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Bold: Questions/Comments
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Regular: Commentaries of Michael Laitman, PhD
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lowercase italics: emphasized words
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Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Question: These days, I’m starting my first lesson as a teacher in an elementary school. One of the things I’m worried about is how will I be able to discover what is special in every student? How do I implement the principle of “educate a child according to his way”?
Michael Laitman: This is truly a problem in modern education and in the state of the schools today, yet, we have to check what really suits the children’s characteristics. Sometimes, we just put them in classes according to topics, but this is usually when they’ve grown up a little. In elementary school, we can also see children who have their own inner direction. Later we can see it, but they clarify it by themselves and we need to help them clarify.
I think that an authorized teacher should be able to say about every student how he relates to “reality,” to life, and what he is more attracted to, what his inner structure is. I would divide them into groups: those who are more sensitive, those who are more intellectual; those who are more attracted to nature, or those who are more attracted to technology, etc. Accordingly, I would relate to the children within each group, in a way that can best get through to them and explain to them even the simplest things.
Moderator: What advice can you give her that would enable her as a teacher to discern that one student is this way, and the other one is that way?
M. Laitman: She should explain concepts in a multifaceted way and give examples from different realms. I remember in school that it was sometimes very hard for me to understand a teacher, but when I would come home and ask my mother about something, she would explain to me in a different way and then I would understand. She would use examples and I would say, “no” until she would use an example that I would understand according to my learning style.
My learning style was more technical and I needed things explained in ways that related to nature’s system, and that were very close and tangible, pertaining to laws and to something that you can see. There were some students that were more comfortable with explanations dealing with plants or animals, but I was very far from these explanations. I didn’t like these kinds of examples and I didn’t understand anything from them.
Moderator: Can you give her some tip for a teacher, something that has to do with spirituality? How to develop the sensitivity to perceive the uniqueness of every student? What inner preparation she should have?
M. Laitman: For that you already need an explanation about the world we are in.
Moderator: No, not with relation to the students, but rather with relation to her as a teacher. I hope she listens to our show now and she asks a question. Can you give some direction to her personally?
M. Laitman: If, while teaching, she will think that in fact she is now in a process of correcting the souls, and not think about her students as merely small children, but instead that there is a soul in each of them and that soul is just clothed in that young body and that soul is approaching the big eternal correction; if she will refer to the children this way, she will begin to discover the unique part in each of them, and then she will not be mistaken. She will also start fulfilling them beyond words, in a more inner fulfillment. But this requires special preparation.
Question: On one of the shows you were asked when God was born and you said, “God was born when man was born because there is no Creator without a creature. But in Genesis it says that there was nothing, only darkness and the spirit of God hovered on the face of earth.” In other words, there were no people there. How do you explain that?
M. Laitman: This is exactly what the Book of Genesis talks about. In the beginning, the Creator created Heaven and Earth. Who feels it, who attains it, and who discovers it? Man, and he writes about it. Therefore, each one of us, out of his own development, needs to discover everything from the beginning. When man attains the Godliness of creation, what does he then discover in Genesis? He discovers that the Upper Force exists and created both Heaven and Earth, which is the desire to receive and the desire to bestow.
Moderator: I am confused now, so go slow. “The Creator created Heaven and Earth and a spirit of God hovers on the face of Earth.”
M. Laitman: Who is it that writes about it?
Moderator: The Torah?
M. Laitman: No, it’s man. Do you think that God wrote it and gave it to you from the printing house in Heaven?
Moses was a man, right? He discovered all of this story of creation. How did he discover it? Moses discovered it from within himself. He discovered the fundamentals of creation that develop this way. But man is who discovered it. Without man, there’s no one to feel creation and there is no creation.
Moderator: But the world was created before Moses discovered what he discovered.
M. Laitman: I’m sorry, but who told you that it existed?
Moderator: There was such a person called Moses, before he discovered what he discovered.
M. Laitman: Yes, and then, he started discovering.
Moderator: Yes, he started discovering what you’re calling the fundamentals of creation. But Heaven and Earth existed before he wrote about them, so how were they created?
M. Laitman: Who says this? Moses himself, or others that exist? Let’s say that if we don’t exist, does this world exist? Who says that it exists? We identify everything through our five senses. I exist; I identify you and the studio here, and everything beyond this room, outside of it. “I” identify it. Without me, with all my senses that perceive reality, does reality exist?
It is a very difficult question. Everyone says, “No, reality itself does not exist.” Even according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, everything depends on the perceiver, the one who attains and feels.
Moderator: And how does this relate with “God created Heaven and Earth”?
M. Laitman: Because this is something a person discovers when reaching spirituality. That Moses, you, every one of us, it doesn’t matter who, has to go through the book of Torah from beginning to end and discover what’s written there within himself, about himself and everything that the Book says. This is what Moses discovered. The Upper reality that we open and discover is called Bereshit (Genesis) and then he discovered that the Creator created Heaven and Earth. It means, that there is an Upper Force that designed two opposite forces called Heaven and Earth—a force of bestowal and a force of reception—and everything that exists is between these forces, between Heaven and Earth. That is what a person discovers when he enters spirituality.
You’re right that Moses existed before he wrote the Torah, before he discovered that reality. He wrote the Torah from the revelation of Godliness to him on Mount Sinai and until he died on MountNavo, before the people of Israel entered the land of Israel. He wrote the Torahduring these forty years. And what did he write? He wrote all of the Torah, everything there is between Heaven and Earth. This is exactly the meaning of ‘forty,’ which is the letter Mem, the quality of Bina (intelligence), the quality of bestowal. He wrote about what’s between Heaven and Earth, and it is that space between them that the Torahtalks about: what is there between the force of bestowal called God, and the force of reception called Earth.
Therefore everything is according to man and without man we can’t say who and what, if anything exists. Moreover, what we discover from history—dinosaurs and their bones, people who lived two or three thousands years ago—did they exist? They exist because we discover that they existed. I understand that what I’m saying is very strange, but I’m speaking from science and from the wisdom of Kabbalah’s perspective.
The simple common person in this world, who is so accustomed to perceiving this world through the five senses, it is obvious to him that this is how it is. But if we exit these five senses, then we see beyond the five senses and we can live outside of them. We can live with the Upper World along with our lower world, and we can also live only in the Upper World when we pass away from this world, and then you see that reality is completely different.
Moderator: Are there any practical implications from this to life?
M. Laitman: Of course there are, because a person could exit his limited perception of his life where he feels only this world. If he could see that this world is just some kind of depiction that exists before him, as Baal HaSulam explains in the Preface to the Book of Zohar that there is some kind of a screen on the back of our mind and we feel some picture there, but it seems to us that the picture exists outside of us. But, outside of us there is nothing. Everything that we see and that we feel is in the back of our mind.
Moderator: You said that a person can exit. How can he exit?
M. Laitman: He can start changing his qualities and see different pictures of reality to such an extent that he sees like in a cinema, in that screen, he sees the Upper Force. And then man, according to the change in his qualities that constantly improve and reach the revelation of Godliness, becomes in his attributes as God.
He sees that picture of “the Creator created Heaven and Earth” from the beginning to the end, from Bereshit to Israel. That’s the whole Torah , that’s the first word of it and the last word of it. He sees the whole Torah as a film projected onto that screen on the back of his mind, and this is what Moses saw and wrote about.
Moderator: I hope soon we will get to it.
M. Laitman: It’s not simple. It takes weeks, months, or even years until a person gets used to this perception of reality that takes place this way. But it’s worthwhile for us nevertheless, to hear about it and understand it, even though it's very weird. It’s also fascinating.
We are accustomed to anything in this world that seemingly simply exists. But in our generation, we already feel things differently. Also, according to quantum physics, and all kinds of scientific and other information, we feel that reality can be a little different than what we think; it can be a bit of a different dimension.
Question: If the physical body has no connection with spirituality, then why did our body evolve to its present state, and only then, did the point in the heart develop in it? Why didn’t it develop in monkeys or in any other animal that could develop an intellect? Also, does this have anything to do with the fact that many of our body’s organs are in pairs?
M. Laitman: I think these are two different questions. First of all, we, i.e. our souls, descend from the world of Ein Sof through five worlds. The souls descend until we come to this world. In this world, matter starts developing from the simplest particles until it accumulates into more and more complex objects, until this complexity reaches cells of vegetative and of animate, and these are already very advanced results of matter. All of that stems not from what Darwin described as evolution, but according to the Reshimot (reminiscence), information that exists in matter and accordingly, matter develops from state to state, from still to vegetative, to animate, etc.
Moderator: Is this some rooted information built in or hardwired?
M. Laitman: It is hardwired in different types of matter. Therefore, scientists think that Darwin is right, because this is how we see development evolving from one thing to the other, and this is true. This is what the Ari writes as well, in the book Tree of Life. However, the difference in development between the Ari and Darwin is that the Ari says that this development is predetermined according to the plan that is rooted in these informative particles, is that inner information.
That development reaches the level of animate called ‘monkey,’ and then in the monkey there starts more inner development called ‘man.’ Again, it’s not because the monkey gives birth to a man, but the monkey begets a man because there is an informative development there, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah describes. There are monkeys that remain monkeys, and there are monkeys from which a man emerged, but not because of the monkey’s development, but because there is an information stream, that from that monkey develops a man.
Moderator: Why in that monkey or in anyone else along the way, didn’t the point in the heart, the desire not emerge before, and get into that “film” in the back of our mind you talked about?
M. Laitman: After the special type of monkey called ‘man’—in that man who is walking on two legs—there starts a special development, which is already intellectual, emotional and social. And at a certain moment, after thousands and thousands of years, a revelation of special, spiritual information that did not occur before at all within man is uncovered. That spiritual information is called the point in the heart, and it does not belong to corporeal development at all; it is called a part of God from Above.
That point that emerges comes from the spiritual nature, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the corporeal nature. Everyone is developed from monkey to man nicely, and they can develop onwards, but the fact that at some moment in the history of a man, the point in the heart starts to awaken, this then is a part of another world, and another plane and level. And then man starts having two forces, a spiritual force and a corporeal force, and then he starts developing according to these two urges. And these two urges are completely separate: one attracts him upwards, and the other one downwards. And thus he develops.
The first one who felt this and actualized it was named Adam, 5768 years ago.
Moderator: Now for the next part of the question, “Is this connected to the fact that many of the organs of our body come in pairs?”
M. Laitman: Yes, it is because our body matches the two lines that we have in our soul, and we have to build the middle line from these two lines. The middle line is called Hesed (mercy) and Din (judgment), reception and bestowal or desire and bestowal. We have to use these two lines and build the right balanced combination between them; this is the work of man.
Hence, this is as a result of the spiritual structure where our soul is divided into two parts. In our body we have two kidneys, two hands, two legs, etc, and even in our internal organs there is also a division. For instance, the heart is divided, as well as our brain and our face. There are also specific inner organs that are seemingly not divided, but they belong to some part. There is also division in them, but one overcomes the other.
Moderator: You are saying that we have these pairs, because it’s parallel to the two forces of the soul?
M. Laitman: Yes, and the beauty of man, the way we see it, is according to how much he is balanced on both sides of the body. Then we say a person is the most beautiful, if his two parts of the face are in complete harmony, symmetry. And when the two sides are not symmetrical, we may perceive him as ugly.
Moderator: And that is parallel to the fact that we have to balance the two lines of the soul?
M. Laitman: Yes, to the middle line. When a person balances the two lines a new quality is born. That quality is called Adam (man), because these two lines or qualities— Din and Rahamim (mercy and judgment) —are called reception and giving; you get them from Above.
But combining them correctly is something I need to do in my own work, my own labor. And by combining them correctly, I resemble the Creator. The Creator is One, and He generates out of Him these two forces, and these two forces connect within me. And if I connect them correctly, then from below, I am also as One, and then I resemble the Creator.
Moderator: And then what will be the form that I have? Not pairs of organs?
M. Laitman: No, our body will stay the way it is. Our body doesn’t go through any corrections. Our body has nothing to do with spirituality. But in the soul, of course, you’ll have three lines until you will have one line, like the Creator, where we incorporate into Him, and we come to Dvekut (adhesion), which is the end of our development.
Question: Since I have been studying on the Kabbalah campus and listening to your morning show and also reading your books, something beautiful has happened to me. I feel that there is a balance between my mind and heart, and I feel good about it. And with this new sensation I feel very good. Is it okay that there is a balance between the mind and the heart?
M. Laitman: Balance between mind and heart is both good and not good. Why? If a person feels deficiencies and desires in his heart, and that he lacks something in his heart, then the mind develops in order to reconcile the deficiencies. How can I complete what I need? And then I become more active, more burning, and I seek things. This develops man until he fulfills what his heart wants. In the next moment the heart is empty, because we learned that the fulfillment that enters, neutralizes that desire. Then we lack something again, and this is how we constantly develop. As we continue developing, we come to a state where we are still empty. Then I need the development of my mind again in order for my mind to help me fulfill my heart, and this is how it works.
So, if this is called balance—meaning that I constantly yearn for balance—it is good. But if I am in rest, ‘thank God I am fulfilled, my heart is filled, my mind is filled and I don’t need anything else,’ then I am dead and then I am not alive. Alive means that I am growing and developing constantly. Man cannot be like an animal, meaning that his body and his head are equal; his head always has to be above.
So this state takes a period of time. A person will go through it and then he’ll start sensing that he lacks a spiritual sensation. Not that everything is fine, somehow falling in place in a way that she describes spirituality and imagines it, and this fulfills him. But new inner Reshimot (reminiscence), desires will emerge in a person from a higher level and then he will feel a true desire for recognition of Godliness.
Question: Is the collision of Adam ha Rishon the same Big Bang where a Universe was created?
M. Laitman: No, the breakage of the souls happened in the world of Atzilut. A very, very high exalted place; very far, according to the qualities of bestowal, Godliness, love, eternity, something that isn’t possible for us to describe, very far in that from our lowly and disgusting world.
What happened is that the one soul called Adam was broken.It was broken in order to allow us to regroup it, like Lego blocks, and when we put together these Lego blocks into the same formation as in Adam ha Rishon, we get to know why the Creator created it this way. By this, we learn His craft and we become like Him.
The Big Bang is something else. From spirituality, when all the souls descended through the worlds of Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya, to the level of this world, then the Upper Light stopped. All the souls came down to the lowest state possible, and then what was left in those souls was a little spark of Light that burst through, even lower than the level of the broken souls, and created matter in this world. Then the matter in this world started developing until we came to a state where we developed from zero. We don’t keep descending from the world of Infinity through all the worlds down to this world, and continue descending. No. In that Big Bang, our world started developing. Meaning, that Big Bang is the last point, the lowest point of matter from which matter starts developing towards spirituality again.
Question: A question from a six year old, “Why do people die”?
M. Laitman: Because they finish the amount of corrections they have to do in this life, when the soul is dressed in this body. So, the soul goes through a short period of correction and then it detaches from the body, dresses in another body with new qualities, with new incidents in life, in order to go through the continuation of the process of correction. And this is how we correct the soul from one reincarnation to the other: the body changes, but the soul is permanent.
“Us” meaning the soul; the body is just like throwing my shirt into the laundry and I don’t really feel that it’s me because it’s a clothing. In this same way, the body is clothing over the soul. My soul is what I constantly have. The souls never die; there is nothing like that. The body, on the other hand, is like an animal. Just like we slaughter a chicken and eat it, same thing with our body.
Question: What is the difference between pleasure of bestowal and pleasure of reception? What does it matter if in the end of the day we do it in order to get pleasure?
M. Laitman: No, the difference is that pleasure of reception disappears and pleasure of bestowal is eternal. Pleasure of reception cannot be more than momentary and fleeting; pleasure of bestowal can be infinite, eternal. Pleasure of bestowal makes me resemble Godliness. And then I understand and attain wholeness, perfection, I feel myself eternally.
All of a sudden, my senses in my head open up and I feel things that I didn’t feel before. Either I receive through the five senses, or I start bestowing through my point in the heart, which is the soul that develops in its own five senses called five Sefirot: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut, which is something that is completely different from the five senses of my body. It is the vessel of perception, vessel of feeling, the vessel of life that is completely different than what I had before.
So, the life in five senses—the corporal smell, hearing, touch, taste and sight—and living through the five senses of the soul, the senses of bestowal, is something completely different. I feel an entirely different dimension of life. Through my five senses here, I perceive through my five physical gates, corporeal waves, frequencies of sound, of taste, of touch that sting the end of my nerves. This is something small, fleeting and material. When I start to work in bestowal, I move to the Upper Light.
Light means fulfillment of the soul. That fulfillment stays in the soul always and I just keep developing and growing and expanding it until I reach the highest level called the Creator, as it says, “the children of Israel shall return to the level of the Creator.” This is what we should reach.
Moderator: The second part of the question is why does the action matter if we’re doing it for pleasure anyway? What is the difference if I am enjoying reception or bestowal? If I am acting in order to enjoy, it’s the same thing.
M. Laitman: We enjoy reception only when we feel that something enters us, but it’s just for a moment, and then it quenches. Whereas in bestowal, the pleasure emerges from me, and I connect to those to whom I bestow upon. I feel their desires. To the extent that I love them, it is the extent to which I fulfill them, and it is the extent to which I enjoy. I do it in order to enjoy. The goal of creation is to enjoy.
Moderator: So, what is the difference? One gives, one receives—both of them enjoy?
M. Laitman: Yes, but in reception you can’t enjoy; you can’t enjoy by reception. The goal of creation is to benefit the creatures and that the creatures will enjoy. But the problem is that in reception you don’t enjoy. You see according to how much the world deteriorates—the depression, drugs, terrorism and so on, because they don’t enjoy. You have many opportunities for pleasure in this world, but you don’t enjoy anything and you stay empty and you are not satisfied. In bestowal you fulfill yourself eternally. The Light of infinity moves and flows through you on to others.
Moderator: But I didn’t see that out of the people who give to charities and hand out money and food that they enjoy; they are also depressed. And I don’t see that they are really happy eternally but they also give.
M. Laitman: It’s not giving, it’s not bestowal. Their bestowal doesn’t come from connection to others by love. This is what nature forces them to do, these actions of giving.
Moderator: Let’s say you have a birthday and I give you a gift. I see that you enjoy it and I enjoy it too. Yes, I am talking about me; I gave you a gift because I saw that you would like a wireless mouse. You look at it and you are happy, so I am happy too and I feel good. Doesn’t this mean that I bestowed?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Moderator: But this good feeling also quenches after a while. It’s like if you give me a gift, it will bore me as well, after a while.
M. Laitman: Yes, but there is no limitation here. Please, start giving and loving everyone. Then you’ll be able to enjoy it all the time.
Moderator: But what is the motivation? Is the motivation the same? If I do it not because I want you to have something, but because I want to feel good, then it’s the same motivation.
M. Laitman: No, because if I have an opportunity to love everyone and this love is my deficiency, that I want to fulfill those I love, then I have an opportunity to love infinitely.
Moderator: But I don’t want to love them, I want to feel good. You’re saying that the present method is going bankrupt and I agree. In one of your last lessons you said that a person opens up the refrigerator and it is full of everything, he opens the closet and it is full, he looks in the parking lot at his new car—everything is full, but his heart is empty. So what I am saying is, “Fine, let’s find a different way, a different technology to feel good.”
You are saying, “Buy everyone a gift and you’ll feel good.” First of all, I don’t have gifts for everyone, but even if I had, now you are saying I need to love them as well. I don’t want to love them.
M. Laitman: I am telling you that the wisdom of Kabbalah brings a person a method for how to reach infinite pleasure, egoistically. We are speaking from an egoistic perspective, regarding how to reach infinite pleasure. This is something I learn from simple examples, if I love someone or look at a mother who loves her children…For us it won’t be natural since we only lack love towards others. The moment I’ll have love towards others, then what I’ll give others will fulfill me.
You’re saying you don’t have infinite gifts to give. If you’re starting to be interested in how to love others, even in order to enjoy it yourself, the wisdom of Kabbalah explains to you how to reach the infinite Provider. By this, you connect to the Creator, the Source of the Light. And through you, you will be able to pass the Light, the fulfillment to all people. They will be fulfilled through you and by that, you completely resemble the Creator.
He stands there wanting to fulfill others, and you come and absorb the desires of the others. You are taking the fulfillment from Him and through you, you pass His fulfillment on to others. You are just a pipe, but you pass the Light on to them and this is how you enjoy, and you enjoy double here. You enjoy both in taking infinite desires from all the souls because they become yours and you fulfill them, and thus, you become fulfilled with infinite pleasure. In addition to this, you become fulfilled by being equal to the Creator. You resemble the Creator and His status, and so, you have a double profit here. This is what it means when it says that “the righteous earns double.”
Moderator: There is an inversion in the middle here. You said even if you do it egoistically, you want to enjoy and you see that you can’t enjoy by absorbing, so you are giving in order to enjoy. Even egoistically it works, so isn’t there some inversion in the middle as if a mechanism has been changed in me?
M. Laitman: This inversion happens naturally, because you engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah and you want to reach forms that are similar to bestowal, to Godliness. Then this inversion is done on its own. This is called the Light that Reforms. It happens this way to a person, because what he deals with and what he studies, holds a certain force that does that revolution within you, and then you turn into a man of God; it works.
I can’t tell you that it’s easy, but a person who feels empty eventually has no other method to fulfill himself. Therefore, in the end of days, as it says, “And they shall all know Me from the least of them unto the greatest of them” because everyone will feel empty and they will feel better off dead. This is why we disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah and advertise it before man will feel this level of depression and despair. We want people to know the method beforehand and to use it.
Question: You are saying in many of your lectures that because we are not in spirituality we only take advantage of a small percentage of our brain, two percent, let’s say. If we take a brain of a Kabbalist and we go to the lab of a scientist, will we find greater activity in the Kabbalist’s mind?
M. Laitman: There is an external biological brain and there is a brain that develops internally next to the soul, like with our desires. We have earthly desires and we have desires that belong to the soul. One who goes with faith above reason: Faith above reason displays in one who acquires greater and greater qualities of bestowal, and through his relation to others, he becomes included with the desires of the others, and is incorporated with them. He wants to provide fulfillment for the others, and wants to resemble the Creator; he studies Kabbalah in order to develop the soul.
Then his brain both corporeally and spiritually develops in a way that he simply is able to perceive, include, and absorb the entire mind, and everything that this world has to offer, including all the worlds.
Moderator: Do you mean that you can see this with analysis and scientific tools?
M. Laitman: No, of course not. We still don’t understand how the brain works and what’s going on with it. Everything they check with tools and various methods show that the mind is still completely abstruse for us, the brain. But this is how it is. A person, who goes above his beastly mind, becomes wiser in both his human mind and later in his spiritual mind.
We obviously can see it. Look how many people in history were great in two or more disciplines—science and politics and even in drawing, painting, or music—this desire to excel in these ways has declined from generation to generation.
Then the desires of man turn smaller and then he kind of buries himself in them. Where are all those great musicians, painters, artists, intellectuals and philosophers? There aren’t many any longer because it’s been done already. “The face of the generation is the face of the dogs.”
Moderator: So, what you want to say is that only the people who develop themselves spiritually, grow with this intensity of their minds?
M. Laitman: Yes, of course and we, to begin with, are having ninety eight percent of our minds free for spiritual work.
Question: I have been studying Kabbalah for two months and I have heard your lectures talking about the spiritual world, the corrected world. What is the corrected world? How will society be managed? What will the interrelations between people be like? What will happen to countries, to wars, to hatred? Will hatred and evil disappear? It sounds very utopian.
M. Laitman: I agree with you; it does sound utopian and unrealistic. However, many things even corporeally once looked utopian to us. If you would show someone a mobile phone fifty years ago or a television, or thirty years ago a computer, they would think you are a bit crazy. I remember the computer that was the size of this room. This room is for instance, one hundred meters. So a computer was one hundred square meters, and I remember as a student, we used to fill that computer with information from punched cards, special perforated punch cards, and then it performed its operations and this is the way we used to work with the computer.
Moderator: Yes, but today I have a laptop instead of a computer the size of the room, so the principle didn’t change. It is the same thing. They just took the computer and condensed it, and came up with a more advanced and smaller version, a laptop. When you are talking about a corrected society, you are saying that everything works oppositely.
M. Laitman: I am telling you that even concerning the corporeal things, we can’t imagine what we will have in fifty years from now. So, you want to be able to describe spiritual things that will develop from today to tomorrow—we just don’t know. In five years from now, the world will be completely up side down. You don’t believe me now, but we’ll live and see.
First of all, people will discover that they can’t live in the same way they live today. For instance, we will say, “stop, to our sufferings in this world.” At home, people will hate each other; at work, everywhere, you will discover hatred, pressure and stress from everyone. No one is assured of anything; everyone is afraid, everyone is frustrated. No one is happy and no one is satisfied. A person has no way to travel anywhere because of the lack of fuel and energy, and we are having feuds between governments and countries. Everyone with their own egos cannot restrain this. It just bursts, erupts and destroys man, and man is lost in it and can’t do anything about it. All of these things and also children and their parents with what happens in families, it’s all that will just be gone. Fifty years ago you wouldn’t even think about these things.
Moderator: Is this the world in five years from now?
M. Laitman: Most people will not even accept drugs. I will feel so bad that I won’t even be able to use drugs to have a good moment, to be calm. In short, it will be a black and dark world.
Moderator: But you talked about the corrected world. How did we get to a black and dark world?
M. Laitman: When we are there, man will start listening and hearing differently from what he hears now. He will start listening to the fact that these things that we have been through and that have happened were predetermined. Why? Because we need to understand that we have to move to a different dimension of life, not the life of reception, but instead, the life of bestowal. And that has no special revolution besides a psychological one where we have to move, we have to shift to a different calculation.
And man will feel so bad in his present state that he will be willing to detach from what he has now, and move on to a different calculation. Because in that, at least I won’t feel myself, I won’t feel the evil, the deficit and emptiness. If I will be able to somewhat bestow upon others and feel good about it, then I am willing to do it. Just give me the opportunity, give me the possibility to do that. And then I will already be calm, I will be somewhat disconnected from the previous evil state.
People will feel that bestowal brings them wholeness and then they will start moving to it, especially because they will also hear an explanation that this was predetermined, preplanned. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have heard, and now they will hear. So, there’s a special force in nature that is standing by to help them and it is called the Creator. The Creator created them and leads them constantly to that point of crisis.
And now, He is willing to go with them and move forward, just like in the exodus from Egypt, with the column of clouds. He is willing to guide them, to get them out of this darkness to what is called the GoodLand. Then they will listen and it won’t be a problem. We are very close, at least to this first phase of the plagues or blows of Egypt, where all people will feel that this world is just terrible, but there is nowhere to run away; we can’t escape from Earth.
Moderator: Does it take a lot of time to move from all the beatings to the good?
M. Laitman: It depends on man; it depends on the dissemination of Kabbalah. Don’t wait for anything to happen from Above, except for blows. Take the example of the story of the exodus from Egypt. Until we absorb these blows or recognize them intellectually by the wisdom of Kabbalah, and recognize them as blows, so as to escape, then we won’t get out of it.
Moderator: Okay, tell me something optimistic. You drew a picture of a dark world in five years from now, and who knows when good will return. Is that the summary?
M. Laitman: The good can happen at the same moment that you decide, “I’ve had enough of being in the egoistic vessels of reception. They bring me death, and I have to change them to new vessels.” If you do that, then you’re facing the crossing of the Red Sea. And then you move from one world to another, from the world of reception to the world of bestowal, where you are unlimited and where you are completely eternal and whole.
Question: You’re saying that there is nothing outside of me. If a person dies and appears in a new incarnation, does he come to the same reality, to the same world? That is, how could it be that a person who dies and appears in a new incarnation comes back to the same reality?
M. Laitman: It's because he perceives reality through the thinnest, lowest, tiniest layer of the soul called the body. What we feel as our body, as everything that surrounds us, is a sensation that is through the soul. However it’s the lowest, smallest level of the soul that doesn’t change. It is that coarse material that gives us a sensation of a body. That layer departs and therefore, I feel this as a new clothing every time. I reincarnate and feel the reincarnation, and then I die again—his part simply departs.
Do you know what the Light that departs from the Partzuf is? The expansion of the Light within the soul is called life. And the departure of the Light from the soul is called death in the spiritual sense and also with us.
What is corporeality? Corporeality is the last level of spirituality, where the same laws of spirituality exist. Only these laws seem to us as if they work in reception instead of in bestowal. If in spirituality the expansion of the Light in the soul is called life, the departure of the Light from the soul is called death.
The same thing happens with us. We don’t exist in our bodies, it just seems to us that the body. We exist within our desires, and our desires are just like the desires of the soul. When the Light expands in our desires, it means that the body lives and develops. And when the Light departs from that lowest level of the soul called body that means that the body departs, that the body dies.
Let’s say until the age of forty a person develops and from the age of forty the Light starts leaving the vessel. So, we see that we are alive, that we have a body and that it lives, but in fact, this isn’t life and it’s not a body. We already talked about perception of reality in the first part of the show and we said that reality only appears to us this way; it all appears on our screen. We have this life, our body, everything that happens to us and everything we feel is here, on the back of our minds.
Therefore here, we feel development of the expansion of the Light called life in our desires, and the departure of the Light from our desires called death.
Moderator: Everything is in that projector, on a screen of our mind?
M. Laitman: Of course, everything is in our desires. Besides desire that the Creator created there is nothing, nothing besides desire. Therefore, our whole life in our world is also life of the desire.
Moderator: But let’s say that we understand what you are saying that all of life is just some picture projected to us on the back of our minds. Let’s say we can live with this. Let’s zoom in to that moment when a person dies, like the question describes. When he incarnates, then what happens in the middle? Does that projection of our show, of our life, stop?
M. Laitman: It stops because the will to receive gradually quenches, and therefore the Light gradually exits. The will to receive cannot sustain the Light in it. And that means that a person is about to die. Later, the will to receive and the Light meet again and they develop and that means that a new body is born. Then you again have the picture of reality, the entrance of the Light to the desire, they develop together. This is the life that develops in our sensation and later the exit of the Light. The departure of it and a shrinking back of the desire is called death, from the age of forty, forty-five onwards.
Moderator: If you want to deepen your understanding of this subject, I recommend that you study Preface to the Book of Zohar as well as Rav Laitman’s book called Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life, which deals with the perception of reality.
M. Laitman: Besides that, they can read this article in Preface to the Book of Zohar, item 34.
Question: You said there is no matter of faith at all, only study and that does the work. My question is, how can you study without having faith in the teacher that he is telling the truth?
M. Laitman: First of all, why should I believe anyone? Why, because he has a nice beard or a hat, or he is nice, or he talks nicely or he gives great speeches? Why? What do I need to believe in? Why should I believe anyone? Where does it say that I need to believe anyone?
Moderator: So, how do you know with whom to study? There are tons of teachers all over the place. How do you choose them?
M. Laitman: Only according to what I understand.
Moderator: So, you have faith that one of them is good and not the other one.
M. Laitman: Yes, but I am following what I am, and not what someone is telling me, and I must believe what I am. If he is wrong, then I am wrong after him. If he is right, then I am right after him. So, where am I? If I study the wisdom of this world, then the more I am taught, I check it, examine it, I see whether it’s correct or not and I advance onwards.
But if I study the wisdom that has to do with Godliness, who can tell me whether it’s right or not if I don’t sense it? How can I check the person, the teacher whether he feels it or not? Yes, you have so many millions of gurus in the world. So how do you say that I have to believe someone? Whom should I believe?
You are saying, “This person is great. There is a person who is huge and I believe him.” Then I’ll ask you, “Why, based on what?” You tell me, “He speaks nicely.”
Moderator: So, what do you do?
M. Laitman: Follow your heart, only your heart. Don’t believe anyone, but only what your heart is telling you, but check whether your heart is pure and not bribed. If you really want to reach truth, only the heart can tell you whether you are on the right path or not.