Comment: You claim that Kabbalah is approximately 4,500 years old. But historians and philosophers claim that it is much less.

My Response: The fact is that philosophy has nothing that could be put to the test of experience. Therefore, each generation writes a new philosophy and the previous one is stored. In the end, nobody uses it.

I met with many experts, in particular, with Professor Daniel Matt, who translated The Zohar into English in a special, academic language. He taught at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. We gave lectures together. Before that we had a lot of conversations, and I asked him: “Why do you assert that The Zohar was written in the eleventh century by Moshe de Leon?” He replied,: “From the descriptions in The Zohar, it seems to us that it is about the nature of northern Spain, those meadows, those hills… .”

I asked, “Are there really no such meadows and hills in Israel, in Galilee?”

He answered, “Well, so it seems to us.”

This is despite the fact that The Book of Zohar itself repeatedly describes how Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was sitting with his disciples and writing this book, how one disciple asked a question, then the second one, the third, and so on. There is not a single page in it that does not mention how Rabbi Shimon’s disciples discussed all these questions among themselves and immediately wrote down the answers to them.

This is what the book consists of. From this the book was formed.

But Professor Matt believed that Rabbi Moshe de Lyon purposely wrote it in such a way to hide his authorship. It is not clear why.

I think that philosophy’s pride is somewhat hurt because in comparison with Kabbalah, it really is worth nothing, because it operates with purely illusionary, unprovable categories that have no basis whatsoever.

But nothing can be done, and this also has a place in humanity.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Seekers” 9/16/09

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Question: You say that a person can come to the opening of the upper world only with the help of Kabbalah. And what about other methods that claim that they have achieved the opening of human consciousness?

Answer: Just like me, don’t trust anyone. Why on earth should you trust me or anyone else? One will have a bigger beard, the other will speak more beautifully, the third will manipulate something else. You have to check everything.

And first you need to make sure that you are checking correctly, that is, you need to calibrate your senses, your thoughts, your apparatus, with the help of which you carry out the test like any scientist.

What else? Let’s say you now start to trust someone. This is how your whole life will pass and in the end you will be convinced that you believed in the wrong thing. The next time you are in our world you will believe and follow another teaching with your eyes closed.

Kabbalah says: “No, first we need to check what we are actually using to make sure what is experienced, that we are forming it correctly and analyzing it correctly, and only after that should we correctly approach this system.”

When I came to Kabbalah as a budding scholar, this was the only way I felt about it. I didn’t even imagine I could believe in something. In what? What I am told about the existence of God? I don’t want to believe it! I want to know!

Kabbalah is engaged in revealing knowledge for you. You comprehend the upper world, that is, an additional system that stands behind our world and controls it. You enter it and you begin to see it. It shows through this matter. You see how this matter works, how all its parts are interconnected. All methods only speak about it, and the Kabbalist sees it. He operates with it.

Every person who asks about the meaning of life must go through it all himself. Nobody can do anything for him.

And if he finds comfort in some other technique, then let him stay there. Kabbalah in no way pulls or agitates anyone. For many millennia it was hidden because humanity did not need it, people did not have an urgent question about the meaning of life. But then humanity was not so interconnected with each other as it is now.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Seekers” 9/16/09

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Comment: One common spiritual method is the so-called “Osho teaching.” Like Kabbalah, it speaks about unity and about the perception of the universe as a single whole.

My Response: A great number of people talk about unity. Nowadays physicists and even economists say that everything is interconnected. Russian geologist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) developed the theory of the noosphere. In principle unity is an ancient concept that existed before Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is only four and a half thousand years old. It originated in ancient Babylon. However, even before that, people believed that everything in nature is interconnected. On the one hand they worshipped the sun, the moon, the stars and various forces of nature, and on the other hand they still believed that there was something that unites them.

The medieval scientist and scholar Rambam wrote that at first all people believed in the existence of one single force. Then they saw that all sorts of phenomena occur in nature, as if under the influence of different forces: the moon, the sun, wind, water, and so on. They realized that the one single force hidden from them manifested itself through various private forces, and they began to worship them because they saw an obvious image. Thus, polytheism appeared.

Initially monotheism prevailed, a single upper force. Even when people began to worship its various manifestations, they realized they were worshipping angels, that is, representatives of one upper force.

Therefore, the unity that Osho or other methods speak about is a very ancient postulate.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Seekers” 9/16/09

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Question: The fact that the ancient philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and later Spencer took a lot from Kabbalah is evidenced by the mention in their theories that the human community is a living organism in which everything is interconnected.

Why did it happen that some became Kabbalists and attained the upper world, while others remained philosophers?

Answer: If a person initially has a point in his heart, then it pulls him to enter the upper world in one’s senses. And if this point has not yet awakened in him, it means that he does not yet have an embryo that manifests itself from within, this spiritual instrument, this organ of sensation of the upper world. And therefore, he develops an attitude toward the upper world through understanding.

This is how philosophy arose, which is built only on abstract constructions of some forms, all kinds of reasoning, but, in no case, on an explicit, sensory, cognitive penetration into this matter, because they have no connection with it.

People who have a point in their heart and strive for sensation of the upper world go through very serious stages of their own correction because they need to become like the upper world in their properties: to move from the property of receiving to the property of bestowal, from the property of hatred to the property of love.

This is a very difficult inner tragedy that a person experiences in order to achieve such a state after many years of serious, persistent work on oneself. And not the same work as in philosophy or in other methods where self-restraint prevails. Here, the attraction of a special upper force, called the upper light, is carried out, which corrects us.

The one who does this becomes a Kabbalist. He senses, sees, and clearly cognizes the upper world, the upper system that controls us. And the one who cannot develop these properties in himself, since their rudiments have not yet appeared in him, which, perhaps, will appear in the next cycle or after several cycles, becomes a philosopher. This is how humanity develops.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Seekers” 9/16/09

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Question: Baal HaSulam writes in the book A Sage’s Fruit that at one time philosophy took the place of Kabbalah. However, only Kabbalah can talk about the issues that philosophy took as its basis. What is the reason for this statement?

Answer: If we take the basis of philosophy—and now I am not speaking from the point of view of a Kabbalist, but from the point of view of a philosopher—then the medieval German Kabbalists, in particular, the philosopher and humanist Johann Reuichlin writes in his work De Arte Cabbalistica that Pythagoras, the founder of philosophy, translated the word ”kabbalah” into Greek with the term “philosophy,” and took all the basics of philosophy from Kabbalah.

Indeed, even in the time of the prophets, in the eighth and ninth century BC, the ancient Greeks studied with Kabbalists. Kabbalists taught everyone who wanted to study, because Kabbalah is intended for everyone without exception.

If a person had a desire to engage in their own improvement and attain spiritual likeness with the upper force, he could come and study this method. There were no restrictions on this.

Subsequently the ancient Greeks, who studied with the prophets, organized their own school. They disconnected matter from its form and began to deal with the abstract form. And philosophy appeared from this.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Seekers” 9/16/09

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Question: What does a person have to change to be happy?

Answer: To see the world one is in.

Question: Does one need to change some external conditions for that?

Answer: No, absolutely not! Open a book or connect to our website on the Internet. He will get everything from there.

Comment: But it sounds somewhat unrealistic that my happiness depends on reading a book or listening to some channel.

My Response: This is how Kabbalah works. This is a special science that is revealed in this way.

On the other hand, I would say that there is nothing special here. Isn’t the same thing happening to me when I study other sciences—let’s say psychology?

Comment: But I don’t change. By studying any some science, I just accumulate knowledge.

My Response: It depends on what kind of science. If you study the science about yourself, then you change. I said psychology, not veterinary science or geology.

It is not easy. I am changing because the science is about me and about how I can discover the higher world. It is said that Kabbalah is the science of the revelation of the Creator to a person in this world, in this life. By the Creator, we mean the whole of nature, true, global nature, of which we currently feel only one percent, and therefore we do not know how to behave in this world, and not only in it. What happens to us after we die?

Comment: Nobody knows this.

My Response: So I can find it out. Why should I live in this world without knowing what will happen to me next? Then this life has no meaning either. And thus the whole picture is opened for us and it unfolds in front of us—everything right here where we exist.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Hope for Peace” 9/9/09

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The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy, Elie Metchnikoff:

To modify the human constitution, it will be necessary first, to frame the ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all the resources of science.

If there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a kind of religion of the future, this ideal must be founded on scientific principles. And if it be true, as has been asserted so often, that man can live by faith alone, the faith must be in the power of science.” “To change human nature, first of all, one must be aware of the ideal to strive for, and then use all the means provided by science for its implementation.

If we think of an ideal capable of uniting people in some kind of religion of the future, then it cannot be grounded otherwise than on scientific data. And if it is true, as is often said, that one cannot live without faith, then the latter cannot be other than faith in the omnipotence of knowledge.

My Response: Of course, we must strive for real faith, which is absolute knowledge, when a person changes himself so that he becomes closer to nature. Then a transformation takes place in him, and he begins to feel the inner pulse of nature, its movement and himself in it, as one harmonious general whole.

Question: If what he does brings him even a drop closer to nature, then is this the right direction, and if it moves him away, then the wrong one?

Answer: Yes. And also according to the motto “a sound spirit in a sound body” The healthier you become, the closer to nature you will be, because you are a part of it.
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From KabTV’s “Meetings with Kabbalah” 7/29/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is science 100% objective?“

Science is not objective. Science is objective only to the degree that our five senses, in which we perceive the world, are objective and independent.

We do not know the world outside of us. We feel only what enters inside of us through five “apertures,” the five senses. If our five senses were different, we would perceive the world differently.

Science explains that animals perceive the world differently to us, some in the form of spots of smell, and others in spots of heat and cold, and the list of varying ways of perception among animals goes on and on.

Modern scientific theories also say that the world is not objective, but the reaction of our senses to something happening outside. This is why we perceive the world to the degree of our five senses’ connection with the surrounding world. It is also why science is not objective, but absolutely subjective, relative to the observer.

Science in our world stems from the reaction of our senses to something unknown, which happens outside. Thus, in the end, science merely registers our reaction to what we perceive and discover. If we were to perceive and reveal something from the outside by means of a sense that is not inside of us, but on the outside, then we would perceive a completely different world.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo said “There is no law of Nature that cannot be overcome and changed, if we have the faith that all is ruled by the Lord and that it is possible for us to come into direct contact with Him, if we know how to escape from the prison-house of age-old habits and give ourselves unreservedly to His will.”

What do you think about this postulate?

Answer: I absolutely agree with him. Kabbalah says simply: What we perceive today, we perceive inside ourselves according to our qualities and properties.

We experience the world through our five senses. If we had five or fifty more, we would perceive the world differently. Behind the material organs of sensation is our thinking, sensory apparatus, which synthesizes a picture of the world for us.

For example, frogs or bees have a completely different perception of the world, not to mention the fact that the thinking apparatus is built in accordance with this.

Therefore, when we talk about our human ability to unite into one common integral whole, we mean that we will be similar to the integral nature.

There is one unified force in nature. And today we are looking for this divine particle, from which all matter was created, in order to rise above the problems of movement, space and time.

We are going to achieve one single whole, the basis of the property of nature. When we begin to feel nature in an integral form, our egoism becomes our helper, and through integral vision we perceive everything in a completely different way.

I see the world as one common whole not through myself, but let’s say, through a dozen people, and therefore, my perception becomes multifaceted, integral. I begin to feel the universe, its inner forces, what drives it in a completely different way, and at the same time, as a person, I am changing nature, changing the world. It depends only on me.

I cannot say that today I feel the world as it is, because I perceive it in my senses, evaluate it in my conceptual apparatus, in my mind, built in a certain way.

And when I go out to others and try to unite with them, I achieve a completely different mind and feelings. Then, naturally, both nature and the whole world are perceived differently. We call it the upper world, because it is higher than our egoism.

But in principle, this is the world, only it is felt differently, because we have changed our perceiving apparatus. Nevertheless, we explore it completely realistically and understand that by changing ourselves, we are changing the world. The world is our reflection.
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From KabTV’s “The Science of Management”

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Question: There is “Pareto’s 80/20 Rule: This ‘universal truth’ about the imbalance of inputs and outputs is what became known as the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. …The generalization became: 80% of results will come from just 20% of the action (Forbes).

Do you think that with the widespread knowledge of Kabbalah, it would be possible to influence the consciousness of 80% of people by changing that of 20%?

Answer: This percentage can be much lower, down to one percent. As it usually happens: one shepherd walks ahead of the herd and the whole flock follows him. So, it is possible.

The only problem is to create this dependency. Anyway, all the people will have to be taught the system of right connections so that they understand the idea of a leader and follow him for their own good. This requires very serious work in the team in order to unite them.
In this case, you can succeed very fast, especially if you understand the current state of humanity in any society or nation.

Whatever the percentage of the team, the most important thing is that all 100% of its participants understand the common goal, imagine that they benefit from the right interaction, and that their leaders really work at a very serious, objective, altruistic level, in pursuing the goal that is clear to everyone and is for their benefit.

If this can be brought to the entire collective, then there is no problem, one person can manage them all. They will be happy to obey him and unite around him because he will be considered the head while the rest form the body of this system.
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From KabTV’s “Science of Management”

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