Question: They say that the nature of man has changed a lot. He has ceased to be homo sapiens (intelligent man). Do you agree with this?

Answer: On one hand, it is difficult to say that he was once an intelligent man. But on the other hand, man is born again—this is absolutely certain!

Egoism, as the foundation of our nature, on the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels is quiet, calm, and necessary for the survival of every species. But man is absolutely unlimited; each of us needs everything.

In this aspect we are going through a certain development. At the moment, we are in a state where we can realize that any forward movement, any progress, and any development leads us to destruction precisely because everything is based on our egoistic nature.

If this nature were absent, we could live a perfect life. Strength, knowledge, and opportunities, man has everything except for one thing: we always stumble upon our egoism. No matter what good we start, as they say: “good impulses are destined for us,” all this disappears under the onslaught of egoism. He, like the devil, takes us and through some path quietly leads us off the right path.

Therefore, until we correct our egoism, we cannot do anything with ourselves.
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From the TV program “Together about the main thing” 7/18/18

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Question: My favorite character Don Quixote fights against egoism by trying to solve a problem with a single blow of the spear. How can we keep this boundary so that we do not force the good on people? How can I avoid this?

Answer: Only through education. There is nothing else. Only by explaining that the egoistic nature is given to us on purpose so that we can turn it into its opposite. Otherwise, we have no hope for a more or less normal future.

Nowadays, with our state-of-the-art technology, we are bringing ourselves to a dangerous line. Imagine if all the computers in the world would shut down for a moment, it is not so difficult to do, and that is it, the world comes to a standstill.

Today we do not even need atomic bombs. It is the old, barbaric way. All you have to do is turn off the computers; they control power plants, the water supply, and everything else, and we will not know what to do next.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/18/18

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Question: There is a phrase: “What is impossible to observe openly, a person observes secretly.” With the development of the Internet, the line between observation and peeping has been completely erased. What has always been hidden is open and accessible to everyone.

According to recent studies, this is defined as the experience of certain stimulating emotions that cause a person to develop. That is, he receives the strength that makes him go further.

Why do people like to spy on others?

Answer: Because at the same time a person, first, evaluates himself above others. This is the first impulse: they do not see me, but I see them. I’m kind of cooler than them, and that’s the most important thing. Secondly, maybe it gives him the opportunity to command them or somehow defend against them, etc.

But, in general, peeping is a great help to our egoism, which expands the ego and makes us feel like rulers, masters, owning circumstances.

Question: Is the feeling of such power good or bad?

Answer: This is neither good nor bad. This should lead us to reassess our values so that we understand that all our egoism, all our desires to be better, stronger, and smarter than others are wrong. After all, in the end, relative to nature, we act as one single whole—humanity.

To position ourselves correctly, we must unite among ourselves. And then we will be able to correctly manage our own destiny, nature, and the world. By uniting, we lower our selfishness and raise our altruism. Then we can truly rise above our selfish nature and will not abuse the idea of spying and eavesdropping.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 2/16/21

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My new article on Linkedin “In the Land of Pharaoh King of Egypt”

There are many ways to think of the drama that took place between Pharaoh and Moses in Biblical Egypt. Some think of it as history; others see it as folklore, and still others see it as an allegory to teach us morals. The wisdom of Kabbalah has a completely different take on the story of the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt. It views it as a process that leads to one’s defining moment in life: the liberation from the ego and the entry into a new reality, where the ego is the servant and care for others is the king. This is why today, when egoism is our sole ruler, it is so important to introduce the concepts of the wisdom of Kabbalah, since only caring for others will prevent the world from exploding into pieces.

In Kabbalistic texts, Pharaoh represents the ego, our inclination to focus on ourselves and strive for superiority over others. The period that humanity is in today is indeed a “Pharaoh” period. These days, Pharaoh, people’s untainted and unhinged egoism, is coming to the fore. It controls our lives, organizes them, and we have nowhere to run from its control.

In Kabbalistic texts, Pharaoh represents the ego, our inclination to focus on ourselves and strive for superiority over others. The period that humanity is in today is indeed a “Pharaoh” period. These days, Pharaoh, people’s untainted and unhinged egoism, is coming to the fore. It controls our lives, organizes them, and we have nowhere to run from its control. Even when we realize that it is not good for us to let Pharaoh govern and enslave us, we opt for “bread and circuses” since we feel helpless against it.

Nevertheless, bit by bit, the realization that our situation is not as it should be is forming within us. Gradually, we are realizing that the endless pleasure hunt leaves us empty in the end. We are born, mature, get a job, perhaps a career, have children, grow old, get sick, and die. Why do we go through these cycles? If in the end we die and stop existing, then why be born in the first place? The little pleasures we have in life, if we have them at all, alleviate some of the pain we experience the rest of the time, but if there is nothing left of our lives when they end, then what is the purpose of living, and what is the purpose of the suffering?

When we begin to ask these questions, and today more and more people are asking them, it is a sign that we are beginning to disagree with Pharaoh’s governance over us. This is the beginning of the emerging of the Moses within us—a new perspective on life that wishes to pull us out of the shackles of egoism and deliver us from the metaphoric land of selfishness: Egypt.

The wisdom of Kabbalah does not relate to physical locations or to flesh and blood people. Every persona in the drama is a force within us, and every land, a type of desire. Egypt represents the desire for self-indulgence, concentration on oneself, while Israel stands for the desire to give, to care about others, to connect with their hearts. Both “lands” exist in every person in the world; therefore, every person can choose with whom to sympathize: the inner land of Egypt, egoism, or the inner land of Israel, giving.

When Moses begins to grow within us, we begin to feel our stay in Egypt as pressing and oppressive. When the Passover story tells us that the people of Israel were in exile in Egypt, it means that they began to want to free themselves from the shackles of egoism, but Pharaoh, the kernel of egoism, would not let them go out free. After some time in that state, the Moses force within us begins to gain strength and makes all the pleasures that the ego offers seem pointless and tasteless. It isn’t that we suddenly fall from riches to rags, but that the same riches that felt so good before, feel pointless and meaningless, and we lose all joy from having them. But in the absence of having any other pleasures, we feel it all as emptiness and hunger. Worse yet, since we are not yet free from egoism and must still serve it, though we no longer want to, we feel that we are slaves, enslaved to Pharaoh.

Today, many thousands of people already feel like that. They are especially common among younger people, who grew up seeing their parents’ lifestyles and simply do not want them. They find no pleasure in them, but they also find no pleasure in anything else. This is why so many of them turn to substance abuse to forget about life, or to extreme sports or violence, frantically searching for something that will excite them and give them a reason to keep living. These youngsters are not failures and they are not fools. They are actually very bright and very honest with themselves, and cannot pursue a goal that doesn’t seem worthwhile.

This transition period we are in can be long and painful. The struggle between Pharaoh and Moses happens within each of us, but it also has social, national, and international ramifications. The Bible describes the time of hesitation whether to go Pharaoh’s way or Moses’ way as the ten plagues of Egypt. But in the end, the ego, namely Pharaoh, surrenders. Now we are approaching that point of choice on the global level. We can choose to experience the plagues, as well, or we can choose Moses’ way before the plagues land on us.

We know that in the end, Moses will win and we will build a united society, where people care for one another. Therefore, the sooner we head in this direction, the faster we will achieve this blissful state. In the process, we will avoid Egypt’s afflictions. Now is our time to make a choice which way to go, toward the land of Egypt, and suffer, or toward the land of Israel, the land of unity and love.
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Question: Yuval Noah Harari’s book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century talks about the challenges that humanity will face in the coming years.

Which he describes as mass unemployment, technological, political, and environmental challenges, nuclear weapons, a change of values, an era of disbelief or an epoch of post-truth, mass wars, a change in education, and constant disorientation in the future.

The author believes that former beliefs, on which the world was held until recently, have already collapsed, but nothing has yet come to replace them. We do not understand where to move, what to do, what skills to acquire. Where can this lead?

Answer: I do not consider these challenges a direct threat to humanity since it faces a more serious common goal: to rise above our nature that is constantly destroying us.

In the 20th century, we went through all sorts of technical and technological revolutions and two world wars, but this does not save us. We have reached computerization and technological breakthroughs, but even this is harmful to us. We see that our egoism is simply killing humanity, raising new elites, and they, like a hydra, devour everything around.

Therefore, we must look at the root of the problem. We can change social, political, no matter what, technologies a thousand times, but after a certain hope for some kind of “panacea,” we again find ourselves as losers because our egoism, like a “snake,” conquers everything and leaves us with nothing…

Therefore, all technologies and advances in any area will still lead us to disappointment in our development. It seemed that we could make humanity happy, worthy of the fruits of our development, but we see that, on the contrary, it feels itself falling ever deeper, hungry, unjustly dismantled into countries, nations, and classes. As a result, we again find ourselves in front of a large disillusion.

Therefore, we need to take our main goal, the egoistic nature of man, and see how we can correct it. Without this, all the principles or causes of our misfortunes will lead to nothing. We need to look exactly at the root.
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From the conversation on the topic “Challenges of the XXI century. Introduction” 4/24/19

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 3/16/21

An anonymous student wrote me a letter saying that he can’t help but tell people the truth. He says that if he keeps it to himself, he feels bad about it, doesn’t know how to deal with it, and he asked what he should do about it.

Well, first of all, he doesn’t know the truth. What he knows is only what his ego tells him. Moreover, his “outcry” isn’t really coming from the depth of the heart, but from the ego; he wants to force his opinion about what is true and what is untrue on others. He thinks he understands people’s situation, what they’re doing wrong and what they can do right, so he wants to force his understanding on them.

There is nothing here but ego, which I would say must be destroyed altogether. Who gives him the right to force his opinions, feelings, and preferences on others? Did anyone ask him to do this or expects this of him? Even if he thinks that he will do them a favor by this, it still doesn’t give him the right to soak them up with his understandings, conclusions, preferences, and goals.

If you want to know the truth, then the truth is that people have to be given free choice; they need to choose their own truth, and that’s the end of it. This is the most important principle in education—for children, as well as for grownups.

What he should do is keep silent, and understand how self-absorbed he is, to the point that he must stuff others with his views. This should be this student’s lesson and a lesson for all of us when we feel superior or more knowledgeable than others. It should also teach us how to relate to people who “tell us the truth.”

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Was Pharaoh of Passover really a bad guy or just a victim of his royal birth? He was no Haman.“

Pharaoh is a very powerful force. The wisdom of Kabbalah does not discuss Pharaoh as a personality, because in practice it is a nonexistent persona. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, Pharaoh is the very big ego that the Creator created. It is a great desire to devour everything in the world for self-benefit.

The more humanity develops, the more this force of Pharaoh, the egoistic force, surfaces. One of its expressions is that we aspire to all kinds of accomplishments in our world, and the more we achieve, the emptier we feel. Likewise, the world appears to worsen the more we develop.

We become more and more dissatisfied with life. The more we connect technologically and economically, the more internally detached we feel from each other. Today, we witness such instances as people no longer feeling secure in the most distant villages. Our tightening global interdependence has led us to such paradoxes where farmers cannot even feed themselves from their own land.

Pharaoh represents the egoistic intention behind everything we do. On one hand, we make tremendous progress technologically, and we find ourselves in a situation where we are more dependent on others all around the world. On the other hand, we find ourselves feeling more and more detached from each other, and that we cannot tolerate being so tightly connected to others.

The ego, however, leads us to the need to correctly connect to each other, where we yearn for, build and ask for connection. What this means is that Pharaoh, by transforming our world so that it becomes increasingly interdependent and interconnected, brings us to a state where we hate the feeling of division, and we then transform our world into another one with positive connections. In other words, by abiding to our ego’s demands while connecting more and more, we find that we will simply be unable to achieve long-lasting happiness, success, or even survive. Pharaoh, however, constantly spurs our divisiveness. On one hand, Pharaoh awakens in us a desire for unity and acts so that we cannot live without making the right connections between us, since otherwise we cannot provide ourselves with essentials. On the other hand, Pharaoh will not let us unite. This contrast sums up Pharaoh’s merit.

We then start understanding that we have no other way out besides rising above and escaping from Pharaoh—the egoistic desire for self-benefit. Our escape from Pharaoh, from using others egoistically for the sake of self-benefit, is called the “exodus from Egypt.”

It is quite complicated because we still need to discover these concepts within ourselves. We live in a unique era. Today, we increasingly discover what has been prepared for us in the form of Pharaoh, i.e., in an egoistic form. We see a globally interdependent and interconnected world closing in on us more and more, and at the same time, we find ourselves feeling more internally remote from others. We thus need to respect Pharaoh, this overblown ego we find ourselves in today, because it leads us to realize how bad it makes our lives, and through such a revelation, we gain a desire to exit our ego and enter into a much more meaningful and joyous world where we are positively connected.

Based on “News with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman” from April 12, 2016. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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My new article on Linkedin “When the Ego Rots”

For as long as we can remember, the ego has been our ally. It has earned us great achievements: We came out of the caves, developed agriculture and learned to produce our own food, became lords of the earth and of the sky, defeated plagues and enabled every person on earth to potentially have a life that only two centuries ago, were fit for kings.

In the past several decades, the ego has taken over everything we do, and our relationships with others are now based not only on the desire to build ourselves, but to a great extent, if not mostly, on the aspiration to hurt, humiliate, and even destroy others. Once the ego begins to focus on destruction, it ruins everything. When this happens, it is time to bid it farewell before it drags us into another world war.

But we have not come to this. While some of us enjoy unimaginable affluence, others are worse off than their ancestors had ever been; they die like flies without food, water, or dignity. We could have defeated the plagues, but it seems as though we ourselves have become a plague that is infesting the world with bile and abhorrence for our fellow humans, for all of life, and for our planet. The ego, which has gotten us all that we have, appears to have rotted and is now destroying everything that we’ve achieved through it.

As long as we used the ego to grow and develop, it worked in our favor. We’ve always used the ego not only for development, but also to defeat enemies and rivals, but we did not let it take over. In the past several decades, the ego has taken over everything we do, and our relationships with others are now based not only on the desire to build ourselves, but to a great extent, if not mostly, on the aspiration to hurt, humiliate, and even destroy others. Once the ego begins to focus on destruction, it ruins everything. When this happens, it is time to bid it farewell before it drags us into another world war.

We still don’t see it yet; we still think that the ego is our friend, but as all parents tell their children, “Stay away from bad company!” The ego is now bad company because it looks for nothing but troubles, to fight with everyone and destroy everyone, so we must turn away from it or it will drag us down along with it.

There is an alternative: The way forward is by joining hands and joining forces. The ego may not be satisfied in this way because we will not destroy anyone, but we, as opposed to our egos, will gain security, joy, and confidence in our future. Today, only a united society can thrive. Only when people of different backgrounds, faiths, and ideologies join hands, they can create a vital and pliable society that can adjust to the changing circumstances in the world. When only one ideology reigns, it quickly becomes rigid and fragile, and will collapse before long. Just look at what happened in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Communist Soviet Union to realize that to succeed, diversity is a requirement, and diversity cannot thrive where the ego reigns. It’s time to dethrone the ego.

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My new article on Linkedin “The Case for Paradoxical Thinking”

Paradoxical thinking is something that various systems, such as educational systems or various advanced organizations, are trying to promote. We feel comfortable when matters are unambiguous, but it turns out that the ability to keep in mind conflicting ideas develops people’s minds very effectively. Paradoxical thinking contributes to people’s mental health, mental development, and builds a better society overall. But what is the highest level of paradoxical thinking that we can achieve? Let’s examine some insights.

Another paradox that can develop the world is our relation to our raging egos. On the one hand, the egoistic desire to subdue everyone is destroying our lives. On the other hand, if we learn how to use our egos correctly, we will be able to turn them into what is called “help made against him.” In other words, we will be able to turn them into levers for development that will raise us from one level to the next on the spiritual ladder.

When we are confined to one system of thinking, contradictions confuse us and create internal collisions. Alternatively, when we develop a dual system of thinking, we can maintain one thought in one system, and a completely opposite thought in the other. This allows for complete opposites to exist within us simultaneously, since each thought is in a different system. Therefore, our challenge is to know how to build an additional system of thinking. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is all about.

Imagine that there are tiny insects that do not grasp the dimension of height, and live only according to their perception of the surface. They can move from side to side in their space, but not up or down. In relation to them, we have another level of perception. Similarly, a person who lives in one system of thinking feels the world very differently from one who lives in two systems of thinking.

It is one thing to understand this notion, but it is a different matter altogether to achieve it. To do that, we must awaken evolutionary forces that will develop that system within us. We cannot really know what these forces are, but we don’t really need to. It is enough to want to develop them to make them act on us more forcefully. The trick, if you will, is to know how to approach that evolutionary force and make it build in us that advanced system.

One good example of an exercise in building such a dual system is the Biblical story of the tying of Isaac. God said to Abraham about Isaac, “Through Isaac your descendants shall be named” (Gen. 21:12), meaning that Isaac was to have children of his own and continue Abraham’s dynasty. But on the other hand, God instructed Abraham to “offer him … as a burnt offering” (Gen. 22:2), which would prevent the continuation of Abraham’s dynasty. How can one reconcile such contradicting instructions? This is when the third party must intervene. In such a case, we cannot use reason since it will direct us one way or the other. Instead, we must “summon,” meaning want a higher intellect—from which the contradiction came, the root of the paradox—to come and reconcile the conflict.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, the root, where all the conflicts are reconciled, is called “the Creator.” The Creator is the general force in nature; it is the force that sustains all of reality, the root of the universe and everything that evolves in it, the origin of our lives. In the end, each and every contradiction points precisely to it, to the source from which everything comes and in which everything unites.

Since we cannot connect the opposites with our current mind, we must replace our minds with an “upgraded” mind that we receive from that higher source. This is how paradoxes elevate us to a spiritual level.

Another paradox that can develop the world is our relation to our raging egos. On the one hand, the egoistic desire to subdue everyone is destroying our lives. On the other hand, if we learn how to use our egos correctly, we will be able to turn them into what is called “help made against him.” In other words, we will be able to turn them into levers for development that will raise us from one level to the next on the spiritual ladder.

Our spiritual aspiration should not be to erase the ego from the world, but rather to want it to remain and even grow. As we strain to rise above it, to cover it with a good relation toward others, we also rise to higher degrees in spirituality.

The key to dealing with paradoxes is therefore in shifting from a system where we shift from thinking only of ourselves into a system where we think about others, feel their needs and understand them. In this way, we build within us an additional system, which will provide us with contradicting views. Then, when we learn how to connect those views, a higher intellect will appear among us, which will resolve today’s paradoxes at a higher level of connection and complementation.
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Comment: One of the famous Kabbalists, commentator of the Tanakh, David Altschuler wrote that before the time of King Nimrod, all people were equal and none of them rose to dominate others. But Nimrod began to dominate and rule on Earth. Then people began to build the Tower of Babel.

MyResponse: The Tower of Babel, Migdal Bavel in Hebrew, from the word “lebalbel” (confuse), means confusion, mixing of languages. This means that egoism became higher than people, and they ceased to understand each other.

Question: Here two characters appeared, Abraham and Nimrod, symbolizing good and evil, a positive and a negative force. Abraham claimed that it was necessary to unite above the contradictions that had arisen, and Nimrod proposed to disperse and settle all over the world. What is the resistance here?

Answer: Abraham called for the same unity as before. Only earlier it was natural, and now when contradictions rose up, it was necessary to achieve connection above them. Nimrod advocated for what is called capitalistic development, for a rational decision.

Both of them were right. Because, on the one hand, Abraham said: “We lived well. Now egoism has risen, and it separates us. Let us unite!” Nimrod, however, thought: “Why do we need to unite? Everything that comes from nature is good. If egoism has appeared, it will develop us. Why should we level ourselves again?”

Question: It is clear that a conflict arose between them. But since the Torah does not speak about corporeality, what does it mean, from an internal point of view, that two forces manifest in a person: Abraham and Nimrod? What are these forces?

Answer: Abraham called on people who possessed these two points to raise the point of unity, to raise it even higher, because it is for this purpose that egoism was developing.

Nimrod claimed that egoism was necessary for its own self, so that by using it we will begin to develop corporeally and technologically.

Nimrod, from the word “mered” (revolution), opposed integral nature. He was convinced that egoism should be used wherever possible.

Question: Is egoism not nature? It seems that Nimrod was going in a natural way, following his nature.

Answer: It depends on what he was following. Nature is based on balance and is in internal homeostasis. Egoism, like cancer, violates everything.

It turns out that, on the one hand, nature is built on competition, and on the other hand, it is built on interaction, on the balance of two opposite systems. One system is Nimrod, and the other is Abraham. The problem is how to balance them.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/13/19

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