The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that our life is organized in a special way. On one hand we live in a physical body on the animal level, like all animals, with a limited number of years. But during our existence on this planet we receive an amazing opportunity to reach a higher degree of man, Adam, (Domeh – meaning similar) to the upper world that is eternal and perfect.

We can do it if we rise above our material body and start building a spiritual body, meaning a spiritual degree. The spiritual body is completely opposite to how we perceive ourselves today. It is really spiritual, that is, a force without matter. This force is built on the basis that we begin to treat each other completely differently than now.

Now we treat each other egoistically. Even love that we have for families and children is egoistic. After all, we love them because they are close to us and we feel our dependence on them. But if we can build an attitude to reality that is opposite to our egoism, we will begin to acquire the second force, the force of love and bestowal to others, and feel a new reality in it that is a network of connections.

If I come to the environment without the intention to use everyone maximally for my own benefit but change my attitude so that everyone would feel equally good, I see a different world, a world that is united, where all are connected with each other, with the force of love, unity, and mutual bestowal acting between us. And then I can change my perception, my system of thinking and evaluation, and feel myself existing in another world.

If my attitude, my way of thinking, and my perception change, I will see another reality. If I treat the entire world: stones, plants, animals, and humans as myself, seeing them as a unified system, then they all will become close to me. I will feel that I depend on them and they depend on me.

Suddenly I will stop feeling time because the flow of time is a fulfillment of some deficiencies, and I won’t have them anymore. I won’t need anything; all my needs will be in other people only. The concepts of time and space disappear. After all, space is defined by the distance between me and someone else, calculated according to how much I can receive from him for my own benefit.

And now it turns out that the opposite is true, I don’t care whose desire this is: mine, yours, hers…. When I don’t look at the world egoistically, the world begins to change dramatically. My perception of reality changes and I see what Kabbalists call the upper world.

If I treat everyone this way, I feel my body less and less, this animal inside, which is now my “I”. And even if this animal dies, the way it is accustomed in bodies, I won’t feel any loss. This is because I am already connected to everyone and live within them. I don’t live inside of my animal body taking care of it, but I am spread between all.

This new perception of the world through the power of bestowal and love presents a life on the degree called the upper world, eternal life outside of the body. The wisdom of Kabbalah gives us this opportunity by inviting us to engage in such a system of connection and reveal the upper world that is concealed from us now.

It is invisible until we acquire the qualities of bestowal and love. However, it actually exists here, next to us. There are people in our world who, while living in bodies like ours, feel a different connection between all the people: bestowal, endowment, and love.

This method was developed by Abraham and passed to the group of people gathered around him who later called themselves the people of Israel. Israel means straight to the Creator (Yashar-El), meaning our relationships, upbringing, and interaction are directed to the degree that is higher than our current life.

We must reach the degree of the spiritual world here and now, while we exist in the animal body, and so it is written, “You will see your world in this life.” And then a person feels that he has exited the limitations of his body and now lives eternal life. The spiritual world is right here; we just need to feel it!
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/5/16

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New Life 524 – The Wisdom of Kabbalah: What Is Correction Of The Soul?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

From the start, human beings were created with a desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment only for oneself, and this is called the ego. The ego motivates all of our actions.

For example, when we give to our children it fulfills our ego. Even people who help others, volunteer in hospitals and the like, get egoistic satisfaction. None of this is connected to the correction of the soul. The correction of the soul is building love above the egoism that is inherent in us.

To truly love means to develop love above the hatred that you discover in yourself for everyone who is not you. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for truly connecting to others, a method for building the soul with the help of a unique force. We learn how to awaken the “Light that Reforms,” a unique force inherent in nature that transforms hatred into love.

The work is carried out in a group, in a circle, in a workshop. Ten people together learn to reveal the force of love between them. Kabbalists explain the method and direct our development to the discovery of a new life, the soul. Then we discover that basically all of us are a single soul called Adam HaRishon (the first man).

That is how we become similar to the Creator. The Creator is nature. When Abraham discovered the general force of nature, the force of bestowal and love, he invited everyone to discover this along with him. The isolation that is mounting in our time testifies to the great need for discovering the soul. Isolation is derived from our ego.

Eternal life, the life of the soul, can exist only with love and bestowal, because it is unlimited.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 524 – The Wisdom of Kabbalah: What Is Correction Of The Soul?” 2/17/15

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New Life 523 – What Is A Soul?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The soul is a “portion of God from above” (Job 31:2); that is, the soul is part of the Divine. The higher power is good and benevolent; it is the infinite power of bestowal, love, and giving. A part of it is also called the soul.

There is no connection between the soul and our body. Our body is a body like the body of an animal. It is even possible to print it with a three-dimensional printer. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Adam (Man) is defined as similar to the force of bestowal and love.

The characteristic of love and bestowal that we build are the Adam in us or the body of the soul, and the Light of the soul enters into it. In our physical body there is no mind, no soul, or anything, but just the life force like in the bodies of animals.

To attain a soul, what is required is work on ourselves that is not simple, the building of the characteristics of love and bestowal. Our ego is self-love and the soul is the opposite characteristic, the characteristic of altruism.

Every person can attain a soul and reveal the Divinity, eternal life called “paradise.” And one can do this only during the course of his or her life in a body, when there is egoism. Only at this time is it possible to transform the egoism into altruism and attain the soul.

In attaining the soul, there are different levels, which are called: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and Yechida. In sum, this is 125 levels.

The soul, the desire to love, is called the body of the soul, the Kli, and the fulfillment that is felt in it is called the Light of the soul. The Light of the soul is enormous pleasure, greater than everything that all people together have ever experienced. Until we have prepared a Kli that is accommodated to absorbing this pleasure, we cannot attain it, otherwise we would explode…The Kli for receiving this enormous pleasure is the building of the supernatural characteristic of love and bestowal to others.
[154243]
From KabTV’s “New Life 523 – What Is A Soul?” 2/17/15

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We must educate people from infancy to relate to their bodies as a stranger that has attributes, opinions, feelings, etc.

For example, when some part of the body hurts, we must say that the body hurts, that it is the body that has pain. In other words, relate to the body as a part that is not merged with the person himself; rather, it exists separately next to him for awhile, as Rabash would say when he would point at the body and say: “Let it suffering!”

With such training of this attitude toward the body it will gradually become a habit to perceive the body as something given to us in addition to the soul, and to differentiate the soul from the body. We must also speak about the soul as something that we are given for a particular period of time for a particular purpose.

The person himself must be the owner of both the body and the soul, managing both of them, the egoism of the body and the higher purpose of the soul. The soul and the body are like two lines, and we must build a third line as the combination and sum of both of them, and you see yourself, your embodiment, as the result of the combination of both of them.
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Question: How do we deal with the loss of a loved one? It is impossible to accept that a person was here right now and suddenly he is gone. The mind doesn’t agree with the fact that our life is temporary. Death seems unreal to us.

Answer: Doesn’t this attitude indicate that our perception is limited, that we are naive, immature, and lacking the understanding of our condition? We are not able to perceive life and death.

Apparently, we are able to perceive just a tiny fragment of our life, like little children, and we don’t know what is really happening in it. An encounter with death plunges us into shock, when someone was living and suddenly disappears. We look at a lifeless body and are astonished that this is not a human anymore, not a friend, not a relative. There was a person and now he is gone. How is it possible?

This person lived in me, was imprinted in my qualities, desires, feelings, and memory. And suddenly he disappeared. How is it possible that a person ceases to exist? Our mind can’t perceive it. And the problem is probably not reality itself, because nothing is eternal in this world. The problem is in our limited perception that is able to see only to the threshold of death.

Why is life arranged this way? Why is a person placed in a limited body that occupies a very small volume in reality? We attach great importance to this body, much higher and more significant than is due a physical body situated on the animal level.

We are used to the temporality of our existence and live very well with it. And not because we are not depressed with this knowledge. But because we live in and can’t see beyond this life, we are reconciled with the understanding of our mortality and console ourselves by masking these questions, convincing ourselves that this is life.

Humanity invents religions and beliefs that tell about the afterlife. People believe them for lack of choice because it is still some compensation for the impermanence of life that suddenly stops.

But in fact, this question requires a much more mature attitude. We can look beyond the boundary of life and death, beyond the borders of this tiny reality that we see around us now.

Would we be able to see reality on a higher level, i.e., stop perceiving it as animals that perceive everything only through their bodily senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch? Would we develop new, out of body organs of perception that are outside of our material body, its animal degree?

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains all this, which is why it is called the “science of perception,” as “Kabbalah” means “reception.”

Kabbalah helps us to open our eyes and see the real, wider reality right here and now, not after the death of the physical body.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/5/16

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Question: Is there any connection between the spiritual world and the corporeal world, between the body and the soul?

Answer: There is no connection, unless perhaps when we are worried or persecuted. Then certain changes take place under the pressure and tension, but nothing more than that. Our body is an animal and there is nothing spiritual about it. Today we can easily replace all its organs. And as for the soul, if there is a soul, it remains, and if there is no soul, nothing changes.

Question: What is the function of the brain? Is it ours or do we belong to it?

Answer: The brain is like a modem that connects us with the upper mind on its basic level, which means with a minimal connection. In fact there is nothing in the brain but grey matter.

Question: But after all, we say, a wise man, the crown of nature…

Answer: They used to say that in the past, but I don’t hear such expressions anymore today. We are already ashamed of ourselves. Fifty years ago we still believed that we would grow wise and reach great accomplishments, but now everything has collapsed.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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Question: Are the souls divided according to gender?

Answer: The souls indeed are divided according to gender like the bodies in our world. Only simple types of organisms can function simultaneously as a male and as a female.

In fact, everything begins from plus and minus, from positive and negative, even on the atomic level. After all, the universe was created and began to expand after the Big Bang, when a small spark of Light penetrated our world from the upper level.

This spark began to generate positive and negative elements of nature like electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on. Consequently, all of nature is built on pairs of opposites where one cannot exist without the other. At the same time, there is no struggle between them, which we may want to see in our world for egoistic reasons only, and everything is made of the right mutual connection between pairs of opposites.

Therefore, we shouldn’t think that someone is good and someone is bad. We should understand that our evolution, our progress, and our very existence wouldn’t be possible without the right mutual cooperation between men and women.

So, there is no room for wars between the sexes. There cannot be a plus without a minus, a positive force without a negative force, or the north pole of a magnet without its south pole. Every part of nature is built according to its specific oppositeness because it cannot exist otherwise.

When nature mutually cooperates with all of its inner forces, we evolve harmoniously as everything is built on the harmony between two states, systems, poles, and the opposite forces that exist in it.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/6/16

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Question: When does the soul appear in a person? Is it during birth or during its conception?

Answer: A person’s soul appears during his spiritual conception when he begins to fulfill his Reshimo (his spiritual gene). A person’s first ascent above his ego and his inclusion in the upper world is called the point of incorporation in the upper world. Then the upper world becomes a womb and the root of his soul, the Reshimo, becomes a sperm that takes its place in the upper world and the conception of the soul begins.

Question: Is there a father and mother, etc. in the spiritual world?

Answer: Everything that is depicted in the form of objects in our world, like a mother, a father and people, is actually depicted in us by the upper forces because in spirituality everything exists in the form of forces, while in our world everything is revealed as objects.
[181998]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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Question: In the corporeal world there are colors, shades and sounds and we can describe and draw. How can we picture the spiritual world? Are there corporeal objects there like houses and trees?

Answer: No, and neither are there in our world. Houses, trees, colors, shades, and sounds exist only in our perceptions. Objectively there is nothing beyond our senses.

All of reality is depicted in our brain and is then fixed in our senses. This is how we feel our inner attributes, which depict inside us what seems to be our environment.

The spiritual world is objective and external to us, and so we begin to feel the perfect eternal nature there, the upper nature that is in perfect harmony, and not our own nature.

We are chained so tightly to the frameworks of our world that we cannot imagine what the perception of the true reality is. When we get rid of our body, of the feeling of existing in the current dimension, everything will be clear, as it says: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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Question: What is a soul?

Answer: A soul is a spiritual organ by which we feel what is external to us. If a person has created it, he feels the upper dimension outside himself. No one has a soul except for those who worked especially in order to find it, to acquire it, to create it, inside them.

A soul is a desire to bestow, the ability to feel the world that is external to you, a special sensor. This sense is acquired and it enables us to feel others even if they don’t have this sensing organ.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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