Question: Where does a person’s thoughts originate from according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: Thoughts are a product of the desire. Desire is the basic matter of man: I seek to fill my emptiness. As a result, thoughts appear to choose how I can fill myself.

Question: Where do the feelings, the emotions, come in?

Answer: There is no reference to such concepts in Kabbalistic sources. There is a desire and there is the mind that helps fulfill the desire. The intention is an additional level above the desire that expresses what exactly a person wants to use it for.

The desire comes first and the mind is secondary because the mind never changes the desire; on the contrary, the desire governs the mind. No matter how many philosophers, writers, poets, art critics, and people engaged in the arts wanted to present this to humanity—our corporeal desire manages everything.

Question: What do different emotions, like joy, humor, etc., mean according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: These are all feelings in the desire.

Question: What is the function of the feelings and the mind in a person’s spiritual development?

Answer: The role of the feelings is to show what is happening in a person’s desire and the role of the mind is to be able to work with these desires. But the mind itself doesn’t work on them. It can manage the desire only through the Light that Reforms.

We often see psychologists, and experts in other pseudo-scientific areas in our world who are trying to work with a person’s internal world, with his thoughts and his desires, but they do not succeed.

Being the product of desires, thoughts can help a person manage his internal world, if with the help of his thoughts, he creates in his desire the conditions under which the Surrounding Light begins to impact him.
[200471]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/21/16

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In the News (Phys.org): “A UK, Canadian and Italian study has provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram. …

“The researchers, from the University of Southampton (UK), University of Waterloo (Canada), Perimeter Institute (Canada), INFN, Lecce (Italy) and the University of Salento (Italy), have published findings in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“A holographic universe, an idea first suggested in the 1990s, is one where all the information that makes up our 3-D ‘reality’ (plus time) is contained in a 2-D surface on its boundaries. …

“Professor Skenderis comments: “Holography is a huge leap forward in the way we think about the structure and creation of the universe. Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains almost everything large scale in the universe very well, but starts to unravel when examining its origins and mechanisms at quantum level. Scientists have been working for decades to combine Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum theory. Some believe the concept of a holographic universe has the potential to reconcile the two. I hope our research takes us another step towards this.”

“The scientists now hope their study will open the door to further our understanding of the early universe and explain how space and time emerged.”

My Comment: The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks a lot about this, but it suggests that one should be involved with the study of man, not the study of nature, to expand the possibilities of our perception, our inner characteristics, so then we will see that the picture of the world that appears before us depends completely on our inner characteristics.

As we shape the world ourselves, we limit it, and as such we also see the world. If we expand this picture by changing our characteristics, we will see the world differently, in other dimensions.

Question: Which is to say, to do this, people must change? And scientists believe it is necessary to explore nature.

Answer: The examination of nature is a very limited approach to the subject. It doesn’t yield anything. We have no benefit from this except satisfying our curiosity.

A person needs to develop and change himself. He can and must expand his internal sensory perception, emotions, desires, and thoughts so much so that he will see worlds that exist outside of him, but he will discover them when he discovers himself.

For example, a little child differs from an adult in that he perceives a small, narrow part of the world, even though he basically sees exactly what the adult sees. The question is what does it mean to “see”? The entire difference lies in this. We don’t see the inner connections of nature, we don’t see the true world but only our lowest level.

It is only when person opens the next levels of absorption, knowledge, emotion, and impressions within himself that the next level of creation that exists around us will be revealed to him.

At present, we are in a period and state in which we can understand that our movement in the direction proposed by scientists is erroneous.

We must turn inward, into ourselves, and expand our senses. But because this is connected to the ego, against our nature, we don’t want this. We sell our perceptive abilities in exchange for petty egoism.
[202747]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/1/17

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Question from Facebook: Are the concepts “real world” and “imaginary world” determined only by the person himself? So consequently, they are subjective? Which is to say, are they open to debate?

Answer: Certainly. After all, we cannot say that what is perceived by a person exists objectively. It is felt within him, and it changes because his perception is subjective with respect to him.

But we are talking about how we exist, in what capacity, space, time, movement, world, and so forth.

Therefore, Kabbalah speaks about how to perceive the perfect level of our existence where there are no limitations on our drives, characteristics, developments, thoughts, and desires. A person is not limited by time or space in anything he can imagine! The wisdom of Kabbalah brings us to this state.

I think that this is better than the world of today.
[203156]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/15/17

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Question from Facebook: What does it mean to rise above your consciousness and which path leads to it? Basically, can we influence the scope of our consciousness by simply wanting to expand it?

Answer: Of course we can! What we have is animal consciousness. It serves our physical bodies, therefore it is on the animate degree. All of our thoughts are directed toward food, sex, family, and wealth. Some people also desire fame, knowledge, and power. That’s all a person has in this world.

What does our so-called higher consciousness come down to? What do we occupy ourselves with and what are we serving? We pursue such low goals! It’s not even worth it.

The wisdom of Kabbalah (“Kabbalah” from the Hebrew word “receiving”) talks about receiving higher consciousness, about expanding it in order to make oneself Human.  “Man” or “Adam” in Hebrew means similar to the Creator and this is what our consciousness should be aimed at: becoming similar to the Creator.

This is not easy, it’s difficult. However, when a person sets this goal, when he is in the proper environment, then everything can be achieved with relative ease. In any case we will continue to wander through life until we attain the goal. Such is the law of nature.

Let’s make it quick, easy, and simple and we’ll attain the most wonderful state!
[202998]
From Kab TV’s “News with Rav Laitman” 2/6/2017

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Question: What does it mean to perceive what is external to you?

Answer: Our desire is actually neutral. It can be used for your own benefit or for the benefit of others. It all depends on what a person wants: to bestow or to receive.

If I want to receive, the desire is called a corporeal desire and I feel this world; if I want to bestow, to give, the desire is called a spiritual desire, and then I feel that I am in the upper world.

The point is that anyone can receive, but you need to know how to be able to bestow. “Kabbalah,” although this translates to  “receive” in Hebrew, it is actually the science of bestowal. Therefore, it is built on the quality of bestowal and its main law is love.

Love is filling the desires of other people, which unfortunately does not exist in our world.

Most importantly, if I can bestow unto someone, I can help him attain the upper world. In other words, our bestowal to the world comes down to disseminating this method, because it is only by this method that a person can reach a comfortable, true, eternal, and perfect state.
[203043]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/6/16

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Question: What is spiritual attainment?

Answer: And what is corporeal attainment? A small child, for example, sees only a tiny fraction of the world that he can perceive and process in his brain, which is an emotional, visual, and mental instrument.

We are the same, and we may see much more than we perceive. There are whole worlds that surround us, but we don’t feel them because we don’t have their models within. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us that we have a great and wonderful opportunity to begin to feel the real world that surrounds us.

Many interesting scientific articles have been published recently about this saying we live in a matrix, that our universe is one of the components in a system of universes, etc.

Here the wisdom of Kabbalah comes in, telling a person that he can attain, discover, see, and feel all that and live in it. And so, a person can enter this space and remain in it forever. What does a person have in this world? It will slowly fades away from our feelings, like fog dissipates, and through it we begin to see fields, trees, and houses more clearly, and this world disappears like a haze.

This is what a person who begins to attain the upper world feels because the feelings of the new world become increasingly more powerful than the feelings of our world, and our world gradually becomes less important and its impact gradually becomes minor, and then even less important for me, until it disappears completely.
[202872]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/20/16

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Question: What can you say about Joseph’s prophetic dreams; there are whole stories there?

Answer: These are not ordinary dreams, but Kabbalistic levels.

There is nothing special in an ordinary dream because when we dream, we are released a bit from the pressure of everyday life, so we can to some extent feel what is already upon us and must be clothed in physical forms. But in principle, the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t devote any attention to this.
[200682]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/1/17

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Comment: For centuries humanity has been interested in forecasts of the future, what tomorrow has in store for us.

My Response: Why? After all, knowing the future doesn’t make it easier to live it. If they were to tell us now that in a particular amount of time these or those events would happen, all of our thoughts would be tied to that date.

Question: What motivates people to decipher the writings of Nostradamus?

Answer: On one hand, a person wants to know the future on a global scale; that is natural. But regarding a person’s own future, I think it is worthwhile not knowing. If the future is hidden from a person, it means that it must be hidden. Not even the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals this. It brings a person to a state where the boundary between life and death is erased.

Basically, what is death? It is the animal component of human consciousness. When this part disappears, the mind continues to exist anyway.

Comment: All of the sources point toward the future, for instance, “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid….” (Isaiah 11:6), or “It will be on that day…and the Creator extends His hand again and again.”

My Response: This is not speaking about a specific day, but about a time toward which we are heading today, tomorrow, or in another hundred to two hundred years.
[200561]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/1/16

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Question: Is it possible to artificially create the human mind?

Answer: No. We don’t understand what intelligence is at all. We think that the brain is doing something, performing calculations, but none of this is happening on the material level.

We have no idea how we are connected between ourselves and with the vast systems in which we find ourselves, but we do not feel them because they are in the next dimension.

It is revealed only to a Kabbalist who sees that without wisdom there is nothing to think about here. And people are engaged with isolated and individual calculations: I solve a problem here, I reach some kind of conclusion there, and so forth. We constantly make endless attempts to discover a solution without suspecting that all problems are solved in an analog form.

The higher system, because it is analog and not digital, discrete, solves problems simultaneously in every point of infinite space of desire and Light, which is called Malchut of the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), because when an analog system is working, all potentials are balanced and all changes happen in parallel.
[201507]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/21/16

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Question: In the writings of “The Last Generation,” Baal HaSulam explains thirty million years of the development of planet Earth, cooling, warming, and so on. On the one hand, Kabbalists don’t talk about time and, on the other hand, that is what he wrote. What does he mean by the words, “thirty million years”?

Answer: Baal HaSulam means that within our sensations, in pulses, in the reflection of time, such conditions like these were not created all at once; they were built through a process of contrasting actions, warmth and cold, plus and minus, until they reached a common denominator.

As a result, in the depths of the earth in a raging fire all of the elements of the periodic table boil , and on the top we live quietly on the thin crust that separates us from the seething hell below.  And it all depends on that thin crust.

Question: Before Baal HaSulam, there wasn’t even on Kabbalist who described these processes?  

Answer: Yes, but this doesn’t mean that they didn’t know about it. It is just that they couldn’t express it in language until then. Since Baal HaSulam lived in the 20^th century when we began correcting ourselves and the world began moving toward the completion of correction, a language accessible to our understanding appeared.
[200322]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/14/16

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