Explain to me please, how can intelligent, thinking, educated people agree that a woman is made of a man’s rib, that snakes can speak, that there are magical apples in a paradise and you can eat them and know the truth, and many, many other things like that on every page of the Bible.

Where does our reason disappear? We clearly see that there is no such thing in nature. Why do we agree? This is why I am an atheist since I cannot agree with this. How do you, an intelligent, educated person, explain this to yourself? (Oleg)

My Response: I explain it to myself very simply. I just delve into what the Bible says, sink my teeth into it, and dig into it. There I find completely different explanations, different layers that amaze me. They do not simply satisfy me, but amaze me with their explanation and depth.

I discover such continuous, consecutive findings that I see that for those who do not want to attain them, our world, even without a biblical or some other interpretation, remains a mystery and worthless anyway. But the one who digs into this text and understands its allegory, really reveals the upper world for himself.

Question: In your program “Secrets of the Eternal Book” you explain this a lot. But for those who are asking now: What is this surface layer for when they write “snake,” or when they write “a woman is made of a man’s rib”? Why confuse humanity? Can they just say, “Let’s look inside” and to describe what is inside?

Answer: People looked at the root of the action, at the root of the problem, and therefore described it this way.

Question: So, they look at the root of the problem and write “serpent.” What problem do they see?

Answer: They see that from all our world, a similarity to this action can produce an image of a serpent.

Question: What action are we talking about?

Answer: That it lies, that it thinks only of himself, slanders, and so on. The feeling of the inner forces of the world leads them to such a language. Basically, when they were writing it, they felt these inner forces and desires.

Question: Can we say that this is behind every word of the Torah?

Answer: Absolutely everything is like that! Behind every word.

Question: What is the Torah about? Let’s say people do not know. They think that this is really a body of laws, that it is such a historical book that talks about the history of the people. It actually is there.

Answer: All of it is also there, of course.

Question: The commandments are also there: what to do, what not to do, let’s say. In general, what is the Torah written about?

Answer: It is about a person, about his place in nature, about his history, and his future.

Question: When you say “about a person,” is it about every person?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So how should I look at it; is it an external text or is it about me?

Answer: It is about you.

Question: Is this how I should start reading?

Answer: Yes. In general, this book itself is a guide for you and the world in which you exist.

Question: “The world,” do you mean this world in which I live now? In which we live with you?

Answer: Of course, yes.

Question: This book that was written 3,000 years ago, is it about today’s world?

Answer: Of course.

Question: What does it say? What is it really calling me to?

Answer: It urges you not to stay in a limited vision of this world, but to try to reveal it more deeply.

Question: What will I see?

Answer: The forces that control you and the world around you. Then you will see, discover, reveal, and get acquainted with a single force that is concealed behind the manifestation of these various forces.

Question: Does it mean that this book leads me to this single force? The more I look into it, remove the layers, the closer I will come to this single force. Is that the purpose of this book?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, are we talking about the Creator?

Answer: Of course.

Question: The last question then. Oleg asks. He looks at it, of course, the way he sees everything around. He says: “We do not see this in nature.” This is his opinion. Such a single-layered opinion so far. But still, please tell me, what is the “Garden of Eden”? What kind of force is this?

Answer: The Garden of Eden, paradise, is a state of a person when he attains all the layers of nature in depth. This is the feeling of a person. The fulfillment he receives at that time is called “Garden of Eden,” a “tree of good and evil” and so on.

Question: What does it mean that a woman is made of a man’s rib? Eve was made out of Adam’s rib.

Answer: A man and a woman here represent two parts of the universe. The woman is more lively, intelligent, and I would say insidious. But at the same time, she fulfills the program of creation. She pushes the man to be more active. Which, in principle, is true up to our day.

Now it is still difficult for us to understand where the role of a man is here and where the role of a woman is here. But, in principle, they are interconnected in such a way as to reveal in all the actions of nature, the force, role, plan, and purpose of the Creator.

Question: Then what is called a “rib”? What is it?

Answer: A rib is that part of the desire of a person, of a man, which can be combined with the desire of a woman and correctly coexist with her. That is the part in a man that can become the basis of a woman.

Question: When you say “man,” what do you mean?

Answer: The quality of bestowal. And a woman is the quality of reception.

Question: The last question is a serpent; what is a serpent?

Answer: A serpent is a cunning one, I would say, in which the Creator hides, through which He shows a man and a woman how compatible they can be only in a certain connection with each other. Therefore, such a connection of a man and a woman with the help of a serpent is the beginning of life.

Question: When you say “serpent,” is it a force, is it a desire? What is it?

Answer: It is the force of desire.

Question: Why is he whispering to a woman? Here he comes to her and whispers: “Come on, do the forbidden, tell him…” Why is he egging on if the Creator is within it, as you say?

Answer: Because you cannot do this in a direct way, but only through deception, as it were.

But deception is actually a holy deception. Not in the name of deceiving and stealing, profiting, taking possession of something else, and in someone else. Because the very nature of creation is false, and it is necessary to deceive it. It is necessary to bring a person from a state of evil to a state of good, so the serpent does a big serious work.

That is, our world directs to evil in order to come to evil, and here it directs to evil in order to come to good.

Comment: It means that the serpent performs a great function.

My Response: A serpent?! It is the basis of life.

But to this day we are experiencing these problems and cannot understand where this serpent is, how to pull it out of us, remove it, and how to get rid of it. It surrounds us and is inside us. It rubs with us all the time.

Question: What is the future for the serpent and for us? Is it going to whisper like that, are we going to follow it like that? Will everything keep happening like this?

Answer: No, we have to reveal the true picture of the world, and then we can correct the serpent.

Question: What is the true picture? What should we reveal?

Answer: We must all together grab this “serpent” that is between us and hold it until it agrees to work together with us, and act together with us. When it says: “I agree,” we will believe it. And the world will suddenly become different.

Question: You say: “So that it would work with us,” and then where would we come with it, all together?

Answer: To reveal the truth, which is in being in the serpent’s wisdom, but for the sake of others.

Question: What did you mean by “serpent’s wisdom”?

Answer: This is wisdom.

Question: Why did you call it the serpent’s one? It sounded very beautiful!

Answer: Because the serpent has it. It is located between all the elements of nature and is ready to connect everything in order to take the best that each part of the element of nature has for the sake of others.

Question: Is this the serpent? So, is it something high?

Answer: There is nothing higher than it.

Question: Can the serpent be called something else? We called it strength and desire. What else can you call a serpent?

Answer: It is the upper wisdom.

Question: Why is it said that “it should crawl on the ground”? When it sinned, whispered to Eve, it was told: “From now on you will not walk, you will crawl on the ground and eat dust,” and so on. Why?

Answer: Because it told the person what the cause of his suffering was, and showed the person the correct solution.

Comment: It should be praised for this, but instead…

My Response: The fact is that the serpent must. The Bible does not seem to say this, but it must tell and show a person, reveal the future to a person, that is, bring Adam and Eve to the Garden of Eden. To the same Garden of Eden in which they were born and developed, but in a corrected form.

Question: So, after everything that happened, and there was a fall into our world from this Garden of Eden, do we need to go through this world with all its suffering and wars and climb back into the Garden of Eden? Is this the work of the serpent?

Answer: Yes. Then the Garden of Eden will be revealed all over the earth. Forever.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/7/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How does one discover their true self?“

We discover our true self from within what Kabbalah calls the “point in the heart,” a tiny desire within us that attracts us upward to another realm beyond this world.

Today, we live in an era where people despair more and more from living in this world. Rising depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and drug abuse signal that more and more people wish to separate from our current sensation of life. However, at the same time, a new desire surfaces within us with a spark hope, fulfillment and vitality. This desire’s fulfillment exists in a different place to where we understand and feel our desires’ fulfillment up until today.

If we pursue the fulfillment of the point in the heart, not suppressing it but interesting ourselves in how we can exit our present state and progress upward to discover life’s source—what we live for, why we were put here to begin with, and what is the meaning of life—then such a point guides us to the revelation of our true self.

The more we seek according to the demands of the point in the heart, the more we will be led to discover the source of our existence in the upper force of nature, the force of love and bestowal, which created and sustains all life.

In other words, our true self and the upper force are one and the same. We arrived here in our world by way of descent and stemming down from that upper force, and we can ascend back to that root point of our existence via a path of ascent. The point in the heart, also called “the desire for spirituality,” is what attracts us to that exalted spiritual state.

We were all initially created in what the wisdom of Kabbalah calls “the world of Ein Sof (Infinity).” We descended into our world from the world of Ein Sof through various levels, from a lofty state of love and bestowal down into its opposite egoistic state that characterizes our world.

We exist in the world of Ein Sof in our perfect and eternal state—our soul. We were initially created in such a state, and from there, our soul—the root of each and everyone’s soul—began shrinking, gradually minimizing until we ended up in this world where only a tiny fragmented point of a desire remains in our consciousness of the great big soul we all share.

Our descent from a eternal and perfect state as a single soul into our world was intentional. From our current form of existence, we need to start developing back up to the state we were created in, and to do so by seemingly creating it by ourselves, not just by receiving it with no free choice. We will then attain a much fuller and richer sense of our state as a single soul.

In our original state, we had no real sense of that soul, no sense of life. It is because we lacked feeling the complexity and the purpose for our development. Our soul underwent shrinkage to a tiny point that exists as a small spiritual desire within us, and from the feeling of this tiny point, we can develop this desire up to a sensation of our full soul, and on our own accord.

In other words, by attaining the root of our soul—our true self—through developing and nurturing our point in the heart, we develop, sense, examine and increasingly understand that desire, all the way until becoming fulfilled through it. When we return to the world of Ein Sof, we then live to our fullest extent: in eternity and perfection.

That is our true self, and it is what we have to attain.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this state is called “the attainment of adhesion with the Creator,” and it is considered the purpose of our lives, the reason for our creation in the first place. The Creator is the force of love and bestowal that becomes revealed within us, and which fulfills us completely, in such a state. In Hebrew, the word for Creator (“Boreh”) comes from two words “come” and “see” (“Bo” and “Reh”), i.e., “come and see” that you receive every goodness and delight there is to receive in existence.

[317530]
Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 18, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Who is spiritual?“

One is spiritual when one is above our world.

“Our world” is the egoistic desire that constantly calculates self-benefit at the expense of others and nature. If we aim ourselves outwardly in order to bestow contentment upon others and nature, when the outcomes of our acts are unrelated to those who perform them—even indirectly—then we are considered spiritual.

In other words, being spiritual means attaining an intention to bestow to others and nature above our inborn desires to enjoy ourselves alone. With such attainment, we come to sense our eternal and perfect existence as a single soul, i.e., as a great desire that wishes to enjoy through the intention to bestow to the upper force of bestowal that creates and sustains life.

Such an existence is above time, space and motion. It is in no way linked to the sensation of the animate body, but is rather felt in a new inner space in our senses, in an intention to bestow that we develop and attain.

Based on the book The Kabbalah Experience, Ch. 11 – Concepts in Kabbalah by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: If it weren’t for your explanation of Kabbalah, I would never even want to hear what it is. But when faced with your explanations, I felt that there is truth behind it. Usually, this feeling holds you for a while, and then gradually goes away. And you are left alone with a lot of criticism. What should a person do in this case?

Answer: I do not care about lulling a person, appeasing, calming, or giving him the strength to resist those criticisms that begin to brainwash him as if sympathizing with where he, the unfortunate, has ended up, and so on. I am not interested in that! This is the fate of man, he must cope with it himself or he will not become a Man!

I am not going to come to anyone’s aid! I am being completely serious. Not because I am indifferent to the fate of a person but because he will otherwise not survive! It is necessary to push the little chick so that it flies. There must be a push! There is no escape from this.

This will only make you stronger! Only in the fight! In no case should this opportunity be taken away from a person. That is why I never help anyone! I watch with compassion how one suffers and how he cannot find himself!

I remember how once, emotionally I said to my teacher with pain: “Well, help me!” And he grinned right in my face. I was ready to tear him to pieces! I was in such a terrible inner state that I could not see day and night. I was tormented, boiling, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, I could not see anyone, I ate myself up. I had such inner experiences, searches, misunderstandings, malfunctions, that death is better than such a life!

And my teacher, who, in principle, was to blame for the fact that I felt this way, grinned and did not even help! In anything! He only said: “It is okay. A little more, a little more. It will pass.” What “will pass”? And so on for months and months.

It is a very complex process when a person acquires the quality of another world and accommodates two worlds: the material world, acting under the egoistic force of reception, and the altruistic world, acting under the force of bestowal. These are completely different, opposite, contradictory worlds! At the beginning of the journey they are not connected to each other. A person is either in this or that half. And only then can he build a middle line.

It is in such a struggle, confusion, and clarification that a person consisting of two parts of the world is born.

But this is not an endless process. For each degree there are a certain number of states that we must go through. This is our evolution. This is the only way we can develop. In fact, this is a wonderful way of development!
[317192]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Insurmountable Criticism” 9/3/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the best way to make a wish come true?“

First, you should have a great desire for your wish to come true.

Also, you should examine whether your desire aligns with—or is in contradiction with—the developmental course of nature, which leads everyone and everything to higher states of connection.

After such an examination, you should find and surround yourself with people who also wish to achieve a state of positive connection. You will then gain an understanding of how to advance to your desired result of a harmonious and peaceful connection with others and nature.

Based on “Kabbalah in the Modern Turbulent World” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: There is the phenomenon of cryptocurrencies of late. This is not ordinary paper money, but some informational data, which today is increasingly capturing all areas of monetary relations. It can already be used to pay in stores and online.

What is this phenomenon? Previously, money was just gold and silver, which were accepted all over the world. Now, instead of money, some data appears. Why do people come more and more to this type of money?

Answer: Cryptocurrency is more convenient. I do not have to carry a bag of money anywhere, my pocket does not tear from gold coins, they cannot steal my checkbook, and so on. All this is much more reliable.

Of course, along with this, there are inconveniences of how to store it, how to write out checks, how to do something else, and so on, but in general this is progress. It will continue, we cannot do anything with this. I think that no one can interfere with the development of cryptocurrencies.

Question: But here countries are faced with a problem because they cannot regulate cryptocurrencies, since in this case, the money is sort of above the country. This is a kind of distributed value, which is managed from a huge number of devices that are not tied to the country. Why is money rising above state power?

Answer: Because countries as such should have been liquidated long ago, there is no point in their existence. People should be outside the countries and communicate freely with one single currency—a gold coin, or not even a gold, does not matter what it will be. That is how things should be.
[316986]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the modern turbulent world” 8/3/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s the difference between mind and thought?“

Thoughts are nonexistent in and of themselves. Rather, they occur in the mind.

The mind derives from desires.

Our desires derive from the desire that exists in nature.

The desire that exists in nature derives from the intention that exists in nature.

Such a chain manifests in us in order to create desires. Accordingly, desires surface thoughts, and thoughts weave together the mind.

When a certain network of thoughts forms within us, which we can own and operate, we can then evaluate our desires—the influences from nature—and try to connect our mind with nature’s mind, and our desires with nature’s desires.

Desires are primary, and the mind serves them. It turns out that the size and versatility of our desires corresponds to the size of our mind that tries to serve and satisfy them.

Based on a Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on January 15, 2017. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Anthony Tori on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What determines a good goal?“

A good goal is one that is set for the benefit of all people and not just for one person or a single group.

Secondly, a good goal needs to cause no irreparable harm to nature in the process.

These two rules are essentially complex and they encompass a lot.

Based on “Kabbalah Express” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 31, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Can birth rates be regulated?

Answer: Birth rates can be controlled with the help of money and housing. If young couples are provided with conditions such as money and living space, then, I think, this can increase the birth rate. But these are huge public expenditures.

Question: You once said that there is a certain global plan in increasing or decreasing the birth rate with the help of which a correction is made. What is the meaning of this process from the point of view of Kabbalah, from the point of view of a common desire?

Answer: Of course, this refers to adopting a certain general plan for the movement of mankind to a certain limit.

But I do not think that we can talk about it now because we are still in an absolutely imperfect state. First, we need to solve a lot of problems, and only then, when we see what a family can be, what a person, children, and so on can be, will we be able to solve questions about the reproduction of generations.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the modern turbulent world” 8/3/23

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Dear Michael Laitman,

You have been a replacement for me for radio and TV for a long time. I have been with you for three years. I want to ask a question, Where do desires come from?

Moreover, such desires are shameful to admit. And sometimes you cannot get rid of them. They were not in me, generally, I have a completely different character. Please tell me how to deal with such desires that are not good? 

Answer: I do not know what “bad desires” means.

Comment: A person is somehow uncomfortable with the desires that suddenly arise in him.

My Response: Well, desires arise. Man is a complex animal after all. He consists of an animal part, a human part, and possibly a spiritual part.

Question: Meaning, desires from all degrees come to him?

Answer: Yes. So there is nothing to worry about. All desires have the right to be revealed and to exist in a person.

Question: Any desire?

Answer: Absolutely any. And a person can have all kinds of relationships to this.

Question: What does one need to do if bad desires arise, even those that shake a person?

Answer: I see. What to do? Shake yourself, shake them off, and continue to exist. You need to engage in something else, and then the desire will change.

Comment: Please answer the question “where do they come from and why?”

My Response: From above! Why? In order for a person to develop. In order to develop him.

Question: When you say “develop,” what does it mean? So that some specific desires arise in him?

Answer: Desires, emotions, intentions, and so on, such that will match the more developed person that he will become.

Question: You said “from above.” Is there a bank of desires that one needs to go through?

Answer: Yes. There is a bank of desires that we have to go through, each of us and all of us together.

Question: And when this bank is emptied, desires pass, what happens next? When all the desires have already passed through me, what does it mean?

Answer: The end of the world. We have worked out all our desires and are at rest.

Question: The end of the world, what is that in your opinion?

Answer: The end of the world means that there is no one to live onward, there is no need, and there is no goal.

Question: So I will not be coming back here?

Answer: No.

Question: Where will I end up? This world has ended. Where do I end up?

Answer: In the next world.

Question: And what is there in the next world?

Answer: Happiness, peace, and all good things are waiting for you in the next world.

Question: I already like this. That is, in principle, this whole chain of desires should lead me to the world where there is happiness, peace, everything?

Answer: Yes.

Question: How should I work out these desires in order to come to this peace and happiness?

Answer: You will come to it anyway. So, do not worry. The only thing you need is to agree that you will be brought there. And therefore, in accordance with this, live calmly, breathe calmly, and be peaceful toward the upper force that will lead you there.
[316377]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/20/23

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