Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What came first: science or Kabbalah?“

Science came from Kabbalah, which was discovered by Adam over 5,700 years ago. After Adam, Kabbalists appeared 20 generations before Abraham, i.e., prior to the time of ancient Babylon, and then others appeared after Abraham.

Kabbalah gave us a system. Philosophy emerged from Kabbalah. There are several sources, documents and writings of ancient philosophers as well as those of philosophers and scientists of the Middle Ages, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and continuing with Newton, Reuchlin, Leibniz and others, who described how early philosophers studied with Kabbalists, from whom they derived their knowledge. They developed that knowledge into philosophies, and those philosophies became the foundations of the sciences.

In those times, we aspired to learn about the general nature that was outside of our perception. In other words, we had a closer connection to nature and were interested in learning about the meaning of our lives.

Today, it might sound unreal that we once inquired into the meaning of our lives, but it is due to our present-day distance from nature, where we fail to perceive what it meant to be much closer to nature in those times. Afterward, humanity evolved in its egoistic desires, through desires for money, honor and control, and we developed a much more pragmatic and technological approach to science. Today, however, after eons of such development, we have reached a position akin to those past researchers of our world; we are returning to that same question about the meaning of our lives.

Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What Is Science?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on March 6, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Do We Do When There Is No Work?”
ChatGPT and now Bard are the two latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) machines that have made a buzz in the world. However, they are neither the first, nor the last of their kind; AI is taking the world by storm. From writing assistants through autonomous cars to replacing surgeons, AI and robots are taking our place, and the process is accelerating exponentially.

IBM, for example, has recently announced that it will pause hiring of 7,800 employees and replace them with AI. Likewise, British telecom major, BT, is planning to cut nearly 55,000 jobs by 2030 and replace some of them with artificial intelligence tools. No doubt, this is only the beginning.

If, until recently, most people believed that AI and automation would replace only manual laborers and simple, repetitive tasks, now the picture seems very different. AI can draft legal documents and perform research; it can code like a programmer, and operate with precision that no human surgeon can. At the moment, it is used mainly to assist human professionals, but it is improving so rapidly that the day when humans are no longer needed for almost any job seems to come much sooner than we thought.

We have been brought up to build our self-esteem based on our job, our profession. We may think that a workless world is paradise, but because we value ourselves and others by our professions or our careers, a world where people have nothing to do, and nowhere to find anything to do, is a world of life without meaning. This is a very sad and bad world to live in.
The reality today, even though most of us still do not feel it, is that in terms of jobs, half, if not three quarters of the world population is redundant. There is simply no need for that many workers in the world.

The problem is that until approximately two centuries ago, we were like all other animals, and natural enemies kept human population in check. While other animals had predators, we had plagues and wars, but the result was the same: human population did not explode.

However, once we found a way to overcome disease and reduce child mortality, there was nothing to prevent human population from exploding. The constraints have been lifted and the balance has been broken.

Yet, even with the eight billion people in the world, and even with more than that, we can still avoid depleting and polluting the earth. The question is not one of culling human population, but of educating ourselves to behave in a sustainable way.

Here, too, we need to understand what education for living in a sustainable way means. It will not help us to terrify people by telling them that if they burn fossil fuels it will kill the planet. We need a deeper, more comprehensive form of education—one that helps people find meaning in life, and shows them what to do, not what to avoid.

The education that people need is one that lifts them above our inherent self-centered nature. Education means teaching ourselves to truly care for one another, not because it is a nicer way to live, but because this is how all of nature exists. Once we know this and understand that we, too, should live like that, we will be able to establish a different paradigm of living, and as a result, we will lead a more peaceful life, harmonious with nature and with each other.

Although we will have much better lives than the current rat-race we define as life, better lives will not be the goal, but the outcome of a deeper understanding of the nature around us, of our own nature, and how we can entwine the two in a way that elevates us to a new level of existence. Today, an educational process of this kind is not an option; it is mandatory if we want to avoid a social, economic, and eventually existential collapse.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Can there be more than one Israel?”
A new survey published in Israel reveals that about half of the Jewish public in Israel believes that splitting Israeli society into two autonomous states is possible. Ten percent of the respondents in the survey believe that such a division is not only possible, but even likely. In my opinion, dividing the State of Israel into two separate states is possible only in theory, but not in practice. What the survey does show, however, is how divided and splintered Israeli society really is, and this is what we should really worry about.

As a practical idea, two autonomous Jewish states cannot happen because the division would be between secular and orthodox Jews. However, the orthodox Jews cannot sustain a state on their own without the help of the secular part of society, primarily in the economic aspect.

At the same time, the secular part of society will not be able to maintain a separate state because its social cohesion relies on denunciation of the orthodox Jews. If it receives its own state, without orthodox Jews, the fragmented secular society that is currently united against the religious would have nothing to keep it together and would shatter into countless pieces.

Fragmentation and division have plagued Jewish society since our inception as a nation. However, breaking up has never solved anything for us. On the contrary, it only worsened our plights.

Instead of looking to splinter our society even more, we should understand that our only hope of solving our problems is by embracing the differences between us and using them for the common good. Jews will never be similar to one another. On the contrary, the differences and divisions between us will only widen and intensify the feeling of estrangement. And the only way that we can ever deal with our mutual aversion is to accept the differences, embrace them, and then contribute each sector’s unique qualities for the success of Israeli society in its entirety.

Such an approach may sound impossible to carry out, but we really have no choice. Either we embrace it, or we will fall apart altogether.

It is not a new approach. In fact, this was the modus operandi that our ancestors sought to implement. King Solomon encapsulated this method with a single verse (Prov. 10:12): “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes.” In other words, hate causes conflicts, but we cannot solve them through compromise, but rather by cultivating love for one another despite the hatred. It may seem impossible, and certainly undesirable, to love someone when what I feel is hate, but it is nevertheless the only solution that will save the State of Israel from dissolution.

The way to overcome such a formidable hurdle is to focus not on our negative feelings, but on our responsibility to the world. We must remember that our nation emerged from strangers who followed Abraham’s ideology of unity and mercy among all people, which he bequeathed to his progeny and disciples. Therefore, it is precisely when we feel like strangers that we can implement our forefather’s ideology and realize the greatest legacy of the Jewish people to the world: the motto, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is also when we become a light to the nations, as we had been chosen to be, and what the world still expects us to do.

Our entire history, we have been running away from our vocation. Our entire history, we have been persecuted, expelled, and murdered almost to extinction. It is time to stop running from ourselves, from who we are destined to be, a nation of courageous people who face their own hatred of each other and prove to the world that unity among strangers, which is how we feel about each other, is possible, and we are the living proof. Only if we do this, we will find peace, and peace of mind, and the world will find them with us.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Does Shavuot Signify?”
Shavuot signifies the day of the giving of the Torah, which is the greatest event that could ever occur.

Why is it the greatest ever event?

It marks a state where certain people who lived their usual lives, unknowing of why they were alive, received instructions—a method—on how to live optimally in our world, how to discover who they truly were, and that if they so wished, they could exit the narrow framework of feeling this world in their five bodily senses, expanding their perception and sensation to feel a new world.

They called method that they received “the Torah.” Through this method, they could discover a much richer and wider reality—the eternal reality—which they could connect with and feel.

That is what the Torah gives us. It is a method for expanding our perception, and which lets us discover the true reality where forces of love, bestowal and connection dwell in addition to the narrow reality we perceive in our five corporeal senses.

Shavuot is thus a very special holiday. It marks a differentiation of us living as animals in this world to becoming human beings in the fullest sense of the term, i.e., those who exit their feeling of this narrow and transient world and enter the attainment of a true, eternal and perfect reality beyond the bodily senses.

We should thus respect this holiday and try to reach what those who have attained those states—Kabbalists—tell us about it: that it is a state of connection “as one man with one heart,” of mutual support and understanding, with love and care for one another, and where we feel ourselves existing in one heart.

Even though we each initially live in our egoistic qualities, where we play host to many divisive thoughts, desires, decisions and opinions that resist the state of our complete connection to each other, by using the method of the Torah—the method of how to connect to the force of the upper nature that influences and changes us—we can rise from our egoistic level to one of eternity and perfection.

If we had not received the method of connection called “the Torah,” then we would have become completely divided, and we would have had no opportunity to understand the quality of love, bestowal and connection. We would have remained like animals in this world. Thanks to various unique individuals who implemented this method on themselves, we can access and apply the same method on ourselves.

When we do so, we develop a sense for feeling the quality of love, bestowal and connection. We then come to feel that there is a special force that vitalizes and illuminates the connection between us.

All people host this sense, but some feel it more than others, and the method we received on Shavuot lets us develop it until we feel attracted to connecting “as one man with one heart.” Moreover, those who develop this sense influence its awakening in others, and as such, more and more people increasingly draw toward it.

What is this sense? Generally speaking, it is a sense of love.

If we hold ourselves in an inclination to reach a common love for one another, then we undergo several states of feeling our disconnection, with disregard and disrespect for each other, until we discover the force of love, bestowal and connection that unites us upon those states.

We then become a new nation based on a common desire to connect in love above our divisive qualities, i.e., a nation that was previously nonexistent in a natural and biological way.

It is my hope that we indeed develop this sense of love, bestowal and connection using the method of connection that we received, and that we come to achieve this new sense sooner rather than later. When we do so, we will feel a new inclusive, eternal and perfect reality open up to us, a sensation of harmony and peace that we cannot even imagine in our current earthly senses.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Loneliness Epidemic”
This month, the U.S. Surgeon General published an advisory on loneliness titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” According to the advisory, approximately half of U.S. adults experienced loneliness daily, even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which only exacerbated the situation. Lack of social connection, states the advisory, can present significant health risks and increase the risk of premature death by 26%. It also increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, dementia, and is regarded as one of the primary motivations for self-harm.

But perhaps the most disturbing conclusion that emerges from the advisory is the decline in social connections among teenagers and young adults. The decline in social connection time “is starkest for young people ages 15 to 24, it states. For this age group, time spent in-person with friends has reduced by nearly 70% over almost two decades,” between 2003-2020.

Loneliness is the feeling that I cannot maintain positive reciprocal connections with the people around me. It is not a matter of the number of people who surround me, or the length of time I spend on social media platforms. Feeling alone depends on the quality of the connections, not their quantity. If I feel disconnected, and that I cannot trust the people I am in touch with to support me, and I, too, am disinclined to support them, I will experience loneliness.

Not everyone dreads being alone. Some people do not feel disconnected or unsupported because they have few or perhaps no people around them. For others, however, physical isolation translates into a sensation of loneliness, with all its adverse effects.

From the moment of birth, the people around us shape our understanding, views, sensations, and perception of the world. I may live in some isolated village, disconnected from civilization, but feel deeply connected to my fellow villagers. In such a state, I will not feel lonely because those around me provide me with all the support and warmth I need, and what I learn through my connections with them suffices for the life I am leading.

On the flip side, I may be surrounded by millions of people, but if none of them provides me with support and warmth, and what I learn from them does not provide me with tools that help me cope with life successfully, I will feel alone and lonely. Moreover, the masses of indifferent people around me only amplify my feeling of loneliness and insecurity.

I do not need enemies in order to feel lonely; the apathy of the environment is enough to make one feel like a meaningless speck, and very few people can deal with feeling worthless.

Especially for young people, who are the most affected by social isolation, we must not ignore the spreading loneliness epidemic. By nature, young people need social connections, as these are their formative years, when they design their worldviews and master the art of living in a civilized society. Without healthy connections, they will grow up insecure and maladapted to society. Such people will never be happy.

If we remain inactive in the face of the spreading epidemic, the social consequences could be horrendous. Luckily, we are not helpless. The more active we are toward our environment, the more we can change it. If we are positive toward it, it will reciprocate our attitude. To get support and affirmation from the environment, we need not look for others to provide it to us. Instead, we should initiate such behavior toward others, and they will reciprocate our positive and supportive behavior.

Most of us are afraid to open our hearts. We have been conditioned to think that if we open our hearts to others, we become vulnerable and people will hurt us. However, for the most part, the opposite is true: If we open our hearts to others, they will open their hearts to us.

Our loneliness, therefore, is more manageable than we might think. If we make the first move toward others, in all likelihood, they will make the next move toward us, and not against us. We can cure the loneliness epidemic, but we must want to cure it, and we must be willing to take small chances. And most importantly, we should not expect others to be friendly to us, unless we are first friendly to them.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Israel Rethinks Its Identity”
This week, seventy-five years ago, in the midst of a war for its survival, David Ben-Gurion solemnly declared the establishment of the Jewish state: the State of Israel. But since that fateful day of May 14, 1948, Israeli society has become so divided that the historic document has become a weapon in the hands of parties that interpret the Declaration of Independence in a way that meets their agenda, regardless of the authentic intention of its authors, the leaders of the nestling Jewish state. As a result, a heated debate has emerged in Israel over what being Israeli means, what is the difference between being Israeli and being Jewish, which of the two takes priority, and can we have a just society for all its citizens when the country is defined as the homeland of the Jews.

For seventy-five years, we have been unable to resolve these questions. In my opinion, even if we continue to debate for the next seventy-five years, we will not come to an agreement. Each side will only become more entrenched in its opinion, and misunderstanding will translate into more division and internal hatred.

The great 20th century thinker and kabbalist Baal HaSulam once wrote about the obstinacy of Jews: “They [the divided parties] believe that in the end, the other side will understand the danger and will bow his head and accept their view. But I know,” he writes, “that even if we tie them up together, one will not surrender to the other even a little, and no danger will interrupt anyone from carrying out his ambition.” These words, which were written in the essay “Exile and Redemption” in the 1930s, ring very true today, as the discourse in Israel becomes increasingly polarized and vitriolic.

We may need to revisit the Declaration of Independence, but its foundation should remain. The existence of the State of Israel represents the fulfillment of the hopes of Jews for thousands of years. But what we should discuss is not the characteristics of the state, but rather the understanding of the essence and purpose of the people of Israel itself.

If the State of Israel continues to justify its existence merely on the argument that this is our historic land, that we were promised it by God, or that we have no place else to go because we are banished and exterminated everywhere else, we will not be able to justify Israel’s existence to ourselves or to the nations. Our justification for existence lies in our purpose, and the purpose of our existence has nothing to do with us, but rather with the rest of humanity.

The people of Israel was founded on the basis of brotherly love, and only when we maintain such relations are we regarded as a nation. Moreover, as soon as we met the condition of brotherly love, we were commanded not to keep our unity to ourselves, but to set an example for the world, to be “a light to the nations.”

Indeed, if we look at the history of our nation, we will find that all our tragedies befell us after extended periods of growing division and self-hatred that continued to escalate even when it became clear that our division will lead to ruin. This is what Baal HaSulam meant when he wrote, “no danger will interrupt anyone from carrying out his ambition.” And accordingly, our best times as a nation came when unity prevailed among the people.

Because our success and failure are so inherently entwined in our unity, we are able to determine our own national fate. If we choose unity, no matter what division we must overcome in order to achieve it, we will thrive as a nation and as a country. If we succumb once more to division, we will lose the basis of our identity as a nation whose purpose is to serve as a model of cohesion. In consequence, the nation will fall to pieces and the country will disintegrate.

Unlike any other nation, the Israeli nation is not dependent on anyone’s assistance or affirmation. The only thing that determines our success or failure, the only thing on which we are dependent, is our unity, and our willingness to become a model nation for humanity.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can Kabbalah be understood without knowing Hebrew?“

It is possible to understand Kabbalah in any language. Moreover, it is desirable to study Kabbalah in one’s native language. However, at the same time, there are a number of Kabbalistic terms in Hebrew that one should learn in order to advance in the study.

For example, the Hebrew word “Partzuf” literally translates to “face,” but in the wisdom of Kabbalah, it holds a completely different meaning, and no term can properly express its spiritual meaning other than the word “Partzuf.” It is a similar situation with several other words. If you think of “Partzuf” as “face” and other words like “Rosh” as “head” and “Raglaim” as “legs,” i.e., the everyday Hebrew uses of those terms, then you will become completely confused and will miss the point completely.

These words and several others are the terminology of the soul, and we gradually come to perceive them as such the more we advance in the method of Kabbalah.

I thus think it makes no sense to translate these words. Likewise, in several of the world’s professions, many words remain in their original language. For instance, Latin is used in medicine, Italian is used in music, and all kinds of expressions in German and English are used in international technical languages.

Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Language of Kabbalah” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on January 23, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do people who go out to space and look at the Earth from afar undergo any kind of special change?“
Indeed, people who go out to space and view the Earth from afar come back differently.

By detaching from us even for a short period of time, they come back with a different opinion about how we should relate to life.

They can then no longer negatively impact others because of their newly-gained global and integral perspective of everyone and everything: that we are small creatures living on the same small planet. Accordingly, they disagree with the negative connections we have established, where we exploit and harm each other day after day.

I think that we would transform our reality and our world if we could send us all—the whole of humanity—out to space and bring us all back. Doing so would pull us out of our current perceptual bubbles, and we would gain a whole new perspective outside of these bubbles.

Then, after exiting our previous bubbles, we would understand that life could be completely different.

We would then agree to change ourselves. We would even do so against our own will because we would gain a new lens through which we would view reality.

We would then become more mature and understand that it is incredibly childish to constantly struggle with one another in our limited lives here on Earth. Such a change of perspective to a globally-inclusive view of ourselves and our world would lead us to a major change for the better.

Based on the video “Do People Who Go Out to Space and View the Earth from Afar Undergo Any Special Kind of Change?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some things we can do to help ease our anxiety about the future?“

To understand that it is just anxiety and not reality.

We should look into what we have the ability to do today, understanding that any anxieties about the future are about what might happen later, and accordingly we should calm down.

Fearing the future gives us absolutely nothing. We nevertheless do not know what will happen tomorrow, so why should we get anxious with various worries and concerns?

Based on the video “Anxiety about the Future – A Kabbalist’s View” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, on The Times of Israel: “What was Antonio Stradivari’s secret to making the best violins in history?”

Indeed, whether it is the latest technologies being unable to recreate the Stradivari violin sound, nor the International Association of Violin and Bow Makers, which has repeatedly attempted to discover the master’s secret with no luck, there have been all kinds of logical explanations such as the wood being different, or the times being different, and so on, but no one really knows the secret.

We first need to understand what happens inside our ear, why and how it is possible to elicit the kind of reaction that Stradivari’s strings derive, and how the sounds enter us.

There is indeed a secret at play, but I think that even Stradivari himself was unaware of it. He was simply working according to a certain intuition.

The secret lies in a special combination of sounds that influences the heart, and we need to think about how the heart responds first, and the ear follows. The primary role of the heart is of utmost importance in this area, yet nobody knows about it.

Even Stradivari did not know about it. He was unaware of such internal mechanics. He and his hands were generally driven by an inner intuition, and of course, the guiding higher force played a role in that interaction.

We are talking about a person who was really just an ordinary person with a certain profession, but at the same time, he became chosen to perform a certain role, and this secret became conveyed through him.

As such, the secret of Stradivari’s violin sound applies to everything beyond musical instruments. The sound has to enter the heart first, and only then does it reach the ear. Of course, this runs against what we commonly think, i.e., that we do not hear with our ears, but with our hearts.

Words also have such a quality, and it is how words are formed. When we speak or write, we have to find a word that enters the heart, and we hear it only afterward.

It is actually very easy to find such words in the wisdom of Kabbalah. My teacher, Rabash (Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag), said about this, “Michael, haven’t you heard what it says in the Shema prayer? It says, ‘Shema (Hear O) Michael.’” I was surprised, thinking why is he saying “Michael” and not “Hear O Israel”? “Israel” is a general name, but in reality, we can insert our own names there. That is, this “Hear O Michael” speaks to the heart, and the composition then begins.

The Shema prayer is considered one of the loftiest prayers, and a prayer is heard by the person’s heart first and only afterward by the ear—if it is even heard at all.

We say in the wisdom of Kabbalah that the prayer of an ordinary person is more exalted than prayers composed by sages and Kabbalists. This is because the person feels it; his heart resonates with the word that is rooted in a spiritual sensation. When a person thus pronounces the prayer with his feelings, he first hears it above. It is not something born within any of us.
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