Entries in the 'Q&A' Category

The Desire the Creator Is Revealed In

243.04Question: You speak with great confidence about things that are clear to you. But why do we have such a veil over our eyes? Why are we unable to hear?

Answer: Because you are not on yet at this level of the desire’s development. Right now, you are like a small child who looks at a grown-up and does not understand what he wants from him.

Suppose there is a desire in you that we will designate as circle A. And within me is also a desire that we will designate as circle B. These two circles must be aligned with each other so that a shared segment is formed between them.

This common segment is the overlapping parts of your circle and mine; its nature must be such that I do not perceive myself and you within in and you do not perceive yourself and me; rather, we perceive a third entity, something shared, detached from our other desires, which we are unable to connect with one another in this way.

This is a desire of the next level. It is above than our current other desires. Through it I can enter into the other person. That is, the common segment, detached from our individual selves and representing the place where we exists within one another, is precisely that field, that desire, in which the Creator is revealed.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Klipa” 10/9/10

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The Third Force

232.09Question: You once said that a Jew and a Roman are simply two forces trying to clarify the third force. That is, they develop not without purpose. Is the third force born independently or from these two?

Answer: The third force is intermediary between them, which we must now restore and bring into existence.

Everything that has happened up to this moment has only been preparation for what we must do now: correct the world. Not the Jews and not the other nations, but specifically us, which we do by taking Kabbalah as the source of correction.

Question: Does this third force already exist or do we simply not perceive it?

Answer: We must create this third force together because it does not exist; it does not descend from above. Only two forces come from above: the force of the Creator and the force of creation, the property of bestowal and the property of reception.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Truth About Reality” 10/8/10

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Write It Down and Burn It

294.4Question: You gave someone a hand, helped an elderly woman get off the bus; in your opinion, these are not good deeds?

Answer: And you live with the feeling that you are accumulating good deeds for the future.

Question: Still, these are good deeds, are they not?

Answer: No, you do this only for yourself. Remove your personal benefit from it, and you will disregard it all and do nothing.

Question: Then how should I live? By what should I measure my steps?

Answer: If you do not overcome your egoism and do not perform actions against it, then you will not perform a good deed. It will be sold in advance.

Question: Does it mean that I am bribed all the time?

Answer: Yes. If a person imagines that he is performing the very best deeds from which he will later receive some benefit, then it is all a failure in advance.

Question: Then with what intention should I act?

Answer: Expect absolutely nothing in return.

Question: That I will receive nothing for it, no benefit?

Answer: No benefit at all. There will be benefits for the world and for people, but nothing for me. As if no one knows about it, and no one will ever know.

Comment: That is, my name is nowhere; it is not carved in stone, nor mentioned in captions. It is nowhere.

My Response: No.

Question: So, I did something, and that is all?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Now people in the arts (and not only in the arts) will collapse when they hear this. Do you understand? The entire copyright system is built on “this is my music, this is my creation; if you use it, you must pay,” and so on. The whole world is built on this! And we are going against the world.

My Response: Yes. You may write it down in a notebook only for yourself and then burn it. But even in such actions, when a person thinks about what he will gain from it, as if saving up for a rainy day, it is still good if he acts this way.

In fact, it does not give him any real benefit, but it is still good. There will be less evil in the world because of it. And good deeds will begin from a higher threshold, from a higher degree.

Comment: And these deeds, when a person truly says to himself, “Did I do a good deed? No matter whether I will get to heaven because of it or not, I simply do a good deed”.

My Response: He raises himself to a higher level, and from there he must begin to work.

Question: You know, we have now saved the world. Because the world looked at this and said: “This is impossible to achieve—faith above reason.” But you have now added such a step: do these deeds anyway. They will not yet be good deeds, but will they be a step toward good deeds?

Answer: Yes. And then a person must get used to performing such actions not for himself, but for the world. And here his soul begins to reveal itself to the world.

Question: What is this space called “the soul”? You said “reveals itself.” What kind of space is that?

Answer: It is an absolutely empty space that a person must fill with his desire.

Question: Toward the world? From himself? And nothing for himself?

Answer: Nothing.

Question: Is this the degree to which humanity is heading?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And can it reach it?

Answer: Of course.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 2/12/26

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Like a Small One Next to a Great One

963.5Comment: It sometimes happens that a person at the initial stage of studying Kabbalah has questions for you, and even though he does not ask them, he feels that he is receiving answers from you.

My Response: Of course. In general, people who are near me say: “Our questions disappear.” This is natural. Because when they are near, they include themselves in me like a small one beside the great, and then they feel safe, as if in some kind of shelter, and no questions arise for them. Indeed, that is so.

Question: Do you fulfill the person?

Answer: I do not fulfill them. Rather, they fill themselves with the fact that they are attached to me and feel me. Thus, he slightly feels that inner balance, calmness, and fullness that exist in me.

And although I myself am in a certain internal restlessness, on his level and even a few levels above, I am in a completely resolved, calm state.

He does not perceive my higher level but the one at which he interacts with me, like a child with parents. Parents have problems and concerns, but next to them, the child feels calm. He does not feel the level of their restlessness, but feels on an animate level that they are guarantors of his balance and security.

Comment: And then he goes out into the world and is surprised that it is not at all as he thought.

My Response: Yes, naturally. But still, this is good for advancement. I remember my states next to my teacher when you are in a state of absolute perfection and utter tranquility, yet you are compelled to  cultivate needs and desires for spiritual development within yourself.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Difficulties of Translation” 9/12/10

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The Creator’s Work: Desire – Intention – Action

284Comment: I keep getting confused between desire, intention, and action.  I cannot properly tune myself to any one of them, nor to all of them together.

My Response: I will try to explain it sequentially and concisely.

The Goal: The most important thing in a person’s life is to attain the purpose of life (of creation), which is complete adhesion with the Creator. This must become the result of all one’s efforts in life.

The Means to Achieve the Goal: Adhesion with the Creator is achieved by similarity of form. But the Creator is the desire to bestow and a human being is the desire to receive. Therefore, similarity is not achieved through similarity of desires, but through similarity of intention—with what intention I use my desire.

We will always remain opposite in our desires: The Creator desires to give, and we desire to receive. Otherwise, we would not exist as entities distinct from Him.

Since we are created from the desire to enjoy, we can attain similarity with the Creator only by changing, not the desire itself, but the intention—the purpose for which we use the desire.

Thus, our work is only on the intention, and we join the desire to it to the extent that the correct intention “for the sake of the Creator” allows.

Restriction of Desire (Tzimtzum): Therefore, we must acquire the inner strength to use the desire from zero and upward, only in proportion to the correct intention “for the sake of the Creator” (in bestowal and love).

This means that initially, we must gain control over all desires, impose a restriction on them (Tzimtzum, Tzimtzum Aleph, the first restriction), and then use each desire only partially to the extent that we possess the proper intention.

Recognition of Evil (Hakarat HaRa): Similarity with the Creator is attained through similarity of intention.
As we strive for the intention to bestow, we begin to uncover more and more of the intention to receive (the Klipa) within ourselves.

The revelation of this corrupt intention is called exile—the Egyptian Exile (Galut Mitzrayim).

If we persist in trying to change the intention from “everything for myself” to “everything for the Creator,” we arrive at the sense of our slavery to egoism—the intention “for my own sake” (for Pharaoh’s sake).

Revelation of Evil: In this state, we gradually and fully realize that our nature, not the desire to receive, which is constant, but the intention “for myself”—is our true enemy.

By trying to break free from the intention “for myself” and acquire the intention “for the Creator,” we discover our absolute powerlessness against this enemy.

Revelation of the Means of Correction: At the end of this realization, we discover that only the Creator, the light of correction (the light of Torah, the surrounding light) can correct our intention. Then we exit the slavery of the evil intention into the intention of bestowal (similarity with the Creator). Meaning: only the Creator (the upper light) can take us out of the egoistic state—the Egyptian bondage, the state of thinking only about ourselves.

Therefore, the main thing is this: Think about the light, the Creator, who can, and only He can, correct you (your intention) from “for myself” to “for the Creator”, make the Tzimtzum, and use the desire only to the extent that the intention “for the Creator” is present.

Thus align yourself in all your actions in this world toward the correcting light so that it may give you the intention “for the Creator.”

If anything is unclear, write to me, and I will clarify.
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The Truth About Reality

423.02Question: How many forces exist and can interact with each other?

Answer: An infinite number. What we divide into 125 degrees can be subdivided further and further, endlessly.

We see that all of humanity, having gone through its cycles for, say, one hundred thousand years of existence, has not even yet reached the corridor leading to the spiritual world. And how many different states such a huge mass of people has gone through during these hundred thousand years—every minute, every second?

We cannot even imagine what we are actually dealing with. But in spirituality, it is simpler, because the lower degree, with all its diversity, enters the higher degree as a single element.

That is, all of inanimate nature is considered one unit relative to the vegetative, all vegetative nature is considered as one unit relative to the animate, and all animate nature is considered as one unit relative to the human.

And all of humanity is considered as one unit relative to the divine. Therefore, there is no complexity. On the contrary, everything becomes more and more simplified.

Question: Why is there specifically such a gradation of inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels?

Answer: This comes from the four stages of the expansion of the direct light. The beginning of the light’s influence on the desire, when the desire still does not feel itself as existing, is called the letter “Yod” or the first stage of the development of desire. Then comes the second stage, when the desire already begins to feel itself. After that come the third and fourth stages. In the fourth stage, the desire begins to feel the Creator. This fourth stage is called man (in Hebrew, Adam, from the word “Domeh,” meaning similar to the Creator). That is, the desire in the fourth stage feels the Creator and thereby gains the possibility to become similar to Him.

From the first perception of the Creator until today, 5,786 years have passed, that is, from the moment when Adam first sensed the Creator. This moment is called the Jewish New Year (Rosh HaShanah) and is considered the date of the first contact of a human being in this world with the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. The Truth About Reality” 10/8/10

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Translation Difficulties

294.3Comment: There are cases when you really do not feel a person. They ask you a question, and everything seems clear, but there is a feeling that you are not actually connecting to the verbal aspect of what they are asking.

My Response: Yes, it happens that a question is clear to you, but not to me, either because I do not find all four screens that connect the verbal question with the person’s inner spiritual state, or because the state they are describing does not exist. In other words, what they are asking is not yet a true question; it is fundamentally flawed in itself.

But if this question passes through another or a third listener, when I ask them to retell it to me, then it may lose the original sharpness that it had for the one who asked it, but it already becomes the correct question. That is, it reveals the real emptiness that has a place in the universe, and with which one must work.

Question: What are these four screens?

Answer: The four screens are what are called “Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey,” that is, the fundamental name of the Creator or the four-layer structure of our soul, which we must feel in order to correctly perceive the influence of the light upon us, which builds a question within us, and accordingly from the question to attain this light, which is the answer.

Comment: Very often someone asks a question through the Internet, and during translation the meaning of the question is radically lost.

My Response: That is natural because people are not in the same states. One person asks a question, and another feels it in a completely different way.

Question: So translation cannot convey the feeling of the person who asks the question?

Answer: Both yes and no. I would not go so far as to say that the translators significantly distort the meaning. In fact, even if a person phrased it differently than intended, I often can sense the question exactly as it was conceived.

If it is a strong, correct question coming from one’s heart or from the emptiness of his desire, then I will feel it even if the translation is not very good. In principle, when a person has great pain or inner emptiness, we feel it even without much external expression.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Difficulties of Translation” 9/12/10

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When Will the War End?

79.01Question: Is it really possible that there are wars in spirituality too? I always thought that there was only love there.

Answer: From the beginning of the worlds to the very end, the entire reality, except for the single Creator, the one upper force of love, is built on the struggle of opposites, that is, on war. The Creator is attained by us through the attainment of love as the absolute annulment of hatred, war, and opposition, that is, in the complete annulment of each one before the others. In this way we form the image of the Creator within us. We create Him. As it is said: “You have made Me.”

Question: Are you talking about the war within each person? Is this the spiritual war?

Answer: Yes, the external war exists only on the animate level.

Question: You once said that external wars occur because we haven’t waged our internal wars properly, and therefore the external wars appear. Can you explain this a little more? Does it mean that I did not see my war to its end?

Answer: I should have fought. I should have resisted. I should have stood and led the forces of light against the forces of darkness within me. And thus I should have seen how I was moving the world toward a state of connection, closeness, and love among all its opposite parts. And thus I bring the state of war to the state of true peace.

Peace is Shalom, from Shlemut, complete wholeness, full unification (Hashlama). Somehow I did not complete this work somewhere, and therefore I allowed it to manifest even in the lowest form in this physical world.

Question: So now, in order to stop this external war, must I return again to my internal wars?

Answer: I must do it, and everyone must do it because the external war exists only in order to push us toward internal connection.

Question: So resolving the war by external forces, when someone wins and someone loses, is not a real solution?

Answer: Of course not.

Question: Then will there be another war?

Answer: Of course! Nothing is solved this way. It is only a step along the road, along the path, about how to continue the next page of the war.

Question: Will the next page of the war come one way or another? And maybe it will be even more terrible?

Answer: Of course, more terrible. The most important thing is that at the beginning of a conflict, we quickly determine what it is about and extinguish it by uniting and complementing the conflicting sides in such a way that they reveal the Creator.

Question: Suppose there are two conflicting sides that hate each other. How can they suddenly stop at the beginning of the conflict?

Answer: By rising above themselves, by rising above one another, and by imagining what the world should be like if they unite together so much that they no longer distinguish between each other, but only sense the connection between them.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 3/14/22

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Non-Random Encounters

294.2Comment: You say that every man has an inner woman.

My Response: Yes, that is his desire. The point is that in our world, we are divided into different parts: men, women, children, and the elderly. In the spiritual world, all of this exists within a single soul. It has a masculine part, a feminine part, and what they give rise to between them: the screen and the desire, Masach and Aviut. The birth of another Partzuf, another level, is like their children.

In our world, all of this has taken on a final form, which is expressed in various material objects; we need to unite them. That is, we connect with each other in families, while at the same time we are obliged to unite the feminine and masculine parts: the desires, aspirations, and goals.

Question: People often say that we are born for each other, and exist in heaven as a single whole. Does Kabbalah recognize such a concept?

Answer: Of course, people do not meet each other by chance. It is no accident that parents give birth to these particular children, that a man and woman marry, later perhaps separate, and then meet again.

This is all natural, especially today, when people have so many opportunities for contact. They travel, rush madly from one end of the world to the other, and spin everywhere.

On one hand, this connects people on a spiritual level into a single desire. On the other hand, look at their personal relationships. They marry and divorce, come together and part. All of this is aimed at quickly completing the mutual inclusion on the spiritual level that remains to be fulfilled, at transforming it from a corrupt, egoistic level to a spiritual one.

Comment: When a man and woman meet and begin to flirt, that is one level. Once they engage in intimate relations, a deeper connection forms between them, as if another kind of union occurs. They even behave differently because they are closer.

My Response: Yes, naturally, because sexual relations in our world correspond to the spiritual union, Zivug de Hakaa, in the spiritual world. At the animal level, a special type of internal contact arises. But this animal level also defines the spiritual level.

That is why I say that nowadays all kinds of chance encounters have become more frequent. This is the final stage of our earthly egoistic development; it is not moral, spiritual, or psychological development, but the stage of maturation of our desires.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Man and Women” 9/11/10

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Add Up the Opposites

254.01Question: You perceive all the processes taking place differently than how they appear in the picture of this world. You said that you have perceived a crisis for a long time, but it still has not manifested itself physically, that is, in the external world. How is this possible? What is this process and why is there such a delay?

Answer: Baal HaSulam explains this in many of his articles. He says that there is an action called “descending from above” and an action called “receiving from below.”

All sorts of commands, actions, and phenomena descend upon us from above. But while they are realized in our perception and while we are conscious of them, a certain amount of time passes. Therefore, there is a delay between descending from above and receiving from below.

Since a Kabbalist is on a level above our world, he sees forces descending into our world, and therefore believes that something needs to be done quickly. And the rest of the people are still in a drunken stupor; they say: “Everything is fine. Why are you panicking there?”

That is how it turns out that a Kabbalist show up, hurries, an shouts like Baal HaSulam 20 years before the Second World War. He said that Jews should escape from Poland, soon Hitler would conquer it.

Messing and other people even warned about this. But no one listened to them, they were silenced, considered enemies of the people, and so on.

I once talked to a major Israeli figure, a man of great culture, a strong industrialist who is very concerned about the future. At one time, he met with the President of the United States and talked with him about the need to quickly change the world, educate people, and encourage them to be kind and loving to each other. But the President didn’t understand anything.

Such an advanced, well-respected politician completely misunderstood him. It is not that I didn’t understand it, but I thought it would be good to do so. This is not the way to go. That is, people still don’t understand.

And they are right, because they act based on what is in our world. Why would they listen to some kind of “mystics,” even though the environment has been faltering for a long time, and everything else is falling apart.

Will they really pay attention to some Kabbalists who wag their fingers at them and say that it is necessary to change relationships in society, to change the social environment in the world? They won’t do it. They don’t have the necessary tools, influence, or upbringing for this.

We see what happens to our children. These are the most precious creatures to our hearts, but we leave them to their fate; as the street or school educates them, so it will be. As a result, we get drugs, promiscuity, emptiness, and complete lack of purpose in life. That is why humanity sees its future so bleakly.

But we don’t even need to correct ourselves, the main thing is that if we could correct the children, guide them correctly, then at least the future generation would live well. We, as adults who love them so much, cannot properly and soberly look at what is happening. This is so stupid! The Creator gives us some kind of clouding from above. If you unfold this whole picture, how can parents treat their children’s future like this?!

The whole education system, the whole world community, has launched this. Everyone raises their hands: “Well, my children will be like that too. What can I do?” They have the same answer as the politicians and say we don’t have the means to correct people.

Therefore, we are heading toward states where suffering will accumulate to such an extent that humanity will howl because it will not be able to hide from problems with its “ostrich policies,” and then it will agree to listen to what the science of Kabbalah has to say.

Question: You speak from the point of view of an ordinary person who sees that he is not understood, the whole world does not hear him. But if creation is arranged completely differently, if it is inside you, then what?

Answer: What difference does it make whether it is inside me or outside? I have to fix this. That is why I’ve been given the opportunity to see it from the outside, to make it easier to fix.

Question: So there must be an appeal to the perception that exists as if from the outside?

Answer: Sure. I have to reach out to people, correct them, and promote Kabbalah so that they will come to me and strive for the same goal—unification.

Question: So it is impossible to do this internally with a small group?

Answer: No, it is not possible. I cannot do the work for others, although these others, as you want to say now, are in me.

Otherwise, you take away freewill from every part of you that you think exists outside of you. This part can correct its selfishness only if it feels free from you and does it on its own. This way you will help each other.

And it is not schizophrenia. The fact that we cannot put several opposite things together in our minds is our problem. This is the problem of the narrowness of our world, because we have only the desire to enjoy and nothing else.

But we have other possibilities to experience the existing universe. In order to develop them, we are given so–called “schizophrenia”: although these are my parts that exist outside of me, and everything around me is me; it is mine, but on the other hand, I have to correct it exactly as if it is not mine, helping them to be independent, and then each part will fix itself.

Having corrected ourselves, we will all come together into one single whole, and all our independent corrections will come together. That is, all our desires will add up to one desire, and all our small screens will add up to one screen.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Schizophrenia” 10/7/10

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