Question: Can we say that Kabbalah is the psychology of the soul?

Answer: No. Kabbalah is everything! And the soul, if we are talking from a wider point of view, is all in all some kind of feeling.

A person believes that the soul is his inner experiences and concerns, but this is simply the vital force that acts within him and makes it possible for him to ascend. To a particular degree this force also exists in animals.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, the soul is called our egoistic desire, which with the help of the upper Light we correct into its opposite desire, into an altruistic desire, and this desire works with an intention to bestow to others, instead of receiving.

The soul is a person’s movement away from himself toward the outside, the ability to bestow, to love others without any personal benefit.

If you attain this characteristic, which must work for a very long time, it means that you have a soul. If you don’t have this property, then there is no soul.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

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Question: How do you feel about euthanasia? There is a new invention: a machine that allows terminally ill patients to die completely painlessly and in just a few seconds. And the person can be buried right away, right in this machine. How do you feel about such an exit from life: easy, calm, without fear?

Answer: In principle, I cannot say anything. It is a personal decision. Death is always painful, always unpleasant. Today, many people take advantage of a variety of options to move on to the next world painlessly. But this is just one point of view.

From another point view, Baal HaSulam used to say that, if possible, it is worth trying not to avoid this pain. It’s difficult to talk like this, but I have to tell people this because this pain is anti-egoistic. It cleanses a person.

We need to make sure that an individual has already crossed over into a different life before he leaves this one. Then, parting with this life will not be painful for him—he has left and that’s it.

Let’s hope that we are now approaching a time when humanity is capable of discovering this possibility for itself, then it will be a simple, calm transition from one life to another.

In principle, euthanasia is not necessary. If I already feel the next state, then I can just allow my body to die. I observe its death from afar and this isn’t painful for me in any way. It isn’t frightening or sad. I am already living within my next body—my spiritual body, the body of the soul.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 12/14/17

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Question: Do Kabbalists have such a thing as spiritual pain? Can the soul of a person who lives in the awareness that there is none else besides Him hurt?

Answer: If a person has a soul, then it can be in pain. And the soul is a quality of bestowal and love for one’s neighbor. Therefore, from the point of view of Kabbalah, pain in the soul is that I cannot realize my sincere and kind feelings toward others.

This can be likened to how parents want to do something good for their child, but they cannot because the child resists.

Question: What does a person mean when he says that his soul hurts?

Answer: An ordinary person does not have a soul! It is simply that when a person’s nervous system is stressed, the heart contracts as it pumps blood throughout the body. And people are used to saying their soul is in pain.

But this is not a soul. The soul is the quality of bestowal, and its pain is its inability to realize oneself in bestowal to others.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/20/17

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In the News (Daily Mail): “On October 25, Sophia, a delicate looking woman … made international headlines. She’d just become a full citizen of Saudi Arabia — the first robot in the world to achieve such a status.

“‘I am very honored and proud of this unique distinction. This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship,’ Sophia said …

“I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people. …

“Hanson said on the company website. ‘We envision that a rough symbiotic partnership with us, our robots will eventually evolve to become super intelligent genius machines that can help us solve the most challenging problems we face here in the world.’

“His creation echoes his thoughts. ‘I want to use my AI to help humans lead a better life,’ Sophia said. ‘Like design smarter homes, build better cities of the future.’”

My Comment: And later, will these robots discuss among them, “Should we revoke man’s citizenship?”

They will create a similar council and will reach the opinion, “Is there anything good about this miserable protein-based creature? We should revoke its citizenship. How is it any different from an animal? It isn’t. It just pollutes the environment and ruins our robots’ lives. We are pure, corrected, perfect, while man just poisons himself and the environment. We need to get rid of these people.”

Remark: Much is being said today about artificial intelligence, robots…

My Comment: A robot will never become human because it does not have a soul. The soul is not something that we can design or place in a body. Even if I were to take pieces of a human body and start connecting them in some way—connecting them to electrodes to enliven them with electricity or anything else—I won’t be able to enliven it to such an extent that it will become human rather than an animal.

That is, we can gather some kind of protein body out of natural elements, but we will never be able to connect a soul to that body. In other words, the question about the meaning of life and existence, what is inside of us, and besides, we have no idea how much that defines us as people, we will never be able to understand it or endow a robot with it.

Remark: But a robot is designed to make humanity happy.

My Comment: What can that unfortunate machine do to make humanity happier? Give it electrical power? Will it give to others the same way as it is connected to electrical power? How does it understand the notion of happiness?

Question: When will people become disillusioned with artificial intelligence, in robots?

Answer: Very soon. Humanity will become disillusioned with this faster than it can manufacture a batch of robots.

There is nothing far-sighted about this. Man doesn’t need it. I can make my life easier, but then very quickly I will be left with nothing to do and will virtually bring myself to the brink of extinction.

Question: By doing this are we setting up a dead-end for ourselves?

Answer: Of course, just as all of our achievements in any sort of endeavors will all eventually lead us to disappointment, and we will choose a different path, then a third and, so on.
[218565]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/6/17

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Question: Why is love always perceived as something elevated and beautiful and hatred as bad and evil?

Answer: This is natural because love evokes positive feelings in us and brings joy. As a rule, it does not cause pain and harm to anyone. A person is elevated through it.

It is not just about love between a man and woman. We are talking about love for children, for a neighbor, for nature, and for everything. Love is a positive feeling because it comes from the feeling of the correct attitude of the Creator toward the creatures.

However, in us, it clothes in our egoism and therefore turns into something opposite— into love for oneself and no more for anyone and anything else. It manifests itself on all levels: food, sex, family, wealth, power, fame, and knowledge.

Therefore, love dressed in egoism can be very cruel. It manifests itself in completely opposite qualities, in hatred for everything, the opposite to this love. However, this is just in our world.

And if we are talking about the upper state of love, there love is above our egoism, the same way it is in the external nature, like in the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

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Remark: Humanity has always tried to understand what a soul is, why people react to everything differently, why they perceive the world exactly in this way and not another. The study of this led to the development of psychology.

My Comment: For thousands of years, Kabbalists have very seriously studied what a soul is and attained it. They not only conducted research and wrote books, but they revealed it from their own experience, absolutely reliably.

But due to the fact that humanity could not attain the soul, it invented religions that promised a person immortality for performing certain actions in this world.

In fact, in order to become immortal, we must exit our egoism because it destroys us, swallows us into itself. Rising above it, we acquire the quality of bestowal, exit into the next dimension, and thus begin to really feel immortality.

A person can reach this in our world, in this life, now—he does not need to die at all to experience it. This is the purpose of Kabbalah. Study it and you will see how close this can be to you.
[218323]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

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Question: What can a person do if during his entire life he never experienced love?

Answer: It depends for whom. If a person does not feel love for himself, this is some kind of abnormality, because love for ourselves is our nature. If he does not feel love for others, then this is natural and he is a normal, healthy person.

Question: Why do some say in response to the phrase “love your neighbor as yourself”: “I do not love myself very much, so I will not love others very much either”?

Answer: Try to love others the way you love yourself and you will see how much you love yourself. You will suddenly discover that you love yourself more and more every day.

Question: Is love a state, a feeling, or some kind of quality, a force, in a person?

Answer: Love is a feeling when I feel I belong to myself. The force of belonging to yourself is called love.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

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Question: Is the collection of our feelings and emotions predetermined or can they be developed? And if so, who develops them: the individual or society?

Answer: During the course of one’s life, a person does not choose anything; he does not have freewill. He gradually moves through various experiences that are given to him so that he will eventually acquire a certain quantity and quality of experiences and arrive at their correct differentiation and realization.

This can go on for many lifetimes until he accumulates the necessary quantity of experiences. And then he comes to Kabbalah.

The set of all the person’s collection feelings and reactions to different events is determined in advance. There is nothing random on any level of nature, not even the smallest detail. But for the individual, it is confusing: it seems like he does something, influences something, then suddenly something accidentally happens. There are no accidents; everything is completely predetermined!

Question: So, a thought is a product of a desire within me. Am I only able to think about what I want?

Answer: Yes. Thoughts always steer you toward new fulfillment. What you want is what you think about.

Question: Sometimes some strange thoughts come into my head, over which I have no control. Let’s say, I am sitting in a lesson and suddenly I remember how six years ago I sailed on a ship or drove somewhere in a car. It is not clear where these thoughts come from?

Answer: There is a continuous rearrangement, classification, connection, and ordering of our thoughts that goes on within us—there is nothing random in this process. It is possible that it seems completely incomprehensible or unnecessary to you, but it just seems that way. In reality, it is not “the ship” or the “six years ago,” but rather those data that are recorded in specific compartments of the sensory and mental memory so as to ultimately lead you to some spiritual sensation.

Question: How do you work with this?

Answer: You don’t. You must continue to move forward only with what is presented to you in the given moment. And these are not disturbances, these are what there is in this moment. Do not pay attention and against the background of all this, continue to focus only on one thing: sorting out your thoughts, your feelings, and aiming them toward the goal to connect with others in order to reveal the general force of unity called the Creator.

Then you will enter a level where everything will open to you and you will understand all the details, all the connections, everything that exists.
[217247]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

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Question: What are feelings from the Kabbalistic viewpoint?

Answer: A feeling is a sensation in the desire.

Desire is the matter of all of creation, and the sensation inside the desire is called feeling. Since all of creation is one differentiated, integral desire, then all that exists inside it is feelings.

We are not talking just about the universe here, but about all the worlds, about the entire, vast creation. There are two kinds of feelings found there, hatred and love, and we exist between them.

Therefore, we must see how to differentiate them, on what basis do we make a verdict: the feeling that I treat with hatred or love, whether the feeling itself is called “hatred” or “love,” or do I determine how it will be in relation to a certain sensation? In other words, it is a science about feelings.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

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Remark: They say that a person who remains in history has found eternity. Indeed, for example, such people as Plato or Spinoza have been dead for a long time, but we remember their names.

My Comment: What does it mean—eternity? Material reality is just an illusion; it does not exist.

Our world will exist until we reach the upper world. As soon as humanity begins to rise in its mass to the spiritual world, our world will evaporate, dissolve as in fog, and cease to exist.

You will understand this when entering the ladder of attaining the upper worlds. Remaining in our world, you will see that this really has to happen—our material world will evaporate in the future because it exists only in our sensations.

Remark: But meanwhile people are making every effort to somehow leave their mark in history, in any form.

My Comment: What is left for them? In this way their egoism seeks to establish their “I.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/16/17

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