Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think of the Diderot effect?“

After living a life of poverty and not caring much about material wealth, Denis Diderot received a fancy new red scarlet satin robe as a gift. Afterward, he noticed that his chair was just an old straw chair, and changed it to a beautiful new leather one; and he then also spotted that his desk was shabby, and replaced it with a large gorgeous table. Eventually, Diderot fell into debt over the fulfillment of his newly-discovered material desires, and he wrote that where he was once the absolute master of his old robe, he became the slave of his new one.

Generally speaking, he was right—that we would be better off living in our “old robes.” There is nothing wrong with living our lives without investing energy into materialistic acquisitions.

We need to have everything in order to comfortably pursue our goals, but beyond meeting those basic needs, we should make sure not to become slaves to our possessions or to the changing times we live in. Why should we work for new robes, chairs and desks, i.e. for material possessions? We would be better off to not waste our lives in such a way, and stay in our “old robes,” so to speak, while taking care of ourselves.

In such a context, “taking care of ourselves” means doing what we deem as important, and not what our surrounding society projects to us as important. We should never fall into such traps as valuing surplus materialistic acquisitions.

We should instead focus on our goal at the basic human development stage that is called “the animate level” within us, i.e. to not follow any goals and habits that society projects onto us, but to live for ourselves. Choose a goal and live for it. People need to validate their paths; to direct and shape them in ways that bring no harm to anyone, including themselves.

Based on the video “The Diderot Effect – A Kabbalist’s Response” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: In the material world there are states of birth and death, childhood and old age, and in the spiritual world this is expressed in the expansion of perception. What does the expansion of perception mean?

Answer: Each time you don’t die, but, as they say, you change your “skin.” You change all your instruments, desires, and insights for new ones.

The cycles for you do not go through a complete shutdown, as it is in our world, because you do them yourself. You yourself go from one state to another, and therefore, they are controlled; they are desirable.

A person does this himself, within himself, and attains the upper world. He begins to gradually expand these boundaries, to feel himself in another.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Expanded Consciousness” 8/14/13

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Question: Have you always spoken in an eloquent way?

Answer: I have always been able to speak beautifully. People were even amazed at my Russian, although I did not study anything specific. However, I have read tens of thousands of books. I have always been very inquisitive. We had a subscription for technical magazines such as Knowledge is Power, Science and Life, Radio, magazines about art, and others. At that time I walked around all the museums in St Petersburg (Leningrad at that time) and in Moscow.

In general, I was swallowing tons of information as I had an unsatisfying thirst. But I have understood quickly that it does not give anything. I moved here from Russia for the most part because of the untamable thirst for knowledge. It seemed to me that I would not be able to gain it there. And indeed all interesting jobs were off limits for me.

However, when I moved here exactly the same happened to me. In addition, all my conscious life from 18 to 30-years-old I spent searching and at the same time I suffered greatly from an ulcer in my duodenum that led to terrible bleeding. A doctor friend told me that nothing would help me and said, “You have such a personality, it will get worse.”

As soon as I started to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, within a year or year and a half I realized that this wisdom has all the answers and the ulcer started to go away. After all, I had come to the source that I gradually had to unearth. Of course, I still had a multitude of questions, nothing was clear, and I was in inner conflict, but I was already in the theme.

I did not know Kabbalah and did not understand it, but I still was in it. I was getting satisfaction studying it and catching it.

Gradually the ulcer disappeared and there was nothing left. Today all my x-rays are absolutely clear.

Later on when I started to attain the wisdom of Kabbalah, everything started to assemble into one single picture like a song, a pleasure, or a joy. There was nothing else I needed. I was ready to sit in my room practically all my life because I was seeing eternity as I was delving in it.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. A Man in Attainment” 7/21/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are your thoughts on freedom of speech?“

There is no freedom in our world, and while our world exists in its current form—running on a motor of human egoism, where we each aim at benefiting ourselves at the expense of others—then we can expect no freedom.

Freedom of speech, the way we currently understand it, is that we let everyone take to the streets, so to speak, and yell whatever they want. Everyone yells and no one listens to or understands one another. If it is genuine freedom of speech in such a form, then no one listens to anyone else because everyone only focuses on what they yell. In other words, we currently define freedom of speech as everyone’s opportunity to yell whatever anyone wants.

I see freedom of speech differently—as the freedom to remain silent. It is much more beneficial for us to keep our mouths shut. Instead of pressuring, influencing, coercing and deceiving each other, we would do ourselves a much bigger favor by staying silent.

If our current media would freeze and enter into a new mode of stillness, then we would start feeling our own selves. Instead of pressure coming at us from all directions, we would instead start feeling questions such as “Who am I?” “What am I?” “What do I live for?” and “What do I truly want?” We would discover that we each want to say something, but we would think hard about what we want to say, what others expect of us, and what we should ideally convey to other people. In other words, we would discover that we really have no freedom of speech.

True freedom of speech is when we have the most important, sacred and beneficial information to bring people. It is a speech of the heart, where we open up our hearts so that we understand each other without words.

We need to reach a state where we peel off the egoistic crust that has accumulated over our hearts, open our hearts, aim them at positive human connection, and enter into a common heartbeat of the entire planet. We do not need to pay billions of dollars, like Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter, for freedom of speech. Instead, we need to live and breathe the inclination to open our hearts.

Based on the video “What Is Freedom of Speech for a Kabbalist?” 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: “How do I teach my children to embrace failure?“

Suppose we encounter failure. Michael’s group played against Oren’s group, and we lost. We then sit and talk about it, understanding that we were weak and we lost, without crying about it. We might feel some pain or cry internally, but we try to understand why we lost. It is quite complicated and it takes time.

At first, there might be shouting, yelling and blaming, but later on, we reach a state where we lost, and now what? Do we throw it away or do we continue? In such a juncture, we need to learn and absorb examples from those who have succeeded and dealt with failure, and there are several movies and books on such a topic. Those who reach success have undergone major crises, become disappointed, faced exploitation and whatnot.

We then decide that we now want to learn from our failure, and seek how we can overcome such a state. At this point, we learn what was wrong, what we should correct, how to correct ourselves, and how to study our opponent. And if we discuss such a phenomenon in terms of our inner traits, then we each learn about our egoistic nature that is ultimately behind all failure and loss, and in so doing, we prepare ourselves for our next battle.

Based on the video “How to Teach a Group of Children to Deal With Failure” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: You once said: “If you unite, I will be able to explain more.” Do you own the information and you need a formed desire toward which you give this information?

Answer: We need desires that will be at the level of what I want to explain. If there are no such desires, then the explanation will not work.

Let’s say you are sitting in front of a group of students. They ask you some questions, and at the level of these questions, you have to explain everything to them. You can’t give them an answer a few courses higher—they won’t understand it and it will only confuse them.

Therefore everything goes only according to the plan that my students dictate to me. Sometimes I get a little ahead of events in order to prepare them for the next degrees.

Question: If an external person listens to the information that you give us and which is clear to us, will he somehow understand or will he not hear it at all?

Answer: He will think that I am saying something completely incomprehensible, philosophical, psychological, and generally abstract from our world.

But there are people, many people in the world, who are familiar with this information although they are not in it. Even the same Hasidim, although they do not attain what is written in their books, they know it. And so if they hear me, they will say, “Yes, he says what is written in our books.” After all, the founders of Hasidism were great Kabbalists.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Hidden Information” 8/6/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can one rise above themselves?“

We can rise above our egoistic selves in a group setting where we conduct various exercises that guide us on how to connect with each other until we receive a feeling that we live in a single system of nature.

By learning how to connect, we start learning what nature wants from us, and the extent to which we can realize this desire of nature. The more we learn the ways of positive connection above our egoistic selves, the closer we come to a state of living in a hate free and united world. We then start feeling the attainment of a higher world.

The feeling of rising above our egos in a group setting is different to the feeling of working on ourselves in a purely individual manner, for instance, in practices such as meditation.

In a group setting, we remove illusory concepts of rising above ourselves, and learn together with others how to invert the negative egoistic force into a positive one. In individual practices, we are closed within ourselves, and solely by the power of our imagination and inner effort, we seemingly try to not be under the ego’s control. We likewise receive no forces from above. Indeed, such practices somewhat let us detach from the ego, but we do not work with the ego in a way where we build a new system. Likewise, those engaging in individual practices such as meditation are not connected among each other. It is as if each one sits in their own personal corner. They might seemingly enter a different world, but it is detachment from the earthly corporeal ego that gives such a sensation. However, it gives us no ability to truly rise above our egoistic selves—to enter and act in the upper world with understanding and awareness.

When we aim to rise above our egoistic selves in a group setting, we reveal the extent in which we need to invert our egos. We come to see how our egoistic nature operates in opposition to others, and the more we try to positively connect, the more we discover the negative force working against our connection. Eventually, from such an interplay, we come to genuine demands and responses to rise above our egoistic selves and discover higher worlds of perception above the ego.

Based on the video “How to Rise Above Yourself” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual process?“

The spiritual process of development means disagreeing with listening to our egoistic desires for self-benefit at the expense of others and nature, and developing a new spark that will be connected solely with the upper force of love, bestowal and connection, called “the Creator” or “nature.”

According to our efforts to develop this spiritual spark in us, our spiritual desire, we will be called “human beings” in the fullest sense of the term. That is, “human” in Hebrew (“Adam”) means being similar (“Domeh”) to the most high, the Creator (“Domeh le Elyon”).

The Creator is the force of bestowal, of giving. It is the opposite of what we are, desires to receive. The Creator exists in a small spark we have within us for giving. It is very hard to find the Creator. The biggest egoists can find the Creator faster and more accurately than smaller egoists. People who have smaller egos, who have an inclination to help and participate with others feel as if they already experience the spiritual quality of giving to a certain extent, but they do not.

While we develop spiritually, wishing to identify more and more with the spiritual spark within us—the force of love, bestowal and positive connection to others—we go through states of despair when we find ourselves continually falling into our egoism, pride and self-concern. Getting through such states and using them optimally depends on the environment that we surround ourselves with. Individually, we cannot get through such states.

We are given a certain feeling, and if we have something contrasting that feeling around us, similar to weights that alternate from side to side, then in such a way we can use the counterforce.

If we surround ourselves with people who support us in our spiritual development, then we help each other, discuss and understand each other. We also might not necessarily be focusing on the person who is currently in descent, but toward everyone.

Based on the video “What Is the Spiritual Process of Development?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is calmness?“

Calmness is a state where we feel comfortable, a state that is different for each person. For instance, some people are rampant, and if you try to calm them down, they might explode from the pressure. That is, their wildness is their calmness.

There are different types of people, such as choleric, sanguine and people who are naturally stressed or under pressure. Calmness is thus in relation to each individual. That we each feel comfortable in our current state means that we are calm. And we should understand that some people need high levels of activity in order to feel calm.

I had a friend who managed a theater. He dealt with frustration and pressure around the clock, but when there were periods when there were no requests to put on shows, he felt depressed. Therefore, definitions of calmness are completely personal. We also cannot examine such definitions by blood pressure or other physical measurements. Simply, each person feels calmness differently in their lives. But in short, when a person feels content with their life, they are calm.

A key paradox regarding calmness is that we generally regard calmness as a healthier state than stress, but life itself does not let us remain calm. This is because we shape our lives artificially, out of our ego. We wish to use other people and nature for our own personal benefit, and by doing so, we spoil each other’s lives, leading each other to anything but calmness. Therefore, realizing calmness throughout society today would require correcting the human ego en masse.

Based on the video “What Is Calmness?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does despair do to you?“

Everything we receive from nature is for our benefit. If we reach a state of despair, it means that next time it is better not to exert our efforts in that direction because we will not get what we want. Therefore, despair comes to teach us that we should not waste our time and energy in a certain direction.

Despair is a critical point of scrutiny where we can revise our direction in life. We can either see that a certain direction is not for us, and then we become willing to let it go and take a different direction in life, without regrets, or perhaps we reach a point of despair and realize that we indeed want to head in the direction that we were headed, and then we shift into a higher gear and tackle that direction at any cost with new strength.

Despair comes to show us that we have a certain goal, we have certain strengths, and we see that they do not match. Therefore, perhaps by reaching despair of our own strength, we can then discover new sources of energy to reach our goal, for example, someone to consult, a group to connect with, a trainer or a coach, and that we can receive additional strength from there. In such a situation, despair couples with a feeling of joy, because it could be that without despair, we would labor endlessly in a certain direction and settle for mediocrity.

Based on the video “What Does Despair Do to You?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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