Question: For an ordinary person success means family, an orderly life, financial security, safety, or in short, everything that is attained through competition. But he has already grown tired of this chase. How can he reach a simple normal life that he can consider successful?

Answer: It is becoming very simple in our world. If we are speaking about a corporeal body, we have to provide it with healthcare, a pension, and a good environment. But one person cannot achieve success that way. It is attained by society, by all its members together. This is the reason that a person has to create an environment that will provide him with healthcare and a stable life, with everything that he needs.

Question: But in our society success is attained through competition. Can it be attained differently?

Answer: In our society success is attained through competition because our egoism has two directions. One is to dominate others and to be above them, which puts a person under great stress and leads to great waste of energy and constant pressures. The other direction is the attraction of the corporeal body (the same egoism) to complete rest. These two opposites exist in us and make competition a necessity. It awakens us and forces us to work hard.

What is more, the conditions of competition can be very different: the competitor can be my rival or my colleague. I am basically for competition when it comes to good deeds, when a person struggles to do something for the sake of society.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/17/15

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Question: Can there be success without competition?

Answer: It depends on what you consider success to be. For example, if I am criticized in newspapers, I consider this a success: they have paid attention to me. Someone else may consider this a misfortune, but I don’t care.

I believe that if someone is right, let him be scolded, so what? Perhaps people cannot comprehend his actions in any other way. So success is a relative concept.

I do not mind being criticized in all publications and on the Internet, even if I am called the most horrible and harmful for humanity. In some way it draws attention to what I strive to deliver to the world. And when they read my articles maybe they will be impacted somehow.

Question: Why do you need that kind of success?

Answer: People will become interested in why I am being criticized, and thus they will get to learn and feel a little bit about what I am saying concerning correcting the world and the fact that human beings have an opportunity to come to a better state of existence instead of a third world war. I want to leave some lasting imprint on them.

Question: Let’s suppose that you are given permission to publish four lines. What would you write?

Answer: It goes without saying that nothing can be explained in four lines. I can offer people replacing suffering with happiness, fear of death with a sense of eternity. And if they are not indifferent to these things, everything else can be learned from within the method itself.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/17/15

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Question: What in me is afraid of death?

Answer: My physical body is not afraid of death, the ego is. It is afraid of not being able to fill itself and raise itself to the level of simple existence.

The matter is that when our egoistic desires receive pleasure, then death is already felt. In the actions of the ego, in its use, it is felt that everything has ended in the rejection of the light from within it, meaning, its death. Thus it can never be filled. Each filling for the ego, is to come closer to death.

Question: What is there after death?

Answer: Nothing. The physical body ceases to exist, but the Reshimot (spiritual information) remain. On the corporeal level they have realized something in a certain way, at a certain time, in certain circumstances.

But their spiritual level of implementation has not yet taken place since a person has not yet reached this level. Therefore, he has to go through different circumstances.

After one begins the next incarnation of the soul in a newly born body, then again a long line of growth is carried out, during which the unconscious correction of Reshimot is carried out. And then again a person is given the opportunity to reach the level of development of his soul, meaning reaching the level of desire to bestow as against the desire to receive.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/17/15

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Question: Are omens, amulets, Feng Shui and other methods important in the process of our spiritual growth in any way?

Answer: Spirituality means love and bestowal above and in contrast to our egoism. This property appears in us only as a result of the influence of the Upper Light (Surrounding Light) on us.

We can awaken and summon the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) by mutual efforts in the group. This actually sums up the whole Kabbalistic method. Everything else refers to how by increasing the mutual love and bestowal among us, we use our new common attribute to attain the upper world that operates only according to this principle.
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Question: You say that the world is ruled by Satan, the evil inclination. What does that mean?

Answer: It is our egoism, which has many different names: the evil desire, Satan, devil, Azazel, etc. It turns out that our world is ruled by our uncorrected, egoistic desires. If I say that Satan is inside me, it means the egoistic property exists in me.

Question: If Satan is an attribute, why is it drawn with horns and hooves?

Answer: Horns, hooves, and a tail are all people’s fantasy. By the way, these elements can also be found in Kabbalah, in the corporeal language that expresses certain spiritual attributes. Therefore it is absolutely forbidden to depict such pictures and imagine that there are forces and spiritual attributes that have such forms. There is nothing evil in nature except our egoism.

Question: So why have people described Satan in such a frightening way?

Answer: These pictures appeared during the last 500 years. On the one hand, Satan is drawn in the image of a man, but on the other hand, as a frightening beast. This is how a person subconsciously relates to his evil inclination, egoism, which constantly incites us. The word “Satan” stems from the Hebrew word “Leastin,” which means to snitch, to provoke, to incite.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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Question: Is there a God?

Answer: I don’t know what people mean when they say “God.” If by God we mean a force that controls everything, then that force is nature.

As we learn more about nature, we see that everything about it is rational, balanced, and works according to its laws. We know some of these laws, others we do not, and for this reason their essence is hidden from us. We believe in various miracles and actions that supposedly can affect our course of actions, and this is all because we lack knowledge. The science of Kabbalah offers the possibility of learning these laws.

Nature can be called God if we remember that it is an absolutely rigid force, which does not abide to any of our wishes. It is not like our parents to whom we can come and cry and they will have pity on us. Our tears will not help. It is a system that acts according to its precise laws. As it is written, “I gave a law, and I do not change it.”

According to the science of Kabbalah, the numerical value (Gematria) of the words “nature” and “God/Creator” are the same. Therefore, turning to the Creator is the same as turning to nature. However, it’s best to call this force nature because we immediately understand that we are talking about rigid laws and pleading to them will not help.

A person should know how to behave and correct himself in order for these laws to become benevolent for him. And if he does not use them correctly, then naturally he will receive a negative reaction, as with any physical laws.

Therefore, there is no God whom we can mollify or somehow appease!
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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Question: Our desires keep growing. How can we turn them into a ladder on which we can only go up and feel the ascension?

Answer: There are two states in creation: absolute bestowal and absolute receiving. The distance between them is called a ladder and on every step of that ladder there are increasingly greater desires. As one ascends the ladder they take on the form of an increasingly greater intention to bestow. The desire itself is a desire to receive while the ladder determines the intention of in order to bestow. In fact, we have initially been created as individuals who think only about ourselves and who use all our desires in our own interests. Being unable to give anything, we can only receive from others.

But when using the wisdom of Kabbalah, we draw the special energy of bestowal, which begins to operate on our general egoistic desire and correct it layer by layer by adding the attribute of bestowal to the attribute of receiving. When the Upper Light operates and influences the desire to receive, it divides it into 125 levels of correction, forming a ladder called “Jacob’s ladder.” This is how we correct ourselves until we reach complete bestowal, thus changing the form of our entire huge ego into the attribute of receiving in order to bestow.

When we use the two major attributes of creation, the attribute of receiving and the attribute of bestowal, we reach equality with the Creator. At the same time we don’t disappear in Him because, on the one hand, our desire to receive is kept and only acquires an external form of bestowal, but on the other hand, receiving with the intention of in order to bestow makes us similar to the Creator. This means that externally we become like Him and internally we are made of the desire to receive. This is what the whole correction comes down to.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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Question: You used to write more posts about the actual wisdom of Kabbalah and now it is as if everything is about Israel and the Jews. Aren’t you a Kabbalist anymore?

Answer: I engage in the advancement of the world towards the goal of its development, which is the ascent (transition) to the next level, to the spiritual level. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the study of this transition. But it is a process that happens to humanity gradually over 6,000 years, since the discoverer of this phenomenon, first man (Adam). In our world the transition is realized in a group of people.

They differ from others since the question about the meaning of life is burning in them, as Baal HaSulam tells us in the “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 2. Abraham was the first to gather and organize this group, and called it the people of Israel.

This is not a biological nation that developed from their common biological ancestors, but an ideological nation, i.e., descendants of people belonging to different nations living in Babylon 1,500 years BC who understood the call of Abraham, that through connection and unity, despite mutual rejection, and revealing the upper force (“taste and see that the Lord is good”), the meaning of existence is attained.

The fulfillment of this goal is the reason for the existence of the Jews, although they have forgotten about it for 2,000 years now. But this is the only reason they exist: in order to show themselves and all the other nations the attainment of the goal: revelation of the Creator. The fate of the Jews depends on the successful illustration of how to attain the higher existence (being the Light unto the nations).

The nations of the world expect this of the Jews subconsciously, and when this mission isn’t fulfilled, it evokes hatred towards the Jews and a feeling that the Jews are hiding something from them. Today we are in a special point in human evolution: it has reached global egoistic dependence.

There are two ways we can advance from this point: either by a world war or by correcting the global dependence into positive global connection. If the Jews choose the path of unity and teach the nations of the world how to fulfill it, the world will reach the next level of its development rapidly and safely. This is the only thing I engage in.
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Question: Who can influence others?

Answer: There are people who have a great influence over others. It comes from the root of their soul. They are born leaders with a special charisma.  And it is very important for their influence to be positive.

We must educate people so that those leaders who succeed in integral education could lead the masses even with the little charisma that they have.
But charisma alone is not enough because it can be a negative sign, as with Hitler. Therefore, we first should correct the person and only then help him become charismatic.

Charisma will appear in precisely from realizing the greatness of the goal and that one can give humanity the knowledge accumulated through those special properties.

But if a person isn’t properly educated, he may become harmful to everyone. Thus, charismatic people who want to be leaders, but do not wish to be part of the integral education system and go through correction, are a big problem!

Correction means seeing oneself working more for the benefit of society more and more. When a person understands the importance of his participation in the common system, then he begins to lead.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 5/13/15

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A Jew is a person who choses transitioning from this world, the lowest step of the Universe, to a higher degree as his purpose in life.

“Jew” derives from the words “Laavor” and “ever” which means “transitional.”

In my opinion, not all representatives of our people are “Jews” even though historically they possess a special, inner potential, which has not been implemented. They are “sleeping” Jews.

But judging by the conscious actions, it is possible to say that our students belong to the category of Jews. Others are still in a “stand-by” state. They have to be awakened.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 5/13/15

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