Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is spiritual awakening so painful?“

The darkest time of night is before dawn. Likewise, the authors of The Zohar stated that humanity’s darkest time will come before its spiritual awakening.

Kabbalists Rav Isaac Luria (the Ari) and Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) both pointed out the time The Zohar was referring to as from the end of the 20th century, and into the 21st century.

Baal HaSulam referred to our era as “the last generation.” The phrase describes a lofty spiritual state, which is the final and highest of all spiritual states, and not as it might sound, i.e., as a time of apocalyptic tragedy.

It is in our era, Kabbalists asserted, that we would enter the beginning of spiritual ascent, and eventually reach the final state of human evolution.

However, in order for a positive spiritual transformation to take place, we need to also apply ourselves voluntarily to a spiritually transforming process.

It is as if we currently experience the labor pains of emergence into a new era and generation, and as with any birth, the process is quite difficult and challenging.

Until our era, we had been developing according to corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, and in our era, we start feeling a new desire that we cannot pinpoint like the other desires. Instead of feeling drawn to a new and higher state, we rather feel increasing dissatisfaction in our current state, that the desires we have fail to fulfill us. We become more and more divided and resentful of each other the more we find it difficult to fulfill ourselves.

Such is the awakening of a new spiritual desire among our corporeal desires. Ultimately, such a desire emerges in order for us to seek how to fulfill it, but in order to do so, we require educational and social influences that guide this desire to its fulfillment.

Until we discover and implement a method to fulfill this new desire, then the more we try to fulfill it with our past approaches and teachings, the more we will encounter crisis.

This is why our initial spiritual awakening is so painful—because we feel a growing need for spirituality without guidance for how to relate optimally to this new need.

Without the guidance of a new method for our newly emerging spiritual desire, we find ourselves experiencing more problems and crises across the board, on personal, social, economic, ecological and global scales.

The wisdom of Kabbalah was developed specifically as a method for fulfilling this newly emerging desire. Although it first appeared 5,000 years ago, Kabbalists kept it mostly secret over the generations as they knew that humanity had not yet ripened in its need for the wisdom. However, major Kabbalists such as the authors of The Zohar, the Ari and Baal HaSulam specified our era as the one when humanity en masse would become ready for the wisdom, and would be open to the teaching that it provides.

In other words, our era is characterized as the darkness before the dawn, and we need only learn how to guide our newly-emerging desire in a spiritually-productive direction in order to invert the overriding sensations of our era from those of troubles and crises, to higher states of connection and sublimity that we have never experienced before.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Photo by Rick Medlen on Unsplash

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is chaos, spiritually?“

Chaos is a state that emerges on the spiritual path to the extent that we aim to build the necessary conditions for spiritual progress—positive connection among us.

The chaos unfolds inside the person, because the transition from one spiritual level to the next takes place like a computer overloading.

We thus feel inner spiritual transitions as chaotic. It is as if we undergo an erasure of everything we previously absorbed, and find ourselves before a completely new state. However, nothing in actuality becomes erased, but on the contrary, we undergo an inner reorganization. It is as if we shift from one frequency to a higher, more powerful and broader one.

If we aim at positively connecting to each other, and by doing so, resemble nature’s interconnectedness, then several new emotions, sensations and perceptions emerge in us, including the need to achieve more and more connection. The chaos that emerges within this process is not destructive, but on the contrary, we discover forces so powerful that our current vessels of perception and sensation are incapable of holding them. They give us a new challenge that we need to resolve, and by working on this challenge, we grow and eventually reach its resolution.

We thus feel such states of transition as chaotic, but they are in fact not chaotic at all. They emerge in order for us to rise to a new level of understanding, emotion, perception and sensation, and to see that there is a higher order in nature. The more we dedicate ourselves to such a process, the more refined our perception and sensation of reality becomes.

Based on the program, “An Integral World,” on November 26, 2012. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: What are the dangers of group work?

Answer: If it acts correctly, according to the advancement of society, then there is no danger.

Question: Is collective intelligence the future of humanity or the death of an individual?

Answer: I believe that the personality should dissolve in the general intellect.

Question: Is there genetic transmission of group skills into humans?

Answer: Yes. Even scientists say that there is something called internal memory.

Question: Can a group of people when uniting between them increase the wisdom of each participant?

Answer: I think not. The most important thing for us is connection where we begin to feel unity and understand this force. Unity is the result of our correct development.

When you unite with others, your personal intelligence dissolves into everyone. Instead of being individual, you acquire something common.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/ 25/20

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is spiritual truth so elusive?“

What is spirituality? Spirituality is the quality of love, bestowal and connection. This is why spirituality is so elusive. It is concealed from us, since it is complete altruism while our quality is the opposite, total egoism.

Then, the question becomes, is spirituality hidden from us or do we hide spirituality by having no interest in recognizing its existence? According to our receptive nature, we solely desire corporeal fulfillment. The idea of enjoying purely by giving, without receiving anything at all in return, is alien to us.

That is the whole problem. Nobody and nothing hides spirituality from us. We exist within a spiritual reality, and if we could expand our vessels of perception and sensation, we would see that only a single force of love, bestowal and connection exists. However, when we look at the world around us, it looks like a completely opposite picture to one of pure love, bestowal and connection.

This opposition is in order for us to develop a sincere desire to enter into balance with the spiritual reality surrounding us, that our relations and attitudes to each other will become as loving, altruistic and positively connected as the quality of nature in and of itself. During the process of adapting ourselves to the spiritual reality of love, bestowal and connection, we do not cancel the inborn human ego and our corporeal desires. The only transformation we need make to reveal the spiritual truth is in our intention: that we restrict our egoistic intention to enjoy at the expense of others and nature, and increase our intention to love, bestow and connect purely “for the sake of bestowal,” i.e., without wanting anything in return. In other words, in order to discover the spiritual reality that is filled with the quality of love, bestowal and connection, we need only transform our intention from egoistic to altruistic, and then we will enter a whole new perception and sensation of reality: one that is boundless, tranquil and completely balanced.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2010/11/17, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose.” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are there any spiritual games to play in a group and understand spirituality in easy way?“

A spiritual game is one that elevates us from the animal degree, where we consider self-benefit over benefiting others, to the human degree, where we prioritize benefiting others and nature over ourselves.

Such a game involves learning and participating in a group of individuals who share a common goal of attaining spirituality, and specifically by treating spiritual development as a game, we construct ourselves as human beings in the fullest sense of the term (“human” [“Adam” in Hebrew] stems from the phrase, “similar to the upper one” [“Adameh le Elyon”]).

While it is common to think of games as trivial and entertaining in our world, if we pursue spirituality, then the spiritual game is of utmost importance and seriousness. By playing this game, we gradually adapt ourselves to the spiritual world until we completely resemble it.

This game involves assembling ourselves in an environment that guides and supports spiritual progress, which includes a group, books and a spiritual teacher, and this environment acts out the higher spiritual state that we wish to enter.

As the spiritual world is characterized by qualities of bestowal, love and positive connection, which is contrary to our corporeal world—qualities of reception, rejection and division—then in order to become spiritual, we need to include ourselves in an environment where its members learn, act out and exemplify the spiritual qualities to the best of their abilities. By involving ourselves in such an environment, we gradually absorb those qualities, and then from a game where we act out and “play” spiritual qualities among each other, we eventually reach a state where we feel the difference between our corporeal egoistic state and the spiritual state that our group projects onto us—which then activates a sincere desire—prayer—that spiritually transforms us. If our desire is sincere, with no self-benefit laced within, then it gets a response, and we discover our eternal soul.

Based on the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 1/3/21. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the connection between body and soul, and who is controlling who?“

Body and soul have no connection. The soul exists in and of itself, and the spiritual world reveals to us only if we attain a soul.

By attaining a soul, we start sensing a new reality outside the narrowness of our ego, which constantly wants to enjoy itself on account of others. Until we attain a soul, however, our ego is all that we know. It makes us seek fulfillment via a limited prism of desires—food, sex, family, money, honor, control, and knowledge—and the moment we start feeling enjoyment in those desires, the enjoyment diminishes, which makes us want to seek new and different kinds of fulfillment than before.

Our egoistic form of development leads us to an impasse: we start feeling that we expend more energy trying to fulfill ourselves than we do feeling fulfilled, and at that stage, fundamental questions about our lives awaken in us: “What is the meaning of our lives?” “Why are we here?” “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” “Where are we from? Where are we now? Where are we headed?” “What is reality?” and so on.

Such questions are our initial spiritual awakening. The more we want to get them answered, the more we seek through various methods, teachings, groups, and other environments, until we eventually arrive at the wisdom of Kabbalah. Kabbalah describes this process as the awakening of the “point in the heart,” or the so-called “seed of the soul.”

If you find yourself seeking answers to fundamental questions about life’s meaning and purpose, it is a sign that you are seeking to attain your soul. The wisdom of Kabbalah was devised as a method that guides our attainment of our soul, while we are alive in our bodies in this world. When we reach such an attainment, we then perceive and sense the depths of reality, seeing the interconnections among all that exists, and knowing how to act optimally at every moment in order to positively impact our eternal soul.

Based on an interview with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on Israeli Radio, 103FM, on October 5, 2015. Written/edited by students of Dr. Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are major spiritual awakening symptoms?“

We have been evolving over thousands of years, and at a certain point, we start awakening to questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives. They are the first awakening that we receive toward spirituality, and they become our principle concern the moment that we start rising above our animate existence.

Unlike animals, our desires evolve from one generation to the next. We feel the desires of the next level of evolution, and our sensation of emptiness constantly grows, forcing us to seek new and different kinds of fulfillment to what we previously had. We thus gradually develop a more and more pronounced question about the meaning of life, which increasingly preoccupies us.

Newer and newer ideas surface in us, and we develop increasingly complex systems as a result of our growing unfulfilled desires. Science also develops in relation to the questions we have in each generation, and we can see the vast difference between today’s science and science a few centuries ago.

Moreover, the question about the meaning and purpose of our lives manifests itself first and foremost in certain individuals. Over the course of history, we have been driven to make breakthroughs in several areas, whether it be art, music, literature, poetry, science and technology. Our desires constantly grew according to a scale starting from mere survival necessities—food, sex and family—through to social desires—money, honor, control and knowledge. From one generation to the next, our desires become increasingly refined.

According to the great Kabbalist, the Ari (Rav Isaac Luria), the question about the meaning and purpose of life started emerging in humanity as a whole toward the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. The technological, scientific and cultural revolutions in Europe thus became the trigger for the emergence of a totally new attitude to life and religion. Many people started no longer fearing being non-religious and getting punished for dissent, which signaled that desires in humanity grew to a new level where belief started falling short in the new demand for proof that had started evolving.

At the start of the “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote:

Indeed, if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question, I am certain that all these questions and doubts as to whether we should study the wisdom of Kabbalah will vanish from the horizon, and you will look unto their place to find them gone. This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’

We could say that everything unfolding in the world today is due to us not finding an answer to the question about the meaning of life. We can see what humanity engages in and what it leads the world to, and it is all because people fail to understand what they exist for.

We mostly wish to file away the question about the meaning and purpose of life, and instead engage in much more immediate and concrete pleasures, keeping ourselves busy in order to avoid asking the question. It is because the question, if we engage in it without finding an answer, brings us existential suffering in addition to the suffering we experience in relation to our daily survival.

However, the reason that Baal HaSulam discusses the meaning of life in his “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” is because he wants to show how we need not have any lofty goals or special thoughts in order to embark on the spiritual path. Very simply, if we feel bad and we do not know why we are alive, and such questions keep surfacing in us making us feel uneasy, and that we need to get these questions answered in order to justify our existence, then we can start taking steps on the spiritual path.

The wisdom of Kabbalah was made specifically for answering the question about the meaning and purpose of life, and it is open to all, regardless of age, gender, background or any other seeming differences.

Based on a Virtual Lesson on January 31, 2016. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does it feel like to sell your soul?“

Human nature is a desire to enjoy and it divides into a few levels: individual desires for food, sex and family; social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge; and a tiny desire for spirituality.

Our soul is where we feel fulfillment.

If we dedicate ourselves to fulfilling corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, we experience transient fulfillment in such desires, and by doing so, we attain no eternal soul. This is considered selling our soul to Satan, as the Hebrew root for the word for “Satan” is “Hasata” (“diversion”), i.e., that such desires divert us from attaining our eternal soul.

If, however, we dedicate ourselves to fulfilling our spiritual desire, then we can attain and discover our eternal soul while living in our world.

Our spiritual desire emerges initially as a tiny desire among our corporeal desires, which in Kabbalah is called a “point in the heart.” This desire is felt as a certain kind of emptiness and uneasiness, a feeling that our other desires cannot entirely fulfill us, and it leads us to question the meaning and purpose of our lives. The stronger we feel this desire, the more we traverse teachings and environments until we eventually find a method for attaining the soul while we are alive in this world. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for the soul’s attainment. It is open to anyone, but those who have a sincere desire to discover the meaning of life will be those who reap the maximal benefit from the method.

Based on a Virtual Lesson on April 3, 2016. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can you end suffering in life?“

We first need to understand the source of suffering in life, and then we can implement a method to end it.

In order to understand the source of suffering, the wisdom of Kabbalah explains a key interaction between two fundamental forces in nature: one is a force called “light,” the force of love, bestowal and connection, also known as “the upper force” and “the Creator” (“Boreh” in Hebrew), which means “come and see” (“Bo” and “Reh”), because we need to attain this force as a clear perception and sensation in order to believe it. This initial force created the second force: the creation, which is also called “the created being” or “the desire to enjoy”—a lack of fulfillment, opposite to the initial upper force.

The upper force develops the desire to enjoy, making us feel as if we need and want several different kinds of fulfillment. We are essentially made of a set of desires—food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge—and we each feel an instinctive urge to fulfill ourselves via these desires in differing extents.

If we fail to fulfill these desires, we suffer, and this suffering extends from sensations of emptiness to those of outright pain, the latter of which can even become intolerable.

Desires for food, sex and family are natural bodily instincts shared by all animals. By contrast, desires for money, honor, control and knowledge are social desires based on comparing what we have in relation to others, and such desires are unique to humans.

The source of suffering is thus the inability to fulfill these desires. In Kabbalistic terms, when the light (pleasure/fulfillment) does not fill the desire, then it suffers, and the suffering can be intense or slight, long-term or momentary, collective or individual.

Understanding that our desires’ lack of fulfillment is the source of our suffering, we thus find ourselves in a constant race for fulfillment. The problem is that our desire to enjoy only knows how to enjoy at the expense of others and nature, and thus we pit ourselves up against each other in a tug-of-war, each pulling to their own corner. That is why any kind of fulfillment we sense in this current setup is only transient, after which we once again feel empty and desire a different fulfillment again and again.

The solution to this predicament is to invert the direction by which we enjoy. If instead of wishing to receive fulfillment for ourselves alone at the expense of others, we would develop a new desire—one where we wish for the benefit of others—then we would enter a new level of life where we would feel constant fulfillment.

Image: Left: Direct reception of pleasure into the desire leads to its extinguishment. Right: The intention to benefit others redirects the pleasure, allowing for continuous fulfillment.

Our desire to enjoy for personal benefit alone immensely limits and narrows our sensation of fulfillment to very tiny and transient moments, and most of the time we feel emptiness and suffering in order to push us to seek fulfillment. On the contrary, the desire to benefit others holds unlimited potential for fulfillment, because by aiming to benefit others, we enter into balance with the initial force of love, bestowal and connection that is on the opposite side of reality, wishing to bestow just like it.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that teaches us how to undergo such a transition. “Kabbalah” means “reception” in Hebrew, because it teaches us how to receive fulfillment in a way that is ultimately adapted to nature, a fulfillment that does not fade away but which constantly increases.

On one hand, Kabbalah has become quite popular, but on the other hand, it is a hidden wisdom, because its results are felt in each person’s sensations and desires. Nevertheless, it is open for everyone, and it lets us understand how to work with our desires in order to receive fulfillment in an unlimited manner. By doing so, we become truly happy as we rid ourselves of suffering at its very source.

Based on “New Life episode 736: The Origin of Our Suffering” [28:27] on June 23, 2016. Written/edited by students of Kabbalists Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How can we achieve spiritual maturity?“

A spiritually mature person is one who ceases to pursue self-aimed enjoyment, and in its place, seeks love, bestowal and positive connection to others.

Similarly, in our corporeal lives, as children, all we know is how to receive self-aimed enjoyment, and we run after one fun thing after another. Then, at a certain stage of corporeal maturity, when we become adults, we have to assume a more giving and responsible role in society, to work and to socially contribute in various ways. However, even an adult in our world, who works and contributes to society, functions according to a fundamental self-aimed desire to enjoy.

Reaching spiritual maturity means that we invert the aim upon our desires from “for our own benefit” to “for the benefit of others.”

By doing so, we cross a barrier between our corporeal world and the spiritual world. The essence of our enjoyment thus also changes: Instead of enjoying by moving from one self-aimed enjoyment to the next among desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, we instead enjoy from being connected to our life’s purpose and source—the spiritual force of love, bestowal and connection that exists in absolute eternal perfection. In other words, spiritual maturity means living in love, bestowal and positive connection to others, not for the sake of the enjoyment it brings us, but for the sake of connecting with the source of our lives.

Spiritual maturity thus comes after establishing a connection and a degree of resemblance to the spiritual force of love, bestowal and connection. By doing so, we rise above our life’s corporeal degree, where we seek egoistic enjoyment.

If we take a snapshot of human evolution in order to see where we currently are in relation to such spiritual maturity, as a humanity, then we can see that we are in the process of transitioning to a new era where we no longer extract the same kind of enjoyment from corporeal pleasures like we once used to. We no longer see a rosy picture ahead of us anymore either. In the past, we were able to resort to different systems in order to replace our current ones. This is no longer the case today, as we can already envision the bankruptcy of the directions that we have tried. We simply do not anticipate the reception of any special new enjoyments in life anymore.

Such a state is part of our natural evolution: we have reached a limit in our corporeal development, and the time has come to transition to a new spiritual paradigm. In plain English, this means that we find lesser and lesser fulfillment from running after pleasures all the time, in order to realize that true fulfillment in our forthcoming era is to instead chase after the source of all pleasure—the spiritual force of love, bestowal and connection. Moreover, if we fail to apply ourselves to this transition out of our own will, then we will experience more and more negative sensations—dissatisfaction, emptiness, depression, loneliness, stress, anxiety and other forms of suffering—in order to prod us to realize the need to spiritually mature. We will simply be cut off from being able to enjoy anything, and we will then start asking fundamental questions about our lives, such as “Why is this happening?” “What is the meaning of all this?” “What is this life for?” “Why is there so much suffering in this world?” and “What can I do about it?”

In other words, we will start asking not about enjoyments themselves, but about their source. The more we ask those kinds of questions, then the more we will be led to seek new and different environments to the ones we engaged in until now—ones that will help us mature spiritually.

As long as we enjoy ourselves in this world, we do not ask about the enjoyment’s source. However, as soon as we stop enjoying life, and also see no future goal that draws us to enjoy by way of moving toward some worthy goal ahead of us, then we start feeling ourselves as immersed in a serious existential problem. We then start asking fundamental questions about the purpose and meaning of life, and not simply how to enjoy ourselves while we are here.

At such a juncture, we start understanding that if we want to enjoy life, then we need to come closer to life’s source, which means inverting the aim by which we enjoy from “for our own benefit” to “for the benefit of others.”

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on December 30, 2010. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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