Moderator: Michel Laitman, how is everything?
Michael Laitman: You want me to start saying what’s good and what’s not?
Moderator: In brief, tell us only what’s good.
M. Laitman: I think that, ultimately, we reach the inner hearts of people here and there, and they start understanding that the wisdom of Kabbalah is here to save the situation, both of the people of Israel and of the whole world. And people start relating to it differently, not like some kind of remedy or some charm, which is also good, but in fact wisdom of Kabbalah’s definition is ‘the revelation of the Creator in this world.’
And people start understanding that precisely by revelation of this Upper force to us, we’ll know what is demanded from us and how better to arrange ourselves in this world, with respect to that inclusive Upper force of nature, Elohim. In Gimatria (calculation with Hebrew letters numerical values) Elohim is nature. We will know how to save ourselves from all the troubles and how to succeed in life both in this world and outside of the framework of our seventy years of life here. More people understand it and therefore, I’m happy.
Question: In last week’s newspaper there was research about Rabbis/Kabbalists who are most regarded in Israel. I was amazed to read that all the top people in government and the economic field throng to these Rabbis to receive advice. Can you explain this phenomenon and why so many people use it?
M. Laitman: Thousands of years ago, the wisdom of Kabbalah has divided into two channels. One channel is able people with power and intelligence who, from their experience, give people advice, tell them what they should do or shouldn’t do in life and in this they serve the people in a faithful and successful way. It is a common phenomenon. And these people are both Rabbis and they are wise people.
And there is another line of Kabbalah, another parallel direction, where a person studies the wisdom on his own. He doesn’t come to a person to ask for advice on how to succeed in this life. But he asks that person, “How can I attain the revealing of spirituality to me? I want to achieve the spiritual world. I want to be there myself to be great; to understand the great world that is outside of this world; I have the yearning for this. I want to ask “what is the secret of life, why do we live, what is the meaning of life and what for?”
All those questions are usually asked by children, many them are our children here. And when they come I usually ask them, ‘what do you want to ask?’ so, the child asks naturally, “What do we live for?” And then, I remember myself, that I wasn’t able to answer this question and neither could my grown father nor mother or others when I asked, “one just lives and you need to manage in life.”
If you want to manage in this life, you go to one kind of Kabbalist. And if you want to know the secret of life yourself, you go to the other kind of Kabbalist. And they teach the wisdom of Kabbalah, as Kabbalah defines it: The wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to everyone who desires it, the all-inclusive Force that directs us. And this is for people who are able to give it energy, to be persistent for a very long time.
Moderator: Do you go to Kabbalists who give advice to succeed in life?
M. Laitman: No, and that's because I take care of myself. But I do not disqualify the service that they give to the people. I know that the support and the strength that they give to the people in essence and psychologically are helping them get through the potholes of life.
Moderator: Do they have spiritual forces?
M. Laitman: This I don’t know. If a person does not open himself to the other, then you can’t say if he has these forces or not.
Once in our show, I remember we spoke about my teacher, Rabash, Rav Laitman Baruch Shalom ha Levi Ashlag. And I was with him visiting many Kabbalists of thirty years ago, who must be now, as far as I know, in the next world. I used to drive him there and I was present at conversations he had with them. They spoke about all kinds of exalted matters of the world of Atzilut and how things evolved accordingly. They spoke almost in the language of The Zohar or in language of the sages, which was hard for me to understand.
And always, when we left, I asked, “What did you talk about?” And sometimes he explained, and said, “I don’t know what to say about him, whether he really has spiritual attainment or not; whether he really attains the Upper Force himself and is in contact with Him. He did not open himself up and, therefore, I don’t know.”
Moderator: You talked about two parallel lines. One was the advice of how to manage your life the best possible way.
M. Laitman: Ninety-nine percent of the people seek this and it is correct.
Moderator: There is another line where Kabbalah teaches a person about the meaning of life, opens up to the person the secret of life and gives him perception, an understanding of the whole reality. Then he doesn’t need this advice.
M. Laitman: Not necessarily, I wouldn’t say that it means that you don’t need the advice. Rather you attain the Upper Force, the revelation of Godliness to a person, for yourself. But because you have a yearning for it, what’s called a point in the heart, you cannot calm down. Such people come to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, but they are few. As it says, “I saw those who ascend and they are few.”
Moderator: Now about those various people who give advice. Many people give advice not just in the name of Kabbalah, but in the name of other methods. They may be Jews or non-Jews, in this country and in the world over. And some people give better advice, some people give less successful advice. Is there something special which characterizes people who give advice in the name of Kabbalah? Do you recommend going to them specifically for advice or is there no difference?
M. Laitman: I would say there is a difference, because these people, nevertheless, are studying Torah . And what they advise is according to the framework of the Torah. It is not, however, Torah from the spiritual world.
Moderator: Allow me to barge in for a moment. Sometimes, nowadays, part of the advice that people give in the name of Kabbalah, is totally hallucinatory, different from any advice given in the Torah. I think they were described as of one type. Though I do not wish to qualify or disqualify any.
M. Laitman: No. I’m sorry, I cannot relate to everyone this way .
Moderator: O.K.
M. Laitman: I heard it is that these are known people, Rabbis, all keeping the Torah and they give advice in the framework of the Torah. It doesn’t matter that the advice the people ask for and are given is in the framework of this world. They tell you what the Torah says about how to behave in this world. They won’t tell you all kinds of laws that are not acceptable in the Torah. They will tell you everything in the framework of the Torah. And whatever it said within the framework of the Torah is according to the spiritual world.
Even as we have here all the kinds of contributions, tithing, and we will soon have the year where the land must lie fallow, festivals, Shabbat, weekly days, marital relationships, doesn’t matter what, they will still give you an advice that is in the framework of the laws of the Torah in this world.
Therefore, there is a difference between them and all the other sages of the world of whom it says, “You must believe the wisdom of the wise of other nations.” Many wise people can give you advice. If I want to earn in the stock market then I probably will go to an investment advisor and not to a Kabbalist. But he will tell me one thing and another will tell me another thing. The question is, “Whom do I want to ask?”
In the framework of this world, Kabbalists I belong to don’t give any advice at all. The Kabbalah only teaches a person how to elevate himself to spirituality, how to, himself, open the heavens. The students that study Kabbalah that I know, Kabbalah of the Ari as it is called, with me, study the correction of the soul. A person works himself, in order to correct his soul and with his corrected soul he reveals Godhood.
Our soul includes 613 desires; they are all egoistic, with hatred towards others. We have to correct them by the Light that Reforms, as it says, ”I created the evil inclinations,” (these 613 evil desires are called the evil inclinations) and “I created for it a Torah as a spice”—that the Torah has the power to correct these desires from unfounded hatred to the love of others. And then, if you study the Torah correctly, then you correct these 613 desires from being for the sake of self-benefit to that of the sake of others and they are called 613 Mitzvot (commandments).
The result is that the person achieves “Love thy neighbor as thyself—the general law of the Torah.” It means that you start feeling the Giver of that law. “The reward of the Mitzva (commandment) is to know the One who commands. The One who commands is the Creator, God, and the person discovers Him in his 613 corrected desires.
If he aspires for that from the start, then the Kabbalah I teach brings him to that. Whereas if he asks, “What do I do with my children, how to have peace in the home, how to succeed in all kinds of things, how to be saved from the evil eye”— he asks about this world and not beyond. Then he goes to these Kabbalists who are also great Rabbis. They advise him from their great experience in life and from the Torah. So, if so, it’s better to go to them and not to the wise of other nations.
Question: Does every soul have different ten plagues?
M. Laitman: No, they are not different. It’s like in this world, where we see the world in general; for all it is the same world. Yet sometimes, people perceive it differently because of their mood, because of their health, whatever happens to them. But in sum total Egypt is Egypt. However, everyone goes through it personally a bit differently.
That is, Egypt is a state a person enters while studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. Otherwise, he doesn’t feel himself in exile. We made nice video clips where we interviewed people on a Tel Aviv street, asking them whether we are in exile or in crisis. “There is no exile nor is there crisis, life’s beautiful.” All said. Only one aged person said that he has a problem that the Maccabi sports team didn’t win.
Moderator: We looked for a miracle in the field and did not find it.
M. Laitman: We did not find it.People do not feel we are in exile. The exile is one of two thousand years of detachment from spirituality. We could always have overcome the corporeal exile by physically coming to the land of Israel. People, who wanted to come to the land of Israel over the last 2000 years, could have come. So the exile is not exile from the state of Israel. We see that there are many people abroad and there are many people living here in the state of Israel, who will be happy to escape from this land to other lands.
The exile is spiritual. We have to discover that we are disconnected from the Upper Force, from Godhood, that we need to be with Him together as it says, “The people of Israel should return to their God;” we have to adhere to Him; this is our goal and the purpose of the whole world.
Through the Torah we have to achieve adhesion to the Creator and to discover that force that operates and that must dwell in us.
Moderator: How is that connected to ten plagues of Egypt?
M. Laitman: A person starts feeling that he has a need for Godly revelation; he starts studying Kabbalah, in that direction we described earlier in which I engage. It is not about advice but about studying. Such people are very few. And when one starts studying, he invites that Light that reforms that exists only in the wisdom of Kabbalah. And then he starts feeling himself disconnected from that Light, disconnected from spirituality.
The feeling that he has first is called ‘seven years of satiation.’ Like in Egypt, at first he feels himself advancing, acquiring knowledge and advancing towards spirituality. He learns how it’s built, even feels a bit closer, and then seven years of hunger start. They are the “plagues of Pharaoh” that is the true sensation of how his nature is opposed to the spiritual.
The oppositeness to the spiritual is in the ego, him thinking about himself and not about the others. While spiritual is only giving, bestowal and love of others that is the quality of the Upper Force, of the Creator.
Moderator: So, knowing this oppositeness is composed of ten plagues?
M. Laitman: There are seven years of hunger and then ten plagues. Each one accepts them personally, a bit differently—the way we each accept everything differently in life. We cannot even measure this. You are sick with the flu and so am I. I have fever and so do you. I have these feelings and you have them too. Yet each one feels it in a personal way, because each one of us has a special soul of his own and in the vessels of his soul he goes through these blows differently.
Moderator: Let’s finish talking about the plagues. What happens after the plagues?
M. Laitman: After the plagues the good starts. What happens to a person who goes through blows? He starts seeing that he can no longer suffer his own ego; how his evil inclination is really evil, how bad it makes his life; it disconnects him from all the good which is Godhood, spirituality, the sense of wholeness and the eternal. Then he wants to strangle, to kill the Pharaoh inside him.
The Pharaoh is within him. It’s all of our evil inclinations, the 613 uncorrected desires. Then he is ready to get rid of them and by that force he escapes, he leaves and detaches from these desires. He doesn’t want to be in them, he hates them and by the force of that hatred he moves from Egypt to Mount Sinai that is the revelation of even a greater hatred towards himself, towards his original preliminary nature; hatred towards being egoistic and wanting to exploit others only; of wanting to relate to everything in a way of receiving, exploiting and profiting. He wants to rise above this hatred and this is like Moses ascending Mount Sinai.
So, all of man’s desires are below, around Mount Sinai, and he himself, his point in the heart, rises above Mount Sinai, above that hatred, and there is a meeting between man and the Creator. Then he opens himself to the Upper Force. From then on they both walk together, even though through the desert, which is a very hard path, for forty years. This means that a person starts correcting his desires from the level of Malchut to the level of Bina. It means that he attains, understands, feels and sees how he can invert each and every desire to bestowal, from hate to love.
Moderator: How does it feel when a person lives together with the Creator? Is it different from our life?
M. Laitman: It’s not that they are together holding hand in hand. The Creator clothes within a person; the person feels that all of his qualities, all of his desires slowly receive a different shape.
He starts relating with a calculation, with a desire, an inclination towards the others, towards that force that dwells in the sum of the souls. He starts to look at all these souls, meaning the people. He doesn’t see human beings, according to their bodies like we see people, he sees souls in front of him—the internal desires and how they are connected into one soul called Adam ha Rishon (the First Man).
And that, in fact, is the unity of all of us. The sum of all these souls together is called Holy Divinity (Shechina).
Moderator: Is it exciting to feel such things?
M. Laitman: It is exciting because a person starts feeling that he belongs to that system. In his belonging to that system, he discovers eternity and wholeness, he discovers that he has acquired eternal life. He detaches his own body, which means he understands that his body is now alive and accompanies him and through his body he is in contact with others, and he has a role in this world. He relates already differently to the life in this world as well, with more responsibility, because he has the opportunity to use this lowest level to help others as well. And also by connecting to all the other souls and discovering the Creator that dwells in the connection among the souls, he acquires spiritual life, spiritual force, that in fact produces contentment to His Maker.
Moderator: Can you say that a person who turns spiritual and goes through these processes becomes wiser, cleverer?
M. Laitman: He becomes wiser and cleverer, but it’s with respect to the whole of reality, not with respect to this world in how to succeed and how to benefit in the artificial systems built by men. If you would ask this kind of Kabbalist how to gain in the stock market, he won’t tell you; or how to be healthy, he won’t advise you because he doesn’t belong to the corporeal systems. Rather, he belongs to the systems of the correction of the soul and not the beastly spirit that every animal has as well, but to the divine soul.
He becomes wiser only in the divine systems, beyond ego, beyond this world. Therefore, he will open the book and start reading the definitions of the wisdom of Kabbalah. It’s written simply, “The wisdom of Kabbalah is a revelation of the Creator to the person living in this world.”
Moderator: What does it mean to be wise in divine systems?
M. Laitman: There is a person who is wise in financial systems, he is an economist. There is a person who is wise in nature’s system, like a physicist. And there is one who is wise in the systems of the activation of the spiritual worlds. And that is a Kabbalist.
Moderator: Does it have something to do with our life? Where are these spiritual worlds?
M. Laitman: Our life is divided into two parts: the correction of the soul and the existence of the body. With the existence of the body, we just have to worry about how it will live for seventy years. And with the soul, we have to be concerned, during these 70 years of the body existence, about how to elevate it to its source in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) from where it descended to the body. So some people take care of the body; some people take care of the soul. I’m from those who take care of the soul.
Moderator: This is something that I understood. I am insisting on a specific point again: What does it mean to be wise in divine systems?
M. Laitman: That you know them. You can open Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) and you know how the spirituality is built, you’re there.
It says that the soul of a person cannot exist in the spiritual world if he doesn’t acquire a modicum of information about the spiritual world. It's like in this world where you prepare a person for 15-20 of his early years only for him to know how to live in this world. You teach him how the world is built, what to do and what to beware of or not. So in the same way you have to educate him and teach him how the spiritual world is built and how can he be independent there and then his soul gets independent, eternal life. Otherwise, he has to return and again keep studying until he finishes this spiritual university, and each and every person will have to do it; there is no escape from it, all will have to pass.
But those who already have a point in the heart are starting to study right now and they succeed. And those who don’t have a burning point in the heart that wants to attain Godhood, then they’re found in the framework of this world and they live feeling good. So these have Kabbalists and those have Kabbalists; these have the wisdom of Kabbalah and those have the wisdom of Kabbalah, and this is how we continue in the meantime.
Moderator: So you’re from the spiritual university.
M. Laitman: I am among those who want to attain Godhood.
Question: You said that all the actions that are in order to take care of the environment don’t really matter and the main thing is man’s inner work. Does the welfare of the environment (collecting bottles and the like) not influence the soul, so that eventually the soul will develop as well? Otherwise, we’d just be stuck with water bottles and, generally, a polluted environment.
M. Laitman: You’re right. Of course, if an enemy comes upon me, I have to fight with him, and if I have a disease, I have to go to the doctor that will cure me. If I experience ecological problems, I have to heal them where they are found and fix them. But eventually, this correction will not help; what I did already, I have to correct. But from now on, I have to care for it differently, by my inner correction. Because all of these problems are at the level of man; in our thoughts and desires we ruin nature. And we ruin human society if we do not correct ourselves and it won’t help us to clean the whole of planet Earth after ourselves.
We are in lack of balance with nature, in actual opposition to nature, because we are evil. The whole of nature is a force of love, a force of giving and bestowal. There is a harmony among all the parts of nature. They don’t gain, receive, and take more than what they need in order to live; like a cell in the living body that receives only what it needs and serves the whole body to give to it, provide it with life.
This is how we need to act with respect to the whole of nature and with respect to society. Unless we correct ourselves it won’t help us to clean the whole of Earth after ourselves, and we will still experience the great crisis. Therefore, we have to fix the crisis, we have to be healthy and we have to fight an enemy but to know that by that, we only do a small portion of the general correction. The rest of the correction has to come out of our heart, which has to be directed to giving, loving and bestowal towards others and the Creator.
We can achieve that only by the Upper Light. There is no force in this world that can correct man except our attracting the Upper Light upon ourselves. It says, “I created the evil inclination; I created the Torah as a spice for it because its Light Reforms.” And the Torah that brings us that Light which reforms is only the wisdom of Kabbalah. Therefore, today, the wisdom of Kabbalah is uncovered in order to give us that Light, because we have come to such a crisis where we can succeed only with this Light.
Question: I work in a kindergarten with children from the age of one year to two years and at noon time I let them listen to Baal HaSulam melodies. Does it influence them spiritually? In addition, I would like to know if there’s some way to give children that are so small something of the wisdom of Kabbalah, indirectly, of course. For instance, what do we tell them after they beat one another? Or is there no use in these explanations and they have to grow up to actualize their ego and then choose spirituality?
M. Laitman: First of all, of course, music written by Kabbalists has its spiritual root and it ties a person to his soul, it evokes man’s inner forces. And, of course, it’s worthwhile for a person to listen to it, both a baby and a child. There are researches from the scientific world that say that the music influences an embryo in the womb of his mother—I am talking about a spiritual music.
The person who wrote it was at the time of writing in spiritual attainment. The notes that are like the letters of the spoken language are connected to different levels of spirituality, are connected to the general correction of the soul. Therefore, a person who listens to it connects to these levels where his corrected soul will once be.
Moderator: But how does he connect to it, since he is not in it?
M. Laitman: It works on him. It works on him because through that Kabbalist who wrote it, he is also connected to that corrected system. And one day he will have to achieve it himself, because we will have to achieve Godhood, all of us. ”Return, children of Israel, to your God.” As it says, “They shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.” “My house shall be a house of prayer to all the nations.” All nations will surge towards him. All humanity will have to rise to that spiritual root, to God, from where we descended to this world. Therefore, these preparations, listening to music, even an embryo and, of course, a small child—it has to be in a proper amount. It definitely helps.
Moderator: Secondly, our viewer wants to know if there is some way to give small children some wisdom of Kabbalah. For instance, what do you tell them after they beat one another?
M. Laitman: They won’t understand; they won’t understand and, God forbid, do not limit them, because there is no coercion in spirituality. There is explanation and the explanation has to be as an example. If she can give an example that at her age, when she beats someone, then she is sorry for it and then she makes up with the other, she comes crying about it having happened. Maybe they can create a theater show or something like that; or some games that show that only together they can succeed.
Usually, all the games that we create, since they are egoistic, are about how you win over me. We roll the dice and being always in competition, one against the other. We have to build games that show that one cannot succeed without the others and cannot attain anything without the others. As Rav Zusha said, “You can learn something good from thieves. They know that they cannot succeed alone. They have a love of friends among them so they succeed in stealing because they have love among themselves.” Therefore he says that it is worthwhile to learn that quality from them.
So we need to develop such games for children where they can see that one without the other cannot succeed, that on his own he is weak, small and incapable. Like a football team, even though that’s a great competition, because the ego overpowers it, but nevertheless, it creates games that show that people are interdependent. This is how people get wiser and learn from the examples that they need a society and that the society can be good to them if they are good to it. This is what I would recommend.
And there is much more advice about how to educate children and how to propel them towards the good qualities that are demanded by the Torah, but always through an example, never through oppression.
Question: When a person starts studying Kabbalah he can change his fate. The moment a person starts studying Kabbalah, can he control only the path he walks, the path of suffering or the good path? Or can he change every detail in his predetermined fate? For instance, his marital relationship, his age of death and so on. What can we change in fate and what not?
M. Laitman: He can change everything.
Our soul descended from the world of Infinity to this world and it moves in this world in a path where everything is predetermined. We cannot do anything in this world beyond what was dictated to each and everyone. Within us there are Reshimot (reminiscences), like scientists today, especially in genetics and biology, discovered that everything has a gene. If I steal, that means there is a stealing gene; I have troubles because I have a gene responsible for it, and so on. Everything is run by genes, hormones—internal Reshimot—internal data, that evolve through life and therefore, I look the way I look.
We see it well with twins, where twins are born and then one is living on one end of the world and the other one lives on the other. After twenty or thirty years you look at them and they are very similar. They have the same names for their children, choose the same profession and even have similar homes when you enter them.
A person grows with everything he was born with; he only develops it. He opens these things and actualizes them, his inner Reshimot, the inner data that is already in him.
So where is free choice? Where are we, at all, human beings? Are we just machines that perform our inner instructions? The wisdom of Kabbalah says, “It is so.” In fact, you have to realize your inner instructions, but it depends on how you realize them. Either you use your desire in the right direction or the incorrect desire in the incorrect direction. Then it makes you go through life in a completely different way.
Let’s put it this way: the Midrash says it well. When the drop of seed is brought before the Creator, before it is put in the womb, it then asks the Creator, “What kind of person is this seed going to be? Will he be wise or stupid, successful or not, etc?” The only thing that isn’t written is whether he will be righteous or a villain because there he chooses the path that he takes in life. All the details are already written, we only realize them but we do it correctly or not. And that changes our whole perception of the world, completely.
Let’s put it this way. Where is this realization? It is only through the society. There is a very nice article by Baal HaSulam called Freedom of Choice. Where is our choice? The choice is only in the society that gives me values in this world and then I realize these values in spite of me.
Moderator: Let’s say I did everything correctly; I was in the good society, I advance with the good desire and I do everything with maximum perfection and totally positive. Does this make things that were predetermined, change? Let’s say that I was meant to get divorced, but if I follow the right spiritual path, I won’t divorce?
M. Laitman: You won’t.
Moderator: Do I change my fate in fact? For instance, let’s say I was supposed to die by a car accident at forty years old, so will I not die?
M. Laitman: Certainly. In our life you change everything. Otherwise, why do we live in this world? And what is this world for? As if it has no use. The use is that, eventually, we will learn from our life that we relate to our life incorrectly. We don’t use the right software in order to develop our life well. So, then we will feel these blows, crises today with drug abuse, terrorism, divorce, disappointments, depression, ecology.
In all of these plagues we are going through, we need to learn that there is the software in nature, the right program to operate man and we don’t know it. And that program is the wisdom of Kabbalah that teaches how to receive correctly everything that’s in front of us in order to not be damaged. And that changes our life from one end to the other.
But people who come to that realization have to be despaired from their previous life. Therefore, the world now enters a phase where it starts to identify its state as despair, a state where it doesn’t know how to manage.
Moderator: So, that new program, as I have lately learned in a course of video editing, is like editing a video; I edit the film of my life.
M. Laitman: On your own. And if you don’t learn to edit it yourself, then you edit it by your evil inclination, your ego that does it in a very bad way, like what we see today in this world.
Question: I once read in your newspaper’s article about spiritual geography, where you talked about places in Israel that are under the influence of spiritual forces and that every place is under a spiritual force specific for it. Unfortunately, you didn’t relate to the southern part of Israel at all, starting from the Dead Sea, that you said is the Malchut, until Eilat, including all the cities in between. Does it mean that the Negev and the southern part of Israel are not influenced by spiritual forces?
M. Laitman: Everything there is included in Malchut.
The Land of Israel, as it’s written in the book of the Ari, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of Ten Sefirot) and many Kabbalah books, matches spiritual forces—ten spiritual Sefirot. Keter (crown) is like the Hermon. After that we have Hochma, which is the Galil, and Bina is the Kineret (sea of Galilee). From Bina emerges Zeir Anpin or Tifferet, which comes through the Kineret through Jerusalem, which is in the middle there as Tifferet. And it goes down to Dead Sea, which is Malchut. Everything below there belongs to Malchut. That is, basically, the spiritual geography of the spiritual Land of Israel. That is the way they are called.
It is written in The Book of Zohar that Rabbi Shimon strolled in the markets of Tiberias or walked along the Kineret; it doesn’t mean that he hiked there. It means that he rose to the level and height of the spiritual Land of Israel and there he did all kinds of corrections.
And the truth is that the land of Israel isn’t just a small strip that I just talked about. But the land of Israel is called “that, which David conquered,” which in its larger dimensions includes Lebanon, Syria, and Trans Jordan, as well. They’re not exactly the land of Israel, but parts that belong to the land of Israel, like what we learn from the writings of the Ari, in the book Tree of Life. But that’s already more exact details, the parts of Sefirot where they are and in what worlds that I don’t wish to elaborate on here. But this is how it’s found.
Of course, in general, if we ask how the world is built, then it is built as a replica of a spiritual world. From the spiritual world the forces descend to this world, to this whole Universe. And against all the stars, planets and their gatherings into galaxies, there are spiritual forces that sustain them and work on them. And there are even more special spiritual forces that work on Earth. Because the Earth contains not only still, vegetative and animate, but also speaking level. And the speaking level also contains levels of still, that exist in the whole universe, but also vegetative, animate and speaking. Among the speaking level there is the still, vegetative, animate and speaking in the speaking species, the human species. In them there are the nations of the world and the people of Israel. And in the people of Israel there are parts, there are tribes and more and more. On these many details there are spiritual forces.
When you learn the wisdom of Kabbalah you study this entire map, the reason this world is built this way, is divided this way and why it has fallen into the crisis we are experiencing today. Why is it that every nation has this kind of history and why every nation is located in its place and suddenly they change their location? It’s because the spiritual forces work on them and arrange them differently each time. As it says, “A person doesn’t move a finger below without an angel from Above that declares it.”
Therefore, studying the wisdom of Kabbalah is, actually, studying the entire system of this world. How everything behaves, where it all comes from and where it is going. And that teaches a person a great wisdom in life.
Why do you need it? Before we didn’t need it, but we do today when we are in a great crisis by all the artificial systems we built. Those were anti-nature, anti-these Upper forces, which is why today we are in crisis. So, we start feeling that we have no choice. We have to know how to manage in this world; otherwise we are in danger of extinction. This is where the wisdom of Kabbalah steps in and says, “I can teach you.”
This is why today, after so many years, the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed. And this is what it brings. And if we will learn it, we will know how to manage our life both in this world and beyond this world in a wonderful way.
Question: My greatest ego is directed to the connection with my husband and children. Does it mean that I have to find the connection to the Creator through them and if so, then how?
M. Laitman: A person has to follow his inner inclination always. It says that, “There is no coercion in spirituality.” It means that if I have no inclination towards spirituality, towards something above this life, then I don’t. If there is, then I have to implement it as well. But there is no coercion; you cannot limit a person and not allow him to develop. Everyone is according to his desire, “Educate a boy according to his own path,” to what he is attracted to. Only give him a right way to implement his desire so he will not fail, so he will succeed in life with what he is according to his own inclinations.
Therefore, if this lady has a good and beautiful desire to manage at home, with her husband, her children and have a happy, joyous home, then she just needs to be taught that little wisdom of how to have peace in the family and correct education for the children. These things are important for her. And if she realizes herself this way, in the right way, then it turns out that she advances and moves closer to correct self-realization, towards Godhood.
Moderator: I want to elaborate on her question somewhat. Having asked you a question, indicates that she probably started some process of studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. And she understands that a person has to find connection with the Creator. And she, probably, wants that in a certain way. And she heard that there is something called ego that if you transcend it, you find connection with the Creator and that is where her question came from. “My greatest ego that I distinguish in myself is aimed at my husband and at my children.” How do you tie that discernment that she had to the spiritual development that she is interested in, as well? Otherwise, she wouldn’t ask you a question.
M. Laitman: She should be a good mother and a good wife in the framework of the family. And she cannot start using them in order to achieve spirituality.
She doesn’t need to change the order of her regular life with anything. If she wants to advance spiritually, then she can start listening to our lectures through the Internet, read our books and watch our videos. There is a lot of material for beginners, for men, women, for everyone and she shouldn’t start forcing that on her family members.
Moderator: It is not about forcing but about the inner relation. She is a human being and there are more human beings around her—her husband and her children. She distinguishes her ego that is aimed at them. Does she need to work internally towards them and be able to connect to the Creator this way?
M. Laitman: In a very, very cautious way. First of all, she has to learn from the books and then start realizing it after. She will understand when from the books. She can’t do it immediately the way she feels: to start limiting herself, to relate to them in a special way, coercing herself as against her ego, imagining that she does spiritual actions; it isn’t good. To study Kabbalah is first of all to study. And after a long span of study, months, if not years even, then people arrive at the inner performance and only then towards others. And for a woman, of course, it’s no different than for a man.
Question: I study Kabbalah every available moment. I have great yearning to get rid of my ego and acquire love and bestowal. But instead of the Creator sending me Lights of correction, He sends me more and more situations where He forces me to be egoistic; states, where I have no choice, for which I find no solutions. Why doesn’t the Creator help me to get rid of my egoism?
M. Laitman: He wants to help you, only He positions the ego as help corresponding to you. In order to really get rid of the ego, you first have to realize that this ego is very great. And it is so great that it disturbs you in everything in your life and stands in all of your ways, not just here and there. Speak to people on the street; you’ll see, as we saw the people we interviewed in this video clip. They said, “A miracle? A miracle is me.” The other one said, “What? A miracle? I only need Maccabi Tel Aviv to win; that’s the miracle, it is sufficient for me.” It means that a person has to, first, realize how he exists in evil, his life is bad and is evil because of his ego; precisely his ego corrupts himself and the whole world.
So, you will realize the Egypt in which you is, which chokes your throat, which is the control of Pharaoh that can’t let you breathe, even a bit of the real life. When a person reaches such discernments, he is able to exit ego, because he cannot stand it. And it’s not coincidental, a bit here and a bit there. But he really can’t bear it anymore.
Therefore, if we don’t understand it and we can’t justify it, we have to agree that the first part of studying Kabbalah is called the path of Torah, which is a hard path where the person starts discovering how bad he is and how he is immersed in evil. But he discovers it not because he doesn’t succeed in our life, but because the Upper Light—the spiritual Light, shines on him, the good Light.
And with respect to that Light, he feels himself as evil. So, he is opposite to the Upper Light—to God, to the Creator and then he sees how evil he is. And in that Light he is able to distinguish that it is not me that is evil. I’m divided into two parts: me is Moses and the people of Israel, and there is in me also Pharaoh that controls me. This is what he sees in that Light that shines on him. He starts dividing himself into two parts and then he sees how that Pharaoh embitters his life and he wants to exit him at any cost. And then he rips himself off of Pharaoh and escapes him with the power of the Light that reforms. And then he exits his Egypt.
But it’s not before you first realize that big great egoistic part of you. Except for that weak Moses part that is afraid of Pharaoh, even though the Creator tells him, “Come Moses with Me to Pharaoh;” otherwise, Moses would be terrified. And the people of Israel are also yelling at Moses, “What did you do to us? It has become worse since you went to Pharaoh. Don’t go to Pharaoh!” Everyone is so afraid of that ego, because it is that bad, but there is no choice. Yet the Light that shines, eventually, gives the person the ability through darkness, through fear when he is distracted, to escape his ego, his nature. This is what we’re expecting.
Question: I listen to the early morning lessons lately. I have connected to many of the things and feel the concepts and act according to them in my daily life and am very connected. When we begin to be filled with the general power there is a sense of inner loneliness, albeit we are filled. The more time passes and the more one feels connected to the balance of nature and all that surrounds us and it looks as though the people around are being filled, yet the inner feeling is that you are more and more with yourself.
My question is, does Rav, as a Kabbalist, feel this? Is it a process that really happens or is it just a fogged in period only to herald renewed filling?
M. Laitman: Yes, that is right. The first period is a time where a person starts to completely not understand this world, because everything is not according to what he learns. He even hates people; he moves away from people, everything looks strange to him. As he studies spiritual laws he sees how reasonable that is as against what is happening in this world. But, eventually, it helps him to correct himself. And then, he is in this entire world and understands people. He becomes good to the creatures, to the Creator and to himself. And that does come.