Question from Facebook: Everything you teach is pure psychology of the relationships between people. What do the Creator, Light, and all other attributes have to do with it?

Answer: The fact is that the Creator is attained between people when a special relationship of bestowal and love appears between them. Not earthly bestowal, earthly love, but on a higher level, that is, above our egoism.

In order to rise to the next level, above our egoism, the wisdom of Kabbalah is needed, which, in principle, deals only with this. That is, it is psychology, but on the next, higher level.

In our earthly psychology, a person does not need to change himself in practice. Here he must receive the upper force, and Kabbalah explains to him how to do it. Receiving this force, he builds above himself another entirely different person who works in bestowal and love to others, outside himself. That is, on the material level, “I am inside myself,” and on the spiritual level, I act “outside myself.”

Materialistic psychology cannot deal with this; it does not have tools for this, no power of Light that can inversely change a person. Therefore, psychology is psychology, and Kabbalah is Kabbalah.

Question: Is it possible to say that materialistic psychology adapts us to the earthly reality, and Kabbalistic psychology, to the upper reality?

Answer: Of course, I adapt myself to a different system of relations built on complete disconnection from my egoism and above it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/10/18

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Question from Facebook: Do you really think that everyone should leave their business and job, sell everything the way you did, and just study Kabbalah? Are you “second best” if you don’t do this?

Answer: Not at all! I had no other choice. Nobody told me to do that. I just had an inner calling, a certain kind of fate that guided me, and I could not have acted otherwise.

Question: So when you tell us about this, it is not an example?

Answer: Of course, it is not an example. I myself do not know if I would have done that again or not. It just happened.

Question: Does it mean that a person should not leave his job or his business in order to study Kabbalah?

Answer: On the contrary, studying Kabbalah requires that you engage in all of that.

I did not quit my job. I changed it to another one so that I could study without being burdened by anything, without thinking how I would pay taxes, organize all kinds of things, and be responsible for the business. I just wanted to take care of my needs, to work a little to support my family, and to spend the rest of my time studying.

Question: What is your advice to someone studying Kabbalah? How should he live in this world with work, family, and so on?

Answer: In no case should a person run away from this world. It seems to him that he might make some great altruistic, sacrificial act, but in fact, it is not the case. He should stay at his job and continue everything the way he did before.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/1/18

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Question: I study the theoretical part of Kabbalah in order to more easily depict a spiritual connection. Why do I need so much knowledge if I study this material for myself?

Answer: You need it precisely so you could understand your own structure and the structure of the world.

You are studying the eternal science! You will need it in this world and in the next world, in this life and in the “other-worldly” life.

Study it! This is what will remain with you forever.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/10/17

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Question: There is personal and general governance. How do they fit together?

Answer: General governance descends on the people and the world, and personal governance descends on a person or his small community. At the same time, both types of governance may contradict each other.

Remark: You said that the Creator does not relate personally to a man in any way, only through the whole of mankind.

My Comment: It does not matter. If the Creator affects a person or if people want to selectively affect one another, then it is a personal impact. For example, in creating a mutual guarantee (Arvut), we want to selectively influence our friends.

The Creator has no personal claims to a person. A person is a product of his environment, and therefore, the Creator treats him as a part of this environment.

Question: Our body consists of billions of cells. Can I say that as I do not show my attitude to each cell individually and I cannot even discern them, in the same way, the Creator looks at us and does not see? Does He see only the general picture?

Answer: The fact is that the general system is completely deterministic, interconnected. There is nothing in it to make it necessary to watch selected cells.

We exist in the ideal world that from our perspective looks corrupted, egoistic. The problem of governance is to force us to reveal this ideal world. Therefore, general and individual impacts are connected to each other.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/10/17

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Question: Can a student of Kabbalah fail to achieve his cherished goal?

Answer: Of course. Kabbalah is a science. Everyone wants to be Einstein, but some only become assistant professors. This is necessary.

A person should strive for the maximum, but it does not matter how it will turn out. However, if he works correctly, he will surely reach it.

In a closed system, when one returns to his roots, he feels that he is higher in relation to others. By passing the upper Light through them, he feels himself to be a special source of energy for everyone else.

Question: Einstein is an example of reaching a high level in a certain direction. But he had a rare talent, there is no second Einstein in the world. And you say that in Kabbalah, everyone can reach great heights?

Answer: Einstein had a gift to see the inner connections of the world. His genius was in that, through the combination of various opposite properties of nature, he was able to obtain new formulas, expressions, comprehension, and to describe them mathematically.

Therefore, mathematics is the basis of all sciences, although it is not a science by itself. It is a way of describing internal connections of nature. After all, nature is also not a science. Nature is a network of connections between us.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/4/18

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In the News (Nautilus): “Unhappiness Is a Palate-Cleanser,” by Indira M Raman, “…We often behave as though we might find a route to contentment—comfort, satiety, warmth, or some other reward—and be happy all the time if we could just make the right choices. But pleasure is often fleeting, even from the most appealing experiences, giving rise to ennui and sparking the drive for something new and sensational. As a neuroscientist, I can’t help wondering whether the transience of our satisfaction may not in fact be inescapable and instead may reveal an inevitable aspect of the way the brain works, the understanding of which might provide a clue to how to contend with it. …

“Without one’s being able to make comparisons, the world goes gray. In other words, it’s not just that variety is the spice of life; it’s variance that lets us sense anything at all. …

“We perceive things not by their absolute value but by their contrast to what came before. …

“…I think it offers a key to happiness that is compatible with how the brain works. The ability to detect even familiar stimuli can usually be restored by a brief palate cleanser, which literally permits a recovery from desensitization sufficient to intensify a subsequent experience. … Because the brain grades on a curve, endlessly comparing the present with what came just before, the secret to happiness may be unhappiness. Not unmitigated unhappiness, of course, but the transient chill that lets us feel warmth, the sensation of hunger that makes satiety so welcome, the period of near-despair that catapults us into the astonishing experience of triumph. The route to contentment is through contrast.”
Indira M. Raman is a professor in the department of neurobiology at Northwestern University

My Comment: I agree with her. It is impossible to distinguish light without darkness, joy without grief and so on. Our feelings are built on two opposite perceptions, and everything depends on how we evaluate them, weigh them.

The most correct way is for us to begin realizing that bitter sensations were necessary to feel sweet. And then they too become part of the sweet. I wish you such a feeling.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/20/18

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Question: How are egoism and altruism defined?

Answer: Baal HaSulam defines egoism as self-love, when a person wants to fill himself as much as possible in spite of all others, without reckoning with anyone.

Altruism is a desire to fill another person, giving away everything you can, in spite of yourself—not to please yourself, but to please the desire of a friend.

There are only two vectors in the universe: a force directed either toward oneself or toward others. Their combination generates everything that exists in nature at all levels: inanimate, vegetative, animal, and human.

Question: Why was such a multi-level system created?

Answer: Four levels of nature personify the four stages of the development of direct Light. Inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature correspond to the first, second, third, and fourth levels of desire.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/4/18

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Question: Can a Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or any other religious person be a Kabbalist?

Answer: It is not a matter of faith. What matters is that a person who was told something, has read, or somehow received information, accepts it as a belief, meaning he uses it as data, as a fact. In this case he is called a believer.

Kabbalah is not a faith. It is a science that researches something that is unattainable for an ordinary person. However, every person can achieve and discover the new spaces and new forms. This is even discussed in physics today.

It confirms that there is matter, energy, spaces, and volumes that we cannot sense. There is movement above knowledge, above light and time, and beyond time and space.

It seems as if science starts discussing this even though a person does not enter it with his own senses. He pictures this solely in theory. However, the wisdom of Kabbalah helps us develop sensory organs within us that will enable us to feel and sense spaces beyond time, matter, or dimensions, and to exist within them. These spaces are considered spiritual.

Question: Do I have to believe you?

Answer: You don’t have to believe me when I tell you that this exists like how you don’t have to believe physicists who tell us that the light disappears, that there are white and red dwarfs, other universes besides ours, and so on.

You don’t have to believe them or me. It all depends on whether you desire to attain it yourself, whether you think that it is important to you. If it is important to you, then you are invited to travel to “another world.” If this has no importance to you, then stay in this world. Good luck!
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/20/18

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Question: What is primary from Kabbalah’s point of view: form or matter?

Answer: Of course, matter (desire). Desire develops to its egoistic form, and then this form goes through certain stages of development, awareness of itself as the opposite of the Creator, and then aims to correction and similarity with the Creator until it reaches complete similarity with Him. It is all form.

Baal HaSulam has a very interesting article, “Matter and Form in the Wisdom of Kabbalah.” I advise you to read it.

Question: So, are you a materialist?

Answer: We are involuntarily materialists because we work with matter, with the desire to receive, to enjoy, and to receive fulfillment.

Question: Spiritual practices, Kabbalah, etc. seem to be detached from matter to many people. But no?…

Answer: Those are not spiritual practices. This is a kind of inner psychological phenomenon that one imagines and nothing more.
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From KabTV: “News with Michael Laitman” 3/20/18

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Question: What are the three basic laws of the methodology of Kabbalah?

Answer: The first postulate is that there is a single upper force of nature, called “the Creator” or “Nature.” We ascribe no special properties to it other than it being one common force that includes absolutely everything existing in creation.

The second postulate is that the upper force created the inanimate, vegetative, animal, and human levels of nature, which are automatically controlled by the upper force without any possibility of freewill. In such a situation, a person is nature’s part that can consciously and independently react to its signals. “Human” in Hebrew is “Adam“ (from the word “Domeh” [“similar”]), which means “similar to the Creator.”

Similar to how the Creator has His freedom of action, there is an opportunity to act independently when a person rises above his nature and can act above his own nature.

The third postulate is that as a result of special actions and exercises, everyone can reach equivalence of form with the Creator in a way that we will have the freedom to act similarly to the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/4/18

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