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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: How does Kabbalah explain what happened at the Holocaust? What happens to the souls of Hitler, Eichmann, and all those evil people?
Michael Laitman: I was born after the Second World War, but I come from the area where this horror happened. I lived in Vitebsk, western Russia, on the border with Poland where much of it happened. In Vitebsk, just a few families remained out of tens of thousands of Jews. Within three or four days they were rounded up into the ghetto, and that was it, they were gone. So I felt it throughout my childhood, living in Russia before I came to Israel, and even until today. So, I understand how you feel. It all remains and is within us—this terrible disaster and fear, threat and grief. There are many relatives that died.
Kabbalah certainly explains it in a higher more comprehensive way. Kabbalah explains why it happened. It explains why the Creator caused us these great punishments and for what and why it turns out this way that in every generation we have enemies that rise to destroy us. Kabbalah also elucidates what is going on in general with the destiny of the people of Israel.
We have to understand that we should consider how to account to ourselves what is happening and why there’s so much hatred toward us all over the world. Even today, we don’t have a lack of Hitlers, and all those who surrounded him in the world who would gladly do to us what they did then, and the world would still be silent as they were before.
No one is going to give us a haven, just as in the past the Austrian and German Jews were not allowed to escape to different countries; they all shut their doors. It was very difficult to find any place to run to from the Nazis. Even today we are seeing the same attitude all over the world, so let’s not fool ourselves. Everything is the same and we are, I would say, not in a better situation than before. So, why is this situation happening to us, and why is the whole world directed like this toward us and we can’t get out of it?
Moderator: Recent reports say that anti-Semitism increased drastically in the past year.
M. Laitman: Yes, and even in countries where we didn’t see it before it’s increasing, as it does all over the world. If in the past it was only in Germany and not so much in other countries that would not fight for us, but at least they were, seemingly, blaming the Germans. Today, the situation is that even the United Nations, who granted us our rights to be here in the land of Israel, are now, with all of their documents, slowly erasing us off the map. It’s as if the people of Israel don’t exist, as though they want this phenomenon to disappear from the world. And why is this happening? We can see this in the days of Mordechai, Esther, Achasverous and Haman. We can see it through the exile that we’ve experienced since Spain, and the countries in Europe where we were expelled, hated, and burned.
I was in many places in the world where that same Holocaust occurred except on a smaller scale, like in England and in Europe. There are many places where Jews were slaughtered, destroyed, and burned. It’s not a one-time occurrence. It’s always been happening and it may still (God forbid) happen today.
The problem is that we are a chosen people. We have a method for the correction of the world, as the Kabbalists explain, and we’re not using it. We hold the key to the worlds’ happiness. Baal HaSulam says in the Introduction to the Book of Zohar, that this hatred came upon us. It’s because we have the method to save the world and we just don’t know the kind of power that we have to affect it, the wisdom that we have. And we need to implement this method on us, to show it to the whole world, and then the world, instead of hating us, will respect us and learn from us. We have to become the light of the nations.
These are not pretty words; they’re not given so that we can become successful scientists or win Nobel prizes. They are given to bring the world to happiness. Precisely now, in our generation, when the whole world is entering into crisis and all feel sorrow, hunger is assailing many and the ecological, financial, and educational problems, as well as terrorism are everywhere, increasingly, the nations of the world will punish the Jews with another wave. This is just as you mentioned that now anti-Semitism is rising and increasing in the whole world. It will come against us and it will be aimed against us, and we cannot shut our eyes.
We cannot be like everyone else. We have to open the Kabbalah books and use them to correct ourselves to return to the same state as prior to the destruction of the Temple, as one man, one heart, in brotherly love. We have to show everyone that “love thy friend as thyself” is the law by which the world can exist. And then, as Isaiah the prophet wrote, “the nations of the world will carry us on their shoulders and bring us to Jerusalem,” and they’ll learn this method from us. Then every person and the whole world will finally rest. This is what we should bring to the world. The more we shut our eyes and the more we do not want to acknowledge it, anti-Semitism will increase, and our situation will be more and more dangerous.
Moderator: Let’s approach the second part of the question: the souls of these evil people, Hitler and Eichmann.
M. Laitman: Of course, we hate these people, but we have to see that there is the Upper Force that directs the world, and it’s conducting the world benevolently, in goodness and in doing good. “I the Lord do not change,” and “There is none else besides Him.” Therefore, we have to relate to a different question. Why is that benevolent force acting on us in this opposite manner? The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that we are those who are opposite from that Higher force. It’s a good force—benevolent, bestowing, loving—and we, among us, the people of Israel, we hate each other, we reject each other, we do not love one another. We previously fell from brotherly love to unfounded hatred and we’re still in this unfounded hatred of one another. Until such time as we can bond with love, mutual giving and mutual responsibility, this Upper Force, which is our God, the Benevolent One, will be felt in us, depicted in us, as our opposite. And that’s because we are opposite from it.
Moderator: What about those evil ones?
M. Laitman: These souls, these wicked people are the ones executing the commands of this evil Force, which we turn from good to bad. Baal HaSulam wrote twenty years prior to the Holocaust and warned the Jews. In 1922 he wanted to pull out with him all the Jews from Poland, from Warsaw where he came from. At that time, they were all connected and the majority of the Jews lived there in Warsaw; there were several million of them. He addressed them as he was a religious judge in Warsaw, but no one would listen. Some tens of families came out from all of Poland and the rest stayed there; they didn’t want to move to the land of Israel and regrettably, the Holocaust is what happened to them there.
So, we need to understand that our uniqueness as a nation in the land of Israel should not be as that of nuts in a bag (gathered together merely for survival rather than due to unity), hated by everyone, therefore huddling together. Rather, instead of existing together by forces of hate, we will be connected by forces of love. Until we arrive at the place where we are connected by forces of love, the world will treat us with this negative attitude. We have to regard the world’s attitude toward us as the hand of God. This is how Providence directs itself to us because we are not realizing ourselves as the chosen people.
I’m sorry to say this. I understand that I grew up and participated in all of this grief that accompanied all of my family and my kin. Yet that’s what I’m discovering in the wisdom of Kabbalah, and that’s the answer that I have to all these terrible things that happen to us. Let’s hope that we will unite and achieve what is called “the people of Israel,” as one man and one heart, and then we will have contact with the Upper force, and certainly, no one will be able to touch us and harm us in any way.
Question: Lately we’ve been talking about the soaring price of rice, the world food crisis. The rice price today broke an all time record high and it’s causing a very serious food crisis such that we haven’t had for years. Will there be real material hunger, and if so, what can be done in this situation?
M. Laitman: We have to know, as we’ve said in our previous talks in these shows, that we are in opposition to nature’s force, the benevolent the force of God. We are all opposites; we’re immersed in our egos and don’t want to unite, don’t want to bond, don’t want to correct our relationships, and in this way, we’re totally opposite to this general force. We have to understand that the whole of nature—the still, vegetative, animate, and man—are in an integral system where everyone is in some kind of connection with others.
We, by consuming from nature, from the environment, more than we need, by wanting to use others and use the environment, we are destroying our attitude towards nature and in return, nature punishes us by making us feel our imbalance with it. This is by way of tsunamis, by hurricanes, by heating or cooling; problems with food, economy, education, and in everything that’s happening in the world—depression, the family crisis. And in every area, we will feel no success in any human engagement on Earth.
Moderator: So will there be hunger or not?
M. Laitman: It’ll be like a collective blow, a multifaceted blow that will come like the ten plagues of Pharaoh spoken of in Torah, and we will have to acknowledge the reason for these blows. Thus, nature reacts to us in order to compel us to recognize how we should exist in the system. We relate to nature as if we are its owners and we can do whatever we want, but the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches you the common law of nature, which talks about integration and bonding.
Today, we are discovering that we are all connected, but no one wants to be considerate of others, no one wants to balance themselves with the rest of the world. We’re all doing whatever we want. In this way, of course, we’re pulling these anti-forces on ourselves and they make us suffer, but in the end, nature will win and we’ll have to change ourselves.
Moderator: If I understand your answer, you’re saying that hunger is only one of the blows that we’ll feel. So will there be hunger and more things, more troubles?
M. Laitman: Of course, and in the end, they will all force us to change ourselves and to correct ourselves.
Moderator: And if we change ourselves, the price of rice will drop?
M. Laitman: The minute we change ourselves, we will be rewarded with blessing from nature and we will feel how these blows will diminish, leave, and remove themselves.
Moderator: Sounds like magic and legends.
M. Laitman: It’s not magic; look at how our body lives. Every system, the heart, the kidneys, the lungs, every part of the body tries to benefit the whole body. When it thinks only of itself, the body gets sick, some part is out of balance, and that’s how we are in the ecological system. Today, we can see from our science, that all the systems in our nature—still, vegetative, animate—are all balanced. The events that occur in nature, which occur due to us, cause plants to disappear, animals to disappear, and other things happen such as climate change. It’s because we don’t want to acknowledge this integrity of nature.
Moderator: You’re talking about integration and balancing reactions. This week I read in the news, that after we realized there’s a world food crisis, the United Nations built a special task force, and the World Bank is lending hundreds of millions of dollars to the countries producing rice so they can restore themselves and keep giving us rice. Isn’t that an example of reciprocity and balancing reaction?
M. Laitman: No, because by that, we want as though to put out the fire. That’s what we want to do, and we’ve done that before and we’ve seen that nothing good came of it. According to the law of balance with nature, which is the common law of any living organism, just like in our body, we need to be balanced with this nature in understanding, in feeling, in reciprocity towards the whole world, towards the still, vegetative, animate, and also people. It’s not only to help people who have nothing to eat. We need bonds of love among us, because according to our root, we belong only to this system of one Adam, one man, Adam ha Rishon (the First Man). When we see this connection between us, this truly is a very internal connection between all the people in the world. If we don’t recognize it, if we don’t correct our attitude from being egoistic and exploiting of others, into loving others, then we will suffer blows until we get wiser, and perform this correction.
Moderator: Are you talking about having to develop a relationship of love among us?
M. Laitman: I’m talking about developing a relationship of love among everyone, and the people of Israel have to be an example.
Moderator: So what about this financial support?
M. Laitman: It’s not going to help; it will bring upon us greater blows. As we saw in the pastwhere we helped Africa and that help made them stop working and until today there is still hunger there, whereas before, there were developed countries there and at least they could sustain themselves.
Moderator: So, what should we do?
M. Laitman: Help those who are starving, for sure. Just as when an enemy comes to fight me, I have to fight back. Also, along with this, we have to correct our relationships with one another, not just give some food; food is not going to help. We have to make sure that all over the world, specifically in the media, that all will change themselves, and that they will introduce to the world only one thing that is needed for us to be salvaged from complete destruction—the basis, the law by which this world runs. This is the law of reciprocity, the law of Arvut (mutual guarantee), as it was explained in the article Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah). The whole world will have to come to it, the law of “Love thy friend as thyself.” It’s nature’s common law, it’s not something fantastic.
The more we advance toward it, the more we’ll see that this is the case. Even as we examine living biological organisms today, we can see that the law of reciprocity, of connecting and consideration, at the spiritual internal level, exists between every organ of the living organism, otherwise the body does not exist. We are discovering today that our systems, the financial and all of the systems in which we exist in human society, all as one body. So, we have to arrange in this body the same relationships as in a living organism, and then we have a chance of existing and succeeding. Without this, we’ll only suffer blows. In the end, we’ll still have to be balanced with nature, but only after a lot of suffering. This hunger and the multi-faceted crisis is just the beginning. That’s what the wisdom of Kabbalah explains.
Question: A ten year old boy is asking, “What is a gift according to Kabbalah, and how do you choose a gift for a friend?”
M. Laitman: A gift is something that no one needs, as you can see when you walk into a gift shop.
Moderator: Yes, gift shops have chosen everything in the world that is quite useless.
M. Laitman: Actually, a gift is something by which I express my love for a person. So, what matters is my attitude towards the person.
The actual gift does not matter at all. For example, I can give a person a pen, yet if in my giving the pen and connecting my love to it, he feels who he received it from and with what feelings of love he received it, then it becomes a gift that is an important gift for him. The gift is important according to the sensation of the giver, the importance of the person who gives it. It may be a little boy, my beloved little boy, who comes to me and wants to give me something from the goodness of his heart, and I take it as something very important and very dear to me.
It is the most exciting when I get a present, maybe a postcard or something, some tiny object, but from someone very important. It says in Gmarah that normally, a woman is acquired by possession.
Moderator: When a man sanctifies a woman, he has to give her something.
M. Laitman: Yes, but if he is an important person, it is enough that he will receive something from her. He does not have to give to her, but he has to agree to receive from her and then she is acquired. So in the receiving and giving of the gift, the imparity between the people, or a couple, is very important. If the giver is higher, he can give the smallest thing, and that will be considered a big gift, or if the gift is from a person who is very, very loved, then the importance is according to the connections of love. Thus, the gift itself is not what matters; it is the relationship between people that matters.
Moderator: So when this child of ten wants to choose a gift for a friend, how should he go about choosing it?
M. Laitman: I don't think that in choosing a gift for a friend it’s important to think about what this friend loves and what he wants from you because then, he only anticipates this object and not your relationship. So if you only debate as to what to give him and what not to give him, then you’re not talking about natural, direct, pure, open love, but rather, there are all kinds of calculations. What can I do to make him happy, to make him glad by giving him this and that? If you are giving from the bottom of your heart, and out of love, it doesn't matter what object you give.
Question: Why are women so busy with their outer appearance? What is the source of the importance of a woman’s appearance to herself, and to men?
M. Laitman: I am associated with biology, because biocybernetics is what I studied initially. My daughter has a PhD in biology, and so I understand this science and I’m interested in it. Biology explains many things in nature that I can use in Kabbalah as examples. Everything that happens in a person comes from genes, hormones, all kinds of data that are already within us, and there’s nothing we can do to change them. We can research any phenomenon from the perspective of nature.
Women have a tendency to decorate themselves and that decoration comes from the Upper root. To be decorated means to correct one’s self according to the Creator; it is in the human soul. Within us there is a Reshimo (reminiscence), which is a spiritual gene by which we have to decorate this ugly egoistic person.
Moderator: You don't mean physically ugly.
M. Laitman: No, no; I mean internally ugly, egotistical, exploitive, our true nature, “Man’s heart is evil from his youth,” and, “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice, because the Light in it Reforms.” Through the power that we have using the Torah correctly, Kabbalah explains that we can correct ourselves.
Moderator: We can decorate this internal ugliness?
M. Laitman: Yes, decorate it and bring it to the level of beauty; beauty means similarity to the Creator. Then the Upper Light shines inside of a person like the Creator, he becomes Adam, from the word Domeh (similar) to the Creator.
Moderator: So why is it specifically the woman who decorates herself?
M. Laitman: Because a woman symbolizes in our world, Malchut—the root of creation, the foundation of creation. This is why it’s a woman’s nature to be externally decorated in this world, just like we should correct ourselves internally, which is called, decorating toward the Creator. Man and woman, groom and bride, these are relationships between the Creator and the created. The created is as the woman, and the Creator is as the groom, as the man. From this we can learn how we all—men and women, should make that decoration on ourselves, which is the correction of our egos. In this way, we become similar to this higher example, and we achieve the degree of man, Dome (similar) to Him.
Moderator: So men will take a make-up course for the soul?
M. Laitman: Everyone needs to decorate internally, but how to truly decorate one’s self is what the wisdom of Kabbalah explains. Therefore, in the wisdom of Kabbalah, we use these things such as: Masach (screen) and Returning Light (Ohr Hozer), coverings that we put over our egos, beauty, called the Light of Wisdom that shines for us, all of which are terms that belong to the bride and the groom, the man and the woman. This is the vocabulary that Kabbalah uses.
Question: Why in Judaism, is there so much fear and dread all the time? For example, there is a song that says, “The most important is to not be afraid at all.” So what should we be afraid of since the Creator is benevolent?
M. Laitman: We should only be afraid of our own egos; this is our prime enemy. One has no enemy in the world besides one’s self to oneself; there is nothing to fear but ourselves. If we direct ourselves towards the goal and want to become similar to the Creator—since this is our designation, our whole lives and our whole existence in this world is to achieve this state—then our enemy, the one who obstructs us, is only our egos. This is the only thing we should be afraid of. The Light is entirely aimed only against my egoistic desires that obstruct me from achieving eternity and perfection—the good things, a good comfortable life, a secure life, and abundance. I can achieve that, and yet I alone, ruin everything.
Question: My husband plays computer games in which he is the machine gun that should kill soldiers. My child is two and a half years old, and sits on his lap and watches the game. Can that harm him in any way, such a young child in terms of the violent message he is absorbing? I object to it and I'm afraid of my child’s exposure to this type of violent content, but my husband says that it is a boy’s nature to play with guns, and there is nothing wrong with it.
M. Laitman: It is true that boys, naturally have a tendency to play hunters or to play with guns or have competitions, and girls tend to play with dolls, jump rope, and other things like dances, and things that have to do with decoration.
Moderator: Why do men hunt and compete?
M. Laitman: It's just nature; in nature men hunt, seek and bring the food to the woman just as we can see with animals.
Moderator: But why is it like that in the world?
M. Laitman: Because the woman is in charge of the place of raising the family, the children; the woman is the home.
Moderator: What is the root of this? Is there a root for this in spirituality? What does the man hunt in spirituality?
M. Laitman: The side of the man is to provide the Light for the soul. The female side is to supply the need for the reception of the Light in the soul. These are two forces: the force of the need for the Light, and the drawing of the Light. The man draws the Light, and the woman brings the need for it.
Moderator: So the copy of the drawing of Light in our world is to go and hunt? Also, what, about her child? Is there damage done to the child while watching these violent games with his father?
M. Laitman: These games are not hunting for the sake of existence. The purpose of these games is to kill, to hate, to succeed through exploiting and lying to others. Of course, these things are totally and absolutely disqualified. From the first day a child is born, and even before that, and of course, once the child begins to understand, to expose him to these games is a big problem. It is a child who comes into this world and comes from previous incarnations with an accumulated evil, an evil nature and a burning ego. So we have to consider everything else that will grow in him as he develops. From the youngest age, we have to instill the right values in children so they can cope with their nature.
I remember myself, in my time, education was to tell the children that you have to be good. Why? Don't fight anyone and be good to people. Why? Because subconsciously, we understand that if a person is good to everyone and if he treats everyone favorably, he has fewer enemies. He has less of a chance of having problems and of having people wanting to harm him.
So you want to do the opposite of the evil nature and to not teach him how to kill others, and how to chase others and harm them. On the contrary, teach him how to do good to others. By that, you guarantee to your child, as much as you can guarantee anything, a safer life in the future, and that is all we want for our children. So if you teach him the opposite, how to kill, you make him miserable. He will constantly be under pressure and think people want to do the same to him. He will always be internally tense. Why does he need this? One’s fate depends on one’s attitude to others: the better one relates to others, in all of this, one gains.
Moderator: I want to ask another question about this. Suppose we did bring up a little boy this way, to relate well to others, what would be the outcome?
M. Laitman: Not just a little boy. What if we could educate the whole world this way? With all the media, the television, if we only talked about good attitudes toward people, then children would grow differently. In a single generation, we would see a completely different generation than our own, and it’s not because we are good that we will educate them towards the good, but rather, it is so they will have it good. As for us it is a lie for we are not good, but to educate them so that they will have a good world, we have to change the entire attitude in education.
Moderator: I want to go back to that boy. I want to tell you my private problem at home. When my son first went to school, it was for him, and as a result for us, a total culture shock. He came home and said that the children there beat each other, and that this is all that those children engage in during the school breaks, only harming each other. That’s basically what they do in terms of social life at school, as he is a boy. With my daughter, it wasn't felt that much, as girls are more delicate by nature. Yet when my son went into first grade, we were in shock. So, that small boy that we are trying to bring up with goodness, and to be good to others, don't you think that he might go into the surrounding society, where one is taught values that differ, that he will end up being a sucker, and being beaten by everyone while he smiles Isn't there a danger of that?
M. Laitman: You are right, but in the end, I don't think that by that he is inviting an attitude of hatred on himself or exploitation. I have seen such children, and in relating nicely to others, it didn’t mean they couldn’t fight back. Yet, you needn't teach them, program them, to constantly hunt people like some preying animal. I started teaching Kabbalah to my son when he was nine or so, but at the same time, I sent him to learn all kinds of group activities where he learned judo, bicycle riding, and other things.
So I built him strongly, but not strongly in a way where he exploits everyone and comes to all with demands, nor how to kill others and do harm to them. Rather, he had the kind of strength so that if someone came at him, he understood that there was no choice and that he has the strength to confront. In his nature, he doesn’t have this inclination to seek to kill soldiers and all else. There has to be balance between these things. We are in a very, very difficult world indeed, but we don't have to be like everyone else.
Question: As a person who has been searching the breadth of the rainbow, from the peak of the defilement of India, to the most ultra orthodox rabbinical school, and everything in between, in all of them I found some strength and I took some knowledge. In all of them I understood that this was not my place. How can such a unique person, with this infinite internality in the infinite creation, find his place and know that his mission is correction, and on what level should he act?
M. Laitman: Only by following his heart. That is what Baal HaSulam says in The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot. Today, the whole of the wisdom of Kabbalah is in this big enterprise that he created in The Study of the Ten Sefirot. It is a, six volume corpus of 2000 pages, far from simple but there you find the complete wisdom of Kabbalah; Kabbalah in its usable form and in all its breadth and glory.
In The Introduction to this Study of the Ten Sefirot he writes, “How does one come to the wisdom of Kabbalah, to this vast wisdom in which he doesn't even know what it’s for and why he’s getting into it?”
Baal HaSulam says that a person turns to Kabbalah when he is asking, “What is the meaning of my life”? If you have that question, and you didn’t succeed in answering it with money, with honor, with dominion over others, with knowledge, with all kinds of pleasures you’ve been seeking in this world, with meditation and tranquility, or not even with religion or anything else; then you come to Kabbalah, and there, you are certain to find yourself.
Now, the issue is that today, the wisdom of Kabbalah is available for sale in the form of red bracelets and charms and whatnots. You might want to investigate this, as to where your place is in all of this, but be brief in this investigation, and do not waste time.
There are those who go to Hassidut, as you said, and find their place there. According to their evolution they are there. Some, even before seeking Hassidut, like you, went to India and all kinds of places and as you’ve seen, there are people who are content with these states and these circles, and they remain there for the time being.
But a person who is developing and is completing the development of his ego, he is certain to come to the wisdom of Kabbalah. So I advise you to start taking an interest in that—not superficially but seriously; go into our site or buy a book like Kabbalah for the Beginners, and start seeing what it’s about. (Addressed to the moderator) Can you advise something else?
Moderator: Yes, there are several options. If you’re talking about Internet study, then go into our site where you’ll be exposed to a lot of content. You can also sign up for free online courses at our Online Learning Center. Another option is to study with the books. If you want a textbook, then there’s Kabbalah for the Beginners—it’s a good option. You could also first study easier books that help explain the source materials. They are all available at our bookstore, www.kabbalahbooks.info.
Question: If my desire is to study Kabbalah at every opportunity, is it not from an egoistic need because I’m enjoying the Kabbalistic writings and I less enjoy, for example, other writings?
M. Laitman: So what’s bad about this? First of all, our ego is the best thing about us. “When writers vie, wisdom mounts.” When we are envious of what others have, when we’re attracted to better things, to get more and more, to acquire more, moving from possessing money, to honor, then power, and then knowledge—in this way we come closer to the goal.
The wisdom of Kabbalah is the wisdom of how to receive, not how to stop working with our desires. So the fact that you enjoy the writings of Kabbalah is a good thing and it indicates a ripe desire for these things. Through this study, you’ll just begin to understand what it all means, the wisdom of how to receive, and why it is not so simple as to just come and receive, a way in which we never receive everything in life and we leave this life as empty as when we came into it.
Also, even during life, when we achieve something, we are then immediately emptied of the enjoyment of that achievement, and then we achieve something else, and the next minute, we feel empty again. So the wisdom of how to ideally fill ourselves, completely and eternally, to feel that life is never ending—that’s how perfect you’ll feel. It’s possible. All you need to do is to keeping studying.
I’m not sure what you’re studying, which texts and how, this has to be examined. It may well be that while time is passing you’re not acquiring the method of how to receive. However, the use of the ego correctly, is the basis of the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is in contrast to all the other various mystical and spiritual methods, all of which talk about how to stop the ego; how to do less, how to think less, and how to diminish a person to a state where you either sit and do nothing and just focus on one thought, or you do deeds and things, and think less, etc.
Kabbalah says, “No,” the ego that you have didn’t just grow in you for no reason over incarnations of thousands of years. It grew so that now, you’ll use it for the supreme attainment.
Question: I understood that unlike other religions that want to suppress the ego, Kabbalah says that you shouldn’t resist the ego. So what does it mean when I want to steal or murder someone?
M. Laitman: No, Kabbalah says this: you have to learn the method of how to work with your ego correctly, and then, even with regard to stealing and murdering, you’ll use the ego correctly. You’ll murder and rob your egoistic desire, and transmit it in this corrected form into the desire to bestow and love. That’s the meaning of stealing.
Stealing, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, is when you steal from your ego and pass it to bestowal, it’s an internal stealing, from one desire to the next. You then use that same egoistic desire that you had previously used to steal; and you now begin to use it to give. Whether we speak of killing, even slaughter and murdering, it’s all about internal corrections of our desires.
So when we talk about the wisdom of Kabbalah, it tells you how to do these things internally. That’s why it’s called the internal teaching, the internal wisdom. It tells you how to do these things internally in your desires, and that a person doesn’t have to do anything externally. He doesn’t feel like doing things, rather, he acts at the level of thought and desire, and not at the level of physical actions, with the functions of the hands and the legs.
Question: How do you explain to a child what it means to come out of this world, to the Upper world?
M. Laitman: Coming out doesn’t mean you flee, like a bird or butterfly. It means you come out with your feeling and perception. Right now, in our five senses, we feel the surrounding world, yet, we have a point in the heart that wants to fill itself through something else. This point in the heart is additionally known as the sixth sense, or the soul, and if we develop it, then we begin to feel what is beyond this wrapping, what is beyond this world.
This world is like a theater, it’s like a screen. Behind these screens, behind this picture, you begin to see the forces that operate this world. You begin to see yourself, the souls, the worlds, and you see and feel how you lived before you came down to this world and what’s happening when you leave this world. You begin to see and to feel the whole of life as an endless flow. Feeling the whole of nature in its eternal form as an endless flow is the meaning of achieving the next world, the Upper world, the spiritual world. Anyone can do that. It’s good that a child is asking. Let’s give it to him!
Question: Why did the Creator create corporeal love between man and woman? What is the reason for it? What should we learn from it? What should we do about it?
M. Laitman: The Creator didn’t create anything specific in our world. Our world is a concatenation of all the worlds, and our world is the last copy of all the worlds in corporeality, in our substance, in matter. So even if we want to understand anything about our world, we can’t understand anything here. The more we delve into science, the more details we have, the connections between these things becomes more and more complex, and we then find that we don’t really understand anything. We understand less and less the more we advance, because the connection between things isn’t in our world. It’s in the Upper Forces, on a Upper level than this world.
If we want to understand and to have good relationships between men and women, which is today not so common, then we need to rise to a more spiritual level. That’s why it says, “Man and woman—Divinity between them.” If we want to really connect between man and woman, the true connection that we don’t even understand because it’s so sublime and great, then we have to build a spiritual connection between them, at a more spiritual level, above the beastliness, beyond our bodies. In the final analysis according to our bodies, we’re as animals, the animate level.
We need to develop this connection at the speaking level, a higher level, a spiritual level. That’s why it says, “Man and woman—not man and woman here in corporeality, but rather spiritual man and woman—are together when Divinity is between them.” What is Divinity? The revelation of the Upper Forces between them, between man and woman, and this is what connects them.
Yet so it’s between all people. If I really want to connect to another and understand another and be one with them, I have to have the Upper force between us that connects us. This is why we say that all people are one soul. We need to connect this way among us, and in that connection among us we will discover the Upper force, which will be in us, and thus, we will feel ourselves in a complete, eternal, spiritual world. This is truly our goal; the goal of the development of all people.
Question: I notice that the more time passes it gets harder for me to listen to the news. I sit with people who talk about horrors that other people are experiencing and things that they heard about in the news. They continue eating and being merry as if they heard a good joke. Is this a reaction of the still level in people? What’s happening to people? Don’t they care?
M. Laitman: Those, who study the wisdom of Kabbalah, begin to relate what’s happening to the Upper Force, to the Upper Light and to the Creator as the good and benevolent one. All of our actions that take place in this world are a result of our mismatch with this Upper Force. This is because our world is a copy, an opposite replication of the Creator. What we can see here in this world, is our oppositeness to Him. That’s why this world is all bad, because it’s an opposite replication of the good and benevolent. In this world there is no benevolence, there’s nothing good. So it’s no wonder people are behaving this way.
Yet a person who begins to connect to the better force, and understands how opposite it is operating from the way we feel in this world, for this person it becomes hard for him to listen to what’s happening in this world, how people are relating to one another, and how impermeable they are to this attitude from Above. This is what’s happening to the questioner, and it’s true. But we need to understand people in the world and not to degrade them, but look at these things as a passing phenomenon, because they too will soon realize what you realized, and you’ll then continue together towards correction.
In our times, we will see that humanity is changing and beginning to understand either because we won’t have a choice, or due to the inner recognition from out of itself, and the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah by which we wish to accelerate people’s recognition of the good attitude and good life. We will see how this world will change, and these people will not want to listen to the bad news, but will want to correct them immediately.
Question: How does a student without a physical group, but studying through the Internet, work with the group? How is he to be impressed by the group? How does he bestow to the group, etc.?
M. Laitman: Today we have about two million students world-wide; we teach in many languages. If we have a congress, people come there from over fifty countries, fifty languages. We publish books in fourteen languages, and our circles are expanding all over the world. So people can’t all sit in the same place, and this isn’t the goal. The goal is for people to work, to study, to raise a family, to be wherever they are on the planet, in their own society, and at the same time to study Kabbalah, and thus learn how to correct themselves.
In this world group, there really is just one group. And a person who is connected and studies with us, and participates with us in disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah, which brings people closer and the world closer to the good—any person and the whole world—by that, he is connected with us. In spirituality it’s considered that he’s in the same system with us.
I recommend that you study with us through the site, through the Internet and television, in any way you can and as much as you can. At the same time, perhaps take upon yourself some act of dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah, because by that, you’re showing that you want to do good to the world, to bring people closer to good life, to bring them to a better, successful, complete state. By doing both, studying and disseminating, you will advance and you’ll be successful.
Moderator: Just something technical. If you go to our site, you’ll be able to find, for example on www.kab.info, a link for participation in dissemination of Kabbalah. If you find it interesting and important, you can fill out your details there and people will contact you and offer you something that suits your free time and your skills.
M. Laitman: I want to add that it really promotes you, it’s not just doing a little of something. It’s an act that promotes you most towards the goal, because by that, you’re creating connection between you and others. You’re reconstructing the connection among people that was lost as a result of the destruction, of the sin of Adam ha Rishon (the First Man).
Moderator: How is a person helped by being impressed by the group when he wants to absorb the importance of the goal from the group?
M. Laitman: First of all, he’ll be connected with us. We’ll send him newspapers to disseminate and other materials and he’ll be with us. Perhaps he can write, perhaps he can disseminate through the Internet, or there may be other such possibilities. Perhaps he can help us with his professional knowledge because all over the world we have thousands of branches that produce all kinds of media in many languages. People do see that they are advancing through this work, so just try it and see.
Moderator: A person who does this work, does he become more integrated in this concept that is called a group?
M. Laitman: He works with us in this system so he feels what is in the system, and he experiences it. He thus creates connection with us.
Question: How can I find a way to remember what I’m learning with you, because I keep forgetting it?
M. Laitman: You don’t need to remember anything, nothing. Don’t remember anything! Whatever’s left in your heart, as your heart changes, this is your possession. It is not the clever one who learns. We don’t count pages; what you know by heart, is worthless. What matters is only how much your heart changes. The Torah, the corrections, are written to men of the heart. Remember only that one thing and the rest will come.