Only the Heart Needs Correction
Interview of the Kabbalist, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD with
founder of the first Russian TV channel in the USA Rabbi Mark Golub
February, 2006
Michael Laitman, PhD—a major Kabbalist, scientist of biocybernetics, professor of ontology and of epistemology, and founder and director of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute and the Ashlag Research Institute (ARI). He is the author of more than thirty books, which are translated into nine languages. Michael Laitman is a member of the World Wisdom Council, an elite gathering of experts that devote themselves to solving global problems of the modern world.
Rabbi Golub founded the RTV channel in the USA: The Russian Television Network of America. It has expanded over time, and now broadcasts to the Russian community in America through ten channels, including Israel Channel 9. RTN, one of the ten channels, is still broadcast over cable television.
Rabbi Golub: My current goal is to create the first national English-speaking Jewish channel in America. And this is why I have received video files about you and your academy. I am very impressed and touched by what you do. At this time the channel is called Shalom TV.
Michael Laitman: We will also be glad to make this happen.
Rabbi Golub: Thank you very much. Besides, this process enchants me. I have been walking around the building, and what amazes me is the loyalty of those people, which have come here from around the world to study with you and work here. For me it is a great honor to sit here with you. I am very grateful to you for this time. I would like it if you could speak in Russian with me.
When did you arrive in Israel?
Michael Laitman: I arrived in Israel in 1974.
Rabbi Golub: Why?
Michael Laitman: At that time I was already a scientist of biocybernetics, and I was going to continue my scientific work. But while working in the Research Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion in the Military Medical Academy, I asked myself about the meaning of life. While studying the functioning of a live organism I could not find the answer to “What is the purpose of existence of the organism itself?” This is why I started looking into this question, but the answer was nowhere to be found. I left Russia. I was hoping that in Israel I was going to do something that would help me find the answer to the question about the meaning of life. About five years elapsed before I found Kabbalah.
Rabbi Golub: It was not easy for Jews to leave Russia when you left.
Michael Laitman: Yes. At that time it was very difficult to leave Russia.
Rabbi Golub: I was told that you were denied exit [from the USSR.] Is this true?
Michael Laitman: Yes. For two years I was denied exit. I tried unsuccessfully to leave from Leningrad. After I moved from Leningrad to my hometown Vitebsk, I tried to leave from Vitebsk. I couldn’t. And then I moved to Vilnius. And from Vilnius, not even from Vilnius itself, but from a small Lithuanian village, I left to Israel. That is, I was traveling discreetly until I found the way out, the place where this could happen, and I left.
Rabbi Golub: Where were your parents at that time?
Michael Laitman: My parents remained in Russia. And only my wife, our small child, and I myself went to Israel. At that time it was equivalent to parting forever. I arrived precisely during the war of the Judgment Day.
Rabbi Golub: You arrived and immediately ended up in a war.
Michael Laitman: I was ready for anything. I knew that it was, here, where I was going, and nowhere else; my home was here. Immediately I got a job with the military air force. I worked there for four years repairing fighter planes. Around 1978-1979, when I was already seriously studying Kabbalah, I quit the job. It was very difficult for me to combine intense work and intense study.
Rabbi Golub: How difficult was it for you to integrate into the life of Israel?
Michael Laitman: I don’t think I even tried to integrate into the daily life of Israel. I was trying to find myself in this world, in this life. And I cannot say that life in Israel attracted me with something special, unique. I related more to a small group of people who were attaining the creation, attaining the Creator, and fulfilling man’s purpose in life.
Rabbi Golub: Do you think that Russian culture and the time spent in Russia have helped you on this spiritual journey?
Michael Laitman: Yes. That is because the search for the meaning of life awakens fairly actively in both Russian Jews and Russian people.
Rabbi Golub: How did you come to Kabbalah?
Michael Laitman: I started searching for the answer to the meaning of life. But this answer was nowhere to be found, neither in biology, nor in physics. People need to know for what they are living. And people here and there started suggesting to me where and how I could find this, that it possibly exists in Judaism, but only in the inner part of Judaism, in its secret inner part, in Kabbalah. I started searching. But several years elapsed until I found its inner part.
Rabbi Golub: Mass departure of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel began in the nineties. How do you participate in their lives? Do Russian repatriates come to study with you?
Michal Laitman: That is true, starting in the nineties many Jews from Russia started coming to Israel (around one million people in total.) I wrote my first three books on Kabbalah in Russian in 1983. In 1990, as soon as it became possible, I published these books and simply gave them away for free, all fifty thousand copies. And the echo of that action of dissemination still reaches us.
Also, here in Israel, I have opened a large Kabbalistic school in Russian (in addition to the Hebrew group.) And I can say that today half of my students are Russian speakers, but to tell you the truth, we study in Hebrew. There are also Kabbalistic groups in many Russian cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Sochi, Krasnodar, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, and others. In general, we have a great number of Kabbalistic groups around the territory of the former Soviet Union, and we have a very close connection with them. Besides, we have a great number of groups in the USA. We have a virtual university, which has around 800,000 students.
Rabbi Golub: It’s simply unbelievable.
Michael Laitman: And amongst them there are around 150,000 to 200,000 Russian speakers.
Rabbi Golub: I am sure that you have a lot of wonderful students from all over the world. But is there something innate, something hereditary in the Russian mentality, in the foundation, or the upbringing, which makes these people that study with you somehow special?
Michael Laitman: I do not have a special connection with the Russian students, it is just like with any other students, but they have their own special predisposition towards spiritual search. I would say that it was like this until the year 2000. But during the recent years, I have been finding the same kind of interest and aspiration in Israelis. And even in the Americans, a very serious element of dedication and aspiration towards self-knowledge has awakened.
Rabbi Golub: Can you explain why so many people from around the world over the last twenty years have come to Kabbalah, why they are trying to find an answer to the spiritual question?
Michael Laitman: Over the course of its continuous existence, the world advances through human egoism. Our egoism keeps on growing. It develops in people from generation to generation, and besides, it also develops in each person individually over the course of a lifetime. We are not animals who are born and die on the same level. We develop.
During its scientific, technical, public, and social development, humanity kept on thinking that the following generation was going to be happier, work less, rest more, be more fulfilled. Even fifty years ago we were still thinking this. I remember that when I was a child, it was taught that in fifty years people were going to work three to four hours a day; there was going to be a lot of free time; everything was going to be nice, beautiful. In the end, we have come to the exact opposite.
That is, that human egoism, which kept on pushing us forward and promised us pleasure and fulfillment, in the end, has brought us to a dead end. Today we see that we can not fulfill ourselves. Before we always ran somewhere, and we thought that we were going to become fulfilled with something good. Today we no longer run anywhere. Humanity has become submerged in depression, suicide, and drugs, trying somehow to simply suppress its desires, to become oblivious. All of these things and universal terror are signs of a large common crisis. It leads us to a state when man will be forced to answer the question about the meaning of life.
And so man begins to look for answers. It says in The Book of Zohar that at the end of the twentieth century humanity will come to this question, and this is why, only then, the science of Kabbalah can be revealed. This is why it was concealed over all the thousands of years. Starting with our time (and I am a witness to this, since I have been studying Kabbalah for about thirty years,) interest in Kabbalah is gradually being born, gradually people stop fearing it. They are beginning to express interest in it directly: what can Kabbalah give me? And once they learn that Kabbalah answers the question about the meaning of life, they no longer fear studying it.
Gradually notions about Kabbalah as magic, some kind of red string, holy water, and various miracles die out. People realize that all of these attributes are merely psychological trappings and not more. Interest in true Kabbalah appears; [true Kabbalistic attainment, a state] where a person can perceive the universe, eternity, and forces that govern us, see oneself in all of the previous reincarnations, see one’s destiny, perceive why our world is made this certain way, our life, and where all this is taking us.
In our time there already are a multitude of people on this planet, who begin asking this question, and this is why today we have a great number of students in our International Kabbalah Academy.
Rabbi Golub: As I understand, Kabbalah can be studied for many years. Is this so?
Michael Laitman: Yes.
Rabbi Golub: This means that the answers aren’t simple, it is not easy to attain them, and real understanding takes years. Is this a lifetime process?
Michael Laitman: Yes, but this process captivates. It reveals to people the meaning of their existence, the meaning of their lives, and they begin to understand why people behave in a certain way, why things happen. They see the forces that govern our world. For them this world becomes transparent; they see through it; they feel it, perceive it, and they also see their eternal states behind this world, the ones before birth and after death. That is, they see the entire picture of the universe, they start relating themselves to something that exists not only within the boundaries of our world. This is why this is a special science and a special experience. It is like a continuous fairytale journey that happens to man, and every time he attains more and more, he receives more and more pleasure.
Rabbi Golub: Could you explain in two minutes to those that do not know Kabbalah at all what Kabbalah is, the essence of the Kabbalistic answer to the question of the meaning of life, which takes an entire lifetime to learn, or at least give us a clue?
Michael Laitman: The meaning of life is to attain such level of perception of the universe in this lifetime, when there is no difference between this life and death, and life in a different world, on a different level, in a different dimension. That is, when man begins to live absolutely freely in all the dimensions and not only in the one which he now perceives.
Rabbi Golub: And what affect does this have on egoism?
Michael Laitman: The problem is that while man is an egoist, he only perceives his little life, he keeps it inside himself, and this is all he perceives. And this is why there is all the suffering, all the problems. Everything that he perceives is a consequence of his ego. As soon as he is able to go beyond himself, beyond his ego, he immediately experiences the Upper exterior world. As if he rids himself of his own self, of his suffering, of his reserved, compressed sensations, and his entire life becomes an immense flow of pleasure.
Rabbi Golub: The Jewish tradition speaks about the evil and the good beginnings in man, that both of them come from the Creator. That it is necessary to avoid suppressing the evil beginning, but to direct it towards constructive goals, that there is nothing bad in any of man’s desires, and everything only depends on the way that man uses them. This is why it seems that the Jewish tradition has a very positive attitude towards what we call egoism. How does this go with the Kabbalistic understanding of the fact that the entire problem lies in egoism?
Michael Laitman: We do not need to fight the egoism. We simply need to understand the way it can properly be used. Nothing is created in vain in us. All of the properties are given in man so he would properly and fully realize them. One must not suppress anything within him. One must not cloister, and one must not fast without a reason, or practice specific limitations. Judaism in general is against this, and Kabbalah especially.
The science of Kabbalah is called the science of reception (the proper way to receive an absolute and constant pleasure.) And this can only be attained when man properly begins to work with the altruistic part of his desires, and then with his egoistic part. When he is able to bestow, to receive, then this common property, this desire appears in him, and he receives constant pleasure. He constantly feels like he is immortal, healthy, and perfect.
This is why one’s attitude toward people, oneself, and everyone else must be of absolute kindness. The entire problem lies only in learning to properly realize oneself. This is what Kabbalah teaches, this is why it is called “the science of reception,” a translation of Hochmat ha-Kabbalah.
Rabbi Golub: You have said that the study of Kabbalah is open to every person, regardless of whether a person is Jewish or not.
Michael Laitman: Yes. Absolutely to everyone.
Rabbi Golub: Then there is something universal in the essence of Kabbalah, is this correct?
Michael Laitman: Yes. It is not connected at all to Judaism, or Islam, or Christianity—nothing. It is above all this. Kabbalah simply speaks about man and about the way to lift him above our world to the realm of eternal Upper Forces.
Rabbi Golub: Have you experienced tragedies in life?
Michael Laitman: Now it is difficult for me to tell. Have I really experienced tragedies in the past? I think that not. And now [I don’t experience anything like that] for sure. When my teacher passed away, and I was left alone, of course that was painful. But on the other hand I could see and understand that I had to go on my own starting then, that he had completed his function in this world, and now I needed to do something independently.
I don’t see at all that there can be horrible tragedies in this world. Everything depends on man’s perception. If one sees the final objective, if one sees everything through the proper perspective, then he feels that there is no evil in the world, [nothing] but absolute good.
It is necessary for man to see the proper perspective. Man must learn how he was created and for what. And then, from afar, the eternal, perfect pleasure shines at man, initially prepared just for him. And when he is in constant movement towards it (and this is true for everyone) he sees that absolute love penetrates the entire world.
This is the force of the Creator.
Rabbi Golub: There is a lot of suffering in the world.
Michael Laitman: Yes, there is a lot of suffering in the world. But this suffering is given to us to inspire in us the need to realize its origin and its purpose, similar to how one punishes a child so the child will understand that he needs to do something. Regrettably, we are the ones who cause this suffering to the extent that we require supplementing our development at a given time, and thereby become a little higher in our moral, public, and social levels, and in our relationships with one another. If we were correcting ourselves, and to the extent of our material development, we also were increasing our moral development, then we would feel very good both in this world, and in the spiritual world.