Question: A person who is developing spiritually first feels that all his desires are entangled, he does not know how to direct them, how to balance them. Then there is a surge of egoism (the state of Babylon) when he cannot in any way establish relations with other people. Then he begins to realize his egoism; this is the entrance to Egypt.

In the outside world, where space, time, and motion exist, material pictures are drawn for us, such as Babylon, the desert, etc., but all these stories speak only of the internality, right?

Answer: Yes, just as you have a program on your computer, you run it, and it shows you some videos.

In the same way, we have all kinds of informational records inside us, which are manifested in the fact that we see ourselves existing in this world and acting in accordance with what nature scrolls in front of us. But in fact, this is all our internal video image.

It is as if your inner desires, turned inside out, show this picture so that you can change it. Change your inner qualities and you will see the world outside of you change. Can you imagine what has been given to you? To change yourself on such a big, enlarged scale.

If you change yourself a little, you will see big changes in the world around you, between yourself and inanimate nature, animals, and the people with whom you interact. When you change yourself internally, you see the consequences in the external world. You make your own movies.

Question: Does it turn out that the outside world is like an indicator for me?

Answer: The external world is a reflection of your inner state. If you now see, for example, some wars in the same land of Israel, then you need to change something in yourself. This is the only way you can influence the external situation.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/21/21

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Question: Why should I, as a man, correct my nature?

Answer: You cannot get away from it. We are not given a choice in this matter. As it is said: “Against your will you are born; against your will you live, and against your will you die.”

We simply have to fulfill our destiny in life, and not just one life but a series of reincarnations, gradual returns to this life. And it does not depend on us; one way or another, we have to complete it.

In the course of history up to the present day, we have been led along an unconscious path. We developed egoistically; we were pushed ahead; we invented all possible variations of social systems, family structure, upbringing of children; we developed technologies and whatnot until we came to realize that all this development leads us to emptiness, depression, drugs, and self-destruction. As a result, we find ourselves today in a global crisis.

The fact is that this is a crisis of the entire humanity, of its hopelessness. But we were not consulted about it. Egoism kept developing and driving us and we seem to be rolling by inertia. And now it has shown us that all this purely automatic egoistic development is pointless, and that its only purpose is for us to realize that it is a dead-end.

And now what? Now the question arises about the next level of existence: “What is this all about?” Nonetheless, people try to run away from the answer, drown in thoughts of fashion, vacations, parties, or anything else. But gradually, all these entertainments start to wear them out. And people are left alone with the question: “What is the meaning of my existence? Life has no meaning. Thus, it is not worth living.”

Man cannot escape it. This is a natural path of development, and we are in it. More and more people in the world are asking this question, they cannot hide from it, bury their heads in the sand, and continue living as before. This is how our nature works.

You do not need to be more educated, less educated, a psychologist, a scientist, or an intellectual to perceive it. I have met such people in South America, in Africa, everywhere. I have students all over the world. It is just that the time has come. The Book of Zohar says that it is our generation that will begin to seriously ask this question, and that is why Kabbalah must be revealed.
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From KabTV’s “Close Up”

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Question: The film industry has learned how to bring Hollywood actors to life. Deceased musicians come on stage in the form of holograms. Microsoft has a patent for creating an interactive chat-bot that conducts a dialogue on behalf of any person, even the deceased. This technology is called “digital reincarnation.”

The idea of digital immortality is that the real “I” is not my body, but data, information that can be separated from the body and stored in some other form.

It turns out that they have come closer to this feeling, to the state of immortality?

Answer: No. This is a completely different area—the state of immortality. They took a person, copied his movements and his characteristics, and now they can manipulate it.

It was recorded, processed, deconstructed into all sorts of bits, squares, pieces, and now they can make up any image from them. They can take a Thumbelina and make a Baba Yaga out of her. We are all in these holograms.

That is, the world is really illusory.

Comment: The world really wants to come to a state of immortality.

My Response: Why is it? The way we live nowadays? I would, on the contrary, project out of all these holograms such a picture that everyone would want to fall asleep. And that’s it! So good, calm. It would be a very nice planet. It is said, “The sleep of sinners is for their benefit.”

Question: Please tell me, what is immortality for you?

Answer: This is an ascent above the level of death, above the level of our life, which is considered even worse than death. Kabbalah evaluates our life as the lowest, an existence that is not even worthy of contempt.

Question: Is this our world?

Answer: Yes. We must start to rise from it and make a real movie of ourselves. So that each of us begins to play the right person, the image of the highest, supreme, and positive that embraces the whole world!

Question: To play exactly?

Answer: Play, of course! We’re not like that!

I have to play the role that I really want to see in myself, in which I want to see myself! And I would get used to this role, get used to it, and demonstrate this role in front of everyone. And they would still demonstrate themselves in relation to me and others. And so we would have turned this world from a game into a real world.

After all, if everyone is playing, then this game turns into the truth.

Question: So I’m starting to see this as the truth?

Answer: Of course! I am perceived, and I perceive all the others, and then there is no separation between us, this is the truth or this is some kind of pretense. We play, we play all the time. And in this way, we attract upon ourselves the upper light, a special energy, global, cosmic, which would actually make such people out of us!

Comment: Our current role is more or less clear: we are what we are. We see what we are.

My Response: And this is also not the real us! This is also imposed on us. We must discover that we are being played with, that our egoism is controlling us. All this vanity and so on, it’s not us, really.

Question: So what I have in me, pride, vanity, superiority over others, is not me?

Answer: You don’t even know who you are.

Question: Who should I play?

Answer: Yourself as a righteous person. The righteous is the one who justifies all. Everyone absolutely. That is, to feel that everything else besides me is absolutely good. And then you get into a very interesting situation!

Question: But how can I justify a rapist, a hater?

Answer: No, no, this is not even a question! It just needs to be done. And you will see that there is no violence and nothing similar to it, nothing at all. We see it all in our distorted qualities.

Question: Is it my ego that’s turning everything upside down around me?

Answer: Yes. So, it’s all very interesting.

Question: Should all of humanity start playing this movie? Or does it start with a small group?

Answer: Naturally, from a small group, as usual. But, in principle, it should spread out.

We must understand that if we do not seek to change ourselves, it will end badly. There will be such irreversible changes with humanity that will awaken it again, perhaps, in many thousands of years.

Question: If we ourselves do not strive to play the role of the righteous?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/10/21

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Advance by Overcoming”

Selected Highlights

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My new article on Linkedin “Regrettably, We Have to Love Each Other”

We may not like the idea because we don’t like each other, but we have to come to love each other, or else, we’re in for a civil war. This is where the State of Israel stands today. “Love your neighbor as yourself” has been the motto of the Jewish people since its inception. We were a collection of strangers who came to prize the idea of love of others, and our ancestors practiced it with one another until they vowed to be “as one man with one heart.”

However, if you look at us today, we are very, very far from it, and we are getting even further away. No one has picked up the gauntlet and actually tried to implement this most basic tenet of Judaism. We’ve turned education, which originally meant raising children to become human beings who care about others, into conveying information, either secular or religious, but none that makes people know how to relate to others with kindness and love. As a result, our society has come to the brink of collapse. There is so much hatred among the factions in the country that we might collapse into a civil war, as we had done before, unless we quickly reverse course.

I am saying this not because I am a doomster, but because I want to prevent what is already in the making. Our nation has already come to such a state, and it caused us to lose our country and our freedom, not to mention the horrendous loss of life that mainly we inflicted on ourselves in a bloody civil war. Today, too, we have enemies surrounding us, but today, too, we are our own worst enemies.

Therefore, we have to recognize that unity above all differences is our only option going forward. We will not agree on politics, education, defense, foreign policy, separation of religion from state, or any of the topics that currently divide us. However, we must understand that if we try to destroy our dissenters, we will destroy ourselves. Therefore, if we want to have a future, we have no other choice but to find a way to unite above all the differences, which will remain.

This may not seem possible to achieve, but a civil war is on the other side of unity. If we keep this in mind, perhaps we will find a way. And the first step toward finding that way is realizing the kind of danger that is lurking around the corner. The next step is to sit together and discuss, with open minds, since we have no open hearts, how we can live together nonetheless, so we don’t end up killing one another, with our enemies killing those who will remain.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think is the cause of modern racism?“

The human ego is the basis for all our drives and characteristics. It operates in an absorptive manner, receiving from others and nature for the sake of personal benefit. Over the course of history, the ego undergoes development and leads us to a fateful transition where it changes direction to its opposite: from receiving to giving. We can aid such a transformation, to make it faster and more enjoyable, if we learn how the ego operates on us, and what we can do in order to realize the transformation consciously.

When our perception shifts to a direction that aims from ourselves outwardly, toward the benefit of others, we discover a paradigm of totally different feelings and understandings. When we are self-aimed, we always calculate whether something is good or bad for us. It means that we automatically choose that which we perceive as good for the ego, and throw aside what we see as bad for it. When there is a phenomenon that neither benefits nor harms the ego, then we have no sensation of that phenomenon. This is how we perceive reality.

When we change ourselves, shifting our constant egoistic focus on self-aimed benefit to an altruistic focus on the benefit of others, we then start perceiving the part of reality that surrounds us, which we had no prior perception of, because we perceived everything through our egoistic impulses.

We then start perceiving everything via a completely opposite altruistic lens. Instead of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, we develop five new altruistic senses called “Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut.” We then perceive a new world, called the “upper world” or “spiritual world,” through the new altruistic nature that we attain.

When we reach such attainment, our egoistic perception of reality still remains. We continue living and feeling the world through our same inborn five senses, however our focus completely transforms to perceive the altruistic part of reality that is concealed from our egoistic perception. We then start feeling life in two worlds. Via this new perception and sensation, we start making decisions on how we orient our every motion. We are all destined to reach this state.

In the meantime, our egoistic perception prioritizes whatever it perceives as serving greater benefit to ourselves, while everything that does not benefit us, it rejects or does not perceive at all. In general, we automatically choose what we enjoy and find useful for our goals, and reject everything else.

Racism is a state where, in addition to our senses being directed solely toward self-benefit, we also enjoy when others are worse off. Humanity in general has this problem. Part and parcel of our egoistic development over generations is that the ego reaches a state of overgrowth, where we live and work not only to serve our own interests, but we also wish to inflict harm upon others. This comes from excessive social desires (wealth, honor, control and knowledge) where we constantly compare ourselves to others, and the bigger our egos are, the more we want to be above them. Then the worse it is for them, the better it is for us.

Envy, hatred, and generally the desire to reap enjoyment from harming others, is nonexistent in animals. This constant comparison to others in society thus sets the scene for racism. We start blaming others for all kinds of problems and misfortunes in our lives when we think that they cause our troubles, or when we see that they are more fortunate and successful than we are. Also, we want to look good in the eyes of society, and the more we see others looking seemingly better than us, the more we want to put them down in order to elevate our own status. Such traits exist only in humans, because we are composed of animal and human qualities. The animal part of us requires food, sex and family, and the human part demands money, honor, control and knowledge. When our egoistic desire grows and we wish to fulfill ourselves more and more with the sources of these emotions, we then encounter envy and hatred.

It follows that we feel better off when we see others as worse off, as it is an essential aspect of our inborn ego. If our egos are small, similar to animals, then we do not encounter such negative emotions. However, if our egos are highly developed, then we feel great unrest due to constantly comparing ourselves to others and seeing that they are more successful and fortunate. This unrest thus acts on us in order to make us want to be above them, either by outcompeting them, or by putting them down.

Racism thus increasingly surfaces the more our egos grow. We find ourselves emphasizing our differences and divisions more and more, without any inclination to rise above them, which ends up creating more and more instances of racism, hatred and division.

We thus find ourselves moving toward a state of immense hatred and divisiveness, on one hand, but on the other hand, we also find ourselves becoming increasingly interdependent. At such a fateful juncture, we need a new kind of education that emphasizes how we can positively connect above our divisive drives—specifically a wisdom that acknowledges the causes of our divisive drives, and which guides us not in order to diminish or cancel them, but in order to rise above them in a positive connection—and by doing so, we will reach a newfound harmonious balance between these two opposite tendencies.

Based on a video conference with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on June 7, 2015.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash.

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Question: If the Creator sees only the system, how does He manage each one individually?

Answer: The Creator does not manage each of us individually. There is the management of the general system that leads us all forward. The Creator does not engage with any specific individual and does not lead him in a special manner in any way.

The whole system to begin with was designed in its initial and final form. It is only up to us how to add to the process of our personal efforts and thus accelerate the transition. By accelerating it, we seemingly escape the stick and move forward by our efforts.

We perceive the correct way to develop, but if we lag behind, we immediately summon and invoke the negative force that pressures us by certain actions, circumstances, and negative feelings, and then our path becomes a path of sufferings.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 2/24/19

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Question: The Torah tells us that on the way to the promised land, the people of Israel fought with several nations, and they were instructed to destroy Amalek, even to erase the memory of him.

The Torah also says that when the seven nations conquered the land of Israel, the men had to be killed and the women taken captive. In addition, it is described that the Jews fought with the mixed multitude (Erev Rav), but nowhere does it say that they should be killed.

We have different desires and we have to deal with them in different ways. Why?

Answer: That is right, these are all our different desires. We should not fight with anyone externally. The Torah describes the inner corrections of a person, in himself. Therefore, Amalek and the seven nations that inhabited the land of Israel until the Jews came there, and all the people around us that we had to fight, are our inner attributes that we have to fight against and change from selfish to altruistic. This, in general, is the essence of all wars.

Comment: Still, it happened as historical events.

My Response: Yes, because every spiritual force has its own effect in our world. The upper force itself is called the root, and its effect is called the branch. Therefore, we must also fulfill these conditions in the material world, which we feel in our egoistic properties, to destroy and so on, if we cannot do it on the level of the spiritual world. But, in principle, the Torah calls us to make corrections in spirituality.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/14/21

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Question: What would you answer if you were asked what is the thought that you would like humanity to remember?

Answer: That there is really only the Creator and nothing but Him.

The Creator is nature, the upper force of nature, the upper intelligence of nature, only He exists and nothing but Him.

Question: Are the people everything? Us?

Answer: There is none of this.

Question: What about this thought?

Answer: This is the central, global thought and plan of all of nature.

Question: Why is it necessary for a person to come to this thought?

Answer: So that he would hear it, begin to explore it somehow, and come to it himself. This is very valuable.

Question: Do I exist? The one who thinks that there is a Creator?

Answer: No. There is none else besides Him.

Question: No one else but the Creator? Is this a law of nature?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/29/21

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