Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are we heading towards World War III?“

We live in unprecedented times. In our era, humanity is becoming increasingly interconnected, and together with this growing connection, we discover more and more inner resistance, rejection and opposition. Moreover, today we also see that we have no idea about what to do about our growing division.

In the past, we would settle our growing divisiveness with war. Nations and states found direction and motivation in their mutual conquest for control and governance over other nations and peoples.

Today, however, we see no media discourse about war as a solution to our problems. It also becomes increasingly clearer to world leaders that war will solve nothing. Governments are finding that they cannot even control their own populations, and so the idea of taking over and controlling other nations becomes all the more elusive.

People are realizing that we have no energy to go to war, yet at the same time, governments continue to strengthen their military forces.

Wars between countries have become replaced by cold wars within nations, where increasing divisiveness and polarization lets no one rest, especially among the countries’ leadership ranks. Country’s leaders today have to deal with ever-strengthening political opposition striving to bring them down. In such a situation, countries engage more in internal struggles, and less on external enemies.

At a bird’s-eye view of such development, we see how nature constantly increases our interconnection and interdependence, and until we adjust our attitudes to match such connection positively, then we experience it negatively. While war is a tragic and unfortunate phenomenon, it was also seen as a solution that provided direction and motivation to mobilize countries in the past. Today, however, through the process of increasing connection on the outside and increasing division in our attitudes to each other on the inside, nature is exhausting us. This growing helplessness of world leaders and their populations are making divisions between countries less important than the divisions within countries, and it is ultimately growing a desire in us for sincere connection. We will eventually come to see that only connection above the divisions can bring us peace, balance and harmony.

The point where both world leaders and their populations will feel helpless, and that control is out of their hands, is called “the recognition of evil.” It is a phase that we need to undergo toward a more positive connection and sensation of livelihood. This phase takes place in order for us to develop a sincere desire to connect above the divisiveness.

Through increasing division, we evolve in our understanding of what unity means. In the past, we related to unity in terms of families, tribes and nations. Today, unity needs to be revealed on a much broader scale, which is defined not as unity of one group against another, but unity above division.

Therefore, if we understand the principle of unity above division, how to approach it, and know how to invite the fundamental force of connection dwelling in nature that has the power to connect us, then we will be able to realize a new harmonious state in humanity: the unity of humanity upon the forces of division within every one of us.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on January 30, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can you describe your spiritual awakening experience?“

We start our spiritual ascent from having an entirely egoistic desire, which wants solely to receive for personal benefit, and then a tiny spark of a spiritual desire emerges within us.

The spiritual desire is one of love, giving, and positive connection with everyone. However, we initially do not feel this desire as such, but instead feel it as inner emptiness among our egoistic desires. It raises deep questions about our true identity, and our meaning and purpose in life.

Existential questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” urge us to seek their answers. If these questions bug us enough, we embark on a journey through new and different environments to those we grew up in, reading all kinds of texts, and reaching out to various teachers and groups.

If we sincerely ask about the meaning of our lives, then eventually we arrive at the wisdom of Kabbalah, which was made specifically for answering that question. The wisdom of Kabbalah is also called “the wisdom of connection,” as it methodically guides a process for how to positively connect in order to discover our ultimate unification among each other and with nature as a single soul, with the force of love and bestowal dwelling in nature holding us all together.

We learn about fundamental principles of the reality that we live in: We once existed as a single soul, called “the soul of Adam HaRishon,” which shattered. The shattering of Adam HaRishon gave rise to our state as we know it in this world, where we perceive each other as separate beings, and feel detached from nature as well.

However, while we exist in this perception of separation, we have a small spark, called a “point in the heart” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, which belongs to our connected state as a complete soul before it shattered. This point in the heart awakens existential questions in us, and urges us to search for how we can ultimately discover our perfectly connected, harmonious and eternal soul.

At the start of our Kabbalah studies, we learn the difference between humans and animals, that humans have an additional egoistic inclination for self-love unfound in the animal world. Whoever feels this egoistic self-love, a sense of uniqueness, can also reach the sensation that it is an evil inclination, and that in order to discover spirituality, they need to rise above this evil inclination in order to discover a “good inclination.”

The good inclination is one of connecting and integrating with others. By investing ourselves in such a connection, we invite spiritual forces that dwell above the point where the soul of Adam HaRishon shattered, and through the influence of these spiritual forces, we eventually reach the discovery of our true connection as a single soul. That revelation opens up to us a complete picture of reality, and a sensation of connection that is absolute, harmonious, perfect and eternal.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on January 26, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: To attain the Creator, one must love and help gratuitously. Does it mean we should also love animals? After all, you do not expect any material return from them. Maybe we should start with them?

Answer: No. Regarding animals, plants, and inanimate nature, there is a clear regulation: you should use them only to the extent that you need to achieve a human goal. Nothing else.

You should not sit all the time and, as Mayakovsky wrote, “Stroke the shriveled black cats.” 🙂 This may be good for generating electricity, but not for achieving the goal of a person. There is no internal advancement in this.
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From KabTV’s “Ask a Kabbalist” 12/31/18

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is your view on euthanasia? Should it be legalised or stay legalised?“

On one hand, it is very important that we die natural deaths.

On the other hand, if we find people living through intolerable and unavoidable suffering, then it is necessary to relieve those people from such pain.

Based on the talk “Communication Skills” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Michael Sanilevich, on October 9, 2020. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the difference between physical love and spiritual love?“

Physical or corporeal love comes from receiving pleasure from someone or something.

Spiritual love, on the contrary, means that we feel repulsion and rejection from others, and above these negative sensations, we build a loving attitude.

It is written about spiritual love that “Love will cover all crimes” (Proverbs 10:12). Spiritual love does not replace hatred, but emerges above it.

To the extent that we suffer from such hatred, i.e., that we want to love others but find ourselves in opposite sensations that contradict the love we want, then our construction of positive connection above such negative sensations awakens spiritual love.

Spiritual love is thus measured according to the distance from whom we want to love. Attaining spiritual love thus also requires a great amount of learning and preparation, with the understanding that it is an attitude that we need to attain toward the whole of creation.

Creation, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, is the desire to enjoy. A single desire to enjoy is positioned behind everything we perceive in reality.

The desire to enjoy in and of itself poses no problem, as it is simply matter. Problems emerge when the desire to enjoy wants to individually benefit at the expense of others. Among cells in an organism, such a tendency is considered cancerous. Among us humans, the desire to individually benefit at the expense of others is the basis for every problem we experience in life.

The more we develop, the more the desire to enjoy grows, and the more we find ourselves in a swamp of problems and crises. Such a process is leading us to a state that the wisdom of Kabbalah terms “the recognition of evil,” where we gain awareness of our egoistic nature that wants to self-benefit at others’ expense as the root of all problems. At that juncture, we will reveal that we hate the egoistic nature within us, and we will then genuinely yearn to have a loving attitude upon it.

The desire to enjoy is our nature. We cannot get rid of or destroy it, nor do we need to. We need only treat our nature as the ground level in a building that we need to construct, where the second level and upward is built out of a positive and loving attitude upon the desire to enjoy from other people and nature.

How can we reach such spiritual love?

It is done by asking for it from a higher degree. The desire to enjoy is the nature of creation, and opposite it is the nature that created it: the desire to bestow, love and give. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, the desire to bestow and love has several names, including “the Creator,” “the upper force,” “the light,” and also “nature.” It describes the quality of giving and love that exists in reality, concealed from our inborn desires. When we reach a sincere desire to love others spiritually, i.e., without wanting self-benefit laced within that love, then we reach a true request to the Creator—a prayer—to perform that self-transformation.

Why would we even want to reach such a state?

It is because by doing so, we bring ourselves closer to the source of our lives, elevating ourselves from the animal degree of existence to become human in the fullest sense of the term. “Human,” in Hebrew (“Adam”), refers to the phrase “similar to the most high” (“Adameh le Elyon”). Therefore, reaching spiritual love means attaining resemblance to the Creator, which is described by Kabbalah as the purpose of life—the highest, most harmonious and balanced state of perception and sensation that we can achieve, while alive in our world.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson of January 23, 2021. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “According to the Bible, what is spiritual growth?“

The purpose of our lives is to reach a state of perfection by harmoniously unifying with humanity in a single integral system—our soul. This state is called “the revelation of the Creator to the created beings in this world,”* and it is attainable while we are alive in our world.

The Bible was given to us as a means by which we can correct ourselves in order to unify with others, i.e., to ultimately reach a level of “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The word for “Torah” in Hebrew connects to two words, “Hora’ah” (“teaching”) and “Ohr” (“light”). That is, the Torah is a means by which we draw light onto ourselves, which corrects our intention from self-benefit at the expense of others to bestowal and love for others.

Spiritual growth takes place by rising above our inborn egoistic nature to increasing positive connection and unification with others. In the Bible, such ascent is described by degrees called holidays, weekdays, the Sabbath, Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of the month), the nations of the world, Levites, Cohens, Israelites, and so on.

It is important to understand that the Bible does not describe corporeal phenomena, but spiritual degrees, structures, and processes, which are ultimately degrees of love, bestowal, and unification. The correct study of the Bible should draw upon us the light that brings us closer to attaining those degrees. When we attain the spiritual degrees described in the Bible, we can perceive what it means to be on the degrees of King David, King Solomon, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, Jacob, and so on.

The more we grow spiritually, the more we feel that we elevate from the lowest degrees to the highest, and encounter several states on the path. In other words, the more we unite among each other, and with humanity as a whole, the more we experience the various depictions contained in the Bible. Such spiritual growth takes place until we integrate the entire world inside ourselves and become “human” in the fullest sense of the term (i.e, “human” [“Adam” in Hebrew] from the phrase “similar to the most high” [“Adameh le Elyon” in Hebrew]), which means that we resemble the Creator.

We should thus perceive what is contained in the Bible as degrees of our spiritual growth that we undergo until we reach the complete harmony, perfection, and eternity of our soul—in equivalence with the Creator.

* See section “What the Wisdom Is About” in “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah” by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam).

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What exactly is our soul and what does it add to us?“

We exist on the animate level out of four levels of the receptive desire to enjoy: still, vegetative, animate and speaking/human. Within such a desire emerges a desire to give, or in other words, a desire to enjoy from the quality of giving.

That desire is called the “point in the heart.” Indicative of its name, the point in the heart is tiny, and it has no area in which it can enjoy from bestowal. It is surrounded by the “heart,” which does not mean the flesh heart within our physical bodies, but the receptive desires to enjoy in all of its corporeal manifestations: for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge.

By developing the point in the heart via the influence of the forces dwelling in nature, as described by the wisdom of Kabbalah, we can develop a desire to give above our inherent receptive desire to enjoy, and by doing so, feel pleasure from giving.

The soul is the quality of giving in and of itself.

It is written about this quality that the soul is “a part of the Creator from above.” In other words, the soul is the extent to which we resemble the Creator, which is the pure desire to give. The soul thus adds to us a giving intention above our inborn receptive desires to enjoy, which gives us access to the eternal spiritual world, concealed from our corporeal senses. While we have yet to attain even the tiniest extent of the quality of giving, we remain at the corporeal animate degree, with no knowledge or attainment of the true eternal reality that we exist in.

Based on talks with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, written/edited by his students.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does Satan exist?“

The word for “Satan” in Hebrew stems from the word for “deviation” (“soteh”), i.e., that it is a force that diverts us away from the spiritual path.

This force is the human ego, which is a desire to enjoy on account of others and nature. It exists within each and every person, and incites us at every moment with the desire to receive for personal benefit alone.

Essentially, this is a force at the basis of our entire corporeal world. It governs over us until we correct this state. Moreover, we cannot get rid of this force; we can only correct it.

Correcting this force means rising above it by drawing the opposite, creative force of nature: the force of bestowal, love and connection. Performing such a correction requires a method.

The method for undertaking this correction is called “the wisdom of Kabbalah.” It explains how and why the egoistic force appears in us, where it is leading us, and the purpose for all the suffering and pain that it gets us into. It also provides a method for how we can rise above it in order to enter into a new harmonious reality.

Based on the talk, “News with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman” on November 23, 2020. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do you know when you have awakened spiritually?“

You shift to a more unified reality from the current divisive one.

It feels as if you wake up from a dream, see an evil and unjust world all around you, and then you close your eyes again, and reawaken into a perfectly harmonious world.

The awful world that you first saw was all in a dream, and you did not want to be there anymore.

When you awaken the second time, you see a balanced world and not the one that you saw in your dream. Kabbalists wrote about such a spiritual revelation, “They were as dreamers.”

The question is: How can we wake up from our worsening nightmare into a peaceful, balanced and harmonious world? The answer is by changing our perception of reality.

We currently live in a perfect world, nothing less than Heaven, where there is total goodness and not a shred of evilness. The sole obstacle we have in sensing reality as such is our perception. Therefore, by changing our perception, we change the world we live in.

Our current perception of reality is the lowest of them all, where all goodness inverts to its opposite form. Outside this perception is the tranquil and sublime world of Ein Sof (Infinity), but we perceive this eternal goodness through senses that immensely limit it to a tiny, transient and negative picture.

By learning how to rise above our current perception of reality, we will see ourselves blanketed in a warmth of love that we have no awareness of in our current level.

The process of rising above our current perception of reality to one that is perfectly connected, harmonious and eternal is called a process of “correction” in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The changes we undergo in our perception and sensation of reality are considered corrections, and the more corrected we become, the more positive and harmonious the world will appear.

Essentially, correcting ourselves and transforming our perception is a process of rising above our divisive drives, and by doing so, we see how others’ attitudes also change toward us.

In short, there is no need to change anyone or to correct the world. We need only correct ourselves, and then we will discover that we live in a perfect reality.

Based on “The Meeting of Worlds” on June 16, 2014. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Photo by Frank Oberle on Unsplash

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does it mean to ‘let go’ spiritually?“

“Letting go” and “flowing with the spiritual current” means not objecting to the spiritual process. However, the ego is a great interference to simply “letting go” spiritually, as it constantly awakens its complaints and demands.

Therefore, “letting go” spiritually is more difficult than it may sound. It does not mean simply doing nothing and letting our egoistic instincts control us. On the contrary, it means joyously accepting everything happening to us and the world, seeing that everything emanates from a single force that wishes only to benefit, love and care about everyone and everything, and not having any inkling of criticism toward that force.

It can seem as if there is nothing out of the ordinary in such a process, just to enjoy life as much as possible. However, it is in fact very complex, because “letting go” spiritually means being in complete unification with the spiritual force of love, bestowal and connection.

Complete unification with that force means that we agree to and justify its intention to do only good to us, while we are made to endure countless contradictory states to that goodness. In such states, we naturally disagree with nature, the world, life, and myriad problems and crises that we are put through. In other words, we constantly disagree with “letting go” spiritually, as there is always some situation that surfaces in order to make us feel bad.

We are put through difficult and contradictory states on purpose. Kabbalists discovered how the single force of love, bestowal and connection, which they call several names including “the Creator” and “nature,” engages us through such states precisely in order to guide us to its discovery.

So how can we accept everything calmly and “let go” spiritually? It is only doable by changing ourselves, so that instead of perceiving through our inborn egoistic lenses, we develop new altruistic lenses that let us perceive as the Creator does, i.e., solely with an intention to love, care, give and positively connect. With such a transformation, we can achieve a harmonious existence, a state of absolute rest. This concept of absolute rest and harmony, however, is opposite from how we refer to rest and harmony according to our corporeal definitions. It is a rest and harmony that is built from our progress above the speed of light by participating in countless amounts of changes: At any given moment, by applying an intention to love, bestow and positively connect, we undergo billions of changes through completely accepting the providence of the single force of love and bestowal. We think logically while we engage in restricting and rising above our egoistic complaints and demands, which merges us with a state of absolute rest and perfection.

Based on a talk, “Secrets of the Eternal Book,” on July 29, 2013. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Photo by Максим Степаненко on Unsplash.

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