Entries in the 'Q&A' Category

If Youth Only Knew, If Old Age Only Could

571.03Question: Many of your students use their material qualities for the dissemination of Kabbalah. They are told that first they must rise out of their egoistic attitude, but they don’t want to listen to anyone. What should be done about this?

Answer: In Kabbalah, as in our world, this is called the suffering of parents: “If youth only knew, if old age only could.” You can’t do anything with such a person except try to educate him as much as possible. But, in principle, everything depends on him.

You give the students what you can, you soften and accelerate their development, but nothing more than that. And then, gradually, they begin to absorb it.

To this day, I am nourished by what I went through with my teacher during twelve years of being by his side. Education is when you give a student the beginning of a connection with you, and then through this connection between souls—whether on the level of our world or from world to world, it doesn’t matter—his further development takes place.

We must look not at bodily interactions within the framework of this world, but at the fact that we exist in the system of souls, and everything happens there.
[347615]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. If Youth Only Knew, If Old Age Only Could” 10/4/10

Related Material:
Spiritual Children
Annulment Of The Student Before The Teacher
A Conduit of Spiritual Energy

Questions about Spiritual Work—248

231.01Question: What is an “object” in spirituality?

Answer: An object in spirituality is the desire to receive the light.

Question: There is a feeling that we are ripening for the revelation of the qualities of the ten Sefirot within the ten. How can we help each other accelerate this process?

Answer: We must try to implement what we read in the articles and in The Study of the Ten Sefirot. From this it will become clearer to us what we need to do, how, in relation to whom, and so on.

Question: What is explained in The Study of the Ten Sefirot is the science of spirituality, and it hardly touches our everyday life. To what extent are the concepts of restriction that we study in spirituality connected to restriction in everyday life, when I restrain myself from various excesses? How much does this help in spiritual advancement?

Answer: It helps a lot in spiritual advancement. I can say this with absolute certainty.
[347224]
From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/25, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot“

Related Material:
Questions about Spiritual Work—247
Questions about Spiritual Work—246
Questions about Spiritual Work—245

Questions about Spiritual Work—247

234Question: It is said that Malchut of the world of infinity adorned herself in order to come to equivalence of form with the upper light. What does this mean?

Answer: Malchut chooses the form in which it can receive, in order to be filled with the light of infinity that was revealed at the beginning of creation.

Question: What is the difference between reality before the Tzimtzum and after the final correction?

Answer: That the true reality becomes revealed.

Question: Is the Tzimtzum, essentially, the only action through which equivalence of form with the Creator is possible?

Answer: For now, yes. And afterward it will depend on how much and in what way the Kli receives. In this will be the equivalence.

Question: Is the act of Tzimtzum connected with the restriction of the desire to bestow?

Answer:Yes, the act of Tzimtzum is the restriction of our will to receive.

[347178]
From Daily Kabbalah Lesson  8/15/25 ,”The Study of the Ten Sefirot“

Related Material:
Questions about Spiritual Work—246
Questions about Spiritual Work—245
Questions about Spiritual Work—244

Simplify the Method for Everyone

629.3Question: Did Kabbalists of the past try to bring the method down to each person?

Answer: No! This has never happened! They have been trying very hard to lower the threshold only in our time, in the last 100 years.

Comment: But you said that the method must be lowered so far that it practically touches the tip of egoism.

My Response: So that it becomes understandable to anyone, to absolutely everyone.

A person living on the simplest egoistic level should clearly understand that the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals the secrets of the world, allows them to understand their destiny, and even change it.

Indeed, by drawing the upper light, we do change our destiny! What else shapes our future if not it?

So it needs to be explained simply and directly to every person while gradually revealing that this involves serious inner work, work on correcting the errors of nature.
[346727]
From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Hello Aunt Fenya!” 9/27/10

Related Material:
Toward Greater Mutual Understanding
How To Break Through Egoism’s Armor
Adapt Kabbalah

Exchange Empty Desires for One Full One

276.04Question: If I understand correctly, is Kabbalah about creating difficulties in order to later feel the spiritual?

Answer: No, Kabbalah is not about creating difficulties; it is about revealing the Creator, the quality of bestowal and love, in each individual and in everyone together through the correction of egoism.

Question: But isn’t correction about breaking the ego?

Answer: No! You can try breaking it if you’re stubborn. But if you’re not, you’ll gladly exchange it instead. Let’s say you go to a store, return ten empty bottles, and get a bottle of beer in return. Is that a bad thing?! You benefit from it. Instead of empty desires you can’t fill, you get one full “beer.” Sure, you give up ten, but in return, you receive one full one. Who would refuse that?

Comment: There’s also a beneficial egoistic calculation here—what feels good to me.

My Response: Of course! There’s nothing without calculation. Kabbalah comes from the word “to receive.” You just need to understand that you actually receive much more when you give up your empty, egoistic desires. So ultimately, it can be said that “love your neighbor” is a means of self-fulfillment.

Question: Let’s say I return ten bottles and receive one full one. Is the process of correction like making that full bottle?

Answer: No, that’s not your job. That’s not you. You just need to exchange one for the other. All the “bottles,” the “recycling station,” all of it already exists. You just have to want to make the trade of your empty desires for one full one.

Question: So basically I’m not really doing anything? I just add a tiny grain to the process and the rest is the system?

Answer: You only contribute your desire to exchange, nothing more. Both the empty and the full “bottles” already exist. You just need to want to exchange them.

Question: But it won’t work automatically?

Answer: No, never. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have freewill. Otherwise, you wouldn’t truly exist. You have to do it!
[346753]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. I Am the System?!” 9/28/10

Related Material:
Perception Of Spiritual – Through the Breaking of Egoism
Overcoming Instead Of Fighting Windmills
Everything Will Be Clarified In The Thought

A Woman’s Hisaron

630.2Question: What is a woman’s Hisaron?

Answer: A woman’s Hisaron is the natural deficiency that forms within her that must be worked with more intensively. There is nothing artificial about it!

Let us say I want something, so let me want it today. Later I will want it more consciously, so just want it more consciously, and so on. It is not an artificial desire for something nonexistent. What we are engaged in is entering into the true nature, not the deceptive, egoistic nature that surrounds us, but the eternal and perfect nature that is 100% altruistic and entirely directed toward bestowal.

Right now we are merely in a small, illusory volume, like a dream, where everything operates in opposition to bestowal. But in truth, all of nature is founded on altruism, bestowal, and love, which is the Creator’s quality. It is only us who experience this clouded perception when we are in the opposite state.

Comment: So we should just leave the women alone.

My Response: Yes, let everything move as it should! Just more desire, more inner tension, more yearning, and everything will come to fruition. The intensity depends on the overall effort, on the collective influence we have on one another.
[346724]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. A Woman’s Hisaron” 9/23/10

Related Material:
Female Desire, Male Intention
A Woman Is A Desire
The Women’s Desire As The Engine Of Creation

The Perception of Spirituality Is Through Breaking Egoism

109Question: You talk about a global system all the time. But a person subconsciously understands that in a global system everything should be good in the family and in everything else.

It turns out that if he is in a different sensation, he cares not about himself, but about those people who are around him, and receives great pleasure from that. Is this true or not?

Answer: Are you justifying egoism? Of course, it is very pleasant to enjoy egoistically and you don’t have to break yourself for it.

The whole problem is that it is not really possible. Disappointment comes, emptiness, states come that are impossible to remain in. The Creator deliberately ruins our lives.

Question: So the sensation of spirituality always comes through breaking?

Answer: Absolutely! How else?! After all, you have to reveal completely different sensory organs in yourself, those in which you will enjoy bestowing, and not receiving.

The whole world is created in order to bring humanity to correction. Therefore, if necessary, difficulties are created.

And if a person creates difficulties for himself, then there is no need to impose them on him. That is, if he himself is looking for ways to correct himself, and tries to identify his egoism in order to turn it into its opposite, then there is no need to beat him, prick him, or create any obstacles for him.
[346731]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. I Am the System?!” 9/28/10

Related Material:
Advancement Through Pressure
Advancement By Overcoming
The Difficult Work Against Egoism

Should We Respond to Insults?

629.3Question: How should we work with insults? Children do not help their parents; they have practically abandoned them. Someone truly betrayed someone else, someone sold out a friend, and so on. How should we work with these offenses?

Answer: I think we need to reach a level of development at which we will understand that all the people around us are puppets controlled by the Creator so that we can properly correct ourselves in relation to these people, justify them, and wish them well.

Question: Is that possible?

Answer: Generally, yes. Not always and not immediately, but still…

Question: It is a long process, but that is the direction we should go in?

Answer: Yes! Otherwise, you are slandering the Creator. And that is a completely different matter. There the calculation is entirely different—it is a matter of how you perceive the universe: whether it exists on its own, or whether you govern it. If everything comes from above, then we have no other choice but to make ourselves absolutely submissive, agreeable, and capable of changing to resemble this upper force.

Comment: That is beautiful. I would cautiously suggest that our whole world is a world of sinners. We all exist in a state of hatred and constant offense.

My Response: Like little children in a sandbox.

Comment: And we respond, and respond; we keep responding. Look at all the diplomatic corps, how they clash: “You expelled my diplomats…”

My Response: Stop joking! Just stop. This is all…

Question: Then why are we being joked with like this?

Answer: So that we eventually become truly disappointed. Not in how the Creator made us this way, but in how foolish we were not to realize why He made us this way. And the answer is right in front of a person, but he does not want to see it. But all this is so that it accumulates, breaks through, bursts out, and explodes.

Question: If people begin to follow this direction little by little, what will our world become?

Answer: Our world will transform from today’s madhouse into a world where people are engaged in self-research, self-healing, and self-building.

Question: And through that, do they, as it were, bring the Creator into this world?

Answer: Yes, to the extent that this happens, the Creator is revealed within them.

Question: And what do you mean by “the revelation of the Creator in a person”? What does that mean?

Answer: The quality of bestowal, of love, which elevates us to an entirely different level of perceiving the world.

Question: Are you certain that there is only one path, and no other?

Answer: No, there can be no other path.
[346610]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/24/25

Related Material:
What To Do When Resentment Suffocates?
What To Do If You Can’t Forgive
The Right To Feel Offended

Selfless Act, or Gratification of One’s Own Vanity?

559Question: One day I really wanted to do something for someone without expecting anything in return. Suddenly, I saw a poor, sick girl on the street who clearly needed help. I gave her some money. She did not expect it and was so happy that I even teared up. Was it my ego crying, or did I cry because I had made a truly altruistic act?

Answer: A person, by definition, cannot do anything selflessly because he is an egoist. You helped the girl and were so moved by your own act, feeling like you were special, like you had done something selfless and unconditional. You lost a quarter from your pocket and felt good about it.

I am not denying the nobility of your act in any way. But it is earthly nobility, not spiritual. Because you, as a human being made 100% of egoism had to feel satisfaction in order to commit this seemingly altruistic deed.

Therefore, if you receive pleasure from your actions, it is called a reward, payment, or compensation. Your action cannot be called unconditional. Moreover, it was not selfless from the start, because you were moved by compassion; meaning, someone else’s suffering affected you.

And I am not even mentioning that, perhaps, the girl was pretty, in tears, in need of support, and some masculine qualities may have flared up in you; in other words, your egoism was working at full force.

You have to know your nature well in order to understand the reasons behind these inner impulses aimed at helping another person. But until you make a connection with the Creator, they will always remain egoistic.

Inside us, a very interesting machine is at work. That is why people serve each other in different ways, run around hospitals, look for victims, and do all sorts of things for others. All this because egoism, in this special form, pushes them to exchange what seem to be good deeds. But in reality, they are just satisfying themselves, their own vanity!

Through these actions, you elevate your status in your own eyes: you gave to someone, they enjoyed it, and you became higher than them, nobler, you started to respect yourself even more. This is your reward for what you did for them.

Question: So if a person has not revealed the Creator, who provides him with altruistic fuel, does he have any chance at making an altruistic action?

Answer: None. It is self-deception.

Comment: But the act itself is noble.

My Response: Noble means “bringing about good.” And these actions bring no real good—on the contrary, only harm.

If you want to bring true good into the world, draw the upper light into it, that fuel which will help us truly perform even unconscious actions directed away from ourselves and not toward ourselves.
[178246]
From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah” 1/10/16

Related Material:
Egoistic Altruists
Egoistic Altruism: The Path To Superorganism And Fascism
Unified By Love Or Hate

Bestowal

509True bestowal can only be achieved under the influence of the upper light when we study Kabbalah in a group.

By reading books that describe the actions of bestowal that the light performs on desire, we thereby cause its effects on our own desires. It is all very simple.

Question: By what measure is bestowal evaluated?

Answer: Bestowal is measured above the desire, meaning, what kind of desire I am able to rise above in order to bestow. Maybe I can give up 10 dollars, or 20, or perhaps 10 million or even 20.

This example is clear to you. It depends on what you are able to rise above. Bestowal is measured by the magnitude of the desire you transcend, by the desire you disregard in order to bestow. This is called a “sacrifice.” You sacrifice your 10 million.
[346447]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Bestowal,” 9/24/10

Related Material:
When Does the Force of Bestowal Appear in the Ten?
Why Is It so Difficult to Work for Bestowal?
The Measuring Unit Of Bestowal: The Ten Sefirot