Question: Do you personally celebrate Israel’s Independence Day?

Answer: I can feel it. I do not know what this holiday means at all. But I am glad that such an event took place.

Question: Do you have national pride?

Answer: For what? One has to do something to be proud.

Question: What feelings do you have when you look at Israeli society?

Answer: That this is a template for good deeds, but nothing more.

Question: How did your teacher feel about Independence Day?

Answer: He celebrated it within himself.

Question: There are a great number of ceremonies and events on this day. What would you suggest to the organizers?

Answer: To figure out what Independence Day is, what independence is, and how to reach and implement it.

Question: How can we make this day more significant? How can each person personally spend it with meaning?

Answer: To understand why we are given such a state. We have not yet reached independence to celebrate it. On the contrary, we depend on everyone and everything. How can we make ourselves independent? To do this, we must rise above ourselves and get closer to the Creator.

Question: Do you think people are ready for change?

Answer: Perhaps, people are not ready, but the time has come for that.

Question: What kind of future do you see in relations with the Arabs?

Answer: I think everything will end well. We will be able to come to a mutual understanding without bloody wars.

Question: When will Israel actually become independent?

Answer: It will be independent in corporeality once it becomes spiritually independent.

Question: What practical action would you recommend to everyone to come closer to this independence?

Answer: To rise above your egoism and try to get closer to others.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/26/22

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Question: Baal HaSulam writes that the condition for the independence of the state of Israel will be met if the nation becomes the basis for the spiritual development of all humanity. How do you envision it?

Answer: If we strive to be the spiritual center of the world and to show the whole world the quality of bestowal, love, and connection, then we will get the strength to hold ourselves, to support others, and to achieve it so that we will be understood, loved, and respected.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual states” 4/26/22

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Comment: We are used to the phrase, “Israel Independence Day.” We are accustomed to this holiday; we celebrate it. In today’s world, the word “independence” is spoken of everywhere: independence of countries, independent republics, independent press, independent experts. All sides of the conflict and all parties speak about it: right, left, individuals, everyone!

Besides, it is not just a word, but a very important concept in Kabbalah.

My Response: In Kabbalah, this concept is absolutely the opposite of what people, the world, society, countries, and nations understand by it.

What does “independence” mean? From what?

Comment: It is the independence of my boundaries, independence from someone else. I want to live by myself, with my national independence: republican, state, and so on. This means that I am independent so that no one gets to me; I will build my own world. This is called “independence.”

My Response: But this is impossible because in today’s world everyone depends on others. So how can we be independent?

If you are going to be independent, you have to go into the woods and provide for yourself with what you can. You are condemning yourself to terrible conditions.

Question: Can we say it another way, it is so that no one dictates to me how to live? Is it also impossible?

Answer: It is the same thing. No one will dictate anything to you, but how will you provide for yourself? How will you create and preserve this independence? It is completely unclear how this is possible.

Today, in our world, a developing country should be connected with all countries by good mutual ties. Only in this case can it feel comfortable among everyone. Otherwise, it will feel crushed, limited, humiliated, and so on.

Question: In the case it will be on its own?

Answer: Yes, but no one will give it that opportunity. After all, all countries surround each other and want; like wolves in the forest, each one wants to snatch from others as much as they can. This is our normal, egoistic world. It cannot be any different. It was always like that, only we covered ourselves up a little. We did not reveal this enough in our egoism.

Question: Do you think there is no point to demand independence in this world; it does not exist and will not exist?

Answer: We can demand, but so that at the same time we demand it from ourselves! This is the most important thing. If we will observe such conditions that there are good neighborly relations, peace, and mutual assistance between us, which are contrary to our natural, regular quality to receive, conquer, and force to peace.

Comment: If we have unity, then it is against someone. And all this is vicious.

My Response: Of course. Therefore, everything we create is only supposedly for the benefit of ourselves and to the detriment of others. There cannot be one instead of the other.

Kabbalah says that independence is when we rise above our egoism. Independence from our personal egoism, this is what real independence is, and then I only think about others. Among other people, in good relations with others, which I create with all my capabilities, I feel independent.

Question: Are you saying “only about others”? I don’t think about myself at all?

Answer: I will not exist, I am just a consequence. Today I also exist as a consequence of the attitude of everyone else toward me.

Question: Does it mean that I can only think about others, and then the consequence will be the way they treat me, the way I treat them, and so on?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Should my first thought be: “They will treat me well if I treat others well”?

Answer: I do not think this is the nature of a person and our society. Therefore, to say such beautiful phrases: “Do not hit others and they will not hit you,” and so on does not work.

Question: And what you say, does it work? How is it possible in our world that I do not think about myself, but think about others? At the level of a country, for example.

Answer: The thing is, of course, it does not work either. If I treat others well, I will only give them an additional reason to grab me and bite off different pieces from me. Therefore, the entire problem in human society is for it to transform itself from a pack of predators into an organized, mutual, voluntary, kind community.

Question: Do you believe in this fantasy?

Answer: No, I do not believe it by any means, but I say it, because, in principle, this is the only solution. Once we realize that this is the only solution, no matter how fantastic and absolutely impossible, then we will suddenly have the opportunity to implement it.

Question: From where?

Answer: From above. We will be able to receive such a force from nature that will raise us above our egoism, and then this will be realized. I will be above my nature, I will be above my thoughts, I will be above my decisions. How will it happen? It will happen because the second force of nature will be revealed: the quality of bestowal, connection, and love.

Question: Can you guarantee me that? For example, I am a politician or an ordinary person, and I hear you. Can you guarantee me that?

Answer: I can only tell you again in more detail so that you understand that there is no other way. Or we go toward perishing and die in every generation. And in the next generation, they are preparing the same fate for our descendants. Nothing is changing except that the suffering is becoming greater and the possibility of solving them with the help of wars and death is becoming more and more terrible.

Question: Will I, through understanding and feeling this, come to what you say?

Answer: Yes, we will eventually understand. Moreover, this is a very scary decision because we will feel like we are being skinned. Because this is absolutely against me.

However, there is an opportunity to resolve this issue in a kind, peaceful way. It means to study our nature and study the force of nature that can help us change ourselves. Then we will be able to expose ourselves to this kind force of nature, and it will change us from evil little predators to kind big creatures.

Question: Do you think we are getting closer to this recognition that we are vicious little predators?

Answer: We are getting closer. However, so far we are also getting closer to it not in a good way.

But according to the way all kinds of positive and negative forces are being revealed more and more, especially in our generation, we are given the opportunity to talk about it and somehow implement it, that is, there is hope that we will be able to form this system of forces of nature for ourselves, for our understanding, for our knowledge, and to understand how we can balance it and express the good force from it.

I think we can do it. Otherwise, we will still come to this, but in a long, long way, a terrible way of suffering.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/18/22

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My new article on Linkedin “The Freedom to Love”

When your little girl or boy runs around the house, they feel no restraints or limitations. They feel free. Would it not be wonderful if we could be like that throughout our lives? Surprisingly, we can. Your children feel free because they are enveloped by your love. This is what gives them confidence that nothing will happen to them and they can venture anywhere they want and do whatever they please. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be there to keep them from harm.

As we get older, we encounter people who are not our parents and whose love for us is not unconditional, or who are complete strangers and might even seek to harm us. Instinctively, we lose our confidence and lose our joy. Instead, hesitation and suspicion take over.

However, if we were to give each other love the way we were given it when we were little, there would be no reason to stop feeling safe and happy. In other words, if society were to give people the same feeling of love that parents give their children, no one would feel insecure or mistrust toward others when venturing outside one’s home.

No feeling is better than to love someone else. This unique pleasure is the reason that parents love to tend to their children. Love fills the lover even more than it fills the loved one. When love is reciprocated, no bond is stronger than a bond of love.

Our sense of freedom depends on the level of love among us. Particularly now, when the world has become completely interconnected and interdependent, it is essential that we become aware of it.

Because there are so many commitments and obligations between us—some of which we are aware of, and most of which we are not, but they exist nonetheless—it is imperative that we build positive relations between us rather than the existing atmosphere of distrust and hostility.

It is not simple to develop love for others. However, in its absence, we cannot feel free.

In its truest form, love means stepping out of myself, out of my personal desires, and beginning to relate to other people’s desires the same as parents relate to the desires of their children. But when strangers relate that way to one another, it creates an entire society whose members give each other a sense of complete freedom because they all feel loved.

In such a society, we can realize our full potential. When we want to contribute our abilities to the common good, the community, and all of society encourage us to do so, and we feel unbounded support and encouragement from the surroundings. This, in turn, increases our love for the society and our desire to give to it, creating a cycle of giving that empowers each member in the society, and the society as a whole. There is no end to what such a society can achieve.

The spirit of love knows no boundaries. If we nurture it among us, we will feel as safe as a baby in its mother’s bosom, and as free as a bird throughout our lives.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the meaning of attaining spirituality or spiritual satisfaction?“

Attaining spirituality means attaining a new intention that operates for the benefit of others.

Such attainment gives us the ability to feel the world that is outside of us and independent of us. In other words, it lets us feel the Creator. The Creator is a force of bestowal and love, which fills the air, space and everything around us.

Through spiritual attainment, we start feeling the positive field that begets and controls us. We are born and raised as small egoists, opposite to the force of bestowal and love. By nature, we wish to only benefit ourselves at the expense of others and nature, and when we start moving toward spiritual attainment, we start developing ourselves to become more and more like the force of bestowal and love—wishing for the benefit of others and nature.

Spiritual attainment is also called “attainment of adhesion with the Creator,” and it is how we attain an eternal and perfect life. By attaining spirituality, we equalize ourselves with the force of bestowal and love, live in it, and continue doing so for eternity. Our bodies are made only in order to perceive egoistic forces, and when we attain spirituality, equalizing with the force of bestowal and love, we discover that we actually have no bodies.

Based on the video “What Do You Get from Bestowing to Others?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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

Writings of Rabash, “Concerning Love of Friends – 2” 

Selected Highlights

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “There Could Be Much More Light in Israel”

On the knife for cutting the Shabbat challah of Baal HaSulam—Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag—were engraved the words, “State of Israel.” Although the Independence Day of the State of Israel has no Kabbalistic background, the establishment of the State of Israel was of great importance to Baal HaSulam.

In the eyes of the Kabbalist, the reestablishment of the State of Israel in the land of Israel was a great step and cornerstone toward the fulfillment of the eternal Jewish vision. Two thousand years after the destruction of the Temple, when unfounded hatred broke out among Jews and we were scattered to all corners of the world, we finally founded once again a state to realize our role as the Israeli nation: to be “a light unto nations” – a model of the correct path for all mankind.

The Zionism of Baal HaSulam was not the Zionism we know, and it did not advocate one party or another. It focused on the goal for realization of the plan of creation, a plan in which the Jews play a central and significant role. From one Independence Day to the next, Baal HaSulam tried to navigate the compass and guide the Jewish people in his writings to fulfill their spiritual destiny.

Independence Day is also of great personal significance to me. Thanks to the establishment of the State of Israel, I was able to immigrate to Israel. And I share the aspirations of Baal HaSulam for the establishment of an exemplary people on Israeli soil. Let us be united as one man in one heart toward that goal. For only in this way will great and positive forces be able to arise among us, superior forces that we will spread to all the nations of the world from the strength of our unity as Israel.

I was recently pleased to hear that 90%of Israelis said in a new poll that they are proud to be Jewish. Without such national pride it is impossible to move forward. However, we should feel this pride as both a reward and an obligation.

While we are rewarded with the exalted role that awaits us, with the distinction of being a special link in the chain of humanity, it comes with an obligation to continue along the path, because we are only in the middle and we must reach the end. Our destination is to reach the state of mutual guarantee between us and then to transmit the power that comes from our unity to the whole world.

We have a heavy and significant work to carry out, and the nations of the world sense this within the contents of the internal global network that connects us all. Year by year, people put increasing pressure on us to push and force us to fulfill our destiny. Sometimes the people of the world relate to us negatively in the form of antisemitic statements, and sometimes they relate positively in the form of expressions of appreciation and a desire for cooperation. But whether from one side or another, the world is steering us toward one clear point: that Israel must be a unique people, upright before God, a people directly connected to and aligned with the revelation the Supreme Force.

Considering the darker side of the recent survey was the admission that about 33% of the respondents, young people aged 24-34, said they were considering leaving Israel. It is the intense stress and pressure, the danger and threat, and, most importantly, the lack of foreseeing a positive future that empower these thoughts of leaving Israel. They all stem from a lack of knowledge and appreciation of our indispensable role as a people, our destiny as a nation, and our responsibility to some nine billion people of the world.

Both the younger and older generations—in fact, all of us without exception—need to go through a maturing process. Simply understanding our role as taught by Baal HaSulam in his writings—a direct continuation of the message of a long chain of Kabbalists stretching back to the birth of our people— will already neutralize the latent contempt some of us may feel for our role. This deeper perception will elevate us and clarify for us how to build among ourselves and later in the world a reformed society.
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Question: The time in which we live is special. On one hand, there are dark times: pandemic, war, disease, and death.

According to statistics, it suddenly turns out that along with this there is an increase in social support and charity.  Along with the great separation people are experiencing,  at the same time there is great solidarity and support. They exist together. It feels like we are being put through some kind of purge.

What do you think we will cling to?

Answer: We are simply being washed like in a washing machine. That’s all.

Question: What is being washed in us?

Answer: Everything! Egoism, altruism, our views, everything is being washed. Such is our time.

Question: What is a “clean garment” for you? What should we come to as a result of all this washing?

Answer: We should reach an understanding of how we should relate to the world. We do not know. We rush from here to there. We do not have a clear worldview.

Question: Is that why we were placed into this washing machine?

Answer: Yes. People are not yet free within themselves to create a clear, definite, independent, objective base for themselves in order to observe the world from it, and precisely from it.

Question: Is this washing and cleaning in order for us to have at least some small light through which we would look at the world? Is it only then that we can talk about some kind of getting closer to objectivity?

Answer: Yes, at first we begin to understand how biased we are, how there is absolutely nothing that is clearly our own within us. Everything is superficial, everything changes very much depending on what we hear and what we see.

Question: Do we have this understanding that if they have already started washing us, it means we are dirty?

Answer: So what? I have nothing else. I think this way today, in a day or two or a week or two I will think differently. I myself do not know from which side and to which side I am gradually drifting. Not at all.

Question: How do we get through this time and come to a good result?

Answer: This is possible when we see a goal and we aim at it, we harpoon it, and we can be directed at it and go to it, swim to it. We harpoon it and it is dragging us.

Question: What should be the goal?

Answer: The Creator. There is nothing else. The world is already close to beginnin to discover this state.

Moreover, for us this discovery is turning to be scientific in some way, experimental, like for scientists, and so on.

And for people it will happen naturally. Like this: turn left, turn right, no, not here, no, not there, but where is it? And so on. That is, they will be rocked on the waves, and in the end they will see that here it is, the promised land.

Question: Are you saying that nowadays some kind of gyroscope is as if inserted into a person, like in an airplane, which leads him to the goal?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is this gyroscope my inner voice that will be saying what I feel?

Answer: The gyroscope is a small motor that is clearly oriented, for example, to the North Star. No matter how its platform rotates in all planes, this spinning top is clearly directed at it along its axis.

Question: Is this how we will be directed to the Creator?

Answer: Yes! We need someone to spin this top within us. This is the middle line that should appear in us. Then there will be nothing scary.

Question: Is this what you call the best and only result of this whole washing and cleaning?

Answer: Of course! After this, everything becomes clear!

Question: Is this why all this is happening now?

Answer: Yes. Hold on to it and keep walking.

Comment: May God grant that this gyroscope, this wheel, will be finally inserted into us.

My Response: Yes. But only if we want it.

Question: How will I, a simple, ordinary person, perceive the Creator? What is it that I am yearning for, going toward?

Answer: The only truth of all possible ones. Then everything in the world will gradually subside, settle down. In general, it will all calm down.

Comment: God willing!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/21/22

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Question: You often say that man himself creates the Creator. Isn’t this idolatry?

Answer: When a person creates the Creator, that is, builds an idol for himself, this is idolatry. Usually, this happens in all religions and spiritual practices.

Comment: But we often say that in uniting with each other we create the Creator.

My Response: No. We create a quality that we call the Creator. That is not idolatry. We do not sculpt anything for ourselves to worship this doll.

Comment: It turns out that without revealing the altruistic positive force of nature in our feelings, it is impossible not to be an idolater.

My Response: We are all idolaters until we become at least somewhat similar to the Creator. That is, if the quality of bestowal, of absolute, pure bestowal, is even a little bit higher than zero, it already is a quality that is above the egoistic work called idolatry.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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