Audio Version Of The Blog – 07.05.16

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Don’t Believe What You See

Laitman_910In the News (Psychologies): “Each of us at least once had a sudden epiphany: all the known facts, like puzzle pieces, add up to one big picture, we did not notice before. The world is not so, as we thought. A person close – impostor. Why we do not notice the obvious facts and believe only to what we want to believe?

“Insights associated with unpleasant discoveries: betrayal by a loved one, betrayal by a friend, a loved one cheating. We repeatedly scroll pictures from the past and wonder – all the facts were before our eyes, why didn’t we noticed anything? We accuse ourselves of naivete and lack of attention, but they are not to blame. The cause is the mechanisms of our mind and psyche.

“The reason lies in the blindness of information on the neurobiological level. The brain is faced with a huge amount of sensory information that needs to be processed efficiently. To optimize the process, one constantly designs models of the world on the basis of previous experience. Thus, the limited resources of the brain concentrate on processing new information that does not fit into his model. …

“We ‘remember’ what is beneficial for us to remember at the moment, and just as easy to ‘forget’ the wrong information. …

“Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Daniel Gilbert (Daniel Gilbert) warned – people tend to manipulate the facts in order to maintain the desired picture of the world. This is how the defense mechanism of our psyche works. Faced with conflicting information, we unconsciously give preference to the facts that fit our picture of the world, and reject data that contradict it. …

“Our eyes only notice in the literal sense what it wants to find the brain.

My Comment: These facts are not new and have even been studied extensively, but the problem remains. Because our whole nature is a desire to receive and to enjoy—there is nothing more to us—everything is aimed only at our filling ourselves, despite the research results, we will still serve our desire blindly.

Only the wisdom of Kabbalah allows us to ascend above our nature, and then we will not see the distorted picture that our egoistic brain depicts for us, but the true picture of the world. It is upper world, the world above our narrow self-interest.
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Husband And Wife: Spiritual Advancement

Laitman_630_1Question: If a husband and wife are reflections of each other’s characteristics, they are practically doubles apparently, possessing similar desires and a natural feeling of closeness to each other. How can they advance together in the best way?

Answer: That is also how they must progress. If that is how they are connected to each other, it is up to them to feel how they help each other and advance together. Conflicts are constantly created between them and greater and greater possibilities for attachment.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/6/16

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Dispelling Myths About Kabbalah, Part 11

Laitman_049_01Kabbalah Never Made Anyone Crazy

Question: Many people are afraid of Kabbalah because there are rumors that it can make a person crazy. Is this true? And if not, where did this opinion come from?

Answer: Baal HaSulam in Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot and also the ARI and other great Kabbalists explained where such rumors came from. There is no danger at all in studying Kabbalah. In my life I have never seen that it made anyone crazy.

Although there are many people that start to study and stop and then get angry that Kabbalah allegedly didn’t meet their expectations. I receive indignant letters claiming that I didn’t want to open a door to the Creator for them. But I only teach on the basis of the original sources; everything else depends on the person.

This is the case with any study. When I graduated from the university I enrolled in graduate school and continued to study to get a PhD. And there were others who finished school somehow and didn’t want to study any further.

Everything depends on the person and on his desire. Anyone can study; the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t require any special abilities other than the desire.

Kabbalists themselves spread the rumors that Kabbalah can make a person crazy. After the destruction of the Temple people fell from their spiritual degree to unfounded hatred; therefore, Kabbalah went into hiding for 1,500 years until the time of ARI. And that is why the Kabbalists spread rumors that it is forbidden to approach Kabbalah.

And they succeeded so much that these myths are still alive even in our time, 500 years after the lifting of the ban. Chaim Vital, the disciple of the ARI, wrote in the sixteenth century that there is no prohibition on the study of Kabbalah.

Baal Shem Tov and other great Kabbalists, the founders of Hassidism, made every effort to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah. And nevertheless there are still a lot of myths about Kabbalah and many people, especially among Orthodox religious people, protest against its dissemination. There is no prohibition against it anymore; on the contrary, there is a duty to study it.
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Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/28/16

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The “Self” From A Kabbalistic Point Of View

laitman_622_01Question: Does my “self,” meaning my desire to receive, feel the desires of the physical body as if they were its own?

Answer: The “desire to receive” is what I want, while the physical body is my “beast.” Sometimes I feel my desires through the physical body, meaning a desire for food, sex, and family, and sometimes through a more internal body, a desire for knowledge, respect, and wealth.

The first type of desires (food, sex, and family), are a person’s “beastly” desires. Then follow the desires on the human level, desires for wealth, respect, and knowledge, but these are still not desires on a spiritual level. And then, spiritual desires are revealed in a person, attracting him to resemble the Creator.

Question: What is the “self” from a Kabbalistic point of view?

Answer: The “self” is a desire for pleasure and it is different on different levels. Sometimes I want food, sex, or family, and sometimes control, wealth, or knowledge.

Question: If the body is given only to meet the first three types of desire, is it possible to attain spirituality, discovery of the Creator, without it?

Answer: How can I begin to work with others without a body? After all, we must communicate with each other. Our entire world is built from the first and final state of our way; there is nothing accidental.

The final goal of creation appears first, which is to bring the person to the likeness of the Creator.

It is from this that creation was created. In order to realize the goal of creation, a person must simultaneously include the “minus” and the “plus.” So from the start, the “ego,” which is contrary to the altruistic characteristic of the Creator, becomes determined within him.

 

 

The “minus,” meaning the egoistic state in a person, constantly grows. But together with this, a person must create a “plus” from the “Point in the Heart.” Therefore it is said, “The end of the action is in the initial thought.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/13/16

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The Sorrow Of The Kabbalist

laitman_293Question: A Kabbalist who understands that everything comes from the Creator relates all of life’s problems and troubles to Him. But does he feel fear or sorrow at the same time?

Answer: A billion times more than an average person. But he knows where it comes from and for what. It is exactly in order to treat it properly.

I see a picture of my teacher Rabash‘s wife’s death in front of my eyes. They lived together for 65 years and they loved each other very much, even in old age.

I remember when their grandson called me and said that his grandmother passed away and asked me to stay with his grandfather. I came immediately. Rabash was lying on his bed, curled into a ball, facing the wall, and not responding to anyone.

Although he knew in advance about the outcome, as his wife was paralyzed for the last few years, but I felt that he was going through a very strong shock, a blow that he must take upon himself. Not on the human level, but with completely different ideas and goals. I could feel his tension, calculations for further correction, and the fate.

Question: So the blows still exist?

Answer: I described the external picture. And what is inside this picture… God forbid that we will ever realize what such a person goes through in such a state.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/2/16

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The “Path Of Torah” And The “Way Of Suffering”

laitman_629_3Question: How is it possible to differentiate between the “Path of Torah” and the “Way of Suffering”?

Answer: It is possible to describe the “Way of Suffering” as every type of physical suffering that we move through slowly since they are from a lower level; whereas, the “Way of Torah” is a replacement of suffering from a lower level with suffering from a higher level. Suffering from a lower level is a yearning for corporeal fulfillment and suffering from a higher level is a yearning for unification.

So we move through them more quickly, and this is preferable in the eyes of the Creator. Yet those who walk the Path of Torah also have times of moving through the Way of Suffering, which are replaced with periods of purposeful advancement in the Path of Torah.
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Correction After Exile

laitman_747_03Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 4:25 – 4:26: When you beget children and children’s children, and you will be long established in the land, and you become corrupt and make a graven image, the likeness of anything, and do evil in the eyes of the Lord your God, to provoke Him to anger, I call as witness against you this very day the heaven and the earth, that you will speedily and utterly perish from the land to which you cross the Jordan, to possess; you will not prolong your days upon it, but will be utterly destroyed.

And so it happened. Because the nation is the group of people aiming toward the Creator and then this desire disappeared.

Generations change, meaning that more egoistic layers are revealed in a person and so he can’t remain in a state of close cooperation with others as one man with one heart.

Mainly it is revealed at the entrance to the land of Israel, because it is especially egoistic from the point of view of correction when you constantly climb your egoistic desires.

They constitute huge hard layers, the third and fourth levels of egoism that are impossible to withstand. On the one hand, they tear you apart by tempting with such cunning pleasures that you don’t have the strength to refuse.

And as soon as you move away from them darkness, depression, and blackness descend on you. Rising above such desires is only possible by being in mutual guarantee (Arvut), in connection, and by fervently praying to the Creator to give you the Light of correction.

Therefore the Creator tells Moses that his children and even more so his grandchildren “will become corrupt and make a graven image, the likeness of anything.”

Worshipping idols means worshipping our egoistic desires. It is unavoidable! “All the same, you will come to it and will become idol worshippers!”—the Creator predicts.

The future of humanity is inevitable. It was known to all Kabbalists, starting with Adam, Abraham, and further, because the real Kabbalists see to the end of creation, i.e., to the end of 6,000 years. The only thing they cannot foresee is the way the current stage, before the end of correction, will be passed, whether it will be by a good or bad way, because during the last stage of correction our freedom of will is revealed.

Comment: Thus, the Creator predicts to the people that they will disappear completely from the nation to which they crossover.

Answer: The people of Israel must go into exile. No wonder the greatest Kabbalist of that time Rabbi Akiva rejoiced at the destruction of the Temple and the fall of the Jews from the spiritual degree, because he saw that the prophecy came true, and the exile would be followed by correction.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/2/16

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New Life 519 – Understanding God

New Life 519 – Understanding God
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

If I were to discover that a single force is behind everything in my life, I would try to understand it. People who have revealed it can teach me what it wants from me and how I will be able to discover it. Kabbalah explains this developmental process, and today we can reveal the Creator!

The nature of the upper force is bestowal and love and its program is that we will also acquire its characteristics. Only when we try to be like the Creator will we be able to understand the events that He arranges for us in our lives.

If you want to understand a particular profession, you should emulate their actions. That is also how it is with the Creator. To understand God, one must do things like Him – being benevolent to everyone, acting according to “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). But it is necessary to really study how to realize this, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is engaged in.

When a person builds the characteristics of God, bestowal and love, within oneself, it is said that one reveals Him. Then there is nothing that separates between him and God. God is within him, as close as possible; there is real adhesion. A person like this has become a man of God. All people who become close to Him are really like Him. This is the best state, this is an unlimited state. A person is filled with the upper force and merges with eternity.

All people must evolve toward this perfected state, and it is the role of the Jews to teach it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 519 – Understanding God,” 2/12/15

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 07.05.16

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” Article 40

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Chapter 4, Item 43

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom,” “Ancestral Heritage”

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