Question: What does the Final Sea [the Red Sea] represent?

Answer: The Final Sea (Yam Suf in Hebrew) is a border between the ego and a freedom from it. It is not altruism yet, not love and bestowal, but an exit from the ego.

On the borderline between the egoism and the altruism there lies a barrier of water. Water has two qualities: on the one hand, the quality of the so-called Gevurot, meaning strict laws, harsh forces, and on the other hand, the forces of mercy and love.

Water that consists of these two forces represents a borderline that divides Egypt (an egoistic world) and an altruistic world. Therefore, it is necessary to pass, meaning to break through the part of the water representing harsh force that protects Egypt and doesn’t let to exit it.

If a person can pass this wall of water, he enters the amniotic fluid that starts developing him like a fetus in the mother’s womb. But he has to hate the ego so much that he would be able to get rid of it. And then the waters will part.
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Question: Who are the Egyptians and the people of Israel in terms of spiritual work?

Answer: The Torah speaks about a person like about an object that includes in itself the entire world. Everything is within the person.

The Egyptians in us are egoistic forces; the people of Israel are altruistic forces or forces that want to be altruistic, but are under command of Egyptians (egoism). The Pharaoh represents the entire ego in which we exist.

The Creator is the upper force that controls the Pharaoh, Moses, and all others. His task is to bring the entire creation to the equivalence of form with Him, to altruism. But this requires the recognition of the ego as an evil and the exit from it.

Moses is a force representing part of the Creator that exists inside the person and pulls him toward the revelation and attainment of the upper spiritual qualities. Between these forces occur interactions when a person feels inside himself which of his desires are egoistic, which are altruistic, which of them require a connection with the Creator and which cling to the Pharaoh.

This way he sorts them internally and as a result of this work he understands what actually drives him. He sees that he is completely under control of the Pharaoh. Wherever he turns, everywhere he discovers the Pharaoh hidden within him.

It seems to him that he already works for the sake of bestowal and love of others, that he is above all earthly egoistic desires, but he still continues revealing them within himself. In the end, he doesn’t just despair but is convinced that the Pharaoh possesses him 100%.

But at the same time a special point called Moses that resists the Pharaoh is emerges within him. It starts a fight with the Pharaoh and dooms itself to the ten plagues of Egypt that have to pass over the ego. This way a person starts to understand that he can get rid of the ego. But how can he do it? It is not clear yet.

With this feeling he enters a dark night where, on one hand, he cannot see and understand how the redemption happens, but on the other hand, he passionately desires it. This night is called the night of exiting Egypt and we celebrate it on Passover.
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Question: What is the right thing to do when we receive blows? Every state is different, so how can I understand what the Creator wants from me?

Answer: The Creator wants only one thing from you: that you keep getting closer to Him, either individually if there is no other option at the moment, or together with the group. The Creator has intentionally opened His arms to you and has sent you blows so that feeling frightened you will run to Him.

But the moment your adhesion to Him grows weaker, like a child initially adhered to his mother wants to break away from her, new disturbances immediately come along and give you the opportunity to adhere to the Creator.

This is how we should look at our whole life! If you try to get closer to the Creator by changing your nature before the blows arrive, you will not feel any pain or troubles and will simply feel that you are bathing in the Upper Light! All the sufferings result from the lack of connection between us and the lack of feeling the Creator.

The moment we feel Him in the right connection between us, all the sufferings will disappear and the whole world will be filled with goodness,

Question: What does it mean to get closer to the Creator?

Answer: Getting closer to the Creator is adapting to His attributes, which are qualities of bestowal and absolute love.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/14/16

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Question: Why don’t we eat Chametz on Pesach (Passover)?

Answer: Because Chametz symbolizes the connection between flour and water. Flour symbolizes the attribute of the egoistic desire and water symbolizes the attribute of the altruistic desire.

Therefore, on Passover we are at final stage of the domination of the ego and we begin to feel that egoism controls us in everything since we lack the attribute of Hassadim, the attribute of Hesed, the attribute of the water, which is what the Matzah symbolizes.

Matzah is the connection between flour and water. They are mixed for a very precise period of time, for 18 minutes, so that the flour will not begin to rise. If they are mixed too long, we have to constantly knead the dough without stopping…

This process symbolizes our work with egoism, the process in which we have to keep working with it, giving it new forms over and over again, moving to altruism. And then it is possible.

But in principle, it is impossible to work with the Chametz for more than 18 minutes, which means that the connection has to be minimal, just as it appears in our egoism. What is altruism? That we want to show good intentions toward someone so the ego will benefit from it? The Matzah symbolizes the lack of water, the lack of Hassadim, the lack of Hesed, in our egoistic attitude, and so it is called the “bread of poverty,” which means the poverty of a wide heart, in the openness between people.

It is customary to eat Matzah on Passover eve because it is on this night that we reveal to what extent we don’t have the attribute of love and bestowal among us, the attribute of Bina, or the attribute of Hesed. We are ready for anything as long as we can exit this egoistic state, and so we eat Matzah on the night of our liberation from egoism.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/13/16

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Question: Are we responsible for all the sufferings that we encounter?

Answer: The Creator who created evil is responsible. It is written: “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.” If we change the evil to good, we will reach the level of the Creator. Everything in our world is arranged so that a person will dig and discover the problems in his nature, in the nature of his evil inclination, and will find a way to overcome these problems by properly using the method of correction.

If such questions come up, it means that a person is ready to start using this method, and then he gradually realizes why everything was created the way it is and not differently. Then it will be clear to him that the Creator is the special force of nature that includes all of creation, all of nature, all the upper levels, that are inaccessible to us now but which we will reveal.

When we correct the egoism the Creator intentionally created as cruel, immense, and universal, we become the managers of all of nature, both in our world and in all the other worlds. Humanity will ascend to the level of eternity and perfection even without having to die, we will simply ascend to the next level.

Humanity is at the level of development when the question about the meaning of life arises in most people. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this indicates that we have matured and reached the level at which we are ready to perceive and to adapt to the upper world.

Question: Why do we suffer if the thought of creation is for man to enjoy?

Answer: The reason is that we don’t correct ourselves. If we knew how to do it and started the process of correction, we would immediately feel better, climbing the levels of the ladder of goodness.

Comment: There is an interesting fable about this. A thirsty man stands by a stream of fresh water and tries to fill a dirty glass. The water seems tasteless, bitter, and he cannot drink it so he curses the dirty stream. This is how we often curse the Creator who sends us sufferings.

When a person finally realizes that the cause is not the water, but his glass, everything will change. He cleans and purifies the vessel and the taste of the water changes, then it becomes clear to him that the water in the glass was always pure, even while he suffered.

Answer: Yes, this is our life, but we will be able to enjoy life only if we can draw the right forces out of them.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/16/16

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Question: Is there a difference between communication with the Creator through a text written by a Kabbalist and communication with Him through a situation that a person goes through?

Answer: Communication with the Creator may be through a situation. I remember once I had to attend a trial and it was very unpleasant and humiliating even though I didn’t really have an attitude about the situation. But it was specifically this situation that gave me a serious hold on the Creator.

Question: Is it possible to communicate with the Creator through pleasure?

Answer: This is very difficult.

Question: Does this mean it’s better through suffering or through a book?

Answer: It is not necessary to choose. You need to accept both the good and bad in the same way. As it is written, “A person must bless the bad just as he blesses the good” (Mishnah Berachot 9:5).

If a person is not directed this way, it isn’t good. He needs to prepare and correct himself. The uniqueness of the Creator is the prerequisite for looking at the world correctly: where does everything that exists and all that is stands before us or is felt within us come from? No matter what happens, everything that is felt and portrayed within me comes from the Creator.

Question: And what if I feel that the situation is bad?

Answer: It makes no difference how we feel the situation. The Creator portrays it so that through the bad we will connect with Him, and then the bad becomes good. It’s the only way. Love appears above all the evil.

Most importantly, you should not allow the picture of this world in any case to hide the spiritual world, the network, the upper force that manages us. We must not allow the various forces and circumstances of our world to conceal the Creator from us.

We must strengthen it with the help of friends, books, everything possible, and constantly hold on to a close connection with Him. We must monitor all of our thoughts, feelings, circumstances, and problems. And we must immediately join them to a greater yearning for the Creator. Don’t miss anything. It means that the Creator strongly wants you.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/7/16

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The first hero of the Passover holiday is Moses, the spiritual leader. This is a special quality within a person that leads him to the exodus from Egypt.

If we don’t talk about Moses as a quality within a person but as a character, then he wasn’t a born leader. Moses is a person who is closed within himself, who wants to achieve, to be aware of the surrounding world, his characteristics, himself.

Moses lived in the palace of Pharaoh and used all the benefits that were due him as a prince. In the palace they respected him and he learned the Egyptian wisdom, magic, everything that was used in Egypt in his time in the construction of the pyramids, in perceiving the universe through astronomy and everything that had been developed back then. Moses was a scientist and so all this was very attractive, but he was not connected either with the Egyptians or with the people. He was simply a prince.

When he was in exile from Egypt, the Creator called for him to return to Egypt and he obeyed, but without any personal intention. When he returned to Egypt, he went to his grandfather, Pharaoh, and his stepmother, Batya, as an opponent, standing before them and saying to Pharaoh, “Let my people go” (Exodus 5:1). But Pharaoh opposed this and argued, “The children of Israel are living here with their families and cattle; they manage their households and have been mine for quite some time already. They don’t intend to go anywhere.” Imagine a situation in which we apparently demand from President Obama, “Let the Jews go to Israel.” And he would answer, “I don’t intend to free them; I need them for the development of the economy, science, and commerce. Try approaching them and listen to what they will answer.”

After all, the Jews were living very well in Egypt. They used all the benefits even more than the Egyptians themselves. So it was impossible to approach them in any form, even from the point of view of Pharaoh and from the point of view of the Jewish people themselves. The people of Israel were fat, lazy, and under the influence of traditions, culture, science, arts and entertainments of the Egyptians. They had everything they needed, including huge pastures for their cattle. One can say that they lived in the best place in the world.

The moment Moses began to ask Pharaoh to free the people of Israel from Egypt, they began to feel the evil side of Pharaoh: blows, pressure, oppression, taxes, great persecutions, and pogroms. Generally, everything that we have seen throughout the history of the Jews suddenly began to appear in Egypt with the people who had been totally pampered in every way! And so the attitude of Pharaoh towards Moses became sharply negative. In spite of this, Moses went to Pharaoh according to the command of the Creator and demanded from him, “Let my people go!”

Moses was afraid of Pharaoh and the Creator, and didn’t know what to do. He tried to convince the Creator that he was tongue-tied and stuttered, that he was not a natural leader. But the Creator replied, “I know whom to choose, so onward!” And he went. Moreover, when the Creator said, “Let’s go together. I will harden the heart of Pharaoh so much that it will be preferable for us to go together.”

The wisdom of Kabbalah talks about the deepest and innermost characteristics of a person, which he must discern within himself specifically through the pathway of spiritual development in which a person begins to search within himself for the characteristics of Pharaoh, Moses, the Creator, the people of Israel, Egypt, and all the rest of the images in the Torah.

Ultimately, he reaches a state of absolute darkness when he understands that he cannot leave Egypt, he doesn’t want to leave it, and doesn’t know what forces will make it possible for him to do this. And then at night an immense power, a storm breaks out, lightning and thunder in the spiritual sense. The person is found in a terrible panic! But he runs after the Creator.

The exodus from Egypt happens in haste; from where and to where is unknown. What matters is that the Creator wants this, and the person carries out His will.

There is nothing else! What matters is what the Creator wants and that we follow Him because it is impossible to get our bearings by using our feelings or knowledge—neither through the heart or the mind. Only the upper force shows a person where he or she should go. The Creator leads you by a pillar of fire or cloud, and you go; it cannot be in any other way.

To be completely purified from Egypt and take everything above your reason and feeling, you must leap into the sea! The sea is a terrible state in which it is up to the person to take a step absolutely contrary to all of his emotions and reason! After that, nothing is left of what was his! He exists completely pure. In this state, a spiritual birth happens. After full purification of emotional and physical memory, a new life begins.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/11/16

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Question: What does Pharaoh represent?

Answer: Pharaoh is an immense force. I will not talk about him as a personality because practically this persona doesn’t really exist. The wisdom of Kabbalah examines Pharaoh as the immense ego that is created by the Creator. It develops and absorbs everything into its egoism and is ready to devour the entire world.

It is insatiable and gradually becomes revealed as humanity develops. The more we strive to do something in the world and get something, the more it devours, leaving us no hope of changing the world for the better or a happy future. On the contrary, the world only becomes worse and worse.

More and more people are dissatisfied with life. We once thought that we could get along, but today we don’t. Today people no longer feel secure in the most distant villages, not economically or from the aspect of material existence. Now people are so tied to the whole world they cannot feed themselves. This is a paradox, but a farmer cannot feed himself from his own land.

Pharaoh (egoism) swallows this, because it brings us together so much that we cannot be independent from others. It makes our world integral, global, and interconnected, a small village in which we all depend on each other. And here we see that we cannot handle it.

Egoism leads us to the need to be properly interconnected with one another. This means that Pharaoh himself, by transforming our world so that it becomes mutually connected, brings us to a state where we hate it and then we transform our world into another one with good connections between us. Otherwise we will not be able to continue living. But then Pharaoh continually directs us against unity. So on the one hand, even though he awakens in us a desire for unity and acts so that we cannot live without making the right connections between us, since otherwise we cannot provide ourselves with even the most essential things, and on the other hand, he won’t let us unite. This contrast sums up the merit of Pharaoh.

Therefore he is called an “angel of the Creator.” He was created by the Creator like the two-faced Janus, where from one side he obliges us to connect and unite and on the other side won’t let us get closer to each other. So we begin to understand that we have no other way out besides rising above it, escaping from it. So we run away from him. This means that the flight from Pharaoh, from our nature, from our ego, is the Exodus from Egypt.

This is not easy because it is still up to us to discover all this within us. Our time is unique. We are now discovering everything that the Creator prepared for us in the form of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is now being revealed among us in the form of the global and integral world, and at the same time, individually it doesn’t allow us to exist in accordance with this integral world. So we need to respect Pharaoh because he takes us out of Egypt.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/12/16

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Question: What are the “Ten Plagues of Egypt”?

Answer: The purpose of creation is going to the next level of existence, the upper world. While living on Earth, we have to feel the upper world, to see the system of management, the Creator of everything that exists in this world and is hidden from us today.

Egoism, which is our foundation, the enormous force of nature that we must transcend, is what “runs” us. On the one hand, the ego is drives us upward; on the other hand, it will not free us. After all, if it were to lead us as usual within itself through all the configurations and structures through which we have passed in the course of human evolution—the primitive era, the era of slavery, the feudal era, the capitalist era, and the socialist era—it would not be clear toward what we would continue.

But egoism puts a “wall” in front of us, we cannot move further; so the current phase is called “the last phase of human development on Earth.” In other words, egoism is requiring us to become rounded, to unite on the one hand, but on the other hand, it won’t let us unite. Therefore, the only solution we can come to is to transcend “Pharaoh” (egoism), above Egypt to the next level of existence, the higher system of management.

This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about. This is what we must reach. The “Ten Plagues of Egypt” exist in order to completely break away from egoism. This is because our egoism consists of ten parts, which are the ten Sefirot: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. Each one of them “portrays” for us a particular type of existence within the ego.

We must gradually release ourselves from these ten Sefirot, these ten modes of existence. This happens when we begin to see that each one of them is finite, incomplete, leading to a blind alley and giving us no hope of continuing our existence within the ego.

The final phase of each of these ten levels, these characteristics, these parts of our ego, is the ten plagues of Egypt. After them it is no longer possible to remain within the ego. Instead we must get up and run away from it blindly. On the present level, we cannot see the next level. So the flight from Egypt happens at midnight, in total darkness.

The ten plagues of Egypt are in fact a separation from our egoism, when we run away in the dark and it is unclear where we are going. But the main thing is that we are running away from it! And so gradually we develop before us a new life, a new world, new eternal, infinite, and perfect new expanses.

Question: Is it possible to get along without the plagues?

Answer: No. In fact it is not pain but insight, enlightenment. The plagues pass over our ego and in these states we rise above it!

Comment: It turns out that if I identify with the ego, I feel the plagues. But if I rise above it, i.e., identify with Moses who is leading me forward, I don’t feel them.

Answer: This how the plagues function. They obligate a person to rise above them, and then he stops feeling the ego. If the person is elevated above it, he stops feeling it. Then a relaxed, new life begins.

So in fact, the ten plagues are not really plagues. They are the highest gift that the Creator gives a person, pushing him out of egoism forcefully. So, let’s go, let’s run away from it and gain a new world!
[181795]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/12/16

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Question: Are we to blame for our suffering?

Answer: No, the Creator who created evil inclination is to blame. This is what He said: “I created the evil inclination, and I gave a method to correct it.” But if we manage to transform evil into good, we will obtain the same level of existence as the Creator Himself.

Everything in our world is arranged so that man himself would unearth all the problems of his nature, his evil inclination, and he himself would discover how to correct it. Moreover, these problems can be easily overcome; all we need is to just systematically and correctly use the method of correction.

If people start asking these questions, it means they are ready to start using this method, and then they will gradually understand why everything is created this way and not otherwise. They will realize that the Creator is a special force of nature that includes in itself the entire world, the entire nature, and all upper levels, which are unreachable to us yet, but which we will reveal.

By correcting our ego, deliberately created by the Creator to be so savage, enormous, universal, we become the masters of the entire nature: both of our world and all other worlds. We rise to the level of eternity and perfection, even without falling into death, but simply by rising to the next degree.

Nowadays humanity has reached such level of development when the question about the meaning of life arises in most people in the world. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, it means that we are ready to discover the upper world.

Question: So why do we suffer when the thought of creation bring contentment to man?

Answer: It’s because we don’t correct ourselves. If we know how to do it and start entering the method of correction, we will immediately feel better and better, climbing the steps of the benevolent ladder.

Comment: In this regard there is a very interesting legend. A man exhausted by thirst is standing beside a stream with clear spring water and trying to fill a dirty glass. The water seems to him unpatable, bitter, he can’t drink it and he curses the dirty stream (in this way we often curse the Creator who sends us suffering).

When he finally understands that the problem is not water, but his glass, everything changes. He cleans the vessel, the taste of the water changes, and he realizes that there always was spring water in his glass while he was suffering.

Answer: Yes, this is our life. If we manage to draw correct forces from it, we will be able to constantly enjoy it. And if not, then vise versa.
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