Michael Laitman, On Quora: “ How hard is it for a person who isn’t a Jew to understand the Torah? “

Understanding the Torah requires study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is open to everybody regardless of religion, nationality, gender or age.

At the outset, the Torah appears to be a historical tale, but Kabbalah reveals it as a method of correction and a textbook on the structure of the upper world.

By advancing in the method of Kabbalah—the method of correcting our egoism, i.e. a gradual transformation of our inborn intention to enjoy for self-benefit to an intention to bestow—we come to understand the Torah through the attainment of the upper world that it describes.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think about the UN Sustainable Development Goals?“

I think that it is a childish initiative, but let them try.

It is childish because it fails to account for the root cause of everything that makes life on this planet unsustainable, and how to correct the problems and crises we face at their root.

The root cause of our troubles—from environmental and ecological problems to personal, social and economic ones—is overblown human egoism, i.e. our excessive desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature. And the way we fix this problem is by applying ourselves to an educational method of correcting egoism, which means organizing our influences to redirect the intention upon our desires: to replace enjoying at the expense of others and nature, to enjoy by benefiting others and nature.

As a result of entering such a process, we would reach a heightened harmonious and peaceful state throughout humanity, where we would discover how to positively connect to each other through ties of bestowal. We would create a humanity that values mutual consideration, benefit, support and encouragement above our innate divisive drives, literally living for each other, and then we would discover a whole new world filled with forces of bestowal and love.

That is the key to reaching true sustainability.

By failing to account for the human ego and its correction, then we merely apply Band-Aid solutions to our problems, and egoism’s unabated growth beneath the surface would continually elicit new mutations and crises until we realize that it is fundamentally what we need to deal with.

Based on the video “Why Kabbalists View the 17 UN Sustainable Goals as Childish” 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: “Why do so many people identify with the loneliest whale?“

The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52 is a documentary that, over thirty years, tracked a whale that produced high-pitched sounds on a frequency unique solely to that whale, to which no other whales responded. They thus called this whale “the loneliest whale,” as it lived in complete loneliness, roaming the seas with its unanswered call.

Many people identify with this whale because sometimes in life we feel that we too are like that lonely whale, that no one hears us. We could even be surrounded by a lot of people and have a social life on the outside, but on the inside, we sometimes feel so lonely that no one responds to us.

Indeed, we each live inside ourselves. However, instead of remaining lonely, we should apply ourselves to positively connect with others above our feelings of loneliness. It is because our development is leading us to a complete connection among all people, and by aligning with such a tendency, we will discover much happier, more fulfilled and meaningful lives than our current experience. We should thus consider the kind of frequency that we would need to produce in order for others to hear us and turn to us.

That frequency is a heart full of love, one which wishes to benefit them. If we calibrate ourselves in such a way, then we would cure our loneliness. We would then find that others would start responding to us, wanting to come closer to us.

Based on the video “Why Do So Many People Identify With the Loneliest Whale?” 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: “What is your take on gender equality?“

Nature made a specific distinction between genders, placing us into an unequal state. Male and female parts in nature are necessary for birth and procreation. If we try to impose an artificial removal of the difference between genders, destroying their influence and attraction, then we will have no next generation. The push for treating genders completely equally emerges specifically in our era when people have lost their bearings, not knowing where to further progress, and so they come up with ideas that there should be equality in a place where nature created inequality.

We thus need to differentiate between nature-made inequality between genders, and the man-made distortion of nature, which today has taken gender equality too far—something that is not in our hands to change.

If we let ourselves increasingly become influenced with the opinion that removes the differentiation between male and female, we will increasingly bear witness to society’s degradation. The expansion of such a view to the center of public opinion would mean people no longer giving birth. We would lose interest in each other, have no more families, and no next generation.

However, we also need to understand why today we experience more imbalance between the concept of our inner self and our external manifestation. In the past, we did not have such issues on mass scales as we do today, i.e. a woman was a woman and a man was a man. Our times, however, are characterized by overblown egoistic growth. Our ego has developed over millennia through its stages of base desires for food, sex and family, and social desires for money, honor, control and knowledge, and today we have started crossing the threshold where our egoistic approach to life can no longer fulfill us. Today, it thus comes as no surprise that we see such unreal and unreasonable egoistic mutations manifesting.

We need to go through these stages of egoism’s overgrowth in order to realize its failure: that we cannot fulfill ourselves and find happiness with the ego determining our way of life. Eventually, we will reveal the human ego as the sole evil quality in existence, that contrary to other levels of nature, the human ego pits us up against nature in its most basic aspects.

The two distinct genders in nature are essential for the development of society and life in general. There is no superiority or inferiority between the genders—only complementarity. Instead of distorting nature with our man-made definitions, which fail to make us happier and more fulfilled, we would be wiser to promote the ways in which we can complement one another, and by doing so, raise the value of positive human connections: among partners, in society and our relationships across the board. By building positive human connections, developing an atmosphere of mutual consideration, support and encouragement throughout society, we create the conditions to find meaning, happiness and true fulfillment, which is what we ultimately need.

Based on KabTV’s “Close-Up. The Future of Humanity” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 17, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How might being kind and showing you care about someone, including a stranger, make a big difference in the person’s life?“

One of my students told me a story about a young man who was hospitalized on the verge of death. He wrote a “Farewell to the World” post on Facebook, which was met with hundreds of warm and caring comments from his family, friends and strangers. Lying on the hospital bed, he said the following: “Every word and sentence flowed into me like enlivening energy that really forced me to breathe in more and more love. Miraculously, my body stopped collapsing, and gradually, I made my way back to life.”

Now this man is fine. What is that force that brought him back from death? People, with their caring attitude toward him, gave him strength, passing a vitalizing force onto him. Their words carried healing forces, which he soaked up, and which enlivened him.

Indeed, we can truly enliven each other and build worlds with a loving and caring attitude toward each other.

Based on the video “How Care from Strangers Saved a Man’s Life” 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: “What do you think of U.S. officials who said Monday the bullet that killed veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was likely fired from an Israeli position?“

I heard about CNN reporting that IDF soldiers shot the Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh, as a targeted attack, which is uncanny because firing at civilians is the opposite of what the IDF teaches their soldiers from their very first training stage. It is no secret that the media is presenting Israel in an increasingly negative light, and it is because we Jews are not doing what we are supposed to, i.e. what humanity innately expects from us.

There is a subconscious expectation dwelling in humanity toward the Jewish people: to reveal the method of the world’s correction so that the world will become a positive, warm and friendly place. A common counterargument to this that I often hear from Jews in Israel is that “I wish the world would be a kinder and better place, but we’re living next door to people who teach their children to kill Jews from a young age.” What we fail to understand is that we are to blame for the increasingly negative attitude toward us, from our neighbors systematically teaching their children to kill us, to the global media painting a dark portrait of us.

It is almost impossible for us to hear that we are to blame for the negative attitude toward us, because we perceive ourselves as the victims, and it seems preposterous to say otherwise. Why? It is because we do not want to see the core reason behind this statement: that we have a role to guide the world to its correction, i.e. to a state of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Ultimately, although it appears we are headed in an opposite direction, humanity in general is headed to a state of mutual love, consideration, respect, support and encouragement. That state is set in nature, and our current state of development is akin to an unripe fruit that becomes increasingly bitter, until at its very end it inverts, becoming sweet, ripe and good to eat.

So who are we Jews in this developmental process? Unlike other nations that have biological roots, we share an ideological foundation: we first become known as “the people of Israel” when, under Abraham’s guidance in ancient Babylon, we attained a state of “love your neighbor as yourself,” and that heightened connection between us—balanced with nature’s force of absolute love and bestowal—attracted nature’s positive force into our connections. That is what it means to be “Israel,” from the two Hebrew words “Yashar Kel,” which means “straight to God”—understanding God as the root force in nature, a quality of love and bestowal that created and sustains reality.

Today’s increasingly negative attitude toward us is due to the increasing need in humanity for the revelation of nature’s positive force of love and bestowal, and that there is a critical mass within humanity who hold the key to attracting that force, and they are not doing so. Instead of acting like an open tap that lets nature’s positive force of love and bestowal stream freely into humanity, this critical mass instead acts like a cork, blocking the positive force from humanity. Without letting nature’s positive force of love and bestowal into humanity, the negative force of human egoism continually grows unabated, and thus problems across the board increase: from personal problems such as depression, loneliness, stress, insecurity and anxiety, through to problems in society such as increased distrust, inequality, poverty and crime, to name a few.

The more humanity experiences hardships, the more a subconscious negative feeling emerges in humanity toward the Jewish people. Today, that negative feeling becomes expressed as a recent exponential rise in antisemitic crimes and threats, together with an increasingly negative view of Israel.

If we Jews would start realizing our role, to achieve relations of “love your neighbor as yourself” among each other and to become a conduit of that positive force dwelling in nature toward the rest of humanity, then we would see the negative attitude toward us dramatically invert to a positive one. The subconscious urges within humanity would take a major turn. People would start feeling a new light, harmony and peace fill their lives, seemingly out of nowhere, but it would be due to our attainment and projection of a mutually considerate attitude that is sourced in nature.

We hold the key to making this immense positive change a reality. We just need to find the lock and turn it, and then we will see how a whole new perception and sensation of reality would open up. We would understand the core drive behind what currently appears as unjust and unfair accusations against us, and through our own attitude shift toward each other above our differences, we would enable that attitude shift en masse.

It is my hope that we will awaken to this process sooner rather than later, because the sooner we do, the more we will spare both ourselves and the rest of humanity much suffering.

Based on the video “Media Coverage of Al Jazeera Reporter Shireen Abu Akleh’s Death – A Kabbalist’s Response” 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: “What is the meaning of the image of God?“

Our attitudes to certain people and things lead to various images and behaviors.

We depict the image of the Creator in His attitude toward the created beings. We can do so in relation to the inanimate, vegetative and animate levels of nature, but we mostly do so in relation to people, the human level. When we aim to apply the Creator’s attitude toward the created beings in our human connections, we gradually assemble the image of the Creator.

The Creator is the general force of nature, immaterial, still, and above the loftiest of our imaginations. The wisdom of Kabbalah studies how this force operates toward us, and what it desires from us.

Based on “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Michael Sanilevich on May 21, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Where do dreams come from?“

Dreams are impressions of the material world or other various wandering currents in our subconscious that we see in our mind.

The wandering streams or currents of information, and the cell restructuring of the brain that takes place, bring about dreams. It is important to mention here that dreams relate solely to the physiology of our animal body, and have nothing to do with spirituality.

The dreams described in Kabbalistic sources, such as those of Pharaoh or Jacob, refer to a partial attainment of the spiritual world. Moreover, these dreams have nothing to do with showing us signs of the future. The wisdom of Kabbalah does not deal with such concepts. Likewise, dreams cannot be used for spiritual development, which requires clarity and absoluteness of efforts to connect with other people in a way that is balanced with nature.

Based on the video “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Michael Sanilevich on June 28, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Wolf Zimmermann on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the message behind Noah’s ark?“

It is written in the story of Noah’s Ark that all lived peacefully in the ark. It is because the ark represents the spiritual quality of Bina, i.e. a quality of pure bestowal, one that envelops and sustains everything within itself. By hiding in such a quality, we get saved from the flood, which represents the big ego—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature, opposite to the quality of bestowal—which engulfed the ark, outside of its walls, appearing in various terrible forms: volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, blizzards and fires.

The ark protected all who were inside it. They wanted to save it. The message is that the more we protect the ark, the more the ark will protect us, because the ark is the spiritual quality of Bina: pure bestowal. Entering such a quality is like entering a womb: it protects us from negative and harmful external influences.

The myriad problems and crises humanity experiences emerge from overblown human egoism. If we build an ark, and do not eat each other, but instead dwell peacefully in such an ark, in our small world where everything and everyone is completely interdependent, then we will be saved. Otherwise, what happened to all those who remained outside of the walls of Noah’s Ark will happen to us: our egoistic attitudes to each other will eventually drown us.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on March 28, 2013. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is freedom?“

Freedom is a state where we rise above our restrictive limits and give everything we can for society’s benefit. Doing so gives us the opportunity to feel absolutely free from every restraint.

How does it work that we become free when we give everything possible for society’s benefit? It is because we then feel no limits from our egoistic nature—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature—because we use it with an intention to bestow, i.e. a desire to benefit others and nature.

Acquiring an intention to bestow upon our egoistic nature, which can be achieved through exercising giving and positive connection in society, is our life’s purpose. When we acquire the new intention to bestow upon our inborn desire to receive, we gain access to a state of eternity and perfection: unlimited fulfillment, complete perception and total connection with others and nature.

Based on the video “Kabbalah Express” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Israel Shimshon on June 24, 2022.

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