Question: You say that it is harmful when a person is praised a lot. How can one find the right measure?

Answer: It depends on how one praises and for what.

I would like to be praised by everyone because this is an advertisement. Then everyone would listen to what I say.

But I don’t even need to know about the good reviews. It is necessary for others. And for me personally it is better when I get criticized a little.

Question: Is it good in the family when a wife praises her husband and raises him in his eyes?

Answer: Yes. This gives him great strength. He, like a small child, immediately feels as if on a high horse.

Question: Does it harm him?

Answer: It depends on what kind of person he is and how he perceives any actions: one is productive, the other is not. One may become proud, and the second, on the contrary, will try to justify the trust.

Question: Do you care what people say about you?

Answer: I wouldn’t say I don’t care. This is how I control myself and feel where I am, how I react to it, and so on. It’s still interesting.

A wife can support her husband by giving him a lot of help, either directly or inversely. As it is said: “Help against you.”
[314677]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Protection From the Evil Eye” 7/9/11

Related Material:
Point of Connection Between Husband and Wife
A Spiritual Family
Husband And Wife: Where Is The Creator Between Them?

Filed under: Man and Woman, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: How can couples generate constant flirting?

Answer: There is an entire science called the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is the science of how to get pleasure from the same source and at the same time make sure that it is constantly renewed. It is the science of desire that we are trying to master.

Question: There are some couples who understand that they cannot be together, but still do not break up the family. What keeps them together?

Answer: I think that if people do not physically feel any dislike or repulsion for each other, then everything else is fixable, but you cannot physically cope with your rejection.

Physically means at the inanimate, vegetative, and animate level. We hardly change there. This is how one animal sniffs another animal and determines by the smell whether it is its partner or not. People find a partner in the same way. Does smell not matter to us? It does matter very much. And so does everything else.

But if everything depends on the fact that once a couple loved each other, everything was fine and now it is not, then this is fixable. This is all psychology; you need to work on yourself correctly.

In addition, it is necessary to consider whether one interferes with the other. Today there are many couples who continue to love each other, and at the same time each of them has something on the side.

That is, the physical side today is so disconnected from the internal that it can be like that.

Comment: But Rabash, in principle, said that it does not matter what kind of wife you have.

My Response: “It does not matter what kind of wife” means that she does not physically repel you, but in everything else, you must find some common path.
[314629]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Eternal Love” 7/27/11

Related Material:
What To Do If Love Is Gone?
Bygone Love
On The Way To Attaining Love

Filed under: Man and Woman, Q&A - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What’s your opinion of the controversy over proposed judicial reforms in Israel?“

They have ignited significant unrest in Israeli society.

Israelis from all walks of life are either denouncing or supporting the reform. Its critics argue that it will destroy Israel’s democracy and make it vulnerable to the whims of politicians. Its proponents claim that it will restore equilibrium to Israeli democracy, which they believe was disrupted by the Supreme Court’s overreaching powers, such as the ability to revoke laws or appoint new judges.

The current protests against these reforms have escalated so much that prominent figures in Israeli society have been discussing the possibility of a civil war. Some have gone so far as to explicitly call for the murder of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, and the entire cabinet, to reinstate democracy.

Throughout our history, we have been known as a stubborn people, holding strong opinions and believing that only our perspectives hold value. There have been instances when we took this belief to the extreme, from deeming those who disagreed with us as unworthy of living to engaging in brutal civil wars. And it appears as if we are on a similar trajectory today.

Democracy does not benefit such people. Democracy is for people who trust that general policy decisions are made through voting. If more people favor one policy over another, the parties supporting that popular policy will arise victorious in the elections. This grants them no right to mistreat the minority, but it empowers them and imposes an obligation to put the policy for which they were elected into practice.

If we view democracy as valid solely when the views we support are in power, then we are not truly democratic but rather disguised tyrants.

It pains me to witness Israel’s current state of affairs. While the rest of the world is advancing and learning, we find ourselves entangled in power struggles that will bring our nation to its knees.

Taking into account our violent history marked by internal conflicts, then it might be preferable for us to disperse and to dissolve the nation. I do not know what the upper force has in store for us, but if the choice is between dissolution and civil war, I would opt for the former.

Yet there is a third alternative.

Our people have always been stubborn, haughty, and strong-minded. If we were to disband now and regroup later, we would still face each other in disagreements, much like we do today. We possess this deeply-ingrained characteristic because our ancestors had such traits. Since they were that way, they understood that their only chance for success was to set aside their egos and unite, especially with their dissenters. That is, they faced a clear-cut choice: unite or die. Today, we find ourselves approaching that critical juncture once more.

In the past, when our ancestors chose unity, we not only became a nation but also served as a model for the world. We demonstrated that despite our mutual aversion, uniting above hatred would create an unbreakable bond capable of overcoming any obstacle. The strength of such a united nation was insurmountable.

For the time being, however, I see hostilities flaring and no one ready to even have a dialog, let alone unite. However, as long as we have yet to trigger violence, there remains hope that we will come to our senses before we sink the ship we are sailing on.

Based on the article “The Judicial War May Devolve into a Civil War” by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Question: Why when a man and a woman connect, first the so-called spark of love flares up between them, and then gradually fades and turns into cooling or even hatred?

Answer: This is a natural process, just like any other. It is like I sit down to eat and eventually I get full, and if I continue, then I will have repulsion.

Similarly, there is a period of feeling hungry, satiation, filling, and enjoying it. And then, when hunger disappears, the person is satisfied, as after eating, and therefore needs to stimulate the desire again. Now the desire for this object or for some other requires renewal.

If people are properly attuned to each other and are able to find the process of renewing desires, aspirations for each other, flirting, then they can live together all their lives, be devoted to each other, and find great satisfaction in each other.

There are people who are not originally created to be satisfied with each other. Rabash also said that when you meet a girl as a future spouse, you just have to see if she isn’t physically repelling you. That’s all. And then whatever you decide.
[314594]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Eternal Love” 7/9/11

Related Material:
Love Is A Beast
What To Do If Love Is Gone?
Bygone Love

Filed under: Man and Woman, Q&A - No Comments →

Question (from a letter): Why do you formulate the golden rule in the interpretation of Rabbi Akiva’s “love your neighbor as yourself”? Rabbi Akiva said that all the commandments of the Torah converge to this one, single commandment. But the sage Hillel said that the main commandment is “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you.” Isn’t this second, more passive formulation the key to success? And besides, it’s more realistic.

Answer: That is right, I totally agree with that. But the fact is that “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you” is not a complete, passive fulfillment of the commandment. The second part is active—love.

So, the first one does not solve the problem. It only seems to distance people from each other. But they tend not to harm.

Question: So do no harm is the first condition? Should there be some kind of attack next?

Answer: Active.

Question: “Love your neighbor as yourself” is like an attack on yourself? Can I do it only after I have fulfilled this first rule?

Answer: Of course.

Question: Can’t I jump over it, right away to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Instead of proceeding from the rule “Do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you.”

Answer: Try it. But on the way you’ll still be doing it.

Question: So, it turns out that “Don’t do to others what you don’t want to be done to you” is included in “love your neighbor”?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is it possible for an ordinary, simple person to come to this and not to do to another what you don’t want to be done to yourself? Or will you still do something wrong to someone?

Answer: A person cannot restrain himself. He faces his own kind all the time and constantly sees where he wins and where he loses.

Question: And they annoy him all the time. So why do they offer things that are unrealistic for a person to do?

Answer: It is realistic, you just have to work on yourself.

Question: The result should be the fact that I need to work on it?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: And until this arises in a person, he is not capable. Because a lot of people write to us: “I already live by this rule,” “I have been living by this rule for a long time.”

My Response: 🙂 I believe that it is impossible without the Creator. But, on the other hand, I believe that we will come to this.

I am optimistic because it does not depend on us. Nature moves us, and we will inevitably come to this rule.

Comment: All these rules of both Rabbi Akiva and Hillel seem to say to a person: “Do it!” And you say that one cannot do it without the Creator.

My Response: One cannot. Man cannot change the laws of nature.

Question: Which are only for themselves, only egoism?

Answer: Yes, a person is not able to do it.

Question: So, the question is if a person wants to follow these rules, what should be his steps? What is step one?

Answer: The step is very simple. You have to come to a society that will be occupied only with correcting the connection between them. There you will be able to see how they work on loving each other and at the same time study yourself, as far as you are capable of this at all.

So, one way or another, you have to connect to this breathing machine.
[314614]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/5/23

Related Material:
Hillel’s Rule
What Is Hateful To You, Do Not Do To Your Fellow Men
Acquaintance With The Evil Inclination

Filed under: Commandments, News, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: What is the selling point or advantage of spirituality, of raising a person to the next degree?

Answer: It depends on which society you turn to because there are several civilizations in our world. The selling proposition can be either equality, security, friendship, or connection. It can be getting rid of depression, environmental problems, or any family or social problems, i.e., everything that you protect people from within our world.

In addition, people not only get rid of something, but also get eternity and perfection. After all, in any case, even if I make my life on this earth as comfortable as possible that I will be filled and happy without limit, it will still end within some limit, in 70, 80, 90, even 100 years, but it will end.

And here I am invited to be filled in this world with the most kind, pleasant, safe, correct way of life and start from it, right now, to feel my next life and be born in this next life, in this new feeling. It is easy, simple, and not for me alone, but for everyone together. I am invited to feel such a slight intoxication when you rise and begin to really attain the next degree, the next state.

But the next degree, the state, is built on society, on the fact that everyone feels like one whole—we. This is not the feeling of each one where he feels only his small world and his small individual life. It is a feeling when we all add up to one common organism and feel the life of this organism.

It is eternal and perfect because it becomes like the upper force of nature, the Creator, because it is all in bestowal. And we become not a scattered organism, but gathered together in its parts into one huge great whole. And this organism exists forever because it is built on bestowal, and we feel it. It is called “the soul,” and there is one soul for all.
[314767]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Advertising Image of the Spiritual” 7/16/11

Related Material:
What Does Kabbalah Give To A Person?
Knowledge Of Kabbalah Is Indispensable
The Sinking Of Science: The Past Pride Of Humanity

Filed under: Crisis, Dissemination, Globalization, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Hypnosis is the imposition of one person’s desires on another. If everything is programmed, then why are there such factors in nature when one controls another through hypnosis?

Answer: We are all connected together in a common system. But there are people who see more, people who hear more, and those who communicate better with this system.

Look what Wolf Messing could do making others think in a certain way or catching their thoughts! How did he do it? He did not know himself.

The fact is that he was connected to some other system in which the past, present, and future already exist connected into one. It was as if he was traveling along this axis or rising to a level where his thoughts and the thoughts of another person were together. And because he was stronger, he imposed these thoughts on the other, good or bad, any thoughts.

Is not that clear? What do the various secret services do? How many such developers and specialists do they have? A huge number! I have seen it myself: one can point his finger at you in such a way that you will feel a blow.
[314468]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Power of Hypnosis” 7/24/11

Related Material:
What You Tune Into Is What You Feel
A Generator Or A Receiver Of Thoughts?
Thoughts And Mind

Filed under: Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Is it possible to go through the entire Kabbalistic methodology according to The Book of Zohar and The Study of the Ten Sefirot?

Answer: Of course not! Even if Shamati, Baal HaSulam’s letters, and Rabash’s articles are included, it is still impossible; a teacher is needed for this. And those who do not have one are engaged in currents revolving around Kabbalah such as Hasidism, New Age, and others, and it seems to them that they are already in it.

The realization of texts themselves, clear, internal, Kabbalistic ones, cannot be realized without a teacher. After all, he works on you more than you work on yourself. Just as a mother and father work on a child to raise him and it seems to him that he is growing by himself. Only later, when he has his own children does he begin to understand this.

No one can reach the spiritual degree by himself! Only if there is someone who teaches you all the time, “slips” you all sorts of actions, knowledge, questions, and guides you. Why do I always give an example with children? This is an exact copy of the spiritual growth!
[314860]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. You Cannot Advance Ahead Without a Teacher” 7/23/11

Related Material:
The Multifaceted Work Of A Kabbalist Teacher
Following The Teacher Who Sees The Way
Kabbalah And Psychology: The Teacher-Student Relationship

Filed under: Kabbalah Study, Q&A, Spiritual Teacher, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why does it feel so good to buy things?“

It feels good to buy things because it fills our ego.

We are made of egoistic desires to enjoy through acquiring, buying and receiving, and when we bring desirable things closer to ourselves in such ways, our egos enjoy for short periods of time.

The fulfillment is short lived because our ego is interchangeable. It behaves like a taxi meter. The wheel keeps turning, and our satisfaction diminishes with every passing second.

And what happens after the enjoyment fades away? We then need to work again in order to buy again. Our entire lives then look like an endless cycle of working and buying, working and buying, ad nausaem, and we never remain satisfied.

We cannot stop this process because our ego constantly grows. We always move away from a prior state where we had felt some fulfillment, enter into a feeling of emptiness and lack, and this lack forces us to seek fulfillment once again.

Moreover, since our ego constantly grows, then the pace of this process constantly accelerates. The time shortens between one purchase, i.e., a moment of pleasure, and the next such moment. Every successive pleasurable moment is half of the previous moment.

For instance, if we needed to travel on vacation for a week once a year, we now need to travel for a month in the summer, and then a month in the winter, and we continually need to find new and different ways to satisfy ourselves due to our constantly growing ego never letting us be completely satisfied.

Why do our lives operate in such a way? Why does our ego constantly grow, making us feel empty after every fulfillment?

It is because our ego grows in order to make us want the greatest fulfillment and force that we could possibly ever feel.

If we do not reach the final complete form of fulfillment, we leave our ego empty, and its vision remains fixed on the complete and continuous form of fulfillment beyond the smaller pleasures that enter it time and again. Therefore, it is as Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes:

Since all their possessions are for themselves alone, and ‘he who has a single portion wants a double portion,’ one finally dies with only ‘half one’s desire in one’s hand.’ In the end they suffer from both sides; from the increase of pain due to the multiplicity of movement, and from the regret at not having the possessions they need to fill their empty half. – Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Reflection.”

Therefore, our life story is that we chase pleasures more and more, buying more and more, and the enjoyment we receive from this chase becomes lesser and lesser. Moreover, the intervals between each pleasure become shorter.

We can see an example of this loop in the rise of drug legitimization: that the usual pleasures people could once fulfill themselves with no longer satisfy them, and the ego demands ever more pleasure in shorter intervals.

We thus see that we are in a process of constantly-diminishing pleasures and a constantly-increasing feeling of emptiness, and it is in order for us to eventually reach a final state of despair—a state where we will want to bury our ego and shift to an entirely new and different form of fulfillment: not of receiving—but giving—pleasure.

This transformation from enjoying through receiving to enjoying through giving can be thought of similarly to how we become parents. As parents, we shift to a mode of enjoying from giving to our children.

It is a purely psychological inversion, a new mode of sensing pleasure. Instead of receiving pleasure into ourselves and experiencing that pleasure disappear, leaving us empty, we rather feel pleasure in a new attitude, where the more we give to the world, the more pleasure we feel. Moreover, we can feel the latter form of pleasure continuously, without it fading away.

Based on the video “Why Does it Feel So Good to Buy Things?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
[314847]

Filed under: Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Comment: When you describe incorporation into other people’s desires, everyone always imagines that you gave something to someone: either you brought a cup of coffee to a friend or something like that.

My Response: No, a Kabbalist does not work at this level. Illusionists can work at this level—to guess a person’s desires and thus perform tricks. A Kabbalist does not perceive desires of this type at all.

For him, mutual desires are desires for connection: whether they exist or not and as far as we can combine them. Our task is the restoration of one single organism, the parts of which we must connect after shattering. We have no other concern. That is, I perceive you as a part that needs to be attached to a common organism. That is how a Kabbalist sees it.

Therefore, bringing someone a cup of coffee or something else is not what is required. The Kabbalist’s desire to feel the other is not at that level, although in general he should take care that this other, who seems to exist outside of him, has what is necessary for existence.

Comment: After all, the material is also included here.

My Response: Yes, in this way the existence of an extraneous desire or an organ of this desire is evaluated within us. Each of us is a separate organ that exists at the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels.

On the still, vegetative, and animate level, I have to take care that the other has everything necessary, that is, what any animal needs.

On the human level, I have to take care to create all the necessary conditions for him to properly connect to spiritual nutrition.

How does the part of the desires that is called human, feed? Only when it connects to one shared system. I have to bring him to the possibility of connecting to this system.

But he still has freewill. Without the fact that he realizes himself and connects himself to the common system, nothing will happen.
[314225]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Other People’s Desires” 6/27/11

Related Material:
Filling The Desires Of Others As If They Were My Own
How Can We Fill The Desires Of Billions Of People?
Giving Means Filling The Desires Of Others

Filed under: Perception, Q&A, Spiritual Work - No Comments →