Question: How can we determine what elements pull us away from spiritual development and oppositely, which ones help us advance?

Answer: There is only one thing that leads a person to the goal. It is his aspiration to the center of the group in order to reveal the Creator within it. Everything else is only for support, if indeed it gives any support at all.

We are talking about people who seek the revelation of the upper world, but not about those who merely live in our world, suffer, and want to improve their life. There is a different method for them. They do not wish to reveal anything above our world; they want to get fulfilled with something that exists here.

Comment: But there are different criteria for connection when people are doing something together.

My Response: We are uniting with the purpose of assembling our single enormous desire, sufferings, aspirations, uncorrected properties, and all negativity to the degree that it would express within us and we would cry out for correction.

We pile up the flaws together and say “We want to correct them. Please correct them!” And this is it. Just like kids  scream and fight, but you calm them down, in the same way we have to fight with one another, scream, and go to our mom (the upper mother Bina) so she will correct us.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Arava or How To Overcome Yourself?”1/21/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can you balance emotions?“

We can balance our emotions with the help of the environment.

What I mean by “environment” is our society and its influences, that we can surround ourselves with such influences that will guide us on how to direct the emotions that awaken in us.

For instance, we know the example of peer pressure, when our friends tell us to do or not to do something, and their influence makes us follow their recommendations. Using this force of our surrounding environment, we can choose our environment—the kinds of people, media and values we surround ourselves with—and accordingly change our attitude toward certain emotions.

We can then build our intellect with our social influences. Our desires constantly grow, and we correspondingly need to build a greater and greater intellect with which we can deal with our growing desires.

Adjusting our environmental influences in order to build the intellect so that we can best deal with our growing desires is the essence of education. It is what we need to teach the younger generation, that we can balance our emotions with our intellects, and by doing so, come to see our perfect state in life.

We should thus try to find an environment that would be able to supplement our constantly-surfacing emotions in a certain direction. Our environment should act as a damper, helping us mediate our inner excitements and eruptions, bringing them to a state where we would be able to realize them—but to realize them in ways that benefit both ourselves and others.

In other words, we need to examine ourselves in relation to our environment, whether the environment accepts what we want to do. If we find that our desires match those of the environment, then we can continue realizing our desires. We can then determine that we can carry out what we want to do, that it will benefit both us and those around us, and that everything will turn out just fine if we go ahead and realize our desires.

This is how we can balance our emotions—by learning how to balance between our intellect and our emotions via our surrounding environment.

Based on the video “THIS Is How You Balance Your Emotions” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Writtem/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: There is a story that Darwin was explaining his theory of evolution to a nobleman for a long time. The man was listening, agreeing with the scientist’s impeccable logic. In the end, Darwin concluded: “Now do you agree that man descended from a monkey?” The nobleman replied, “Maybe you have, but I have not.”

A lot of people write to you: “Indeed, the world is egoistic. Selfish people, neighbors, friends, and even relatives. But I don’t feel that way. I both give and love.”

Why can’t a person break through to himself and say, “This is how I am,” and really feel it?

Answer: He doesn’t feel it. We don’t see outside ourselves! Maybe a little, perhaps, but not everywhere or always. Sometimes I have some remorse for the past; however, it is partial. Here and there I’ll come up with maybe a dozen times in my whole life.

Question: But I won’t flagellate myself?

Answer: No way! That very ego protects us from this and does not let us see the truth.

Question: At the same time, you say the truth is when one realizes his evil, not someone else’s evil, but one’s own evil. If so, how can we approach it?

Answer: We will work on ourselves. We will attract the upper light with special actions—rapprochement between us—and then we will feel that we are truly egoistic.

You really need to break into yourself. The war is about getting into your own heart, not into the heart of another.

Question: You talk all the time about connection, getting closer to others, and so on. How does this make its way into your heart? Let’s say I am trying to connect with someone I hate or, perhaps, dislike.

Answer: Don’t start with someone you hate.

Question: Even for the sake of good connection, for general rapprochement. How does it pierce my heart?

Answer: It opens your heart and brings it closer to other hearts. These are the first steps that need to be taken.

Question: Do these steps get more complicated?

Answer: Naturally.

Question: So, what is the biggest challenge? Can you tell us what the end goal is? What is the final stage? What do we reach?

Answer: I don’t know that yet.

This is a total correction of all beings you can incorporate in your heart. It will include them and give them all a place and fill them with your love.

Question: So, do I include the whole world in myself?

Answer: Into myself. And I fill it all with love.

Question: You keep saying that the name of the Creator is love. Does it mean that I am filled with the Creator?

Answer: Yes, you are filled with the Creator. You include in yourself all desires, all qualities, of everything that exists, and fill them all with the Creator, that is, with love.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 9/22/22

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Question: What is goodness?

Answer: Goodness is an understanding of interdependence—all the way to love. And evil is vice versa.

Question: But each side in any conflict thinks that it is doing good.

Answer: We need to rise above ourselves and start thinking only about making everyone feel good, not one at the expense of the other. Otherwise, we will not get anywhere. We must learn what mutual connection, mutual dependence, mutual restriction, mutual support, and so on, mean.

That is, we must create systems that will include absolutely all of humanity. These are systems of integral development.

We must understand that we will not be able to survive otherwise. Nature will drive us out of this planet, out of this world, if we cannot establish a system that will take care of everyone.
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From KabTV’s “Blitz Questions and Answers” 1/6/23

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Question: From where are the origins of handwritten and printed texts?

Answer: Handwritten text does not come from Kabbalah. Kabbalah has never welcomed recordings. Why record? Either you enter into the feeling of the global universe sensorially or not.

There is a teacher and a student. The teacher explains to the student what to do, and to the extent that he can adapt this technique, he begins to expand his sensors of feelings.

Therefore, relatively few books have been written in the entire history of the development of Kabbalah. They appeared only 2,500 years ago. Before that, people knew everything by memory; they had a sense of the upper world, so there was nothing to write about if they perceived it anyway.

Similarly, the method of revealing the upper world was not described since children simply adapted it in themselves. From childhood, they were taught to perceive the spiritual world through the correct attitude to others, and at the age of three to six years, they entered into its attainment. It was absolutely natural for them! The environment influenced them that way.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Difference between Handwritten and Printed Text” 1/21/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s the difference between an emotion and a desire?“

When we realize our desires, then we feel emotions. In other words, the feeling of a desire’s fullness or emptiness is called “emotion,” but it is the same desire. That is, emotion is a phenomenon within the desire.

We are activated by our desires at every moment, and we constantly try to realize the desires surfacing in us.

Desires awaken and grab hold of us, directing us to try and fulfill them, and the way in which we work with our desires depends on our social and environmental influences, i.e. the kind of upbringing and education we receive, and the values of the society we live in.

Were it not for our intellect and our social influences that can guide our intellect to navigate our desires, then our desires would overwhelm us.

It is thus in the balance between the intellect and the emotion, i.e. the extent of the intellectual force that we develop over our desires, that determines the extent to which we can control ourselves and our emotions.

Based on the video “What Is the Difference between Emotion and Desire?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: What does the condition of better off dead than such a life mean?

Answer: This state manifests itself at every level. First, when a person is desperate. Secondly, when he feels himself in such a deep egoism that he is ready to do anything just to not stay in it, and so on.

A person has such moments of despair when he breaks through. This is usually directed against his egoism, but sometimes also against the Creator. Everything happens. So what? We have nothing to hide!

The Creator for us is the upper force, the highest quality of nature. I want to acquire it so that the Creator is in me. This is not something that has a volume, some parameters, some view. This is a quality, a category. Kabbalah has a very simple attitude toward this—it is all for materialism.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Better Death than this Kind of Life” 1/28/12

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Question: Do you remember your purely egoistic perception of the world when you were not yet in spiritual attainment? And then, when you already began to perceive everything on a different level, did you erase some facet, some illusion that seemed to you before?

Answer: Nothing has been erased. I just perceive everything more clearly, understandably, and with greater agreement and tolerance, not because I am getting older, but because I see the need for all manifestations of what is in a person.

I see that the most terrible, the most disgusting, and everything that no one can justify, comes from the same source, the upper force, and, unfortunately, sometimes manifests itself in such terrible forms.

And, of course, I treat people as material that needs to be corrected, to convey the truth to them, and to help them.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Laitman – Before and After Attainment” 1/28/12

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Question: Often before big events or congresses there are states when people start to distance themselves somehow, think that they are unimportant, and do not take part in the events. Do they lose something by not overcoming those states?

Answer: Of course, undoubtedly! The main problem is in the preparation of desire, suffering, and awe. Will the connection succeed at the next level? After all, if it doesn’t work out, it will be a huge blow, a failure, which then, of course, through disappointments and various revelations of problems will turn into a correction.

But we need to act differently. We need to go forward with our own pressure, and push our way into the higher world.

Question: What should I do? The main thing for a person is just to participate?

Answer: No, you have to be in this body and soul and prepare yourself with great passion, with great trepidation, and with horror that it may not work out because such an incredible opportunity comes once in a lifetime.

Question: But on whom does the development of this desire depend?

Answer: From all together on the terms of mutual guarantee.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Arava or How to Overcome Yourself?”1/21/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What must America do to fix its trust crisis?“

Indeed, we are living in times of a social trust crisis, and it could lead to worse states where our connections would freeze and we would be unable to move toward each other. Then, from a state where society lives in an iceberg of sorts, we will see that we gain nothing beneficial from our mutual distrust, and we will then start developing a desire for a newfound warmth and love.

We will then need a connection enriching teaching that will guide us on how to come closer to each other, and how to warm our relations with love.

On one hand, we will hold ourselves in mutual distrust and feel ourselves frozen in such a state, and on the other hand, we see how we have no choice but to learn how nature leads us to a helpless state as part of our evolutionary development.

Our increasing distrust is due to our constantly growing ego—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature—that has reached overblown proportions in our era. It makes our relationships colder and colder until we eventually find ourselves completely frozen, unable to make any movements toward each other. At such a point, we need to start artificially activating warm relationships of positive connection.

How?

We will need to start such a process in small groups of people who agree to the need for a transformation from negative to positive human relations, and who will be willing to act out relations of mutual consideration and respect above their innate mutual distrust.

By engaging in this process of connection-enriching learning and exercising of positive connections in small groups, we will start seeing that nature demands of us to live as one body with mutual responsibility among its parts, like how cells and organs live and function together harmoniously for the sake of an organism’s health and well-being.

How do a variety of diverse and even opposing parts exist in a harmonious connection? It is because there is a natural system of life that ties them together.

We thus have to draw the positive force dwelling in nature—a force of bestowal, love and connection—to connect us similarly to how the many cells and organs of a human body interconnect.

Our next state of evolution is to realize our tight interconnectedness and interdependence in a positive manner: that we become aware of the need to mutually consider each other, that living in mutual distrust leads to nothing positive, and that we need to nourish each other with care and respect.

When we reach such a realization, then we will need to also develop a demand for the positive force dwelling in nature to vitalize our interdependence. It is an omnipresent force, but it is dormant and concealed from our egoistic perception; it is actually what is frozen while we let our inborn egoistic approach determine our lives.

When we reach a demand for the positive force of nature to enter our connections, feeling how our very survival depends on it, then we can then take that force “out of the freezer,” so to speak, and let it guide us first to positively connect above our mutual distrust, and then continue strengthening that connection until we feel ourselves as living in a single body.

Based on the video “Social Trust Crisis: Where it Leads Us and How to Fix It” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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