Question: Is there any difference in the presentation of Kabbalah for people in the past and for those who come now?

Answer: Of course! There is a big difference in the explanation, in the approach, in the specifics, and in the style of presentation. Once upon a time, 20 years ago, you could only speak to people in accordance to what was written in the original sources. For example, the Torah mentions a serpent, and you explained what a serpent is, and so on.

But today, people do not ask about this because they understand this is some kind of allegory. A person requires a specific explanation of what Kabbalah is talking about and what we can achieve with its help.

That did not happen before. Everything was figurative and descriptive. Six hundred years ago the great Kabbalist RAMHAL described Kabbalah as a dialogue between the soul and the body: the body said, the soul said, the body said, the soul said, and the whole book, two hundred pages, was like that. RAMBAM wrote in the form of all kinds of philosophical thoughts and sayings.

That is, each generation, even each society, imposes its own form of presentation.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Old Stuff” 2/1/10

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A letter from a viewer:

My wife is thrilled with your programs and keeps pushing them on me. I watch them, mostly out of respect. I like some of it, but sometimes you say things that I do not know how to take. For example, you said that everyone is responsible for the whole world. Why do you say that? It is clearly impossible. But what amazes me is that my wife is delighted.

My Response: The fact is that when everyone feels responsible for the entire world, we will indeed see a new world.

Question: From this letter, it is clear that he does not understand how this is possible, while his wife is delighted. So each of us has certain points that either accept this or do not accept.

He imagines the whole world as eight billion people. So when you say “the whole world,” he thinks you are saying we are responsible for all these eight billion people, for what is happening in Somalia, in starving Africa, and so on. Are we responsible for this?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: This phrase requires some further explanation.

My Response: The thing is, if every person suddenly, let’s say, by a magical command, wished to see everyone else as their friends, the world would change. Undoubtedly! But since we do not believe in this because it seems too unrealistic, we continue as we are.

Question: But we are real people. This husband is an absolutely real person. He would like to sort things out at home, with his friends, and you say: sort things out with the whole world, be responsible for it.

This thought, this action can only happen “by a magical command,” right? So, are you sending us back to the Creator again?

Answer: To the Creator.

Question: Constantly?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, a person comes, with this pain inside. Many people write that they feel this empathy. What prayer should a person have to the Creator? Should they ask to change everything or what?

Answer: That the Creator changes at least this person.

Question: This person?

Answer: Yes, so that he can feel the pain of the entire world and, based on this, relate to the world differently.

Question: Can one not fall apart and feel this pain? Not explode, not die from it?

Answer: It is possible.

Question: We spoke about the fact that Kabbalists aspired to this, it was their goal to feel the world, the pain of the world.

If a person feels all the pain of the world, what should his actions be, can you say?

Answer: To ask the Creator to make the world better. That is all, nothing more. The one who made the world bad should make it good.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/1/24

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Question: If my perception paints an external picture of the world for me, and this external picture is actually me, then what is the point of transitioning to a state of bestowal to others if they are me?

Answer: You never actually bestow anything to anyone else. What you do in your life is develop your perception, engage in self-knowledge, self-understanding, and self-discovery. That’s it! Everything that appears to be outside of you are your own sensory organs, which are intentionally made to seem foreign and unrelated to you. This is done so that by attracting them to yourself, you develop the desire for bestowal and love instead of egoistic desire, and you discover that all of it is actually yours. These are your attributes, your desires.

There is nothing in the world that does not belong to you. By integrating these so-called external objects, which are actually forces, attributes, and desires, you form a vessel within yourself for perceiving the Creator, the upper world.

The idea that something exists outside of you that is seemingly not yours and foreign is an illusion. It is you!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Whole World is Me” 2/4/10

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Question: After one of your lectures, as a rule, a person comes to study the wisdom of Kabbalah all fired up. He or she felt something unusual. This feeling lasts for a while, and then it cools down. Is this his problem or not?

Answer: No, this is how it should be!

Why should I keep him under my influence? Absolutely not! It is necessary for him to start understanding what I have told him and what I have suggested of his own freewill. Under no circumstances should he be left in a state of enthusiasm because then it will be like a drug for him.

He will no longer receive any sustenance from me. The next time he meets me, he will no longer have that initial admiration and perception. He will turn on the analysis, the requirement of the conceptual apparatus, because he needs to progress.

It is like with children: the first time we can entice a child, but after that, we want to involve them in actions.

Question: Usually, those people who initially admire everything become “seasoned wolves” later on. You look at them and their childlike innocence is gone. But how can a person avoid going into a kind of isolation?

Answer: I cannot say anything here. You do not need to think about what he should be like. He will be as he should be. We do not determine his future states. Whatever happens to him is how it should work out.

The main thing is to give him information about internal development, about external opportunities, what he should do, how he should study, read, work in a group, and disseminate—in short, how he should absorb all the material.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Light Narcotic” 1/21/12

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Question: Usually a person is born and goes through a certain path in life. Most often, by the age of thirty, one enters into a stupor when all one’s plans begin to shake a little, and then he begins to think about the meaning of life.

You came to the wisdom of Kabbalah at the age of 30, and before that was there, so to say, a period of preparation?

Answer: Maybe, although I would not say that about myself. I wanted to come to the study of Kabbalah, it seems to me, at the age of six or seven.

Question: Does the current generation have such an opportunity?

Answer: It does not really depend on the generation. Of course, the current generation has it. But it also depends on how a person feels. As far as I can remember, I always felt that I needed it.

I am not an exceptional person. I just have such an attitude toward life, toward the world, that does not tolerate anything superfluous, everything must be neatly arranged; otherwise, this world is such a big mess that I simply do not want to exist in it. Not because “my head is small,” but because I do not want to tolerate disorder; I must put everything into a system.

In principle, the most important aspiration of such a person is to bring everything they feel in the world into a coherent structure, into a cohesive picture. Only then does the world make sense to them, and the person enjoys perfection, harmony, the interconnection of all things, and their mutual definition, what we on the human level call mutual guarantee.

For him, the system is something that encompasses our universe as its integral part. He must understand the structure of interaction, functioning, management, movement, and development. Without this feeling, he feels bad, he does not feel okay. He feels his connection to the entire system, to the entire cosmos (although it is more than the cosmos) that he cannot help but come to the perception of universal harmony.

That is the inner need I began to feel at four to five-years-old, and when I was twelve to thirteen years old, it became absolutely clear. Searches for the source of creation led me to study paleontology one moment, then astronomy the next.

It is very difficult for a person to navigate in our world where there is no flexibility. This compels him to seek inner harmony because it begins to help him perceive the world in its external rigidity as harmonious.

The lack of flexibility in the world leads a person to enter into the system of creation, to find integrity there, so that everything can be perceived well from the outside, and then he will be able to live. Otherwise it is very difficult for people seeking internal harmony in our world.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Laitman’s Childhood” 2/14/12

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Comment: You say that dissemination depends on our internal unity. In theory, we want to convey some information. We gather together to do this.

My Response: We gather together for dissemination in order to unite and to find between us precisely the properties that connect us: mutual bestowal, mutual support, mutual guarantee, flexibility, connection, common bonding, even love.

We wish to clarify these properties. Why do we need all this? In order to then reveal the same properties in the rest of the world because the rest of the entire world (inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human nature), the entire mass represents the huge desire that must be completely, organically connected into one whole.

Then in this unified desire that is connected through common efforts, we will feel the property of bestowal and love, which we implement together. And this property of bestowal and love implemented jointly by us is called the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Meaning of Kabbalah Dissemination” 2/12/12

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Question: What does disseminating Kabbalah give a person?

Answer: The real dissemination is attracting souls and desires detached from you to unity and further working with them to achieve unity.

A person disseminates the idea of global unity to those desires that feel as if they were outside of him.

As soon as they begin to perceive it, he engages with them in studying, in unification, and then does everything to come together with them to one whole.

In principle, dissemination itself goes according to the inner desire to unite with everyone. But, beside this, external work is also necessary because you otherwise cannot approach a person at all.

Therefore, you need to give him something external because we live in a corporeal world, that is, in such desires that manifest between us in the form of projections of bodies, objects, books, computers, and so on.

We must use these projections of desires in our imagination, that is, tangible objects and matter. We should use it the way it is perceived by us, although in reality it does not exist; it is simply depicted to us by our desires.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Meaning of Kabbalah Dissemination” 2/12/12

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Dina writes:

What should I do with my hatred for this world? Many people feel this way today. People hate this world! They hate it! And many even ask: “Why was I born? Why bring a child into this world?” 

My Response: But it is true. The time is coming when a person will be utterly disappointed with this world. Human egoism is growing and it cannot be filled. People do not know what to fill it with. So every day they live feels forced and unsatisfactory.

Question: What can be done about it?

Answer: Nothing!

Question: Just sit doing nothing?

Answer: Do nothing.

Comment: But still living in this state all the time, I don’t know about that.

My Response: I understand this state. Especially in my younger years, I had many such states: what to live for, why live?

Question: Is the basis of this hatred toward this world, which you do not understand?

Answer: No, it is hatred for the emptiness that this world evokes in you.

Question: But still, first is there a reason for this happening in one way or another?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Today you are certainly relaying and understanding that something is happening to people. And people hate this world for a reason. Why?

Answer: It is to make this world better for you and for others.

Question: Is that what we need to come to?

Answer: The solution exists, but everyone must find it for themselves.

Question: So you are saying that that is why people are brought to such a state?

Answer: Yes.

Question: You also say that this world was given to us by the Creator. We see it this way because He wants us to see it like this?

Answer: Yes, the Creator desires our sound decision about how I perceive the world and how I want to see and feel it.

So that during my lifetime in this world I would make myself into such a being who approaches the Creator with my thoughts, aspirations, and so on. The Creator, having created this world, gave me the opportunity to reveal Him in order to rise above it.

Question: And what do I see? What am I revealing? For now, I am revealing this world that I hate.

Answer: To reveal the hated world in order to rise above it, from a doomed, dreadful, egoistic world to a kind, beautiful world.

Question: So, will I see it like that then?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, if my aspiration is to turn this hatred into another state, to see this world differently, if I constantly, mechanically repeat this, will it work even mechanically?

Answer: It will work even mechanically. For this, I must radically change my attitude toward the world, toward people, toward everything.

Question: By force?

Answer: By force. It is not easy. This is the self-improvement work described by Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/15/24

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Question: You have a student, and I have a very close friend, Gilad Shadmon, who has been with us for 30 years.

His father was in Auschwitz and at the age of 15 he was evacuated as part of the Death March from Auschwitz in 1945. The remaining living prisoners were marched to other camps across Poland. People died of hunger and exhaustion during the forced march and many were shot along the way.

His father recounted that he was with 12 teenagers, 15-year-olds. They were terribly hungry, but when they got hold of a piece of bread, they decided that each would take a small piece and pass it on to the next.

He was one of the first, almost a whole piece of bread was passed to him. At that moment when he was biting into it, he felt: “I cannot hold back, I will eat the whole piece.” But he restrained himself, and everyone else did too. Each took a small piece and passed it on.

This story impressed me a lot. Why do you think he restrained himself, this absolutely ravenous teenager?

Answer: Because he was connected to his friends. What else could have restrained him? And so he held back.

Question: So this is real connection?

Answer: Yes, it does not allow a person—to the point where they would just die on the spot.

Question: So this state of connection you just mentioned, it is higher than everything, right? Higher than hunger, higher than death.

Answer: Probably. I do not know, I have not experienced it. I cannot say.

Question: But you still have confidence that this happened precisely because of that? He saw these guys standing next to him and felt it?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Although it is known that starving people—and there are many examples in history—forget everything, even their closest relatives. It is an instinct, they start eating. They are not to blame maybe, those people?

Answer: No.

Question: But here, these are teenagers. Is there still something in this?

Answer: At that age, people can neglect themselves. Adults, not anymore. And younger than that age, children of course, no. But teenagers, yes.

Question: So, something in adults still dies out? And teenagers still feel that there is a future in this connection?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Another question. These were starving people, and we are well-fed today. We do not think about others, that is, those who are hungry, and so on. And even teenagers today who are well-fed do not think about other hungry people.

Why? What happened? Do we need to see it for ourselves, or what? What is needed?

Answer: No, these are completely different circumstances, different areas of consciousness are activated in us, the well-fed. And therefore, we cannot be compared with them.

Comment: So you cannot say: “There was such nobility there…”

Answer: No! You cannot mechanically transfer that.

Question: You cannot compare?

Answer: No.

Question: Can this be called nobility? In the Russian language, there is such a lofty word as “nobility.”

Answer: I do not know if it is nobility. Life just does it like that.

Question: So at that moment comes the realization that connection is everything, above life and death, above everything—connection?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Sooner or later will humanity, the world, come to feel that that is everything?

Answer: It will come.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/8/24

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Alexander writes:

I am not married, and I have never really had true friends. A year ago, I started watching your programs and realized why this is happening to me. I demanded too much from others when I should have demanded it from myself. But it seems too late to change now. I meet someone, things seem good, and then suddenly I feel intense irritation and I cannot control myself. I say something harsh or just disappear, avoiding meetings. I cannot overcome myself. And it all ends. I have been to psychologists, even to a psychiatrist and a fortune-teller, but it keeps repeating. I do not know what to do.”

Question: What advice can you give him?

Answer: The only advice one can give is to find a group that would support and involve him in connection between them, between all the group members and with the Creator. He should see examples of connection between people and how they rise toward connection with the Creator, and this will set him on the right path.

Comment: You are already moving toward connection with the Creator, such a group that seeks connection with the Creator.

My Response: Absolutely, yes. He must understand that this is exactly what he needs.

Comment: That is, at the level of our world: make friends here, be together here, and here…

My Response: No, that is no longer relevant.

Comment: To live normally, to meet someone, to finally get married.

My Response: Let him connect with those who are given to him from above and realize the correct connection.

Comment: So you are saying his connection should be with those who want to rise to the degree of the Creator, to rise above this world, and not with those who want to settle in this world.

My Response: Exactly.

Question: Will all this continue to expand further? Should we specifically seek such groups? There are sciences in this world, psychology…

Answer: We have to finish up everything in this world. Complete as much as possible and leave nothing for later.

To complete in this world means striving for connection between us and with the Creator and for all this to come into its correct form.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/8/24

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