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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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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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Where did all the antisemitism come from in the first place?“

Antisemitism lives in the foundations of human society and human nature. The human ego—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature—evolves throughout history and during a person’s life. The more it grows, the more it feels an opposite force also dwelling within. That opposite force is called a “point in the heart.” Contrary to our egoistic desires that wish solely to absorb pleasures into themselves, the point in the heart is a desire that has potential to develop into a desire that loves, gives and positively connects to others.

The point in the heart is also known as the seed of the soul, as we can develop it to discover our soul—the connection that underlies those very points. The realization of the potential encased in this small point of desire is the ability to rise above the human ego, where instead of detaching from one another through our growing egoism, i.e. increasingly prioritizing self-benefit over benefiting others, we instead prioritize the benefit of others and positive human connection.

The point in the heart is the opposite of our egoistic nature. There are people who host only the negative egoistic force, and there are people who have both the negative egoistic force and the positive altruistic force. When both positive and negative forces coexist in us, then we become called “Jews” or “Israel” according to our inner essence. Likewise, if we solely host the negative egoistic force with no revelation yet of the point in the heart, then we are called “nations of the world” according to that essence.

We underwent several stages of development throughout history. The point in the heart first surfaced throughout human society in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians who felt the inner urge to seek something deeper in life beyond the earthly egoistic desires joined Abraham, who taught a method for how to nurture the point in the heart in order to rise above the ego and positively connect. Abraham organized the Babylonians who wanted to study with him into a group, and he called this group “Israel,” which is made up of the words “Yashar Kel” (“straight to God”), i.e. people who aim themselves directly at the attainment of nature’s upper force of love, bestowal and connection, which is opposed to the force existing in human beings, the force of reception.

Since Abraham’s time, the two groups—Israel and the nations of the world—have undergone much development. Some from the Israel camp left the group to pursue their natural egoistic inclinations, i.e. with an inclination to the nations of the world, while some from the nations of the world felt that they possess a special closeness and connection, which draws them to Israel. In other words, Jews are not a nationality, but they are people who host the point in the heart, which associates them with the positive force of nature, and which is opposite to the egoistic force that we are born and raised with by nature.

The source of antisemitism is in the contrast and conflict between the two opposite desires of our inborn egoism and the point in the heart that can develop our ability to rise above the human ego.

Based on the video “What Is the Essence of Antisemitism?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can ChatGPT write another Bible?“

I received a similar question recently from one of my students who mentioned that people use ChatGPT to write various kinds of articles and books on a wide range of topics. As such, could ChatGPT write another Bible, the Torah or The Zohar?

Very simply, neither ChatGPT nor any kind of A.I. program could write a spiritual text.

A.I. is based on human intellect and emotion, our inner programming. Spiritual texts, however, are written from a higher level than human intellect and emotion. They are written from the soul’s interconnections, which computers cannot reproduce.

Based on the video “Can ChatGPT Write Another Bible?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do I activate the energy of success?“

Getting the energy to succeed depends solely on the importance of the goal.

That is, if you want to achieve something, you will have the energy to achieve it.

Most importantly, you need to understand what your goal is, and that you have to achieve it, and then the energy for achieving it will come.

You can the also increase the importance of the goal by choosing texts, media, teachers and a group of people that you surround yourself with who share the same goal.

Based on KabTV’s “Blitz of Questions and Answers” on January 6, 2023.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How would you become the best version of yourself?“

We can become the best versions of ourselves when we realize that we need to achieve love for one another.

When we reach a state of loving others, we exert our energy into that love, and we then want nothing for ourselves but only the ability to benefit, support and encourage people.

Realizing this ability means overcoming the egoistic force within us—human nature, our desire to enjoy at the expense of others—with the altruistic force of nature. With such an overcoming, we reach balance with nature.

The egoistic force remains within. It acts as a minus, and then the minus and plus—the altruistic force—function optimally in order for us to achieve our common goal: the unification of everyone and everything into a single whole.

Based on the video “Jewish Self-Realization” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are the Jewish people still in exile?“

Being Jewish means attaining the sensation of two contrasting forces in nature, the egoistic force, which is our human nature, and its opposite altruistic force, which is the force of nature itself.

The attainment of these two forces define the people who, first under Abraham, developed this feeling of reality. They became known as the people of Israel, and later, as the Jews.

At a certain point, around 2,000 years ago, they lost the sensation of the two forces and lived solely in the egoistic force. That is the meaning of being in exile.

Exile has no geographic connotations, i.e. leaving some geographic Land of Israel. It is rather a matter of an inner exile, that we lack the sensation of the altruistic nature—the quality of love, bestowal and connection—in our relations. When we departed from this sensation, we then entered our period of exile and ceased to exist as the people of Israel.

Based on the video “What Is the Exile of the Jews?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there a difference in the sensation of an anti-Semite from the Middle Ages and today?“

Yes, there is. In the Middle Ages, people felt a much deeper dependence on the Jews than people today.

Today, we have medicine, chemistry, technology and other means by which we can use nature to our benefit. Humanity has accumulated much more knowledge, and many more people today engage in fields that Jews more typically occupied in the past.

However, the fact that Jews no longer uniquely hold certain positions and engagements in society does not lessen antisemitism in our times. On the contrary, antisemitism is rising and taking on a new evolutionary form.

The hatred of Jews in our era is not due to Jews’ disproportionate success in fields such as science, technology and medicine. It is rather due to a certain kind of force that the Jews possess: a hidden force that is rooted in what made Jews a united people in their establishment, a force capable of uniting humanity above all differences and divisions.

Before all the rationalizations of Jew hatred in our world today, there is a deeper feeling of hatred toward the Jews that antisemites themselves often cannot understand at its core: that as the Jewish people once united and became a conduit for the positive force of connection dwelling in nature to spread and cover human society, likewise today, the more people feel increasing troubles and dissatisfaction in their lives, the more they feel that Jews are somehow behind their problems.

Antisemitism today thus becomes sharper, subtler, more threatening and more global. If the Jewish people unite above their differences like they did when they first became the people of Israel, they become a conduit for the positive force dwelling in nature to spread and heal the world of its problems.

Therefore, antisemitism can be uprooted if we Jews start functioning according to what made us Jews to begin with: to start uniting above our differences, and by doing so, unclog a certain inner pipeline to human consciousness—to let the positive force of nature enter the world, and to let unity cover the growing differences and divisions in human society.

Based on the video “Antisemites in the Middle Ages Vs. Antisemites Today: Is There a Difference?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What might be the motivation behind the phenomenon known as “Jewish self-hatred”?“

Abraham, who researched the laws of nature, saw that the growing human ego of his time was a sign of a maturing society. He understood that nature grows the egoistic desire in people in order for people to positively connect above it. This is because by taking hold of two forces—our innate egoistic force, and the altruistic force above it—we can reach an understanding of the laws of nature, how the two forces of separation and connection act in nature.

There is a very special state between these two forces that we can attain, and which Abraham attained. Abraham started teaching the method of attaining the two forces in nature to the Babylonians of the time, and a special group formed around him.

What we need to understand from this story is that a group emerged in ancient Babylon, and the people in this group developed a sensation of two forces in nature—the egoistic force and its opposite altruistic force, the force of connection that connects the two. The people who attained these two forces received the name “Israel,” and later became known as “the Jews,” which means “unity” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]), because these people received a desire for unity that they further developed into a unified sensation of the two forces. The other Babylonians of the time did not receive the drive to unite, as they were content enough remaining within the natural egoistic approach to the world, and they become known as the “nations of the world.”

“Nations of the world” is the term defining the egoistic force of human nature. When the altruistic force appears in certain people, then this altruistic force also starts urging a more accelerated growth of the egoistic force within the person. As a result, we find a group that includes both forces: the positive and the negative. Due to the growth of the two forces within, that group’s members become more developed. The group with the smaller egoistic force simply does not need as much of a desire, because they have enough in order to live their lives without developing the connection to the altruistic force.

Since the Jewish people initially emerged from the attainment of the two forces in nature, we then also find how this nation is in constant contradiction with one another and with themselves. It is because they host these two opposite forces, and they are thus people who cannot easily get along—neither with themselves nor with others—because they play host to a fundamental inner conflict. Therefore, until today, we bear witness to every Jew consisting of both gentile and Jewish parts, and they thus host an inner restlessness.

This is the root of Jewish self-hatred, i.e. in each and every Jew resides a force of self-hatred, a big egoistic force, and without balancing it out with its opposite altruistic force, then the self-hatred becomes apparent.

Based on the video “What Is the Origin of Jewish Self-Hatred?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why are there ‘self hating Jews’?“

Indeed, throughout history, the Jewish people have seen fellow Jews turn against their own people. Titus’ Chief of Staff, Tiberius Julius Alexander, who was Philo’s nephew and whose father donated the gilded gates to the Temple, commanded both the destruction of Jerusalem and the massacre of 50,000 of his native Jewish community in Alexandria. In the 15th century, Tomás de Torquemada, of Jewish descent, was Spain’s first Grand Inquisitor, and the architect behind the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

During World War II there were Jews who fought and spied for Nazi Germany. Stalin’s personal assistant, Alexander Poskrebyshev, was a Jew and assisted him in everything, including his plan to exile all of Russia’s Jews to Siberia.

More recently, we have the infamous Bernie Sanders example where, as a Jew, he believed that Israel killed “over 10,000 innocent people” in the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, when even Hamas’ highest casualty assessments were a quarter of that number.

Jews are said to be unique, but this profound self-loathing is not only unique, it is also very dangerous.

From the very beginning, we Jews were different. Even in the days when we were called “Hebrews,” we lived by different moral and social codes. While the rest of the nations lived by the sword, the ancient Hebrews exercised brotherly love and attempted to love their neighbors as themselves. And while the world nurtured individualism, the Hebrews fostered selflessness.

Our ancestors were an eclectic “bunch.” They did not come from a specific tribe or locality, but were a collection of individuals who took to the idea that mercy and brotherly love were the tenets by which to live. Unlike their Babylonian and Canaanite contemporaries, they did not try to hurl ego against ego to see who was left standing. They had come from just such societies and no longer wanted to live this way. Instead, they acknowledged that the ego, which they termed “evil inclination,” is indeed evil, that it is an inherent trait (“evil crouches at the door”), and that the one way to overcome it is to cover it with love. To put it in the words of King Solomon (Proverbs, 10:12): “Hate stirs strife, and love covers all crimes.”

Granted, it is not easy to constantly aspire to correct your ego and love your neighbor as yourself. From the very beginning, some Jews could not live up to that ideal and left the creed. In fact, after the exile in Babylon, the majority of the Jews abandoned their faith and mingled with the nations. The few who did return to the land of Israel became the Jewish people we know today. They were the ones entrusted with passing on the ideology of their forefathers: the idea that “love covers all crimes” is the way to live, and that “love your neighbor as yourself” is the great klal (all-inclusive law) of the Torah, the Jewish law.

When Israel’s remaining Jews had declined into unfounded hatred, they could not keep their unity, the Temple was ruined, and the Jews disintegrated into exiled communities. It seemed only fitting that the one who ruined the Temple, Tiberius Julius Alexander, was himself a Jew.

Soon after the ruin of the Temple, anti-Semitism in its more contemporary form of blood-libels, conspiracy theories, and accusations of disloyalty, began to dominate the nations’ attitude toward the Jews. At best, the aristocracy tolerated them for their economic and financial acuity. At worst, they were murdered and driven away.

Devoid of the ability to live up to the tenet they themselves had engendered, the Jews became as selfish as their host nations, and a great many of them could not understand why they should maintain loyalty to their religion. These assimilated Jews became our nation’s fiercest enemies, holding profound rancor toward their kindred. They knew that they were born into a creed that was meant to be “a light unto nations,” but they did not want to be the chosen people and resented the fact that the world expected them to be different, more ethical than others, when in fact they weren’t.

Non-Jewish anti-Semites have it relatively easy; they simply hate Jews and they rarely need to rationalize it. Jewish anti-Semites have a much harder life: they feel constantly obligated to justify to themselves and to the world why they hate their own people.

In doing so, they perpetuate and deepen Jewish disunity, driving us further away from the brotherhood that had originally propelled us into nationhood. And when we cannot form brotherhood, we cannot be “a light unto nations” and we therefore intensify the nations’ hatred toward us. This is the reason why the worst catastrophes happen to Jews in countries where we are the most assimilated and least united, as it happened in Spain and later in Germany.

We all have a part within us that resents its origin and objects to our task. Just like our forefathers, this is something we all have to overcome by uniting above our egos. If we let that Jew-hater within take over, we will increase the separation among us and the hatred toward us will grow even more.

The deeper the world falls into unbridled egoism, the more it needs a method to cope with it, and the more it will turn against the Jews. Being the ones who once had a successful way of working with the ego—by uniting above it instead of making futile attempts to crush it—the world will blame us for its woes, not realizing that all it really wants is for us to connect and set an example of unity.

While we may be unable to change the self-hating Jew without, or within us, we can use them as reminders of our task: to unite by covering our hatred with love, in order to share it by way of example with the world. We owe the world our unique method of connection. Until we implement it in order to share it, we will remain the world’s pariahs, whether we espouse socialism or capitalism. Our way to freedom lies not in hating one another and bonding with the world; it lies in loving one another first, and then bonding with the world.

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