Question: What is the spiritual root of an object in our world? Does the ocean have a spiritual root? Where is it and what is an ocean?

Answer: In the spiritual world, there is no question of “where?” The ocean is. It is about certain attributes, many forces that are interconnected.

Water symbolizes the attribute of bestowal (Bina), in which different animals (Malchut) appear. This means that Malchut rises to Bina and the mutual cooperation between them brings it life, by obliging Bina to turn to Keter and receive Light.

The Light spreads in Bina and performs certain actions in it, and thus marine life is created in the seas, in rivers, etc. Everything stems from Bina and then gradually descends to Malchut, which means that all the creatures gradually come out of the water and unto the land and begin to multiply, to spread, and to live on it.

We learn about the mutual cooperation between Bina and Malchut as Tzimtzum Bet (the second restriction).

The mutual cooperation of the forces creates this picture of our world until a person reaches spiritual attainment and then he looks at the world and sees which forces are behind the earthly objects, how they manage the world, and how certain spiritual attributes affect the upper roots.

Question: Why are there mountains, plains, and valleys in our world? What is their spiritual root?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah everything stems from the attributes of two forces: Malchut and Bina or the Light of Hochma and the Light of Hassadim, the attributes of reception and bestowal. The mutual states that are created between them reflect and have such implications on our world.

There is no need for anything else but these two forces. Together the attributes of bestowal and receiving create the whole variety of attributes, the types of characters, and the objects on all the levels of nature: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

There is nothing in nature but these two opposite forces: an electron and a positron, a plus and a minus.
[199992]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/14/16

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Question: Did you feel that you were above your teacher? Was your teacher always happy with you?

Answer: I never had a feeling like this, but there were times when I was not happy with him. There was a time when he expressed his dissatisfaction with me, and I have felt this as a blow to this very day.

Question: Do you continue to listen to the recordings of the lessons of Rabash?

Answer: No, I methodically read his articles.

Question: Would you recommend that your students listen to recordings of Rabash’s lessons?

Answer: You will not get anything more by listening to the recordings. If a person is attracted to this and it arouses special feelings in him, then by all means he should do so.
[200675]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/7/16

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New Life 478 – The Right To Change Our Fate
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

Question: The thing that impresses a person who hears about the wisdom of Kabbalah for the first time is that the wisdom of Kabbalah gives him a chance to change his fate. Each of us would like to get rid of his daily troubles and suffering, his financial, health, and family, and the problems in every aspect of our life. Is the wisdom of Kabbalah really that powerful that it allows a person control over his fate and enables him to change it?

Answer: I am glad that more and more people ask about how we can change our fate and whether this is really possible. It raises several questions. Is our life really in the hands of blind fate or is our fate predetermined and meant to lead us to a certain goal? Can we influence our fate? After all we feel that we are totally controlled by it.

There are people who can even foresee the future. I know several such people and I can confirm that they did actually foresee things that later came true. They had a premonition as to what would happen in the future.

This means that all the events have already been registered in a certain program above, which later descend like a computer program and begin to operate, and we are in it moving according to this program.

There is indeed fate, and today we are becoming increasingly more convinced that we are in its hands. In the past, we lived far from one another, one country to the next, one continent to the next, and so we felt we had no control over our lives.

Things are different today: humanity is strong enough and has enough knowledge, brains, ability, desire, and an inner need to control our lives, but we see that we cannot do so. It is a miracle: we do everything we can in order to manage our lives, but things only get worse.

It wasn’t so in the past, but today we realize we are absolutely helpless and unable to control our fate in any way. The question is whether we can influence our fate.

In every generation there are people who can foresee the future and who can say what will happen. Foreseeing fate is one thing, but changing it is a totally different issue. No one can do that. If someone promises you that, you should be very careful.

Question: It turns out that fate is like a finalized script of a play that we are going to act in. There are people who can foresee our destiny, but no one can actually change it. Does the wisdom of Kabbalah enable us to reveal our fate and most importantly to change it?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science that is first and foremost meant to reveal the plan of creation to us, which means the process we undergo. This process controls us and leads us to a certain goal from one generation to the next. It began even before the creation of our universe and it will bring us to the end of creation when this whole world will take on its new form, which is different from its current form.

The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us only about part of the general plan. The plan itself is much wider and includes other dimensions beyond time, motion, and space, but the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about what we need to do here while living in this world, as we call it, and how we can change our fate during this lifetime. It enables us to change our state at every given moment so that it will be for everyone’s sake: for our own sake and for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a very practical science and is only meant for practical use.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah there is fate and everything that is registered has to be fulfilled, but we can change the way we undergo these states. Suppose I am a child whose parents sent to first grade and I have no choice but to go to school for ten years until I graduate.

However, it is up to me how I will spend those next ten years: whether nicely or in a terrible painful way, whether I will feel good or bad, whether I will be punished or receive commendations. This means changing our fate.

Question: It turns out that the script has already been written and according to it I have to be in school, but it is up to me how I will feel in this predetermined state.

Answer: It is up to me how the program will operate on me to the extent that I manage to learn it and how to use it.
[150481]
From KabTV’s “New Life 478 – The Right To Change Our Fate,” 12/21/14

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“There will be happiness in this world” means that anyone who completes his release from the ego and acquires altruistic characteristics begins to live a life that is full of meaning, attaining wholeness, happiness, and everything good that is latent in the thought of creation.

A person even acquires the meaning of life in this world, and especially in the next world” (Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot).

The correct system is composed of two forces: the repulsive and the attractive. All of nature is based on these two forces, except for humans.

Therefore, we need to communicate between us, with ourselves, with others in the family, in a group, in a nation, and in the world, we must use a system that balances these two divine forces: the positive force and the negative force.

Herein lies the relevance of the wisdom of Kabbalah, and this is its uniqueness and strength: it gives us the opportunity to come to equilibrium in any system—in the family, in a team at work, in kindergarten, in school, in the framework of a single nation, and in the world.

Question: Must these two forces, reception and bestowal, be in balance in the connection between people in the sense that it is up to us to balance between how much I want to receive from you and how much I want to give to you?

Answer: Yes. We are not talking about annihilation of the ego, but only about the need to balance it correctly. It means that to the degree that you can use the positive force, you can also use the negative force.

On the one hand, there is the left line; on the other hand, there is the right line. The integration between them is in the middle, in the middle line.

The left line is the ego, the powerfully negative line. The right line is altruism (the characteristic of bestowal), the positive. The negative force draws everything to it, while the positive power bestows everything.
The middle line is specifically composed of the correct, balanced, mutual cooperation between them, like any technical system.

Everything must be in balance, but this balance and proper interaction doesn’t exist in human society.
The right line is missing in us and we must draw it to us with the help of the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light).

Our main task is to draw the Ohr Makif. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah deals with.
[199525]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/2/16

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Question From Facebook: Buddha did not create religion; Jesus did not create religion. If that is true, who created it and for what purpose?

Answer: Three religions exist in the world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Buddhism and all of the rest of the Eastern doctrines are not religions, but currents and methods. They exist without any pretense about anything and without imposing anything on others.

Religions were created as egoistic copies of the wisdom of Kabbalah and come to us instead of the Kabbalistic principle: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches only how to achieve love of others. It is called the inner true Judaism.

When they began to carry out the principle “Love your neighbor as yourself” between a small number of people, they discovered that, as soon as they applied it, they came across difficult problems that tore the people to pieces.

The principle “Love your neighbor as yourself” arouses intense egoistic desires and drives within a person. These are described as the “Wars of the Jews” according to history. Beginning from the tenth century BCE, for a thousand years, terrible things happened among the Jewish people. There was constant, internal civil war.

Even though people struggled to hold onto the level of “Love your neighbor as yourself,” they discovered that they could not. Therefore, the Kabbalists who managed the nation during the period of King David, King Solomon, and the rest of the kings gradually began to loosen up the higher level so as not to approach people with demands that were too high to implement this general rule.

People could not tolerate this general rule, for according to the thought of creation, the law of nature, it was necessary to reduce a person to the lowest egoistic level. So, immediately after they attained the highest level of altruism called the “First Temple,” they began to fall from this level. According to the program of creation, this was necessary.

The people had to maintain this level, but people did not succeed. The sages of the Sanhedrin that stood as their head understood that they would not succeed in holding the people to a level like this, for the people were not prepared to survive physically or spiritually.

So everything gradually deteriorated to a level where the people began to carry out ordinary physical actions instead of spiritual laws. For example, to show love, they would express this with a material gift. If they wanted to create a partnership, it was created externally, not internally. Instead of correcting oneself, a person began to immerse in a Mikveh (ritual bath), etc.

In this way people moved from the inner implementation of the law “Love your neighbor as yourself,” meaning rising above the ego, to the performance of external actions called Mitzvot (commandments).

Beginning from this period until our day, religious tradition became a copy of the spiritual actions that a person performs in his heart. The books of Kabbalah say that one must write a Torah on the walls of one’s heart. It is specifically this which is required of a person.

For this reason, the wisdom of Kabbalah is called the interior of the Torah, while religion, which teaches and maintains the Mitzvot until today, is called the exterior of the Torah and doesn’t require a person to yearn for love of others, but only to study and perform physical actions mechanically.

In our day, the period of the implementation of the external part only has finished. According to the law of nature, we must begin to ascend to the next level, meaning from the external implementation of the Mitzvot of the Torah to the interior implementation. The stipulation of “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” must remain our principle, our idea, until we discover that there is an inner meaning to all of our actions.

Question: In the past, people could not hold onto this level. Can they do so today?

Answer: Today, we no longer have a choice. We have done the preparatory work for beginning to apply this principle gradually by connecting in small groups, in groups of ten. That is how Moses united the people after they left Egypt.

We try to apply the law of “Love your neighbor as yourself” in our groups and try to show and teach it to all of humanity.
[201405]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/21/16

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New Life #406 – Heaven And Hell
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What are heaven and hell according to the wisdom of Kabbalah? What does a person have to undergo during his lifetime and how can we reach bestowal unto others and feel as if we are in Heaven? Where are heaven and hell?

A person does not choose the genes he is born with and he doesn’t choose the way he is educated, so how can he be judged?

After the body dies there is neither heaven nor hell. It is about states that a person has to undergo during his lifetime. A person who is inclined to the truth relates to bestowal unto others as heaven and to what he does for his own sake as hell.

An ideal society is a society in which everyone treats others with love and bestowal. This is living in heaven.
From KabTV’s “New Life #406 – Our Attitude to Life: Heaven And Hell,” 6/15/14

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Question: Do clear laws exist for mutual cooperation between people, as they do for the laws of physics?

Answer: Such laws exist, but they are hidden from us. In every physical system, a switch exists between its elements to maintain balance, its working state, and so forth. Precise formulas also exist for preserving the system of human society. There is a general system of control.

The first articles by Rabash can be used as an example; in them it is said:

• You must be higher than others,
• You must be lower than others,
• You must be equal to others,
• You must be concerned about the existence of an intermediary component.

This is the entire law.

There is nothing else besides the laws of switching of people in a group, a group of ten! This is the main law of nature from which it is possible to derive all the rest of the laws.

Question: Why did people first begin to discover the physical laws, but were not concerned about discovering the laws of human connection first?

Answer: It is because the ego repels people from the laws of human connections. And it is the opposite for the laws of nature; it attracts people. Helped by knowing the laws of nature, a person can influence, manage, and control! But the laws of human nature say that a person must be equal with everyone, he must be concerned about everyone.

A person is interested in everything except in building the right mutual connection. `But the human, societal system is the highest system that exists in nature. If you balance it and make order in it, within it, the person begins to feel the next level of creation.

All the more so, for correction to happen it is enough to build the right connections on the level of a group of ten. With less than a group of ten, it is difficult to do this. With more than a group of ten, it is impossible because the focus is dispersed. Ten people is the optimal situation. We were created such that a group of ten is the maximal condition required for us, like in mathematics.

Question: Why is this hidden from us? Why do we know all the laws of nature on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate, but we have not yet discovered the laws of human society?

Answer: The laws are discovered according to the degree of our development. A person who is not developed is not ready to discover these laws, just as it is impossible to talk with a small child about the discoveries of Tesla.

Besides that, a lot depends on the perception of the person. For one person, human relationships present no difficulty; for another person, this is a closed subject. A person is generally not interested in this aspect of life until he begins to study the wisdom of Kabbalah. Within the wisdom of Kabbalah, he discovers his relationships with the Creator.

Only after that does a person gradually begin to feel that there are all kinds of mutual relationships between people. This understanding comes through the upper world.
[200415]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/2/16

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New Life 395 – Luck, Fate And Angels
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

How should one relate to the concept of luck and fate and how can everyone transform his life into an opportunity to achieve goodness?

Nothing is accidental in nature. From the Big Bang to the present moment, everything is managed according to fixed laws. Fate is a type of chain of situations that a person must go through from the beginning of life to its end.

Everyone has an opportunity to change his attitude toward what is happening to him and feel that everything is good. Everything in our lives is an opportunity to change our hatred into love. You begin to realize and see that this is so. Good and evil don’t exist. Bad is what is bad for others and good is what is good for others. “And you shall love your friend” (Leviticus 19:18). Nothing is bad except unfounded hatred and there is no good but brotherly love.

“Luck” consists of forces that reach a person, “fluid” from above, which arouse him to become balanced with others. If a person knows how to receive this correctly, this luck is felt as good to him, and if not, then it is bad.

The wisdom of connection teaches a person how to prepare himself to accept all events in life correctly. And what are angels? Angels are forces that influence me. An example is the force of gravity. Destructive angels are forces that give life all kinds of slaps and upsets and it is up to me to correct myself through them.

Essentially, correction is the formation of a good and balanced relationship, “And you shall love your friend as yourself.” Good angels bring love of others closer; evil angels pull one back toward egoism. Even demons and spirits are forces.

It is impossible to see them, one sees only the result of their influence. We must learn to manage them.
From KabTV’s “New Life 395 – Luck, Fate And Angels,” 6/3/14

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Comment: In the past you have said that there are states in which a person looks at the letters in a text and they suddenly begin to disappear.

My Response: This is a phenomenon that happens when a person begins to be shaped by a particular emotion. This is a sign of emotional expression; the emotion itself having no form. So the letters that made it possible for you to describe something as emotions begin to disappear and you no longer see them.

It could also be the other way around, when a person who is reading a Kabbalistic book can suddenly see additional words appear that are not written in the text. These are not miracles because the texts that are written by Kabbalists are multilayered. If you are lucky and achieve a level like this, you will see many additional words that arose in the thoughts of the author.
[199933]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/24/16

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New Life #393 – Distinguishing Between Good And Evil
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

Can we reach the absolute definition of good and evil? Why do we need it and what are the special conditions we need in order to use it as a compass in order to advance in the right direction?

Our definitions of good and evil depend on our culture, our upbringing, and our society. In order to actually distinguish between good and evil, we need an absolute definition that can be the criterion. Good—a state of balance, harmony and the complementation of all the forces of nature, evil—the opposite, imbalance.

The compass that guides us in the right direction is being balanced both physically, and in the human and spiritual sense. Total balance means being with others when there are no differences between us, trying to manage our lives so that a common force, goodness, the upper force, is revealed between us.

The right upbringing should develop the sense of the recognition of good and evil in a person. Love is good and the opposite is bad. My nature is wanting to use everything for my own sake, but since everyone is like me, I suffer…

The criterion according to which we measure every action is simple: whatever is good for others is good.

Distinguishing between good and evil means distinguishing between using others for my own sake and using myself for the sake of others.
From KabTV’s “New Life #393 – Distinguishing Between Good And Evil,” 6/3/14

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