Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do you think that each person has its key to happiness and why is that?“

Each and every person holds a key to happiness. However, it can only be activated and applied when in positive connection with other people.

There is an expression that habit becomes second nature. In our daily lives, we concentrate solely on our own problems and concerns. It is simply how we are built. Naturally, we think only about ourselves and our closest environments.

Nevertheless, our sensation of happiness depends on our engagement in social interaction and communication. Much recent research in the fields of happiness science and positive psychology certifies this point. Therefore, in order to become genuinely happy, we need to change the direction of our daily habits and concerns from benefiting ourselves to benefiting others, or in other words, to stop thinking about ourselves and start taking care of others.

How can we undergo this transformation?

We can do so by gathering several people into a supportive environment, where each member will be directed at the same goal: positive connection above division in order to discover the most harmonious states we can experience, including true happiness, love, freedom and peace.

Then, in such an environment, we will need to undergo connection-enriching education, regularly training our hearts to act in mutual encouragement, support and respect toward one another above a constantly growing ego within us operating in the other direction, to exploit others for its own benefit.

By doing so, we will gradually achieve a balanced state in society, one where we will experience true and lasting happiness.

Happiness, therefore, is in our hands, but we hold it together. We are mutually dependent on and responsible for each other in order to achieve true happiness, and we thus require a certain learning method and framework in society.

That is what the wisdom of Kabbalah offers. It is a method for connection that anyone can apply in order to exercise positive connections in society above our divisive drives, and by doing so, reach harmonious states that we have never before experienced or imagined.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the secrets of the Kabbalah?“

There are no secrets in Kabbalah and never have been.

The entire problem is only in society’s possibility of correctly accepting it, adapting to it, tasting it, and using it correctly for its development.

For example, it is written in The Book of Zohar that of the great Kabbalist Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai’s ten disciples, only Rabbi Aba could correctly expound upon the teaching so that it would be accessible, smooth, correct, and at the same time, hidden.

In other words, the concealment in Kabbalah is that it discusses the higher world, beyond our current perception of reality, which we perceive through our five senses. To perceive the higher reality, we need to develop an additional sense, called a “screen” (“Masach”) in Kabbalah. Such attainment is available to anyone who so desires, and the method is laid out in a way where it can be researched, attained and repeated by anyone. It is only a matter of whether one has a desire to attain a reality higher than our current one, and whether one applies oneself in the method according to the guidance of the Kabbalist teacher.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does Kabbalah support the idea of reincarnation?“

A person is born with a particular spiritual potential and can choose whether to realize it in our world or not.

When the body of a person dies, this spiritual potential passes to another body that is born, and that is how it continues until it is fully realized. This is what Kabbalah considered as reincarnation, i.e., it is relevant only in relation to our spiritual potential.

Therefore, according to a person’s interests, it is possible to understand the level of his or her spiritual potential: if one still finds satisfaction in corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, or if one finds less and less satisfaction in those desires, and finds oneself contemplating the meaning and purpose to life more and more.

If it’s the latter, then it’s a sign of a person’s spiritual desire awakening, which Kabbalah calls “the point in the heart.” The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for developing this desire until we can perceive the eternal reality of the soul through it. When we reach the full realization of this spiritual potential, we no longer need to reincarnate in our world.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the relationship between Kabbalah and the Bible?“

The Bible (or Torah) is sublime and spiritual, but, frankly, it can be a bit long on history with its lists of relations. You read about people marrying, divorcing, cheating on each other, and killing one another. A fair question might be: what’s so spiritual about that?

In the framework of Kabbalah, however, the Bible doesn’t tell stories of people. Instead, it presents relations between spiritual forces.

“First, you must know that when dealing with spiritual matters that have no concern with time, space, and motion, and especially when dealing with Godliness, we do not have the words by which to express and contemplate. …For that reason, the sages of the Kabbalah have chosen a special language, which we can call “the language of the branches.”—Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), Part 1, Histaklut Pnimit (Inner Reflection).

The Bible shows the process of the correction of souls through higher forces. This takes the souls on their path of ascent as they rise in their ability to bestow. Characters such as Adam, Noah, and Abraham are not thought of as people who lived somewhere and wandered (or floated) around. They are considered forces that operate over desires that have to be corrected, within each and every one of us. For example, the story of the exodus of Hebrew slaves from Egypt represents not their freedom from physical bondage, but the acquisition of the first Masach (screen), the crossing of the barrier.

Some stories may seem to have no rationality or sanctity in them. When reading them, remember that these are not events, but stories of forces. They are not to be understood or justified in earthly terms.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What books can I read to understand Kabbalah?“

The science of Kabbalah is unique in the way it talks about you and me, about all of us. It doesn’t deal with anything abstract, only with the way we are created and how we function at higher levels of existence.

One of its sections talks about the descent of the higher forces from the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). The world of Ein Sof is our initial state, and there we exist as a single, unified system of souls, completely interconnected. Then, from the world of Ein Sof, we study the sequence of worlds, Sefirot and Partzufim as they descend to the world we live in.

Many Kabbalistic books have been written about it, starting with Abraham the Patriarch around 4,000 years ago, who wrote a book called Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation).

The next important work is The Book of Zohar, written in the second century CE. The Zohar is followed by the works of the Ari, a renowned 16th century Kabbalist. And the 20th century saw the appearance of the works of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam).

Baal HaSulam’s texts are best suited for our generation.

They, as well as other Kabbalistic sources, describe the structure of the upper worlds, how they descend and successively bring lower worlds into existence, and how our world came into being, the universe, our globe, and how life evolved. Studying how that system was created and how it descends to our world allows us to master the method of entering this system and governing it.

We, for the most part, study the six volume textbook Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), written by Yehuda Ashlag. It is designed as a study aid with questions, answers, materials for repetition and memorization, explanations, graphics and drawings. This is, if you will, the physics of the upper world, describing the laws and forces governing the universe.

This material gradually transforms the students, because when searching how to enter and begin to live in the spiritual world, one gradually adapts oneself to the material.

The science of Kabbalah does not deal with life in this world. Instead, by studying this system we re-attain our level before we descended, the same level where we will be at the end of our ascent from this world. During this ascent, the study of Kabbalah builds within the student a system equal to the higher system.

This system begins to organize and manifest itself in the person who wants to achieve it, and who studies it for this purpose. Just like a drop of semen can potentially evolve into an entire human being, and subsequently grows into a mature grown-up, the science of Kabbalah develops our desire to attain a higher level of existence.

At first this is a tiny desire, called “a point in the heart.” This point is like the embryo of our future states. By studying the structure of the upper world, we develop the “genetic” information within it, and as it grows, the structure resembling the higher levels forms within us.

This is why studying is so rewarding. Even if we do not understand a single thing about what we are reading, simply trying to understand the Kabbalistic texts nurtures the point in the heart, the desire for the higher force, and the point begins to grow. The more it grows, the more we feel the appearance of a new creation, a new and different feeling of a world within ourselves.

In so doing, the science of Kabbalah gives us the opportunity to feel the upper worlds, to understand everything that happens to us, and most of all, to control this process for ourselves.

I recommend that before approaching the aforementioned books, to take a introductory course, so that you will be able to get guidance on how to approach the books to reap the most spiritual benefit. I have added links to various courses you could choose to start from in my Quora bio.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does Kabbalah entail and believe?“

The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t involve believing in anything. Or in other words, “belief” is a degree in Kabbalah where only once one attains something, then one can discuss believing in that thing.

There is only one practice in Kabbalah: attracting the Ohr Makif (surrounding light), i.e., the higher force dwelling in nature that changes us from our inborn corporeal form to a spiritual one.

This wisdom is very simple because it is based on the interaction of two forces: the higher spiritual force of bestowal and love and the lower corporeal force of egoism, of reception. Moreover, it states that there is nothing other than these two forces in reality.

The higher force of bestowal and love controls the lower force, the egoistic desire, and everything that happens in reality, which the wisdom of Kabbalah studies, is realized in the interaction between these forces.

The lower force is generated by the higher force and is called “existence from absence.” It is like in mathematics where there is zero and something different to zero.

The higher force acts upon and influences our desire, which is completely under its control. We are desire: each one of us individually and all of us together.

We are unconscious of how the higher force acts through us, thinking that we are in control of ourselves. But, in fact, each one of us is simply a small device. We have the opportunity of evoking the additional influence of the higher force.

To the extent that we attract it to develop wisely, we understand how the higher force influences us and carries out particular actions in us. We begin to study how it operates on us, and by doing so, start developing the ability to control the way it influences us.

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Today, the development of technology and artificial intelligence makes us think about our future. If the human workforce is no longer necessary, then what will come of us? How will it influence the social structure?

Historian and philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari, in his book A Brief History of Tomorrow, states that in the near future, humanity will be split into two subspecies:

1) the minority, “the owners” of the artificial intelligence and the super-specialists;

2) the majority, everybody else.

In a wide consideration, there will still be producers and consumers, but when all work niches are filled with an automated workforce, “everybody else” will become just a useless “protein mass,” artificially stimulated to consume. We already can observe this phenomenon today. It seems that there is more to come.

How can we manage this emerging situation?

The wisdom of Kabbalah states that besides what we observe, there is the higher governance. Humanity does not exist all by itself. It has a predefined goal of existence and stages that it needs to undergo in order to reach that goal.

According to the natural process, first, we will reach the understanding that we are killing ourselves (in Kabbalah it is called “the recognition of evil”). Then, we will gradually reveal the possibility of the higher reality, perfect and eternal, to which we can smoothly transition from our current existence.

As a result, we will all go through an inner transformation, and no matter which professions will disappear and which ones will stay, humanity will be aware of how to balance and live a joyful and delighted life.

Take the Free KabU Course to Find True Answers About Life

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is Kabbalah? How is it practiced today and by whom?“

The wisdom of Kabbalah has been connected to religion, mysticism, yoga, tarot cards, numerology, astrology, charms, amulets, magic and that a person must be at least 40 years of age in order to study.

The reason for the misconceptions is that Kabbalah is thousands of years old. The first person who discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah was Adam HaRishon, who lived over 5,000 years ago. The wisdom developed from Adam HaRishon’s time until a significant transition in the wisdom took place around 2,000 years ago, which left only a few unique individuals to engage in it, i.e., in its authentic form.

Since then, Kabbalistic writings have passed through the hands and minds of millions of people. Likewise, many who have encountered Kabbalah have blended it with their own backgrounds, teachings and understandings, without attaining what authentic Kabbalah was intended for. This ongoing mixture over the generations has given rise to the numerous misconceptions (read more about the misconceptions in the “Kabbalah and Magic” section of this page, and in the “Myths about Kabbalah” section of the website).

So what is Kabbalah then? As written above, Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag’s definition of the wisdom of Kabbalah is as follows:

“This wisdom is no more and no less than a sequence of roots, which hang down by way of cause and effect, in fixed, determined rules, interweaving to a single, exalted goal described as, ‘the revelation of His Godliness to His creatures in this world.’”

In plain English, this definition can break down to the following:

Kabbalah is a method by which any person can attain a higher level of reality.

It is important to note that it is a method, an empirical method, not a belief. Also, any person can study it, regardless of race, gender or nationality. “Attainment” means a clear perception and sensation, not an idea, theory or philosophy.

The higher level of reality that one attains through correct Kabbalah study has been given many names. As you can see in Baal HaSulam’s above definition, he uses the words “His Godliness” to define the higher level of reality. You will also find words in Kabbalistic texts such as the “Upper Force,” “Upper Light,” “the Creator,” “Nature,” “God,” “the Lord” and “the King,” all describing that higher level of reality.

What do these terms define?

They define a quality of bestowal and love, which is the source of everything that exists in reality. This quality is also defined as a desire to bestow, often cited as a “will to bestow.”

Opposite the higher level of reality is us in our current level of reality. You could call it the “lower level of reality.” As the quality of the higher level of reality is bestowal, opposite to it is the quality of reception, also called the “will to receive.” That is the quality of what is called “the creation” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, or in Baal HaSulam’s above definition, “the creatures.”

This then brings about the question: If the wisdom of Kabbalah is a method where any person, while alive in this lifetime, can attain a higher level of reality, which means attaining access to a quality of bestowal, why would anybody want to do that?

The reasons why are as follows:

1) Transient Pleasure vs. Continuous Pleasure

In our current level of reality, every time we find pleasure, it dissipates. The pleasure neutralizes the desire. For example, if you’re hungry and you really want to eat, and you’re handed your favorite dish, then your first bite of that dish is pure bliss. The more you continue to eat, the lesser the pleasure you feel. At a certain point, you’ll feel satiated: the desire to eat became quenched. Moreover, if you’d continue eating, the same action that was giving you pleasure a few moments ago, you’d start feeling sick.

Our problem in our current level of reality is that we don’t know how to sustain and increase our enjoyment. As a will to receive pleasure, our inborn nature is such that pleasures fade away upon their reception, they don’t increase.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how we can use our desire in a new direction, with what is called an “intention to bestow.” By applying this new use of our desire, we can start feeling enjoyments in an opposite way to the way we currently feel them: where instead of enjoyments fading away upon their impact, they increase and become continuous.

2) Incomplete Perception vs. Complete Perception

We live in a world of consequences, not knowing why we’re here, where we’re from, where we’re headed, what’s the purpose of us being here, and how everything is connected. We perceive a small fragment of reality, limited within time, space and motion. No matter how much we learn throughout our lives and throughout our human history, we never reach a state where we feel we have complete perception. By attaining the higher level of reality, we add that part that we’re missing in our current level of reality, and expanding our sense and understanding to form a complete picture.

3) Separation vs. Connection

We perceive ourselves as being separated from billions of other people, and many more animals, plants and objects. We construct our lives based on this separation, and encounter a life filled with struggles, pursuits and conflicts, often feeling like we just need to survive as best as we can until we ultimately perish. By attaining a higher level of reality, we attain connection to everything around us, seeing everything and everyone as pieces of a single puzzle, harmonious and integrated, like cells and organs in a healthily functioning body.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does cause some Jews to endure poverty in Israel?“

When the country’s citizens make no effort to strive for a warm, family-like sensation, they let a high tension atmosphere develop that chokes its citizens from one day to the next. Such relations give rise to a country with great wealth and amassing poverty.

The Cause of Poverty: Not Sensing Each Other as Members of a Single Family

Israel’s “rich country, poor citizens” state is bigger than merely an economic situation, and thus cannot be solved at the economic level alone. It requires the implementation of connection-enriching programs through its education and media systems, regularly explaining how all Israeli citizens are members of a single family, and which aims to pass a family-like sensation among everyone.

It might sound like a socialist idea, but it’s not. We saw such examples in history, and they all failed. The reason was because they did not to take nature’s laws into account.

The laws of nature are integral laws of interconnectedness and interdependence. They guide us toward more and more connection, and in our times, the connections we need to form are at the level of our attitudes to each other: that we develop a feeling toward strangers as if they are members of our own family. By aligning our attitudes to each other accordingly, we guarantee ourselves a harmonious future.

2 Steps to Solve Poverty: Disagree With Division and Promote Connection

The first step toward a change of attitude to each other is disagreeing with our present separation. Social division is the principle cause of poverty, and our disagreement with this situation makes room for a new desire to appear—a desire to change our relationships so that we feel ourselves connected like members of a single family.

By activating and encouraging the desire for family-like connection to spread among society via educational and promotional means, we would then start seeing the erasure of our emotional remoteness, and likewise, its symptoms of poverty.

The Kabbalistic Explanation as to Why There’s a Growing Gap between Rich and Poor

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the state of imbalance between rich and poor takes place due to an imbalance between Ohr Hochma (light of wisdom) and Ohr Hassadim (light of mercy), i.e., when there is a lot of Ohr Hochma and only a little Ohr Hassadim.

What are these two lights in relation to this current situation? Ohr Hochma signifies spiritual abundance and wealth, while Ohr Hassadim expresses the desire to give that abundance and wealth. Ohr Hassadim is a condition that prevents the desire to keep receiving more and more for personal benefit to imbalance our systems. In other words, Ohr Hassadim can be thought of as a regulating device that warms the heart, which otherwise becomes continually colder in an encasement of egoism without such conditioning. Therefore, when we apply Ohr Hassadim upon our instinctive desire to devour everything for self-benefit, we build a new sense, a tool that gives us the ability to receive the Ohr Hochma in a balanced manner. In this way, we can have a country where all its citizens experience spiritual abundance and wealth. Without such a regulator, we then continually head in an egoistic direction and bear witness to the “rich country, poor citizens” situation we are in today.

Moreover, without the Ohr Hassadim regulator that aims to give the abundance to others in society, then not only the poor citizens feel as if they are deficient, but also the rich feel a constant lack. More wealth is never perceived as enough wealth, and thus they continually seek how to increasingly fulfill themselves. This is how the pressure of the Ohr Hochma is felt. When we aim to receive for self-benefit alone, then pleasures we receive ultimately encounter an empty space within us, like a black hole that extinguishes any self-aimed pleasure we absorb.

Therefore, whether or not we have a little or a lot depends on our attitudes to each other.

Abundance Reaches Everyone When Society Becomes as a Single Family

We can organize our relationships in order to create an abundance that fills the space between us. When we open ourselves up to others, we become conductors of that abundance, like hubs and nodes in a network that pass signals to each other, and then our lives becomes rich and diverse.

Therefore, the more the idea of our need to connect as a single family upon our innate division spreads among society, both rich and poor, then the more we will find that there is plenty to go around for everyone.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there a rise in hate crimes against Jews in 2019?“

At least in the United States, nearly 60% of crimes religiously motivated in the last year were committed against Jews, with 1,879 such incidents reported during this period. Physical attacks on Jews have also increased nationwide by 105% over the past year. In New York alone, anti-Semitic assaults make up more than half of its reported hate crimes.

The question then becomes: How can we disallow anti-Semitic crimes and threats from becoming the new norm?

While some American Jews justifiably fear an unknown future, the majority of U.S. Jews are still skeptical about the possibility that a terrible disaster could hit in their homeland. However, reality shows that American Jews’ sense of immunity has been lost. That Jewish places of worship, community centers, and homes have become targets is a situation that was inconceivable in the past.

In my recently released book, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, I detail at length similarities between pre-WWII Nazi Germany and today’s America, and aim to show how throughout history, whenever the Jewish people become divided, anti-Semitism rises, and often ends up in disaster. On the other hand, as I have been extensively explaining for many years, the way to salvation from anti-Semitism by the Jewish people is in its unity.

In order to thrive and survive, the people of Israel have to be united “as one man with one heart,” i.e., to live in mutual responsibility according to the rule, “love your neighbor as yourself.” These are not merely pleasant or empty words. It is the order of the day.

Unity of the Jewish people is intended to bring spiritual prosperity and well-being not only to the Jews, but to humanity. The role of the Jewish people is to be a “light unto the nations,” providing every person on this planet with a method to achieve unity and the manifestation of a positive unifying example.

Anti-Semites harbor unexplained irrational enmity toward Jews. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this negative sensation is inherently a longing for unity among Jews, one that will fill all of life’s gray spaces with light and vitality.

There is a chance to unite, and by doing so, stop further escalation of anti-Semitism. But we need to act in the direction of coming closer to each other and rising above our differences before it is too late. It is as written, “once permission has been granted to the Destroyer, he does not distinguish between righteous and wicked.”

When Hitler came to power in 1933, first Chief Rabbi of Eretz Israel and Kabbalist Rav Kook delivered a sermon in the old city of Jerusalem in which he spoke about the terrible Holocaust, years before it began:

“Enemies force the Jewish people to be redeemed, blasting the trumpets of war, bombarding them with deafening threats of harassment and torment, giving them no respite in the Diaspora. The shofar of an impure animal becomes the shofar of Mashiach. Amalek, Petilura, Hitler and their ilk- awaken us to redemption. The one who did not listen to the sound of the first shofar and the ones whose ears are closed up and do not want to listen to the sound of the second, ordinary shofar will listen to the sound of the impure, invalid shofar. They will listen against their will.” (Berachot 51b)

Today, President Trump is pro-Israeli, but sooner or later, the administration will change, and a leader can enter into office with a lot less sympathy for the Jews.

In such a scenario, the media will limit its coverage of violent incidents against Jews. Less awareness from the authorities and the public would thus make anti-Semitism take a far uglier turn from its current intensification.

If the message of our better future depending on our unity reaches listening ears, we will experience a shift to safety, peace, and calm. As long we are given an opportunity to disseminate the method of connection — the wisdom of Kabbalah — it is our duty to do so, as it holds the potential to dissipate all threats and bring us to a newfound harmony.

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