Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there any purpose in life?“

The purpose of life is to rise above our inborn animal level of existence to the human one, where we realize our positive connection to each other and to nature, and where we can properly discern between good and evil, and exercise our free choice to choose good.

In such a context, “good” means closeness among each other and with nature’s force of love and bestowal, while “evil” means anything that distances us from achieving that closeness.

When we exercise our free choice to rise above our animal level of existence in this way, and enter into our next state of development, we will then experience perfection: a world full of people who understand and feel that they live in an interconnected and interdependent system. In such a state, we all share a harmonious connection and clearly perceive how the upper positive force of nature acts on us.

We then each become willing to be humanity’s representatives, including everyone within ourselves, caring for them and connecting them to the positive force that dwells in nature, sharing a common experience of perfection, harmony and peace.

Based on the video “What Does it Mean to Exercise Our Free Will?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: According to statistics, the level of cardiovascular diseases in single people is much higher than in those who are connected by some kind of good ties with others. The same goes for stress. There are a lot of psychosomatic diseases that are associated with loneliness. Why do people choose to live alone anyway?

Answer: Because it seems to them that such a life can be calmer. In the morning I get up, take a shower, make myself a coffee, go to work, come home from work—everything is normal, fine. I can have lunch at work, watch TV after work, or go to the cinema.

But the fact is that we are not created to be alone. After all, we were created to live in a family. And a family is at least one more person. And here, we cannot escape from ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the modern turbulent world” 8/3/23

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Question: What is this inner human need a person has for someone else to live next to him? It is not just the satisfaction of some material needs, for example, food or laundry. What is there in this that a person may not notice?

Answer: We are created like this. In principle, nature had some kind of purpose, in which both the male and female parts of man existed together. Then this purpose became split into separate parts: male and female. Therefore, we still need the female part because it cannot be together with the male in the same body. That is the way we exist. Not only we, but also inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature are built on the same principle.

Question: In Kabbalah, we study that a man must necessarily have a female part next to him. Previously, Kabbalists did not allow a man to study at all if he was not married. Why were there such restrictions?

Answer: If a man is not married, then, according to Kabbalah, he is considered an incomplete person. That is, he has no expression through the female part, through the female side. A woman cannot help him in his spiritual advancement.

And it is all the more important for a woman to have a man because without a man she cannot advance spiritually.

In principle, we can say that they are in the same condition: they are necessary for each other precisely for spiritual advancement, so that by yielding to and understanding each other, they could correct themselves.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the modern turbulent world” 8/3/23

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Comment: When you started teaching, you taught your students pure Kabbalah without any examples. But in recent years, it seems like you have moved in a direction that is pro-political.

My Response: No, it has nothing to do with politics. To me talking to socialists, liberals, democrats, or anyone else is all the same. These are little human toys.

I tell them how they should use the current state of nature, which they are completely powerless against and do not understand, and that they must acquire a completely different approach to life in this world. What difference does it make to me who they are? It is not politics. Politics is if I stand between them. But I do not get involved in that!

Maybe it looks that way because people are used to calling anyone who talks about the state of the world and society a politician.

But I am definitely not a politician. To me, they are all absolutely the same! Lost sheep who have always acted according to their egoism. And today, they are not able to govern our world because another additional force has emerged in the world—the altruistic force. So, something must be done. So I explain to them how.

I simply talk about what I see in the world without leaning toward one side or another or a third. Absolutely! Because no one will solve anything in this anyway. The solution can only come through correcting our attitude toward the world, toward nature.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalah, Politics and Religion” 9/3/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should I do to be at peace?“

We can achieve peace by raising ourselves to become human in the fullest sense of the term. The word for “human” in Hebrew is “Adam,” and it stems from the same linguistic root as the word for “similar” (“Domeh”). It means that a human being is one who is similar to the upper force of love and bestowal.

We are born in our world opposite to that state, as egoists who prioritize self-benefit at the expense of others and nature. The more we develop and grow as egoists, the more we deviate from balance with nature, the upper force of love and bestowal. That is the cause of every problem and crisis we experience in our lives.

Achieving peace thus involves transforming ourselves from being opposite to the upper force to becoming similar to it, i.e., to becoming a human being, “Adam.” By undergoing this transformation, we then calm down the system of nature we exist in, and our problems accordingly disappear.

Outside of our egoistic approach to reality, nature is at peace, balancing between plus and minus, harming and good-doers, and through those two forces, we create a balance between them.

If we wish to use both forces to come closer to each other and to the upper force of love and bestowal, we will then discover how the world we live in is indeed peaceful. It is all up to a shift in our attitude to each other.

Based on the video “How to Be at Peace” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Throughout the world today, especially in Western Europe, more and more apartments are being built that are designed for one person. People are less willing to burden themselves with a relationship with someone, and instead are planning their lives alone. Why is this happening?

Answer: First, it is because we can afford to provide ourselves with food, groceries, services, laundry, etc., and be our own bosses.

When living with someone else and constantly feeling that next to you is someone who limits you is not for everyone. Only if a person has some special relationship with another person, can he endure him, sacrifice himself, and limit himself in order to give him room.

But today, people are not entirely ready for this. Why should I squeeze myself into the corner of my own apartment in order to make room for another? I must clearly imagine what I can get from this and why it is more convenient for me, and so on.

When people had problems buying food, cooking, cooling, or heating, especially if they had a child, they made compromises. A modern person, however, can provide himself with everything necessary.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the Modern Turbulent World” 8/3/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do natural disasters help bring people together?“

We see people coming together and helping each other out more during crises. Nature sends such situations precisely in order for us to wake up to our connection, and to the idea that we need to consider the benefit of others as our own benefit.

Nature is a live system. It is round, connected from beginning to end and vice versa. In other words, it is an integral system, which is in a constant reciprocal connection.

When we change our attitudes to each other, we accordingly change the way the system of nature relates to us. If we relate positively to each other, we then feel nature’s influence on us as harmonious and peaceful. In other words, nature influences us the way we influence it through our attitudes to each other.

Therefore, when we change our attitudes to nature on the human or social level, even though nature seemingly influences us on the biological level, then our response on the human or social level influences the entire system of nature. The way we then feel nature on the biological level also changes to one that feels harmonious and peaceful.

Based on the video, “Why People Help Each Other During Times of Crisis [The Core Reason]” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Saikiran Kesari on Unsplash.
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Comment: From a letter:
Dear Michael Laitman, I am asking for your advice. We raised our children, gave them everything, and they disappeared and do not even call. They are not in our life. My husband started developing dementia. I take care of him by myself, I literally fall down  from exhaustion. I have no strength anymore. Our children are gone, our children have abandoned us.

Why are they so ungrateful? What did we do wrong? Why couldn’t we instill some basic respect for us in them?

My Response: We are not talking about basic respect. Maybe children are somewhere far away, busy with something, they have families, they have everything. But old people demand care and attention. I mean, I understand both parents and children.

The modern world is not made in such a way that we live together as several generations under one roof. Even children do not get attention, let alone the elderly. I do not expect anything else from the world. In no way.

Perhaps it will happen so that people will work half a day, and they will have a lot of time and will really devote part of it to parents, part to children, and part to themselves.

Question: Are you saying that we need to understand our children who are distancing from us with their families?

Answer: We ourselves have prepared such a life for them.

Comment: But this is not exactly how we lived; I remember that.

My Response: We did not live like that because we were in a different world.

Comment: By the way, you yourself have always said that it is good when three generations live together.

My Response: It was so, but now it is impossible. So, let’s stop talking about fantasies.

Question: Then the question about the future is: what will we come to in this way?

Answer: We will come to the point that we will have to really rebuild this world in order to make it more human.

Comment: You are still in favor of these good human relations one way or another.

My Response: Everyone should understand what they have to create, what kind of world they want to see. But, of course, this will not happen today or tomorrow yet.

Question: What should enter a person? What kind of world should he want to create?

Answer: A person must be imbued with desire, compassion, love, and concern about others. About others in general and not only about their relatives.

When he understands this whole system we all have to participate in, then together with others, with strangers, he will be able to create such systems of interaction, support for infants, children, youth, and so on, up to the elderly and all others where everyone feels good.

Question: You have just said a key phrase. You said that a person should understand in general this system in which we exist. Then will everything start falling into place for him?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Comment: This is the most important moment! We do not understand this strategically.

My Response: No, we cannot depict this picture for ourselves.

Comment: We can say that the world is interconnected, but we do not imagine this picture. But the world is like that.

My Response: The world is like that.

Comment: And these connections are good ones.

My Response: These connections are good, and they do not end in this world! They continue in the next world! Therefore, in addition, we must understand where we are and how we are included in each other, where such a combinatoric takes place between us that we cannot escape anywhere, we need to have a good attitude to each other all the time.

Question: I am leaving and coming back, I am leaving again and I am coming back. Does all this take place in this system?

Answer: Yes, everything is in this system. This is called that there is no death, as it were,  and everything is infinity.

Comment: This is beautiful! I wish people would understand this!

My Response: There is no need, this is very hard.

Question: But will we come to this understanding?

Answer: Yes. But we have to be ready for it, and on the other hand, we have to be ready to do it and understand that it will be better for us. We should not look at it as a huge responsibility.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/31/23

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do conspiracy theorists come up with new conspiracy theories?“

We come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories primarily because we do not know where we live, why we are alive, where we are headed, and what is good and bad for us.

We are confused. We can think of ourselves like little children who were placed into an open store, and who then play with all kinds of objects in that store, running around and bumping into all sorts of things, but who have no clue as to why they were placed there to begin with, and what the store’s rules are in order for everyone to enjoy themselves optimally.

That is how we are in our world. Therefore, if something significant and extraordinary happens to us here, we start examining the phenomena from several different angles: Who caused it? Who benefits from it? We start looking for who to blame.

Ultimately, we cause our every misfortune, but it is not as all kinds of conspiracy theorists emphasize, that there are certain people acting in a goal-oriented manner. We can think about it similarly to a volcanic eruption, a tsunami or a hurricane: we might have caused such phenomena indirectly, but not on purpose.

No matter how rich or powerful certain people are, they cannot change humanity’s fate. It is because nature is the general collective force and it includes and sustains each particular and individual force within itself. It rules over everyone and everything, and it does not let any one person or group of people move anything even one millimeter in any direction.

If there are any individual forces that wish to break out and take control, nature simply does not let them. Every person is a small part, an individual aspect, of a general system that is governed solely by the force of nature. Therefore, the ultimate conspirator is nature itself, which governs everyone and everything according to its higher plan—”higher” because it is beyond our minds to comprehend.

Based on the video “Why Do We Conjure Up All Kinds of Conspiracy Theories?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Question: The Japanese art of Kintsugi means golden joinery. It is the restoration of ceramic vessels using adhesive sap of the lacquer tree. Masters repair a broken jar and glue it together. Moreover, they do not just glue, but reveal cracks with gold paint, thereby showing the need for gluing.

Is it important to be able to glue things together?

Answer: In general, yes. If you know exactly their future purpose and evaluate them correctly, then gluing is a great correction.

Question: In Kabbalah we study the process of shattering and the need for correction through connection. Now we live in a society in which people practically do not fix anything: they buy something, use it, and throw it away. How important is it to be able to fix things, fix relationships, and fix lives?

Answer: I think, it is necessary. Man is a creature that doubts all the time, makes mistakes, and is willing to perform more and more new actions. Therefore, he must understand that besides the fact that good impulses are destined for us, we must be aware of them, check them, and try to correct them.

Question: Why glue at all? After all, you can find something new, some new vessel, a new occupation, a new thing.

Answer: No, there are things that are very dear to us, and we want them to be preserved. We want to deal with restored old things. Then the corrected thing becomes even more precious than something new or whole.

We see the same thing in our history, in nature, and in technology. Many things in nature break, and we glue them together, connect them, and give them new meaning, a new life. They serve us, and we love them despite the fact that they could have disappeared long ago, having served their time.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah in the Modern Turbulent World” 8/3/23

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