Question: Your teacher Rabash, commented on a passage from the Torah, in his notes: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” Why should a person remember this?

Answer: Remember means that you must constantly awaken the state in yourself when you were a slave of egoism. Now you are not in egoism, but you incite it in order to work with it even more deeply, even more, and rise even higher above it.

Let us say you jumped out of Egypt, you are in faith above reason. And then what? You need to constantly incite the Egyptian states in order to always rise above them higher and higher, up to complete correction.

Question: But we said that, on the contrary, it is necessary to cultivate the greatness of the Creator’s quality of bestowal, this upper force of nature, and not to remember how bad it was in egoism. Or do we need both?

Answer: No, you are not remembering these qualities, but you incite them within yourself because you still have them in you. But anyway, they are already above your transition from egoism to altruism. Then, once you are already in altruism, you incite them for further work.

Question: Does it mean that when we left Egypt we had not yet reached the final correction, and this is just the beginning?

Answer: There are 125 degrees ahead of us!
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/14/22

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Question: The dysfunctional social environment and troubled family lead to the fact that children from such conditions suffer a backlash from it from childhood. Most of people who became serial killers were unwanted children in a family.

How can a woman’s unwillingness to have a child affect him in such a way that later he begins to perceive the world negatively and hate his own kind?

Answer: We see that the formation of a person happens under the influence of the environment.

According to Kabbalah, the environment forms even those inclinations and qualities with which we are born, i.e., we either inherit them or have no idea where they come from. All the baggage with which a person comes into this world is formed under the influence of society.

Let us say that from birth, a person is endowed with very sharp, dangerous inclinations to violence or demonstrates some socially negative actions. But under the influence of the environment, these inclinations can be actualized in the socially correct plane, that is, for the benefit of society.

For example, if a bully becomes a security guard or a killer becomes a butcher, then their inclinations will be directed to correction. Thus, in our world, we can find the right application of any human quality, whatever it may be.

Everything depends not on the inclinations themselves, which exist in us in an unrevealed informative form, i.e., in the form of our internal informational records (in Kabbalah called Reshimot), but on how we show a person their correct application and give him or her the opportunity to implement them.

But if we begin to suppress a person’s inclinations, then we lead him to the internal problems as he explodes at a certain age and begins to apply them anyway, but in an unpredictable form. He cannot restrain himself and, naturally, finds an excuse for it.

In other words, if the mother and everyone in the household treats the child as unwanted, then in this way they form a negative attitude toward the world in him. Then he naturally implements all negative inclinations into evil.

Kabbalah says that everything depends only on education. The inclinations that a person has have been given to him only so that he can realize himself correctly.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Unwanted Children” 11/28/10

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Question: A man is looking for a mother in a woman-companion. But still, she is not his mother. How can she see a man in him even if she understands his nature?

Answer: This is becoming more and more of a problem in our society, and therefore, we see what is happening with the family.

But a man subconsciously chooses a woman who is somewhat like his mother; he wants to see her like that. It is established in him from childhood in a sense of security, support, and love, which may even be unrequited from the side of a child to his mother. He is just sure that it will be with him all the time—a feeling of something big, warm, and reliable.

Comment: But when he becomes an adult, a problem arises, because a woman does not want to be big, warm, and reliable.

My Response: Then he does not need her. Why does he need her? Today everything is bought: cooked food, pre-made products, and women too.

The fact is that we need to understand the basis and teach children in schools what kind of mutual support, mutual complement, compensation, and replenishment they need.

One person without an opposite partner is still without validity, imperfect, and, in general, unhappy. It is true that he compensates for this with all kinds of entertainment provided by society as he gets lost in them. But as time passes, old age approaches. I do not see people who would be happy to grow old alone.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Siamese Twins” 9/19/10

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Comment: In the legislative law of any country, punishment is determined not by the action itself, but by the intention that preceded it. It is clear that the most serious crimes are those that a person commits intentionally. A crime is considered intentional if a person consciously accepted the possibility of criminal consequences.

According to the main law of Kabbalah, a person is also defined not by his action but by his intention.

My Response: Yes, but in Kabbalah, intention 100% determines the consequence, and in our world, it makes up some percentage of everything that happens.

Our world is a world of actions that come from corporeal circumstances and activities. The spiritual world, however, is completely built on intention. There are no actions in it other than the intention that produces everything.

Desire is a force and intention controls this force. It defines for whom this force works, in whose direction it is aimed, and for whose benefit. All this is divided very specifically: either for the sake of bestowing to others or for the sake of the subject, that is, the person himself.

Therefore, both the action itself, its power, which determines its level, and the intention are taken into account here: either this is the intention to bestow, or this is the intention to receive. This refers to the strength of desire and its intention, just as in our world there is a physical action and its intention.

The problem is that in our world, we cannot accurately explain and accurately record the intention of a person. And in the spiritual world, these intentions are completely clear, and a person is evaluated according to his degree, vision, awareness, and attainment.

Depending on this, his position in the spiritual world by itself makes a judgment on him and qualifies him as to what degree he is, how external nature treats him and directs him precisely either by compelling forces or by helping forces, and so on.

That is, a person is not among people who evaluate him by some subjective political, social, or other standards, but in spiritual nature that is absolute and knows one’s capabilities and evaluates one’s abilities, actions, and successes on its 100% scale.

Question: Who can see and appreciate the purity of a person’s intention?

Answer: Only nature itself because it represents a general 100% altruistic intention.

Question: Can a person who is already at the degree of revelation of this nature evaluate the intentions of another?

Answer: Yes and no. After all, if I am at some degree of spiritual nature, let us say I am 80% corrected in my intentions, then I cannot evaluate everyone else 100%, but only to the level that I have reached myself.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Outside The Law” 2/1/11

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the real essence of spirituality? How does it change one’s life in the best possible way?“

Our inborn human nature is a desire to receive for personal benefit alone. It is written, “The inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). By nature, we wish to grab, steal and kill for our own benefit, and if we do not reveal such extreme forms of our nature, at the very least, our thoughts are always aimed in the direction of self-benefit.

The question then becomes how much can we change from this nature?

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we learn that only through special exercises can we change ourselves. How does it work? If we are in a society, implement advice and adhere to conditions that kabbalists give us in that society, we then gradually and meticulously change over an extended period of time.

The essence of this transformation is that we start appreciating giving, which is the other side of nature to our inborn receptive one.

Nature consists of two forces: receiving and giving. We are born and raised in a nature of reception. This nature functions like an engine that constantly runs by calculating what is most beneficial for ourselves at every given moment from all possible options. It makes us constantly desire the best for ourselves, to move toward pleasure and move away from pain.

The flip side of our nature is giving. We have no idea what giving is. We know how to give in order to receive, and thus giving within our current nature is always done with the calculation that we will receive more than what we give. That is not the giving that is on nature’s other side.

Giving on the other side of nature means giving without anything in return, just like how we now wish to receive without giving anything in return.

If we add this ability to ourselves, then we would be able to see reality for what it truly is. We would then be able to view reality as forces of giving that exist between us and pass from one person to another, and in multiple directions all at once—filling the space between us like an ocean of light. In other words, we would attain a clear perception and sensation of the eternal and perfect spiritual reality.

Based on the video “What Is the Essence of Spiritual Transformation?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Foreword to The Book of Zohar“

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 1, Item 3 

Selected Highlights

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Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence“: Each of the manifold still, vegetative, animate, and speaking in this world has its corresponding part in the world above it, without any difference in its form but only in its substance.

Baal HaSulam writes that there is a law of root and branch; after all, spiritual forces manifest in our world in the form of matter.

Comment: So, when Kabbalists write in their books: “The Land of Israel,” they mean a person’s desire to become similar to the Creator. In our world however, this manifests itself in the form of matter: earth, people living on it, their bodies, and so on.

My Response: But this is on a level that does not exist in us. In principle, we are talking about those qualities that are revealed in people: how can we correct these qualities and to what level, what form we should reach.

Thus, an animal or a rock in this world is a corporeal matter, and its corresponding animal or rock in the higher world is a spiritual matter, occupying no space or time.

In the spiritual world, these are just qualities. That is, a Kabbalist sees spiritual qualities, describes them in his books, and those who have five corporeal sensory organs see them in our world in a materialized form.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/26/22

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Question: It is written in the Torah that Moses was “slow of speech and slow of tongue,” that is, he was tongue-tied. What does it mean?

Answer: Inarticulate speech does not mean problems with speech, but the fact was that it was difficult for Moses to explain the essence of his actions because they seemed completely unreal, wrong, and not from our world to others. After all, you cannot express intention in words, and it will not be clear to other people.

Therefore, everyone who saw what Moses was doing believed that he is not of this world, was acting wrongly and giving them wrong recommendations.

Question: Can we say that it was difficult for him to explain to all the other egoistic desires why it is necessary to leave Egypt because reception is our nature?

Answer: This is correct. First one needs to explain to oneself and then also to others.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/19/22

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Question: Today, outrageous cases where a father abuses a child and the mother helps him in this have become more frequent. Why is this happening?

Answer: This is a result of the growing egoism that outgrows all boundaries, which we do not know how to use.

Throughout the history of humanity, there were even entire cultures whose development resulted in not entirely natural processes. While our egoism was developing in moderation, there were of course all kinds of abnormalities in it, but not as much as now.

Today our egoism has outgrown the border of ordinary earthly society and is beginning to develop upward until we must necessarily correct it spiritually. We have outgrown earthly development.

The current eruptions of egoism already need spiritual correction and this is why we are at such a transitional stage. In the near future, we will have to understand that we need to do something with ourselves, society, family, science, culture, technology, and ecology. But we do not yet know what to do.

We are gradually coming to the conclusion that we have exhausted all our reasonable resources to compensate for our egoism and we cannot work with it as before. We cannot find any compensating forces, intimidation, persuasion, or education for our egoism that will continue to work.

Here, the wisdom of Kabbalah comes to our aid. It reveals to us new forces that can actually be a means of correcting our current egoism and not only correcting it, but bringing it to perfection.

I am sure that in the near future we will reveal this system. People will come to the wisdom of Kabbalah and see that everything is ready within it. Kabbalists have prepared everything for their use and for their benefit: “Please, you can make yourself, your family, and your children happy, make the world ecologically clean and see much more than you see today.”

Question: Were Kabbalists waiting for this moment to reveal their methodology to everyone? Do people now have to realize themselves at this level through all kinds of connections?

Answer: There is no escape because our egoism will force us. It will cause us such suffering with its lack of compensation that we will be forced to find this remedy, and then we will come to Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, Siamese Twins” 11/7/10

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