A book is a system for connecting a private soul to the common soul. That is, to what only exists in nature—to the entire system of the universe, to the entire common creation.

The shattering of the common creation happened on purpose so that we disconnect from it and begin to connect on our own, because in the process of connecting, we begin to adapt ourselves to this common system, the Creator, to correct, and to demand changes.

By going through correction upon ourselves, we begin to understand what kind of system we once existed in, and then we were specifically disconnected from it and thrown out so that by gradually adapting to it, we would not only attain it, but also begin to manage it.

A book is a system of communication that achieves a gradual equilibrium, since communication is manifested in balancing properties. Just as in our world two interlocutors tune in to each other like a transmitter and receiver where there must be identical devices on both sides so that both understand each other, it is the same here: my soul must understand the system of the common soul.

If there are common properties between them, then to that extent I am connected with the common soul, the common creation.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is a Book?” 3/13/11

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Question: How lasting are the principles of the universe?

Answer: Those principles are eternal because they are taken not from our world but from understanding the foundations of those forces that descend into our world.

Our world is governed by a network of forces. It is, in principle, one force. But in order to bring our world to some kind of correct state, it expands into many different forces that push us from different sides a cause a variety of actions, reactions, and so-called disturbances in us.

And we react in accordance with this and willy-nilly come to the desired state for this force, to the goal of our development, which it has outlined for itself.

It is one, but we are complex, corrupted, and faulty. After all, we are not in a perfect state because it specially created us this way in order to gradually push us from different sides and affect all our parts in different ways.

Therefore, we begin to feel ourselves inside some forces, events that pass through us, and based on them we become smarter, wiser, and more understanding of what is happening to us. As a result, we sort of collect the whole picture of the world and ourselves into one common whole. This is especially evident from our generation onward.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who Needs Your Principles” 3/27/11

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Comment: In 1896, Georges Méliès made the world’s first three-minute horror movie. It was called The House of the Devil. More than 120 years have passed since then, and millions of viewers, and maybe billions, adore horror movies. These movies rise to the top of the highest-grossing movies and bring huge revenues.

Scientists believe that we like horror movies because we want to feel an adrenaline rush but in a safe environment.

My Response: Naturally.

Question: Why do we need this adrenaline and all this horror?

Answer: Yes, look at the child. Bring him somewhere, to the zoo for example, and see how he will stand behind his mother, holding onto her skirt, and look out from there.

This is what it is. I remember back in Leningrad on Vasilievsky Island there was a cinema where they showed old movies. After the film, a smart-looking person would come out and give a little lecture about how we should understand the movie correctly.

Question: So, tell me, does a person need this feeling of horror? Why is he attracted to it all the time?

Answer: It shows him the opposite side of life. It is also interesting for a person to feel the comprehension of the border, beyond which there is something unknown and terrible that surrounds you and tries to bind you.

Question: Is it important for a person to approach this border?

Answer: Yes. It is important. We are always interested in understanding the edge, the border. This gives us a sense of where we are, again like the same child holding on to his mother’s skirt and peeking out from behind it.

Question: Does it say about a person that he is developed when he goes to this unknown and stops? Does a scientist have the same feeling? A scientist who is moving toward some kind of discovery: further and further, and something unknown is before him.

Answer: The unknown does not frighten the scientist. It does not frighten him, but fascinates him. There is some kind of fright in this, but not like in Frankenstein. This is different, I must reveal, understand, comprehend, and feel it. The scientist is trying to get beyond the limits of comprehension, beyond the shackles of our world.

Question: Does he want to go there? The child is hiding behind his mother, but does the scientist want to go there?

Answer: Yes. But all the same, both want to tickle the nerves.

All this, of course, excites the scientist very much.

Both, a small child who looks out from behind his mother’s skirt and a scientist who is trying to reveal something are children who want to know the truth. Although they are scared, the scientist also has this feeling, but he goes there.
[312932]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/3/22

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Comment: There are methods where people sit for ten days, are silent, and meditate. They think that by doing this they are purified.

My Response: Yes, their egoism still enjoys it and sees its fulfillment in it for each egoistic level.  Egoism is constantly developing in us; it has its own content, and its own idea of life and of the world. Filling is life.

When a child is little, he or she is interested in children’s toys, as it grows up it is interested in other things, and as an adult, he thinks so until he comes to a state when it is the revelation, sensation, and explicit attainment of the higher world, the upper force, the Creator becomes vital need for him. Only in this way, only in this, nothing else!

And then a person really feels: “Something must be done! But what?” And then he is drawn to the right place. He finds himself in some field, his soul pulls somewhere here, he suddenly types some word, some website, hears some name from someone. And so, it immediately begins to navigate.

And before that, his desire did not capture these coordinates. He didn’t see the link to the right place, the right direction.

Question: Who gives it to him?

Answer: His inner desire. Of all the information that exists, this desire begins to swell in him, and he sees: “This is what I want to see, this is what I want to hear, something was said there.”

Question: That is, some system from above turns on and awakens him?

Answer: Of course! Not by himself. So, it is said that he is brought to a group, to books, to a teacher. And then he begins to understand what it means to work independently.
[312617]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What Is Spirituality?” 3/13/11

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Any Kabbalistic material has a long period of influence because during this time the soul undergoes many changes, only we do not feel it.

You start reading, studying, and huge changes immediately take place within you. The greatest ones! But they are inside you, in deep layers, and therefore you do not feel anything. When these layers gradually fill up to a certain measure, until the end of your first vessel, then you suddenly begin to feel: “I feel something, hear something, understand something new, something different!”

Question: Since a person does not get a feeling of the spiritual immediately, he needs a lot of time to come to this. Will he be under pressure all the time for a long period?

Answer: Of course. Nature will pressure, so will society, and he will be pressuring himself by grabbing himself by the throat. This is the way a person comes to us when such a level of consciousness arises in him that he finds himself in a certain environment and with its help goes forward, and also under pressure from inside and outside. There is no other way to do it.

After all, whatever it is, we are in a system that consists of the will to receive and the light acting on it.

Therefore, we exist only in a desire that feels inside itself either suffering or pleasure, and only thanks to it do we do something.
[312698]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. A New Religion?” 4/4/11

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Question: Are all the variety of objects in the universe (planets, people, and so on) desires?

Answer: Absolutely everything!

Question: So are all the planets and stars the desire to receive?

Answer: No. If I feel something, I feel it in my desires. If I have no desire for a huge number of objects, then I do not feel them. They do not exist for me. As the desire for them awakens in me, I will begin to feel their existence. In other words, if I now observe some planets and stars, it means that there is some desire in me.

Comment: What if we take a small child who is not yet developed and does not know that there is such a variety of objects?

My Response: He exists only in our sensations, and in his own only to the extent that desires have developed in him.
[313044]
From KabTV’s “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 5/14/23

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Question: What is spirituality?

Answer: Spirituality is floating in the quality of bestowal and love.

But in the understanding of an ordinary person, spirituality is films, paintings, and music. On the corporeal level, that is what is being called spirituality.

Question: But since the sixties of the last century, people have gone on all sorts of searches for the spiritual. For example, the Beatles went to India for this, someone else went somewhere else, etc. But were they really looking? Or was it just a trend?

Answer: What else could they do? Nothing. What could spoiled boys from England find? They were searching, of course. A little bit of drugs, a little bit of something else. Their producers were also like that; they died of an overdose.

Question: So they reached the maximum fulfillment of desire within the usual framework. That is, at that time were they fully content in all corporeal desires?

Answer: We think so. On the corporeal level, this is not possible. The more you receive, the more empty you feel. So what if I have everything I want? What is next? I stay inside myself— alone. This is what drew them to India and other places.

Question: Now there are a lot of people who are looking for spirituality. Why can they find the answer specifically in Kabbalah?

Answer: They cannot find anything in it either because they have not grown to that level yet. Their questions remain at the level of new age, mysticism, and meditation: “Show me some posture so that I can meditate.”

I have been to places where there are huge closed communities that do nothing but sit in a circle.

Moreover, these are modern American boys and girls who completely deny earthly life and sexual relations. They need only a modest meal, and the rest of the time they sit and meditate in the mountains, in North Carolina.

I do not understand this at all, but they see spirituality this way.
[312581]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What Is Spirituality?” 3/13/11

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Comment: Vladimir, a scientist, is asking: “Dear Michael Laitman, I have a question about the problem of genetic modification of people. You say that a person must go through the most difficult spiritual changes in himself all his life. And then genetics comes and says: ‘Let us carry out genome corrections, and we will have a person with spiritual qualities right away. And we will immediately correct all mankind in a leap and bring goodness to everyone.’ Isn’t that what Kabbalists dream of?”

My Response: Kabbalists dream that a person will change. But a person will change as a result of working on oneself, not on one’s genes.

Question: So must one work hard himself?

Answer: He must immerse himself in these changes, according to the formula “love your neighbor as yourself.” And then he will see what changes are taking place in him and what he is building, what new state of himself, the world, society, and the universe in general.

Question: So, you do not believe that genetics, by changing the genome, will be able to bring a person closer to the Creator and spirituality?

Answer: No.

Question: Not even close?

Answer: We will come closer to realizing this, but we will not fix anything. Correction will be only in the person himself when he allows nature to change him.

Question: But for this must he make an effort himself?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And is there no escape from this?

Answer: No.

Question: Not even artificial intelligence and all our technical devices will be able to help us?

Answer: Nothing!
[312853]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/20/23

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The above-mentioned will to receive is the whole substance of creation from beginning to end. Thus, all the created beings, all their innumerable instances and conducts that have appeared and will appear, are but measures and various values of the will to receive (Baal HaSulam, Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah).

Question: How can we understand that all objects are the will to receive?

Answer: I can feel everything that exists only in my will to receive. That is, initially I should have a desire for something, a feeling that I want to receive a certain fulfillment. When I want it strongly enough, I can start to feel it.

The measure of this feeling that comes from the desire for fulfillment, will determine in me how I experience fulfillment, what I should do with it, and how to feel all this within myself.
[312947]
From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 5/14/23

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Comment: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a thousand other experts have signed an open letter to suspend development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI). They wrote:

“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable” (“Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter“).

These are the questions they are asking.

My Response: We have finally reached the point of discussing the rise of machines.

Question: Yes, we have seen it before. We used to destroy machines, and now we want to destroy artificial intelligence.

How do you feel about this? In general, is this fantasy so real that they could surpass us?

Answer: These people have stakes in this, Elon Musk and others. Therefore, I do not know about what they write. But, in general, of course, there will be competition.

Any computer is a competitor of a thousand people it frees from work. So, there is nothing you can do about it. But we will not fight it as they did in England several hundred years ago by destroying machinery.

Question: You believe we should not destroy them?

Answer: No, we should not. You will achieve nothing. Progress must take place.

Question: But tell us, why are we given these opportunities to create such machines, such artificial intelligence?

Answer: To begin working on ourselves! By ourselves! So that we put these artificial machines in our place. Let them do all the work.

And we would work on ourselves, on changing our nature from egoistic to altruistic.

Question: So you believe all this progress, which is significant progress, artificial intelligence, and all progress in general, all the simplification of human labor and transitioning it to the machines, is happening so we can reflect on ourselves and start working on ourselves?

Answer: Yes, so we can stop working on the machines and can start working on ourselves.

Question: But was it not egoism that created this artificial intelligence?

Answer: Egoism created everything. Everything around us is egoism.

Comment: Yes, but it creates something that can destroy itself. That is what is interesting!

Answer: Nothing will destroy it. It only allows us to use our opportunities well, correctly.

Question: Are you talking about the correct use of egoism now?

Answer: Yes, so I do not see anything bad about it thus far. Later, we will realize egoism is an evil force of nature the Creator purposely created to show us its opposite side. And we will come to the realization of transformation, of correcting the ego to its next form—the quality of love and bestowal.

Question: Ultimately, you say you favor all this development that will lead us to this state?

Answer: Yes, I’m in favor of the robot uprising.
[312428]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/20/23

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