Question: In physics there is a phenomenon when a person puts all sorts of efforts in one direction and reveals something completely different. Is there such a thing in Kabbalah as well?

Answer: No. In Kabbalah, this kind of “accident” does not exist. A person knows what he should do. He advances all the time, more and more this causes the development of the qualities of bestowal and love within himself, and causes him to exit himself and to rise above. This is his movement, his direction.

Question: Yet, although he says that he wants to acquire the quality of the Creator, bestowal, in fact, he does not want this, does he?

Answer: In fact, he does not. However, during the study, a certain upper energy comes to him, what is called the surrounding light and it helps him to become different.

There is no room for chance here. From the side of the light, an external influence necessarily arises, and we, in principle, aim for it. If in science we do not aim for something that suddenly reveals itself to us, then here this is exactly what we want.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 7/2/21

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Rather, the main difference between spirituals is in their qualities—praiseworthy or blameworthy—and the composition, since a mind that calculates astronomy will not cling to one that contemplates natural sciences (Baal HaSulam, “The Acting Mind”).

The attainment of a material or spiritual object depends not only on the one who comprehends this object, but also on the object itself and what exactly the Creator has put into it.

The comprehended object becomes a connecting link between the one who acquires it and the Creator. Therefore, the Creator created all of creation and the person, so that the person will recognize the Creator through the creation,; and through the creation, the Creator can influence the person. What this means is that the creation is a connecting link that connects us with the Creator. Otherwise, we would not have any possibility of communicating with the Creator.

Question: What do you mean by the word “creation”?

Answer: It is everything. It is everything that exists other than myself and the Creator. I want to see the Creator by gazing intently and searching: Where is He to be found in all of creation? Where is the acting mind that created the creation?
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/21/19

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Question: Can the belief in upper forces change the essence of a person?

Answer: If he really wants it, of course it can. And so it should be.

He must receive power from above, from what is called the upper light, which will change him, guide him through several states in which he will be in despair, in a sense of need, in a huge prayer to the Creator, the desire to absorb the higher properties with all his essence and relate to the Creator through them, and so on. And the Creator will be like an internal property of all the people in the world for him.

It is not all that complicated. This is all within our reach and should be within our reach! I can see it coming, it is close to us.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/24/21

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There comes Tu B’Av (the 15th of Av)—the day of love. It is known that the 9th of Av is a day of sorrow, destruction, catastrophe, a day in which all evil is revealed. And six days later comes Tu B’Av, a completely opposite day when we celebrate the day of joy, the day of love.

All this joy is built on the sorrow of the 9th of Av. Those people who discovered and felt the 9th of Av as destruction will now be able to reveal the day of the 15th of Av as a day of joy and love, connection.

We want to build good, kind relations between us, but we are not able to do this, and two times our hopes are crushed (the destruction of two Temples). First, the hope of living in friendship collapses, which is called a Temple at the level of Mochin de Neshama, and then we even make an attempt to come to love, which also collapses, a Temple at the level of Mochin de Haya.

We fail twice; we build a connection and it collapses, and we build again—and again destruction. But each new construction takes place on the ruins of the previous destruction, and therefore, after these two ruins, for the third time, we manage to build a Temple of love, unity, solidarity, and connection.

We go through the stages of construction and destruction, revealing all the shattering of the 9th of Av and against it, by making efforts, we will be able to reveal the connection and love, the revelation of the upper force between us of the 15th of Av.

It seems, how can one come from destruction to construction and love? But the fact is that both of these states come from one root. We are not talking about a building, but about building inside the heart. At the moment when we feel a shattering in our heart, hatred and rejection, breakage on breakage, and really do not want to be in this state anymore, the turnover from hatred to love happens very quickly.

To do this, you just need to understand that all the destruction is happening between us, we are destroying the Temple by not wanting to get closer to each other. And then comes the realization of evil, that our egoism is the cause of everything and it is necessary to break it in order to rise above it from hatred to love. This is called a “return to the answer,” and it can happen instantly. That is why the day of sorrow is so quickly replaced by the day of love.

First of all, we need to feel that we are really in destruction, in hatred, which causes all the troubles in our life, all the misfortunes. And so we come to the need to achieve love.

The 9th of Av symbolizes the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and the 15th of Av (Tu B’Av) represents the Third Temple and is therefore called the day of love. Love, the strongest connection, is the result of all our corrections. And we need to understand that it is not about the building, we don’t need to build it out of stone. This is a Temple that must be built in our heart.
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From KabTV’s “The Peace” 7/20/21

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Question: You said that there is no holiness either in stones or in trees. That is, there is no holiness in the erected Temple either, but there is holiness in a man?

Answer: Holiness is not a temple, not some physical place or structure, but something that we create from our senses. This is a sensory structure that we constantly support between ourselves.

Comment: You also said that there is no need to cry on the 9th of Av, because Jewish dates symbolize spiritual actions.

My Response: The 9th of Av exists so that we understand that this is the day of the revelation of the evil created by the Creator. He said: “I created evil, egoism between you, and you must rise above it. It is thanks to the constantly growing egoism that by rising above it, you will reach Me.”

Therefore, we need to understand that the revelation of evil between us, which personifies the 9th of Av, is the Creator’s great help for our ascent.

Question: Is it like the disclosure of a disease, when a man realizes that he needs to see a doctor?

Answer: Yes, it is a prerequisite for recovery.

We must strive not for the revelation of evil, but for the revelation of good. And then, if necessary, on the way we will reveal the evil that exists between us—mutual alienation, hatred, and rejection from each other, and we will be able to get over them. But only by positively striving for connection with each other. As it is written, “Love covers all crimes.”
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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There are different types of meals: festive, Shabbat, new moon meal, etc. Each of them symbolizes a certain type of receiving light, abundance.

There is a very strict order in conducting a Kabbalistic meal. The most important thing in it is the internal work, the correct intention, because the meal represents receiving the upper abundance from the Creator by the created being.

When we consume food while giving thanks to the Creator and welcome other participants of the meal, which symbolize the ascent above our personal egoism and getting closer to each other, then we practically fulfill the inner meaning of the meal.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 7/9/21

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Question: What will help the restoration of the Temple?

Answer: I know only one thing: if the majority of Jews, even not all of them and not completely, aspired to connect and realize that this is the only salvation for them and for humanity, then all mankind would also follow them in this connection; the world would begin to rise spiritually and physically in all respects, and evil would disappear from the face of the Earth between people and around them.

Question: How can we come to such an sensory, heartfelt connection between us?

Answer: Only from the shattering. We are trying to bring people to connect by explaining as much as they can understand. And what they do not understand, they will feel from misfortunes that will still have to manifest between them.

Question: The Second Temple was destroyed because of unfounded hatred between people. This is a very serious condition, which is not easy to come to. Did the Jews feel it for the first time at Mount Sinai after spending many years in Egypt?

Answer: No. They started to feel mutual hatred while in Egypt: accusations, murders. And even earlier, it was revealed between the sons of Jacob: Joseph and his brothers.

Question: So there must be hatred first and then love is revealed?

Answer: Absolutely! Otherwise, you do not know what needs to be corrected. Without the revelation of hatred in all its forms, there can be no correction and no reaching connection up to love.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States”

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The Power of Childish Thinking 

One of the most tenacious myths about how Einstein discovered is that he relied on adopting a naive, simple mode of thinking. This mode authorized Einstein to discount and ignore all the difficult technicalities of the existing literature, whose distracting complexities, we are to suppose, block progress. The way ahead is to adopt the mode of a precocious child asking childish questions. Einstein himself seems to have advanced this myth in part through self-deprecating remarks. Here is how one such remark is related, third-hand, by one of Einstein’s biographers: One of Einstein’s typical remarks was reported to me from Falmouth, Massachusetts by James Franck … 

‘‘When I asked myself,’’ Einstein said to Franck, ‘‘how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems. Everything there is to be thought about it, in his opinion, has already been done in early childhood. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done (John D. Norton, How Einstein Did Not Discover).

This is correct. You don’t have to make yourself ignorant, you have to be naive.

Question: How do you erase knowledge that already exists in you? The knowledge exists and somehow I have to take it and remove it in this moment, as if I don’t know?

Answer: I don’t know anything. Actually! I say this absolutely frankly. I feel empty anew every minute.

Question: Why? You have been studying the science of Kabbalah for 40 years.

Answer: This is such a science that it denies itself. It crosses out everything you knew before so that you can take the next step. But the next step is not after the previous one, but instead of the previous one. They don’t add up together. In the spiritual, everything is built on denial.

Question: So I go and go, I am at some stage, and suddenly it completely disappears?

Answer: I start all over again. It’s fine! In fact, this is most correct. It is like I’m being reborn. Doesn’t the child open his eyes even wider?

I don’t feel tired. I am ready every day, every lesson, every morning to start all over again, to be reborn.

Question: And when does a person feel tired?

Answer: If he doesn’t have the excitement of new desires, new questions, then, of course, he can no longer reveal the child in himself, and then he is already an old man.

Question: Is this moving toward death?

Answer: Yes.

Question: When you say that eternal life is possible, are you talking about these constant updates?

Answer: Yes.

Question: When is constant updating possible, in what circumstances?

Answer: Always. It does not depend on the body. This is a desire, it does not depend on the body.

Question: So you have to start over all the time? Updating constantly?

Answer: Yes. And that’s great!

Question: What would you say to an ordinary person who does not study Kabbalah?

Answer: Nothing. Find yourself a hobby and keep going.

Question: And rejoice at new discoveries all the time?

Answer: Yes. Just like my teacher said about the soccer stadium that this place must be respected, it gives pleasure to many people.

He had never been there, had never seen inside, but he knew that there was a game that 100,000 or 200,000 people were watching at the same time and were enjoying life. Joy comes from the Creator, so he rejoices for them that they receive pleasure from the Creator. They do not curse Him at this time. Therefore, this place must be respected.

Comment: The biographer wrote, “One of the most tenacious myths about how Einstein discovered is that he relied on adopting a naive, simple mode of thinking. …The way ahead is to adopt the mode of a precocious child asking childish questions.”

My Response: A person who feels in any state that this is a state of the question, he does not stop at this, he looks for his own answer to it. And he makes a discovery.

All of this alone consists of questions and answers.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/15/21

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Question: There is a thin line between habits in our material world when a person simply changes priorities and the state where a person consciously changes his nature and sees the whole world and all people no longer through his egoistic prism but through an altruistic intention and thus attains the spiritual world.

That is, a person still begins the spiritual path from his egoistic attainment of the Creator when he wants to reveal Him for himself. But then, does it become a habit and his second nature to see the world through altruistic intentions?

Answer: Yes. This habit really becomes his second essence, second nature, and that is what he does.

Question: It turns out that he can no longer go back and think egoistically?

Answer: I cannot say that. There are different possibilities. But to be in one nature, then in another, and sometimes fall back into the first nature is also possible.

It all depends on how much he exposes himself to the upper force that holds him like a magnet holds a piece of iron in the air. Iron is suspended in the air by the force of the magnet and is held by it. In the same way, a person can make it so that the highest positive force of nature, which gives him an anti-egoistic potential, will keep him above the earth, above his egoism.

Question: Just as the Creator has no thoughts about Himself, does a person who acquires a second nature also have no thoughts about himself?

Answer: To the extent that he received this force from the Creator.

Question: What does it mean that the Creator has no thoughts about Himself?

Answer: The Creator is nature that is absolutely opposite to our egoistic nature. Since He has no desire to receive, His whole essence is aimed at bestowal. That is how He works.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/25/21

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Question: If a person automatically gets used to reading, say, The Book of Zohar or Psalms, or praying, does this develop him?

Answer: Yes. If he engages in it all the time, then either The Book of Zohar or any other correct sources begin to influence him, and we see how he changes.

This, in principle, is their value. Where else can we receive the upper force, the upper energy, the upper influence on us? We must draw them to us.

The influence of the upper force comes precisely as a result of learning, reading, studying the sources, and most importantly being in a special society, in a special small group—the ten—that can organize a suitable environment for a person when he simply falls under their influence and is ready to change. And even if he is not really ready, they still change him.

Question: Do you recommend reading from the sources in the ten two or three times a day so that it becomes a habit?

Answer: Yes. But that is not everything. After all, the reading of the sources often happens one-on-one: you and the source. And when there is you and the environment around you, that is, not the still, vegetative, and animate, but human, special people who show you the right relationships and demand the same from you, then it turns out that you are pulling yourself up to spiritual levels.

Question: Many people are taught from childhood to pray, to read psalms, and a person automatically reads them because he was told that he will receive some kind of reward for this both in this and in the future world.

And if he is not accustomed to this from childhood, then he begins to ask the question: “Why should I read?” Since he does not feel pleasure in these texts and does not understand them. How can a person develop a habit here? Or does the habit consist of efforts? You once said that making an effort becomes a habit.

Answer: Relatively. It all depends on the society. The most important thing is to create the right environment for any person, for any companies, societies, and people, so that everyone can find the environment in which they can develop correctly.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/25/21

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