Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there a risk of famine today? Why or why not?“

One of my students asked me about the possibility of global famine, citing a report where almost 90 percent of international food security and nutrition experts surveyed predicted that “without innovation and bold action, global hunger would continue to rise over the next decade.” It is indeed possible, and ancient Kabbalistic sources also state that in our era, we can reach states as horrible as mothers eating their own children. That is how severe it can become.

However, we should not relate to the idea of an impending famine simply in order to fill our storages and our barns with supplies. The fact that we can consider such terrible scenarios is in order for us to seriously concern ourselves with how to avoid such states in advance, and to learn about and deal with the base cause that brings about such crises.

If we investigate the core reason behind not just famine but any crisis that befalls us, then we will find that it is all due to imbalance in human relations, the fact that we are not behaving toward each other the way we should.

How should we behave toward each other?

We need to reach mutual understanding among each other, to establish ties that would help us reach a balanced state. Today, we are doing the contrary, regressing and thus rocking the boat we all share. The world thus naturally heads toward periods of famine and destruction.

The destruction that we can bring upon ourselves should very much frighten us so that we would change our attitudes to each other, and by doing so, change the world. That is the sole reason we can consider impending famine and other crises, and it is also the reason for our experience of crises and suffering in general: to bring about a shift in how we relate to each other, from negative to positive, egoistic to altruistic, and apathetic to mutually responsible.

What could be the catalyst for such a transformation?

I believe that there should be a leader that initiates and promotes it. Our world is tough without someone that human society would accept as their leader and follow, one who would discuss unification and how we could overcome famine and other crises. Of course, it would only work if people would listen to such a leader, and famine would emerge to open our ears to such a person.

Then, after a period of famine, we would be different. We would hold a different attitude to life and to its values. We would no longer underestimate the vast importance of our survival and what it means for us to survive in today’s trying times.

While there have been periods of great famine, wars and other crises in the past, today is fundamentally different because our current era is preparing us for mass awareness of the evil of our egoistic relations, which will spur in us the desire to change ourselves. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, such an awakening is called “the recognition of evil.” It takes an enormous amount of suffering for us to reach a state where we can sense our own nature as evil, to define it as such and to draw the necessary conclusions: that we need to put an end to our rat race of individuals competing against each other for material well-being, and shift to new positively-connected relations where we seek to benefit each other and nature, feeling ourselves as parts of an interdependent and interconnected whole where we each affect one another. We are still not there yet, but that time is nearing.

Based on the video “Is the World in Danger of Impending Famine?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. Do we really practice this in the world today?“

We can realize the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” in today’s world through education.

Education means filling our media, our schools, colleges, universities, and our cultures, i.e. literally everything that influences us, with examples and explanations of our need to achieve positive connections among us all.

If we do so, then there is hope of reaching positive social values and a whole, pleasant, good and perfect world. If not, then our constantly growing ego—the desire to receive that wishes to devour others and nature for self-benefit—pits us up against each other on a collision course to destruction.

We can understand the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” similarly to how an ideal family functions. In the beginning of creation, we were a single family. Today, we need to realize ourselves as a single family among several billions of people, which is possible through regular learning of our interconnection and interdependence. We are currently like a family that grew up and lost their connection, and we need to bring them together to talk about it. That is what we need to do today in humanity.

Based on the video “How to Make ‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’ a Reality in Today’s World” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does human nature work?“

Human nature is the desire to receive, also called “desire to enjoy,” and it functions by receiving what is beneficial to itself and rejecting what is harmful. Everything in our lives is built upon this calculation where we first try to distance ourselves from harm, and then seek how to draw ourselves closer to what is beneficial.

Human nature also includes a multilayering of systems that work simultaneously on still, vegetative, animate and human levels. One of those systems is our bodily one, which operates involuntarily. If our bodies are healthy, then they know what is good for them and draw that goodness to themselves. After the bodily system, there is the emotional system, which also functions relatively according to instinct. From the emotional system, we move to the mind, and from the mind to the intellect, and so on. That is, we have systems over systems that concurrently work on receiving what is beneficial and rejecting what is harmful.

Such is human nature and the essence of our lives. Our every desire, thought and action operates according to the calculation, “How can we receive what is most beneficial to us and reject what is harmful?”

Based on the video “How Human Nature Works” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Nitzah Mazoz. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: When spouses are just starting to live together, according to biological processes, hormones support their relationship for the first three years. It is believed that after three years, hormones stop working, and a cooling occurs between a man and a woman, nothing holds them further. Does it come from nature?

Answer: Probably. In past centuries, it may have been different, but nowadays they say that it is, especially on the part of a man.

Maybe from the woman’s side, I do not know. Usually a woman gets used to a man. I don’t think she wants to change everything so much. Today, it is also a little different for women, but still not in the same way as for men.

Question: It’s not a fact that someone wants to change something, it’s just a question that there is no longer a physical factor that holds them back. How can spouses overcome this and continue to live normally?

Answer: Now is a special time—the time of correcting selfishness. And if the spouses are not engaged in its correction, they will not be able to coexist together.

There will be more and more divorces until there are no families left at all. People will converge for a day or two, for a year or two, and disperse. Children will be born not clear from whom and where. The world will come to this because a person will not be able to cope with selfishness if he does not begin to correct it.

And for the sake of correction, you will live with one woman because you will feel that you are kindred spirits with her and it is with her that you can correct yourself. And then all physical problems or cooling will be invisible because in your physical union with her you will feel spiritual unity, and then there will be no problems.

The world is coming to this. And now we are living in a transitional period when there is no such marriage as before, but there is also no new state of marriage as it should be.

But a person will be like that. He will live only in order to improve spiritually, to rise, to feel a higher state, but in no case to remain in this world and this life. Otherwise, there is no point. Otherwise, people will commit suicide, use drugs, and terrible things will happen in the world.

Comment: In principle, such a connection should ideally be.

My Response: No, not at all ideally. A person will feel spiritual needs above the base, earthly ones because in his eyes it will not be worth spending his life on them. We will survive this state.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Preserve Love” 12/19/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do we build an image of other people inside us?“

We are emotional cameras because we picture other people in our emotions, which are in our desire to receive.

The desire to receive pleasure is our nature and it makes us perceive everyone and everything via how we can enjoy from them.

For instance, if we look at another person’s face, we might register only their eyes and their smile, because we might enjoy those facial features the most. We do not acquire an exact physical photograph of the other person, like how police piece together facial composites, but we build an emotional impression based primarily on what we enjoy from the other person and their features.

Other than people, we also perceive animals, plants and objects similarly—in the desire to receive pleasure, which is ultimately what we are and where we perceive our reality.

Based on the video “How You Create an Image of Other People Within” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Tal Mandelbaum and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: How do you feel how far your student has progressed?

Answer: I conduct an analysis and see. The analysis is not of medical indicators, but of the spirit.

The spiritual is the same material, but not for everyone. For example, you can do an analysis of various waves, radioactivity, gasses, or some other natural phenomena, and I can measure the parameters of the spirit, and the other cannot.

Question: But how is this measured? Due to the fact that a person does some certain actions, or does he have internal changes after all?

Answer: Of course internal changes are taking place in him. I incorporate him in myself, as if in my laboratory, and measure using my ruler. Previously, he got, say, up to 20 divisions, and now up to 25.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Proper Self-analysis” 1/21/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do people see others as a mirror of themselves?“

Undoubtedly, we see people not for who they are. Also, it is not just people, but anything we see, we seemingly bring it to life according to what we want to see in it. People in and of themselves do not exist, but we see people according to what we want to see in them.

What does it mean that we want to see something in someone?

So many people in our lives simply pass us by, as if they do not stand out from the background. However, to the extent in which we get to know certain people, then we gain some kind of impression of them.

We then relate to them in a certain way. Then, even before we start communicating with them, we already picture their image in us based on our previous impressions that we accumulated. We register various impressions from people the more we encounter them. Therefore, we do not know any people for who they are. We only know these images that we sculpt within us.

Based on the video “You Don’t See People for Who They Are” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Tal Mandelbaum and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How should I relate to people?“

We have to relate to everyone favorably, i.e. to give a good example to everyone as much as we can in order to break them with love, out of our love for them.

What does “breaking other people with love” mean?

We first need to understand that what we perceive of other people are not them in and of themselves, but an impression that exists within us. We then need to want to invert our negative impression of others to a positive one, so that they will understand how much we really wish for their benefit.

We continue relating to them through such a tendency up to a point where, as it is written, “love will cover all crimes.” That is, over the initial negative impressions—the “crimes”—love will emerge: that we will perceive no flaws in people the way we perceived various flaws in them through our egoistic picture that we previously held.

Also, what does it mean that our initial impression of other people is always negative? It is that we view others through an egoistic filter, where we constantly calculate along the lines of “What can I get out of them?” and “How can I reap some kind of benefit from them?” If we cannot find any self-benefit from other people, then we find no point in relating to them.

Based on the video “What Is the Best Way to Relate to Other People?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Tal Mandelbaum and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can you tell me more and more about the Hebrew language?“

A little while after I had started studying with my Kabbalah teacher, Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag (Rabash), a letter reached us from a prisoner who lived under terrible conditions in a prison camp in Siberia.

The letter was written in Hebrew, full of very complicated rhymes that I did not understand, and it was by a person who had no prior learning of Hebrew, nor was he connected to Israel or the Jewish people.

Rabash told me that probably what had happened was that, out of suffering, the prisoner came to feel Hebrew and the internality of the language.

How could it be, that out of great suffering, a person with no seeming connection to Israel or the Jewish people, starts writing in Hebrew?

The Kabbalistic explanation is that his suffering led him to a certain kind of connection with the source of his suffering, which is in the depths of creation, and there he found expression in Hebrew.

Kabbalists, i.e. people who hold a connection to the deeper layers of creation, see that it is indeed possible for a person to discover the Hebrew language in such a way as shown by the prisoner. That is, Hebrew is the base language that exists in the center of the world. It is at the root of all writing, talking and expression, and it lets us express our innermost feelings.

If we reach the depths of creation, then we discover life’s causal point—the common root to us all—and in that root, we have a single language and one force—of love, bestowal and connection—that created us, and which guides us gradually toward its revelation.

Based on the video “The Siberian Prisoner Who Discovered Hebrew Out of Suffering” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Tanner Mardis on Unsplash.

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One of the important qualities in spiritual work is patience; one should grit his teeth, shut his mouth, and go through all states.

This is what you do all of your life if you are dealing with the Creator, if He is standing before you, and His revelation and connection with Him is the only thing important for you since He is really the only reason for everything that is happening.

Where else can we go, and what else should we pay attention to? We need the commandment love your neighbor only in order to train and reach His qualities. Neither my neighbor nor I exist here, but only the way to reach the quality of the Creator.

Question: Is patience especially important during a quarrel?

Answer: A quarrel is the appearance of a contradiction with the Creator, when He puts me in such conditions that I do not accept the picture that He paints for me.

Question: In principle, when there is conflict between friends, is this also one of the elements?

Answer: Of course. They just do not feel it. If they are in a group, then this is a lesson for the whole group. They make a hole in the boat in which the whole group sits.

When they quarrel among themselves, they break the unity of the group, and the whole group suffers from this. Nothing can be done here! In such a relationship, no group will achieve any spiritual ascent or revelation of the Creator.

At first, all of this is forgiven and not noticed. Then it reaches such a state that we are obliged to work on ourselves so that the group is similar to the Creator. The relations in the group will always be terrible, nasty, awful, disgusting, and hateful, as in the example of the group of Rabbi Shimon, the creator of The Book of Zohar. But we must rise above this to love.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Conflict between friends” 2/15/14

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