Question: What is fate and what is karma? Is there a difference between these concepts?

Answer: I don’t know what fate or karma is in other people’s minds. I can only say that a person has his own path, and while walking through it, he can alter it. I don’t know whether to call it “karma” or “fate” but everyone has it.

This path begins with the fact that everything is already embedded in a person. Just as a drop of seed contains all the information about the future person, there is a spiritual drop of seed that determines the development of an earthly, spiritual person in us and in this way we advance.

Can this be changed? It can be. The science of Kabbalah is a method of changing one’s fate (karma, if you like).

Comment: The fact is that many people have a fatalistic belief that you were born with a certain fate that you have to accept and go with its flow.

My Response: No, that is not true. We can change our fate and ourselves. The science of Kabbalah gives a person the opportunity to attract the upper forces that can change him.

A question arises: Is the scenario by which this can be done also written in our destiny initially? In general, yes. The only difference is whether I follow it in a good or a bad way.

I can turn myself into a person that is initially embedded in me (in the form of an information record) rather quickly, easily, and pleasantly, or I can do it in some other way. Meaning, I can accelerate my development. But, in any case, I will have to achieve the final goal that has been encoded in me.
[267824]
From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

Related Material:
The Opportunity To Choose Your Destiny, Part 1
Karma Or Spiritual Development
The Right To Change One’s Destiny

Filed under: Body and Soul, Free Will, Meaning Of Life - No Comments →

Question: The basis of man is DNA, that is, our genes that determine everything: our physiology, all kinds of inclinations, and even, as they say now, political views. Do you agree with that?

Answer: What is the difference if genes or some other particles, waves, or elements determine our inclinations? Of course, there are properties set for us that guide us, and thanks to which we distinguish the characters of people, their different approaches to life, etc. Call it genes.

Remark: Our genes can manifest themselves as qualities that can or cannot be changed. For example, if a child is born in a family of egoists where the cult of money reigns, then, in principle, he has no chance of growing up as an altruist.

My Comment: No, I do not agree with that. We see in nature opposing properties. Our teacher Baal HaSulam writes that inversion is very often observed. We know that in Russia revolutionaries were born in noble families. This is the eternal problem of fathers and children when the children go against their parents. Thus, it is the properties of the parents that can be inverted in children.

Question: Do you think that character traits can be changed? Suppose a person has a penchant for stinginess.

Answer: There is no need to change anything. I believe that this cannot be done because the data that are in us are the so-called first nine Sefirot in every person, in every Partzuf, in every soul. We just need to learn how to use them correctly.
[267594]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

Related Material:
Is It Necessary To Change Character Traits?
The Spiritual Roots Of A Person’s Attributes
How Can We Overcome Our Instincts?

Filed under: Education, Free Will - No Comments →

Question: Does a Kabbalist believe that there is an attribute of freedom in each person? Or is it not an innate attribute in every individual?

Answer: It is an innate attribute in every individual, but it is very limited and is not necessarily expressed in this life.

Question: I want to complete my whole correction and reveal the Creator in this life. Where is my freewill? What exactly depends on me?

Answer: Get rid of everything that is unnecessary, choose what is most important and necessary for the revelation of the Creator, and that’s all. This is how you will solve your problem. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah does.

Question: Do I need to give up my needs in order to attain freedom?

Answer: We cannot give up any of our needs. We can simply reassess our values internally so that we can engage only in what is necessary for the attainment of the most important goal in life.

Question: In what way is the implementation of my freewill expressed every second?

Answer: You should gradually reach the point where you determine what your most important goal is and move toward it correctly.

Question: Was Baal HaSulam a free man?

Answer: Every Kabbalist is a free person because he ascends above his egoism.

Question: Can we say that freewill comes down to the creation of the correct external and internal boundaries of one’s conduct and living up to them, and the more you adhere to them the freer you are?

Answer: Freewill is expressed by one’s total devotion to the right environment.

Question: When does a person stop living from one day to the next and thinking only about himself?

Answer: Whenever he wants to. There is no other answer.

Question: Are there limits to freedom?

Answer: There are no limits to freedom. It is all in the desire to bestow, and so it is infinite.

Question: What can you do if you feel great doubts before making a choice, how do you choose?

Answer: Always choose connection and kindness with your group and not any other way.
[257337]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/17/19

Related Material:
Blitz Of Kabbalah Tips – 10/27/19
Blitz Of Kabbalah Tips – 10/6/19
Blitz Of Kabbalah Tips – 9/7/19, Part 5

Filed under: Free Will, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: You have repeatedly said that it is possible to conduct a statistical experiment: to take 1,000 people who live in this world egotistically—I care for myself and you care for yourself, they suppress or dominate others—and take 1,000 other people who are beginning to move toward each other, to connection with each other, and are beginning to clarify what it means to love your neighbor as yourself, and how not to do to others what you do not want done to you.

And if you thoroughly check the statistics regarding the 1,000 people in both groups, you will find that those who start a positive process of love for their neighbors will be much healthier and not prone to depression.

Is there any direct correlation here?

Answer: It is not as simple and primitive as it seems. Otherwise, nature would create us like that and that is it! We would be just clockwork toys that would nod to each other like bobbleheads?

Comment: I would be glad to see such a logical connection: I behave well, and am healthier.

My Response: No. Then everyone would be egoistic like that.

The fact is that in order to create a person similar to the Creator, he must be put against the Creator. It means creating the exact opposite. And then, a person should make himself similar to the Creator. By himself! By his own efforts. The problem is how to do it.

It will not work otherwise, because if you make a man just like the Creator, it would be a toy. It would be just a copy and that is it. He would be made and thrown away. There would be nothing in him from himself.

And if a man is opposite to the Creator and at the same time begins to create his similarity to the Creator by himself, then this will be Man. That is, having been created opposite, he will independently begin to fight within himself to become similar to the Creator. And this contrast will remain in him as his clear egoistic foundation.

Question: What is the Creator?

Answer: He is the anti-egoistic property of bestowal, the property of love. And a man will ask the Creator for it.

Question: That is, he will want to become loving and bestowing, like the Creator?

Answer: Yes.

Question: How can this desire emerge in him, in such a receiver?

Answer: The Creator arouses this desire in him. That is, He makes a man from egoism, a property opposite to Himself, and apart from that, he puts a small drop of His property in a person. Thus, a person consists of two parts, two sources. And here such opposite states are fighting in him, and he is simply torn apart from within—what, where, and how. And everyone is like that in his own way.

And if he reaches such a state when he really wants to make himself similar to the Creator, then he must ask the Creator for this. Can you imagine such work?!

To find within yourself the strength and desire to become similar to the Creator, that is, the opposite of yourself, and ask the Creator to make you the opposite of yourself. Then the Creator gradually, sequentially, step-by-step carries out such corrections on you. And a person gradually becomes more and more similar to the Creator.

This process is not easy, it breaks a person and twists him around with a grinding sound: kh, kh, kh! And then a man becomes a Man, Adam, similar to the Creator.

Question: You say that the time has come when a person begins to move toward this breakage by himself. He begins to feel the point of the Creator in himself more and more. What, besides suffering, makes him pay attention to it now?

Answer: When this point begins to speak up in a person, then there are no questions. It is just right, this is the truth, it is my innermost point, and it is the foundation of the world. This is the point of the Creator. This property is from a completely different level.

Comment: The Creator Himself creates a person to receive and for this world. He Himself inserts a point into a person that is similar to the Creator. He Himself turns it on and leads a person to Him. All this is done by the Creator.

My Response: Of course.

Question: The same question constantly arises here: “Don’t I have any freewill?”

Answer: You do. You are present for all this and still want this. You are a witness, an accomplice, a partner in this process.

Question: What is my main task here?

Answer: To want the Creator to do this to you: “Break! Break me.”

Question: Will a simple person understand you?

Answer: He will. He will understand that it is impossible to live in this state anymore. He will understand that he cannot bear himself.
[267441]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 5/11/20

Related Material:
Becoming Equal To The Creator
The Unperceivable Softness Of Our Existence
The Method of Revealing The Creator

Filed under: Free Will, Health, News - No Comments →

Question: How do I reach the realization that I depend on my desires, and how do I later understand that these are not my desires?

Answer: First you discover that they are your desires, and that you are in them and they manage you. When you try to exit them and ascend above them, you begin to understand that they actually control you and that they are not your desires, but that it is your evil landlord, your ego, and thus you gradually exit them.

Question: Can a Kabbalist, unlike ordinary people, impact and choose which desire, which thoughts, will be revealed in him the next moment?

Answer: No, but he can choose which thought or which desire he will obey, and not just obey, but use and fulfill according to his discretion.
[256545]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/17/19

Related Material:
Thoughts And Desires
Everything Will Be Clarified In The Thought
Through The Prism Of Two Desires

Filed under: Free Will - No Comments →

Nature Is a Strict Teacher

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that the blows of nature occur precisely and in accordance with the level of development of society. That is, as society develops, nature corrects us.

How does the current correction differ from those viruses and cataclysms of 100 years ago?

Answer: In accordance with our development, we get more and more blows from nature. It seems to us that nature is punishing us. But this is not true. It teaches us, shows us at what level and to what extent we are mistaken. We deviate from the striving to integrate between each other and uniting with the global picture of nature.

It turns out that we are, in general, unteachable, clueless participants of nature. We don’t understand what we should do. Or we understand, but we don’t want to hear it.

As a result, nature always points a finger at us, pokes our nose at our mistakes, and we don’t seem to see them. It turns out that the most successful among us seem to be those who notice these mistakes less, who do not care about the inconsistencies of a person with the world around them. They do everything in their own way, and at the same time, in the understanding of others, they are considered the most successful.

Comment: But nature still pushes us toward partnership, cooperation, solidarity. We see that when some cataclysms occur, people begin to treat one another more sensitively and gently.

My Response: Not because they realize something, but out of necessity. And as soon as the threatening state passes, they immediately return to the stand against each other.

Question: How can nature lead us to solidarity, to sensitive relationships, if blows don’t help? What’s the point of them?

Answer: Nature leads us nevertheless to see how integral it is and to feel, by analogy with itself, how integral we should be.

Question: So, nature still requires us as human beings, as the crown of creation, to recognize this on our own and to want to connect with each other sensitively?

Answer: Yes. In order to unite at the highest level, we create a system in which we feel all the internal, driving force of nature and become the same as it: eternal, perfect, and attain everything.

Question: So there should be some kind of reset of values in society?

Answer: Of course. In each and every one.
[266755]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20

Related Material:
Man In An Interconnected World, Part 4
Man In An Interconnected World, Part 3
Man In An Interconnected World, Part 2

Filed under: Crisis, Free Will, Globalization, Mutual Guarantee - No Comments →

The Element of Freedom in the Rigid Program of Nature

Question: According to Baal HaSulam, the law of mutual guarantee is the basis for the interaction of all living organisms and is built on the balance between reception and bestowal.

Moreover, the law of reception is that each member of society tries to get everything he needs to live in the way his individual, egoistic system requires. And the law of bestowal is that each person cares about the welfare of the entire society.

If a person does not observe the law of bestowal, then he is hit by disasters and problems sent to him by nature. How can a person observe this law?

Answer: How to observe is one problem. And the fact that a person is obliged to observe this law follows from the image of nature that is revealed to us.

We see in front of us an absolutely integral picture: one single nature in which man is included with all his egoisms, scientific and anti-scientific “isms.” It turns out that we can not dodge and escape from the integral picture of nature. Whether we want it or not, we are inside this system and cannot exist outside of it.

This system is constantly evolving: from the inanimate level for hundreds of thousands of years, to the vegetative level for tens of thousands of years, to the animate level for thousands of years, and at the human level for literally decades. In other words, the higher nature is organized, the faster the stages of development occur in it.

The only question is when do we begin to discover ourselves in this system? We see that we are opposed to it for a very simple reason. We are not instinctively involved in nature because it affects us with the element of freedom.

We can agree or disagree with the way nature works on us, and to this extent, we determine our fate. It turns out that we are unhappy people. Nature is given to us, we can live in it, work, reproduce, create anything imaginable—unlike animals—on the next, conscious level. And we do not know what to do with it.

We create everything based on our natural egoistic nature, acting to the detriment of others and ostensibly for the benefit of ourselves. We do not understand that integral nature forces us to become different. For the benefit of oneself means for the benefit of others.
[266700]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/16/20

Related Material:
Man In An Interconnected World, Part 3
Man In An Interconnected World, Part 2
Man In An Interconnected World, Part 1

Filed under: Coronavirus, Crisis, Free Will, Globalization, Mutual Guarantee - No Comments →

Remark: Today, man has more freedom than slaves in America in the nineteenth century or serfs under serfdom.

My Reply: This is not freedom! By the way, a slave was not enslaved more than we are today. He felt that he belonged to his master, which meant that he had no worries.

He knew that his master would feed him, make sure he had a place to sleep, make sure that he was healthy, that he had a family, and so on. That is, the master was taking care of the slave, and there was a certain agreement between them.

The fact is that there were special agreements on the status of slaves determining how the owner should look after them, provide medical treatment, and so on. Slaves were not people without any rights. In addition, a slave was quite expensive, so, the owner took care of his assets.

Today, in contrast, everything is quite different. You get fired, you are lost. There are 100 more people at the gate to replace you. No one owes you anything because the owner only thinks about how to get rid of you and not pay anything.

Question: Do you think that in terms of valuing freedom, there has not been a breakthrough in human relationships for the past century and a half?

Answer: The breakthrough is in the fact that today a person is enslaved and used in such a way that he does not even know that he is a slave.

Question: Slavery means a prohibition on moving from place to place, not being able to take care of your family, it is violence and absence of justice. How can the condition of slaves in the nineteenth century be compared to that of the modern working man?

Answer: I do not see much difference. Anyway, you do not move according to your own will but according to the commands of television advertising. You do not choose your profession by yourself but under the influence of what was instilled in you in your childhood. There is no freedom in this. Talk to good psychologists and you will see that that is the case.

Of course, there are relative freedoms, but they are as if you took a pill and do not feel your lack of freedom. And you are even proud of it: “Look, we visited this place. Look, we saw that. Look, we were there.” Why were you there? Yes, it is because others go there. In everything without exception, we follow our flock mentality, and therefore, we have no freedom.
[265509]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/12/20

Related Material:
Obtaining Freedom By Becoming A Slave Of The Creator
Modern Slavery
A Free Slave

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Free Will, Globalization - No Comments →

An individual’s desires are not under one’s control. They are determined by society. If we compare the historic Papuans with modern people, we can clearly see that the development of a person determines one’s desires and pleasures.

Question: Why is a person under the illusion that these are precisely one’s own desires?

Answer: A person does not know anything else. One was created in this, developed in it, and therefore feels that it is one’s own. What does one’s own mean? In fact, he is like puppet, filled with certain desires and small programs, and it exists like that.

Question: Do you think it is important to come to the realization that society dictates all of my desires for me?

Answer: A person doesn’t have their own desires, everyone should know this. Desires are determined by society, the environment. By changing the environment, I can change these desires.
[265789]
From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era,” 4/23/20

Related Material:
Evolution Of Desires, Part 4
Solution Is In The Correct Environment
Today’s Environment Is Tomorrow’s Me

Filed under: Free Will - No Comments →

Question: Although the coronavirus has helped us feel that we are connected, we do not understand how much we depend on each other. This is the whole paradox. How can we get out of this?

Answer: Indeed, a big problem is raised here. We understand that we are inevitably connected with each other, we are together in one system, and the virus acts on everyone, through one to another.

Moreover, this is visible not only in every separate region, but in all countries. There are no problems with communication today so we can learn about everything that is happening in the world.

Are we connected? Yes, but to feel dependence is a problem because it can be at different levels. It is very difficult for us to determine this.

In addition, connectedness is a scientific concept. We can study different connections: bad, good, whatever, because they are objective.

And in order to feel dependence, our subjective sensation already interferes. Maybe I would not want to feel dependent on someone or do not want others to feel dependent on me and make complaints. Therefore, dependence is a very delicate thing.

We must figure out how we are dependent on each other, how this dependence manifests itself, and what if we purposely influence each other in this way? Here, there are many opportunities for all kinds of conjectures and speculations.

Speaking of dependence, I understand that there can be no clear opinion and solid basis here, but there are always some additions from different people directed against each other.

Question: Does dependence always involve a lack of freedom? Is it possible to break out of this?

Answer: Dependence does not necessarily result in a lack of freedom. What matters is what one depends on. If I depend on the whole universe, know that I am a part of it, and voluntarily comply with the laws that exist in it, then I experience a feeling of eternity and perfection. Therefore, it does not suppress me and I do not pressure me that I am a part of it.
[265291]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 5/25/20

Related Material:
What The Coronavirus Teaches Us
At The Red Line
Coronavirus—A Consequence Of The Imbalance Of Nature

Filed under: Crisis, Free Will, Globalization, Health - No Comments →