Comment: Yom Kippur is the day of atonement, the day of judgment, the day of forgiveness. It has many names. It is the most important day and even secular Jews in Israel celebrate it. On this day, highways are empty and children ride their bikes peacefully. Everything stops.

People scan the year that they have lived, they check, and think it over. They even say that there is such a rule from above that you have to check it because you are being sealed for the next year.

My Response: Yes. Humble yourself and check all your actions over the past year.

Question: What does it mean to check all your deeds over the past year?

Answer: How good and kind you were to others. Because if you have any problems with others, then no judgment will redeem you. So it is said! You have to ask everyone for forgiveness and check all your actions toward connection with others.

Question: One should perceive it directly like this?

Answer: Yes, directly! That’s how it is written and that’s how I take it.

Comment: Meaning, if I hated someone, or I snapped at someone, I did some nasty things to someone…

My Response: I’m letting go.

Question: “I’m letting go” in the sense that I am in some way apologizing to them?

Answer: There are some people to whom I cannot turn and ask for forgiveness. I do it within myself. Ostensibly, I apologize to them, although I know that I cannot approach them, I cannot approach them in any way, but I apologize.

Question: Is this to say, it is required from above?

Answer: Not just from above. This is a very serious psychological action that helps a person evaluate his attitude to the world, to life, and to people.

Question: Does it give some kind of purification to a person?

Answer: Of course. I know that I have to apologize now and come out of this state in such a way that everyone will forgive me.

Question: And if I really don’t want to forgive? If I know he’s a scoundrel?

Answer: It doesn’t matter.

Question: So even to the one who offended me, I apologize to him as well?

Answer: Yes, even if he is such a scoundrel as you say, you still need to apologize as if you are to blame for all this. And how do you know? Maybe it is so.

Comment: You’re talking in such a way now, as if it’s a world holiday. You don’t add the word “Jews” or “Israel” here, as if it applies to every person.

My Response: In general, everyone should have it. This is indicated for the Jewish people, but I believe that everyone should have a day of atonement.

Not necessarily at the same time. On different days or different times of the year, but every nation and every person should experience it as if he really is before the court and is obliged to ask for forgiveness from everyone!

Question: On this day I am judged for my character?

Answer: Yes!

Question: What should I be like?

Answer: I have to be like the Creator.

I should strive to not do evil to anyone and not to hold evil against anyone and I must be ready to do good at any time of day or night. The most important thing is to come to love the Creator through love for people.

Question: So one way or another, the end point is love for the Creator? From the love of creatures to the love of the Creator? Is this the most important formula?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But if a person does not feel the Creator and does not believe in Him?

Answer: It doesn’t matter at all. All people, from the age of maturity onward, who are considered adults (women at 12 years old and men at 13 years old), are obliged in some way to sanctify themselves. Sanctify is from the word “light” and the word “holiness.”

Comment: There are judgment day prayers. What is more effective: a prayer that is written or a prayer that is in the heart when a person sits, thinks, and prays?

My Response: Undoubtedly, the one that is in the heart. What the sages wrote, they wrote. But the way I think and what I would write, as it is said, “Write on your heart,” is much stronger.

Question: What would you wish now, on this day of judgment, toward this complicated world of ours?

Answer: I would wish the world peace.

Starting with a person in himself, with friends, with relatives, and ending with absolutely everyone, the most remote up to the very last person in the world, so that the whole globe is covered with forgiveness and that we would never let our egoism rule over us again. Then everything will be fine!

Question: So I have to come to the conclusion that egoism dominates us?

Answer: Yes, of course. The entire Yom Kippur consists in the trial of egoism.

Question: So I identify the enemy on this day?

Answer: Undoubtedly.

Question: It’s not the neighbor, it’s me. And then my request is to get out?

Answer: Free me from this evil inclination in me.

Question: And this is called the best spent Yom Kippur?

Answer: Yes. When I sit, think about it all, and decide that I don’t want to use it anymore, and I ask the Creator to free me from it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/29/22

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Sukkot“

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Gatehouse of Intentions”

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why do we have a nature that rejects what is harmful and absorbs what is beneficial?“

Human nature is the desire to receive pleasure, which wants to receive what is beneficial and push away what is harmful. Such is the essence of our nature, and everything else in our lives is built upon it. We thus instinctively first make sure to reject what harms us, and afterward, when we are certain that we somehow protect ourselves from harm, then we look into how we can enjoy, acquire and draw closer to whatever brings us pleasure.

It is how we behave and we are not in control. A smarter system decides on what gets pushed away and what we can leave. The system operates in four stages: still, vegetative, animate and human. That is, there are phenomena that we do not control, which are only parts of our bodies. Our body is built such that, if it is healthy, then it knows what is good and bad for it. Afterward, there is an emotional system, which also knows what is good and bad for it, and it functions instinctively and relatively. From the emotional system, we move to the mind, and from the mind to the intellect, and so on. That is, systems over systems interact, and they function by receiving the beneficial and rejecting the harmful.

In every single thought, desire and action in our lives, we thus operate by trying to move away from pain and move toward pleasure.

Based on the video “Why Does Our Nature Move Away from Pain and Move Toward Pleasure?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: You said that a person does not feel most changes. Can a person somehow influence this process?

Answer: In no way can a person influence what one does not feel! He has no approach to this. Therefore, we are completely powerless here.

Question: In principle, a person does not feel any science. But he goes to  university, they give him an approach, he begins to try it, and gradually his feelings are built up in the same way as understanding.

Can there be some approach here to correctly feel the changes, the next states, and the next goal? Or are we just running the way we always do and that is it?

Answer: We are rushing through the ether at a tremendous speed, and all of it is moving no one knows where. How, why, and what will happen in the next moment we do not know. Therefore, all our movements are based only on the assumption that the future will be approximately the same as the past, with a small margin of error. That is how we live.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 9/23/22

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Comment: It is said: “When you’re sick, you should see a doctor. He is given the right to treat.”

My Response: This was not said about our doctors and not in our time. It was about the times of Hippocrates and Avicenna, about the times when there were great Kabbalistic sages among the Jews before the collapse of the Temple.

The collapse of the Temple, meaning the fall of that part of humanity called the people of Israel from the spiritual degree greatly affected everything! The Middle Ages arrived, everything went into stagnation, and everything went into decline. Before that, even the Romans and Greeks were not so cruel.

Of course no one is to blame for this. It is the upper program that created such conditions through them. But the fact that through them the upper program destroyed Israel in the form in which it existed, even though it had already slipped to the point that it had to be destroyed, it turned the whole world around. Since then, medicine and everything has gone into a completely different direction.

Before that everything was different. Even relations among other nations were not as barbaric as later. Where are these ancient Greeks? Look at Greece for the last two thousand years. What was it like? And the Romans? And so on. Even the ancient Arab world. Everything has collapsed everywhere. Wars and battles were not needed.

However, all this is nearing completion.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Cause of All Diseases” 7/23/13

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Without Rabash’s articles, we would not know how to properly attune ourselves to the goal and to connect with Baal HaSulam who gives us academic advice from a great spiritual height.

We are not able to extract the details for our connection from there in order to take even one step in practically implementing it. Rabash starts right from the beginning and explains every step to us. After that we can better understand and implement Baal HaSulam’s methodology.

When we come to the direct realization of Kabbalah, the practice of revealing the Creator, the articles of Rabash and The Book of Zohar become essential for us.

Rabash’s articles help us form the right intention and The Book of Zohar helps us attract the light that reveals the spiritual world to this intention. Rabash did something that no Kabbalist had done before him; he described all the stages of a person’s inner work, the practical implementation of the Torah.

He was the only one in the entire chain of Kabbalists starting from Adam HaRishon who gave a concrete step-by-step explanation of the work of a person and a group, which is so necessary today.

Before him, Kabbalists wrote about their individual attainments because this was the spiritual progress in the era of 2,000 years of concealment and exile from the spiritual.

Before going into exile, people were in spiritual attainment and there was no need to talk about something that each child mastered as he grew.

But today, in order to rise from concealment, we need materials that would orient us to enter the spiritual world and it is possible only by studying Rabash’s articles.

Without Rabash’s articles, we would not have been able to correctly understand other Kabbalistic sources.

Therefore, our work is divided into two parts.

1. Study of Rabash’s articles.

2. If we attune ourselves correctly, then we turn to The Book of Zohar or The Study of the Ten Sefirot and can already work with them correctly as we attract the correcting light.

Rabash was very discreet and modest and always kept in the shadow of his great father. All his strength and might were hidden deep inside, so it was impossible to see anything from the outside.

He was the first to teach Kabbalah to non-religious people without any distinction in origin and he considered it very important to disseminate Kabbalah widely.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 9/11/10

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Baal HaSulam had students whom he was holding at a spiritual degree. When he died, they fell from it. The same can be true for our students. Now they are at a certain degree, but when I will cease to exist…I do not even want to think how this can continue.

Naturally, the force that holds them will fall and they will not be able to maintain contact with me in the spiritual space. They will fall. This is the case with all Kabbalists and their students.

Comment: But you have students who have been studying with you for fifteen or twenty years.

My Response: It does not depend on time. To do this, one must be infinitely devoted to the teacher. Therefore, people prefer the son to take the place of his father. After all, a son, as a rule, does not go against the father. He follows him, and does not want to harm his father because from the point of view of egoism, this is also his possession.

Any other person, however, envies, thinks about himself, instinctively wants to exalt himself at your expense. This is what we need to overcome. This is how we are created, nothing can be done about this. But at the same time, therein lies the problem. It takes a lot of time and effort, until the student overcomes his “I” and merges with the teacher inside the teacher, only a few are capable of this.

The rest, however, are also advancing, it does not matter, each person performs his own function. But someone manages to follow the spiritual line after the teacher, someone else does not.

Rabash did it with Baal HaSulam. Nobody else succeeded in that. Nobody! I spoke with eyewitnesses, they said: “After Baal HaSulam died, all his disciples, except for Rabash…” Of course, they did something: they met, studied, taught others, but it was clear that all this was, what is called, ordinary courses for the general population.

The same is true about times after Rabash. I stepped aside, I did not want to deal with anyone. Then I was pulled into one group, there were only five or six people who forcibly made me their teacher, I did not want this. It is not that I did not know how, but I had to give up what I had and would ruin myself.

In general, everything is arranged from heaven. Then it turned out that gradually students began to gather who wanted me to teach them at least once a week. It probably was just the fact that the time had come.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Dr. Laitman’s Prophecy” 6/25/13

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In the process of spiritual development, there is a special state called Yom Kippur (from the word “kapara” – “redemption”), which means the correction of all sins for which a person repents and asks to be corrected.

After all, it is clear that we ourselves cannot correct anything, and the sins we have committed are not ours at all because it is the Creator who created the evil inclination that rules over us and forces us to sin.

We are not guilty that we are immersed in egoism, which every time pushes us to think only about ourselves and not about others or about the Creator. Therefore, both sins and their correction are not our fault and not our merit because the Creator does everything. He has prepared all the sins and all the corrections against them for us, and we are between one and the other, like in a vice.

Our work is to relate everything to the Creator, both the sins and the corrections. We can only connect sin with correction when we can understand and feel that both of them come from the Creator and not from us. The Creator is above sins and above corrections. This is a special higher power above everything.

That is why Yom Kippur is a day of special joy that allows us to rise even higher above creation, to connect with the higher power, and to reach its level. All the sins and all the egoism that have been created by the Creator and the corrections that are achieved thanks to Him are necessary for us to understand the step that is above the evil and good inclinations, that is, to understand the Creator, who cannot be attained in any other way.

The Creator is separated from all creation, and it is possible to attain this essence only in this way, through the experience of our separation to the fullest extent. When we unite with each other, we unite with the Creator.

We rise above transgressions, above punishment and reward, and make these corrections so that only with their help will we reach the Creator who is detached from the whole creation. The Creator has prepared all these states for us so that we can attain Him: one, unique, and unified.

Yom Kippur is the main symbol of the process of attaining the upper force that is detached from the whole creation.

Without unification, without thoughts about the entire world Kli, and without thoughts about mutual help and about all of humanity it is impossible to achieve even the smallest spiritual revelation. All nations are destined to rise above their individual egoism and return to the system of Adam HaRishon, to become like one person, like one desire.

Yom Kippur is a spiritual state in which a person reveals that his transgression is that he thought he himself was transgressing and did not see that everything comes from the Creator. Meaning, he did not recognize that “There is none else besides Him.”

He thought he was doing everything by himself and he evaluated his thoughts and desires in his egoism. But now a person wants to correct his mistakes, all these impure discernments that are not related to the one, unique, and unified upper force. And this is what he prays and asks the Creator for.

This is the essence of the judgment day (translated literally, but usually it is called the Day of Atonement)—the day on which a person wants to atone and correct all the states and clarifications that he could not attribute to the upper force. After all, our whole job is to attribute everything that happens in the world to the upper force and to consider ourselves to be only a creation controlled by it one hundred percent.

The ascent of 125 spiritual steps is an increasing identification of oneself with the upper force until complete unification with it. When we completely correct the Kelim, which was intentionally broken by the Creator, and raise it to His level, then we will be ready to begin the true path to understand and unify with the Creator.

But these are secrets of the end of correction. When we achieve this together—all the creations who are now in this world and those who are not in it—then we will go further and find out what the Creator has prepared for us after the final correction.

In Yom Kippur we reveal that not only good, but also evil comes from the Creator and they have equal value. A person should bless for evil as well as for good because due to both of these forces he attains unification with the Creator.

This unification with the higher power is our common single goal, and therefore any past state must be perceived as an invitation for unification. It doesn’t matter what I feel or what happens in my mind, my heart, my body, or in my relationships, by this I am shown where I can add and strengthen the unification with the upper force.

The meaning of fasting on Yom Kippur is that we act only by the power of faith without using the power of reception.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 9/26/20

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