Publications

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What the Jonah Story Tells Us about Antisemitism”
Nine years ago, I published an article in The New York Times (print edition) titled, “What We Jews Owe the World.” This year, come Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), I’d like to share it with everyone following me, as I think that the message within can have a major impact on the future of our nation.

Buying Our Way to Heaven

The holiest day of the year for the Jews is Yom Kippur, when we fast and pray. A key part of the prayer is reading the book of Jonah the Prophet. Interestingly, many observant Jews believe that buying the privilege to read the book will make them successful for the rest of the year.

Naturally, only the wealthiest in the community can afford to compete for it. The sums vary according to the affluence of the community, and in some cases the privilege is sold for well over half a million dollars.

Cracking the Code

What people are not aware of, however, is the real reason why the book of Jonah is so important. Kabbalists determined that this reading is the most important in the year because it details the code for saving humanity.

Jonah’s story is special because it speaks of a prophet who first tried to dodge his mission, but finally repented. Another special aspect of Jonah’s story is that his mission was not to admonish the people of Israel, but to save the city of Nineveh, whose residents were not Jewish. In light of today’s precarious state of the world, we should take a closer look at this story and its meaning for each of us.

Shape Up or Ship Out

In the story, God orders Jonah to tell the people of Nineveh, who became very mean to one another, to correct their relationships with one another if they want to survive. However, Jonah bailed out of his mission and took to the sea in an effort to escape God’s command.

Like Jonah, we Jews have been inadvertently avoiding our mission for the past 2,000 years. And yet, we cannot afford to keep avoiding it. We have a task that was passed down to us when Moses united us into a nation based on the tenet, Love your neighbor as yourself, and it is our duty to set an example of unity for the rest of the world. Our forefathers, Abraham and Moses, wanted to unite all of humanity, but back then the world was not ready (for more on that, see my article, Why Do People Hate Jews?).

That group, namely the people of Israel, must still become a role model to the world. Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, put it poetically in his book, Orot Kodesh (Sacred Lights), Since we were ruined by unfounded hatred, and the world was ruined with us, we will be rebuilt by unfounded love, and the world will be rebuilt with us.

Sleeping through the Storm

In the story, Jonah’s escape from his mission by ship caused the sea to roar and nearly sank the vessel. At the height of the storm Jonah went to sleep detaching himself from the turmoil and leaving the sailors to fend for themselves. Gradually, they began to suspect that someone among them was the cause of the storm. They cast a lot and the lot fell on Jonah, the only Jew on board.

In many ways, today’s world is similar to Jonah’s ship. As Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, put it: “We are all in one boat, one global economy. Our fortunes rise together, and they fall together. …We have a collective responsibility—to bring about a more stable and more prosperous world, a world in which every person in every country can reach their full potential.” Yet, the sea around us is raging, and the sailors, who are all of humanity, are blaming the Jew on board for all their troubles.

Like Jonah, we are sound asleep. Though we are beginning to wake up to the existence of hatred toward us, we have yet to realize that not carrying out our mission is the reason for the hatred. If we do not wake up soon, the sailors will throw us overboard, as they did with Jonah. Yehuda Ashlag, author of the Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Zohar, wrote in his essay, The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee): It is incumbent upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and the rest of the people in the world to evolve into assuming this sublime work of love of others.

The Wake-Up Call

Jonah tells the sailors to throw him overboard, as only this will calm the sea. Reluctantly, the sailors obey and the storm calms. A whale swallows Jonah, and for three days and three nights he stays in its abdomen, introspecting his actions and decisions. He begs for his life and vows to carry out his mission.

Like Jonah, each of us carries within something that is stirring up the world. We, the people of Israel, carry a method for achieving peace through connection. Unity is the very root of our being. This DNA is what makes us a people because we were declared a nation only after we pledged to be as one man with one heart and strove to love our neighbor as ourselves. Today we must rekindle this bond because wherever we go, this untapped power is destabilizing the world around us in order to compel us to unite and reignite it.

Just as the current separation among us projects separation to the whole of humanity, unity between us will inspire the rest of the nations to unite, as well. When we unite, it will endow humanity with the energy required to achieve worldwide unity, where all people live as one man with one heart. So the only question is whether we assume our responsibility, or prefer to be thrown overboard, only to subsequently agree to carry out our task.

If we want to end our troubles, be rid of antisemitism and have a safe and happy life, we must unite and thus set an example of unity for all the nations. This is how we will bring peace and quiet to the world. Otherwise the nations hatred toward us will keep growing.

Now we see that when people pay so much for the privilege of reading the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur, they inadvertently state their support of the mission of the Jewish people toward the world: to be a light unto nations by showing an example of unity and connection. To conclude, let me quote once more the great Rav Kook: Any turmoil in the world comes only for Israel. Now we are called upon to carry out a great task willingly and mindfully: to build ourselves and the entire ruined world along with us (Igrot [Letters]).

Yom Kippur is the Judgment Day. Who is judging? Who is being judged? What should a person do on this day? What will happen if a person does everything right?

On Judgment Day, a person judges himself, rises above his own egoism, and reveals the world as a single system. It is no coincidence that Jews have always been accused of cosmopolitanism—after all, all distinctions are conditional, and our primordial, internal basis is alien to them.

Today, when the world is in desperate need of unity, the Jewish people are divided. However, we cannot deceive other nations—they instinctively, without realizing it demand from us to take on the mission of unifiers, to merge hearts into one heart.

This is the essence of our Judgment Day.
[214112]

Question: In corporeal sensation, why is a day divided into 24 hours, a year into 365 days, etc.?

Answer: This is a consequence of spiritual states in our world. We perceive everything this way because we do not control our corporeal states. But as soon as we begin to control them, time disappears and we become its creators.

Comment: People have always dreamed of time travel.

My Response: So what is the problem? There is no problem because it all exists in a single, common whole. Depending on your state, you are at one level or at the other.

In spirituality, you move along the timeline back and forth, choosing what you want. If you need it to move forward and promote others, that, like everything else, is available.

A Kabbalist always tries to be at the highest possible level and to constantly advance and ascend. But in order to connect with others, to help others, he creates an additional image of himself, just as an adult lowers himself to the level of a small child, in order to play with him.

Then, by creating his own small image, he comes into contact with ordinary people, communicates with them, teaches them, and slowly invites them to rise independently. But at the same time, he himself is still at the highest possible level and is constantly trying to improve it.

Comment: That means there is no other reason for him to descend if not to help others.

My Response: A Kabbalist does not actually descend, as he only wants to ascend. But for the sake of others, he makes for himself, so to speak, an additional Partzuf, i.e., an additional system, like a mother, playing with a child stoops to the level of a little girl to play.

Question: Are such Kabbalists as Baal HaSulam and Rabash present in our current state?

Answer: What for? They did their job and that is it. They are present, but not in such a state that we can contact them.
[317818]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Time Travel” 9/29/11

Comment: Anya writes: “We live with our parents. My husband insisted on it because we wanted to save money. And now I cannot bear it anymore, I am bursting with hatred for his mother! She criticizes everything: how I cook, how I iron, how I raise children. We cannot move away yet, and my husband says we need to wait at least another year. I do not know what to do! I cannot live like this! Right now, I have closed myself in my room and I am writing to you. I understand that this is my ego, that I need to somehow adapt myself to her, but I cannot control myself. Does she not have an ego? A big one!”

My Response: Of course. But you should think about yourself. If you constantly put yourself down, you will eventually come to a state in which your ego will decrease, and this is good.

Question: So, peace will gradually come?

Answer: There may not even be peace, but as for you, you should see that such a state can be very useful.

Question: And when you say “put yourself down,” does that mean to agree?

Answer: To agree, to somehow distance yourself as far as possible and not to enter into conflicts.

Question: That is, his mother tells her: “You iron, cook, and raise children so badly.” Do you think this woman, Anya, should at least keep silent? And this will be advancement for her?

Answer: Yes.

Question: So, you see that this is a never ending war?

Answer: It cannot end in any way.

Question: Do you think that Anya should be smarter here?

Answer: She should be wiser.

Question: Should she close herself in her room? It is easier to leave and not listen. Just like that she closes herself in her room and stays there.

Answer: But that is not correction. Correction takes place only through contact.

She must tell herself that it is by this decision, when she does not enter into conflict and stays away from it in every possible way without arousing it, that she gradually corrects her egoism. In this way, she saves her family.

Question: Can you please tell her if she can move to such a state that at some point she will be able to say some kind words to her husband’s mother? Can this happen?

Answer: Only when she becomes convinced that she has corrected herself due to her husband’s mother. And then she can hug her and say “thank you.”

Question: Now you have introduced one more detail: that due to her husband’s mother she can correct herself. That is, she already has gratitude even for the mother whom she now hates?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But these first steps are not easy to take?

Answer: This can be corrected only if she sees in her husband’s mother the Creator who raises her this way.

Question: Could you please decipher the Creator for us? She sees that behind the mother there is something that is working with her. Should “and wishes me well” be added here? Should we make such a cluster or should we not?

Answer: The mother is ruled by the Creator. Anya should figure this out.

Question: Will it be good if Anya takes small steps in this?

Answer: If she does, then yes.
[317327]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/31/23

According to the law of evolution, we have reached a state when nature no longer changes at the inanimate, vegetative, or animate levels, but begins to change at the level of mind and desires.

Previously, when we had not yet reached the level of the monkey, nature was constantly changing physically, and under the pressure of various cataclysms, explosions of stars, etc., it created matter. Then this matter formed the planet Earth. Then life appeared on it, and all this was under the external influence of nature, which formed the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of matter.

Today nature influences us! But it is already at the next level, at the level of the mind, at the level of its program, its purpose, and it manifests itself in new conditions.

You do not want to become extinct a dinosaur? Then adjust to it! Otherwise, you will die out.

Kabbalah tells us how to adapt to the natural conditions that are manifested before us today.

We cannot escape anywhere! In any case, we must fulfill this program of creation. We have only two possibilities. Either we will come to this voluntarily or with great suffering when out of eight billion people seven million will maybe remain or even less—it does not matter how many. But still, we will reach a state of complete harmony with nature, i.e., complete adhesion with the Creator.
[317434]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. You didn’t Say Something” 9/3/11

Question: How can we correctly use all the situations that are given to us and feel the spiritual world, and not just shout at the wrong point?

Answer: Incorrect shouting gradually give birth to the correct cry. No one is hiding anything from you. You just have to reveal everything within yourself.

Do you think that I am going to give you some kind of patent right no and you will start manipulating yourself and the world, move yourself this way and that way? It will not work. You have to discover this system step by step within yourself and learn how to manage it, in other words, grow up as a small child grows.

At the same time, you gain the powers of growth and knowledge. At least they are in front of you. In our world, a child is pushed forward as he is growing up. In the spiritual world, a person himself determines the pace of his own development.
[317773]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Last Scream before Death” 10/24/11

Question: You said that it makes no sense to criticize a friend because the Creator created him that way. But how can you suppress some criticism in yourself so as not to harm him and everyone else?

Answer: Criticism can only be about dissemination, nothing else, because by disseminating, he helps everyone, and by not disseminating, he drills a hole in the boat. Just this. Everything else is not his.

His “I” depends only on how to make the most effective use of his properties and his capabilities.

Question: Do you mean internal or external dissemination?

Answer: Both.

Question: And how can I know what spreads internally?

Answer: We can still see his efforts. I can see that.
[317631]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. To Love the Creator… to Hate Creation…” 10/22/11

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can you love an evil person?“

Yes, you can love people who perform even the most despicable of acts because within them is a point of a soul.

We have to understand that there is a difference between bodies and souls. People who do good or bad in the world have no souls.

A soul is called “a part of Divinity from above.” We are made of desires to enjoy, which are called “body,” and their base enjoyment is at a corporeal level where we aim to enjoy through pleasures for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge. Eventually within our desire to enjoy emerges a tiny point of a desire that stems from a higher spiritual degree, above corporeality.

Instead of wishing to enjoy for personal benefit alone, this tiny point of a desire is rooted in a world filled with the quality of nature itself: love and bestowal, beyond the limits of our corporeal desires. If we have such a desire, then we have a part of the soul, and if we feel no such desire to rise above our corporeal desires in a manner of love and bestowal upon others and nature, then we have no soul, not even its starting point.

We can liken this point of a desire to a seed that needs to be placed in the right conditions, such as fertile soil, with moisture, air and a certain amount of sunlight, for its development into a blossoming plant. In other words, we have to place this point of the soul into a protected place that is capable of developing it into a fully-grown soul, which can love, bestow and connect similarly to nature’s boundless quality of love and bestowal.

Kabbalists define this point of the soul as it emerges among our corporeal desires as “the point in the heart.” That is, the heart is our corporeal desires, where we feel transient pleasures and a temporary existence, and the point in the heart is the desire that is rooted in the soul, where we can feel complete harmony, peace and an eternal existence.

If we feel such a desire within us, a point that raises questions about the meaning of life, why we are here, who we are, what is reality, why there is so much suffering in the world, and other fundamental existential questions, then we can place such a desire under conditions that can develop it into its state as a soul. That is what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches—how to develop the point in the heart, inflating it with various means up to a certain volume, and within such a volume, to grow a feeling of love, bestowal and positive connection to everyone and to nature itself. In such a state, we attain our soul.

Therefore, in relation to the soul’s development, we can add love, care and aim to give it whatever necessary in order for it to blossom into its eternal and whole state. However, in relation to the egoistic desires, there is no need to love any of them. Kabbalists call the ego, i.e., the desire to enjoy at the expense of others and nature, the “evil inclination,” and it is ultimately in a state of death. It is bound to be destroyed from its outset because it can feel no lasting pleasure and fulfillment according to its very nature.

Therefore, we can develop love not toward the egoistic part of us where all destruction and suffering are sourced, but in the part within every person called “human,” the point in the heart that can develop into a completely loving and bestowing intention that can bring life and light into the world.

The egoistic desires within us are opposite to nature’s altruistic and eternal form. They are thus not considered “human,” which is a word in Hebrew, “Adam,” that stems from the word for “similar” (“Domeh”), from the phrase, “Adameh le Elyon” (“similar to the most high”). In other words, a human being is one who develops their point in the heart in a manner that is similar to nature’s force of love and bestowal, and by doing so, we rise to the human level in similarity with nature where we discover the eternity and perfection of nature’s altruistic quality. In such a state, we can “love thy neighbor as thyself,” i.e., we discover the common force of love, bestowal and positive connection that is in our soul, and which connects our points in the hearts together into one soul.

No matter how evil any person is in their egoistic desires, it is possible to constantly aim at awakening the point in the heart—the part of Divinity from above—within every person, and try to direct its development above the egoistic desires in order to discover nature’s quality of love, bestowal and connection—the soul where we all connect equally in our common desire that is similar to nature’s.

Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on July 12, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Question: In the lesson, we can dissolve in the field of love and light and not ask about anything at all. On the other hand, a question gives a connection with the teacher and raises the ten, and this is also important.

How can we make the right analysis and reach a balance so that both states feel in contact with the Creator?

Answer: It is necessary to make the right decision: how much, when, and what you can ask so that there is maximum benefit for you and the rest of the lesson participants.
[317976]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/23, “To Criticize Oneself”

It seems to us that we, today’s humanity, are in some way the heirs of two civilizations: Rome and Ancient Greece. The government structure and the structure of the judicial and banking systems come from Rome. Philosophy comes from Greece and in a later period partly from Byzantium. But in principle, all this concerns the corporeal development of humanity.

However, the internal altruistic spiritual development of the world came from the Israelites, a group of people who fell from the spiritual level to the corporeal one. All world religions originate from them, and today they have given the nations of the world a certain preparation for the perception of spiritual ideas.

Thus, humanity was prepared for the fact that the story of mutual infiltration and communication would move to a new level. According to Kabbalah, this is bound to happen either by awareness or by being pushed to happiness by a stick.

Question: Do corporeal and spiritual development, in fact, occur simultaneously?

Answer: In spirituality, the beginning, the end, and all the stages of development exist from the very beginning. On the corporeal level, however, there is none of this; it all unfolds only in us. We can go through these stages either with a good feeling or with an evil feeling. We choose between good and evil.

Every time you have to be in a certain state. If you want to understand and feel what is good for you, you need to transform yourself so that the next state prepared for you is desirable. If you are ready for this, you will perceive your whole path well. If you are not ready, you will perceive it as bad. But that does not change the path.

There is a mechanism inside you that shows you a movie that you have to go through. You just order your attitude to this movie with your constant frame-by-frame development.

In other words, in spirituality, all this already exists in one single picture. And you gradually reveal this picture for yourself as you develop either under the influence of suffering or under the influence of awareness.

It is as if you begin to see clearly and you receive a new vision, a new opportunity to feel, to see, to realize, to understand, and to absorb. In this way, a new world opens up to you.
[317553]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. History According to Kabbalah” 9/29/11

Everyone who is higher than his friend, his egoism is greater. The more you grow, the stronger the ego develops, only it becomes different; it soaks up and absorbs everyone.

And then you grow by fulfilling the desires of others and trying to reveal the general system of connection; in this way it becomes yours. Your starting, root point—the basis of life, the soul—is the starting point from which you constantly act.

That is why our methodology is called Kabbalah (receiving), in the end you receive.

This methodology explains how you can truly absorb the entire universe in all its depth. Everything that Hollywood invents, everything that a person can possibly think of, all of this multiplied by billions of times more you can absorb into yourself and expand to a state where you no longer feel the limitations of earthly existence in any parameters, along any axis of time, or volume, or even the axis of sensations.

Worse and better—all these parameters change and become relative. You are qualitatively changing so much that the transformation of inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels and their various modifications cannot even be compared to what you go through.

It all starts with the realization that it is your desire that becomes something that exists separately from you and it is in it that you begin to work. You set it in motion as some kind of mechanism, change its parameters, process it, and feel it. You are above the desire!
[317640]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Master of Disguise” 9/29/11

Question: We are familiar with the history of humanity based on the external picture of its development. But what has happened with spirituality over the past 2,000 years if there is neither time nor space there?

Answer: Shattering and mixing between those who came out of Babylon, developing; they were inhabiting the globe and then mixing with each other since the Middle Ages, the discovery of new lands, and so on.

At the same time, within them, there was a group of ten tribes, which were physically completely dissolved into them. To this day, we do not know where they are or what happened to them.

The group that today is called Israel, the Jews, did not dissolve physically, but dissolved spiritually; they descended from their spiritual level of loving your neighbor as yourself, all Israel are brothers to each other, etc.

Before the ruin of the First Temple, they were in complete union with each other. But 2,000 years ago, at the point called the ruining of the Temple, they fell from a state of mutual love to mutual hatred and passed 2,000 years of history as a thin stream through all of humanity, sprinkling it with their various talents and discoveries, as if in connection with each other.

In fact, all this was intended only to create within humanity the rudiments, a predisposition, for today’s unification.
[317513]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The History of Kabbalah” 9/29/11

Question: My desire to bring all my friends to the Creator has turned into zero. I do not know how to start all over again. How should I proceed?

Answer: You need to start by praying together to the Creator, asking Him to help you to be closer to each other, to feel yourself in a single united heart, and from this heart to turn to Him.

Question: We know that thought has tremendous force. If you constantly imagine that all the hearts in the ten are connected into one, then in the end it will be so; they will connect. How can we use thought for the ten’s advancement?

Answer: Think about it all the time.
[317981]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/23, “To Criticize Oneself”

Question: In the material world, we see an external picture of the history of the development of egoism. What is happening behind this external layer?

Answer: Behind the external layer of the history of the development of egoism there is a manifestation of light in a not-yet-formed pot (a common spiritual Kli , vessel), and this causes us suffering. In other words, the light that should already fill the pot, let us say, by one millimeter or two centimeters, is revealed, but the pot is not ready. Then the light is perceived as darkness.

The deficiency of this pot is revealed to us, the deficiency of our connection with each other. Therefore, it is felt as a global, integral crisis.

As soon as we begin to unite, instead of a negative crisis, we will feel positive fulfillment. Everything you desire, every one of your wishes, all of them together, will be completely satisfied, and not only on the earthly level.

You will begin to feel these desires in connection with others as desires on an entirely different level, as the unity of one global, integral system in which you will feel your eternal perfect state. It cannot be conveyed in words. It is a different dimension.
[317479]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The History of Kabbalah” 9/29/11

Our world is the desire to be filled, to enjoy. Essentially, this is its entire substance, its essence.

Therefore, what we see around us: the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and humans, wherever we cast our gaze, before us appears nothing but matter, the property of which is to absorb, take in fulfillment, and become saturated.

The desire to enjoy is all that exists in our world. From molecules and atoms to gigantic stars and nebulae, everything represents only this desire.

Everything that fills our matter that makes it move and react represents not the desire to enjoy, but the enjoyment itself, which, by filling the matter, triggers its reactions, movements, and so on.

Thus, the desire that absorbs enjoyment is the only thing we have in the universe, which we have been continuously exploring and revealing for many, many years now.
[317228]
From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 8/27/23

Baal HaSulam calls the pleasure from connection with the Creator, which is included in desire, TANTA (Taamim, Nekudot, Tagin, and Otiot). These are the four types of light, manifested in the four stages of the Kli (vessel). The light gradually descends through these four stages and fills the Kli to the point where it is completely absorbed into the Kli.

There are such examples in our world. For example, when I start to eat something, I first feel pleasure from eating. This is called Taamim (taste). Then the pleasure begins to slowly disappear, but the tastes remain. Memories of tastes are called Tagin. And the memories of how these pleasures entered are called Otiot.

In the material world, if we eat something, this process arises within us naturally. The same thing happens in the spiritual world; when the light enters me and fills my Kli, it leaves its impressions in it— TANTA.
[317505]
From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 8/27/23

Question: The Creator constantly influences us either with pleasures or with some kind of deficiency because my desire perceives everything as bitterness or sweetness. Why did He choose this way of influencing a person—through sweetness and bitterness?

Answer: Because these two tastes are opposite and clearly define where we are and what we want. This is the language of the Creator who communicates with us through pleasure and suffering.

Nature develops us in such a way so that we fully appreciate the upper light, feel the need to come closer to it, appreciate all its tastes, all its metamorphoses, and fill ourselves with it.

Today, in our world, we automatically feel only suffering and pleasure. We do not feel the one who awakens all this in us. In the end, we must come to the revelation of the Giver.
[317577]
From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 8/27/23

In The Book of Zohar it is written that a donkey driver is a help to souls sent to them from the upper most level to raise them from degree to degree. This is called “Ibur” (impregnation, conception). Ibur is an impregnation of the soul of a righteous.

If we want to follow the path of the Creator, then perhaps we resist at first, and then we agree a little and invest all our strength and capabilities to move forward. In the end, we fall under the influence of the Creator, who educates us by hitting us with a stick, pricking with a “stimulus,” a sharp stick, so that we move forward.

This is how we go forward until we begin to discern that we are dealing with a great upper force, which educates us in this way and leads us to the desired goal.
[317852]
From KabTV’s “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” 9/3/23

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do you think life on Earth would be different in the next 500 million years?“

In 500 million years, there will be nothing on Earth because our planet and our universe will be nonexistent.

This is because we perceive the world through uncorrected senses, i.e., through senses that perceive in a manner of wanting solely to enjoy egoistically, at the expense of others and nature. The moment we correct our senses so that we perceive in an opposite way—by wanting to bestow delight upon others and nature—we then rise above our world and feel a different spiritual reality.

Today, discussing such a spiritual reality above our current egoistic senses seems fantasy-like. However, when we attain such a reality, we will feel how our egoistic perception is in fact the unrealistic fantasy, and that true reality is through a mode of bestowal upon others and nature.

The correction of our senses takes place during a period that Kabbalists call “6,000 years,” starting from Adam HaRishon (Heb. The First Man), and it translates to us having just over 220 years to go in this current level of reality.

In our world, Adam HaRishon was the first man who corrected his senses from egoistic to altruistic, or in other words, from complete opposition to nature’s laws to entering into equivalence and balance with them. Before Adam HaRishon, there had been people living for several years. However, just over 5,780 years ago, a man called “Adam” discovered the spiritual reality, the true form of the universe, for the very first time. By doing so, he also discovered the program by which humanity develops and how it will appear at the end of its development. He wrote his findings in a book called “Raziel ha Malach” (“The Angel Raziel”), and he is considered the first Kabbalist.

All people are destined to undergo the transition from egoism to altruism and to discover the spiritual reality similar to what Adam HaRishon went through. When we do so, we will feel a different spiritual reality, and the corporeal reality will then become swallowed within the spiritual one—we will simply cease to feel it. We will then only sense phenomena that unfold at a higher level of existence, above our world.

The lower reality in our egoistic senses then disappears because our five bodily senses will seemingly evaporate and not be felt. We currently accept our world as it appears to us because we are made in a way where we hear, see, taste and breathe, i.e., we use senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. They provide us with a sensation of living in a certain reality. If we had different senses, then we would sense a different reality.

The evaporation and disappearance of this world does not happen in an instant, but gradually. It is because, as we start to positively connect and spiritually rise in our sensation of reality, we lose our egoistic mode of sensing reality. We can somewhat compare it to how we do not feel the inanimate and vegetative levels of nature in our own body. Take, for instance, our hair and nails, which are the vegetative level on our bodies. Do we feel them growing? We do not. They either grow, or they do not grow, and we can cut them and they continue growing. They cause us no disturbance.

It is similar to when we rise to the human level of existence, which is characterized by our developing an intention to bestow above our inborn egoistic desire to receive. We will then not feel the animate level—our desire to receive—in comparison to the new human level that we develop and identify with. When we all develop into the human level of existence, we will then cease to feel the animate level. We will stop perceiving reality as solid the way we currently do. Rather, we will increasingly perceive it as forces and qualities.

Based on “Ask the Kabbalist” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on June 19, 2008. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Question: Is the state before crossing the Machsom when there is a lump in your throat, tears flow, and you scream?

Answer: It just seems to you that you are screaming from the depths of your soul, that you are being torn to pieces. All this is child’s play because it does not come from real attainment, which is complemented by the correct state.

People are, of course, torn apart. I remember myself, and I know these states. Everything is completely wrong. It must be balanced between the heart and the mind and come at the same time from both understanding and suffering. But not the kind of suffering that arises in you: “Give me!” and so on.

In this case, unnatural suffering arises from the inability to become a bestower: “I want to be in the quality of bestowal! I want to, but I cannot do it. I do not have this quality!”

This state is similar to childbirth: “It must be born in me!” This is the pressure you feel from within. Moreover, this is the pressure on the quality of bestowal. It is not a demand: “Give me!” It is the demand: “Give me an opportunity.”

Question: I just saw a man who was crying and saying that he needed the light of correction. How plausible is this?

Answer: Children cry too, so what? I remember I cried too. And my teacher Rabash just laughed in my face as if he had in his hands what I wanted, but would not give it to me. He said: “These are not real tears. This is not a real scream.” And, of course, he was right.

Time is what we need. But now time is shortening. By connecting with the rest of the network, you put yourself in a state where you must receive help from above since you are a transition point, a node, in this system. Therefore, you can radically shorten the entire path of your revelation of this system.

But today it is so close to everyone that you will see it very quickly.
[317776]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Last Scream before Death” 10/24/11

Kabbalah Media

Kabbalah Media

Personal Area
Sign in to like, save and subscribe to videos

Publications
Articles on current events, culture, popular science, relationships and more, presented from the unique perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah
The content is based on talks given by Dr. Michael Laitman and is written and edited by his students.

Kabbalah Media

Kabbalah Media

Personal AreaSign in to like, save and subscribe to videos

PublicationsArticles on current events, culture, popular science, relationships and more, presented from the unique perspective of the wisdom of KabbalahThe content is based on talks given by Dr. Michael Laitman and is written and edited by his students.

Personal Area
Sign in to like, save and subscribe to videos

Publications
Articles on current events, culture, popular science, relationships and more, presented from the unique perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah
The content is based on talks given by Dr. Michael Laitman and is written and edited by his students.