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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Cultured Meat – a Sensible Step for Civilization”

A newspaper article that was sent to me last week declared, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its first ever lab-grown meat product as safe for human consumption… The product is a ‘slaughter-free’ chicken, grown from cultured cells, which could be rolled out to the public in a matter of months.” If this development is commercialized successfully, and if the proper conditions for producing safe and healthy meat are maintained, and there is a big “if” around that last condition, then I am all for it.

Today most people live in cities. They rarely see the connection between the food they buy in the supermarket and where it comes from. If the vegetables they eat are grown without soil, or if the meat they buy comes from a factory rather than from an animal that was slaughtered in order to produce it, I do not think they care. In fact, many people would be glad to hear that the chicken meat they bought did not come from a real chicken, and no poultry was slaughtered to make their dinner.

Additionally, considering the cost of raising cattle and poultry, lab-grown meat and chicken will probably be cheaper to make and cheaper to buy. For many people, healthy food is a luxury, so perhaps this will make it slightly more affordable.

Also, there is a clear environmental benefit to producing cultured, lab-grown meat compared to meat that comes from animals. Animals need grazing areas, which not only deplete vegetation, but also destroy natural habitat for wildlife.

In the more remote future, I think naturally grown food will disappear altogether. It might be that people will buy boxes that contain food that cannot be recognized as anything we know today, that will be neither vegetables nor meat, but something else entirely. I have no problem with it, especially since I myself am not a big fan of meat. I am not a vegetarian, but I am also not fascinated with meat. As long as humanity manufactures adequate food, I have no problem with producing it in a lab or a factory, and I do not think we should give it a second thought.

What I do think we should think about is our attitude toward the things around us. We need to learn to treat everything with decency and kindness, and understand that we are dependent on each other on all levels, from the mineral to the plant, to the animal, and to the human level. If we understand how vital we all are for the perfection of our planet, how we complement each other, and how our well-being depends on the well-being of all of Earth’s inhabitants, we will conduct ourselves correctly and there will be plenty of food for everyone.
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By this we can learn why the light of Ein Sof departed from His self, in which we cannot utter any word, and became defined by the name “light of Ein Sof” (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Restriction and Line,” “Inner Observation,” Chapter 1, Item 12).

Atzmuto is directly the inner part of the Creator that relates only to Him and that we are unable to attain. This is the essence of the Creator.

But for us, the Creator is what is manifested in relation to us. Therefore, in Hebrew, the Creator is called Boreh, from the two words “Bo uReh,” come, reveal, and see.

It turns out that there is Atzmuto, which we do not attain; it refers to the essence of the Creator, and there is Boreh, the Creator, i.e., His thought in relation to us, which we attain.

The purpose of the Creator in relation to the created beings is to bring them pleasure. But they can receive this pleasure only according to the equivalence of qualities with Him. The Creator is bestowal, love, and emanation, and we must acquire the same qualities. The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about this.

Question: Is that why so many people have been created upon whom we can practice to bestow?

Answer: It is for us to try to reach the qualities of the Creator together.

Question: If this is so important, why is this information concealed?

Answer: It is not concealed; no one wants to know it because we need to bestow, to develop the quality of bestowal and love for the other.

Question: Why did the Creator make it so that no one wants it? He could have done it differently.

Answer: This is not possible to explain at the beginning of the study of Kabbalah, but we will come to this.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 10/30/22

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Question: Why do we feel some relief after crying?

Answer: In the corporeal world, this is the psychological relief of our animalistic organism from nervous tension. In spirituality, when a person cries, he finds sympathy from the Creator in this. His crying is like raising MAN (prayer). Then he receives help from above and can clothe his requests in some specific correct form.

Question: It is said that in spirituality, crying is purification. What do we need to purify?

Answer: Through it a person begins to acquire the screen and reflected light. He can correctly understand and accept the Creator’s attitude toward him.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/6/22

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There are two ways in the development of humanity. One way is terrible and full of suffering. There is constant growth of egoism without something to oppose it, when suffering gradually beats us to death time after time, generation after generation, drives us to war, famine, diseases, all kinds of climatic disasters, into all sorts of troubles!

Any problems may arise here! Suddenly, such a disaster can sweep across the globe that half of the population will die of some kind of infection. We have a lot of all kinds of infectious and genetic problems ahead of us, anything at all. Therefore, we are given the wisdom of Kabbalah so that we do not go through all this, and gradually test our egoism, which would push us forward.

After all, we have to reveal egoism from the smallest egoistic level of our world to the great egoism of the highest spiritual degree. If we move from our current state, the lowest on this scale, then until we reach the 125^th degree, we will have to experience enormous, incredible suffering. At the same time, people will not be able to die, because death for them is a salvation, they will not even be able to help themselves by committing suicide.

We see how easily our world turns into people devouring each other. We have no idea how the upper forces are playing with us, how shaky our civilization is.

We need to show the world how we can advance in a good way and gradually establish  our interactions with the help of the upper force. People do not believe that this is possible because there is no way to attract the upper force into their arsenal. Only we have it. We are establishing this contact because we are studying Kabbalah, which passes through us, through me.

The group receives and will receive through me, even if I am not physically there. This connection does not disappear anywhere, it stays no matter what. In the same way, all other Kabbalists are the connecting links, the chain, to the upper light.

Therefore, we need to give this opportunity to people. It is like we are saying to a person: “Take it! Look, I have a tube through which the upper force, the upper light descends. You can take it, correct yourself and behave in the best way in this life, in this world. This will give you spiritual energy, a sense of where you live, why, how, and for what. You will be able to adjust your life correctly.

Now, from this moment on, you will be developing in our world without suffering, in attainment of the eternal good pleasures of the upper world. You will attain the entire universe, the Creator, such levels and such dimensions that you cannot even imagine. This is not Hollywood with its fantastic pictures. You will be a person standing in the middle of the universe, in the middle of all the worlds.”
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Two Ways of Development of Humanity” 10/19/13

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Question: What does a Kabbalist dream of when he sleeps?

Answer: A cat dreams of mice, Don Juan dreams of women, a hungry man dreams of a loaf of bread. What a person wants, what hurts him, what he is afraid of or aspires to is what he dreams about.

What does a Kabbalist dream about? It depends on what you go to bed with: either issues in the group, the students, or, conversely, serious preparation for the next events. In accordance with this, all sorts of thoughts slip through. I have not seen dreams in the form of images for a long time, they are in the form of thoughts.

Once it was in the form of all kinds of scenes where people argued, debated, and empathized in my dreams. But for the past 20 years or more, I wake up with thoughts of what I was thinking in my dream—thoughts mind you, not visual scenes. I don’t know why.

I think it is because I don’t pay attention to the visual scenes in life: not to appearance or to the world. I’m practically not interested in it. I don’t attach any importance to this. What difference does it make how you are dressed, what accessories you are wearing, etc. I realize that this is all just boosting our egoism, to somehow charm somebody or show who I am compared to him to put him in his place.

Question: Did Rabash tell you his dreams? Did he dream of anything?

Answer: No. I don’t think he did either.

I think visual dreams in the form of images stop happening in the early stages of a Kabbalist’s work on himself. It all goes away very quickly because you rise above this seeming theater that is being played out here, and you enter the world of forces.

For example, if there is some kind of problem on the computer screen, the one who fixes it does not look at the screen, the main thing for him is to fix it on the inside. The screen for him is just an indicator.

So does the Kabbalist. He very quickly passes the stage when the screen is even an indicator for him, and he enters directly into the world of forces. There are no images there, including dreams.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What does a Kabbalist Dream About?” 10/12/13

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Question: Is it necessary to develop a person’s responsibility for what he does?

Answer: No! And for what can you beat him or reward him? For the society in which he is. So, society overlooked it.

Question: But he still needs to understand his responsibility. Or is he like a child who broke a cup and says, “It fell by itself!”? But it never falls, a sane person should somehow understand this?

Answer: There is no such thing as common sense! Any person, including a Kabbalist, understands everything only within the limits of his level and no more than that.

All of us are, at best, on the “ladder,” and sometimes under it. So, everyone, to the extent of his spiritual correction, can clearly understand, know, and be responsible for his actions up to this stage. And above that, no. He will always be wrong.

This is the only way we can evaluate a person. If I know exactly my measure or the measure of someone else, then I can load myself or him with any actions up to a certain level, and this will be done correctly in accordance with the program of nature.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Ideal Punishment” 10/5/13

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The spiritual degrees that Baal HaSulam talks about are built on a digital principle. These are absolutely clear laws: the influence of light, the reaction from the desire, and the emergence between them of a means of balancing them called a screen.

All this is built on very clear principles: five degrees in the desire (zero, one, two, three, four), five degrees in the light (Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida), and the screen that binds them together. This is how the system of our soul is built.

But its feelings are analog, not digital. They are not digitized by squares or cubes, although everything grows in this way, but sensory and infinite. After all, when light fills the vessel, it does not leave any empty places in it and it produces this complete integral.

An integral is always a limitation. Instead of calculating the area of some figure, we fill it with squares and then sum them up. The sum of the squares supposedly gives us the area of this whole problematic figure. In fact, it does not, but this is approximately the way we use it, depending on how accurately we divide it into squares.

Here, however, we have a perfect integral. Perfect! Because the light fills all the empty spaces of the Kli (vessel). Therefore, the feelings that we receive are analog, perfect, despite the fact that the gradation of information transmission, its perception, reproduction, and in general, everything except feelings (the sensation of light in the vessel) happens by degrees, meaning it is clearly determined.

Question: Why was the analog system not created in the right way? Why should there be exactly two systems: digital and analog?

Answer: Because in this way the digital system gives the accuracy of measurement, analysis, and synthesis, and the analog system gives the height and perfection of sensation.

In this form, the connection of both systems takes place, but only because we are dealing with light, which fills the Kli and absolutely all its empty spaces. That is, there are no small tails left in our sensations that are not yet filled, not yet included in the integral.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Difference between Analog and Digital Systems” 10/15/13

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Faith Above Reason”

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 2, Part 6, Item 20

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee), Item 25″

Selected Highlights

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