Question: When Nelson Mandela passed away, the whole world started talking about how much he had done for humanity. This man spent 27 years in prison and did not change his views even under the pressure. He is counted among the ranks of the greatest people.

To what extent is such a person internally sincere?

Answer: Human nature is absolute egoism, shallow, and petty, even among so-called altruists and good citizens.

I think that Nelson Mandela did not spend all these years in prison in vain and that he realized what was happening in his country. His main task was the future of the country. He knew that if there would not be the right combination between different layers of the population and different races, it would be bad for everyone. Therefore, when he was released, he first engaged in balancing these parts of the population, and not by raising hatred of one against the other. This was his merit.

Having reasonably weighed all the pros and cons, he set a course for the unification of society. He did not allow a civil war to develop and hatred to plunge the country into all kinds of problems, provocations, and so on.

This was his great contribution and example for all humanity: it is necessary to rise above everything that was in the past, to cross out everything, and develop only together. I do not idealize his actions, but what happened is indeed rare.

The same had happened in Israel. This is a well-known story. When Israel was recognized as a state, the Arabs immediately invaded its territory. The Israelis had no weapons, one rifle for several people. And then the ship Altalena was sent to help with weapons and reinforcement.

But since there were two parties here, the socialist-communist and another, opposite to it, the party that was stronger then sank this ship with weapons right off the shore. As a result, several people died, but the rest were rescued.

This could have served as a justification for a civil war. But Menachem Begin, the leader of one of the parties, said: “No, we will not take revenge on anyone. We will leave everything as is and we will fight against the common enemy.”

There are such examples in history when a great leader takes a step above his I, above egoism, above taking revenge or putting himself on top.

Such people understand that it is necessary to act for the sake of the higher goal. But this is a rarity in history.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Death of Nelson Mandela”

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Filed under: Crisis, Globalization, Israel, Nations of the World, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Where is the line where you as a teacher cannot interfere and take away the student’s freedom of choice?

Answer: In our spiritual work there are always these problems where literally every minute we decide how to act correctly and what our thoughts and intentions are. I cannot interfere with this.

I see the state my students are in and sometimes I sympathize with them very much. I worry and it hurts me, just like a mother does for her son when he is seriously ill and she can do nothing to help him except to give him medicine. But in principle he must take even the most bitter pills and survive this disease.

When I brought my problems in spiritual work to Rabash and asked, “What should I do? What can I do?”, he laughed in my face because I had to solve them myself.

Question: A person tries to calm himself by coming to the teacher. Yet the teacher says, “I am sorry, I cannot say anything.” Does the teacher know how to do the right thing for the student, but does not tell him?

Answer: Of course he does. The upper degree is perfectly clothed in the lower one. Everything that exists in the lower degree is felt in the upper one without any problems. It is the upper degree that feels what is happening in the student. The teacher feels the spiritual content of the student, while the student himself does not know and does not understand what is happening to him.

Question: So are we in front of you like naked babies?

Answer: Yes, like a baby in its mother’s arms. In a spiritual sense, yes, of course.

But what can I do? This baby must develop according to its own laws. I can only minimally help him, because all the spiritual development of a person is carried out by his efforts.

I have to make sure that there are suitable conditions for this development like a mother who gives the child food and warmth, washes him, puts him to bed, etc. Everything else is up to him.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Manipulating People” 12/30/13

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Filed under: Free Will, Q&A, Spiritual Teacher, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: How did you sense that you had found your teacher? How does it happen?

Answer: It is impossible to describe. I see that people who are with me when I give talks, they too begin to feel something because it is an influence of the upper light.

When it acts on a Kli (vessel) that has not completely opened it causes a person to feel emotional and increases sensitivity within a person. It is called a small state. It is like a child who begins to cry because he is unable to define his state or absorb within himself something that should happen to him. The same is occurring with us.

Question: Does it mean that the sensation that it will certainly happen here with this teacher at this place depends on the influence of the light? Is the future light acting upon the person this way?

Answer: Of course! The surrounding light (Ohr Makif) is the future light. This is why it is called surrounding. After all, it is still unable to come into you. Since you are so little in relation to it, you feel that you have found something! But what, you do not know.

Question: Meaning, as if the light is saying, “Hold on to me, there will be something here”?

Answer: Yes, of course. With that, the person cannot vanish anymore. It is already impossible to break away from this source.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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Question: What is the right way to go against one’s egoistic desires?

Answer: You cannot overcome your egoistic desires if you do not resist. Above all your desires, you need to build a connection with the Creator.

After all, everything that arises in you now gives you a feeling directed against the unity of the Creator, against His existence, and you must behave as if He exists, as if He is the one and only source of everything that happens, who is absolutely good and doing only good.

And you get a completely different, constantly changing picture against these settings. But you rise above them and act, saying: “You give me these feelings, these thoughts, these relationships with everyone, and this attitude to everyone, you build this worthless world around me. And I will treat You above all this as good, bringing good, the only one who exists, and the cause of everything that happens. And in general, all this around me does not exist, there is only You!”

Suppose you are talking to me now, which means that I do not exist; you treat me as the Creator’s influence on you, and I do not exist. The same for me. Even those thoughts and feelings that arise in me, it is You who arouse them. And who am I? I am only an expert point that feels all this and is tuned to perceive it this way. And then the soul begins to develop from this expert point.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Get Over Yourself” 2/15/14

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Question: There are times when someone asks you a question and you answer it very briefly, and sometimes you do not even want to give an answer. It also happens that we ask the same question, and you pour out your soul and open wide spaces before us. How do we catch this moment when you can say something?

Answer: If I cannot answer a question directly, but have the opportunity to answer it in a different way, then I answer.

Kabbalists have large limitations in what they can say and what they cannot. In addition, it is possible that by the time you ask the question for the second or third time, the state of the group has already changed. This is why I can talk about the topic that interests you. That is, there are many different conditions. The difference may even be in several days.

Comment: Sometimes you say that it is impossible to talk about something at all, and at other times you address this topic and develop it widely.

My Response: It is because the time has come. It does not depend on me. I am just a transmitter here.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Ask a Kabbalist a Question” 3/6/13

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Workshops are a spiritual act because they force people not to argue with each other, to complete each other, to be equal, to speak on a certain topic set by the workshop leader, and then think about it for a while.

If during the workshop five to ten questions are raised that people discuss, then this helps them build some kind of system within themselves and identify goals and stages of their development. As a result, they create a spiritual space between themselves based on mutual bestowal and kindness.

By discussing the topics of getting out of egoism and rising above it, they build between themselves that clearing on which they want to feel the manifestation of the Creator.

A workshop is the state where a person builds his spiritual vessel, which is a common spiritual vessel. Moreover, he begins to understand that this is outside of himself, that this is a way out of himself— the implementation of the method.

During the workshop, a person correctly expresses himself, his “speaking” level; that is, a man is called Adam, similar to the Creator. Of course, there are many erect-walking creatures; a rooster is also erect-walking. And a person is called “speaking” because he can express bestowal and love and lead another person to bestowal and love.

Therefore, today there is nothing more effective than workshops in which we all are permeated with one goal, one idea.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Why Do We Need Workshops” 4/5/14

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Question: What is the effect of family workshops when, say, five couples sit and talk to each other? In theory, they share things that they may not have shared directly.

Answer: Yes, as a rule, what a wife cannot say to her husband or husband to his wife, they say through others.

The reason for the effectiveness of such communication is that people create a common field, a predisposition to openness. As they say, a bad example is contagious, but in this case, it is a good example. After all, when the others open up, it draws you in, it affects you, and you unconsciously get carried away with others and start saying things that you could not say to your other half alone.

Question: How is it that such an intimate conversation seems to come out so easily?

Answer: Because people see that there is nothing intimate here. The rest of the families have the same issues as they do. What intimate matter might that be? Only shame (an egoistic quality), arrogance, fear of falling in the eyes of others, and so on.

But when, without self-reproach, without saying “we have it even worse,” everyone simply and frankly speaks, then the correct relationships between genders, between spouses (this is not the same thing), between parents regarding children, and so on are clarified. This greatly reduces family tensions.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Family Happiness” 12/7/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can humans be tamed?“

We need to develop ourselves as human beings beyond our animate level of existence, and it is possible with a certain kind of education.

Developing ourselves as human beings means learning and balancing ourselves with the integral laws of nature operating on our lives. If we learn how to positively connect among each other in human society, with altruistic attitudes replacing our current egoistic attitudes, we then develop ourselves beyond the animate level of existence and become human beings in the fullest sense of the term.

First, we need to provide for our animate lives, giving our physical bodies the food, sex and family that they require, then after taking care of those essentials, we can begin our human development. We then need to learn who and what we are, where we are from, why we exist, how we can develop ourselves, how we can control our human development, what our attitude to our surrounding society should be, what society’s attitude should be toward us, and how we can develop together harmoniously, i.e. us in relation to society, and society in relation to us.

We need to supply ourselves with this development that will make us human beings. Unfortunately, I see nobody understanding what it means to develop a human being, and we thus fail to realize such a process. One of the outcomes of our lack of development into human beings is our inability to understand the younger generation. We become increasingly detached from them, and do not know what will happen with them or how to guide them in a beneficial direction. We thus let life unfold as it does, into a proliferation of problems and crises.

Very simply, we need to learn what nature wants from us, and to develop in order to balance with nature’s demands toward us. If we meet those demands, we can then build a harmonious and peaceful world, one that is in balance with nature.
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Based on the video “Can Humans be Tamed?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Tal Mandelbaum. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Alexandr Hovhannisyan on Unsplash.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is Behavioral change?“

Inside us is a model of our surrounding environment. It is where we create and feel the environment. We receive impressions from our surrounding environment, which in turn builds its systems into the inner model that we host.

People specifically can develop inner models of their environment much more than animals. For instance, a dog can feel its master, and a cat can feel the moods of people in its vicinity. A human being, however, builds a model of the environment within that includes the universe, nature and human society. We relate to our environment through our inner model, and our environment also lives in that model. Accordingly, we interact with and feel the environment, beginning life on the human level.

Behavioral change begins from our inner models, which incorporate with and feel our environments, and which develop attitudes in relation to those models. If we are critical of other people’s behaviors, we might simply ask them, “Don’t you understand what you’re doing?” “Don’t you understand…?” means that we actually ask whether the person has a certain inner model, i.e. a set of attitudes that have developed toward people and nature, and why that person cannot understand something from the model they host.

Some people are internally deaf, i.e. they cannot build these models within themselves, and likewise they have a certain level of detachment from their environment. They do not understand what is required of them. It is like babies who have not yet developed such systems within themselves. They observe other people but do not understand what everyone wants. There are many such people. Most people live their lives without the accurate inner models of the universe, nature, society and what is required of them in this vast system.

Building accurate inner models of our environment—the universe, nature and human society—is the education we need today. The behaviors that we assume depend on the measure to which we, according to our inner models, can correctly work with them. We then realize those models in practice through our behavior toward the world. Behavioral change is thus the result of our finding the correct model of the universe, nature and human society.
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Based on the video “What Is Behavioral Change?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Tal Mandelbaum. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Eduardo Sánchez on Unsplash.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Question: Any book leaves a person with a set of impressions. As one reads, a person’s imagination soars and depicts all kinds of things.

You said Kabbalistic books leave the same impression on different people. Did I understand correctly that they give such a clear imprint of certain states that fantasy has no place here?

Answer: Of course not. On the contrary, when a person begins to study Kabbalah all sorts of fantasies gradually disappear, a person becomes very grounded, engages in science, and understands that he exists in a system of forces, and he needs to learn to interact with them.

The more we advance and study man, the less we fantasize. What fantasies?! These are all kinds of electric fields in our brain that affect our biological forms. At the same time, some chemicals get released that also interact with each other, and so on.

That is, there are no feelings. There will be feelings, but only when they become independent of matter. After all, being given something to smell, for example, will produce certain sensations. This shows how much our feelings depend on the processes that occur in us.

While we must rise above these processes with pure logic. Pure logic—after the restriction (screen and reflected light), when I come into contact with the one upper force, with all my strength and scrutiny, and start working together with it on the basis called Zivug de haka’a (coupling).

On one hand, the coupling is a rejection because I reject my ego, but do not discard it, I do not destroy it, but simply push it away to connect with the upper force. And to the extent that I can include my ego, that is, my correctly aimed desires, I include them.

This is a very exact science, there are no sentiments in Kabbalah. It contains precise laws, formulas, forces, and their mutual rapprochement and distancing, and how by connecting with each other at different levels, they form all kinds of shapes: right and left lines. This way, certain feelings are evoked but only to control this process.

We rise from one sensation to another until we begin to feel the Creator. But all these feelings are not in us, not in our ego, but in the quality of bestowal that we develop in ourselves. It is an upper reasoning that is not based on our feelings because feelings come after reason.

First, the mind evolves, which develops self-control, understanding of all actions, and only after that does a feeling from you emerge. This is a completely different level of existence—beyond our present nature.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Recommended Books” 12/12/13

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