Audio Version Of The Blog – 6/5/23
Posted on June 5th, 2023
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Will Chips in Our Brain Make Us Healthier or Zombier?”
Last Thursday, Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink announced that it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct in-human clinical trials. The company is developing a chip that should be implanted in the brain with the intent to help patients with severe paralysis to control external technologies and communicate with their environment by moving cursors and typing with their minds using only brain signals. In addition to helping patients with paralysis, experts believe such implants can help treat blindness and mental illness. Musk even expressed his intent for Neuralink to explore potential applications for healthy people.
Just as Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of our lives, computer chips implanted in our brains will become increasingly commonplace. We cannot stop scientific development; if something can be done, it will be done. The question is not whether or not to permit the development of brain-chips, but how to avoid their countless harmful uses.
As with every new technology, the first use for brain-implanted chips will be for military purposes: as weapons. The destructive potential of turning such technologies into weapons is enormous. The only way to avoid employing them against humanity is by rising to a higher level of humanism than our current reality of relentless power struggles.
Translating thoughts into cursor movements may seem benign, but there is much more to it. The aspiration to apply the technology on healthy people can potentially give its operators control over people’s minds, turn them into zombies, and activate them according to the operator’s will. This may not seem as devastating as a nuclear weapon, for example, but in the wrong hands, it can be even more injurious.
Worse yet, the harm of nuclear weapons is evident, which deters nations from using it, even as they continue to develop them. Brain implants that control people’s actions, however, are a new kind of weapon, and there is nothing to stop power-hungry rulers and magnates from using it, since there is no fear of the consequences. By the time we know what harm this new menace can inflict, humanity could be in total devastation.
Perhaps the only way to restrain abuse of this new power is to have an open discussion about its potential harms. Awareness may be our only counter measure, our only defense against weaponizing mind-control technologies.
In the end, however, I am a firm believer in the good fate of humanity. Whether we realize in time the detrimental potential of computers that control the mind and avoid more tragedies, or realize that we must restrain ourselves only after we inflict disaster on ourselves, as we did with atom bombs, we will ultimately muster the strength to use technology wisely and in our favor.
Human nature is evil at the core and relentlessly pushes us toward the precipice. However, human beings are also able to draw conclusions and choose their course in life. Today we know that destruction of one is the destruction of the other, that harming others harms the harm-doer. Therefore, I believe that we will finally draw the inevitable conclusion that we cannot work in favor of only one part or faction of humanity, that no one benefits unless everyone benefits.
Once we accept this, as unappealing as it may be to our ego, we will begin to conduct ourselves in ways that benefit humanity. Prosperity is possible only when exploitation and oppression become unacceptable, when we feel, not simply think, but truly feel that technology can be used positively only when it is used for everyone’s sake, and not only for the sake of a powerful few.
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Question: You say that everyone needs to know the principles of the universe. Why? At school, for example, children are taught a variety of subjects. But why would the majority study physics or chemistry, for example, if they will not be useful to them in the future?
Answer: These subjects are necessary for general education. Without them, a person cannot think normally. He has to hear and forget a lot of things in order to form some kind of attitude to the world. Subconsciously it still works inside and correctly adjusts a person to the environment.
For example, I don’t remember anything from school and institute chemistry. But I have some feelings about the chemical approach to the world. This should remain from education.
Comment: But during the school years, the child’s world is built. I remember how we were told about evolution, history, about many things, and then you find out that it’s not like that at all. And it’s like your consciousness is collapsing.
My Response: Nothing is collapsing. Humanity is moving forward in this way. What seemed unshakable yesterday is being tested today, tomorrow it turns out to be a lie, and the day after tomorrow a supposedly new truth appears, which in turn becomes a lie in a couple of days.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who Needs Your Principles?” 3/27/11
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Comment: When you studied Kabbalah, you disagreed with your teacher at times.
My Response: I am human. Naturally, I sometimes disagreed with Rabash because my nature did not agree. But above this disagreement, I still had to move forward according to his recommendations.
This means that on the one hand I did not want to follow his advice, and on the other hand I understood that I was obliged to follow it through “I do not want to” because all spiritual, upper nature is revealed contrary to our egoism.
It is said: “I created your desires [your egoism] as help against you.” Against you! It is like having an opponent standing in front of you who shows you how opposed you are to the common nature, to the single force. This is your mirror!
Comment: It turns out that the Creator created ugliness and then He mocks a person.
My Response: No, He shows you your ugliness in the way you treat everyone else.
Comment: But it was He who gave me such qualities.
My Response: Yes, specifically so that you gradually learn to become Him, this upper force.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Method of Realizing Kabbalah” 3/27/11
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Question: Does our consciousness never cling to old information from a past cycle or the past understanding of some things? Or is it deposited in the subconscious?
Answer: I can only say one thing: we are not what we feel, that we are enclosed in a certain physical volume, a biological product.
In fact, we are a thought. Only in relation to us this thought is felt as a kind of formed body, in a certain physical volume, which does not really exist.
Thought draws us a holographic or, one might say, a laser picture of the world. Everything that appears to us is thought, information, which is depicted in us in the form of a picture of the surrounding world.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is a Person’s “I”?” 4/16/11
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Question: What is a book?
Answer: A book in Kabbalah is something that externally looks like a scroll or an image of some letters. This image can be on clay, metal, or any other materials like parchment, papyrus, it doesn’t matter what.
In the inner sense, a book is an adapter, converter, connector, and conductor between us. In each of us, there is an internal system called the soul. Through my external, corporeal system, visual or auditory, I come into contact with some means of connecting me to another system—an external one.
That is, my soul is connected through the book to an external system called the common soul.
This is not just a book, but a complete system made by a certain person or a group of people so that I could connect my soul to the common soul, to the common system of governance. This is not possible without a book.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is a Book?” 3/13/11
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Question: Why do you simplify Kabbalah? People know that Kabbalists have some paranormal abilities, and this attracts them.
Answer: There are no paranormal phenomena. Why do you always look for some tricks or miracles? None of it exists in nature! We are talking about its laws.
You want to say: “There are some laws of nature that we do not know about. If you show them to us, we will be very surprised.” It is like showing a light bulb to a caveman, he will blow on it thinking it is fire. Or if he sees a self-opening door, he will kneel before it believing the holy spirit opens and closes it.
But these are laws of nature! There is nothing else! There are only things we do not know, which may look like a miracle at first. The iron bird is flying in the air! You can only fall to your knees and pray. But in reality? It is the same for everything!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What is a Miracle” 3/6/11
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The point of freewill in a Kabbalistic group is in the decision to expose yourself to the influence of the environment.
This is the most fundamental thing: me and the group. I must gather this team around me, unite them together in one fist, enter among them, invigorate them so that they act on me and I on them, and we would move toward the highest goal.
Although we do not feel it, let’s all take on this task together: “Yes we do not understand what we are doing. Maybe it is still hidden from us. So we will play at it like children and eventually we will grow up because there is a force in nature that develops us.”
But often this is a “voice of one crying out in the desert” that does not resonate with anyone. Or everyone speaks beautifully and others do not respond. Everyone is shouting, “Let’s do it, let’s do it!” and at the same time they look not at each other, but look in different directions.
Comment: Nonetheless people cannot, for example, stay in a certain surrounding for five years that does not affect them in at least some way.
My Response: They have to support each other!
Changes occur in them everyday. Moreover the changes that are taking place in the world should also push them toward their own changes.
After all, since the moment the science of Kabbalah began to be revealed to the general public, look at the changes that have occurred in the world and also with us! There are already millions of us.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Method of Kabbalah Realization” 4/10/11
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Can you define spirituality in one sentence? What are some practical examples of it in our daily lives?“
Spirituality is the attainment of the quality of love and bestowal above our self-serving desires.
Until the moment of our first spiritual revelation—where we cross the barrier between our world and the spiritual world and encounter the force of love and bestowal—we have no example of spirituality.
After that revelation, our own experience lets us perceive a new spiritual reality instead of trusting someone else’s words.
Until we reach the adequate spiritual desire, called a spiritual “Kli” (“vessel”), within ourselves and make direct contact with the spiritual force of love and bestowal, we have no examples or proofs of spirituality.
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 6, 2010. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 3, “The Meaning of Truth and Faith”
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 67
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Selected Highlights
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