Question: Baal HaSulam writes that the condition for the independence of the state of Israel will be met if the nation becomes the basis for the spiritual development of all humanity. How do you envision it?

Answer: If we strive to be the spiritual center of the world and to show the whole world the quality of bestowal, love, and connection, then we will get the strength to hold ourselves, to support others, and to achieve it so that we will be understood, loved, and respected.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual states” 4/26/22

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Comment: We are used to the phrase, “Israel Independence Day.” We are accustomed to this holiday; we celebrate it. In today’s world, the word “independence” is spoken of everywhere: independence of countries, independent republics, independent press, independent experts. All sides of the conflict and all parties speak about it: right, left, individuals, everyone!

Besides, it is not just a word, but a very important concept in Kabbalah.

My Response: In Kabbalah, this concept is absolutely the opposite of what people, the world, society, countries, and nations understand by it.

What does “independence” mean? From what?

Comment: It is the independence of my boundaries, independence from someone else. I want to live by myself, with my national independence: republican, state, and so on. This means that I am independent so that no one gets to me; I will build my own world. This is called “independence.”

My Response: But this is impossible because in today’s world everyone depends on others. So how can we be independent?

If you are going to be independent, you have to go into the woods and provide for yourself with what you can. You are condemning yourself to terrible conditions.

Question: Can we say it another way, it is so that no one dictates to me how to live? Is it also impossible?

Answer: It is the same thing. No one will dictate anything to you, but how will you provide for yourself? How will you create and preserve this independence? It is completely unclear how this is possible.

Today, in our world, a developing country should be connected with all countries by good mutual ties. Only in this case can it feel comfortable among everyone. Otherwise, it will feel crushed, limited, humiliated, and so on.

Question: In the case it will be on its own?

Answer: Yes, but no one will give it that opportunity. After all, all countries surround each other and want; like wolves in the forest, each one wants to snatch from others as much as they can. This is our normal, egoistic world. It cannot be any different. It was always like that, only we covered ourselves up a little. We did not reveal this enough in our egoism.

Question: Do you think there is no point to demand independence in this world; it does not exist and will not exist?

Answer: We can demand, but so that at the same time we demand it from ourselves! This is the most important thing. If we will observe such conditions that there are good neighborly relations, peace, and mutual assistance between us, which are contrary to our natural, regular quality to receive, conquer, and force to peace.

Comment: If we have unity, then it is against someone. And all this is vicious.

My Response: Of course. Therefore, everything we create is only supposedly for the benefit of ourselves and to the detriment of others. There cannot be one instead of the other.

Kabbalah says that independence is when we rise above our egoism. Independence from our personal egoism, this is what real independence is, and then I only think about others. Among other people, in good relations with others, which I create with all my capabilities, I feel independent.

Question: Are you saying “only about others”? I don’t think about myself at all?

Answer: I will not exist, I am just a consequence. Today I also exist as a consequence of the attitude of everyone else toward me.

Question: Does it mean that I can only think about others, and then the consequence will be the way they treat me, the way I treat them, and so on?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Should my first thought be: “They will treat me well if I treat others well”?

Answer: I do not think this is the nature of a person and our society. Therefore, to say such beautiful phrases: “Do not hit others and they will not hit you,” and so on does not work.

Question: And what you say, does it work? How is it possible in our world that I do not think about myself, but think about others? At the level of a country, for example.

Answer: The thing is, of course, it does not work either. If I treat others well, I will only give them an additional reason to grab me and bite off different pieces from me. Therefore, the entire problem in human society is for it to transform itself from a pack of predators into an organized, mutual, voluntary, kind community.

Question: Do you believe in this fantasy?

Answer: No, I do not believe it by any means, but I say it, because, in principle, this is the only solution. Once we realize that this is the only solution, no matter how fantastic and absolutely impossible, then we will suddenly have the opportunity to implement it.

Question: From where?

Answer: From above. We will be able to receive such a force from nature that will raise us above our egoism, and then this will be realized. I will be above my nature, I will be above my thoughts, I will be above my decisions. How will it happen? It will happen because the second force of nature will be revealed: the quality of bestowal, connection, and love.

Question: Can you guarantee me that? For example, I am a politician or an ordinary person, and I hear you. Can you guarantee me that?

Answer: I can only tell you again in more detail so that you understand that there is no other way. Or we go toward perishing and die in every generation. And in the next generation, they are preparing the same fate for our descendants. Nothing is changing except that the suffering is becoming greater and the possibility of solving them with the help of wars and death is becoming more and more terrible.

Question: Will I, through understanding and feeling this, come to what you say?

Answer: Yes, we will eventually understand. Moreover, this is a very scary decision because we will feel like we are being skinned. Because this is absolutely against me.

However, there is an opportunity to resolve this issue in a kind, peaceful way. It means to study our nature and study the force of nature that can help us change ourselves. Then we will be able to expose ourselves to this kind force of nature, and it will change us from evil little predators to kind big creatures.

Question: Do you think we are getting closer to this recognition that we are vicious little predators?

Answer: We are getting closer. However, so far we are also getting closer to it not in a good way.

But according to the way all kinds of positive and negative forces are being revealed more and more, especially in our generation, we are given the opportunity to talk about it and somehow implement it, that is, there is hope that we will be able to form this system of forces of nature for ourselves, for our understanding, for our knowledge, and to understand how we can balance it and express the good force from it.

I think we can do it. Otherwise, we will still come to this, but in a long, long way, a terrible way of suffering.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/18/22

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This week we celebrate “Independence Day”—the 74th anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel. On the one hand, there is a feeling of great pride among the people that in such a short time and under incessant threats we managed to build a country with a developed economy and a powerful army on this land.

On the other hand, many people have a feeling that all this is very fragile. Polls show that half of Israelis fear that the Holocaust of the Jewish people may happen again.

When will the day come that we will feel the stable strength of our existence on this earth? It will come, when we really want it to be so. We do not understand that stability and security depend only on us, the Israelis.

It seems to us that we depend on a thousand different external factors. But in fact, they depend on us, not we on them. There is spiritual force in us, but we do not use it. It is the force of connection and love between us, within the people of Israel.

There is no other force in the world on which something could be built. We don’t have stability because we don’t reveal this force between us. It manifests itself if we treat each other with love, warmth – this is the force of the Creator. With the help of this force, it is necessary to build the country, the nation, the whole world.

We have not yet achieved peace on this earth because we do not want to seriously build our people and state on a genuine basis. We just need to stop looking at our Jewish neighbors as strangers, and outsiders. Only this does not allow us to achieve peace and tranquility.

We are obliged to treat each other as brothers, not as friends in need. I hope we will all understand what independence is, how to achieve it, build it and properly use the power of independence.

An independent country is a gathering of people, in the connection of which an upper force is revealed, binding us by the power of mutual guarantee and bringing us freedom from egoism. This means “to be a free people in your country,” meaning, free from your egoistic desire.

This state is called independence. After all, we become independent of egoism, rising above it in our connection, and in this form we build a country, a nation. A country built in this way is guaranteed peace and tranquility.

And Israel will certainly become like that, and how soon it will happen depends on the people of Israel. I wish us all to see it as soon as possible.
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From KabTV’s “Insight” 5/2/22

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Question: What does Holocaust Remembrance Day mean to you personally?

Answer: It is the fact that we still need to remember the Holocaust of European Jewry in addition to all the huge tragedies that the Jewish people have experienced in their long history. This was a mass extermination of Jews in the modern world, in the modern era. No one anticipated that this was possible. Even today it is somehow hard to believe that this could have happened.

Yet it is what happened, and I have no doubt that it could happen today too. It could happen exactly as it did 70 years ago.

Question: This sounds quite scary. Didn’t history teach us anything?

Answer: No, nothing has changed. People have absolutely not changed. And they will quickly build all those concentration camps.

Question: Why have we evoked and still evoke hatred upon us?

Answer: This is a question. Because this is what we are. Because we do not want to change ourselves and thus do not want to change history. Until we change, the world will not change.

Comment: But the world did not say: “You have to change.” The world simply destroyed Jews and hate them.

My Response: Man appeared in this world in order to change and to accordingly force the world to change. If man does not change, the world practically remains the same. That is, it changes, but it changes at a very slow pace.

Man is born to change, to become an altruist, to be closer to others, to unite, and to show others that this is the way to live.

If Jews do not do it despite the fact that they are obligated to, then the entire world does not do it with them. Then we have a completely new picture of the world. That is, instead of moving forward at a certain speed, the world is slowing down. This slowing down causes such excesses.

Question: Are you saying that the world implicitly, subconsciously feels the guilt of the Jews for the world not changing, not getting happier, and that the Jews are to blame for this?

Answer: The Jews are to blame for this, and all the nations of the world feel it.

Question: What does “feel” mean? They “feel” sounds very mystical. After all, they do not say: “You have to change.”

Answer: Why don’t they say it? Ask people! Ask regular, educated people of our time: Europeans, Americans, they will tell you. It is because they are in contact with Jews.

Comment: Most of the time people say something like this about Jews: “They are bankers, they own all the capital of the world, they run the world. This is why we do not like them, why we hate them,” and so on. “They are the chosen ones;” the chosen ones imply that they are special. This is what they say about Jews.

How did it then pass over to ordinary Jews who are not such leaders of the world? 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated; this did not simply happen! 6.000,000! Children and women.

My Response: Hatred of Jews is absolutely in everyone. It is inside people subconsciously because there is a root in these people aimed at changing the world.

This root is anti-egoistic. It forces people to change, so Jews are slightly different. An ordinary person who has special intuition feels in a person if he is a Jew or not a Jew.

Question: Is it because, as you say, there is some special point in a Jew?

Answer: A special point that encourages him to change nature.

Question: Does humanity need this, precisely this, point?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is this point contagious? Can it pass on to others?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: So, we were born with this point and are forced to travel the world.

My Response: You cannot get away from it, you must implement it.

Question: Does it mean that the closer the world comes to a dead end with all the hatred, with wars, the more it will turn to Jews and with even more anti-Semitism? Will it be even bigger than it was during the Second World War?

Answer: Of course! It will hate them to the measure that is necessary to change the world, but the world will not be changing.

Comment: I have been to Auschwitz and Dachau, I have traveled through these concentration camps, shot many movies there. I had a feeling that humanity would never come to this again. Never!

My Response: Easy! Any person can be persuaded in a second and be made such an anti-Semite that he himself will be the first to kill.

We have a responsibility to figure out why this is so and the responsibility to reveal to the world the reason for it hating us and not to dismiss it as all fiction. It actually exists, it is in nature, and that is why it will not disappear, and it does not depend on education or on intellect or on anything else.

On the contrary, the more intelligent a person is, the more educated he is, the more willing he is to reveal this reason: what is the difference between him and a Jew. In principle, once he understands this, he is very dissatisfied with it and is ready to really remove them all and remove them from the world altogether!

Once we come to a state that the world discovers that we are obligated to change from egoism to altruism, from hatred to love, which is very difficult to do, then can you imagine what kind of attitude will arise toward Jews? It is better not to talk about it in advance.

Now we are beginning to enter this transition period. And we want to start revealing it right now.

We, our organization, want to start revealing it now so that we can show everyone that it is possible. It is difficult, but it is possible to move into a completely different state of matter, one might say, from hatred to love.

Question: So are you saying that if the world starts to slowly understand this, then the pressure on the Jews will increase even more and more?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Are we thereby now directing the world toward the Jews?

Answer: Of course. We are saying: “Let’s help.” Because we all have to come to this stage of rising above egoism.

This stage of rising above egoism is now beginning to grow in the world. We must help it grow, like we grow crops in the field by watering, fertilizing, weeding, and so on.

We must help the entire world! This is called “to be a light upon the nations.”

The world will thereby come closer to this. However, when it gets closer to this, the world will have questions: what for, why, and how? That is, we will have to be able to explain it to the world.

Then we will have to draw the nations of the world after us to this state, to change from egoism to altruism. They will not go through the same states of ascents and descents as we do.

However, they will have to get tied to us and move forward with us. This is where the main moment of leaving Egypt is displayed, when we are in the form of Moses who goes ahead and all the nations of the world behind him. Here all the nations of the world rise from the egoistic level to the altruistic one.

This is called the time of the building of the Third Temple.

Comment: It sounds offensive to the nations of the world that we, Moses, we are leading.

My Response: Let them take this problem from us. I am ready to follow them.

Question: As long as they would lead to the right place? Will we then not be waiting for the next Holocaust that may happen? Are we then already bypassing it?

Answer: Yes. Here again everything depends on us.

Comment: How much responsibility is piled on us! There is no chance to live peacefully.

My response: There is nothing scary here if we agree to do everything so that the Creator would do everything through us. Does He need representatives in this world? Let him do it through me, I agree. That is all.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/25/22

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Question: How can Pharaoh, the negative force in us, bring people, who want to attain the Creator, closer to His revelation?

Answer: The Pharaoh’s force only seems negative to us. In fact, it kind of teases us and brings us closer to the Creator.

It awakens egoism in us and draws us forward, ostensibly for egoistic fillings. When we get closer, it suddenly turns out that we cannot reveal anything and anyone with the help of egoism. We remain as if with a broken trough.

This means that we come to attain the Creator through the realization of the evil of our nature.

Question: Pharaoh means working within reason when a person wants to understand the whole process with his mind. What is wrong with that?

Answer: That is not the point. There is neither good nor bad in this. But it is impossible to understand this process with your mind, just as it is impossible to see the spiritual world with our eyes. We understand that our vision perceives only a certain amount of information at a certain frequency and nothing else. Proper tuning is necessary here, and it is achieved through diligence.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual states” 4/14/22

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Comment: It is written in the Torah that the Creator says to Moses: “Come unto Pharaoh.” He does not say “Go to Pharaoh to fight with him.”

My Response: Moreover, Moses does not want to go to Pharaoh at all, he is afraid. But the Creator says: “Do not be afraid, I will go with you.” He seems to reassure Moses: “There is nothing to be afraid of, let us go together.”

In fact, this is not a good approach because, from then on, Pharaoh begins to attack Moses and even the Creator, and says: “Who is the Creator that I should listen to Him”?

Question: What does “come to Pharaoh” mean? How does a person feel it?

Answer: A person wants to turn to the Creator so that the Creator would help him rise from his egoism to the level of bestowal, love, and altruism. This is the way out of Egyptian slavery and escape from Pharaoh.

Question: How does this process happen? Does a person hear a voice that says to him: “Come to Pharaoh, let us go together”?

Answer: There are not any voices here. Do not make a psychological problem out of Kabbalah.

Pharaoh is your egoistic state. To resolve it, you must take it, place it in front of your altruistic state, and correct one with the help of the other. You are prepared to use the quality of bestowal and love to correct the quality of reception and hatred.

Question: But we do not have the tools to feel it. It is like a child inside the mother who cannot understand whether there is a world, space, time, or movement. Can it be that it is the same here? You say some words, but there is no volume in them.  How van we get these feelings?

Answer: You can get the feelings only if you start trying to reveal this within yourself.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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Question: How can we understand that Pharaoh is the other side of the Creator?

Answer: If the Creator is good, pushes us toward goodness and unity, wants to raise us, and leads us to a state above the entire nature, then Pharaoh does the exact opposite, He pushes us down, does not allow us to grow as a people, and wants a simple, ordinary, limited, beastly life for us.

Pharaoh is, so to say, equal to the Creator by module. He is just the other side of Him.

Question: Does it mean that as much as the Creator is great, so Pharaoh is great also?

Answer: Yes, but the difference between them is that with the power of Pharaoh one can act for oneself, and with the power of the Creator, for the sake of others.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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Question: Why is Pharaoh constantly changing? First he was good, then he was bad and so on. What does it mean?

Answer: He does not change by himself, but what changes is only his manifestation in relation to a person. At first, it seems to a person that Pharaoh is good, that he equips him with everything, leads him, hosts him, and gives him a good place in Egypt.

Then gradually, it is as if a different Pharaoh appears and he is bad. So it is said in the Torah: “And a new king arose over Egypt” (Rabash, “A Real Prayer is over a Real Deficiency”).

It is the same king, but because the person has changed and requires a different attitude toward himself, then Pharaoh has changed and does not give him what he would like. So it turns out to be a bad Pharaoh.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Why We Care about Moses”

Although Passover is, well, over, there is something that humanity never gets over: its fascination with Moses. In fact, it is not only Moses, but the whole story of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt and their miraculous escape that has captivated the imagination of humankind for thousands of years. What is it about this story that has so enthralled us? After all, stories about slaves and the escape to freedom abound, as are stories about confrontations between leaders. But few, if any, have gained immortality the way the story of Israel’s escape from Egypt has.

There is a good reason for this. The story of Israel’s entry into Egypt, their lives there, and their escape, captivates us not so much because of the story itself, but because of what it means for each of us. The annals of the Hebrews in Egypt describe the process of liberation from egoism and attaining the quality of altruism, or love of others.

There is a reason why Rabbi Akiva explains that the great rule of the Torah is “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and why the great sage Hillel said to a man who asked him to summarize the Torah in one sentence, “That which you hate, do not do to your neighbor.”

Granted, not everyone wants to become an altruist. In fact, few do. However, as humanity evolves, it is becoming increasingly interdependent. The more we recognize that the actions of each of us affect the lives of all of us, the closer we come to realize that we have no choice but to change our most fundamental trait: selfishness, which in this day and age has become what many pundits call a “narcissism epidemic.”

The realization is already underway. The widely used phrase “An infection anywhere is an infection everywhere,” shows that we acknowledge that we all influence each other.

However, how can we care about others when we are so preoccupied with ourselves? This is precisely what the story of the Israelites in Egypt tells us. And it moves us because deep down, we all have an inner Moses that understands that the solution to our problems is in unity, in breaking free from the ego, and it is only a matter of time before we accept the inevitability of the transformation.

In the story, Pharaoh represents the evil inclination, the ego. The Egyptians are also egoistic desires and thoughts, but they are not as obstinate and self-absorbed as Pharaoh. The Israelites are those thoughts and desires within us that are willing to follow Moses toward altruism.

It is not an easy battle, and the lure of Egypt is too strong for the Israelites to triumph. Likewise, we, too, are very weak when it comes to resisting our egos. Just look at the “Me! Me! Me!” culture we have built, as a great NPR essay described it, and you will understand how immersed we are in ourselves.

But sooner or later, we will have to come out of Egypt. The ego-empire is already falling; the civilization we have built is crumbling under pollution, exploitation, and belligerence. It is driving us out of ourselves and into each other’s arms. It is giving us the choice to embrace each other and be saved, or kill each other and ourselves in the process.

Eventually, we will choose the former. The only question is how long it will take before we understand that we have no choice but to run away from Egypt and build a new nation, made of all of humanity, where people care for one another and unite like the people of Israel did at the foot of Mt. Sinai: “as one man with one heart.”
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Question: Who is Pharaoh and what is special about him?

Answer: There is only one force in the world, the property of the Creator.

Love, connection, rejoicing in others, and so on, all this we can define in relation to us as the property of the Creator. Without any relation to us, we cannot understand or determine who or what He is; we cannot even say that something exists in nature at all.

There is an opposite property to the Creator, the property of Pharaoh, the property of our egoism.

In other words, there are, so to say, only two forces: positive and negative. The negative force is the Pharaoh, the positive force is the Creator, and they manifest themselves this way with respect to man.

Question: What is the difference between the manifestation of the force called Pharaoh and the forces of “snakes,” Amalek, or Haman?

Answer: Overall, it is the same negative, egoistic force of nature, only it embodies different actions and therefore has different names.

In nature, there are plus and minus that exist in parallel, and, depending on their manifestations, they are called differently.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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