Brain Research

Comment: At Tel Aviv University conducted a study, which conclude that there are no difference between the structure of the brains of men and women.

Answer: Certainly, because the brain is a machine, a computer.

There are no differences in the structure of the male and female brains. Everything depends on desire, or as they say, on the heart. But the heart is just a motor, a pump. A person’s desire is not found in any physical volume.

There is no initiator of desire within our body, it is found outside of us, and the body is its receiver that absorbs the desire, begins to process it, and reacts to it in a particular way. So men receive particular types of desires and women other types, and in this manner their brains are activated. But in themselves, their brains have no differences.

Desires come from a network that links between us, but we don’t feel it. And all of our actions go there: the mental, physical, moral, ethical, whatever. All of our reactions on all levels go back to this network.

I receive stimuli from this network, react to them, and these reactions go back into the network. The problem is learning how to accept and grasp the signals that reach us emotionally, react to them properly, and transmit them back correctly.

If I do this, I feel this network as a new world, the upper world is revealed to me. Thewisdom of Kabbalah speaks precisely about how to react to this system correctly, use it, and manage it. The cybernetics of the future is the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/10/15

Zigzags Along The Spiritual Path

The Torah, “Numbers,” 21:4 – 21:6: They journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea to circle the land of Edom, and the people became disheartened because of the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in this desert, for there is no bread and no water, and we are disgusted with this rotten bread.” The Lord sent against the people the venomous snakes, and they bit the people and many people of Israel died.

Once again we see the next correction of the initial egoistic desires. Some of them are already corrected, let’s say, on the levels of the root phase and levels one and two, while the deeper egoistic levels are corrected now.

Question: Why do we need these turning points? It seems that everything is fine and suddenly the people come complaining again and again!

Answer: The correction is fulfilled according to the same rules as the slalom: you follow a course to an end point, but constantly zigzagging, you can’t go directly. When an athlete skis down the mountain he has to zigzag, otherwise he would fly down the mountain. It is the same when he climbs the mountain. This is the reason that everything we have seen now repeats over and over again but on a different level. Moreover, if before it seemed that we were performing good deeds and thus advancing, now we discover that we had performed bad deeds and must correct them.

For example, a person who studied Kabbalah wrote books about it. No matter how you look at it, he is not corrected yet and it is his ego speaking in him. I remember the pains I felt when I wrote and rewrote my first books over and over again. You cannot imagine how it raises a person, ignites him and makes him feel satisfied expecting this bestowal and this receiving. On the one hand, he performs some work, but when he raises himself he needs to correct everything afterward. This means that you ascend upward; that is, you ascend but you will have to correct these zigzags!

This is life. You cannot tell a person that it would be better if he did nothing. This prolongs the path. Looking at it from the outside, you see that it’s fate; there’s no getting around it: a person performs his intended path, which has a starting and ending point. He can not avoid such zigzags.

In this area our ego grows, and then we have to correct it by making great efforts. This is great additional work we spend years on. But at the same time we are expanding its correction, including all that we do in our egoism, which expands it.

It is actually by such zigzags that the correction is carried out.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/1/15

My Favorite Job – Vocation Or Mission?

Question: I have found my destiny exclusively in my work, which I really love. Tell me, am I going in the right direction? Could it be that I have found my calling but have lost my purpose?

Answer: Indeed, finding interesting work, really engaging and dissolving into it is a great joy. You have found your calling. In the past I also tried to find a job I loved that was appealing and satisfying, but I realized that it was meaningless. I remember how a scholar advised me to take a certain period in history like the Thirty Years’ War, for example, and delve into it and study it in depth.

– And then what?

– Then you will be an expert on the Thirty Years’ War if you dedicate your whole life to it.

As a big egoist, I thought it wasn’t worth spending my life on the Thirty Years’ War that occurred 400 years ago. The price seemed too high. Life goes by and a person develops and suddenly begins to realize that he has been engaging in something that is meaningless. Instead of the satisfaction and the enthusiasm a person felt before: “How interesting and what a success!”,  he suddenly feels emptiness, disappointment, and lack of energy, and this is terrible. Where have all the years gone? And for what? What should I look for now? He doesn’t have the same strength, desires, or possibilities as before. It turns out that a person shouldn’t engage too much in corporeal pleasures in this life, but rather choose what seems to be the greatest and the most important lasting value that is unchanging and above our lives.

Above our lives can only be eternity. This eternity is what we need to find and not waste time on trifles.

The question arises: Do I go for or not? If I agree, there can be no obstacles, only the attainment of eternity! This has to be a person’s standard since otherwise he lowers himself to the animal level.

Therefore, we need to engage in clarifying the level on which we attain eternity. It isn’t just eternity since there is no point existing on a corporeal level eternally. We don’t need such eternity. You can approach anyone on the street and ask whether he would like to live in this world forever. I doubt whether anyone would agree. It is only the beastly fear of death that forces us to live, but basically it is absolutely meaningless. This is the reason that everyone has to find out their ultimate purpose.

Question: But at the same time a person should have a profession?

Answer: Everyone should have a job so that he will be able to provide for himself normally and be useful, to engage in a job that he likes and not feel that he is wasting his time in vain. But at the same time, he has to make sure that every minute of his life is a small step toward the great goal, toward the attainment of eternity and perfection.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

“Democracy Has Departed The West”

Opinion (Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration): “As far as I can tell, not only has democracy departed the Western world, but also compassion, empathy for others, morality, integrity, respect for truth, justice, faithfulness, and self-respect. Western civilization has become a hollow shell. There is nothing left but greed and coercion and the threat of coercion. …

“The Western World is on its last legs. Unemployment is horrendous for European and American youth—primarily for the educated. …

“The Wall Street Mentality—unlimited Greed—has taken over American life, and this greed has been exported to Europe, which had achieved a sharing relationship between labor and capital. Today Europe, like the US, is an opportunity wasteland for the young. Greece has been sacrificed for the private bankers, and Italy, Spain, and Portugal are waiting in the wings. In the place of independent European countries, a fascist centralized authority is rising.”

My Comment: Everything is going according to the Creator’s plan—to the recognition of the evil of our nature until we reach the sole desire the get rid of it, as the source of all evil, like a snake shedding its skin. The speed and ease of reaching this freedom depend only on our recognition that the egoism is the only evil component of humanity. This is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah is meant for, and through its method we can speed up the recognition of evil, of the attributes of receiving and hate, break free from them, and acquire the good, the attribute of love and bestowal.
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The Fire Of Unity Will Illuminate Our Lives

Question: What is the Kabbalistic meaning of the Hanukkah holiday?

Answer: Hanukkah is a holiday of Light. We celebrate a state where the Light enters our lives, illuminates them, warms and unites us. All that is required from us is to be better towards each other, not to quarrel and bicker.

Comment: This reminds me of the instructions my mother gave me when I was a child.

Answer: What can you do if you haven’t listened to these words until today?! This is the discovery of our egoistic evil inclination. During the Hanukkah holiday we celebrate the coming of the Light, which reigns in our ego and makes it possible to hear that we must connect and unite and in this way expel the darkness.

Darkness is our separation, the conflicts, arguments, competitiveness, and the desire to exploit and dominate others. And we want to be good friends who rejoice in each others’ successes; we share in everything: the general joy as if we belong to a single body. If we take at least the tiniest step in this direction, we will see how a small lamp, the smallest jar of oil, will kindle a strong, warm and good fire that illuminates all our lives.

Question: How is it possible to explain the miracle of that one jar of oil that burned for eight days to people who don’t believe in miracles?

Answer: A miracle is a force, an action of a law of nature that in the meantime is unknown to us. So we perceive this force as a miracle. But in fact, it exists in nature and there are no miracles.

For us it seems like a miracle that we are approaching a natural Light that is revealed from above; it is the force of the mind, the force of the Light and the life that we acquire ourselves thanks to our unity. In this way we eliminate all the enemies that are within us that don’t let us unite. This is the war of the Maccabees on behalf of our unity. If we succeed in expelling the “Hellenists” (Greeks), our individual egoistic desires found among us, and connect, then we discover the Light in our lives. And the Hanukkah holiday is dedicated to this.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 12/6/15

Cancer As A Metaphor

From the News (psyfactor.org): “Human cancers are among the most severe pathology. And the severity of this depends not only on the degree of aggressiveness of the disease, but also the ability to successfully overcome the immunological barriers of the healthy body. Immunity can withstand the introduction and breeding of alien organisms (viruses, bacteria, single and multicellular organisms) because alien genotypes are easily recognized and the body destroys the invading aliens with antibodies.

“A cancerous cell has the same genotype as the healthy cells and at first the body practically does not react to cancer cells. The immune response is virtually absent, no rejection occurs as degeneration of the cancer cell is perceived as their own. But it is nonetheless different from normal cells:

1. Cancer cells lose their ability to specialization,… or the cells can no longer perform their normal functions.
2. At the same time, the cancer cells proliferate much more rapidly than healthy cells.
3. Cancer cells exposed to active migration through the lymphatic vessels. Thus, ahead of healthy cells in the rate of reproduction, they gradually form a tumor. Tumor cells do not perform functions of the body. The migration of cancer cells allows forming a tumor and other organs. With the active reproduction are, in turn, the conditions under which the cells rapidly die. The tumor breaks. The body is destroyed from within. The death of the biological system is imminent.

“The principles of construction and functioning of a nation is almost identical to any biological creation. The country as a living organism, is an evolutionarily formed border, implemented by the mutual exchange of products, information. But for all the progressive activity, the essential and vital factor is the preservation of its identity, i.e., territorial and, importantly, the functional integrity of the country. Without the ‘defense (immune) system,’ protection of a country is unsustainable.

” …humanism can be justified only to a certain extent – if humanity does not go beyond what is permitted, does not destroy the integrity of the current evolutionary system. Exaggerated, unjustified humanism, creates conditions that destroy the basic foundations of the State, should be qualified as a false ‘humanism’ unacceptable under any circumstances and a crime.

“Migration, as such, is estimated to be justified as an evolutionary fluctuation of nature. But when a small refreshing wave turns into a tsunami – a catastrophic situation. … Migrants without encountering a stiff ‘immune response’ are massively introduced into a system alien to them. The vast majority of migrants, as well as cancer cells, do not participate in the public system. Like cancer cells, they consume the products of the state. Like cancer cells, they multiply more actively. Like cancer cells, they also actively migrate to other regions. And finally, like cancer cells, they are fighting for their existence. Struggling for their existence, as individual evolutionarily developed populations with a special mentality, they strongly oppose integration.

“Being in an alien atmosphere,… they will not stop the struggle for the re-establishment of their native culture in the new territories. Recovery from cancer possible. But, unfortunately, only in the early stages. Leaders should stop immigration and deport the immigrants who have arrived, cutting out the tumor, continue therapy, and continue help for the undeveloped nations.

“Wishing good, we are not following the biological laws, often causing irreparable harm.”

My Comment: All systems: still, vegetative, animate, social, etc. are arranged according to one general rule, otherwise they cannot survive. So this makes it possible for us to test them on the basis of their similarity to each other.

When the European Union absorbs immigrants from opposite backgrounds, it doesn’t understand that even if the immigrants are friendly, they cannot get used to life in Europe; they will surely remain in their mentalities, will be opposed to anything that is alien, and will try to arrange the environment that is under their control. Here there is a program of European development…
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Infinite Pleasure Instead Of Black Friday

Question: I waited so long for Black Friday to buy bicycles for myself. I finally bought them, and all of the desire for them disappeared for me. Why does this happen?

Answer: That is the way it always happens. If you are attracted to something that you don’t have, you have a desire for it and a desire to enjoy it. So you imagine your pleasure according to the lack and the unsatisfied desire, and therefore feel tit doubly.

When you get what you were seeking, the pleasure enters, it fills the desire, and you no longer want it, so that with the passing of the day or in a few hours the desire completely disappears. It is just like when you begin to eat some wonderfully delicious special dish that you really wanted to enjoy, but all of the pleasure ends.

The problem in our world is that when we begin to receive pleasure within the desire and the desire is fulfilled, just like when food fills up the stomach, we suddenly discover that the pleasure comes to an end. That is how everything ends, even life.

The question can be asked: Is it possible to get pleasure that will be endless and constantly increase instead of diminishing? Is it possible to do this so that the more that I receive, the more I enjoy, with no end? Then our lives would become unlimited, infinite, and eternal. Basically, this is the secret of eternal life. It depends only on how we use our desire.

The only question is how to make sure that the more I receive, the more I will want, and that this will never end. Is this possible?

The wisdom of Kabbalah is called “Kabbalah” (Reception) because this is a wisdom of how to receive; it talks about how to receive, how to fill myself in an unlimited and infinite manner.

If we connect among us—if the pleasure passes through me, and I transmit it to you, and you to another, and he to someone else and so on, and this flow constantly happens between us—then the pleasure never stops, and no one becomes full.

On the contrary, the pleasures that pass through everyone are constantly renewed, and each one of us begins to feel the pleasure that comes back to him from everyone, thus he gets pleasure from everyone. It follows that we have an infinite growth of pleasure that is infinite in time, which is called our attainment of the world to come, an eternal and perfect life.

That is what happens if we know how to us the reception of pleasure correctly, and this wisdom is called Kabbalah.

Question: Who begins to give first? Do I, or should I wait until they give to me, and then I give?

Answer: No, you come to a small group where, with you, they learn how you can connect so that the pleasure will pass from one to another, and we create a circular stream of energy between us that feels like we are rising in a flying saucer, above our substance, above all of this that is temporary, limited in movement, space, and enjoyment. And then you go into another dimension, away from all of the limitations of this world.
Come and try it!
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 11/29/15

Caring About The Body And The Soul

Question: People often say that a person,who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and realizes that he is about to die in a few months begins to think about the meaning of life. Can we say that death motivates a person to clarify the meaning of life?

Answer: Of course. This is why we don’t really understand death but paradoxically feel it a long time before it arrives, a feeling that animals don’t have. They have a premonition of death that is more apparent than in humans, but it is closer to the actual state of death.

If it weren’t for death, people would behave quite differently. In the corporeal world, all calculations are through death. But this is actually a bad thing because a person is attached to his animal body.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, on the other hand, allows us to ascend above our body and to calculate things independently. The moment we exit it and enter the eternal flow of energy, information, and Light, we immediately cease to take the body into account.

In other words, as long as we are alive we have to take care of the body, because we perform certain corrections in this life through it, but taking care of it, practically, should be just that.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 111/15

There Is No Place For Evil Forces In Nature

Question: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, is there a Satan?

Answer: No evil forces exist in nature, except for ourselves. No Satan (adversary), no angels and no demons exist. In Kabbalah, these terms refer to egoistic forces, no more than this.

Everything depends only on the person because people include the entire world within themselves, and if they rise to the level of the completion of correction, then no one can harm them.

However, people who don’t correctly understand the Kabbalistic sources begin to invent demons, vampires, and other evil spirits. Much time is needed to cleanse our minds of fantasies, ideas, and thoughts like these. All of these are egoistic forces within us that we must correct.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/11/15

In The Matrix Of Worlds

We exist in a completely deterministic system, tied from end to end with billions of nodes, and it is not in our power to change it.We only have the purely subjective possibility of changing its influence on us in that we experience its influence within us according to our internal state.

The science of Kabbalah says  that:

• Either we go with the flow of this system, which obliges us to be changed according to it; it forces us to bring ourselves into balance with it.

But this equilibrium is attained through very serious problems, continuous suffering that comes to all of humanity and to all of nature. And this is not only on the face of the Earth (volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes) but also in the universe (explosions on stars and other cosmic dramas).

• Or we strive to understand this system, what it requires from us, according to what law it evolves, and how we can match it so that we put ourselves into a state of homeostasis, balance, and harmony with it.

In this general system, which includes all of creation, space, our planet Earth with its nature and ecology and ourselves, is called the upper world, and we are within it.

The science of Kabbalah explains where we are and in what manner we can, from our free will, independently, with the joy of discovery and attainment, aspire to balance and accommodation with this external system all the time.

Through constant pursuit of the point of balance with the general system, when we go with it in unison, we begin to perceive its development, its forces, its tendencies, the intelligence that is behind this entire plan and its inner power.
There we feel intense love and care for us.

As we begin to be involved with this vast wisdom, we see that it includes all that a person feels and much more.

All this is given so that a person can become aware of his desires and thoughts; he goes out of himself and becomes an integral particle of the whole system; that is, he attains it completely and simultaneously is in at as one small manageable part.

Question: What prevents us from hearing this call or feeling this thought?

Answer: In order to understand the unity and integrality of the system, we were created disconnected and opposite to each other. This is because if we were created within this system, with its same characteristics, we would be inanimate, like it.

And in order to raise us from the inanimate level to the highest level, meaning to the thought of creation, we need to be completely opposite to this system, starting from our initial and basic state so that nothing disappears from us. We remain separate and opposite to the absolute, and are joined together above this, to attain a similarity to Him.

So when a person begins to grow spiritually, he is dual, meaning composed internally of two opposing systems. One of them is completely opposite to the system of management and the second is some partial resemblance to it that he himself creates within himself.

This was done intentionally by nature, so that from our point of view, we could “give birth to ourselves” as spiritually sensitive and begin spiritual attainment, ascending the levels of the upper worlds. The levels of the upper worlds are levels of resemblance to the upper force.

Question: Why would a person not immediately be placed within this harmonious state?

Answer: If he were placed him in such a state, he would have remained insensitive, like a stone in a field; he would lie there and not feel anything other than his minimal state.

But there are people who yearn to include the whole world within them, to understand, to perceive, to connect with the entire complete system. A person must have a desire like this: he needs to love and to tolerate, to be found with two opposing characteristics and grow according to the distance between them.

He suffers from not attaining fulfillment of his desires, whereas these are determined for him from above. A new desire is born within him every moment; this is called the awakening of Reshimot (remembrances). Reshimot [from the word, “Roshem” (impression), “Rishum” (recording)] are records of the next states. And the person constantly yearns for what is ahead with the goal of realizing them. This is his role.

And here he has a choice: either he throws everything into the hands of fate, and then he is pushed forward through all kinds of means, or he tries to attain his next state through his research and rising above himself. And this summarizes our lives: either a person goes with the flow or he tries to paddle on his own.

The difference between movement without organization and moving on your own is that you move with your own forces, you go with the force of the Creator. And in movement without organization, the nature of the inanimate rules you and you remain spiritually inanimate.

But to advance independently, against the nature of the inanimate, you need to receive His characteristics from the upper force, from the Creator. He makes it possible for you to advance forward, for this is the system of your relationship with the Creator. You go out to another level, and are not left alone in a boat in the middle of the turbulent river of life, but rise up to Him and are found with Him, above the stars.
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From the conversation 11/19/14

Who Will Lead The Nation To The Land Of Israel?

The Torah, “Numbers,” 20:12: The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Since you did not have faith in Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly to the Land which I have given them.”

Moshe cannot lead and bring the nation to the land of Israel because he is more connected to the people than to the Creator, meaning that the connection between Malchut and Bina was premature. It only appears at the next level, at the level of Joshua, who lead and brought the people to this land after he completed the preparation, which included all kinds of small corrections, including Moshe and Aaron.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/15

Attainment That Brings Happiness

Question: Using your personal life as an example, can you tell about some practical results that come from studying Kabbalah?

Answer: I can tell you one thing: a person who studiesKabbalah lives! Every day is new for him! He constantly attains and gives something new to the world.

After all, this wisdom reveals all kinds of so-called secret sources, laws, and interconnections within the world. Furthermore, we are created in such a way that only this knowledge can fulfill us.

Nothing else will ever satisfy us completely, calm us down, balance us, or make us happy! We can suppress ourselves with drugs, work, family, etc. But we will not come to the state that fulfills our soul, i.e., the desire aspiring to the eternal existence. This is only possible if you study Kabbalah, to comprehend the world.

See for yourself. It is worth spending some time on it. After that you will see that everything else will appear to be very small and insignificant.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

The Level of Aaron Has Completed Its Mission

Question: What does it mean that a person has completed his mission and reached the level of Aaron?

Answer: We all depend on one another in the spiritual world and are connected into one system, but each of us also carries his own unique element that no one else has. It is called after him, and it is his personal investment in the general system.

He must manage the whole system from the root of his soul, invest in it, and assist it. His investment in the system, which is what he needs to put into it together with all the other souls, is called his soul. This is the reason that everyone is very important. On the one hand, everyone has one single soul, and on the other hand, everyone has his own personal soul.

There is, for example, a Reshimo (Reminiscence) in me called the point in the heartthat I must fulfill in order to participate properly in the system of man with all of the other souls. It is actually my participation in it that is called my self. Each of us must fulfill that.

All of the billions of parts of the general soul are inside of me, but the main ones are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David. They are the ten main Sefirot of the soul, and all of its other parts are dressed on them, like clusters.

By completing his system, Aaron detaches himself, retreats and joins his forefathers. Now his children continue his spiritual work.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/1/15

The Sufferings Are Different

Question: Why did the Creator create suffering and death? Couldn’t He have created man with an eternal built-in attribute of altruism?

Answer: Then a person would be an eternal beast, which we call an angel. In order to attain the upper level by himself, a person has to suffer.

Question: Does that mean that a person cannot ask himself the question about themeaning of life without suffering?

Answer: No, he cannot. But the suffering can be different. There may be pangs of love. As the saying goes,”I have loved and suffered,” for example, I have loved money and suffered from the lack of it.

Here, on the other hand, you love comprehension, attaining eternity, perfection, and you want it to be absolute and objective. It isn’t as if you swallow some drug and feel good, but you have developed these feelings internally, these vessels by which you find out that you are really in a state of eternity and perfection.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

Living Above Time

Question: How should we behave correctly along the path of correction and how is the correction expressed in the corporeal world?

Answer: The search comes down to the fact that a person looks for a way to discover eternal life: either by changing the world or by changing himself.

According to Kabbalah, the two options, which seem different at first glance, merge into one as by changing the world you change yourself, and by changing yourself you change the world. It is the same thing.

When you change yourself, you enter a level where you begin to perceive the world as eternal and whole. Eventually you attain a perfect eternal life. It is destined for us while still on the level of this world, and then you can quietly and peacefully detach yourself from your corporeal body that is on the animal level.

Question: Does this means that a man can live forever?

Answer: I don’t know what you mean by “man.”

A person’s inner self exists forever, beyond time. There isn’t really the concept of “forever” in the spiritual world because this is also a way of determining time, and when you write “t=”, it is simply infinity. This is the reason that we speak about life above time.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

Why Doesn’t Anything Satisfy Me?

Question: Why haven’t I ever had the feeling of complete satisfaction in my life?

Answer: People cannot experience complete satisfaction in this world because as soon as we are filled with something, the feeling starts to fade away and we lose it. Therefore a person never has the feeling that he has attained what he desires and that he doesn’t need anything else. The moment he is filled, the feeling of pleasure immediately disappears. And so it always is in our world.

We were created this way in order to develop more and more new desires so that eventually we will understand that it is impossible to satisfy them. Then a person reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah, which teaches him how to be truly satisfied and tells him how to actually develop enormous, infinite desires and to fill them with perfect, eternal pleasure.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/11/15

Don’t Avoid Your True Self-Fulfillment

Question: If a person at work and involved in daily life, does that mean that he draws away from what is really important, from the attainment of the spiritual world?

Answer: Of course, he sinks into work and life.

If he thinks, for example, that life is raising his children, then where will these children extract the meaning of life from? From their upbringing. So we will continue to live as animals from one generation to the next.

We may think that the meaning of life is our work. It is even worse if we find a certain occupation and delve into it until we retire. Of course it absorbs, fills, and satisfies a person.

This is especially true when one engages in scientific research. I know this personally. But it obscures the most important question of life; it is as if a person draws a curtain over his eyes.

Question: Should we envy a person who is satisfied with his life and believes that life is just about living?

Answer: No, of course we shouldn’t envy him! It is as if he simply swallows a drug called self-satisfaction and seems to lower his head and draw away from true self-fulfillment. This is how fate plays with a person, testing him.

I have often tried to set such goals for myself, but I would immediately reconsider and draw away from them.

Question: What if you were offered a Nobel Prize?

Answer: Maybe once this was attractive, but that was really a long time ago. I am sure that very quickly a person feels disappointment after receiving this prize.

A Nobel Prize is more about respect and prestige than money, which means that you place the opinion of the society above your own life and work so you are respected.

Is this what you are living for? In a few years neither you nor society will exist and everything will be meaningless.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

Start A New Life!

Question: Why do we want to exploit each other and are willing to trample on others just so it will be better for us?

Answer: Because otherwise we don’t feel that we use the world. Only through exploiting others can we succeed; this is our egoistic nature.

To succeed otherwise, where we help others, is the nature of the upper world, a higher level, the upper dimension. We are not able to do this because we act only within our evil nature, from egoistic desire. As it is written: “I created the Evil Inclination”; this is what is in us.

Question: All my life I was taught that we all use each other, and so it is worthwhile to learn to behave like this. And now you ask me to completely over turn all my prior education. How can I manage to do this if this is completely illogical?

Answer: It is not illogical, but try to learn without changing anything in your life. Just study! And suddenly you will discover that you open a door to a whole new world that doesn’t work according to the principle of reception, but according to the law ofbestowal.

Then you suddenly reveal unlimited power and possibilities. After all, by exploiting others a person is always limited because each wants to exploit the others. But when we work with everyone in mutual bestowal, we are unlimited.

And then we go out into space called Olam Ein Sof, the world of infinity, a perfect and eternal world, because nobody steals and nobody takes from the other, but on the contrary, complements the deficiencies of others.

This is an absolutely different form than material existence; it is spiritual material. This is called spiritual, but in fact this is our substance and we can attain this, then life is revealed in front of us in its perfection.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 11/18/15

A Great Miracle Happened Here

Question: Why is it a custom to spin a dreidel on Hanukkah with the acronym of the Hebrew letters of the words “a great miracle happened here” on it, and see on which letter it will fall?

Answer: The spinning dreidel is our life. We spin and spin our life and eventually realize that it is only when we all spin ourselves together around one common axis that we will reach our fulfillment and our goal.

Question: The Israeli nation is terribly divided today. Around which axis would you recommend that we all spin: the right wing, the left wing, the religious, or the non-religious?

Answer: It is said, “love will cover all the sins,” which refers to the division between us and the hatred and rejection we feel toward one another. Differences will remain and it is actually above them that we all connect and unite. We spin around this unity, and this is our common axis.

Let’s hope that we, the people living in Israel, will set an example of unity to Jews abroad and even to the Jews in the US who are starting to draw away from Israel. We will draw them all to us by our unity.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 12/6/15

Hanukkah 2015: An Existential Struggle

Comment: During the Hanukkah candle lighting ceremony at the Western Wall, the prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Israel is a torch in the darkness. Great darkness surrounds us and here in Jerusalem, in the nation of Israel, we lift the miracle of the independence of humanity, in honor of humanity, for the right of the people of Israel to live freely in its land and in its city, the same city that the Maccabees liberated. This struggle continues even in our generation. In each and every generation they have risen up to eliminate us and in each and every generation the Holy One, Blessed be He, saved us from their hands, provided that we hold onto the banner and torch, and even the sword of Israel.”

My Comment: Hanukkah is a battle of the supporters of the union of the Jewish people as an ideology and as the only means of our salvation. Specifically through unity, the higher power is awakened in us, and Abraham created the Jewish people precisely through unity in ancient Babylon, so our existence depends on our unity. But when we separate, we scatter, and we have already seen this for 2,000 years, especially in our time. Benjamin Netanyahu can claim anything that he wants, but to this very day, in Israel there is no nation and no people. According to the natural and historical definition, the people and the nation can exist only when we are united by a single ideology, a single goal, an understanding of our existence and its significance.

And so the miracle of Hanukkah happened. That is what happened in history and this is what must happen now, but it isn’t happening because we are not united.

We need to understand why we are conducting endless wars with shield and sword in hand instead of holding a seven-branched Menorah in our hand and bringing it to the world. The Menorah symbolizes the unity of the people according to the ideology of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). But we don’t have this unity.

We don’t have such a policy; there is no ideology like this and there is no education of the people like this that will place the goal of providing education of the method of union. It doesn’t exist anywhere: not a in private life or in society.

Jews from different countries with different world views coexist in Israel, and in no way do they consider themselves s a single, united people. They can say, “We are one people,” but their feeling comes from the fact they are surrounded by enemies who force them to defend themselves. And in this state of self-defense, they feel themselves as a people. It is specifically the enemy that unites them and not an inner yearning for each other. So it is thanks to our enemies who press us that we still exist; without them there would not have been a Jewish people for quite some time. If they were to stop applying pressure from the outside, we would cease to exist as a people.

This is a paradox! For, on the other hand, it would seem that if pressure is applied, then everyone would flee in all directions. No! Here they will not flee. Here, like sheep, they huddle together to escape the wolves.

But is this the only way we can exist as one people and still convey the ideology of our unity to the entire world, which is so needed now?

Therefore, we should not just have a shield and sword but also the awareness that we are fighting for the sake of unity. Then the shield and sword will become the menorahof Hanukkah.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/8/15

The Simple Formula Of The Miracle Of Hanukkah

Question: How can it be that a small jar of oil enough for one day was enough to last for eight days? After all, didn’t you say there are no miracles?

Answer: It was not a miracle, because when we move to the next level, other laws operate there. There it is possible for one small jar of oil to burn for eight days. We see that even in our world, as we develop, we learn to extract energy from sources we previously were unable to use, or we use known sources more efficiently, with a new quality. Who would have thought that a kilogram of material, for example Uranium, could be more energy efficient than a mountain of coal?

Question: So what is the secret here? How can one small jar of oil be made to burn for eight days?

Answer: This happens thanks to our connection. We add our integral union to this combustion energy, instead of the energy of one person.

By uniting, we rise from our closed, mortal world bounded by three coordinates—time, motion, and space—to the world of Infinity. It is not just an eightfold increase as in the miracle of Hanukkah; we rise to an infinite world.

I am a scientist, I want to know, due to what can we multiply our world to the infinite dimensions? It is only through our connection. In this manner, each one becomes a master of the entire integral world instead of a single point. I connect with seven billion people, and so do you, and so does he, and so does each one of us. So instead of being by myself, I am with seven billion, and each one of them is connected with all seven billion.

We are connected, all the while increasing the power of our unity. Anyone who attains the intensity of connection connects with those who are also connected with the seven billion, and so we multiply our power infinitely.

And ultimately we become a sphere with an infinite number of connections, and each connection gets the unit of energy and mutual understanding of life. That is how we ascend to the world of infinity.

This is a simple scientific mathematical formula, so this is not a miracle. The miracle is only in one thing: that an ordinary Jew who hears about this now will want to try to implement this unity at least a bit.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 12/6/15