Audio Version Of The Blog – 8/22/23
Posted on August 22nd, 2023
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Question: If we talk about intellect, then today there is no single definition of this concept. There are several directions according to which classical science defines intellect.
First, intellect is a quality consisting of a person’s ability to recognize new situations, the ability to learn and remember based on experience, understand and apply abstract concepts, and use their knowledge to control himself and the environment.
Second, intellect is a general ability to recognize and solve problems, which combines all the cognitive abilities of a person and his ability to understand various situations.
The third definition is very short and concentrated. Intellect is, first of all, the basis of goal setting, resource planning, and a strategy to achieve the goal.
How would you define intellect?
Answer: I am closest to the third definition. The most important thing is still the goal setting and the way to achieve it.
Question: If you dive into this definition of intellect, then scientists expand it a bit and consider that it operates on three levels.
For ease of understanding, let us call intellect an agent that does something.
The first level is the agent achieves the goal, but everything is controlled by a person. For example, a calculator or a computer. A person sets goals for it and fully programs and controls it in every sense.
The second level is the agent has a goal set by a person, but the intellect chooses the ways to achieve it. For example, an artificial intelligence that learns from some data. The formation of neural connections takes place in it, and on their basis, it can offer something new. That is, this is not programming, this is the creation of something new.
And the third level is an animal or a person who sets goals and develops algorithms for achieving them. Animals set some simple goals and methods to achieve. A person sets more complex ones.
But is it correct to say that a person sets goals for himself?
Answer: As part of our activities, life, and communication, we, in principle, whether we wish it or not, set goals for ourselves throughout life and everything that happens to us.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 7/31/23
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Question: During life, a person acquires life experience and learns from examples and abstract concepts. This is similar to the training of an animal when we set some tasks for it, give examples, and some kind of reward for performing them. Based on the results of these actions, we evaluate whether the dog is smart or stupid. Is a person trained in the same way during his life?
Answer: Of course, we evaluate ourselves and everyone else only in relation to our tasks.
Question: Some information is constantly entering a person. There are some calculations going on inside him that are concealed from him, and he acts on their basis. How can he catch the reason for these actions in order to justify them?
For example, with artificial intelligence, it is clear that a person sets goals for it, gives it a database for training, and even evaluates what is good and what is bad in its actions. How can this be determined in relation to a person?
Answer: There is nothing we can do about a person because the higher nervous activity is also taken into account here. So this is harder with a person. And it will get harder with machines. If we are talking about self-learning algorithms, then it will be difficult for us to establish the right attitude to the machine. And to a person too.
Therefore, we treat each other purely externally, one cannot go inside the other. It is unclear how and what to do with this person inside himself because he is a thing in itself.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 7/31/23
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Question: In the Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah it is said that there are two systems: the system of holiness and the system of Klipot (Impure forces). What are they?
Answer: The fact is that the desire originally created by the Creator as a desire to receive can be corrected to a desire to bestow. If the desire to receive is opposite to the quality of light, wants to receive everything into itself, and be filled with light, then the desire to bestow, on the contrary, is similar to light.
And to the extent that it resembles the light, it comes closer to it.
Thus, from the desire to receive created by the Creator, the desire to bestow is formed as well, and we work with these two desires.
Therefore, the system of holiness and the system of Klipot work against each other. The desire to receive and the desire to bestow are opposite each other and play out between themselves either a direct or an inverse relationship to creation.
Question: Does the person not exist here yet?
Answer: The system called Man appears after everything is created and distributed. A person is someone who begins to consciously work with the systems of holiness and Klipot from down below, up.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 7/30/23
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Comment: From a letter:
Dear Michael Laitman, I am asking for your advice. We raised our children, gave them everything, and they disappeared and do not even call. They are not in our life. My husband started developing dementia. I take care of him by myself, I literally fall down from exhaustion. I have no strength anymore. Our children are gone, our children have abandoned us.
Why are they so ungrateful? What did we do wrong? Why couldn’t we instill some basic respect for us in them?
My Response: We are not talking about basic respect. Maybe children are somewhere far away, busy with something, they have families, they have everything. But old people demand care and attention. I mean, I understand both parents and children.
The modern world is not made in such a way that we live together as several generations under one roof. Even children do not get attention, let alone the elderly. I do not expect anything else from the world. In no way.
Perhaps it will happen so that people will work half a day, and they will have a lot of time and will really devote part of it to parents, part to children, and part to themselves.
Question: Are you saying that we need to understand our children who are distancing from us with their families?
Answer: We ourselves have prepared such a life for them.
Comment: But this is not exactly how we lived; I remember that.
My Response: We did not live like that because we were in a different world.
Comment: By the way, you yourself have always said that it is good when three generations live together.
My Response: It was so, but now it is impossible. So, let’s stop talking about fantasies.
Question: Then the question about the future is: what will we come to in this way?
Answer: We will come to the point that we will have to really rebuild this world in order to make it more human.
Comment: You are still in favor of these good human relations one way or another.
My Response: Everyone should understand what they have to create, what kind of world they want to see. But, of course, this will not happen today or tomorrow yet.
Question: What should enter a person? What kind of world should he want to create?
Answer: A person must be imbued with desire, compassion, love, and concern about others. About others in general and not only about their relatives.
When he understands this whole system we all have to participate in, then together with others, with strangers, he will be able to create such systems of interaction, support for infants, children, youth, and so on, up to the elderly and all others where everyone feels good.
Question: You have just said a key phrase. You said that a person should understand in general this system in which we exist. Then will everything start falling into place for him?
Answer: Yes, of course.
Comment: This is the most important moment! We do not understand this strategically.
My Response: No, we cannot depict this picture for ourselves.
Comment: We can say that the world is interconnected, but we do not imagine this picture. But the world is like that.
My Response: The world is like that.
Comment: And these connections are good ones.
My Response: These connections are good, and they do not end in this world! They continue in the next world! Therefore, in addition, we must understand where we are and how we are included in each other, where such a combinatoric takes place between us that we cannot escape anywhere, we need to have a good attitude to each other all the time.
Question: I am leaving and coming back, I am leaving again and I am coming back. Does all this take place in this system?
Answer: Yes, everything is in this system. This is called that there is no death, as it were, and everything is infinity.
Comment: This is beautiful! I wish people would understand this!
My Response: There is no need, this is very hard.
Question: But will we come to this understanding?
Answer: Yes. But we have to be ready for it, and on the other hand, we have to be ready to do it and understand that it will be better for us. We should not look at it as a huge responsibility.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/31/23
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Comment: I can quiet my evil inclination only when there is the light of connection in the group. And when it stops shining, the evil inclination immediately takes possession of me.
My Response: Very good. This means that you must constantly ask to be influenced by the light of the Creator, the power of the Creator, which will keep you in the right state. Nothing else is required.
It cannot be otherwise. How do we have the strength to resist egoism? Only if the Creator will shine on us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/6/23, “My Heart Is Slain within Me—Selected Excerpts from the sources”
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Question: Has the possibility of unity and mutual guarantee ever been realized?
Answer: Yes, the possibility of realizing unity worldwide first emerged in ancient Babylon 3,700 years ago.
Abraham attempted to accomplish this, but was able to take only a few thousand people with him out of Babylon who, under his leadership, were able to form a mutual guarantee among themselves. The rest scattered around the world.
Today the entire world resembles a global Babylon, and we must return to global mutual guarantee on a worldwide scale. This task must be completed in a maximum of 217 years, but it could end much earlier, possibly even in our time.
Currently, the year is 5783 according to the Jewish calendar. We do not have to wait until the year 6000 as we can attract the appropriate forces and accelerate this development.
In case the world follows the path of suffering and is pushed forward by evolution, then it will continue until exactly 6,000 years. But if it follows the path of light, drawing spiritual actions, corrections, and changes in us, then time will compress to just a few years, and that is all.
After all, 6,000 years are 6,000 changes. These are no longer years as we transform them into our inner changes. However, if we will not do this, then physically on the timeline they will still have to be realized within 6,000 years under the pressure of nature. And if we add the pressure of the right environment to nature, then we will accelerate both the path and the time.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalistic Calendar” 9/3/11
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New Life 252 – The Influence Of The Residential Environment On A Person, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz
How does contact with the community affect our personal security? How can a person make good connections with his neighbors? Why is re-establishing contact with our environment especially important nowadays?
Man adapts to the environment in which he grows. The close environment in which we grow up and become adults shapes us. A person always strives to feel as safe as in the womb. The neighborhood has an impact on our sense of security. The more you are adapted to the environment, the safer you are.
A child in the neighborhood feels dependent on everyone else; they are his whole world. A child who sees other children around him must adapt to them. He feels that he wants to be with the big and strong ones. Children who grow up without community life lack warmth and bonds with others, and so they are likely to suffer from depression later. Through interactions between children in the neighborhood, we build friendships, connections and bonds of mutual help. There is a huge difference between a child playing with friends and a child playing alone or with his parents. Children who experience life through electronic screens do not develop as human beings because they have no live interactions with others.
Depression is the result of a lack of proper contact with the environment. A child growing up inside his smartphone will find it difficult to develop as a person. It is better to have school lessons that include group work. Friendships must be built between the children. Settlements and kibbutzim have a rich social life for children. Similar groups should be established in the neighborhoods of the city. All nature is linked in all its parts; only we humans are not. This is where suffering and misery grow from generation to generation.
A good residential environment is a place where people are connected, not necessarily sitting at home all the time, but together. Residents can discuss how to improve life, e.g., mutual assistance, children’s activities, and a beauty salon for women. Once a month, a big banquet can be held for the whole neighborhood. Kids and teens can perform in front of everyone, with music, songs and other offerings.
Connection to others gives a person the warmth he felt in the womb. In this way he extends his vessel.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 252 – The Influence Of The Residential Environment On A Person, Part 2,” 11/14/13
This summary was written and edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How do conspiracy theorists come up with new conspiracy theories?“
We come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories primarily because we do not know where we live, why we are alive, where we are headed, and what is good and bad for us.
We are confused. We can think of ourselves like little children who were placed into an open store, and who then play with all kinds of objects in that store, running around and bumping into all sorts of things, but who have no clue as to why they were placed there to begin with, and what the store’s rules are in order for everyone to enjoy themselves optimally.
That is how we are in our world. Therefore, if something significant and extraordinary happens to us here, we start examining the phenomena from several different angles: Who caused it? Who benefits from it? We start looking for who to blame.
Ultimately, we cause our every misfortune, but it is not as all kinds of conspiracy theorists emphasize, that there are certain people acting in a goal-oriented manner. We can think about it similarly to a volcanic eruption, a tsunami or a hurricane: we might have caused such phenomena indirectly, but not on purpose.
No matter how rich or powerful certain people are, they cannot change humanity’s fate. It is because nature is the general collective force and it includes and sustains each particular and individual force within itself. It rules over everyone and everything, and it does not let any one person or group of people move anything even one millimeter in any direction.
If there are any individual forces that wish to break out and take control, nature simply does not let them. Every person is a small part, an individual aspect, of a general system that is governed solely by the force of nature. Therefore, the ultimate conspirator is nature itself, which governs everyone and everything according to its higher plan—”higher” because it is beyond our minds to comprehend.
Based on the video “Why Do We Conjure Up All Kinds of Conspiracy Theories?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “The Difference between the Work of the General Public and the Work of the Individual”
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
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Selected Highlights
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