Why Are There So Many People?

Question from Facebook: Why does the Creator need so many people on planet Earth?

Answer: The number of people on the planet, including those who have died and those who are yet to be born, is strictly predetermined because it depends on the volume of the egoistic desire we must correct. And each of us: living, dead, or yet to be born, carries that desire.

Following this process, we are nearing the end of correction. The desires are becoming greater and that is why they need to be divided into a larger number of bodies. That is why the population increases.

Question: Does it mean that if there were fewer bodies, they would not have been able to bare the egoistic pressure?

Answer: Of course. It is all strictly regulated.

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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 11/23/17

How To Rise Above Time

Question: How can I rise above time?

Answer: In order to rise above time, you need to tell yourself that you do not have a next moment—everything is in this instant. You should live this way; there is only one instant. In each moment, you do not transfer yourself into the next one, but at this instant, you start and finish as if life is really ending.

Then you suddenly feel that this same moment begins to expand and there are an enormous amount of actions, thoughts, and deeds in it, but time disappears.

After all, time does not exist; it is our subjective feeling.

Question: What, then, is the future?

Answer: The future is completely unrelated to time. The future is what happens after the action I now perform. It is a different dimension in which the axis of time is nonexistent. After all, the axis of time assumes that regardless of whether or not I exist, whether or not I do something, time passes independently of me.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, however, says that this is not the case. It states that you must give up such an attitude to life and decide that only you create your own states. If you do not create them, then time does not move, nothing passes by itself from one moment to the next. If you did something in this instant, it is then called “a moment,” and each subsequent moment carries out in this manner.

We live in the world which, according to Kabbalah, is considered illusory and imaginary. The main lie we live in is that we exist in time.

Therefore, Einstein indeed made a revolution by declaring time a subjective concept, with nothing absolute about it that would happen with or without a person.

Time is a person’s inner sensation. If we rise above our egoism, then there is no time.

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From the Talk on the subject of “Time” 2/5/18

Past And Present

Question: Why can’t we communicate directly with the Creator? Why do we need an intermediary, like a teacher?

Answer: It is not an intermediary. It is your previous state. The fact is, creation is a shattered system, which starts to correct itself like links in a continuous chain from the least, almost undamaged elements, to the more complex.

An element that went before always passes all of its knowledge, all it has accumulated, all of its connections, to the next element. And because we are links in this chain, we are always connected to our teachers and then become teachers for the next generation.

Question: If the teacher is my previous state, then who is my future state?

Answer: The future state is you until you advance spiritually. And then it is your students, those who must continue the correction after you, moving through the levels of this broken system. They either find you during your lifetime or in some way connect with you spiritually after death.

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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 10/1/17

To Comprehend Universal Consciousness

Question: Do we have the opportunity to comprehend the universal mind and learn how to correctly perceive, respond, and build our behavior in society and society itself?

Answer: If we look only at our life and at our limited possibilities and properties, then the future “does not shine” for us.

We see what is happening in the world: egoism grows and people indulge in it, no one is going to limit it and cannot do so, and no one can manage the world intelligently.

If there are some great personalities who understand this, their influence on society is so small that the chance of coming to a world correction is almost zero.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks of very interesting and rather revolutionary things. It explains that there is nothing outside. All that I observe and everything that appears to me—are my internal properties. Absolutely everything is inside me. But I see this as inanimate, plant, animal, and human nature that is outside only to be able to feel more, because I cannot see this inside of me.

If I begin to know the outer world as my inner one, to expand my participation in it, and to relate to the world with good connection and love, then I begin to feel these qualities in myself. They come back to me from the outside.

I perceive them in myself and thus I understand that, in addition to my true consciousness, i.e., a large information field, there is nothing outside, and I exist with respect to it. And all other creatures, including humans, exist only in me as my internal properties.

When one starts to get insight into this, one understands that there are no contradictions here—you just see other people who have certain properties and seem to exist, like you, but in reality you are one in one whole mind.

According to Kabbalah, humanity will come to a state when they will be convinced that they are under threat of destruction. But people cannot destroy themselves because it contradicts the general development program. Thus, people will understand that they have to move into such a relationship that will give them the opportunity to begin to feel themselves existing at the next level —not only in the power of reception, but in the power of bestowal.

And then between these two planes—the lower (egoistic) and the higher (altruistic)—we can exist in such a way that egoism will be directed to the benefit of love and bestowal because we need to feel others and know what to give to them and how to be with them in the right communication.

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From KabTV “Together on the main thing. Alexander Zhdanov,” 11/24/17

Love On The Physical Level

Question: Can we see examples of true love anywhere so we can understand the possibilities of realizing it?

Answer: An example of true love is the love of a mother for her child.

This is love on the physical, beastly level, which can be seen in a limited form in animals and in a more extensive form in humans. If we were to cut off the connection between a mother and her child, there would not be any love between them.

Therefore, in our world, what we call love is simply an egoistic attitude toward a source of pleasure. It is nothing more than this. If I love you, then I receive pleasure from you.

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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

Who Will Manage The Future Society?

 

Question: In the year 2018 will there be less stupidity in the world? Or vice versa, the more there is, the closer we will come to discovering it is foolishness?

Answer: Both. Two opposites are necessary. On one hand, there will be much more stupidity, as we now see in politics. On the other hand, there will be many people who understand that this is stupidity, insignificant, and dirt.

This will change the general state of nature, the network of forces we are in. We don’t have any need for rulers and there is nothing to expect from them, nor from the intellectual and bourgeois elites who seem to hold the world in their hands.

The desire of the masses to change the situation and unite with each other correctly will gradually lead to a change in everything that nobody can oppose.

Question: Baal HaSulam said that first it is necessary to educate the entire generation, and then they will choose the right leader. How, in your opinion, should the system of government of the future be?

Answer: It is only through the method of correcting the person, through educating the person, that people whose foremost concern is society’s welfare will gradually make their way into governance.

Question: But will one person rule, like kings in the past, or will it be a society?

Answer: I think that it will be a community, but very small, a kind of Sanhedrin as was established in ancient times. It included 71 people who managed the spiritual life. I don’t think you need any more than that.

Each one of them will take responsibility for one system or another of the union: One will be responsible for the system of children, a second for the system of women, a third for the field of science, and so forth. They will solve all questions collectively.

They will be chosen by the overwhelming opinion of the masses who will feel and “smell” who these people are that can manage them. Baal HaSulam writes about this at the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar.

Question: Can you tell when this will happen?

Answer: No. But it seems that during the course of the next two or three years humanity will understand that all the systems must be replaced; otherwise, we will reach a dead end.

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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/24/17

 

Evaluating People According To Spiritual Characteristics

Question: Why do the intellectuals of society, the leaders of the generation, feel the greatest hatred towards people?

Answer: It’s because they are also uncorrected egoists. Those who reach high levels in social, political, economic, and even scientific fields, are people with very great one-sided egoism. It is natural that they perceive everyone else as their potential competitors and suspect that someone will harm them.

It is impossible to complain about people who don’t learn the wisdom of Kabbalah, with the same demands that one would make to Kabbalists. Many times I have heard: “He is a great actor!” but in regard to his spiritual characteristics, he can be the worst and lowest person. We are mistaken if we immediately stick a label of perfection on him.

Spiritual qualities are in love for others, and everything connected with love for others.

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The Building Blocks Of Light And Darkness

It is an art to be able to handle the revelation of darkness as it gets stronger and stronger. From experience, a person understands that darkness comes only in order to point him in the correct direction.

He loves the darkness, appreciates it, and tries to experience it in perfection. The darkness is only felt in his egoism, while he is above it and can build the force of bestowal above the darkness, revealing the Light in it.

It is a multi-layered state, like a sandwich. The darkness is revealed at the bottom. Then comes the right attitude to it—understanding that it is here to help you, that it is the revelation of a new degree—and then you have to rise above it.

At first, I get scared (“You hid Your face, and I got frightened”) and try to flee the danger and evil that is revealed in the darkness. But then I stop myself, realizing that the darkness is here to help me and that I should not curse it. Just the opposite, it draws me closer to the Creator, like a frightened child who clings to his mother more tightly. The same is true for me! Therefore, I see that the darkness is help from above.

I love this darkness and even want to intensify it, to draw it closer. I begin to work with it intentionally, actively, with full understanding. My life becomes constructive: Light and darkness become the two forces, the two lines, which let me progress. That is how I turn darkness into help. I await the darkness, searching for more ways to cling to the Creator.

At first, I still fear darkness because it brings unpleasant feelings with it: fears, disturbances, uncertainty. But gradually, I begin to understand how helpful the darkness is because the advantage of the Light is known only from darkness. So, Light and darkness become my building blocks.

The darkness becomes even more important than the Light because specifically out of the darkness I can reveal just how much I want to give pleasure to the Creator. My desire for pleasure is not inspired by darkness, while the desire to bestow is very much inspired by it. Therefore, the Adam (human) inside me rejoices in the darkness and turns it into Light.

Light does not come to a person. The person changes inside and therefore transforms his opinion on what Light and darkness are. That is how he gradually reveals that creation always existed in a perfect state and that he is the one who is always changing, understanding more and more that there is no evil in the king’s palace and no darkness.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/18/18, Lesson on the Topic: “From Obstructions to Ascents”

Transmission Of Spiritual Information

 

Question: Is it correct to say that the Creator teaches a student through the teacher?

Answer: Of course. It happened this way starting with the first Kabbalist Adam through the series of Kabbalists described in the Torah: Noah and all his sons, who really are not his sons, but his disciples, up to Abraham.

And further, from Abraham through other Kabbalists: Isaac, Jacob, etc., who are called his children and grandchildren. But, in Kabbalah, family relationships mean souls related through the transmission of spiritual information.

When it is written in the Torah that someone has given birth to someone, it refers to spiritual objects (Partzufim) that give birth to each other, multiply, and develop.

Question: So, Issac is not Abraham’s son, but his disciple?

Answer: Of course. He could have had 20 wives and 100 children, but so what? It is the disciples who are described in the Torah.

Question: When it says “Abraham’s family,” what does the term “family” mean?

Answer: It is a spiritual state: Abraham’s desire, called Sarah, from which the soul called Isaac, the left line, was born.

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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/1/17

Thoughts on the Perception of Reality