Ask the Kabbalist (August 28, 2008)
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Bold: Questions/Comments
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Regular: Commentaries of Michael Laitman, PhD
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lowercase italics: emphasized words
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Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Questions: Spiritually speaking, what is the difference between good people and bad people in our world?
Michael Laitman: From the spiritual perspective, one who yearns for the Creator is called a good person, and one who doesn’t is called a bad person.
Moderator: How do we know that?
M. Laitman: You don't know that.
Moderator: But we see people around us and some of them are good and some of them are bad, we feel that one person is good and another person is bad.
M. Laitman: If you are talking from a spiritual perspective, we can’t know, unless we know that a person yearns for spirituality and works on himself. Then the saying goes that he who is greater than his friend, his desire is even greater. He can be very bad because he erupts with pressures that result from his inner work, but he is closer to spirituality. Whereas, another person can sit idle not caring about anything and be farther from spirituality.
So in spirituality, good people are people who are closer to the Creator because “He is good that does good.” Coming closer to Him doesn't necessarily mean that one goes through easy phases and becomes good. It means that he is closer to love of others. On the way to love of others, people discover their ego, their evil side, and then they find themselves under certain pressures.
Moderator: So from the outside, you can’t always see if a person is closer to the love of others, meaning to the Creator, right? However, spiritually speaking, a person who is closer to the love of others is called a better person in spirituality.
Question: Why did the Creator make us corrupted? We come to this world broken. It’s true that there is a plan of creation, as you say, but why is the plan of creation the way it is? I often ask myself and I don’t get an answer.
M. Laitman: She is probably a grandmother according to her voice. Let’s say she has a grandson, and she buys him a Lego piece. When the child builds that Lego, which is initially broken, disassembled, he learns. It is the same thing with us, we are disassembled, disintegrated, broken, and we have to put together our Lego, that soul of Adam ha Rishon (First Man) from the broken souls that are distant from each other. If we put it together, we will know the plan of the Creator, what He wants, why He created us this way, and who He is.
In perfection, in our own strength and in our own independence, we are like a child who grows by breaking something and putting it back together. This is how we have to go through self- breakage and self-composition and then we will attain Him. There is no other choice; there is no other way.
Moderator: When you buy children Lego games, there is a picture of what you need to create on the box. Where do we have that picture?
M. Laitman: Guess! From everything that you were given in this world and with what the wisdom of Kabbalahbrings you from the next world. It brings you a picture, without which you can’t do it.
You forget that it is only by the study that we can depict a better, wider and higher picture to ourselves, one that is more accurate and deeper, until we attain the complete picture. This is how the wisdom of Kabbalah describes the spiritual world for us and therefore, we come closer to Him every time.
If we don’t study, we can’t move in any direction and have no option to attain spirituality this way. Therefore, today when humanity is in a state where we are able to put this Lego together, this wisdom unfolds and shows us this spiritual world.
Moderator: A Lego has many pieces and it tells you which ages it is intended for. According to what you describe, suppose we put together the Lego for the first time, will we have to put it together again, if it breaks?
M. Laitman: No, but on every level you discover that the picture has more and more pieces. You know there is Lego for the youngest age, where the pieces are the biggest. This is what you have at first and when we put together a whole picture, suddenly I see that here it’s broken, and there it’s broken, and I start to put it together using more and more pieces until I put together the last pieces. Then I know what the Creator meant, why He did what He did, and what I attained by it.
Question: What is a desire and where does it come from? How can a person control his desire? What is the connection between a desire and a thought?
M. Laitman: Desire is our nature. We have 613 desires and we cannot control all of them. They are initially within us and, next to the desires the thought evolves, in order to fulfill them, how to attain what is desirable. The more I develop the desires that I have, the wider the thought becomes as well and man becomes smarter.
The more a person wants, and is not able to attain what he wants and is still searching, the more he develops his mind. Therefore, we have 613 desires, and we cannot control them. In order to fulfill them, there is a thought next to every desire, so we have 613 thoughts against 613 desires. If I do want to control my desires, I need the Light that created them to correct them. This is called the Light that Reforms.
Then it corrects my desires so I can use them the right way: to bestow upon others and to love others. Through others I also reach the recognition of the Creator. Then I attain perfection, my perfection. This is the only way I am able to control them.
Moderator: If you said that desire is our nature, then controlling our desires is controlling us? Self-control is to control my desires?
M. Laitman: Yes, and without it, we don’t know what our desires are for, where they come from, what we need to attain, what we will want the next second, and what we will think. Do you know what you’re going to think in a moment? No, suddenly, you want something else, you need something else, and you think about something else. This is how we are operated from Above. Suddenly, desires emerge within us, and if we control them, then we can decide what desire will emerge from our subconscious to our consciousness and how we will use it, and what we will attain by it.
Therefore, we determine our past, meaning the desire that hasn’t unfolded yet, and also our future, what we want to attain by it. Then a person starts controlling his whole flow of life. Otherwise we don’t know and wander about—we want this, we want that. We may hear something, we may read something, we may taste something, and we just wander about in our life. It’s a wonder to look at the world this way; it’s just like being blind.
Moderator: Can a Kabbalist do what you described by inviting something from that bank of desires?
M. Laitman: Yes, to control nature, and then you stop being managed from Above by the 613 strings, your 613 desires. You start changing them because you want to aim yourself at a specific goal.
Moderator: What do you say about the sentence, “all our work is to discover love among us each and every day?”
M. Laitman: Love towards one another, unconditional love of the world is the general inclusive force, as it says, “love thy friend as thy self is the greatest rule of the Torah." It’s the most inclusive rule of reality. Today, in the age of globalization, we discover that we are interconnected and the force of love binds us from the side of nature, but we are opposite and found in hatred toward one another. Therefore, we are opposite to nature. We are both opposite to one another and opposite to our inclusive nature, and that brings about all our troubles.
So the problem is lack of love. In love you discover eternal, perfect, whole, complete and pleasant life.
Moderator: Who doesn’t want love? Do you know anyone who will tell you that they don’t want love? There isn’t a person who doesn’t want it.
M. Laitman: Yes but how do you realize it? You realize it only by the Upper Force “I created the evil inclination, I created the Torahas a spice, because the Light in it Reforms."
We need the Light to come and correct us to be good and that Light comes only by studying Kabbalah. Therefore, we have to disseminate it and explain to people how to correct ourselves and how to reach a happy life, not only us but the whole world.
We have to be the Light of the nations so that the whole world will have that. That is the purpose and goal of the world. Therefore, there is a demand for the wisdom of Kabbalah, and we disseminate it.
Question: The definition of creation in the dictionary is “doing that which contains innovation.” Is there any creation in this world? Is true creation renewing the connection between people?
M. Laitman: No, it says about us, “they all seem like animals.” We are operated from Above, by our genes and hormones. Biologists today discover that we are operated by genes and data that are found within us from the start. We don't create anything new in this world.
The only new thing we can do, if a person has a point in the heart that awakens within him, called a part of God Above, is to develop it and reach the spiritual development. Spiritual development is the only thing we can do, and this is creating something. In everything else, we are, as it says, “animals.” We just live our lives and end it, and there is nothing new about it.
Moderator: Does the term of spiritual development have anything to do with the connection between people?
M. Laitman: Yes, because in the connection between people, when we achieve love of others instead of unfounded hatred, we discover spirituality.
Moderator: I know that you really like museums. Once I asked you, why people put so much effort and time into museums, and you told me that it helps the development of everything.
M. Laitman: Yes, because you put together the best innovations.
Moderator: They put all the best innovations and creations and the museums are filled with creations. You’re saying there is no creation in this world.
M. Laitman: If you call that creation, then it’s right.
Moderator: No, you define it, is it creation or not? Beethoven writes a symphony…
M. Laitman: Well, yes, you could say it is creation. Sorry I didn’t mean that. I am talking about creation in the spiritual sense, something that is new that was not rooted in a man and man realized it. Beethoven had these ideas inside him, and he carried them out as if we discover something in the world. We don’t discover anything in our world, there is nothing new under the sun. This is how we discover it but there is nothing really new here.
Something new, a new creation, only comes from the Creator who created the evil inclination, and creation is making the evil inclination into the good inclination, which is done by our spiritual ascent. There is nothing more from Kabbalah perspective. From the perspective of this world, however, of course, you can say that people, artists, create something.
Moderator: You say that something was instilled within me, and I take it out, so isn't that creation?
M. Laitman: Correct, it is not creation it is not something that did not exist before. It was there in potential, and you just did it in practice. To create something means to create existence from absence.
Moderator: Do we create ourselves, existence from absence?
M. Laitman: No, we don't create ourselves, but the correction that we do is really existence from absence, because “I created the evil inclination, and I created for it the Torah for the spice.”
The Creator started creation and the righteous, meaning those who want to justify creation, to finish it, they’re part of it, and they deal with creation. I just want to add that when we ascend on the ladder of degrees in our correction, we go through the world of Assyia (doing) and then Yetzira (formation) and then Beria (creation) and then Atzilut (emanation). There we attain all the things we created. When we put together that Lego piece between us, it is a new creation because it didn’t exist before.
Moderator: But you’re saying that there is even more, Beria and Atzilut.
M. Laitman: In Atzilut, we discover the Upper Force that dwells within us in that Lego, that interconnection between us. It is new, since it has not happened before. Therefore, Bo Re’eh (Creator), in Hebrew means, “come and see,” only those who create that place, can discover Him. When we make that place for Him, we call it Bo Re’eh, “come and see”—we create that place and we discover something that didn’t exist before.
Question: What happens with our loved ones when they pass away? I would like to understand if we meet them, since I understand that there is no revival of the dead?
M. Laitman: First of all, there is a revival of the dead. Don’t say that there is not, only it’s not in the way we interpret it. Our bodies are biological substances and, just like an animal, our body disintegrates and rots in the ground and nothing is left.
We are talking about the soul only, and the soul is next to the body. If a person develops the soul, then during his life in this world, he moves from feeling himself, identifying with his body, to identifying with his soul. It depends where he wants to learn and in what terms—in the spiritual soul, which means to feel the spiritual world, to feel his soul, or in this world meaning to feel through the five senses. I understand that this is a bit hard to understand but there is nothing I can do about it.
Now if a person develops his soul and identifies with it and is found in it, in all his consciousness and sensations, and wants to feel spirituality through it, then all his life is in the soul. Even if his body lives or dies, it doesn’t matter to him, he doesn’t feel that. He doesn’t feel how much he lives or dies, because the degree of livelihood of the soul is much greater than the life of the body.
Now about the soul, in spirituality we only speak about the soul and there is a certain development when the soul lives, then it has to be upgraded. There is then a stop and then an ascent to a higher level and so over and over again. On that path there are different states which we refer to as death, life and birth. Ibur, Yenika and Mochin (conception, sucking and adulthood). When I discover the broken parts of the soul, I become incorporated with death; however, if I correct them, I start giving birth to these parts, in Ebur, Yenika, Gadlut (adulthood) and this is how I develop.
Everything the wisdom of Kabbalah talks about, and everything that the Torah talks about—life and death and revival of the dead—is all about the soul. Furthermore, about our bodies, just forget about it. It is like the body of some animal that we slaughter and eat, there is nothing holy about it. Therefore, we can have transplants or blood donations, etc., there is no difference in the bodies.
Moderator: What about meeting people that passed away?
M. Laitman: There is no such thing. In this world I am somehow connected to others in order to complete some process here, and later I don’t belong to them, I belong to the soul. If I do return to this life, then there is no connection between this life and the environment here and my next life and the environment there, it can be totally different. In a moment I can be born again, and it can be a completely different situation.
Moderator: Is a person that lived in this world and developed his soul called a Kabbalist?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Moderator: For instance,let’s take your teacher, Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag, with whom you were for 12 years as a student and helper. You were strongly attached to him when he lived. What happened after he died? He has a soul, he developed his soul, does his existence continue, do you meet him?
M. Laitman: I don’t meet him, I feel him. It’s like I felt him before, when he was alive, this is how I feel after he died. What’s the difference? Was the body the connection between us? I helped him put his clothes on and eat and drove him to different places. We used to take walks, to study, to eat. He was old and needed support and help, and I was next to him the whole time. I was connected to his body because I took care of it; however, that connection was because I was connected to his soul.
Moderator: What is the difference between feeling him when he was next to you living in a body and feeling him after his body died?
M. Laitman: It's much stronger without a body because that load that was focused on the body is now focused on the connection with the soul.
Moderator: When a person is with a body, you can talk to him and you can see him.
M. Laitman: Yes, but it is not the connection we are talking about. We are talking about Ruach (spirit) in Ruach; this is how it is called in Kabbalah, Peh el Peh (mouth to mouth). It means that we are in one spiritual state, and we work there. Therefore, what does it matter what body he has or what his body is, young or old, the body has nothing to do with this at all.
Moderator: Now when he has no body, can you talk to him, not through your mouth or what?
M. Laitman: Yes, of course, it’s called mutual Masach, (screen) Peh el Peh, (mouth to mouth). Peh is the name that symbolizes the position of the screen.
Moderator: Do you talk to him a lot?
M. Laitman: These are personal things between us, but yes, the body doesn’t constitute any problem or partition between us. That's the way it should be between all the people. Our world is soon to end, and we will not be in these bodies for a long time, in 230 years we have to finish the correction, until the 6,000th year and after that, that’s it. Our world moves into the spiritual state and this whole world will disappear; it doesn’t exist. We’ll talk about it, how it exists and with respect to whom. However, the body is just the way we feel our life currently.
Moderator: If we talk about the Rabash , there are three heavy books here containing his ideas. Can you summarize in a few sentences, what is the special message Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag brought to the world?
M. Laitman: Like all the Kabbalists before him, how we can realize the purpose of creation that is up to us to perform through the love of others to come to the love of the Creator by which we unite with the whole of nature. The Creator is the whole of nature, general nature, and when we come to adhesion with that inclusive nature, God, we attain complete spiritual life.
Moderator: What is in these writings that don’t exist in any of the previous Kabbalists' books?
M. Laitman: Every Kabbalist writes for his generation because he is incorporated with his generation. Rabash was the last Kabbalistin the chain of Kabbalists from Abraham the Patriarch to our days, and they were the foundation, the Kabbalists, who bring us the Torah and by them, we can correct ourselves. His books contain all the Light that reforms that is suitable for our souls to reach all the good.
Moderator: But when you read what he wrote, what do you feel?
M. Laitman: I feel him. For me what he writes and the way he expresses something, it’s all in me, I live in it. Even more so, when I came to him, I practically didn’t know Hebrew, I knew some street Hebrew and with him I started studying it as the language of Kabbalists. His language is like the mother tongue, I think through him and through him I talk. I also think in the same sentences by which he writes because this is how I learned and got it.
Question: What is the spiritual root of bareness (infertility)? Is there a difference between a man's infertility and a woman's? What does such an experience teach us? How can an infertile person realize the wisdom of Kabbalah without the ability to have kids? Can adoption replace biological kids?
M. Laitman: You are asking difficult questions. First of all infertility is something that we know well from the Torah. Abraham and Sarah, all the mothers had problems. What does it mean? It means that a person can’t actualize his strength, his force of bestowal.
To give a birth means to bestow, to give a gift to someone. The stories of the Torah talk about the difficulties of those couples, Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac, and Jacob as well, in having children. It means the corrections they had to go through to what level they had to rise in order to be awarded actions of bestowal, because actions of bestowal are called children. The Torah talks about it. It doesn’t talk about the bodies; it talks about the development of the souls.
Infertility means that the soul is still uncorrected in order to perform the action of bestowal towards others.
Moderator: Now in our world there are sometimes people who are infertile, many men and women. Does it mean anything, where does it come from?
M. Laitman: It doesn’t necessarily come from them. It also comes from the generality of the world, because in the world, in general, there are all kinds of corruptions. Therefore, some people turn out to be infertile.
But it doesn’t mean that he can’t give birth in spirituality. On the contrary, if he succeeds in correcting his soul, there is a great chance that it will influence his body as well. There is a good chance that it will influence the body as well. Don’t make the Torah a medicine, I don’t want people to think that I talk about the Torah this way, but the spiritual forces might change it this way as well.
Moderator: The matter of adoption. Can adoption come instead of biological kids in terms of correction? Is there any relation in Kabbalah to adoption?
M. Laitman: No, it doesn’t have anything to do with correction.
Question: When or how does a person turn from an “actor” to a “director?” Does a person come to a state, where he must be a “director?”
M. Laitman: Baal HaSulam writes about it in the article Thou Hast Hemmed Me From Behind and Before. He says that we are like a horse and the Creator rides us, the whole creation—the law of creation—manages us through biology, physics, all systems of life and psychology. We are instructed, and we realize these instructions, whether we like them or not, whether we recognize them or not, it doesn’t matter.
By Kabbalah, we start seeing this network of forces that operate us. Then we are able to reach a state, where we ourselves start to acquire that network and be on top of it, and then we start managing ourselves. However, that is on the condition that we identify with that network, that we identify with the Creator and we start being like Him. If I am like Him, it means that I am already operating myself.
Moderator: When does it happen, that transition from an “actor” to a “director?”
M. Laitman: If a person studies the wisdom of Kabbalah sufficiently, in order to be impressed that the laws are decisive, that it’s worthwhile acquiring them and realizing them, that these things are the best things that can ever be in reality, then this ability is conveyed to him.
Everyone must do that until the end of 6,000 years, which is 230 years from now, we will all have to become “directors.”
Question: Why are there so many different names to describe the Creator?
M. Laitman: Man gives the Creator these names.
First of all, our soul is built from ten pieces, called ten Sefirot. In each Sefira, where the Light shines, we feel the Creator differently. You can say red, yellow, green, blue and white; sweet, sour, bitter, etc., such differences.
Therefore, we call it Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut—ten Sefirot. The Light that shines in them is called Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya and Yechida.
The Light along with my desires in all those ten Sefirot, meaning my desires and the extent to which they can absorb the Light, perceive the Creator and hold the Creator in them. I name it like a drink that I pour into myself and the impression that it gives me. The main impression may be warm. It may include other impressions, like moisture, etc.
I give my impression a name. These are called the Holy names, the names of the Creator. When I am filled with the Creator in my soul, I name Him according to my sensation—He’s good, does good, or perhaps He’s not that good, perhaps like the name Elkanah (severe, cruel), there are different names.
Moderator: So what does it mean, when I feel bad things?
M. Laitman: When I feel that, He relates to me with Gevura (limitations). Like a father to a child, who first relates to him in a good way and then in a bad way.
Moderator: I'm curious about something. What does it mean to feel the Creator as sour? In spirituality is there such a thing?
M. Laitman: Of course, there is sour. I can’t convey the tastes, but everything we have in this world is a result of the spiritual world, because this world is a world of consequences.
Therefore, every word in this world has a spiritual phenomena, root. So, besides sour there are billions of other manners and ways. If you have names for them in this world, then there is discernment in spirituality that corresponds to it.
Moderator: This is thought provoking …
M. Laitman: Yes, but what can I tell you about sour or not? I’ll just answer you that in this Sefira or that Sefira it is felt in this level of Aviut (coarseness).
It’s like telling you about some taste. Let’s say “pulses” for instance. What is it? It’s something I ate in Indonesia, called “pulses.” Now explain it to me. How can I explain it to you until you taste it? If you say “sour,” we have a mutual feeling for that. However, if I have a feeling in spirituality, and you don’t have it, how will it help me?
You are saying, “Explain to me, what is sour in spirituality?” How can I explain what is the taste? Therefore, it says,” Taste and see that the Lord is good.” First of all, you taste, then by tasting, you will see, and then you will discover, but first you have to taste it. The beginning of the revelation is like with a baby, he starts with tasting, and he wants to taste everything.
Question: Regarding Rav Laitman’s talk today about reality that’s only within me and has nothing to do with the outside. Say, I get a bill from my bank, or I have an overdraft in the bank, does it exist or doesn’t it?
M. Laitman: Everything exists, G-d forbid, relate to everything seriously, minuses are minuses, the bank is the bank, the police are the police, people around you exist, and this is how you have to relate to it. However, like in a fiction feature film, the story is that we are not exactly in our reality, but we are in an imaginary reality, it is the same thing with us.
The wisdom of Kabbalah talks about it very seriously. The Book of Zohar is filled with explanations about it. You can read The Preface to the Book of Zohar and find an explanation about the perception of reality. It tells you whether you should relate to the reality that you seem to feel now, as something non-existent. The answer is no! If this is what I feel in my senses, and I live with my senses, then I have to act accordingly. When my senses and reality change, I’ll be in a different reality.
Now, I am in a certain state, on a certain level, and I have my senses. In those senses I feel reality. All the coarseness, the thickness is this world, plus or minus in the bank, everything. So, I can acquire additional senses and in these additional senses I feel an additional reality, which I discover in these senses. Then this additional reality, the new reality will be my world. Furthermore, in the previous state, if I still have senses of the previous state, then I live in both worlds. Let’s say, my body feels this world, and my soul feels the spiritual world. If my body dies, then I stay with the feeling of the spiritual world.
Moderator: Let’s draw the conclusion. If she asks, “Does the minus in my bank exist or not?”
M. Laitman: Towards her senses it exists and therefore, she has to cope with it, deal with all the problems and phenomena she has in her senses as reality. I am not saying it is not reality, I am saying this is the reality she lives in for the meantime and she can live in an additional reality by acquiring new senses. This is so unusual for us, and we don’t understand it so it confuses us; it breaks our mind.
Moderator: So, she’s saying, “I don’t relate to my reality?”
M. Laitman: No, this is unrealistic. However, when a person gets used to this…, quantum physics talks about this, modern physicists and psychologists in the last twenty or thirty years talk about it. This is how Einstein’s Theory of Relativity started, that everything depends on the acceleration, and then there is above time, place and motion. Then Hugh Everett and Kabbalah talks about it, however, Kabbalah has spoken about it for thousands of years. It says that everything depends on how a person perceives reality. If we change our senses, then we will live in a different reality.
Moderator: What does it mean to change our senses, to install new eyes and ears?
M. Laitman: No, you can stay with them.
Moderator: Okay, what are the “additional senses” and how many senses?
M. Laitman: The way you feel inside, the way you process the information is what's important; however, here we may confuse her even more.
If we absorb the entire world, if we want to exploit, succeed, and benefit from the world, then we feel a reality of this world. If we want to give, share, bestow and to love the whole world, then we will see a spiritual reality. That’s the difference between the two levels.
When you start bestowing, relating differently to the world, your mind and heart change. You live in others, you don’t live in yourself and then that sensation of living outside yourself is called the spiritual world. The sensation that everything is in you and for you is this world. The difference seems small, as if only the direction, how you judge and calculate everything. However, it changes us completely, and it moves us from one world to another.
Moderator: So, think about it.
M. Laitman: We will talk about it a bit more, and gradually you’ll see that it’s really not a problem, and later you will see how all Torah speaks about this.
Question: What is the spiritual root of Arabs? Why are they hated in the world like Israel is hated? Is the Pharaoh opposite of Israel?
M. Laitman: It was never like that, that people hate Arabs all over the world. Today it comes from the fear of terrorism, because they want to control the world. It also says in the Torah that in the end of generations this will happen.
It says in The Zohar that when the children of Israel will start going back to the land of Israel, they’ll have problems with them, and they will be helped against them. Eventually, they will awaken the heart of Israel toward their Father in Heaven. So, we will cry and understand that we need spiritual force in order to transcend this world and that problem. Then we will receive that strength and achieve our correction, and we will also be the Light of the nations.
By that, the Arabs are doing some kind of a service for us, I’d say. Even though that service doesn’t appear as nice and pleasant and not as help and support but as a disturbance and threat, nevertheless, it is help from Above that is predetermined from the days of Abraham the Patriarch, father for us and for them.
Moderator: What do you mean when you say “Abraham the Patriarch?” Is there some closeness between us, eventually?
M. Laitman: Eventually there will be, but in the meantime in the next phases there will be struggle. It all depends on us, how we will do it.
Moderator: Well, what do you mean everything depends on us?
M. Laitman: The dissemination of Kabbalah depends on us. You see that we have students from The Emirates, Persia, The Palestinian Authority, from all kinds of places, and they feel us. They know that this is true, and they are ready for this. They know Judaism, Islam and any religion has nothing to do with Kabbalah, because Kabbalah talks about the Upper Force, where we all belong to one man in one heart. Like Abraham, our and their Patriarch, wanted to do the correction in Babylon and didn’t succeed.
Moderator: Is it possible today?
M. Laitman: Yes, because we discover that we are in a crisis. Otherwise, we have no choice; we will just destroy our civilization.
Moderator: I don’t understand, are you optimistic or not?
M. Laitman: I am very optimistic, but it all depends on me, on us, on the Jews and not on the children of Ishmael or children of the whole world; everything depends on the Jews. Baal HaSulam writes it very decisively at the end of The Introduction to the Book of Zohar.
Moderator: But when people listen to you, they will say, “We do want peace, and they don’t want peace!”
M. Laitman: No, we want them to leave us alone so we will have a nice bourgeois life. Is this called peace? Peace comes from perfection, perfection with Godliness. It means we discover the spiritual world, that we raise ourselves to a spiritual level. Our world is about to end, according to nature, we see the same thing.
Everything changes in the world. From year to year, it changes more and more. You hear what they tell you about nature, global warming and all kinds of problems we’re facing. We have to understand that we’re at the end.
Moderator: What do you mean “the end?” What will be later?
M. Laitman: Later there will be nothing. We have to ascend to the spiritual dimension, now! Why do we need to keep on living here until this earth and universe go back to their Tohu ve Vohu (empty and chaotic)? What would be the reason for it?
The process of return is also explained in Kabbalah, that we came from the Big Bang, that explosion of the little spark that expanded into the whole Universe, until the creation of the earth and life on earth. In return we can see how this matter shrinks, so to speak, and everything rises to spirituality from that point, where our Universe erupted, that point enters spirituality. Then this world rises through the worlds in spirituality to the world of Infinity. We have to rise there with our soul; this is something we have to do now. Why do we need to wait? Every moment we delay the redemption, what does it give us? It gives us troubles, threats and problems.
Everything is in our hands and therefore, I am optimistic.
Moderator: If you said today, “Listen, humanity! In twenty years from now, we have to pack and move to space, to the moon.”
M. Laitman: Turn on the TV, ask scientists. I am only talking about corporeal science. If you talk with scientists, who deal with this, they’ll tell you, we are at an age…
Moderator: We’re looking for a new earth.
M. Laitman: You can look for a new planet, but you won’t find it. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, there is none. There is no life besides on Earth. What life we have here is a question, but that’s life.
Moderator: Yet you say that we have to move to a spiritual place.
M. Laitman: Yes, because it’s written so. It says that 6,000 years is the life in this world, and later it will be destroyed. We have 6,000 years of the life in this world beginning from the man called Adam (the First Man) who first reached spirituality. From him to the last one is the maximum of 6,000 years, and later there is destruction. This whole world will rise and ascend like it says in The Book of Zohar to the level of Ein Sof (Infinity), there is no need for matter anymore.
Moderator: Now, when it rises and shrinks like you described before and goes back to the spiritual points, this is what we have? That’s it? All of us have just one spiritual point?
M. Laitman: No, only in matter.In spirit, we are the souls.
Moderator: Yes, but we come to that spark, that point?
M. Laitman: No, that little spark was just the beginning of matter. We go back to our souls. Concerning our matter, when we finish correction, we stop feeling our bodies.
Moderator: Our bodies disappear? Therefore, the lady with the overdraft in the bank, her minus is shrinking as well? (Laughing)
M. Laitman: Yes, you can say that, but we have a very good future, if we take what we can do, that wonderful gift, and have that spiritual Upper Light that can raise us to Infinity. So, let’s do it.
Moderator: I am coming with you.
Question: What is the meaning of family in spirituality? What is the role of brothers? Are there mother and father in spirituality? Why is family built the way it is?
M. Laitman: This really comes from spirituality. We see it in the Torah. First of all, the Torah talks only about the spiritual process—about souls, the correction of man’s internality. There is nothing about the corporeal process.
When I correct myself internally, I have brothers. This means I have more people who are closer to me in their spirituality, and we help one another in our corrections. Sisters, spiritual mother and father, spiritual grandfather and grandmother, spiritual children and wives—everything happens there between the souls. These relations, let’s say, the same relations but in an altruistic fashion, with love. It is the opposite from our world, but as a replica. It exists and therefore, in our world as a replica of spirituality in corporeality, from altruism to egoism, we have these here in this world.
Moderator: I remember from my childhood, I had a brother closer to me in age, two years difference, and we would constantly fight.
M. Laitman: Yes, of course you did because there is the copy of it in the ego. With spiritual brothers there is unity, love, brotherly love. What you’re saying is right; in our world it’s a replica of spirituality in corporeality, so you have the unfounded hatred, which is the opposite.
Moderator: Now what is the difference between brothers and sisters?
M. Laitman: The whole of reality is divided into male and female parts. The male part corrects the right side of reality and the female part corrects the left side of realty called Nukvah (female). In the Torah, when it says At, it implies female and next to it there is always male part.
Question: What are grandfather and grandmother?
M. Laitman: It’s Israel, Saba ve Tvuna (Israel, Grandfather and Sagacity) when we have this special Partzuf in the world of Atzilut.
Moderator: Can you explain why everyone likes grandfathers and grandmothers? In our world they are always good. There are always problems with mother and father and the grandparents always give you presents, etc.
M. Laitman: In spirituality you need them in order to see the continuity of the generation. If you only knew about a mother and father, you would miss it. With animals it is so; however, with man it isn’t, because man has to see the perspective, the continuity forward and backwards, more than one generation. We need to know that there is a future, that there are higher ones and lower ones, before us and ahead of us. Therefore, we can feel our grandparents, grandchildren, and that give us a succession that animals don’t have, because they don’t need that development.
Question: Where does the word ‘Kabbalah’ come from?
M. Laitman: Kabbalah mean “Lekabel,” which is “to receive,” to know how to receive the revelation of Godliness, the best things He created for us, as “Good that doeth good,” fulfilling us unboundedly, infinitely, and how to be fulfilled infinitely. This is the wisdom of Kabbalah. Kabbalah also comes from the word tradition, to receive it as a tradition, because it is conveyed from one generation to another, until our generation, and we will have to realize it, implement it and then the whole world will join it.