Question: When you are asked a question, you answer according to the following principle: first you answer once, and, inside the same answer, a second time. Why is the answer arranged like that?

Answer: Because first I have to answer the question itself, and the second time I have to answer in general where this phenomenon comes from, why it exists, in what form it takes place, and so on. That is, I don’t just want to answer the question, I want to give a general form of what kind of natural phenomenon it is.

Question: So you are not doing this because the person did not hear the first time and he needs you to explain the second time?

Answer: No. I don’t refer the question to a person at all. I look at the question as an opportunity to reveal some greater part of the spiritual world or the connections of the worlds.

Comment: It happens that you are asked a question and you answer as if you are on your own wave. The student says, “No, I meant this!” and still you keep going on your wave, and the others think: “Oh! You answered his question!”

My Response: I’m actually answering his question; he just doesn’t hear it. I’m not going somewhere to the side, but I just want him to see it from my side. Otherwise he won’t understand the answer.

Question: So you need to find a workaround, not a direct one?

Answer: This is not a workaround. I believe that my path is the most direct and general. I give both a linear path to the answer and a circular one, which generally includes the whole general problem and its specific solution.

Therefore I have two approaches: I always outline the general state and a specific answer.
[301913]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Ask a Kabbalist a Question?” 3/6/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do we know what is true and what is false?“

We cannot know what is true and false. The only one who knows what is true and false is the upper force. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, “nature” (“HaTeva”) is the same as “God” (“Elohim”). It is the upper force of nature. If we reveal this upper force, then we will know what is true and false, and right and wrong.

In other words, we need to define true and false according to the Creator’s (or nature’s) view. I understand the difficulty in accepting or understanding this, because today anyone can define God any way that they want, and can set out to even kill people in the name of what they define as God. Moreover, since everyone has their own God, the world is falling apart and this destruction will take place until we understand that we have no choice but to draw a common conclusion that there is just one Creator, one God, which is nature.

According to nature, connection above all differences and resistances is of utmost importance; that we need to come closer together above the various disturbances. Nature gave us this option in order for us to discover its wholeness and perfection. If we set out in such a direction, then we will find ourselves reaching a harmonious and peaceful world, and our definitions of truth and falseness would work themselves out along the way.

Based on the video “How to Know What Is True and False” 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: “Have we crossed the point of no return in terms of damaging the planet?“

There is no such point. We need to trust that our thought, which is our greatest quality, can change nature. We only need to understand the direction to which we should aim our thoughts. What should we think about? What condition or state should we aspire to and ask for?

In order to save our planet, we should think about positive human connections. That is, how can we, in our connections, keep nature safe? How can we all together protect our world? If we truly wish to better our planet, then we should see people holding a concern for how to positively connect everywhere that we look.

It has nothing to do with recycling or other activities that we commonly associate with as being sustainable. If we come closer to and consider each other, that we will reach an entirely organic, perfectly connected and round state, then the negative forces will disappear from the world.

We need to understand that if we start thinking better about each other, then the planet will recover from all harm, because our thoughts are the strongest force in nature. Likewise, our negative thoughts about each other are entirely to blame for damaging the planet. That is why the more we recycle and invest in energies and activities that we commonly think of as being sustainable, the worse our planet becomes. Nothing will work to benefit us until we reach a state where our attitude changes toward each other for the better to protect and improve our planet.

Based on the video “Have We Crossed the Point of No Return in Terms of Damaging the Planet?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Why is nighttime the most productive time for mental activity? In principle, Kabbalists always studied at night when the concentration of thoughts is much clearer.

Answer: Firstly, it is physiologically conditioned because a person feels that during that time he has nothing else to do and he can concentrate on some work while everyone else is asleep.

Secondly, at that time, not many stimulating centers are activated in him, and therefore he can more easily concentrate on one thing.

Thirdly, if we are talking about spiritual work, then this is the time when you really need to connect to the spiritual root, root to branch or branch to root. At that time, new desires are created in which a person will continue to acquire an attainment.

Such work begins from midnight onward. Therefore Kabbalah encourages people to get up at twelve o’clock at night and start studying. Twelve at night, midnight, is not half of our night, but a conditional night. If you break the whole night from sunset to the appearance of the first ray of light into twelve parts, then the middle part, the sixth, conditional hour, will be midnight.

The night hour can be forty minutes, fifty minutes, or an hour and twenty minutes. We use mechanical clocks, but in general, in nature, clocks are not mechanical but rather solar and lunar. Therefore the hours are conditional.

Our body works the same way according to its internal conditional clock. The human body works completely differently during sleep in winter and summer. All this is taken into account in Kabbalah. That is, night and midnight are purely astronomical values and not mechanical according to the clock, which ticks no matter where and how.

Comment: But there are different regions.

My Response: Man is connected with nature; he is an integral part of it and cannot be separated from it.

And the regions are indeed different. Therefore there is a problem of how to study. But it is believed that it is still better for us to study together. This is most important.

Baal HaSulam writes that joint study, joint appeal, and joint actions override all other parameters.
[301949]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Everything Happens at Night” 3/5/13

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Question: If my wife is a part of me, is it possible to judge a friend by his wife?

Answer: It depends on the couple. If you and your wife have lived a long time together, but you are an ordinary earthly couple, then this is immediately felt. If you are a spiritual couple, it is also felt. It is even felt if you are at different degrees.

A spiritual couple is two people who feel a mutual aspiration to one another and to the goal, who feel each other and see themselves united in the goal with each other, with the rest of the world, and with the Creator.

In principle, people who live together for a long time feel each other without words, understand each other without words, and, as they say, live in perfect harmony. It is natural. And on a spiritual level there is an even greater closeness. It is part of telepathy, of the feeling of others.

Comment: You always say that a man should be married because through his other half, so to say, he speaks with the Creator. But there are completely opposite, conflicting couples. You look at them and it seems that this single whole consists of the two of them.

My Response: In our time, a couple is not at all what it used to be when people took care of each other, when they had the same feelings, the same thoughts, and the same goals, when they were engaged in a common household, and so on. They had joint standard sensations.

Today this is practically non-existent. Everyone does their own thing; in the morning they run away, in the evening they run back to the same apartment for a few hours of sleep, and then run away again. It is the kind of slavery where there is no place for anything shared.

This is good because they have become so egoistic that it would be difficult for them to live with each other for a long time, but only for a short time if they go somewhere on vacation where there is nothing in common and they do something external. If they took care of their household and were free a couple of days a week, then it would be a terrible state.

That is why those people who are unemployed today are so unhappy. This is a cause for very big conflicts.
[302145]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Spiritual Couple” 3/24/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “When should I tell the truth and when should I lie?“

I recently received the following letter: “Hello, Dr. Laitman, my name is Avi, and I’d like to share a problem that I’ve been dealing with from a young age. Since I can remember myself, I hated to lie, even when I knew that I’d have to pay the price for telling the truth. Many times telling the truth to people’s faces cost me dearly, and over the years, I’ve lost many friends. Even when I knew that they wouldn’t like hearing what I had to say, I couldn’t lie. And my question, Dr. Laitman, is why don’t people like hearing the truth? The truth is the highest value.”

So I told him that he was right, but that I recommended he do one more thing: that when he is saying the truest and most correct thing, where he has no doubt that he is a hundred percent accurate, that he should consider how much the other person wants to hear it, and if the other person would not like to hear it, then why is he saying something detrimental to the other person?

We need to be considerate of other people. Even in special cases where it is a matter of life or death, there too, we have the ability to thoroughly examine the situation and only then say what we have to say.

What, then, does it actually mean to speak the truth? Speaking the truth means that we do everything that is completely to the benefit of the other person according to the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Based on the video “When Should You Tell the Truth and When Should You Lie?” 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: “What should be one’s dream?“

Our dream should be to achieve a positive social connection where mutual care, support and encouragement abound in society.

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Question: How is a question formed? Where does it come from? Is the person who asks you a question just an irritant that allows you to give out information?

Answer: Yes.

Question: How should one prepare for this? How can you ask a question correctly?

Answer: The question, in fact, is to cling to me and make me want to lift the person who asks the question up like a child who runs up to an adult and asks to be held in his arms. This is the real question, and all the rest is nonsense.

Comment: I noticed that there are two types of people. The first type is when a person wants to hear from you something specific: “No, I am asking him this!” And there are people who understand and as if follow your flow. You start answering, and the person possibly had another question in addition. But he sees that you are now revealing this topic better, and he supports it rather than standing his ground.

My Response: These are big problems because we have a large number of people who want to hear, who are perhaps tuned in to a completely different wave. Then someone breaks into a general conversation and begins with his personal questions or with something he imagined to lead everyone somewhere to the side.

In this case, I try to react either harshly or not at all because it is important for me to maintain a common spirit so that people continue to ride together and rise. Therefore, if someone asks some questions from the outside, I can cut him off and that is it.

For me, the main thing is that the general flow is observed.
[301946]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Ask a Kabbalist a Question?” 3/6/13

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is it true that stubbornness is a characteristic quality of Jewish people?“

Max Nordau, one of the Zionist movement’s founders, was quoted as telling Ze’ev Jabotinsky that “logic is a Greek art and Jews can’t tolerate it. The Jew learns not by way of reason, but from catastrophes. He won’t buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky. He waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia.”

It is true. Jews generally do not believe in signs of upcoming occurrences, but we change after we receive strong blows. The Torah also writes about Jewish stubbornness that we are a “stiff-necked people” (Exodus 33:3; Deuteronomy 9:13; Nehemiah 9:16; Acts 7:51). It is due to the big ego residing in us. We can do nothing about it, as it is one of our inherent traits.

While it has its cons, it also has its pros. The pros of our stubbornness and our big ego in general is that if we apply the method we once received to rise above our ego, then we will be able to balance and manage two great positive and negative forces together, as it is written, “Love will cover all crimes.” We will have our “crimes,” our egoism, below—the minus—and above it, we can discover the quality of love, bestowal and connection—the plus. We will then become worthy of showing a positive example to humanity of how to overcome the divisive ego that tears human society apart, and how to cover that ego with an umbrella of love, giving and positive connection, effectively elevating human consciousness to new heights of harmony and peace.

Based on the video “Is Stubbornness a Characteristic Quality of Jews?” 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: “Is globalization reversible?“

This question came up recently when one of my students mentioned the German government’s preparation for an energy crisis following a reduction in Russian gas supplies. Germany’s Minister of Economy discussed gas as a scarce resource and called upon the Germans to save as much electricity as possible, with the government reactivating coal-fired reactors in the meantime. As a result of this situation, the student could not believe how Europe’s most developed country was asked to save energy, and he thought that we should wake up from the dream of globalization where everyone supplies everyone with everything, and that every country should return to producing what they need for themselves.

Globalization, however, is irreversible. If we returned to each country only providing for itself, then we would find much greater costs across the board, for electricity, cars, food and so on and so forth. It becomes much cheaper for everyone if we provide these supplies to each other.

I understand the constant risk in this situation: All it takes is one government in this globalized connection to make problems and everyone suffers the consequences. For that very reason, we need to make sure that we sustain positive relations. While it might seem impossible, as there is always the ability for one to burst out from a general balance, we nonetheless need to invest in building positive relations. And even if a certain country breaches the balance here and there, it will nonetheless remain much cheaper and more sustainable than if each country supplied all their own needs from beginning to end.

Globalization should lead us to a state where we understand the need to work on positive connections among all people and nations. In such a state, we will have no negative thoughts about each other, and people will not think about exploiting each other, otherwise we will simply end up without our life’s essentials.

Based on the video “Is Globalization Reversible?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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