Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual world and material world actually?“

The material world, which is simply called “this world” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, is our inner sensation of reality. It seems as if there is a world outside of our inner sensation, but it is all within.

Whether we see an immense universe full of galaxies and stars, or even the vastness of our very planet, with its still, vegetative, animate and human levels, we perceive it all in our desire to enjoy. Our egoistic desire is our nature, and if we detached it, then we would not feel ourselves or the world.

“This world” is the picture we perceive in our inborn desire to enjoy. It is an outcome of a higher force in reality acting on the desire. The myriad changes and movements we see take place solely in our desire. Nothing moves outside of us, but rather motions take place in our desires, which makes us perceive change and movement on the outside.

On the contrary, the spiritual world includes our innate impression of reality, but we also act together with that impression. If this world is the outcome of a higher force acting on the desire, then the spiritual world is the outcome of the interaction, the connection between the person’s action and the action of the upper force.

The more we resemble the upper force, the more we discover the spiritual world as the extent of our equivalence with that upper force.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on November 16, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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

Fate is what we go through in our feelings, our lives and our conditions. It is an outcome of nature’s influence on us and our interaction with nature.

We have the ability to learn what our fate is and also manage our fate if we apply a certain amount and quality of effort in doing so. In other words, we can both reach a clear understanding of our fate and also take control over it if we wish.

In order to understand our fate and control it, we need to discover our operating program. By doing so, we gain a clear comprehension of the process we are in and how it urges us, from one generation to the next, to reach a final destination.

This process began with the beginning of creation, before the emergence of our universe, and gradually develops to a state where it will transition into another form completely to the form it is now in.

While we exist in our current reality, called “this world” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, we have the ability to change and influence our fate. Through the study of Kabbalah, we can attract the forces that let us influence our fate at every moment, and by doing so, change the nature of the myriad states that we undergo.

For instance, if a child’s parents sent the child to first grade at school, then that child has no choice but to undergo several years of schooling before graduating. The question is whether the child will enjoy these years learning and achieving, or feel them as a burden, getting punished.

Based on “New Life” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi on December 21, 2014 and “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on October 26, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is anti-Semitism rising?“

There are two forces operating in the world: the force of reception, which is the human ego, and the force of bestowal, the altruistic force that we need to attract to ourselves in order to reach balance and harmony among each other and with nature.

These two forces contradict each other.

In the egoistic nature of our world, there is a small group called “Israel,” which comes from the words “Yashar Kel,” which means “straight to the upper force,” that had once detached itself from the ego’s control, and achieved a genuine altruistic nature.

The more humanity—and the human ego—develops, the more the forces of reception and bestowal endure an ongoing struggle, and this conflict becomes expressed in our world as friction between Jews, i.e., the ones who bear the altruistic quality in potential, and non-Jews, i.e., the nations of the world, which defines the opposite quality of reception.

Antagonism between the two forces of receiving and giving aims at pulling us, the people of Israel, and then the rest of the world, toward the giving force.

At this juncture, antisemitism appears as a law of nature that helps Jews realize their mission: to unite above differences and be a conduit for an atmosphere of unity to envelop humanity.

Doing so would elevate humanity to another level of existence, one of peace, balance and harmony with nature.

Based on the video “Why the Urgency to Discuss Anti-Semitism Specifically in Our Time?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do we ask about the meaning of life, rather than simply live life?“

We ask about the meaning of life because, in contrast to the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature, the human level is qualitatively higher than the animate. In other words, the human level of existence is driven by the question about the meaning of life. Contrary to the animate level of existence, which does simply live life, the human level of existence hosts the question about the meaning of life, and has the ability to attain the meaning of life.

We have a question about the meaning of life because we have an innate tendency to wish to live eternally. If we cannot live eternally, then life loses its value, because everything dies and disappears.

Therefore, specifically the human’s most important question is about the meaning of life.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on “What Is the Meaning of Life?” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the difference between Kabbalah and Eastern teachings?“

There are over 4,000 religions and beliefs in the world. The main religions stem from Abraham, who lived in ancient Babylon close to 3,500 years ago.

Abraham taught his method, the wisdom of Kabbalah, to a small group that he called “the people of Israel.” He also gave gifts, or other forms of faith, to the rest of the people. The Torah states that Abraham gave gifts to the children of his concubines and sent them eastward, where these methods reach back to us.

The difference is that Abraham’s method possesses the ability to correct a person, something that exists in no other method.

Kabbalah gives us the ability to attract the positive force toward us, which is concealed in nature, and which will correct our hatred toward each other by covering it with love.

The positive force becomes added to our egoistic nature and we then possess two forces. Their incorporation makes it possible for us to work with them, develop by redirecting our self-aimed desires in a direction of positively connecting to others, and discover an additional form of reality that is outside of us.

Modern physics discusses the existence of such a reality. Other than the universe, i.e. the world that we now perceive, there are other forms of reality.

The wisdom of Kabbalah makes it possible for us to break through our world’s limits and enter into the perception of higher worlds.

We have no such possibilities in other methods because they provide no access to the force that we can attract through the study that gives us the ability to make such a breakthrough. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, such a force is named the “reforming light.” That is, the uniqueness of the wisdom of Kabbalah is that it lets us attract this force that corrects our egoistic nature, elevating us above it to an opposite nature of love and bestowal, while we alive in our world. It is as is described in kabbalistic texts, that “You will see your world in your lifetime” (Berachot 17a).

Based on a talk “Short Stories” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on October 22, 2014. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: Lyuda writes to you: “I decided to write to you after a year and a half of watching your clips. Everyone considers me a good, sympathetic, kind person, but I suddenly discovered that there is not an ounce of love in me.

The person closest to me is suffering and I do not feel his pain. I play at being compassionate, but I do not have it in me. I do not want to be like this, I do not feel good about being like this. I am afraid to admit it to others, and I am writing to you, signing with an alias, Lyuda.”

My Response: Maybe she just has grown up. When we grow up, then, as it is written in Ecclesiastes: “He who increases knowledge, increases pain.”

Question: Does it mean that her knowledge about who a person is has increased?

Answer: Just the recognition of life as an unhappy existence in a terrible, bad state called “egoism.” She is suffering from it, and this is already a good thing.

Question: How can she not suffer?

Answer: To use correctly, productively, negative feelings toward her state in order to rise from this state to a higher one.

Question: What is the higher state? She feels that she does not have compassion for the person closest to her.

Answer: To rise to a higher state means to have more compassion, to be closer to people. To try to develop the correct attitude toward them, that is, kindness, up to love, and so on.

Question: Is the fact that she writes “I do not have a single gram of love in me” kind of a start?

Answer: Of course. This is very good.

Question: So, a person starts from this. Then tell me, how can a person come to love? You say, “She should be kinder, she should love.”

Answer: No, I am not talking about that. She cannot do it herself, so we cannot impose on her any other states. We can only advise her of a few techniques by which she will be able to change these states within herself. Not directly.

A person cannot do that, a person is not the Creator. He cannot switch some switches in himself and suddenly feel compassion and suddenly love. This is not us. But we can indirectly invite upon ourselves the upper light, the upper energy, the upper influence, and it will correct us, and change us.

Question: Does it mean that from the realization that “there is not an ounce of love in me” suddenly she will feel that there is love in her? From the state that she has no compassion for a loved one at all, will she feel that she has it?

Answer: Yes. In addition, she will begin to explore her attitude to the world, to people, to everything, and eventually to the Creator, who, in principle, is the source of all her conceptions about the world. That is, everything that she actually sees in the world, inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature and people, will eventually connect within her into the image of the Creator, that is, the upper force that projects for her such a state.

Question: Are you saying that it is the Creator who evokes this feeling in her?

Answer: Yes! It is written about this that there is none else besides Him.

Question: Does He do it in order for her to understand what real compassion is and what real love is?

Answer: This is not a goal, this is only a means to attain the Creator, His purpose, why He creates such images in us. Why should we see inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature around us? Why are they around us in this way, influencing us, forcing us to be in interaction with them? For what?

Question: But if we try to stay closer to the letter, then why are these feelings, I do not love, I do not have compassion, awakened in me?

Answer: So that through all these influences we will attain their root, the Creator. All these influences have one single root, source, and cause. This cause wants you to attain it, to come closer to it.

Question: What will happen then? Is this some kind of invitation from the Creator to attain Him?

Answer: He invites you on a date with Him. It is easy for Him.

Question: If a person decides and goes on a date, what will he get from it?

Answer: I will teach her. I am here as an intermediary, a matchmaker, one might say, between this woman and the Creator.

Question: Are you talking about yourself? Can you teach her how to go on this date, how to behave?

Answer: This is my profession.

Question: What will it give her?

Answer: What do we want when we want to love, to become acquainted, to get to know another person? We want to reveal our relationship. That is, as much as possible the feelings of one for the other, to explore ourselves, why we are like this, and to feel the other, why he is like that. I would say that a very interesting romance appears here between a person and the Creator.

Question: As a result, does a person attain what he wants to attain?

Answer: Love arises! And it is the biggest, the greatest, the most selfless, and the most important thing. The one that reveals absolutely everything. It turns out that everything in the world was created just for the two of you. For the two of you! This is the only reason for the existence of our world.

It turns out that there is only this person and the Creator. No one else.

Question: Can we say this about eight billion people? Can each one say “There is me and the Creator”? Is this how this meeting with the Creator should happen for everyone? Should everyone attain this love?

Answer: Yes. In a very personal way.

Comment: This is an incredible computer! Everyone has their own program!

My Response: What is complicated about this? This is the way a person reveals it. And everything else in the world is just for him. An infinite number of all kinds of variations, everything that exists, is specifically aimed at him.

Comment: Everything he sees, everything that happens, everything he reads in the newspapers, or hears…

My Response: Everything! This is the way they write a script when they need to bring this character somewhere, to some changes in him and in others, and so on. Exactly in the same way!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/11/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are there intelligent life forms, other than us?“

Besides the still, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature, there is nothing else in the universe. No matter how much we seek other life forms, we will nevertheless discover nothing outside of these four levels.

The human degree is the highest life form because it holds the ability to exit the corporeal world and enter into the higher spiritual and eternal world, a completely different level of existence beyond the universe as we know it.

As large as our universe seems, it is in fact a very tiny and limited place. It emerged from a tiny spark that broke through from a higher degree of existence, called a higher “world” in Kabbalah. We know this event as the Big Bang, a starting point for the construction of life forms and the existence we now have.

It is important for us to note that everything existing in our universe, including us, everything on our planet, and all the stars and galaxies, are merely the outcome of a tiny speck of light that came from a higher degree of existence.

We perceive a vast and endless expansiveness in the universe, with tremendous distances and an immense picture because of how we are created. However, when we look at it from a different point of view, we see it all as something very small and limited, and there is nothing special about it but the ability for the small tiny living creatures in that small circle to come out of it, to rise above that circle and exist on a higher level.

Our universe and everything in it exist on the lowest degree of reality, and by rising above this degree, we discover much bigger and more expansive degrees. We can rise through more and more degrees that exist in reality up to the final perfect and eternal degree. However, we do not need to reach that final degree in order to see that the universe as we currently perceive it, with the still, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature contained in it, stems to us from a higher degree of reality, creating all life forms in our universe and on our planet. There are no other places or degrees from which to emanate for any life forms, but solely from that higher degree.

Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” episode 12 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Joseph (Asaf) Ohayon. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: You said that we work a lot, we don’t need so many professions and so many hours of work. And you are absolutely sure of this. Irina writes to you: “I still don’t understand, but what to live on? Prices are increasing in a race with the rise in gasoline prices. I really respect Michael Laitman, it’s nice and instructive to listen to his lectures, but this is all utopia, it doesn’t happen in the real world. A person from birth is programmed by society to study and work. Parasites, homeless people, inferior, everything is clear with this, and the rest are welcome to the machine.”

My Response: Why go to the machine? Why do we need so much work?! To throw it away later?! See what is being done in the process and at the end of the production chain. How much do we throw away? 60 to 70% of everything produced, including food and so on. What are we doing?! We empty the globe, pump out everything from it.

What’s the point?! If it were all rational, then I would agree with her. But today we are already discovering that we are spending half of our time, energy, and life in order to throw it away later! We pollute nature, the air and everything else. What’s the point? It is better to sit and do nothing, it would be most useful.

Question: So what should a person do if he has nothing to live on?

Answer: I have no complaints and no advice for such a person.

Question: So you are talking about completely different people who recycle and do not know why they accumulate?

Answer: Of course.

Question: That is, here we are talking about the necessary. And how can a person determine: “This is what I need and more is all superfluous”?

Answer: An ordinary person cannot do anything about it. He works, receives almost minimum wage, and cannot do anything about it.

Question: Do you ask this person to quit his job?

Answer: No. I advise him to simply vote in the elections where he can influence, influence, and before that, to convince others how a normal, balanced life should be arranged so that everyone works, everyone receives and can exist—no more and no less, as they say.

Question: What does this mean no more and no less? What do you mean by this?

Answer: So that everyone has enough for what is necessary, enough, but not more than that.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/4/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we cross the barrier between this world and the spiritual world?“

To cross the barrier that separates our corporeal world from the spiritual world means to feel the reality within, and it is done by developing our desire for spirituality to a point where it is ready to resemble a certain portion of the spiritual world.

Our desire for spirituality, which is called the “point in the heart” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, emerges in our lives when we are ready to shift beyond corporeal fulfillment of food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, and embark on a spiritual path.

Such a desire becomes characterized by us questioning the meaning and purpose of our lives, when we feel an underlying dissatisfaction in our daily lives, and long for a certain “something else” that we cannot yet pinpoint.

Depending on the intensity of this sensation, we seek through various environments, such as books, teachers and groups, until we eventually come across the wisdom of Kabbalah. The wisdom of Kabbalah was created as a method specifically for answering our existential questions by guiding us to a clear perception and sensation to the purpose of our lives.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the purpose of our lives is to attain the higher reality. The higher reality has several names, including the “spiritual world,” and it is characterized by a quality of bestowal, love and connection.

The more we apply ourselves to the method of Kabbalah, the more we develop our spiritual desire until it eventually gains the minimum “volume” necessary in order to resemble and enter the spiritual world. This minimum “volume” for crossing the barrier between our world into the spiritual world is called “the ten Sefirot.”

In the ten Sefirot, we start perceiving and sensing the higher reality. We feel how the quality of bestowal, love and connection, also called “the light,” enters and exits us, bringing about various sensations.

It starts with small changes in our perception as we start sensing and relating to the causal level of reality. We then start seeing our world amid a backdrop of a much vaster and more complete spiritual world.

By crossing the barrier into the spiritual world, while living in this world, we understand and feel the connection between the two worlds as causal and consequential levels of reality. These two levels of reality are called “root and branch” in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

During our application of the method of Kabbalah, we attract the light from the higher spiritual world to ourselves, and it repeatedly enters and exits our desire for spirituality, giving us the sensation of what is known in the method as “ascents and descents,” i.e. closeness and remoteness from the spiritual world. Before we cross the barrier between our world and the spiritual world, we feel these sensations in a relatively unclear way, similar to how a newborn baby experiences our world, yet without knowing clearly what is going on.

For instance, if the baby is in a room where the light is turned on and then turned off again, it does not know how to define that phenomenon as light turning on and off, but the baby nonetheless experiences the phenomenon. Likewise, as we apply the method of Kabbalah and enter the process of drawing the light from the spiritual world closer to ourselves, then that entrance and exit of the light provides us with a sensation of the spiritual world (as the light enters) and our world as its mere imprint (as the light exits).

In later stages of development, we start orienting ourselves in this light more optimally to the extent of our abilities, and we develop qualities that resemble the light more and more, entering into increasing balance and harmony with the spiritual world. Such a process continues until we eventually reach the completion of our soul, a state of eternity and perfection.

Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” episode 7 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Joseph (Asaf) Ohayon. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: How do we make the work of each integral education specialist as efficient as possible in order to get effective dissemination?

Answer: The most important thing in a person’s work is to receive approval, respect, and support from the team in which he works.

We want to do the same in those places where we disseminate integral education and upbringing. We begin to weave a network of connections, so that people are mutually connected, so that they understand how they can enrich the team, how much easier, more joyful and comfortable it will be for them.

In this way, they can improve both themselves and the environment in which they exist, and feel happy. First, we must maintain such a state artificially until we begin to receive it from the internal connection with one another.

For this, a responsible person is appointed who makes sure that the members of the team have a constant ascent, meaning choose special content, clips, arrange phone calls between them throughout the day, and so on.

Moreover, those responsible should understand that since they are engaged in dissemination, they have nothing to pass on to other people without an inner fire. A person with a bad mood who is in a mental decline, definitely needs a team. He needs to be raised, put on his feet, healed, and reassured. And only when he is filled with inner energy, with the air of special unification, can he go on further and do more, otherwise he will fail the work.

People leading integral classes, first of all, should unite themselves, get a collective inspiration, a sense of security, reliability, a sense of their high state. They need to show themselves to students as confident, knowledgeable, and carrying an inner charge and warmth.

When they enter the team they should give the feeling that there are, say, not three people there, but one, one common whole. They begin to play with the collective with six hands, as one single body.

Question: Could there be such concepts as envy and honor?

Answer: There is everything here! We are dealing with the egoism of man, we understand the basis of his nature. Therefore, there should be envy, power, honor, respect, a sense of a leap, a sense of pleasure in the attack, and so on. That is, all these qualities should work, absolutely all of them!
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From KabTV’s “Through Time”

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