Question: Can we say that the new generation is further distancing from studying of The Study of the Ten Sefirot, The Book of Zohar, and authentic Kabbalistic sources?

Answer: No, it is not distancing further. People simply cannot exist on the same spiritual heights as exceptional individuals such as Baal HaSulam or the ARI.

We see the same thing happening in our world. A person uses an enormous number of scientific and technological achievements without understanding anything about them. He simply knows how to plug something into a socket and press a button for the device to work. What does he actually know besides two buttons on an air conditioner, twenty buttons on a computer, and so on? He has no idea what is really happening inside!

When using a mobile phone, he may be familiar with only two or three functions, while having no idea whatsoever of the other two hundred functions it contains.

The same applies in spirituality: there are people who engage with it slightly and solely for their own benefit, in some limited personal way, while others want to attain the inner connections between objects, dimensions, and forces—to know everything. This depends on the nature of the soul, its inner qualities, and its root. If a person has such a need, then he will fulfill it.

Question: So the fact that we are moving away from the original sources does not necessarily mean that we are getting worse?

Answer: We are not moving away from the sources. We are simply studying them not to the depth that exceptional Kabbalist scholars do, but rather, to the extent appropriate for the masses, the ordinary people who make up 99% of the world’s population.

Question: But wouldn’t that require a completely different method of interacting with the light?

Answer: No, because we study Kabbalah only in order to receive forces from it. And after receiving those forces, we must perceive the spiritual world. And we will perceive it to the extent intended for our soul.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Properties of our generation” 9/30/10

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The Book of Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES) are two truly monumental sources of spiritual power. The Book of Zohar with the Sulam (“Ladder”) commentary, and TES, which is a commentary on all the writings of the ARI, are two foundational works.

It should be said that these are not merely books, but sources that present the spiritual system itself. Therefore, when I study them, I draw the light from there and its influence upon myself.

Question: But you study them as a Kabbalist who has already attained spiritual perception?

Answer: Not necessarily. It does not matter.

Even people who understand nothing of what they are reading, by reading these sources, studying the inner system in which they exist, draw upon themselves an illumination of the light that brings them closer to spiritual degrees.

To what extent must they pass through these degrees and understand them? To the extent of their soul’s capacity, until they attain the world of infinity and take their place there, the place from which they descended to the level of our world.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Properties of our generation” 9/30/10

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Comment: An ordinary person, even when suffering, cannot rise to a spiritual level until they are “hit over the head.”

My Response: Even when a person is suffering, they still do not hear us. If you take a stick and hit an animal, it runs away. It does not understand what you want from it. Likewise, when troubles fall upon a simple person, they do not understand what is being asked of them. “Just tell me what to do, and I will do it!”

And you tell them: “No, you need to think about the meaning of life.” They are completely bewildered. They do not understand what you want from them. Some instinct immediately kicks in to prevent them from going crazy, and they stop hearing you because your language sounds like that of an alien to them.

I understand this very well, and I do not address them directly. I have no complaints about them. That is why I always say to explain to the whole world in very simple language that such a method exists. “If you ever need it, here is the address. You do not have to run anywhere, or search for anything.”

And those in whom something has been ignited are welcome. For them there is real contact, help, and communication with us. There is no other way.

There is also a third approach that I very much want to bring to life: children’s education. Through this, I can show the world that it has no future. If there is no future for your children in the form that you are giving them, then there is no future for you either, not for your civilization, your family, or your marriage.

That is, you—mothers, fathers, grandparents—are unhappy because when you look at the younger generation, you see how it is “heading to the ground.” Seeing this happening to your own children makes life not seem worth living at all. It is incredibly hard for any person to watch children using drugs, engaging in prostitution, doing all kinds of things, the blurring of genders—all just to survive, and all of it empty.

When we see that the younger generation pays no attention to us, and we begin to feel almost the same toward them, something like rejection or aversion arises, and the question appears: “What should we do?”

And then you show them: “Look, it can be completely different” because it is in our hands. When a child is born, they lie in our arms; they are entirely ours. And while they are with us, we can shape them so that they will not drift away; they will remain connected to us, and no one will be able to take them away.

Therefore we will continue to develop together—children, parents, and grandparents—as one family. Children will not distance themselves from their parents, not because of insecurity or difficulty in exploring life, but because they will see entirely different possibilities that come from mutual connection with us.

Can you imagine what happiness is? Simple, earthly happiness for an ordinary person—this is what we need to show them. All the intellectualizing and endless proofs, none of that is needed. No one is interested in it.

We offer what no one else has or will have because only the light that you give a child during their upbringing shapes them into a human being somewhat similar to the Creator. The child does not even understand it, yet it is already within them and developing.

These children will become the light of humanity.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalah for Children” 10/12/10

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Question: Please tell me, what is our life?

Answer: Our life is a form of existence of protein-based matter.

Question: But still…?

Answer: Still, from this life, we take its Reshimot (spiritual records), memories, and impressions and continue. A huge number of tiny grains of egoism, meaning corrupted desires created by the Creator, gradually go through purification, correction, and connection.

Comment: So, these small egoisms (7 to 8 billion of them) live their lives precisely in order to come to this, as you say.

My Response: Hell, purgatory, and paradise. Like in Dante’s works.

Hell is the feeling and realization of one’s egoism, of one’s lowly nature, and everything that can be said about it. Purgatory is when a person tries to correct it, to cleanse it. And paradise is when a person puts this egoism at the service of other people.

These are the three stages we must go through.

Question: So a person throughout his lives moves toward this final third stage?

Answer: Yes, and therefore, if people understand what these three stages are—hell, purgatory, and paradise—meaning, attainment of awareness of one’s egoism, its correction, and its proper use, then everything is fine. We must try.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 4/20/26

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Question: Why do people think that play is something childish? “I don’t play,” they say, even with pride: “I don’t play!”

Answer: “Don’t play” at what? At becoming a greater human being? What exactly is it that he does not play at?

Comment: When a person says they are “playing,” they are talking about something made-up. You know: “I’m just pretending.”

My Response: Of course it is imaginary. I’m inventing something. But what does it mean to dare?

Question: So, in your opinion, to dare means to play?

Answer: Of course. To play at something greater, something magnificent; it is striving, aspirations. Like children: whatever game they play, they want to become better.

Comment: But for children it happens naturally.

My Response: Exactly. And it should be natural for us too, but we have lost it.

Question: We have lost it?

Answer: Of course. A young person is given everything and nothing is demanded of them, and essentially, they…

Question: Stop playing?

Answer: Of course.

Question: So this is the root of all depression, drugs, and so on? A person stops playing?

Answer: Life no longer compels them.

Question: Should life compel us to play?

Answer: “What is our life? A game!” Only a different kind of game.

Question: We talk about suffering and so on, but does suffering push us toward the game? Does it say to us: “Play”? If I played, would I not suffer so much? Can one say that?

Answer: I would say that I constantly examine myself and am vigilant in checking to see if a desire to stop has arisen within me. You know, I’d like to make that final move at the last minute with real intent: snap.

Comment: And that’s all.

My Response: Yes, that is good.

Comment: I envy such endings too. You know, when someone walks onto the stage and boom! That’s it.

My Response: Yes.

Question: I want to ask something very relevant now. Is playing the way out of the state humanity is currently in? Humanity is at a dead end, lost in thought.

Answer: Of course. We must play at the state we wish to attain. You know how Kozma Prutkov said: “If you want to be happy – be happy”? It is very true.

Question: What game should we play now, in these uncertain times?

Answer: We must play at friendship and love.

Comment: Your simple answers always unsettle me. Friendship and love, they seem to require something more.

My Response: Is that bad?

Comment: It sounds childish. I’ve told you many times, it sounds childish, fit for children.

My Response: Well then, let people remain trapped in their narrow-minded seriousness. I don’t know what else to call it.

Comment: But you truly say: “Play at friendship and love.”

My Response: Of course. What else does a person really have? When this disappears, life loses its taste.

Question: So this is the main game? Constantly?

Answer: Of course. A flirtation with life.

Question: With life or with another person?

Answer: No, with life.

Question: When you say “friendship and love,” do you mean toward another person, toward those close to us, toward distant people, toward the world? Is all of that included?

Answer: Of course. Everything is included in it. There must be movement.

Comment: But if it is a game, and inwardly I understand that I do not truly relate to him this way.

My Response: That does not matter. Even if I do it deliberately.

Question: So it must be done intentionally?

Answer: Of course.

Question: Even if I do not actually feel this way toward him?

Answer: Initially I may not feel this way toward him, but afterward I create it.

Question: I create this world of play: I do not naturally relate to a person with love, yet I constantly want to love him and want friendship with him. And then this world manifests, this level? Do I step into it? Does it actually happen?

Answer: What happens is what you truly want to happen.

Question: Let me summarize. Our main game is the game of friendship and love?

Answer: Yes, because only a good connection between us—let’s not call it “friendship and love” because that sounds too childish—rather, only a benevolent connection between us, mutual help, and a sense of the necessity for good relations can bring us to a new world. There is no other way.

Question: What do you mean by a “new world”?

Answer: A new world means a new society where I increasingly feel that my physical and emotional well-being depends on everyone around me, and theirs depends on me. We are so interconnected that it becomes impossible to separate one from another.

I must realize that is a law of nature here, a strict, very strict, law that my attitude toward others determines their attitude toward me. This seems very strange to us. But if we try, if we make the effort, then gradually we will see that the world depends only on our attitude toward it, and it will change for the better. In other words, you paint your own world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 5/13/26

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Question: The methodology for creating unity consists of joint actions, joint study, and joint dissemination. What might there be besides these well-known methods?

Answer: Every conceivable joint action. They serve to ensure our efforts—to define what the Creator is and to establish the proper conditions for spiritual advancement toward that end—ultimately meet with success. We must define among ourselves what the Creator signifies and what kind of property it is that can be revealed in nature.

It is a unique property that manifests where (based on the nature of our own properties) there is neither “I” nor “you.” But this state of “neither I nor you” is built precisely on “me and you,”  two distinct entities that unite with one another so completely that the “I” disappears.

Once united, at the very point where these egoistic properties annul themselves, where they succeed in rising above their own nature, they ultimately lead to a state of self-negation. This “negation of the negation” yields an image of the Creator within our desire even though the Creator Himself exists entirely beyond our desire. This is a force that exists beyond the scope of our perception and it can manifest within our desire provided that our desire becomes similar to it.

This is the manner in which we must constantly think, analyze, and gradually progress to this realization. For this, we have a teacher and a friend, or as the saying goes: “A friend, a teacher, and a brother” who offers assistance and  who bears a specific duty in this process. We must make use of the explanation and try to model this condition in ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Gate of Tears” 10/11/10

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Question: What metamorphoses occur between descents and ascents? What the does the transition from one state to another change?

Answer: Such transitions are possible only within a group.

You cannot possibly analyze, perceive, or measure this process, unless it is in relation to a group in which you, together with your friends, strive to unite as one and nullify yourselves relative to your common connection. Within this connection, you reveal the source, the upper force, that can transform you all and bring you to this connection.

In this way you truly are striving to reveal the picture, the state that actually exists. It is the only thing that exists.

All other notions, which are disconnected from this reality, such as: tell me, show me, explain it to me, are all mere philosophy detached from matter, and will invariably be misunderstood. Moreover, such thinking will lead you to believe that you can achieve this by yourself. Therefore, it is impossible to study Kabbalah without realizing the group connection with those who share this aspiration.

A person must traverse a vast number of stages, undergoing countess realizations, definitions, and analyses before becoming ready for this specific kind of uniting and transformation in order to simply stop perceiving oneself and to perceive the collective instead. At that point one will reveal that this collective is, in fact, one’s soul.

Question: How can we use our ascents and descents in a collective manner? How can we tune to that specific wavelength where everyone is striving in the same direction?

Answer: I have spoken about this at length, and now I do not want to repeat myself.

Question: Perhaps there is some subtle nuance that we are still missing?

Answer: Nothing is missing. Everything has been said thousands of times. You have it all. If you use it, you will find the correct model and yourself in it. If not, then no.

Comment: In essence, you have explained this system in great detail many times, but your students still constantly ask about the same thing. You give some explanations and uncover finer gradations.

My Response: It depends on their advancement. I cannot scrutinize it now with you. You do not understand that a Kabbalist can scrutinize only those things that he really senses in the course of a conversation.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Practical Kabbalah” 9/28/10

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Question: Do you have a fear of suffering? Suppose you get sick or something else happens to you.

Answer: No, there is no fear. It is unpleasant of course, because it involves pain and disagreeable sensations; in other words, the absence of light within me is expressed in the same way as in others. There is nothing to be done about it; like everyone else, I would prefer to avoid it, but I understand where it comes from, and I do not fear it.

A Kabbalist believes that the plan of the Creator must be fulfilled, and I do everything to align myself with that plan. As for what is intended for my soul, whatever metamorphoses it is destined to undergo, it will undergo. The main thing for me is to prepare myself so that I can be with the Creator in all these transformations even if He performs very unpleasant “surgical operations” on me.

Question: Are you talking about the suffering of the physical body or inner suffering?

Answer: By “surgical,” I mean internal operations. Of course, this could include physical and physiological ones here, naturally.

When Baal HaSulam was asked: “Surely you could make it so that you do not have to suffer before death?” He answered: “I would never allow myself that.” And he indeed had a very painful death. He suffered from cancer, heart conditions, and various other ailments. He endured great suffering. He did not pass away at such an old age, he was around 70. What kind of years are those?

If a person truly understood the extent to which even these sufferings, which serve as a vessel for spirituality, move him forward, and realized that he has the capacity to rise above them, he would not remove them, he would rise above them. But what is meant here is not an ordinary person who simply suffers like a small beaten animal, but a Kabbalist.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. The Sufferings of the Kabbalists.” 10/8/10

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Question: You say that only from unity, from connection, can anything of real value come. People ask you: “What is unity? What is connection?” You seem to explain it, but you do not answer the question directly.

Answer: How is that? I answer directly! I perceive unity clearly; I am in it right now! From this state, the closest one to you, I explain what it means.

But there is a difference between the very first, the lowest state of connection, of mutual guarantee, and the one in which you are.

If I cross this barrier toward you, then I will be like you and will not be able to explain anything. I descend from the degree I am on to the very lowest spiritual degree, and from it, I try to explain to you, who are still lower, what this lowest spiritual degree is. I cannot descend any lower.

Question: What must happen for us to hear you?

Answer: You must generate a profound desire to experience unity.

Question: You speak about mutual guarantee, the power of unity, connection, and all this is, in principle, seems to circle around the same thing, perhaps with slightly different nuances. Recently, you said something concrete: “Think in this specific way and act in that particular way.” That resonates more clearly with people. But will this really work in practice? These things like: smile at each other and treat each other with kindness?

Answer: It depends entirely on your implementation and on nothing else, absolutely nothing else!

You must want it! You must want it a little bit more. And this “wanting it a little bit more” can be achieved through mutual assistance. It is precisely within that small added increment, within the mutual help that you can give each other, that you will attain the shared sensation of mutual guarantee in which the Creator will be revealed.

I explain everything in terms that are absolutely accessible! All that is required is to actually do it. At the very least to start, but I do not see any starting taking place.

Question: So how does one go about starting?

Answer: You need to map out all these actions in writing.

How is any business enterprise built? It begins with general plans and discussions, followed by more concrete details. Then come the development phases, various forms of research, an analysis of the dependencies involved, and so on. But the crucial step to is commence the serious work.

Question: Suppose everyone gathers together and, as it often happens at conventions, feels an intense collective desire for this to happen, will it actually happen?

Answer: Yes, it can happen at a convention, but it is a temporary state, a fleeting desire. Consequently what you will experience is a temporary sensation, a momentary illumination or revelation, rather than a permanent one.

To attain something permanent, you must engage in work, you must cultivate a constant desire within yourself, an aspiration that continuously accumulates. It builds up steadily until it becomes palpable, firm, and deeply ingrained within your very being.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Useless and Worthless People in the Group” 9/26/10

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Question: You always say that we must turn our descents into constant ascents. Is this merely a mental attitude or is it something more? What is the difference between a descent and an ascent?

Answer: It lies in your attitude toward them.

Comment: Suppose a person feels bad, but he understands that, thanks to this, he will connect with spirituality on a psychological level.

My Response: No, that is religion: “I will suffer, and then I will receive a reward.” There is no such thing in Kabbalah. The Creator does not want you to suffer. Since He is in an absolutely perfect state, He wants you to attain this state as well.

Comment: But people say that if you feel bad now, it means you are in a state of ascent.

My Response: Absolutely not! This is simply foolish and incorrect!

An ascent is when I evaluate my state, whatever it may be, solely according to whether or not it brings me closer to the Creator. A descent is when I am unable to evaluate my state on terms of its proximity to the Creator, but instead I evaluate it by how I feel.

Comment: So in any case, regardless of the sensation…

My Response: What importance does the sensation have! If a sensation dictates my attitude toward my current state, this is called a descent. But if my connection with the Creator dictates my attitude toward my state, this is called an ascent.

Question: How do I transform what my “flesh,” my physical sensation, dictates?

Answer: Here lies the little problem: how to rise above yourself.

Comment: But surely I can do this psychologically.

My Response: You cannot do anything on your own. You can say whatever you want, go through all sorts of training exercises, but in doing so, you do not actually change yourself; you are merely training yourself. You can accustom yourself to pain, do whatever you like, it will give you nothing.

There is a vast array of techniques, but none of them alter human nature. A person cannot reach a demand to the Creator that would actually transform him.

Question: How can one use a descent as a means of ascent?

Answer: You must undergo a transformation that you receive the force of bestowal from above, the quality of Bina; this alone can effect this change within you.

Comment: All this seems conceptually clear: the light acts on you and everything falls in place.

My Response: You will understand nothing until it takes place within you, within you!

Such is this wisdom, because it speaks of transformations that must occur inside of you. If you have not experienced them, you will not understand what it is. You may construe a purely intellectual image in your mind, but it will bear any resemblance to what actual reality will be.

It is like trying to explain the concept of a human being to a dog. It may gaze at you with utter devotion as if it is with you with all its soul and heart, but with its dog’s soul, it will not understand you.

Therefore, all sorts of psychological changes are nonsense. You can find a multitude of techniques, throughout the world, but you will not find one that alters human nature. This is a truth that cannot be explained to yogis or to anyone else.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Use the Descent” 9/26/10

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