Question: What is spiritual rest?

Answer: It is said that there is no rest in this world nor in the world to come. We must constantly move forward without interruption. And when we attain complete correction, that is, when we finally rise above our egoism into the absolutely full attainment of the upper world, then everything will indeed come to a state of complete, eternal rest.
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From Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/19/17

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Every soul is connected to the world of infinity by a chain, a ladder of spiritual degrees, with a gradual weakening of the lights and the Kelim (vessels). The moment I establish a connection with infinity, I awaken this system. In fact, it exists within me, and only seems to be external to me.

There are two in the universe: man and the Creator, and it is necessary to somehow give man the sensation that he exists outside the Creator so that I may understand what separation from Him is, opposition, distance, rapprochement, and adhesion with the Creator. Therefore, I was deliberately created in such a way that I perceive reality as divided into what is inside me and what is outside.

Then it becomes easier for me to understand what “I” and the Creator are, what breakage and connection, an unconscious state and concealment are, or conversely, what approaching Him and adhesion into one whole are.

The Creator throws out everything that I feel within myself, and it turns out that my perception is divided into two: the inner, which is everything that I receive, and the outer, what I give, but without the correct intention. Thus, the external world is my Kelim that are deliberately presented to me as alien and foreign so that I may understand what bestowal is. If I begin to relate to them as a part of myself, then I will understand how distant bestowal is from me and how opposite and undesirable it is!

Try to love your neighbor as yourself; it is not simple at all. I cannot. And this means that I cannot bestow, I cannot draw closer to the Creator. No wait, I do want the Creator! But how do you want Him? You must demonstrate it, and this is precisely the only correct way.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/4/10, Baal HaSulam, Preface “Foreword to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: In The Zohar lessons you explain very subtle, hidden, one might even say secret things.

Answer: They are secret and concealed from our senses because we are too coarse and unable to discern them. That is all!

This does not mean they are a mystery. They seem like a secret to me because they are concealed from me, imperceptible to me.

I have to sharpen my perception, make it more precise and capable of differentiating finer gradations of properties. Then I will suddenly start to sense a completely different, true depiction of reality, in a higher resolution.

For this to happen, we must introduce the property of bestowal into our perception. By sensing it, we will sense the upper world.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/7/10, The Book of Zohar, “VaYechi”

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Comment: You say humanity is being pushed toward awareness by blows.

My Response: Naturally. We see that the blows are pushing humanity toward a more realistic view of the world.

Comment: There is a vast amount of information in this world.

My Response: There is no vast amount of information here. It is all nonsense, all on the earthly level, at the level of a small man who can collect crumbs from what he imagined with his five material senses and a small head, and at the same time, he thinks he is drowning in these crumbs.

There is no need to drown in it. Why? You must imagine this world as something that is depicted in your ego, rise above it, and then you will see it as a small grain, because there is no vast information here. These are all your little egoistic impressions of what is depicted to you.

You are like a child who imagines this world as if there is so much in it! But in fact, there is nothing in it. This is purely egoistic matter seeking to maintain an optimal egoistic state throughout its existence and then die.

What is there in this world? What can you offer me between life and death if it all comes to an end?
Nothing. That means I am no longer interested in it. If everything ends, I am no longer interested. This is how I look at life. And this is why I immediately dismiss all your philosophies and politics. What is America or Russia, what difference does it make to me? As the Prophet says, “Calm down, calm down, nations.”

Comment: But you are talking from a position of knowing.

My Response: Not because I know! Once, I did not know anything either. But I was looking at the fact that it all has a beginning and an end. So what difference does it make to me what happens midway?

If the train is heading to a junkyard, what then? We sit in it, open a bag of sandwiches, chicken, beer, and play cards. And then what? We are going to a dead end anyway. Therefore, I am not getting on this train. And if there are theaters, movies, and all kinds of games inside the train, I have no interest in that either, because it is going to a dead end. I do not look at human history, the public, politics, or anything else, because it is all inside this train.

I have held this view since childhood. I could not see it any other way. I had to find another way, take another train, like Harry Potter’s platform “nine and three-quarters.” I need to find the platform from which the train departs in the other direction.

Comment: But you did not initially assume that you could simply feel it.

Answer: Of course, I did not know where it was, but I also did not want to board that train. That was the most important thing for me. So I ran from everywhere, tried to search, but could not find anything. It was not easy for me. But when I found Kabbalah, I immediately quit my business with pleasure and immersed myself in it.

I do not advocate this kind of lifestyle. It is given to a person either as happiness or as misfortune. I do not know how to say this, but it is a special desire for a goal. I am just saying that many people are in this state today. Therefore, I appeal to them, to those who are looking for another train and not the one that goes to a dead end. That is the most important thing.

The Torah states that it is a cure for death. This intrigued me because it is the most important thing. Everything else is nonsense; everything else does not matter. I am saying this as an old man. What does it matter what you fill your life with? You are only 30 years old, while I do not have much time left. I am telling you, there is nothing else to base your life on.

And when the younger generation finally begins to understand this early in life, it is simply a blessing that they are given such an epiphany from above, not to be polluted by various conventions.

They need to find an environment for themselves, whose purpose is clear and precise—to achieve eternity.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Harry Potter Platform” 10/4/10

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Question: We constantly kill others with words. And the smarter ones kill gradually, not immediately. So as not to become an enemy, they kill gradually by starting rumors that spread through others. It is our nature to put the other down.

Why doesn’t it hurt me that I slowly humiliate another person, get them out of my way, and kill them?

Answer: I believe the other person does not let me live, that he is my enemy who sees me standing in his way and must destroy me.

Question: Why were we given such a nature to live like this?

Answer: It is all for the same reason, so that we correct our egoism, so that we can be convinced that “love your neighbor as yourself” is the main law of the world.

Comment: In that case, at some point, it should make me feel bad that I am like this.

My Response: Yes, of course.

Question: I see all these wars now, all these killings, directly, indirectly, and so on. And at what point does it come to me: “What am I doing? It is all inside me. How can I get away from this?”

Answer: At the moment of revelation.

Question: And when does this happen? Can this be accelerated, or can something be done? I understand that this is really the most important moment in my life. That everything is in me, that everything is because of me, that I am the killer. Does it come to a person at all?

Answer: When he becomes convinced that he is full of evil, then his true nature is revealed in him, and he can no longer tolerate it and turns to the Creator.

Question: Does this happen unexpectedly for a person? Or is it as if he already wants that?

Answer: No, this revelation usually comes with a serious push.

Question: So there is something before that; is there some kind of impulse after all?

Answer: Yes.

Question: When this is revealed to a person, does prayer to the Creator become natural because one understands that everything depends only on Him?

Answer: Yes, then a person turns to the Creator, judges himself, and by correcting himself, corrects the world around him.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 12/3/2025

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Question: If we do not sense the Creator, how can we receive His qualities and become similar to Him?

Answer: A person senses nothing outside of himself, outside of his body, whether it is the Creator, a friend, or the group. Therefore, we must first work on our bestowal to the other, to love the other as ourselves. And if I can attain bestowal to the other, then I will be able to bestow to the Creator as well.

If I agree to work only for the Creator but not for the other, this is a sign that I am not ready to work for the Creator either. After all, I am still not making an independent calculation “outside my own interest.” I remain within myself and receive results of the work, the reward.

That is, all the work is only in relation to the group, within which we create the place for the revelation of the Creator.

We do not receive any light; we are filled with our own bestowal! I “generate” this quality from within myself with the help of the force that comes to me and gives me the ability to be in bestowal, and in this I feel the force of the Creator clothing in me. This serves as my fulfillment.

I will never reveal anything “outside of myself,” even though it is said that we “go out of ourselves” and connect with others. This is all my imagination, my perception, as if I am going out of myself.

It is said that Malchut of the world of Atzilut is called “the image of the Creator.”

And it is also said that I must bring joy to the Creator through all the states that I receive from Him. But what does it mean to receive states from Him; after all, they depend on the desire awakened in me: more or less, depending on my overcoming my egoistic desire and correcting it. How is this related to the Creator, who does not change?

And what can I even give Him? There is no one to bestow to, no one to receive my work.

In the end we reveal that we correct only our own qualities and never leave them. And the very quality of bestowal is a pure quality; I cannot work for any kind of “benefit” of it. I can only value it as a special, exalted quality according to my attitude of awe toward the light and toward the other, which inspires the sense of the greatness of bestowal and love in me.
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From Kabbalah Lesson 4/27/11, Baal HaSulam, Shamati 1, “There Is None Else Besides Him”

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Question: Has our world group not yet broken through the iron wall that separates us and the whole world from Kabbalah?

Answer: The fact is that breaking through the iron wall means acquiring the property of complete bestowal. Ask yourself if you are already in that state.

There are people among us who are truly breaking through this wall, there are those who have broken through and there are those who are on their way to it, some closer and some further away.

Each of us should feel as if only one more effort remains to break through the iron wall. Beyond it are many other steps, and each time a person will feel as if he is breaking through it again. But all subsequent steps proceed within this spiritual ladder, within the upper world, already in the quality of bestowal, from a small level of bestowal to a larger and larger one. In accordance with this, an ever-increasing volume and more internal connections of the whole world and oneself with it are revealed. A person feels like he contains the whole world.

In fact, everything is inside of us. Sometimes, when you look at the starry sky at night, you suddenly have a desire to have it all in you; you want to embrace it all. In fact, it is all you, and as a result, you feel not only the stars in you, because this is a very small part of our world, but the entire universe, not to mention the upper world.
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From a Virtual Lesson, 11/18/12

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The Creator is my corrected quality. The Creator is revealed within the created being, and therefore in Hebrew He is called “Bo-reh” — “Come and See.”

I must reach my corrected state, my corrected self; I will see my corrected qualities and I will call them “the Creator.”

I reveal the Creator only within myself, within my corrected vessels of perception. Outside of myself I feel nothing. I perceive all reality, everything that exists, within me, in my sensations. Therefore, The Book of Zohar says that all the worlds and all that fills them, including the Creator, are within a person. Because they are felt by him only within himself. It only seems to me that everything is outside, beyond me.

This illusion is given purposefully: through the tension between the sensation of “outside” and “within,” I acquire the ability to see the world, myself, and the Creator both from the outside and within — and I become able to perceive creation as He does: before creation, during creation, and afterward, in future “super-states.”

Spiritual perception is based on the feeling of “other people’s” desires, which I attach to myself with the desire to bestow to and love them. In this way, my desire grows. And to the extent that I unite with other desires, I reveal an ever-broader reality.

In our world, we reveal the world of Assiya, because each person is locked within himself, within his own, and therefore egoistic, desire.

If I begin to connect with a group, with desires similar to mine in their yearning for the Creator, then to the extent of this connection I reveal the world of Yetzira. I have united to some degree with the environment into a single desire, and within it I reveal the measure of bestowal I have attained, which is called “the Creator.”

The phenomena I reveal within my corrected desire are called light, and its deeper source, the Creator. Then a greater egoistic desire, my “I,” is revealed in me. And above it, in my effort to unite with the group, I attain the world of Beria.

In this manner we reveal all five worlds. Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” that all the worlds are within a person. Therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the created being, within the created being, in its corrected desires (organs of perception).

By revealing the quality of bestowal, we also attain its source, its originator. This most inner attainment is what we call the Creator.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/13/09, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: You say that everything spiritual is feelings. What are feelings?

Answer: Feelings are what happens in the desire, and desire is our matter. That is, we are talking about matter and the form of matter. This is what we study in Kabbalah and what we can sense, analyze, and reproduce. Therefore, absolutely everything is in our feelings.

Comment: But feelings don’t have a specific location.

My Response: Desire is the very place in which you sense what you feel. My desire is the only reality. And all the objects surrounding me only seem to exist. In fact, they are drawn for me in my desire. Besides desire, there is nothing. Matter is desire.

Comment: In reality, this is something inexplicable.

My Response: It simply cannot be grasped.

Comment: Neither feelings nor desire can be conveyed in any way. Only if, as you say, there is a common form. If someone has experienced it, they can convey the feeling.

My Response: That is why I try, in some way, to push students to start writing emotional works about everyday situations that would lead a person to a certain awakening, similar to a spiritual one, and would accelerate their development.

Question: Is it possible to convey Kabbalah in this way? Can you take all the explanations from the heights and transmit them in a sensory form?

Answer: Yes, try to present all this in the form of various novels. One can, of course, write purely psychologically about a person’s inner states, even when he doesn’t intersect with others. Or one can base it on his relationships with a group, with friends, with animals, with women; it doesn’t matter.

That is, the foundation is always the same, only more complicated. Just like in our world: There are more intelligent people, there are less educated ones, but the foundation is always the same—emotional.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Reason and Feelings” 10/5/10

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We live in an inner illusion, and therefore we need to bring ourselves to the system that truly exists. Today we dwell in an illusory system, which in Kabbalah is called the “imaginary world” (Olam HaMedume), or our world.

Moreover, for this there is no need to create a matrix in the 21^st century, like in Hollywood movies. It is enough to turn to books from 5,000 years ago where all of this is laid out step by step. There is no need to break through an open door.

Our world is a complete illusion. It constantly operates inside us. We only need to create normal, natural, correct feelings and thoughts within ourselves that would give us, instead of an illusion, a true picture of reality.

But this true picture is also inside us, not outside as it seems to us. All of it is entirely within our desires. Light paints certain images within the desire, by comparing its qualities and desires, their difference or their similarity. This is the picture of the world.

Therefore our task is to move from a great illusion to a lesser one, and to an even lesser one, until we approach the true reality in which only light fills us. And everything except for it was an illusory reality, only in its various measures. That is why all worlds are called “worlds,” from the word “olama” (concealment), which indicates that we live in concealment from the true reality, the world of infinity.

People imagine another reality in the form of pictures: walls, ceilings, floors, or something else. But I imagine it in the form of inner experiences and sensations.

For example, I ask you: “Do you remember what state you were in the day before yesterday?” This is how you remember this state, and it may be simultaneously associated for you with some place and time, that is, with the coordinates “time,” “place,” and “movement.” And then I ask you, “What are your experiences, your sensations?” and then you convey them to me, as if extracting them from your memory, from your archive, and you describe them. That is, you immerse yourself in this experience again and explain it.

This is similar to how it happens in the spiritual. There is no material volume there. This volume is called “desire” in which I begin to feel my past state again and in some way transmit it to you. That is all. Only inside the desire.

It’s just like in our world. Suppose you detach yourself from everything that is around us and imagine that you and I are in some cosmic space where there is no up, no down, nothing—emptiness. But within us there exist certain shared empathies, sensations, thoughts, memory, and everything else. So these are what constitute, as if were, a spiritual state.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Matrix” 9/19/10

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