Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.07.16

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Answers To Your Questions, Part 135

Laitman_507_05Question: With the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun) will all of us remember our past lives, all of their details, and will we see the meaning of everything that has happened throughout all of our lifetimes in this world?

Answer: Yes.

Question: If Light is all that we get in the worlds, does that mean that the Light even brings pleasure, suffering, and new thoughts?

Answer: Yes, but these will be pangs of love.

Question: From your lectures it has come up that we need to acquire a soul and merge with the Creator. Why and for what should I merge with the Creator? If I want to get something from His “box” now, then why would I want to be in this “box”?

Answer: Only when you are within it will you be able to receive attainment, feel, and change everything, exactly like Him.
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Related Material:
Answers To Your Questions, Part 134
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Answers To Your Questions, Part 132

How Does One Integrate Into The Pace Of Life?

Laitman_120Question: I don’t understand how to fit spirituality into the modern pace of life? I always feel that something isn’t on time, even though I know that haste is only harmful. It seems that I am missing the point. How can one not rush to keep pace with everyone? Can the wisdom of Kabbalah help here?

Answer: I would suggest that you attend our Kabbalah lessons at least one to two hours per day, as much as you can. You should try to listen and absorb everything into you, and if possible, pass it on to others also.

Question: Is there a general rule for beginners that would ensure that they become harmonized with reality?

Answer: The general rule is very simple. Listen to the lessons for beginners or the daily lessons and participate in unity with the friends.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/17/16

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Which Professions Will Remain In The Future?

laitman_566_01Question: How does one support children correctly in choosing a profession when it is unknown if they will have a need for spiritual development?

Answer: In our day this is a problem because all of the professions will gradually be eliminated and disappear.

The only area in which a person will be busy for a long time is the art of cooking, all forms of food preparation. The profession of chef will continue for a long time because this is a basic human desire, and everything else will rapidly change.

Other than that, a demand will remain for anything that requires planning: buildings, furniture, and so forth. But in general, I don’t see a serious future for any of the professions.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/10/16

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In Search Of Free Will, Part 1

laitman_760_1Congenital And Acquired

In general there are two opposite concepts with respect to free will. The first states that a person has an opportunity to make free decisions and thereby to direct his life, giving it a significant impact.

The second concept, on the contrary, attributes everything to fate or providence, depriving a person of any free will and declaring predetermination of events. So which one is correct?

My first profession was biocybernetics, which studies the systems of the human body that control it, ensure its vital functions, and lead it to a certain task and purpose. So, according to biocybernetics there is no free will whatsoever. After all, a body is a complex biological system with two types of parameters:

· Innate properties
· Qualities acquired from outside

Within this framework, an average person doesn’t have the slightest possibility to act according to his will. Some qualities he inherited from parents, some were received from educators, and others the environment. His development is defined by a combination of these factors.

Hence the question is: Does a person choose other factors through which he will be able to change? And if he chooses, what guides him? Isn’t he guided by what is already inherent in him inside and outside, meaning genes and his environment? And even if he is given something else, it also doesn’t depend on him, right?

Heaven’s Will

A person predictably reacts to what is happening and continues on his way. We assume that he is able to make free decisions based on random circumstances. But in fact, that is not the case and there is no freedom in anything.

We simply don’t have enough knowledge about the unified system called nature or Elokim (God). It is divided into completely interconnected subsystems and there is nothing accidental in it. On the contrary, everything is strictly determined. Thus a person is a creature of inner and surrounding nature. He is unable to make free decisions that would depend on him.

So then how to treat it? Is it possible to evaluate his actions as good or bad? To tell the truth, the answer is no.

It is the same way that we don’t assess flaws of some device made by us. If some part in it is broken, we understand that this is caused either by an internal defect or by external factors with which it was in contact. There are simply no any other options.

And therefore if we understand and feel the system correctly, we would see that there is no reason to punish a person. It is no coincidence that there is no punishment in the modern sense in the Torah, but there are only corrections in it. A person should be placed in such systems where he will change through external factors and then his life would flow differently.

However, we are confused and scattered on a scale that extends from fatalism and belief in destiny to belief in blind chance. Some believe that everything is in hands of heaven; others leave just some events to the will of heaven.

Actually, heaven is an unknown component with which we try to establish some kind of relationship in order to improve our lives.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/28/16

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Ynet: “Who Affects Our Lives?”

What makes us choose a spouse or a certain profession? Do we have any choice or is everything predetermined?

Professor Marcus du Sautoy from the University of Oxford conducted a study that examined how long it takes from the brain making a decision to it going into effect. Brain wave scans showed, to his surprise, that the decision to perform a certain action was made in the brain six seconds before the awareness of the decision, and he made the decision! One of the questions that concern modern scientists is: Do we have free will or are we the result of predetermined neurological reactions.

How we look at it, is that it seems that man is not free at all. We did not choose which family we are born into or the skills and characteristics we have. Our parents and teachers, whom we have not chosen, dictate our values of the world and the education we receive. The media shape our opinions and standards for beauty, and society dictates the codes of conduct, speech, and in fact—everything! Sometimes it seems that a person is like empty computer hardware on which any selected software could be installed through which he will function and realize “himself.”

Bound by the Forces of Nature

In fact, a person does not choose to live his life but navigates according to a system of rules set for him, and incessantly tries to please the society that surrounds him. Over the years, a person’s decision-making system becomes increasingly more complex and this complexity creates the illusion of free choice.

On a more internal level, none of us chose to be born into a system that has an embedded mechanism that drives us to achieve maximum pleasure with minimum effort. This desire manages us every single moment to do the simple arithmetic: chase pleasures of life and escape pain. Even if a person pursues pain, it is only because doing so will bring him greater pleasure.

Therefore, great doubt arises about having free choice. “Yet, this concept, expressed in that word, ‘freedom,’ remains unclear, and if we delve into the meaning of that word, there will be almost nothing left. For before you seek the freedom of the individual, you must assume that any individual, in and of itself, has that quality called ‘freedom,’ meaning that one can act according to one’s own free choice” (Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”). And still free choice must apply to some extent since, otherwise is the purpose in all this mayhem called life?! Surely it cannot be that we are doomed to be puppets on a string.

Tell Me who Your Friends Are and I Will Tell You who You Are

Although a person cannot choose his attributes or the environment he is born into, he can adjust himself to a scale of values of good and evil. How? Through his environment.

Baal HaSulam explains that human society is like soil for a grain of wheat. Just as the grain of wheat contains all the properties of a wheat plant and the soil that nourishes it determines the pace, form, and manner in which it will grow, so does a person’s genetic material contain all the features and tendencies of a person, and the social environment, through the scale of its values, determines how he those attributes will be developed For example, a person with an inclination to draw, that is born into a society that doesn’t respect artists probably will not grow up to be a painter.

Thus, when determining standards of good and evil, a person has no free choice; rather, the society he lives in dictates these values. “For example: I sit, I dress, I speak, and I eat. I do all these not because I want to sit that way, or talk that way, or dress that way, or eat that way, but because others want me to sit, dress, talk, and eat that way. It all follows the desire and fancy of society, not my own free will. Furthermore, in most cases, I do all these against my will. For I would be a lot more comfortable behaving simply, without any burden. But I am chained with iron shackles, in all my movements, to the fancies and manners of others, which make up the society” (Baal HaSulam,”The Freedom”).

Like a School of Fish

In their book Connected, Professor Nicholas Christakis and Professor James Fowler, senior researchers from Harvard University and from the University of California, reveal that it is highly probable that a person will gain weight if a close friend does. The decision of a friend of friend, a person he doesn’t know at all, to start smoking increases the chances that he will begin to smoke by more than ten percent. And there are also positive sides to this phenomenon. Another study showed that happiness is contagious. When a person is around people who are happy, his happiness increases.

The researchers examined networks of millions of people and concluded as seen in the animal world: humanity behaves like a social network, a kind of super-organism, growing and developing in which different content flows and affects all the members of the network. Scientifically, it turns out that our environment has a decisive influence on our development and on our decision-making.

If Everything Is Predetermined, Who Has the Ability to Choose?

“The point where the wisdom of scientists comes to an end is where the wisdom of Kabbalah begins” (Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, Likutey Moharan). According to Kabbalah, the whole creation, including our world, is part of one thought that generated creation, the Thought of Creation. Every creature, thought, or event created or which happened in the past, that exist at present, or which will be in the future, are derived and descend from the thought of creation as part of its implementation.

The Creator, the upper force, unlike us, does not need time in order to fulfill His plans so when the thought of creation was made, it was realized immediately. In fact, we are already in the final phase of the operating plan of creation, and not only does that phase exist, but also all the stages to reach its fulfillment. All we have to do is to reveal it. “We don’t innovate anything. Our only work is to illuminate what is concealed inside a person” (Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk).

We all think that our parents met, got married, decided to have children, and here we are. But according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our birth in this world with our specific parents existed in potential prior to our actual birth, and because it had yet to be realized, it resulted in our father and mother meeting, marrying, and bringing us into the world.

“Against your will you are born, against your will do you live, and against your will you will die” (Ethics of the Fathers). If according to science and the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person is pre-programmed and has no free choice in life, then what is the point in living? Why should nature, such a perfect and sophisticated system, create this reality and sustain it? If reward and punishment for every action we have ever performed do not apply, then what is the point? Don’t be discouraged! According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person has free choice in one place only…
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From Ynet article 6/23/16

New Life 745 – Spiritual Genetics

New Life 745 – Spiritual Genetics
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The whole corporeal world exists only so that we will be able to fulfill our spiritual DNA. Any relationship between people is meant to bring about the fulfillment of their spiritual DNA.

There is a system which includes all of the Reshimot (spiritual genes). This system is shattered and this world exists so that we can correct it. In this system every person has a Reshimo (informative data that defines each person’s developmental program). Every Reshimo defines a certain state of development that we have to undergo. The difference between one person’s Reshimo and another’s depends on his place in the general system.

The wisdom of Kabbalah engages in spiritual genetics and teaches us how to fulfill our spiritual DNA correctly.

Our reality is virtual. It is like a dream, and its only purpose is to enable us to fulfill our spiritual DNA by the corrected connection between our desires, so that everyone feels everyone else and complements him in every way.

The corporeal DNA is managed by the spiritual DNA and guides a person in every action he performs in life. The general system in which everyone exists called Ein Sof (Infinity), which manages everyone’s DNA.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 745 – Spiritual Genetics,” 7/12/16

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 08.07.16

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 2, Part 6, “Answers on the Order of Cause and Result”

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Inheritance of the Land”

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