Question: You constantly direct students to the group. What would this action be for someone not in the group as such?

Answer: I do not have to mechanically be in a group with you. I am inside it.

Do you think that a group is ten men sitting in a circle and talking to each other? The group is an inner force. Everything exists in the world of infinity, in absolute perfection, but everyone feels it in the qualities he is in at the moment.

My teacher, Rabash, gave an example, if you look at a plane flying in the sky, one believes that its length is 5 meters, another thinks it is 50 meters, and the third person 100 meters. How can we grasp the real length of the plane if it is far away? We cannot. That is, everyone measures it in their qualities.

So it is with regard to the spiritual, I feel the group to the extent that I can imagine it in a corrected form.

In fact, in the world of infinity everything is in a completely corrected form: the group, humanity, and all the people. But, to some extent, I can only feel it in the measure, at the level I am at.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Group for Laitman” 5/19/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is it that could cause a civil war in Israel?“

As the days pass since the 2022 Israeli elections, the conflict worsens between the political blocs. The opposition states that the government is illegitimate and discusses the possibility of a civil war while the coalition calls for the imprisonment of the opposition leaders on the basis of treason.

In Israel, we are coming to a state of inner struggle, hatred and rejection that has caused us to degenerate several times over history, and once again, we are at a crossroad. Even though we understand that our situation is dangerous, and the country has fallen apart twice before due to letting our differences detach us, it still does not matter. We see that we cannot agree to any kind of a compromise, even if means the country’s dismantlement.

And what is this dire situation ultimately based on? Simply put, ego and pride. One cannot let the other govern the country as long as there is the slightest opportunity to put spokes in the other’s wheel. Other than uniting above the divisions, as is it written that “love will cover all crimes,” we can do nothing else to fix our current conflict.

We have to unite and reach a state of a common love despite our hatred of each other. If we fail to positively connect above our differences, then we will cease to exist.

Based on the video “Is Israel on the Verge of Civil War?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: When studying Kabbalah, a person’s outlook changes. Maybe for someone it looks like pure psychology that a person adjusts himself to the influence of some force that changes him, but in fact he becomes completely different. Is that how his psychology works or, as you say, does the light change him?

Answer: It is the light! Only light!

Psychology works in our world when a person replaces one desire with another, one object of pleasure with another, and makes selfish calculations: what is better, what is worse, where will he be beaten less, where can he snatch more, and so on.

Thinking about how to get out of depression and rising above your mood, how to realize your inner natural data, how to behave with other people in order to make it better—these are purely egoistic tricks.

And light changes the very nature of man. Therefore, psychology cannot help here. It brings a person to this, helps him realize all his problems, and then he must work in a group, with light, in order to change himself.

Question: But how does it happen? What mechanism changes in a person? Where does that portion of light drip that either changes the soul or something else?

Answer: Light affects egoistic intentions that are built on the same principle as altruistic, spiritual ones, only in reverse order.

After all, before there was only a system of bestowal, and then its shattering created the opposite system—receiving. Both systems are opposite to each other, and a person must choose under which one to be influenced.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Bonded!” 3/31/12

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Question: Based on the experience of workshops, how can a person correctly place oneself under the general field in which he is trying to be a part?

Answer: It should be included as an active element of cooperation, as an organ of an electronic, mechanical or electrical system that tries to realize itself beneficially for the overall purpose of the system, that is, try its best.

I am canceling my “I.” Whatever this action is, good or bad, it doesn’t matter to me, it doesn’t matter how I personally perceive it. I put the action, the benefit, the goal of the team, above mine. And I don’t care about my personal goal right up to its killing, just as some insects or even cells of our body receive an order to kill themselves, and they carry it out.

If the goal of the collective is visible to me, and it contradicts my own, then my goal has no meaning, I destroy myself. This should be the inclusion in the group.

And beyond this limit are the following stages. There you begin to feel the spiritual world because your egoism no longer hinders you.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Lithuanian Experiment” 3/13/12

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Comment: You said that if we have any material desires, it is better to realize them quickly so that they do not interfere with our spiritual development.

My Response: If your head is occupied with spiritual development, then involuntarily you will not perform any stupid, unnecessary movements in everything else.

Nevertheless, you still need to organize yourself somehow: make yourself move, eat normally. Let’s say I have a sedentary job, I sit almost all the time, so I force myself to move for an hour and a half a day.

Doctors say that even half an hour a day is enough: a little exercise, walking by the sea, cycling.

But I personally think that, although it is necessary to force yourself to do all this a little, the main thing, of course, is internal work. If a person is engaged in it, then he inevitably has a normal exchange in everything else.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Get High” 4/21/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What can we learn from elephants?“

Elephants are very compassionate and sensitive animals. They are the only animals that hold a burial ceremony. Often the herd digs a hole, covers the dead elephant and stays near the grave for several days. Also, if the herd encounters a dead elephant that is not from their herd, they will treat it as if it were one of their own. In addition, if one of the elephants in the herd is sick, they take care of it, bring it food and help it up.

When we see such examples of sensitivity and compassion, we can raise the question to ourselves as human beings: What do we have that animals don’t, and is there anything that we can learn here?

We possess additional desire to animals, and the problem is that we use our excess desire to our detriment. We can see a clear example of this problem if we look at the endless wars and cutthroat competition we find ourselves in over history, and the way we pour money into stockpiling more and more weapons today instead of myriad other means that could benefit us. We are constantly engaged in thoughts of how to exploit, overpower and outcompete others.

Animals also show many examples of overpowering and killing other animals, but they do so out of a survival necessity, not out of enjoying themselves by feeling bigger, stronger, faster and better than other animals—as we people do toward each other.

Why do we relate to other people in such negative ways? It is in order to sustain our ego, i.e. to try and satisfy our desires for money, respect and power. We do not try to overpower others merely out of a survival necessity.

Therefore, when we consider the fact that we have bigger egoistic desires that we use to the detriment of others, we cannot say that we are at any higher degree to animals.

If we wish to maximally realize our additional desire and truly show ourselves to be loftier beings, then we need to rise above our egoistic desires—our desires to benefit ourselves at the expense of others—and reach a state of a common love for one other, a state of “love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, instead of prioritizing self-benefit over benefiting others, we need to prioritize the benefit of others over self-benefit.

As a result, we would reach a perfect and eternal state—a state that we were put here to achieve.

Everything in nature on the still, vegetative and animate levels—outside of humans—is in a harmonious interplay, and only we humans breach that balance with our self-serving use of our additional desire.

We should thus think about how we can shift from prioritizing self-benefit at the expense of others to prioritizing the benefit of others, and to use ourselves for others’ benefit. It is because, by inverting our intention and attitude to each other from egoistic to altruistic, we would discover no less than a perfect world for everyone.

Based on the video “What Can We Learn from Elephants?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: When someone falls spiritually, we have to support each other along the way. You say a person must go through these states. What is the limit of our intervention?

Answer: There is no limit. If you are doing it with love, there are no prohibitions. To support means to help with love. If you think about the benefit of a friend and do not think that he is being punished for his benefit, then everything will be fine.

Question: Suppose a person cannot wake up for a lesson. Where is the fine line between the fact that I have to bring him to class and the fact that I will harm him by doing that?

Answer: It is necessary to treat such situations very delicately, to try to be gentle with your friends.

I was not always successful with that. I remember I got very irritated, I could not stop myself. “How is it possible not to get up for the lesson?” One day, another day, and the same every time. You wake up the friend. “That’s it, that’s it, I’m getting up,” he shouts from the balcony, and ten minutes later, it turns out that he fell asleep even more soundly. And how to wake him up? You no longer know what to do. I tried everything. Of course, it was wrong, I was still a beginner then. But all this was not simple.

Our entire path is not easy. Now it is much easier because the masses create the corresponding field, and it is already easy for every beginner, he feels that there is such an action in the world, such an opinion, such a desire, such a relationship. There are already talks about it: something is soaring somewhere.

Today it is so easy compared to what it used to be! Before, it seemed quite the opposite. It was very hard! I think the support is getting better and better every day.

Question: How can I not to give in to the misconception that I am doing good for another person to overpower what is not worth doing?

Answer: Nothing will help! Until a person is corrected, nothing will help.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Pull out the Friend“ 3/11/12

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Question: What happens in the intermediate state, when a person has not fully felt the power of bestowal and has not fully completed the work with his egoism? He is neither here nor there.

Answer: Neither here nor there is the most complicated, suspended state. It is necessary to do everything as soon as possible to pass it; there is nothing left to do.

Question: But this whole path is still a transition between the two worlds?

Answer: I understand that this path is unpleasant, but you cannot get away from it.

This is the path where you simultaneously discover both descents and ascents, and yet you cannot balance them, supplement one with the other, or justify them. That is why the years of internal struggle and adaptation to new spiritual conditions are very difficult. I see this in my students, but unfortunately, I cannot help them more than what I am doing.

Just like a teacher at school, can he do something instead of the student? The student is obliged to go through his school years, absorb all the material himself, and complete the required number of tasks, tests, and exams because otherwise he will not know anything at all and will not be able to go out into life.

He must do something. Otherwise, he will have to deal with huge gaps. At least he graduates from school and has an idea of ​​what biology, zoology, botany, geography, history, and mathematics are, at least something, somehow.

You can finish school and university, and, in general, know nothing. Maybe, you will not need all this in your life except for a general understanding of what is happening.

But in spirituality it is different. If you do not know the laws of the universe, if you fail to apply them to yourself, then the upper world will not be revealed to you. After all, you attain it to the extent of your understanding, your power of adaptation. You only reveal what you can practically work with.

Like a child, to whom only a small part of the surrounding world opens up. He does not understand what exists above him. He is interested in his toys and his mother; here is his car, something big that is moving, and this is his world. Everything else, something much bigger, especially in terms of quality, like connections between people and the like, he does not understand at all. He knows that this is his nanny, this is his mother, this is his grandmother, and the fact that there is some kind of connection between them, that there is some kind of life going on behind them, all this is not yet for him.

If we do not grow out of this state, we will not reveal anything. In the spiritual world, if you have not developed the power to understand, realize, and interact inside yourself, then you stay at the same level. You cannot grow automatically. You grow only to the extent that you open the world with your knowledge and abilities.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. All Suffering Has a Purpose” 2/11/12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does unconditional love exist between two partners?“

Unconditional love can exist between two partners if they work on it and attain it.

Love is based on mutual concessions, yielding to one another, and finding joy in doing so. When we love our partner, then we have no demands for any special attention or care from them. Instead, we enjoy the pleasure we receive from sacrificing ourselves for their sake.

Such pleasure is similar to the feeling of satisfaction that we get when we give something to our children. However, our children are naturally closer to us because we feel them as parts of us. With our partners, though, we are separate in our desires and opinions, but by correcting the love between us, then we can bridge that separation.

By nature, we focus mostly on our own desires with little regard for our partner’s. In other words, we relate to our own desires with a higher level of importance than to our partner’s desires. In order to shift from this nature-given self-centered state to a state of love, we need to merge our desires so that they adhere as a single desire. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, this condition for achieving love is described with the phrase, “Make your desire like His, so He would make His desire like yours.” Such love discusses the love that we achieve between the creation, which is a desire to enjoy, and the Creator—the source force of love, bestowal and connection. By adhering our desires into a single desire, when we prioritize fulfilling the desires of others over our own desires, we then reach a state that Kabbalah describes as “husband and wife, and Divinity between them.” That is, we require the force of love itself to enter our connections in order for us to be able to truly love others, to aim to benefit others outwardly with no wish to receive anything in return.

Achieving such love requires connection-enriching education. That is, we need to place ourselves under the influence of learning, guidance, exercises as well as social, cultural and media influences that describe the nature, need and importance of reaching a state of love.

We need to understand that the use of our loved ones and families in order to primarily benefit ourselves ultimately brings about neither joy nor love. The sole way of finding true and lasting fulfillment is to learn how to love correctly—where we prioritize benefiting others over self-benefit, and where we become willing to concede our own desires for the sake of fulfilling the desires of others.

We can bring joy to others and to ourselves by giving endlessly. This altruistic modus operandi would act as a source of everlasting fulfillment. That is, by aiming ourselves in the direction of fulfilling others, we place ourselves into a cycle that positively boomerangs back to us with feelings of absolute and eternal love, as well as eternal life. Instead of trying to consume everything for ourselves, we can bring life to everyone around us with our love. Doing so would enable us to ascend to a higher dimension where we experience Heaven on Earth—an eternal and perfect life.

Regarding our partners, we should shift our focus from searching for love to building love. We need to stop expecting people to act in extraordinary ways toward us, and instead find partners who share a common goal and understanding of what true love is. We can then enter the process of learning and exercising the achievement of true love together with our partners.

Based on “A New Life” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 30, 2015. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Nicola Fioravanti on Unsplash.

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Question: Cinematography was introduced in the early 1900s. What did it give to humanity?

Answer: All inventions of humanity are carried out by order from above, from the general global mind, the Creator, who leads us with the general control signals of nature from top to bottom to ever greater integration, globalization, mutual complementation, mutual guarantee, and connection.

Therefore, along the way we develop ideas, which seem to come to our mind, that help us achieve greater communication with each other. This is what causes all our actions.

They may even seem to be leading us not straight to connection, but in a completely different direction. This happens in order to reveal minus from plus and plus from minus. Any human action, no matter how positive or negative it seems to us, leads only to universal globalization, dependence, integration, and mutual guarantee.

We are moving toward a state in which we will not be able to feed ourselves, keep ourselves warm, or clothe ourselves unless we are completely connected by absolute unity. And when we discover this connection, we will not be able to manage it. How can I manage billions of connections all over the world at the same time?

This is what communists found out when they discovered that by governing the state according to the system in which everything is dictated from the top down—to whom, how much, where to be delivered, how, and by whom to be transferred—they got such a complex machine that could not be processed by any computer, especially at that time.

Nowadays we see that we are also not coping, that all this is a single continuous disorder and nothing more. How can we manage such an economy? Anyway, humanity has come to this question because the integral connection leads us to it.

And it really does not matter who invented cinematography or the Internet. Everything happens according to the upper plan: to bring us to the general unification where we feel the need to attain the upper single mind and desire because otherwise, we cannot exist. This will be the real internet.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Invention of Cinema” 2/11/12

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