Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why are Israelis so smart?“

Why are Israelis so smart?It is because the Israeli ego is the biggest one out of all the world’s nations.

Everyone has a desire to enjoy life, which acts on us subconsciously. Israelis also want to enjoy from the next world, here and now. That additional desire to enjoy is called “the point in the heart” in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

3,800 years ago, when the Israeli nation was founded, it was that additional desire that differentiated between all the ancient Babylonian residents and the group that Abraham named “Israel” (from “Yashar Kel,” i.e., “straight to God”). In other words, out of all the Babylonian residents, it was this people called “Israel” who desired to attain the meaning of life, a clear perception and sensation of the complete picture of reality, while living in this world.

How is it that the Israeli nation emerged in such a way?

Very simply, the ego in certain people grew and started demanding the reason for existence.

The ego’s growth makes us unhappier and more impatient. Why? It’s because an additional desire means an additional void, and it makes us restless until we find out why we’re alive.

The wisdom of Kabbalah was developed solely to answer the question about the meaning of life. Through the study of the wisdom, we discover our place in nature, as well as how and why nature works at its deepest levels. The wisdom of Kabbalah was developed by Abraham around 3,800 years specifically for anyone who hosts that additional desire to know why we’re alive.

Therefore, the Israeli ego is many times greater than the ego of others, i.e., of the nations of the world. There is nothing we can do about it. It is simply how the system of nature operates through us.

With this additional ego in the Israeli people, it becomes important to learn how to use it and direct it optimally and constructively, i.e., so that it would be aimed at the discovery of the meaning of life, and not that it would be used for self-serving motives at the expense of others.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method of guiding the desire for the meaning of life to the attainment of the higher reality, where we discover the reason for our existence, while we’re alive in this world.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there a treatment for the Coronavirus?“

It might sound very profound and not what people expect as the answer, but positive human connection is indeed the ultimate solution not only to the coronavirus, but to all problems we experience on personal, social, global and ecological scales.

Today, the coronavirus comes to show us that in the face of danger, we are all equal, and that there is no escape.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, which I have been studying and teaching for over 40 years, states that there is nothing more powerful than positive human connection.

As a practical example of the immense power of positive human connection in light of the coronavirus outbreak, after panic spread to various countries, including Israel, we hosted a World Kabbalah Convention in Tel Aviv.

Around 5,000 people from 78 countries attended for three days, studying, eating, singing, hugging and dancing together in one space. Moreover, a lot of the participants shared accommodation with each other. We had a medical team on board, and there were no reports of anyone getting sick for the entire convention.

The principle is very simple: We have nothing to be afraid of if we aim at unity.

Our positive connection is the “disinfectant” and the real treatment for any disease, because by connecting, we come closer to nature’s connected form and experience a certain extent of balance with nature. All diseases stem from our imbalance with nature, and so we need only learn how to use this tool of our connectedness to enter into more balance with nature, experiencing positive outcomes as a result.

If our thoughts and attitudes are positive toward one another, mutually considerate and caring, we then become immune to harmful forces. When we connect in a single thought and goal, “as one man with one heart,” we build a field of love and gain the strength to deal with any disease.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What should couples do to improve their relationships?“

To improve their relationships, couples should first forgive anything that they hold against each other.

The same way we want others to forgive us for negative actions or mistakes we have done, we should try to forgive others in advance.

Moreover, forgiveness extends beyond relationships between couples. Ultimately, it applies to society at large.

Even in the smallest of acts, in all kinds of encounters with other people, when driving, shopping, waiting in queues, and so on, we would experience better lives if we tried to forgive people in advance. Today’s society lacks that a lot.

We need to internalize how small and weak we really are, and how easily our mood can drop due to some negative interaction. We thus need to lower our demands upon others.

After forgiveness, our next step is to work on love, i.e., “love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, as we constantly consider our own benefit, and know all kinds of details about what we enjoy, trying to fulfill our own desires’ demands, we should try to understand our partner’s desires to the same extent, and seek to fulfill them as we do ourselves.

Love is thus grown through mutual concessions, where each partner concedes their self-focus and seeks to think about the other, trying to give them what makes them feel good.

This is why it is important to find a partner that has the same goal in life. Both partners can then enjoy from supporting each other to their mutual goal.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Human Development: Nature or Nurture?“

Human Development: Nature or Nurture? Every person has a “preset” of unchangeable inner properties, which are congenial qualities that nature inserted into us.

We receive these qualities from our parents, who received them from their parents, and so on all the way back through each one’s ancestral lineage.

These qualities include our character, emotions, initial attitude to the surrounding world, and they heavily influence our actions and reactions.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the person’s unchangeable qualities stem from spiritual roots, and every one of us is a part of a common collective soul, which in Kabbalah is called “the soul of Adam HaRishon.”

We receive our inborn properties and conditions according to our place within this common soul.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches that the meaning of our lives is to regain consciousness of our place in this common soul by attaining the upper force of love and bestowal, called “the Creator.”

We humans have a completely opposite nature to the Creator’s: our nature is a desire to receive pleasure, while the Creator’s nature is to give pleasure, an attitude of pure love and bestowal.

Therefore, on one hand, we are egoistic beings who think solely out of personal benefit, while on the other hand, nature develops us to increasingly connect.

Thus, besides our inner qualities, we are given an external environment, a society that teaches us how to use these properties in a particular way, directing us to the attainment of the Creator, whether we realize it or not.

This is how nature nurtures us: by placing us inside the various environments that “sculpt” us, bringing us closer to understanding the purpose of our existence.

As we initially exist in a fixed interdependent system of nature, we are subjects to its laws. We can change neither the purpose of creation nor our inner qualities.

What, then, can we change?

What we can change is our environment.

Human development directly depends on the society that we build, on the positive attitude toward others that every one of us can show to our peers and children, and on each and every person’s personal example toward others, as well as the information we distribute through media channels.

The more that we can add awareness of who we are and what goal we pursue through society, the more we can benefit our lives, guiding ourselves to increasingly connect, and by doing so, reach balance and harmony with nature.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why are we alive?“

Why are we alive? Many people ask this question and it leads them to change their lives in one way or another.

I engaged in that question a lot. I studied bio-cybernetics, the systems of the human body, thinking that I could attain the meaning of life by doing so.

But I didn’t find its answer in that field.

I found it only many years later in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The question about the meaning of life always disturbed me, because without knowing its answer, I had no view of why life is worth living. Today, I see the younger generation especially feeling this question, even if they don’t ask it with exactly those words. Finding no answer to this question makes our lives feel meaningless, and we feel a lot of negative phenomena as a result.

To find the meaning of life, we need to find the source from which life is created and develops.

The source of life is the upper force.

We can call the upper force “the Creator,” the “upper light,” “nature” and many other terms, but essentially, there is a source of life, and the question about life’s meaning and purpose stems from it. Ultimately, we exist in order to attain the meaning of our lives.

How we attain the meaning of life is another question.

How can we attain the source of life?

It is a question that humans specifically ask, and not all kinds of forms and organisms on the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature. Moreover, not all people ask this question, and those who do, ask it in different intensities.

Every generation feels an increasing need to answer the question about the meaning of life. Especially in our generation, this question is expressed by more and more people feeling depressed, stressed, lonely, anxious, and getting into drugs, extremism, and finding themselves in all kinds of other problems.

The wisdom of Kabbalah has emerged on a mass scale in our era precisely to answer the question about the meaning of life. It provides a method by which we can undergo self and social transformation in order to feel a new sense of reality, one that is complete, interconnected and full of goodness and happiness.

We attain the meaning of life when we attain a clear perception and sensation of the force that created and develops us. Such a new perception gives us a distinct understanding of why we were created. By attaining life’s source, we attain nothing less than eternity and perfection while we are alive in this world.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is it important to have love in life?“

The principle of love, or more specifically, loving others as oneself, is known to all, yet there is a lot of confusion surrounding it.

There is a general agreement among most people that there needs to be love among people, yet we see that some people are willing to eliminate large portions of humanity in the name of love. It is even more surprising how vaguely this principle is reflected in different religions.

As a result, we are not very concerned about loving each other in actual fact. We are raised through a multitude of influences that completely neglect the question of how we can reach true love among people.

Therefore, the question here is correct, and we should definitely stop and pay attention to it: Is it important to have love in life? Is love really that important?

Perhaps it is enough to teach children morals and have a general atmosphere of respect among adults? Or should love of others nevertheless be life’s goal, which we strive to reach at every moment, and which we are concerned about reaching every person and everyone together equally? Maybe if we set love of other people, all people equally, as our goal, and tried to reach that goal in the fastest possible way, then we could spare a lot of suffering in humanity, and moreover, experience lives of much greater fulfillment and happiness?

Therefore, this is an extremely important question. If we discuss the meaning of life, the purpose for which we entered our world, then why do we neglect this principle so much?

In essence, we are extremely far from understanding the fact that this principle is the universal law of the universe and of nature. All other laws that we know, and especially ones we do not know, rotate around such an axis.

If we wish to understand ourselves and the world we live in, then we have to attain the laws of nature, which are fundamentally laws of love and connection. Without attaining love for others, or as it was written, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we will be unable to discover who or where we are.

Love is the key that lets us see the entire picture of reality accurately, to understand, feel and become included in it, and to use it for self-realization.

By acquiring love for others in practice, we attain the Creator’s quality. Other laws are just facets and partial expressions of this fundamental law of reality. It is similar to how the law of gravity can be expressed in different ways, but as a whole, it always determines how one object is attracted to another.

There is a general phenomenon and there are particular cases of it. There is a law of universal bestowal, and for us it is first and foremost expressed as the social principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” By realizing this principle in society, we carry out the universal law. It controls us, and if we want to arrange our lives well, we have to aspire to its realization.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Does Satan really exist?“

Satan is the human egoistic force, i.e., the desire to enjoy at the expense of others, which comprises the nature of each and every person.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says a lot about this force in books such as the Torah and The Zohar. For instance, the word “Satan” connects to the same root as the Hebrew word “Soteh,” which means “deviation,” and “Masit,” which means “incitement.” It is a force that diverts a person from the correct path—one of positively connecting to others in mutual love and bestowal.

This force called “Satan” is rooted in every single person, and it is impossible to rid ourselves of it. The human ego has many different manifestations, but specifically the one that diverts us from positive connection among each other is called “Satan.”

In order to become freed from its control over us, we need to actively engage in our society by building positive connections upon it.

This force will always exist and will constantly generate discord between us. Yet, when we achieve a positively unified state, then all the satanic forms that held us back will be added to our efforts to positively connect, and will then serve to increase the positive force of connection between us.

Precisely due to the human ego’s constantly running motor that tries to manipulate us at every moment, making us want to detach from each other instead of connecting, and sinking us deeper and deeper into ourselves instead of applying efforts to exit ourselves and connect with others, then thanks to this ego, we will eventually get sick of it, a state called “the recognition of evil,” and will then readily force ourselves to come closer to each other.

At that time, Satan will become a positive force. It is ultimately what will help us reach an understanding of our need to connect and the correct form that our connection needs to acquire.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “As an atheist, what do you think about Kabbalah?“

Kabbalah differs from atheism and religions in general in that it facilitates a clear attainment of the Creator, so that you will feel Him like you feel a friend of yours, and even more. There is thus no room in Kabbalah for belief in something others have told to you. Instead, you have to attain yourself, the entire world, and all the souls, and inside them – the Creator in His entirety.

Atheism is a belief that the Creator does not exist, whereas religion is a belief that the Creator does exist. In contrast, Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator, through researching Nature inside yourself or inside your perceptions.

In this regard, Kabbalah is similar to other sciences. However, the other sciences reveal the world within the senses that we already have, whereas Kabbalah does it in an additional sense – the soul, which you first have to develop inside you. In any case, just like any other science Kabbalah speaks only about the things that are present in one’s senses! It is not interested in anything that’s imperceptible and that cannot be researched, repeated, and tested, and considers these things unreal. This approach makes it a science by definition. See the definition of Kabbalah in Baal HaSulam’s article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah” – “Kabbalah is the method of revealing the Creator to a person in our world” – to every person and to everyone together.

Like all sciences, Kabbalah uses the scientific method or instrument (even though scientists find it difficult to agree with this because they are used to researching the world only through the animate body). The scientific method assumes that:

• Every scientific statement must be proven by experiment.
• Every scientific statement can be proven wrong.
• It is pointless to discuss an idea that cannot be verified in practice. For example, here is a scientific opinion about G-d’s existence: Immanuel Kant showed that it cannot be proven that G-d exists as well as that He does not. The very notion of an unattainable and almighty G-d is not subject to experiment, because if G-d is almighty, then he’s able to control the outcome of the experiment. People don’t accept G-d through evidence, but through faith. Hence, the idea of G-d is beyond science. Any question that asks “Why is so and so this way?” can be answered, “Because it’s G-d’s will.” (This is how religion compelled people to answer all questions, and therefore it slowed down scientific progress.) Kabbalah allows one to reveal the Creator and His actions in practice. However, it is just as indifferent to the things that cannot be verified in practice as the earthly sciences.
• Every scientific statement must be logical and not contradict the laws that are already known. Usually, the old laws become particular cases of the new laws.
• Every scientific statement must indicate its “weak spots”; it should mention which of it constituents are subject to doubt and objection.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Who is the God of Kabbalah?“

God in Kabbalah means the general force of nature, where other than this force, nothing exists.

In and of itself, we consider God as an abstract concept and cannot discuss something existing outside our perception. No one has ever felt it. This state of God, also called “the Creator,” in no way can be perceived by us, and therefore, this force is called “Atzmuto,” i.e., “His essence.”

Everything that we attain and what is possible for us to attain are the actions of the upper force in relation to us. The wisdom of Kabbalah deals with revealing these actions in relation to a person.

We call this upper force “the Creator” because He created the human being and all of our qualities, within which we feel our world and can explore the Creator through our senses. We can explore why He created us with such qualities, limitations and abilities, and what He wants from us.

By making progress in such an exploration, we begin to attain the Creator. We do not attain the essence or “self” of the Creator (Atzmuto), but the Creator in relation to us. It is written about this, “We will know You by your actions.” We explore the Creator’s actions, how He created our world and all other worlds, as a system of connections between Him and us. This system of connections in degrees that cascade down to us is called “worlds,” and this system influences us at every moment of our lives.

By studying this system, these worlds, we study the Creator and ourselves, both our nature and the nature of the Creator, and we progress to the understand of what states we connect to Him with. We can change our behavior and our actions in accordance with this in order to raise ourselves to higher connections, to be connected directly with the Creator.

In other words, we can see what kind of reactions our actions produce in Him and, conversely, what reactions His actions produce in us. We can reach an absolutely complete, open and two-way connection.

When we begin to attain this opportunity, to reveal and achieve it gradually, we naturally change our behavior in accordance with what we reveal, and we enter a completely different stage of our development where we begin to undergo changes in becoming more and more similar to the Creator.

At the same time, our world and we ourselves radically transform, and our state becomes increasingly reliable, convenient and true.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is the esoteric Kabbalah even approaching legitimacy?“

Kabbalah is not a form of esotericism.

People want to label Kabbalah as esoteric or mystic, and connect it with blessings, curses, charms, and many other phenomena. These labels became linked with Kabbalah because there was a prohibition on the study of Kabbalah in the masses for 1,000s of years since humanity’s spiritual desire still hadn’t ripened. In the 16th Century, when the Ari (Kabbalist Isaac Luria) lifted the prohibition on the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, claiming that the time had come for Kabbalah to be revealed to humanity, he also mentioned the prohibition on the use of charms and blessings, since they have nothing to do with Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is a science that teaches the law of reality, of which we are a part. Through this science, we discover those rules and the spiritual world, which is the reason for everything that happens here with us. They are collective rules, which encompass the laws of all the sciences in our world.

Kabbalah is not another belief or an imaginary view of life. Instead, it offers precise and clear laws that depict the structure of the upper worlds.

It is when we study Kabbalah that we first acquire knowledge of the world outside our own. We discover the higher, spiritual world, and then we gradually attain the ability to affect it. Through tests and experiments, we learn how to do it, and then we enter the comprehensive reality.

At this point, we begin to work not from within our own bodies, but from our souls, which are our true essence. The human being is not the physical body that is replaced at the beginning of each new life. The human being is the soul that we currently do not sense.

The purpose of creation is that we will act from within our souls, from the upper world, and live at the highest degree possible, rather than in the lowest (our world), which is at an animal level. By discovering our souls, we attain contact with the upper world, and thus achieve a whole, complete, eternal and blissful life.

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