Entries in the 'Q&A' Category

Sphere Made Of Points

Dr. Michael Laitman with StudentsQuestion: Why do such notions as unity and mutual guarantee seem to us as flat and lacking any volume?

Answer: This is incorrect. Unity and mutual guarantee are corrections which connect us within the system. They contain Partzufim and Sefirot, worlds and Lights, but we do not see them.

For example, what does unity mean? We are opposite, repelling and hating one another, but we have to rise above our desire and unite in similarity, pushing away our differences. Every one of us has a point which is capable of uniting with others. We connect these points and try to increase their quantity and quality.

In this process we annul ourselves and above it, we reveal our connection and mutual guarantee. We want to create space between these points, but by what means? We create that space by adding Aviut (coarseness) to them because there should be something from Pharaoh.

We treat desires of the still, vegetative, and animate levels as a kind of necessity, but we work with the rest of the desires by connecting them with the points. Being connected with the points, these desires pass Aviut to them and create a place where the revelation occurs.

Then, desires which oppose unity increase, and this causes friction and arguments between the points. Some of them do not want to be together, and others attempt to take control. We have to work with these desires. At first, we have to restrict them, but later, we have to attach them to the points.

Then, the work in three lines begins. We constantly reinforce our unity and, together, we build a place where the system of the worlds and the Creator become revealed. Hence, on top of that dimension, the notions of unity and mutual guarantee include the entire reality, including this world.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/2010, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Making The Creator Happy

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can we do now to make the Creator happy?

Answer: Everything I do in the aspiration to unite with others in order to thereby give the Creator an opportunity to bestow to us—all of that means giving Him pleasure, even if I still haven’t attained the kind of unity inside of which He could bring His abundance.

Unification has to be total. Our Kli divides into five parts, and into five more, and so on until the 125th part. This is the smallest degree of unity between everyone, and it is already sufficient in order for the Creator to give us the corresponding dose of His Light, which we will feel.

Therefore, our entire work lies in preparing the Kli, the vessel in the unification among us. We shouldn’t work in relation to the Creator, but among us aspiring toward Him. Unlike Soviet Russia, we don’t unite for the sake of ourselves, but in order to give the Creator an opportunity to bestow to us. Then Israel, the Torah, and the Creator will really be one.

And that is enough. We work among us, keeping an intention to benefit the Creator, in order to prepare the vessels for His bestowal.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, Writings of Rabash

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When I Feel Bad

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Do I have to look for suffering on the spiritual path, or on the contrary, avoid it?

Answer: You should never think about suffering. If a person feels suffering, he has to know that to the degree he feels the bad sensations, he is being controlled by impurity, Klipa.

That’s because suffering does not come from the Creator. He is good and does good. Everything I feel comes from Him, even though it seems to me that I am being influenced from different directions. Thus, if my sensations are opposite to goodness, if they are unpleasant and bad, that means I am ruled by Klipa, egoistic desire, to the same measure. It neutralizes the Creator’s good influence, turning it from Light to darkness. That is why I feel bad.

Thus, the bad sensation is meant to show me how much I am immersed in evil. This has to push me to turn my sensation to goodness. And if I am in the right environment, then I can immediately achieve this. The group’s support prompts me to immediately change the bad sensation to a good one.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, Writings of Rabash

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May The Creator Hear Your Plea!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Does the Creator hear the plea of a person who is asking to raise him to the next degree because he wants to avoid pain?

Answer: Certainly! The Creator hears any prayer. Just ask! But don’t bother Him on trifles as the regular "folks on the street" do. We see that those prayers remained unanswered: People have been begging in vain for millennia.

However, if you wish to rise to the next degree from your present egoistic state, from your egoistic will to enjoy, from all the conditions set for you by the Creator, which are not up to you, and you beg to ascend, the Creator immediately hears and gradually transforms you.

Obviously, you beg from your egoistic desire in an attempt to escape suffering, have power, be recognized, and so on. Yet it doesn’t matter what goals you place before yourself. If you always ask for a higher spiritual degree and visualize it in your mind, in your egoistic desire, in a certain albeit false way for now, then it is called “Lo Lishma (not for Her name),” and thereby you advance.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Calculate Your Faith

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: There are two principles: “faith above reason” and “judge only according to what you see.” Don’t they contradict each other?

Answer: A person only needs to judge according to what he sees. This means that I must check everything in accordance with criteria subject to verification and analysis.

Faith above reason is a degree of bestowal, which I precisely measure over my receiving desires. To believe above reason does not mean to have my head in the clouds. We measure and organize the quality of faith according to the property of reception being revealed. In my effort to rise above it, I make precise measurements; this is my only accurate test. And then, I acquire faith above reason to the extent of my success with turning reception into bestowal.

Suppose that I checked and calculated that I am able to turn 20% of my receiving Kli (vessel, desire) into bestowal. I perform a restriction over the entire 100% of my Kli, and I’m only able to utilize 20% from reception into bestowal. Thus, I precisely verify and calculate this action.

Knowledge helps construct faith above reason. And this is why there can be nothing unmeasured in it, nothing unseen by me, which would prevent me from making a precise judgment.

We simply do not understand that the property of bestowal can only appear from opposites. The receiving vessels turn into bestowal through very diligent work and meticulously regulated, specific efforts. Moreover, measurements here are even more precise than in the actual vessels. This is because I measure and test their resistance, which costs me a lot of effort.

When doing this, my efforts are 620 times more precise than when receiving. When I receive, I simply “open my mouth,” but in order to bestow, I need to check my desire and the desire of another, compare all the data, and perform many different actions.

This is specifically why the property of bestowal represents the limit of accuracy, whereas the property of reception exists without any control in us and is left to its own devices.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishvat”

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Patience Is Perseverance

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is there a margin when patience on the spiritual path begins to cause harm?

Answer: “Patience” does not mean that I sit and let the grass grow under my feet. It is written: “A fool sits on his hands and eats his heart out.” “Patience” means that I constantly, non-stop, try to attain unity.

I keep discovering time after time that I am very far from it, and I keep trying. I fall off again, and once again I return to the path; I keep climbing the mountain as I am being pushed down, over and over again. The higher I get, the less merciful the “guards” become, but I still do not give up.

I only care for my perseverance: I persistently perform a correct evaluation of my actions; I persistently grab on to the goal every second; I am adamant in my decision to attain it. I have nothing in life but this.

And as a consequence of my perseverance, my comprehension of evil and good, my understanding of the purpose of creation constantly changes. I keep getting inspired, as I keep revealing something new in it. Whatever I saw yesterday as bestowal, the Creator, and the evil today acquire new, completely different shapes. In this way, perseverance constantly renews my inner definitions, my connection.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishvat”

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Behind The Words Of The Zohar

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When The Zohar speaks about man, does it refer to the desires?

Answer: According to The Zohar, “man” is a property similar to the Creator. Clearly, this only refers to the desires. This is because the image of man standing before us does not exist in reality. This is a trick of the imagination.

Let’s say that you see an image on the computer screen. Does it exist in reality? Something exists in the computer’s memory, and all the actions happen there. But in order for you to see what happens in the memory (which is there only for your knowledge and for the connection with you), there is a screen where you see a certain demonstration of something that exists in the memory. But the actual original image is there, inside, in the form of electric signals, forces that exist in different combinations with each other.

You see the external symbols of these combinations which are very limited and strictly specific because you are unable to perceive them otherwise. After all, you cannot live in a computer’s memory, understand, and see whatever exists there.

It is the same with The Zohar. Its authors convey to us a certain spiritual impression, which at this point we are able to hear only externally, imagining it somehow in our uncorrected, limited perception. But this vision has nothing to do with the actual spiritual image, concealed on the inside, behind the external forms of the letters, words, and images, which arise in your imagination. The authors of The Zohar have something completely different in mind.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Working Between Plus And Minus, Love And Hate

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean to realize the informational genes, the Reshimot, within the group?

Answer: There is no other type of realization of each person’s Reshimot except by completing his engagement in the group to the absolute state of perfection. This is how Reshimot are actualized.

The group is the only place and way to realize them: I must enter the group with all the desires, properties, and informational data unfolding in me, and until I start seeing it as perfect, under all of its conditions, I cannot say that I have realized a particular Reshimo.

The moment I see all the friends as perfect, that is, connected, bonded, and loving (according to my degree), it means I have finished processing a given Reshimo and have realized it completely. And immediately the next step unfolds before me: as hatred, rejection, envy, lust, and ambition.

Now, yet again, I must bring my present condition to perfection. This is the only way I can actualize my Reshimot and achieve a complete state, a state when there are no more Reshimot which I need to correct with love of others and bring to eternal wholeness and perfection.

And at each more exalted rung, you are definitely going to face greater hatred and rejection, calculations you can’t avoid. You are led by an endless flood of hate and egoistic calculations involving others, while thinking only about how to deceive, take advantage, and place yourself above them.

You think about it every instant until your head cracks. And if you are also arranging a plan to carry it out, you break your heart as well. And then you understand that you can work only in the group. A person is cast into such states when all the problems are focused around only this. This is the way it is until the very end of correction (Gmar Tikkun).

These calculations are not going to leave you alone; they look like some kind of nonsense, and you think you’re done with it. But in an instant, they re-appear all over again! And it keeps repeating time after time, without an end! All we can do is exercise patience and keep returning to the same thing endlessly, until the breakthrough finally occurs.

Rabash used to share how a physician prohibited him from drinking whiskey, but he would soak a piece of pie in it and little by little ate it. It looked like he was eating a pie, while there was less and less whiskey in his glass.

We are unable to receive the Light of Hochma (Wisdom): We can only keep absorbing it in our desire drop by drop, until after an enormous number of actions we absorb all of it. How does a computer work? It doesn’t understand anything but “0” and “1,” while everything else is done through multiple actions.

This is how all of nature is structured: quantum physics, chemistry, and other sciences. There is nothing but “plus,” “minus,” and a tremendous number of acts. The whole trick lies in this multiplying of actions. Each action, no matter what equation it is defined by, comes down to “plus” and “minus,” connection and separation.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is an unfolding Reshimo (a informational gene or record)? What exactly gets revealed to us?

Answer: It is impossible to explain because a Reshimo is a complete picture of the future which unfolds within me. At the end of this entire chain of Reshimot, there is my one last Reshimo that represents the world of Infinity.

Now, one of these states leading me on this path to the world of Infinity is becoming revealed. It is programmed with all the data except my mandatory effort and the screen. When I supply them, this Reshimo becomes realized and transforms into the true picture of reality.

Since this Reshimo includes in itself the entire picture of reality except for my own effort and my
anti-egoistic screen, it turns out that the Creator, who exposes a desire for my participation in this Reshimo, conceals Himself in it. It’s as if He is showing me a picture of reality with unfilled, left out intervals, in which I have to complete Him with my participation.

I cannot actualize a Reshimo in one go; it requires a number of actions, quite a lot at times. In the end, I must completely reveal the degree of similarity and lack of correspondence between us. Therefore, a Reshimo is structured and unfolds in such way as to not just bring me to the completion of this picture; it also must supply me with what I lack.

While I fill in the picture, I add all of the Creator to the point that has initially unfolded in me. After all, our goal at each rung is to become equal to the Creator.

I realize my Reshimo as though I am working and filling in something within me. Thereby, I elevate (fulfill) myself to the level of the Creator at my present degree. It is a multifaceted process that eventually leads me to perfection.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011,  “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Moments Of Truth

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do I thank the Creator for small spiritual revelations?

Answer: They immediately gain great value in a person since this has never happened to him. Never before have I valued rising above myself, but now I feel that I have risen above my egoism and view this as a real treasure.

Where does this attitude come from? From the Light. Obviously, it’s not me who makes the correct analysis. By the nature of things, while experiencing an ascent, I prefer to adhere to the truth.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, Writings of Rabash

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