Entries in the 'Q&A' Category

The Wonderful Attribute Of Mutual Guarantee

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Now the whole global group is anxiously preparing for the Arava Convention and there is a great emotional intensity in the air. A while ago, you advised us to try to rephrase the mutual guarantee declaration in one paragraph, so that it will touch the heart of every individual. What would you write in the declaration?

Answer: The meaning of mutual guarantee is that we must give each friend the feeling that he will automatically, naturally, having no choice, stop feeling the need to care about himself. By that we neutralize his ego. Therefore, the sources say that mutual guarantee is essential for spiritual advancement.

Clearly, the spiritual field is above our ego, and we have to be above it, in the attribute of bestowal. But we cannot imagine how it is possible to be in this attribute of bestowal. Time after time we encounter the same ego, but in different variations. It constantly surrounds us and does with us whatever it feels like, and we cannot get rid of it and rise above it.

This is intentional, so that we will be able to attain the attribute of bestowal only through connection and unity, since that’s the main thing. It isn’t the ascent above the ego, but the connection and unity between us that’s important. When we connect and in this connection influence the friends, they begin to lose their ego. We care about them like a mother who cares for her baby, and they feel fully confident and don’t think about themselves, feeling no worry. What is more, this bestowal that is focused on the friend automatically denies him of his ego and allows him to focus on the spiritual work. This is the power of mutual guarantee, its wonderful attribute.

So if we develop such mutual cooperation among us, by making each other feel mutual guarantee, people who receive this feeling from us will simply start “jumping” out of their ego, ascending in “faith above reason” and will immediately start feeling the upper world.

It is not up to a person, but rather to his environment, which we create by ourselves by mutual guarantee by totally focusing on filling one another until we reach this state in which each of us feels the collective support.

So mutual guarantee is the guiding, mutual cooperation among us that summons the absolute feeling of confidence and the natural exit from the ego.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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You Become Patient To The Degree That You Are Patient

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: On the one hand, we need the perpetual internal burning, and on the other hand, we need patience. How do we combine these two things?

Answer: You become patient to the degree that you are patient. It is impossible to acquire this attribute any other way. I went through different times next to my teacher Rabash, and sometimes I was simply burning with impatience, but eventually, it isn’t that I got used to things since there is not habit in spirituality, but I simply received the recognition of my state.

This is the approach of “submission,” which is absolutely essential. If the Creator is good and benevolent for the good and for the wicked and according to His perception we are already at the end of correction, then everything that happens is only with regard to me, in my feelings. If everything depends only on desire, on my vessels, then it means that my whole correction is in accepting the upper Providence correctly, my current state.

If my state changes and becomes like my state at the end of correction, will I see a different world? Will I see the same faces around me? Didn’t Baal HaSulam, who was at the end of correction, see the same world that we do, with all the atrocities in it? But he perceived the world as absolute good and at the same time he dressed in our desires and felt how we perceive the world differently.

Being patient means that you understand that the world is already corrected, that everything is corrected, but there are still levels of correction that those who see a need for them have to correct. Eventually, you will receive this understanding. It is impossible to skip levels and reach it directly. You can help yourself only by trying to stabilize the environment for yourself, and that’s all.

You cannot have any complaints against the Creator since from the start He has created everything in a finite correct form, at the end of correction. But the created being has to develop the vessels in him so that he can attain and acknowledge all this goodness. It is impossible to give it as a gift, since by that the created being will not feel this infinite state.

In order to do that a person has to go through the state of the “recognition of evil” since you can arrive at the recognition of goodness only through that state. This means that there must be darkness first, concealment, the “recognition of the evil” of this state. This isn’t bad because your ego suffers as a result, but because there is no connection with others in it, there is no bestowal.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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What’s Behind The Curtain

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the article “Body and Soul” Baal HaSulam says that everything, whether it is concealed or revealed is in a person’s consciousness. What is hidden from me today will be revealed tomorrow. What is “concealed” from us now during the preparation phase?

Answer: First, it doesn’t refer to some abstract concept of the unknown, but a reality that actually exists but which we cannot study for the time being. I know that it exists and I know that it is hidden from me. In other words, it is as if the Creator is behind a “curtain” according to my calculations and all my experience.

It is also a kind of knowledge, but not a clear fact yet, for which I can testify and present to others. I have some elements, some proof, but the essence hasn’t yet been revealed. Baal HaSulam says in this article that the knowledge that is not fully part of our consciousness yet is “concealed.” He speaks about knowledge here and not about philosophy.

Experiments with the collider and particle accelerators, for example, enable physicists to come up with different theories about the structure of the micro cosmos. Its components are still unknown, but the data they have received allows them to come up with hypotheses and discuss these matters, since it is already clear: there is something behind this “curtain.” The facts may be a bit different than the theories and even opposite from the scientific hypotheses, but this approach is perfectly “legitimate.”

In our case, the “point in the heart” says to a person: “There is some force that controls everything, that encompasses everything, and that closes everything in one, and I want to discover it.” This desire already builds some kind of model of what we are looking for—the meaning of life, its source, its reasons, and its plan, “who is turning me around, who is managing me and everything around me?” A person guesses, he “senses” the Creator, and so he reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah, in order to get an answer to the question that has already been evoked in him. On the other hand, those who don’t have this question regard the wisdom of Kabbalah as mere speculation.

Later we will discover that the Creator is the force of connection, and that there is nothing but unity, and that it is through unity that all the other forces that make up our reality are revealed.

As for studying the unknown, we don’t examine the Creator but His actions. The wisdom of Kabbalah puts this principle very clearly: “From Your actions we shall know You.” We never speak about the Creator, since it is already an abstract form, and essence, which means something that it is unattainable. Our research refers to a form that is dressed in matter. This form is actually the Creator (Boreh) for us, literally “Come and see” (Bo – Reh). I am the matter, and the form that dresses in me is Him. I become increasingly more similar to the Creator and He is revealed in me, “dresses” in me.

Question: How do I study His actions?

Answer: On yourself. This is all our work. But first we have to receive His forms, His “fingerprints,” and prepare a place inside for it, correcting everything that needs to be corrected, and then receive the form of bestowal and pass on this attitude to those around you, to the friends. This is the form of the Creator that you study, and by that you study Him, which means that you attain what bestowal is, unity.

Question: But today I cannot attribute the Creator’s actions to Him.

Answer: In research a negative result is also a result. The negation in this case is the preparation for the revelation of the Creator. You reject Him and don’t accept His existence—that’s the way it should be. Everything is attained by its oppositeness.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”

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An Example Of Envy

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we give our friends the feeling that we care about them as a mother cares for her child?

Answer: You should show a person that you care and think about him. Send him a text message or e-mail showing interest about how he feels, whether he feels that you are thinking about him, etc. We need to show our concern for others. This example is contagious; then the friend will have to do the same. He will be ashamed that he is behind and is not involved in this.

Question: Wouldn’t this excessive concern stop a person’s development?

Answer: On the contrary, this excites him, annoys, focuses, and directs him to do some work.

When a person sees how his friends take care of him, then it gives him an example and awakens envy: Why isn’t he doing this?

If this happens in a regular, non-Kabbalistic group, then a person, so to speak, “washes his hands” and starts going with the flow. And we have the opposite situation. As it is written in Rabash’s articles, such actions awaken envy and set an example. That is why we have to show this quite clearly and induce a sense of caring in him.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Women Will Succeed!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Women often find it difficult to act together with each other. How can we force ourselves to support our girlfriends, take care of the women’s group, and participate in the general women’s events when the very thought of connecting with each other is unbearable?

Answer: This is only at the beginning, especially for women because they are not used to connecting with each other. Every woman is on her own; she does not need to connect with others as long as she has a connection with a man.

But spiritual ascent requires a connection between women and their joint effect on the men. That is why the ultimate goal is to have them begin to unite; afterward they will start to feel that it is possible to rise above their animal prejudice and be together. They can do that. It is happening already; I feel it.

Our women’s organization is perhaps the only one in the world that can show realistically how women can unite above their individualistic nature.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Men, Support Women!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can men do to support the women during the women’s convention?

Answer: Men have to show the women that they await their connection, communication, and unity, and that they count on their huge common desire that will shake the men and give them such momentum that they will feel the responsibility to rise to another level to fill the women’s Kli, vessel.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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The Formula Of Change

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: As part of my job, I have been in contact with several professors lately and among other things we speak about Kabbalah. I must say that they understand the principles, but they don’t believe.

Answer: True. They have a rational approach. “We have studied so much about our world by different sciences that the picture is clear on the whole. But here this guy who doesn’t seem ‘mad’ comes along and starts talking about some concept that we are not sure where he brings it from. He says that this is the basis of all sciences and he ties everything to Lights and vessels.”

“We don’t know anything about this. We don’t see any evidence of what he tells us about. His explanations may well sound very logical, but he establishes his wisdom on a virtual assumption. ‘Let’s suppose that it is so,’ he says, and on this assumption he bases a whole perfect philosophy.”

“But why should we accept it as a science, if according to our standards it is not a science? A science is what can be studied and thought about. He is saying that his science only requires living according to it and changing internally. We’ve never heard about anything like that. What does it mean ‘to change human nature’? We have a culture, and education, we teach people to be kind, empathic; what could be better? What does this have to do with science?”

Scientists cannot acknowledge the relativity of their perception. They don’t understand that the changes in a person change his reality since it is all created by internal responses.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this accurate mutual connection; to the extent that I change myself, the world that I feel changes. This is the key formula that has a fixed coefficient and a changing parameter that reflects the vessels, my desires, my sensitivity, my intentions, my thoughts, etc.; they change and then the world changes.


X is me, K is the fixed coefficient and Y is the world. I speak to those who are willing to listen to this.

But scientists are not ready for this. They lack a new desire that pulls them out of this world. If they haven’t developed to reach it, they will not listen. One has to be sensitive not only to worldly phenomena but also to phenomena of the spiritual world.

Question: So what does that mean? That intelligent people, scholars, cannot understand us?

Answer: They are actually the most “resistant” since they are sure that they already have a solid foundation.

Question: So who can we turn to then?

Answer: There is a Kabbalistic fable about a man named Ptachiya who came to a town and took all the “empty” people to the desert. After all, if the new question about the taste of life is evoked in a person he feels that he is miserable and empty.

However, if a person doesn’t feel that, if he has no vessel, no desire that matches it, it means that he hasn’t reached a certain level of perception.

We don’t stop disseminating, of course, but only a person who has a point in the heart can hear the message of the wisdom of Kabbalah. The alternative is to feel that you are a beaten animal that has nowhere to run from the endless blows that hit it. Then it will be ready to follow us, just to get rid of the troubles.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”

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The Taste Of Exiting Our World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Some people are more sensitive to certain actions and others are less sensitive. How do you recommend working with the declaration of mutual guarantee so that it is actually imprinted on everyone’s heart, so that everyone lives by this document and together we made addition to it?

Answer: The fact is that it is impossible to do all the time. But even a simple impulsive influence on a person, when you create this possibility in him and he inevitably rises above his egoism to the extent to which he begins to receive from you a sense of security, absence of any problems and worries, it pushes him out of our world. After all, we feel the whole world in the property of anxiety and constant worries because our ego forces us to think and act in this way.

That is why even a spontaneous influence on each other, which creates a feeling of mutual guarantee in a person even for a short period of time, gradually cultivates in him such a drive to rise above himself that he really starts to seek how to make it permanent. Thus, it becomes a means of our progress.

I hope that as a result of our efforts at the convention in the desert we will reach at least this specific letting go of our world. Then people will have the taste of exiting from our world, and they will begin to act in a more goal-oriented way.

Question: How can I use this at the morning lessons, workshops, meetings of friends, and shared meals for the preparation to the convention?

Answer: You need to act in the same direction: Constantly do these exercises, hoping that through my aspiration, my inner effort, I will influence the friends to feel my concern about them and get rid of their egoism. After all, there is absolutely no need to wait for any special event; you can go back to it every day and every hour, and in the end we will succeed.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Help Me Cope With Men!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion from women: Why have you decided to organize a women’s convention for the first time in history? How have we deserved it?

Answer: This is due to the fact that above all we men need your support and your pressure. It’s not the first time I’ve talked about this, but now we all miss it very much: both men and women. As the head of the world group, I am very interested in a serious women’s group that will unite and give men overall strength, a common desire, that will be organized correctly and put pressure on them. It’s very important for me. Help me cope with men!

Question: What should be the result of the women’s convention? In what state should men be in after it?

Answer: After the women’s convention, men should feel that they are obliged to carry out the women’s will. We learn this in Kabbalah. Women’s desires/Aviut rise to the men’s desires, and the men realize them. That is how things work in nature.
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From the Virtual Lesson 12/30/12

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Don’t Be Ashamed Of Changing

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Body and Soul”: And they depict the body as an electronic machine with wires that stretch from the body to the brain, and operate by encounters with external things.

Also, they send their sensations of pain or pleasure to the brain, and the brain instructs the organ what to do.

Question: Is everything the body feels, is all our life actually like a “movie” that is being projected to it?

Answer: There are two approaches that are integrated here, the subjective and the objective. On the whole, if you already see, if you perceive a certain picture of the world, you cannot erase it and say that it is your imagination. It may be your imagination, but this “imagination” is our life and we have to accept it as a fact.

Question: So where is the truth?

Answer: There is no truth. Everything is relative with regard to a person. There are seven billion people on earth and each one has his own truth. After all, we don’t have an absolute scale according to which we can measure the truth. We are all hanging in space, just like earth, just like the whole universe; who knows where he is “hanging?” You are alive now, but in a moment you may be dead, and who is controlling this? In whose hands are the strings?

In our current state, when there are no basic standards, we cannot measure things accurately. We have established many systems and measuring units, which are relative: the Greenwich meridian, a kilogram, a meter, a watt, an ohm, but these are relative units for comparative measurements. They only confirm the fact that actually there is nothing we can hold on to and that we cannot actually measure anything.

We don’t know what the truth is, and we agree on a certain framework of nominal comparisons since we need a common language in order to lead a normal life. Otherwise, how would we be able to keep the connection between us and to live off one another? So there is no truth. No one needs it. If people discover something that is absolute, I would have to accept it as a fact, and I prefer my own “truth.” It is true that we can reach absolute values, but our ego doesn’t let us do that, and so we are immersed in relativity and instability.

We have to get used to this state and to accept it, to accept it as a fact. It is normal to show that I have changed with regard to yesterday. A person who advances understands that nothing is certain and stable. If what was good yesterday also seems good today, it means that I am “still,” not even on the “vegetative” level, but on the level of “still nature.” On the “speaking” level, however, I see “an opposite world” each day. After all, every level is opposite from the one that preceded it.

On the spiritual path, I don’t simply add new things to what already exists; I am transforming each time and there is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no need to be an “indestructible rock”; we are all constantly changing, which is good. Only small children who are constantly restless and uneasy can grow.

Well, we cannot determine that anything is absolute, and so we have to believe that “a judge only has what his eyes can see,” and to accept this picture as real. There is only one truth—that there is nothing stable, and that everything changes with regard to a person.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12, “Body and Soul”

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