it causes despair, which is unhelpful. Only connection with the Creator is helpful. By continually punishing ourselves for being bad, we actually distance ourselves from correction by punishing the Creator. Thus, expressions of joy, awakening, and elevation of spirit are signs that we are moving in the correct direction. Conversely, sadness, weakness, self-punishment, and guilt are signs of stagnation, not progress.

This is the general approach to advancing in the direction of Godliness. If there is a healthy spirit of struggle and overcoming in the group, everyone will abandon their doubts with more ease and speed. Doubts arise constantly and must constantly be set aside. It might seem endless, but there is an end, which comes after several years of effort. The time required is shortening. In earlier times, it took twenty or thirty years to reach Godliness, but as time presses on, more developed souls enter the world and the pace of progress accelerates so that today it is possible to reach Godliness in just a few years.

From a Talk on the Article “What Is Preparation for the Reception of the Torah?” 5/16/2002

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 18

What Is the Difference Between the Reception of the Torah and the Exodus from Egypt?

The Exodus from Egypt is the preparation of the vessels. We take vessels from Egypt, and opposite the point in the heart, we start perceiving the evil within us. “The children of Israel groaned from the labor.” The entire process we undergo culminates in freedom from Pharaoh’s control, i.e., from the control of such vessels and desires. We thereby become ready to confront the doubts, which is considered reaching Mount Sinai.

Without the Exodus from Egypt, it is impossible to speak of receiving the Torah. We need to have the vessels from Egypt, and then we can leave Egypt and reach Mount Sinai with those vessels. Moreover, even as we receive the Torah at Mount Sinai, when the point of Keter—Moses—receives the Torah, the point of Malchut forms an idol, which symbolizes the people waiting at the foot of the mountain seized by doubts about the spiritual work, unable to overcome them, ultimately creating an idol.

It is quite complicated. The process of receiving the Torah is a very long journey, and further corrections are needed afterward. It is due to the Torah arriving in two stages, one following the other:

• The first stage: correction of the vessels.
• The second stage: filling of the vessels.

The process thus does not end with leaving Egypt and the reception of the Torah. When we receive the Torah, we only start refining our vessels. We begin to correct them during the forty years in the desert until we reach the Land of Israel. Before reaching the final correction, there are still many challenges to face, and their purpose is to develop a sense of the true, eternal, and perfect state that is already within us.

In essence, this entire process is a way of opening our vessels so that we can increasingly feel our place. The process only affects the vessels of perception within us. Nothing external changes, only our perception.

It is astonishing how the reception of Godliness is ultimately an inner discovery and revelation; we find out where we truly are and what is within. We can liken it to someone unconscious who gradually wakes up to know where they are. Nothing changes externally, only our awareness and feeling.

The stages of the vessels’ sensitivity in us, which are stages of awareness and awakening, are called the “Exodus from Egypt,” “Mount Sinai,” “Reception of the Torah,” and other names. They are stages that we undergo on our spiritual journey. The change only plays out within us, in our inner vessels. On the outside, nothing changes. We are the ones who change.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 17

What Preparation Is Required for the Reception of the Torah?

The preparation for the reception of the Torah involves overcoming the many doubts that arise in us. We each have our own doubts, despairs, helplessness, indifference, a decline in the importance of attaining Godliness, and so on. We thus require substantial and varied efforts to overcome such doubts. We need to surround ourselves with supportive resources: a society, books, daily routines, and family. Doing so takes a long time and all such endeavors constitute preparation for the reception of the Torah. Ultimately, the main goal is to overcome the doubts and uncertainties that confront us.

Many people come to learn, but as soon as they face some difficulties or even a slight decrease in the desire that they initially received, which was meant to be strengthened from below by the effort they put in, they lose interest in learning. Then they resist the study and leave. Such people lack a deep enough need to feel that it is “better to die than to live.” In other words, they can still find sufficient satisfaction in various worldly pleasures: money, honor, knowledge, sex, food, and sports. However, this is also part of the preparation—there is no other way.

Spirituality is wholeness. What is wholeness? It requires a whole desire. If a person’s desire is well aligned with receiving the Torah, with the revelation of light and Godliness, then we receive the Torah. If not, we are still incomplete in our preparations.

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