Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do I come out of mental illness?“

Positive relationships in society are the enveloping means for good mental health. Mental illness comes from imbalance in the mind and body, which comes from imbalance in society, which is further caused by imbalance with nature. By fixing our social connections, we bring ourselves into balance with nature, and such balance will positively influence not only our mental health, but also our general health and well-being.

Whether or not we are aware of it, positive relationships in society give our lives a sense of meaning and worth. It is no wonder, then, that the more we become divided, isolated and lonely, as is the case in much of today’s world, then the more we also see mental illness on the rise.

By nature, we are social creatures and our lives are full of relationships: at home, in the workplace, with friends, relatives, acquaintances, strangers, and through various media. On one hand, we all want to feel good and enjoy positive relationships. On the other hand, we find ourselves dealing with more and more inequality and conflicts.

When we are young, we learn that we need to behave and speak a certain way in society, because if we do not, then we can evoke a negative reaction from other people. We thus apply certain rules and codes of conduct to ourselves in order to fit in, and while they may contribute to advancing us personally and getting us into certain career paths, they often fail to serve building meaningful relationships, which is what truly makes us happy and gives us emotional stability. We thus find ourselves living in a world where divisiveness, isolation, loneliness and stress are on the rise, and our health and well-being thus become negatively affected as a result.

As important as positive social relationships are to our health and well-being, and in both preventing and treating mental illness, they are tremendously under-emphasized in today’s world. On one hand, we are evolving outside our past boundaries of several classes and hierarchies, which made our lives much clearer and simple, and have achieved a state of more equality. On the other hand, such equality is superficial and it leads to more and more confusion and anxiety.

The great paradox of our times is that our world has become like a small global village, where our interconnectedness and interdependence becomes tighter worldwide, but on the other hand, we find ourselves becoming more and more internally divided and hateful in our attitudes toward each other.

While it stands to reason that the more dependent we become on each other, the more we should learn, apply and exercise positive relations to realize that dependence harmoniously, the opposite is the case: that we keep trying to use each other for self-benefit, and we wish to impose our own views and egoistic decisions on others. This self-centered attitude contradicts the principle of an egalitarian society, where we are each equally important even though we are each different.

Therefore, we have a fateful challenge to meet in our times, where if we succeed in standing up to this challenge, then we will be able to solve several problems in our world, with mental illness among them.

The challenge is: How can we realize our increasing interdependence harmoniously?

To this end, we need to establish a social-educational system that will open our eyes to the deep level of interdependence in all areas of our lives, which should amplify the indispensable need for positive social connections. We can begin with concrete steps to acquire strong and solid relations.

First, it is important to realize that in this tightly interdependent world, every piece is indispensable to complete the full picture of reality, like in a puzzle. By affecting one another, we affect the whole system, for better or for worse. It is a system that each person is part of and that influences each person directly. Do we want to benefit from the fact that we have positive social relationships and a warm environment? Certainly, every person wishes to live in such a reality. It is then in our own interest to transform our actions and intentions from harmful exploitative ones to mutual understanding and care.

The way to achieve this goal is not rocket science. Yet, it is also not obvious to us because we have not been taught how to do it. However, there is a method of connection that we can implement in order to bring about improvements in our social relationships, and the more we undergo such connection-enriching learning, the more we will find ourselves getting along much better, on one hand, and lessening the cases of myriad problems in our lives, including mental illness, on the other hand.

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

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the creator of life?“

The Creator is the quality of the upper world, the principle characteristic of which is bestowal or giving.

We do not know who or what the Creator is in and of itself. We can only know how we perceive the Creator. As much as we sense the quality of giving, perceiving in a manner of bestowal, we accordingly attain the Creator. Similarly, we can say nothing about any object in our world in and of itself, but only about how it appears to us in our perception.

Therefore, in Hebrew, the language kabbalists use to describe the upper world, the word for the Creator is “Boreh,” which is a connection of two words: “Bo” (“come”) and “Reh” (“see”). “Come” means that we undergo a certain kind of self-transformation, where we attain the quality of bestowal, and then we “see.” In other words, we perceive everything in our sensations.

How can we attain the quality of bestowal? This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah was given to us for. It is a method for attaining the upper world by acquiring the quality of bestowal, and we discover the Creator to the extent in which we sense the quality of bestowal. That is why Kabbalah is defined as a wisdom that brings us “the revelation of the Creator to His created beings in this world” (Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag [Baal HaSulam], “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”). By progressing in the method, we acquire new tools of perception and sensation called “Kelim” (“vessels,” plural of “Kli” [“vessel”]) with which we sense the Creator and the upper world.

Based on KabTV’s “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does it mean to seek spirituality?“

It starts by wanting something more or different to what everyday life offers. In the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is called the emergence of the desire for spirituality called the “point in the heart.” When this desire emerges, we feel a need to get answers to the question about the meaning of life.

How do we come to such a desire?

It comes after developing over several lifetimes, where we were first like animals, with desires solely for food, family, sex and shelter, and we then developed through desires for money, honor, control and knowledge.

In our first stage of development, we had desires only for food, family, sex and shelter. We still have such desires even if we are completely isolated from society. Our next stages of development—desires for money, honor, control and knowledge—are characterized by desires that emerge in relation to society.

Afterward, the desire for knowledge appears. Sciences blossomed as we set out to discover where everything came from, and to discover our roots. Such a desire for knowledge, however, still only resides within the framework of our world.

Only in the next stage of our desire’s development do we wish to know our real source, essence and purpose: the meaning of life. We then start becoming troubled by questions about our origin, our future, and who and what we really are.

We are egoists by nature. Common to all of our desires is that they are self-centered and want fulfillment. They pressure us and literally control our every move. The ego’s limit in our world is the desire to become filled with knowledge about something above us.

Suffering is at the core of our desires. We shift from one type of desire to another under the influence of suffering. If we are in a balanced state, then we feel at peace. When a new desire surfaces, we then feel as if we lack something and want to experience or receive something new, so we start trying to fulfill our desire’s demands… and this process repeats throughout our lives. In short, we always move toward fulfillment, and move away from pain.

We live our lives trying to fulfill our countless desires. After several lifetimes, we come to a state when one desire is all that is left: the desire to attain our source, the meaning of life.

When this final desire appears, everything else seems to lose its meaning. We then become depressed, feeling emotionally and spiritually empty, as if nothing can bring happiness.

The feeling of life as pointless and inauthentic is an expression of a new desire that is starting to surface in our era, the desire for spirituality. It is a desire that essentially asks about life’s meaning and purpose—”What is the meaning of life?”—even if we do not verbalize it as such. It makes us seek through various teachings in order to find some kind of meaning and answers.

The wisdom of Kabbalah was made specifically in order to fulfill this desire. It is an empiric method that leads to the discovery of the meaning of life—the attainment of the higher reality—and is open for study by anyone who wants to delve into it.

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

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think is the cause of modern racism?“

The human ego is the basis for all our drives and characteristics. It operates in an absorptive manner, receiving from others and nature for the sake of personal benefit. Over the course of history, the ego undergoes development and leads us to a fateful transition where it changes direction to its opposite: from receiving to giving. We can aid such a transformation, to make it faster and more enjoyable, if we learn how the ego operates on us, and what we can do in order to realize the transformation consciously.

When our perception shifts to a direction that aims from ourselves outwardly, toward the benefit of others, we discover a paradigm of totally different feelings and understandings. When we are self-aimed, we always calculate whether something is good or bad for us. It means that we automatically choose that which we perceive as good for the ego, and throw aside what we see as bad for it. When there is a phenomenon that neither benefits nor harms the ego, then we have no sensation of that phenomenon. This is how we perceive reality.

When we change ourselves, shifting our constant egoistic focus on self-aimed benefit to an altruistic focus on the benefit of others, we then start perceiving the part of reality that surrounds us, which we had no prior perception of, because we perceived everything through our egoistic impulses.

We then start perceiving everything via a completely opposite altruistic lens. Instead of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, we develop five new altruistic senses called “Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut.” We then perceive a new world, called the “upper world” or “spiritual world,” through the new altruistic nature that we attain.

When we reach such attainment, our egoistic perception of reality still remains. We continue living and feeling the world through our same inborn five senses, however our focus completely transforms to perceive the altruistic part of reality that is concealed from our egoistic perception. We then start feeling life in two worlds. Via this new perception and sensation, we start making decisions on how we orient our every motion. We are all destined to reach this state.

In the meantime, our egoistic perception prioritizes whatever it perceives as serving greater benefit to ourselves, while everything that does not benefit us, it rejects or does not perceive at all. In general, we automatically choose what we enjoy and find useful for our goals, and reject everything else.

Racism is a state where, in addition to our senses being directed solely toward self-benefit, we also enjoy when others are worse off. Humanity in general has this problem. Part and parcel of our egoistic development over generations is that the ego reaches a state of overgrowth, where we live and work not only to serve our own interests, but we also wish to inflict harm upon others. This comes from excessive social desires (wealth, honor, control and knowledge) where we constantly compare ourselves to others, and the bigger our egos are, the more we want to be above them. Then the worse it is for them, the better it is for us.

Envy, hatred, and generally the desire to reap enjoyment from harming others, is nonexistent in animals. This constant comparison to others in society thus sets the scene for racism. We start blaming others for all kinds of problems and misfortunes in our lives when we think that they cause our troubles, or when we see that they are more fortunate and successful than we are. Also, we want to look good in the eyes of society, and the more we see others looking seemingly better than us, the more we want to put them down in order to elevate our own status. Such traits exist only in humans, because we are composed of animal and human qualities. The animal part of us requires food, sex and family, and the human part demands money, honor, control and knowledge. When our egoistic desire grows and we wish to fulfill ourselves more and more with the sources of these emotions, we then encounter envy and hatred.

It follows that we feel better off when we see others as worse off, as it is an essential aspect of our inborn ego. If our egos are small, similar to animals, then we do not encounter such negative emotions. However, if our egos are highly developed, then we feel great unrest due to constantly comparing ourselves to others and seeing that they are more successful and fortunate. This unrest thus acts on us in order to make us want to be above them, either by outcompeting them, or by putting them down.

Racism thus increasingly surfaces the more our egos grow. We find ourselves emphasizing our differences and divisions more and more, without any inclination to rise above them, which ends up creating more and more instances of racism, hatred and division.

We thus find ourselves moving toward a state of immense hatred and divisiveness, on one hand, but on the other hand, we also find ourselves becoming increasingly interdependent. At such a fateful juncture, we need a new kind of education that emphasizes how we can positively connect above our divisive drives—specifically a wisdom that acknowledges the causes of our divisive drives, and which guides us not in order to diminish or cancel them, but in order to rise above them in a positive connection—and by doing so, we will reach a newfound harmonious balance between these two opposite tendencies.

Based on a video conference with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on June 7, 2015.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What will be next after the coronavirus?“

At some point, we will recover from the coronavirus. However, we can definitely expect another crisis to hit humanity soon afterward. Whether it will be another strand of the coronavirus, or another pandemic entirely, or some other crisis, the reason I am saying that we can expect more global-scale crises is because it is part and parcel of nature’s way of raising us.

When we understand how nature guides us to a defined goal, how nature reveals toward us on the way to that goal, and what we are required to change in order to balance with nature, then we can understand blows such as the Covid pandemic as essential parts of nature’s plan.

Nature sends us blows in waves, one at a time, because its goal toward us is to raise us to a higher degree of human development, one that is balanced with nature. It can be likened to loving parents who sometimes crack down on their children in order to teach them a lesson, and expect a certain change in the children’s attitude or behavior as a result. After inflicting a blow, nature usually gives us time to contemplate it and implement the change that it expects of us. The coronavirus is thus one blow in a series, and we can expect each successive blow to be harsher than its predecessors if we fail to step up to the change that nature expects of us.

Unique to the current pandemic is its global nature. It affects everyone around the world in a wide variety of ways, whether medically, economically, socially and/or psychologically, but all in all, nature sends us all a reminder that it is bigger than us, and moreover, that we are all interdependent.

By illuminating our global interdependence so clearly, we would be wise to think about how we should best relate to our interdependence—that we help, support and encourage each other, and consider others’ needs as preciously as we relate to our own. This is the lesson that nature wants to teach us, and if we fail to make a shift in our attitudes to each other so that we realize our interdependence more positively, then we can expect more and more global-scale crises to bring us to such a determination.

Similar to how cells in the human body operate in order to serve the whole body’s health above their own individual needs, likewise through global-scale crises, nature aims to show us that we are all parts of a single global system. We would thus be wise to start thinking of humanity as such, lovingly, with care, like how we think about anyone who is precious and important to us.

Key to this challenge is that we have nothing to do with our hands and legs—it all points to a change in our attitudes to each other. If we develop an atmosphere of mutual care and consideration that dwells among humanity, then we will see how such an attitude shift brings about myriad positive changes in our lives—from stopping further pandemics and other global-scale crises, to vast improvements of relations on personal and social scales, and their byproducts, which include more happiness and confidence, better health, and lives that become filled with meaning and abundance.

Based on the Writers Meeting with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and a writing team on June 8, 2021.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some great short jokes?“

A cannibal is having trouble sleeping. He turns in his bed and sighs. His wife pokes him and asks, “Why aren’t you sleeping?” The cannibal sighs and responds, “I can’t stop thinking about why we’re alive! What is the meaning of our existence here?” His wife responds, reproachfully: “How many times have I told you, don’t eat kabbalists!”

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

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the highest form of freedom?“

Freedom means rising above ourselves, i.e. our egoistic nature that wants to enjoy on account of others and nature, to another level of existence, one where we acquire nature’s qualities of altruism and connection.

We experience freedom relative to the previous level we used to be on. However, regarding our next level, we are not free. We exist below it and need to rise to it in order to once again experience freedom. We progress accordingly until we attain the final level of complete balance with nature.

Balance with nature is the highest level of freedom, which includes all the other levels, and we are all destined to reach it.

In other words, the highest form of freedom is our final state, the goal of our existence. While we are all headed there in a long drawn-out process of evolution, which involves a lot of suffering on the way, the wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that lets us reach that state in a single lifetime.

Based on a Kabbalah lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 2, 2017.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is there any connection between Kabbalah and astrology?“

The wisdom of Kabbalah has been connected to several teachings over the course of history, but authentic Kabbalah has no connection to other teachings.

There is no astrology in Kabbalah, no divination by stars, nor any connection between Kabbalah and red strings, holy water, Tarot, mysticism or Kabbalistic meditations, even though if you look up such connections, you will find a lot written about them.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for attaining no more and no less than the purpose of life while we are alive in this world: attainment of the Creator, the higher force in reality. We develop ourselves through this method in order to attain spiritual qualities and a spiritual perception that has no connection to this world’s qualities. As such, Kabbalah has no connection to stars or anything else around the person, but only to that which is inside the person.

Based on “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on March 3, 2019.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Would a new government mean a profound shift for Israel?“

A profound shift for Israel would mean remedying the tensions and divisions in Israeli society, which have been getting out of hand recently, and I doubt that the new government is capable of impacting such a shift.

The new government is an assemblage of politicians who each pull in their own direction, and who are unwilling to make the necessary concessions for the sake of uniting Israeli society. They have formed their current bond against a common foe. After they get their way for now, we can expect them to each soon return to pursuing their individual interests instead of setting them aside in favor of unity.

However, while the new government cannot be expected to bring about a profound shift for Israel, we would be wise to view Israel’s current turbulence as a timely situation that can serve to change our outlook on Israel and its future.

We, the people of Israel, have but a single virtue on which our success or failure depends. It is our unity. If we calibrate ourselves to unite above our divisions and tensions, then we set foot on a positive path of development. By aiming at positively connecting to each other above our deepening rifts, we awaken the support of a positive unifying force dwelling in nature to hold that unity together. Without any unifying inclination among each other, then we also get no support for unity, and our ties then loosen and break.

Moreover, our path to unity is not contingent on the government and politics, and should not be viewed as such. Rather, unity should emerge from the people. It requires recognizing the basis for our divisions: that our very nature is egoistic, i.e. we each seek to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and instead of letting this ego lead us into conflicts and other outbursts, we would be wise to look deeper into why we always encounter crises, and why we never seem to overcome our divisions.

Also, if we haven’t already, then we need to wake up to the world’s attitude toward us. On one hand, we supply the world with much innovation by way of technology, medicine and science. But on the other hand, the attitude toward us becomes increasingly negative and hateful. The more divided we become, the more the world frowns upon us, and it is not far-fetched to think that it could lead to our isolation.

The gray clouds forming over us are in order to make us realize that we will have no other option but to unite. Any motion we make in the direction of our unity, even if it is a single thought of our need to unite, will act positively toward such an end. While negative emotions are ablaze toward us and between us, we should view this situation as the chance of a lifetime: that times of change are upon us, and if we want that change to be positive, we should take the initiative to start implementing relations of unity above division using the method of connection that was made for uniting us and leading us to a harmonious existence.

Based on a meeting with a team of writers and Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on June 3, 2021.
Written/edited by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Rafael Nir on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “In one sentence, what is true happiness?“

Happiness is a state in which the upper light fills us with the sensation of an eternal and perfect existence.

Based on a Kabbalah lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on December 11, 2016.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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