Life Behind The Walls Of An Aquarium

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe perception of reality is a unique subject because we don’t understand it at all. If we were allowed to have several forms of perceiving reality, we could understand it by comparing them. But we live in one reality so it is difficult for us to evaluate it. What we see and feel is our only reality.

How can we discover where we truly are? Fish in an aquarium also don’t know what exists outside of it; they swim in some kind of limited space and don’t know anything more. This is how all animals and humans live in this world; how are we different from them?

But humans very much want to know where they are. Also of importance is can we change reality if we know more about it? Of course not, humanity has produced a multitude of theories about the nature of our reality, but nobody knows how correct they are. We need an objective scientific approach.

After all, no matter how much we are talking about a perception of reality; it is based only on our feelings and sensations. And who knows what exists outside of them? If I change the range of my vision, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching, then reality would be different.

It is known that even a dog that lives with a person perceives the world completely differently, through scents. Other animals perceive through warmth or cold, or by hearing. It follows that reality is our impressions of the world that surrounds us. Our senses perceive some kind of information about it and convey this through a multitude of filters. They convey it to us after many restrictions and changes. That is how we perceive the world in which we live.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that essentially we are found in an ocean of the Upper Light; outside of it there is nothing. But in each one of us there is a desire to receive, a desire to enjoy, that imprints its impressions on a background of the white Light. And this impression is what we feel.

The desire to receive has a particular range of absorption, limited to five areas— seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching—in which it absorbs the Light and conveys impressions to us. So we feel the world just like that.

But it is possible to change this perception. It is not about just extending the range of perception for every sense: wearing glasses, putting on absorptive plates, sharpening smells or tastes through some chemical or physical influences. The wisdom of Kabbalah is not involved with the development of our physical senses; rather, it brings us closer to the true form of the perception of reality.

It is possible to approach the truth if we receive impressions not through the five corporeal senses, but through constructing senses from our desire to receive that are similar to the Light. This means that they have the characteristics of Light, the characteristics of bestowal, love, that are beyond us, beyond our ego. If we can rise above the ego that is given to us, then we can create characteristics that are like the Light from ourselves.

It follows that the ego was given to us so that we would build characteristics above it that are adapted to the Light. And then we will begin to feel a reality in which the Light is in control. We will feel it in those new characteristics that are created within us.

Kabbalah is involved with developing such characteristics within a person, helping him to build a new perception of reality. And when a person acquires it, he begins to feel how much his previous perception of reality was limited, temporary, and distorted.

To the degree that he changes his perception of reality, the person is himself changed. In fact the perception of reality is what defines the person.
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From the Convention In Chile “Day One” 7/30/14, Lesson 2

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A Mature World View

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Sometimes an uncontrollable hatred against outsiders pops up in me, especially doctors. You teach that we need to look at everyone through the prism of the Creator, especially regular people. 

But the thought that the Creator is standing behind them is really erased by my ego that wants to “kill” them. How must one work with this?

Answer: This is a childish view; it is an immature, incomplete, and narrow view of the world.

When you say that “the Creator is standing behind them,” you imagine some kind of omnipotent person. You don’t perceive this in the form of a natural law, the accommodation of two natural forces.

In fact, the Creator doesn’t exist. There are two forces of nature that portray all of creation for us. We must find such a form in mutual relationships, a formula within us in which we feel mutually connected and in absolutely harmony with others. This state is called the “Creator.”

If we don’t attain the characteristic of these two forces, don’t connect them, and don’t accept harmony between them, we don’t know what the Creator is. In this case He doesn’t exist.

So it is necessary to look at the world as something that the two forces portray for us. Then the hatred will not appear within you.

Do I have hatred for our neighbors around Israel who are bombing us? On the contrary, I say that we are guilty since we have not taken advantage of the possibilities that have been given to us. But I don’t have hatred towards them. Well, who are they anyway? In principle they are performers and have no other function.

This is how it is necessary to look at doctors who deliberately destroy their patients. That is how the egoistic force is revealed in them and they have no freedom here at all here. I have seen doctors who sacrificed patients who still could have been saved, only because it was profitable to do so. It’s all egoistic manifestations.

So, you simply need to grow up a bit.
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From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, lesson 6

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The Secret Of The Ten Tribes, Part 5

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What was happening in the days of the Temples? Why did they have to be destroyed?

Answer: First of all, why do the Jews unite? Through their correction, they establish relationships among themselves which will allow them to fulfill the condition of “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

To achieve the state in which the Creator will be fully revealed, they must create a single soul and a single desire.

Through  their internal unity, they built the first Temple within themselves. However, this state exists only for a moment and then immediately begins to break down, step by step.

The process is that at first, there is a slow ascent to the “bar” of the desired state, and once it has been reached and becomes manifested, the descent begins immediately.

Question: So, the method of Abraham has achieved its own result and raised people to the desired height?

Answer: Yes. There was contact between the entire nation and the Creator, based on mutual love, during which the nation reached the state of complete individual correction. This is the building of the first Temple.

When a state is realized, the people have nothing to do and no reason to exist at this level, since it exists for only a moment. The Light comes, fills the vessel, and that is all.

Then this state must disappear. Indeed, the process goes on until this handful of people, that has become the nation of Israel, corrects the whole of humanity. Therefore, an entirely new perspective is revealed before them.

The ultimate goal is not the construction of the First Temple, but in the complete correction of all of humanity. This is what Abraham said in Babylon even when he was the only one who knew about this.

But today the Jews say: “Please, leave us alone! What chosen people!? We want to be like everyone else!”

However, they will be compelled. We see that they will be forced,  just as they were then.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 8/27/14

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A New Abraham

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus,” 18:1-5: And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: I am the LORD your God. After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their statutes. Mine ordinances shall ye do, and My statutes shall ye keep, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God. Ye shall therefore keep My statutes, and Mine ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.”

Under no circumstances should we use the egoistic desires that we took out of Babylon, Egypt, or from the land of Canaan, to which we soon must return. If we use all our desires properly by gradually correcting them and ascending to the previous level of Canaan, we will begin to turn this land into the land of Israel, which means focusing all our desires on the Creator, on bestowal.

Question: The modern corporeal world lives mainly by the laws of Egypt, Babylon, and Canaan but not according to the spiritual laws of Israel. Why is the spiritual revelation in Israel intended only for individuals and not for all of humanity?

Answer: No! Humanity does reveal the egoistic abyss we are all in as well as the inability of returning to the good times we had in the past. But the condition for this good life was that the ego was smaller. Therefore we say “the good old times” when we think nostalgically about the past.

Indeed, if we go fifty years back, we will see that people were less egoistic then. They were satisfied with much less and lived much more happily. They communicated with each other more and didn’t sit behind their computer screens or have the problems or the poisonous vapor of rot that are typical of our times. Everything was much simpler.

But there is no going back to those times and there is no need to do so! We have to advance. The main thing is to learn to attain the reason for the problems that we feel and to understand that they stem from a person’s ego and not from any other source. Therefore, we have to recognize that the ego is evil.

Comment: But the world has turned around when it came out of Babylon and Egypt and went back there, as today we are living by the same laws.

Answer: The world didn’t go anywhere. Humanity dispersed from Babylon all over the world and created the same Babylon everywhere. Today we are back to the small Babylon but on a global scale. Once again we are facing the huge egoistic Tower of Babel that pressures, kills, and destroys us, and we don’t know what to do.

It is now that a new Abraham should appear and call everyone to him: “Everyone who doesn’t agree with the new state, come to me! Let’s leave this state. We are not going anywhere, but we are going to ascend morally and spiritually above this terrible hateful state and start building a totally new land with a new heaven above.”

I hope that such person will appear. We have to prepare the ground for him as much as we can. We are in a very interesting historical point in which it is as if we are tangled and trapped. In this state, we have to fertilize the soil for the next generation. I see this as my mission and without that, there is no point in living.

Question: Indeed, in every egoistic leap in history there was always a leader who emerged and led the nations. Does he also have to appear now?

Answer: I think so. I hope that my students will be able to reveal themselves together as one leader. I don’t think that it will be one person. It may be in some way, but on the whole, it has to be something bigger and collective. I see the new leader as a group of people, and I think it will be the group of my students.

The situation is changing and the world is changing, including its attitude towards itself and to how to live. We see to what extent everything today is the result of advertising. Everyone understands that this world is based on a lie and that it is impossible to find the truth in it. No one is right and no one is to blame, since our nature simply manipulates us in such a way that we drown in this “vanity fair.”

When we finally acknowledge that under the pressure of external circumstances, which we actually summon, the Upper Light will reveal in us real internal, egoistic problems from which we will see that there is no way out. Then we will start to run around and will not be able to find ourselves in any way, as it says: “in the evening you will wait for the morning to come and in the morning you will wait for the evening to come.” But this will probably come after us, and now we have to work on it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/6/14

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The Majority Of Us Are Hidden Racists

 Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Psychological Science): “The social world is stratified. Social hierarchies are known but often disavowed as anachronisms or unjust. Nonetheless, hierarchies may persist in social memory. In three studies (total N > 200,000), we found evidence of social hierarchies in implicit evaluation by race, religion, and age. Participants implicitly evaluated their own racial group most positively and the remaining racial groups in accordance with the following hierarchy: Whites > Asians > Blacks > Hispanics. Similarly, participants implicitly evaluated their own religion most positively and the remaining religions in accordance with the following hierarchy: Christianity > Judaism > Hinduism or Buddhism > Islam. In a final study, participants of all ages implicitly evaluated age groups following this rule: children > young adults > middle-age adults > older adults. These results suggest that the rules of social evaluation are pervasively embedded in culture and mind.”

My Comment: Only  correction by the Upper Light (Ohr Makif) through the method of Kabbalah will elevate us above all subjective assessments and make us independent, free, and ready for equality and unity.
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Abraham’s Method—The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

From “Who Are You, People of Israel”:

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to unearth nature’s positive force and balance our egos.  It argues that it is predefined in nature’s plan that in the end, all parts of nature, including human society, will achieve unity.

Israel Means Straight to the Creator

Abraham’s disciples called themselves Yisrael (Israel) after their desire to go Yashar El (straight to God, the Creator). That is, they wished to discover nature’s force of unity so as to balance the ego that stood between them. Through their unity, they found themselves immersed in the force of unity, the upper force.

Israel called the state of connection to nature’s upper force that they had discovered “the upper world.” They also learned that in the process of human development, the rest of the Babylonians—who followed Nimrod’s advice, dispersed throughout the world, and have become today’s humanity—would also have to achieve unity. That contradiction between the people of Israel, which formed through unity, and the rest of humanity, which formed as a result of separation, is felt even today.

The complete text of the brochure is here
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Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Three” – 09.21.14

Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” “From We to Unified,” Lesson 5

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” Workshop 5

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” “Summary of the Convention,” Lesson 6

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Convention in St. Petersburg, “Day Three,” Workshop 6

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 09.20.14

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/download/audio/eng_o_rav_2014-09-20_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’20.9.14′]

The Secret Of The Ten Tribes, Part 4

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Abraham’s group, with their law of love for the other as for oneself, “went” through all the generations in Egypt. They experienced it, got out, stood around Mount Sinai, and became a nation. At the time, where was the group of Nimrod, meaning the rest of humanity, Babylon?

Answer: In the meantime, people gradually dispersed and settled. Kabbalah and the Torah do not study this because they are engaged in the spiritual elevation of man, and this is happening on the same earthly level. All this is described well in Flavius Josephus’ The Antiquities of the Jews.

Question: Let’s go back to the people of Israel, which came into its own “land,” in the egoistic layers of its own desire. How did they begin to process this egoism?

Answer: It was not easy. Firstly, they did not know how to alter it or how to begin to work on it.

They did not have Moses with them. There were no Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. And here  began a different control of the people.

Basically, it was a kingdom. All kinds of frictions arose between them that were not described in the Torah, but in the Prophets and then in the Scriptures. They chose where to build the Temple, meaning where there was a suitable place for the sum of their spiritual desires. But we are not talking about geography, simply this process described in geographical terms.

The twelve tribes began to divide the land among them. There was a condition under which the two tribes should live beyond the Jordan where today’s Jordan is located because it was supposed to be according to the plan of the common soul on earth.

In general, there is a human nature (the soul), as well as animate, vegetative, and still. All these levels are projected on top of each other, and all are built on the same parallel principle. When the human nature begins to be manifested in us, meaning similarity to the Creator, according to this spiritual move, we also change the place of residence. In general, everything changes in us, and we do not even notice how much we change. This happens instinctively, as if by itself. Thus, we begin to explore and discover how we now need to exist.

Question: Do they continue living by the principle of love for the other as for oneself?

Answer: Of course! They continue, deepening it further. This means populating and developing of the land of Israel because the land means desire. Thus, they move forward.

But the matter is not that they divide the land between themselves. In the sources it is described how every tribe settles on its land, where it should be. The borders and clear distribution between them are described. The tribes cannot be mixed with each other because the common desire, the common soul is divided into four levels according to three lines. Hence, (4 x 3) twelve parts, the twelve tribes appeared, which must fully match their purposes, from the spiritual to the earthly level, so that they are exactly and identically added to each other according to these levels and even follow each other in a parallel manner.

Question: So, the correction of the world begins here with this small area, on which the twelve tribes are “laid?”

Answer: Yes. What is interesting is that it is said that later, at the end of the days, all of humanity becomes attached to these twelve tribes (ten of which were lost but will return). Then everything becomes clear because the modern Babylon turns into one whole, and the twelve tribes appear again in order to spread throughout the earth. That is, the “land of Israel,” like La Peau de Chagrin “stretches” throughout the entire globe, not physically of course, but internally.

Thus, this is the process of the correction of the huge layers of still, vegetative, and animate and, in general, human egoism, which is already covered, fused in one whole, and spread over the entire earth in a form that is presented to us today. As a result, from a small point, a new world is formed, with a new intention, and an aspiration “straight to the Creator,” Yashar-El, Israel.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 8/27/14

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Two Solutions to the Crisis

From “Who Are You, People of Israel”:

Searching for a solution to their conflict led the people of Babylon to form two conflicting views. The first was the view of Nimrod, king of Babylon, and the second was the view of Abraham, then a renowned Babylonian sage.

David Altshuler, author of Metzudat David (David’s Fortress), writes in his commentary on Chronicles One, “Until the days of Nimrod, all the people were equal, and no one prevailed over another so as to rule one another. But Nimrod began to prevail and rule the land.”

In truth, Nimrod made a perfectly reasonable case concerning the emerging hatred among the Babylonians. He argued that they should move beyond the boundaries of Babylon and disperse.

When they are far from one another, he asserted, they would be able to live in peace. Conversely, Abraham’s argument was that dispersion would solve nothing. He explained that according to nature’s law of evolution, human society is bound to become united. As a result, he strove to unite the Babylonians and to build a perfect society.

Succinctly, Abraham’s method entailed connecting people above their personal egos. When he began to advocate his method among his country folk, “thousands and tens of thousands assembled around him, and … He planted this tenet in their hearts,” writes Maimonides (Mishnah Torah, Part 1). The rest of the people chose Nimrod’s way: dispersion, similar to quarrelsome neighbors trying to stay out of each other’s way. These dispersed people gradually became what we now know as “human society.”

Only today, some 4,000 years down the line, can we begin to realize which of them was right, Abraham or Nimrod.

The complete text of the brochure is here.
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