Question: Can a person who has begun to seriously study Kabbalah be taken from this world as a result of a disease or an accident, and so on?

Answer: Why not? Is that a bad thing?

Everyone curses our world and feels bad in this world. At the same time, everyone is afraid to leave this world. This is only because a person doesn’t know and doesn’t see what is next.

And he doesn’t need to see anything. Right now, just build your future world so that you will feel no transition between life in this body and life outside our body. In fact, our egoistic desires depict for us life in our body, but if we neutralize them, we would feel that we are in the spiritual world.

There are people who have felt spiritual phenomena as a result of great suffering because when one undergoes great pain, the body can neutralize and nullify itself.

We, on the other hand, attain it much more easily through the help of the group where we summon the effect of the Upper Light, and then we feel as if we have no body since it is incorporated in others. Instead of feeling ourselves, we begin to feel others, and this is called exiting the body.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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Comment: Modern genetics can now enable scientists to change the genes of babies so that they will be healthier, more beautiful and clever when they are born and thus augment all of humanity.

Technology will also allow us to control the genes that are passed on to the next generation. Is it right to program the future child?

Answer: Science offers us many options and the question is how we use them.

Comment: Parents don’t want their child to suffer.

Answer: If we are given this option, I am in favor of determining in advance whether a child is healthy in the first place. If we could discover the gene of happiness and luck, it would be quite good. But that is not in our genes. Happiness is on a level higher than the level of biological research. When we have the chance to make people healthier physically and mentally, then of course we should use this technology.

People may object to this, especially religious people who claim that everything stems from the Creator, but if this is the case, what is the point in taking any measures and why should we go to the doctor, etc? It says that a doctor is given the permission to heal people since the treatment includes both a diagnosis and other elements that affect our body, and so we should determine and do it. If we could determine in the early stages of pregnancy that a baby has certain defects that cannot be corrected, the pregnancy should be terminated.

First, there is the time during which the embryo is formed and we should determine his attributes before it is formed. First there are the three days of the absorption of the semen and then another forty days of the creation of the embryo during which it is not considered an embryo yet. If we can determine what will happen to it during this time, then from a Kabbalistic, medical, and religious perspective it is not considered murder or the termination of life. This is the reason that we should use these technologies. I don’t mean that we should go against the upper nature in any way! On the contrary, I believe that after forty days, when the embryo receives its soul based on the roots and branches in our world, it is forbidden to intervene with its development. But we can determine all its attributes before that.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/15/16

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Question: How was the human body created?

Answer: According to the theory of evolution, atoms first accumulated into chunks of matter, the earth was formed, and millions of years later different simple connections appeared on the surface of the earth, and life began to develop.

About 500 years before Darwin, the great Kabbalist the ARI wrote in his book, The Tree of Life, that everything evolved from the still, vegetative, and animate levels into the monkey, which is the uppermost form of the animate levels and an intermediate level between the animate level and the human level.

Question: How was the soul created according to Kabbalistic theory?

Answer: The soul was not created. The soul is a part of the Creator from above.

The Light enters our desire to receive, which wants to enjoy, and changes its attributes to the opposite attributes, into a desire to receive and enjoy for the sake of others by dressing in others and connecting with them. When a person begins to connect with others in order to bring them pleasure, he becomes a Kabbalist who receives the Light from above and conveys it through him to others.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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Question: Does a connection exist between the soul and the external beauty of a person?

Answer: No, when a person speaks from within his soul, then he is beautiful. It is immediately felt that he is a serious person internally: with intensity, with knowledge, with understanding, with some kind of illumination—with this, he is beautiful.

After all, we don’t judge art and science according to their appearances. We judge them according to the potential genius that is found in them. We admire scientists without any connection to their external appearance because they reveal the secrets of existence to us.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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Question: How can a person imagine the upper force, the Creator, if it is impossible to perceive Him through our human senses and compare Him to anything in the corporeal world? How is He revealed, and how do Kabbalists attain Him?

Answer: It is very simple. There is a force called the force of bestowal, and a person can feel it only if, on his part, he has a desire to bestow. Therefore, the attribute that we gradually acquire by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah called “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the attribute of bestowal, and it is fulfilled by our love of others.

If a person loves another, he yearns to give him everything. When a person feels that by himself, he immediately begins to feel in this emotion the upper attribute—the Creator, the upper world—and it depends on how intensive this emotion is on his part.

The upper field exists in potential and is revealed only when a network of the right mutual cooperation between us is created.

The incorporation with others, the connection with them, is the network through which the upper force is conveyed. Then, we feel that it exists.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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New Life 689 – Where Do Our Thoughts Come From?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

There is no stronger power than the power of thoughts. Animals live according to an instinctive operating plan, which man doesn’t have so that he can develop unlimitedly. Where do our thoughts come from? They come from the general computer of nature, from the upper force.

Every state we undergo in life is meant to help us advance to the recognition of the upper force. If we paid attention to every thought we have, we would begin to identify the upper thought.

This is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah engages in, in how to perceive the upper leadership and how to identify it. Thus we begin to follow every thought and desire that awakens in us with intention of discovering their source in order to be adhered to the upper thought, to the upper force, that there is none else besides Him. The only way to identify the upper force is by using the formula of “love thy friend as thyself.”
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From KabTV’s “New Life 689 – Where Do Our Thoughts Come From?” 2/9/16

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Question: Sergio Canavero, an Italian surgeon, plans to perform a complicated human head transplant, following experiments that have been carried out on apes in the US. According to the Italian doctor, the first operation on a human being will be performed within two years’ time. Do you believe that this is possible?

Answer: Why not? A head transplant is merely a technical issue, that’s all. If they don’t solve this issue now, it will happen in another 10 to 20 years.

I remember the first human heart transplant that was performed in South Africa in 1967. Everyone held their breath and waited to see whether the person in whose body that heart was planted would begin to think differently. We have very primitive ideas regarding the human body, and we think that there is some spirit living in it and that it is transferred to another along with a heart or liver.

Question: Still, the idea of a head transplant is a bit scary.

Answer: Yes, the head is the major part of the body. The thoughts that come from the head control the body.

Question: How do the thoughts come to the head?

Answer: This is a different matter altogether. There must be a different kind of transplant here. We need to connect to the upper modem in order to do so and learn to receive signals from the upper mind. This is a flight in a totally different class.

There is actually nothing in the head except for grey matter. The head is like a computer that is fed by the outside world, and there is nothing else inside of it. If you study the head, you will find nothing there since our knowledge is not inside our head, but is external to us, just as all of reality is external to us. We are merely vessels that perceive what is in space and nothing more.

We need to get into this space to the level where all of the information is: energy, knowledge, and most importantly properties. The attributes are the most important part because the information, energy, and knowledge are technical entities, while the attributes belong to the upper level of nature called the Creator. The uppermost attribute is the attribute of love. However, in order to penetrate the attributes, a person needs to undergo the special training that is studied by Kabbalists, the essence of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The work of attaining the Creator’s attributes is replacing the head, which a person performs during his lifetime in this world without any transplants. It isn’t a transplant but a gradual ascent to the level of the upper information, the upper properties. I invite anyone who is interested in that to come and study.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/5/16

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New Life #513 – Regarding Illumination and Spiritual Attainment
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

A person who is working according to the method of Kabbalah reaches illumination at some point. He feels that the world is full of a good force, love, and connection. This is like a cloud that descends upon the Earth. Then this passes, he continues to work; his definitions of what is considered an ascent and a descent change.

He wants to improve. For several years all the fundamental data in him are corrected, and he then enters into permanent illumination.

All of the evil that we see in the world is because our characteristics are broken. If we correct the ego, we see goodness. All the people in history who discovered the Light, found the tendency to love others.

The Rav chose the method of Kabbalah not because he was a Jew, but because this was a scientific method appropriate for everyone. In Kabbalah there are no physical exercises, there is daily training, studying the sources, and a group where we connect.

A person who discovers the Light sees that everyone is found within it unconsciously; his role is to help everyone feel the power of goodness, love, and connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #513 – Regarding Illumination And Spiritual Attainment,” 1/29/16

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Question: What is body and soul?

Answer: Before we begin to speak about body and soul, we must understand how we perceive ourselves and our reality. We feel everything in the same way that a television set operates. There are electric forces that operate inside it, and vectors appear on the screen and create a picture that we perceive.

The same thing happens inside our head. As Baal HaSulam said, there is a screen inside our head in which there are vectors of forces in motion that depict different pictures for us. However, these vectors are our own internal forces that depict the picture of this world on the background of the white Light.

This principle of the perception of reality is also characteristic of the spiritual world. After all, if we consider the relations of altruistic vectors instead of egoistic vectors, we will receive a picture of the spiritual world, which means that everything I perceive in my egoistic desires depicts the picture of our world for me, and everything that I begin to perceive with my altruistic desires, if I acquire them, is called the picture of the upper, spiritual world and nothing more than that. This is the whole difference.

There are corporeal bodies in our world that we feel as our own and as independent forces, although they are also vectors, forces that give us a feeling in our senses of something warm and alive. We call the soul a virtual force that revives the corporeal body, and both are merely forces that depict pictures and images of this world for us.

As for the spiritual world, if we depict everything by altruistic forces and not by egoistic ones, our spiritual body will be a desire to bestow that is opposite to my current desire to receive, and the reviving force that now fills it (which means the soul) will be a force of love and bestowal, not a force of receiving for myself the way it is now. But a person who has not acquired this force and is in the intermediate phase now cannot see that.

The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t prove anything. This method teaches a person how to see that reality is fuller and more perfect, that the way one feels today is only a small part of the whole. A person who implements the method of Kabbalah develops his senses until he can depict the picture of the spiritual world on the background of the Upper Light (the attribute of general bestowal) through the help of the force of bestowal. Then, he can exist both in our world and in the upper world at the same time.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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Question: What is unique about spiritual desires in comparison to social ones?

Answer: We are all  a desire. In principle, seeing ourselves as a particular biological structure is just the way it seems to us. In fact, what our eyes see are conglomerates of desires, and nothing else exists in the world.

The Creator only created desires that are placed before us and felt in various forms.

A soul is also a desire, but when it exists as a desire directed toward reception, it is called a “body.” There also is a desire that is built upon the characteristic of bestowal that directs itself toward others.

Those desires that we can change from reception to bestowal become a soul, and those that cannot be changed remain as our biological body.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/13/15

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