Question: Is it possible to call accepting the opinion of a friend, even though it is the opposite of one’s own, “faith above reason”? If so, how do I do it without disregarding my own opinion?

Answer: Faith above reason means contrary to my opinion, I accept the opinion of a friend and follow it 100%. I am trying to make his opinion, even though it is the opposite of mine, become mine. You need to experience it yourself, and gradually you will be able to understand what it is.

Faith above reason is a system of spiritual perception where you begin to see the spiritual world above our world or through it. It is not easy. You need to spend a lot of time and expend a lot of effort until you start to perceive everything this way.

This is a completely different system of the universe, as if you have a completely different mind, feelings, and thoughts.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 6/16/20

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Temperatures are rising, and one colony of ants will soon have to make a collective decision. Each ant feels the rising heat beneath its feet but carries along as usual until, suddenly, the ants reverse course. The whole group rushes out as one—a decision to evacuate has been made. It is almost as if the colony of ants has a greater, collective mind.  

A new study suggests that indeed, ants as a group behave similar to networks of neurons in a brain.   

Rockefeller’s Daniel Kronauer and postdoctoral associate Asaf Gal developed a new experimental setup to meticulously analyze decision-making in ant colonies. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that when a colony evacuates due to rising temperatures, its decision is a function of both the magnitude of the heat increase and the size of the ant group.  

The findings suggest that ants combine sensory information with the parameters of their group to arrive at a group response—a process similar to neural computations giving rise to decisions. 

“We pioneered an approach to understand the ant colony as a cognitive-like system that perceives inputs and then translates them into behavioral outputs,” says Kronauer, head of the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior. “This is one of the first steps toward really understanding how insect societies engage in collective computation.”  (Rockefeller University)

Question: How would you apply this to a human being? Is it applicable to a human being? Can a person reach such a state with another person?

Answer: No. It is possible to reach this state through tremendous internal work but not simply instinctively the way birds or fish or other animals do.

Question: For animals it is instinct whereas for us it is work to achieve this state?

Answer: Of course. You see how fish in the sea all swim in a huge school that can include hundreds of thousands of them.

Question: And man often abandons another person and runs away because he is hurt.

You, as a Kabbalist, do you think we should reach a state where we start to feel one another this way, where we exist in one breath?

Answer: Generally, we will have to. But it will not happen the way it does with fish or birds but by us calling out to the Creator and asking Him to connect us within Him. For Him to connect us in His upper mind, in the desire, and then we will roll together with Him. This is what we want to strive for.

So, the Creator will be the force that unites, governs, and guides—everything!

Question: Then thoughts about me, that I feel hot, will go away?

Answer: I will be inside of Him. What thoughts are there? Everything is done.

Question: Meaning, I am entirely inside of Him and rely only on that?

Answer: Yes. He has already swallowed you. It is the same for everyone.

Question: And then we become a single body, heart?

Answer: Yes. Look at those fish—they are in Him instinctively. But we need Him to do this for us.

Question: When we see this—the way birds, ants, and fish move— why are we being shown this? For us to see it and maybe even envy them?

Answer: It is for you to see that there is a state of adhesion, unity, and obedience where each one annuls himself for the sake of everyone. Our purpose is—in spite of our egoism and individuality—to reach the same state.

Question: And what if we were not endowed with this individuality?

Answer: Then we will be like fish or birds. And what is the rationale for that?

Question: Meaning, then we would not feel that happiness?

Answer: Only if we want to do it in spite of ourselves! Then you feel pleasure from submitting to the Creator in spite of yourself in order to be together with everyone you want to separate yourself from! Do you understand what kinds of opposite forces are operating here? And at the convergence of these opposing forces is precisely when you reach adhesion with the upper one.

Comment: Bliss, as they say.

My Response: Yes.

Question: The feeling of not wanting to connect with others, does this feeling not disappear in me?

Answer: No. You rise above it.

Question: So, one way or another, I am left with this black hole inside of me?

Answer: Of course. “Love covers all transgressions.” That is, egoism must always be below, and there is connection and love above it. Otherwise the love will disappear.

Transgressions must be there.

Comment: We are very different from ants.

My Response: They don’t have it, they just calmly work.

Question: So what, they don’t have this feeling of happiness, then? Happiness, revelation?

Answer: No, they have the sensation of carrying out their instinct. That is, they feel themselves executors and self-sufficient—but no pleasure.

We were given the opportunity to receive pleasure and be happy.

Comment: Precisely when we overcome ourselves.

My Response: Only then.

Question: Otherwise, a person cannot attain happiness?

Answer: No.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/4/22

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is Ray Kurzweil correct in saying that advances in science will enable man to live forever?“

My question in relation to Kurzweil’s statement is: What is so good about us constantly living all the time? Why live at all if we are never to die?

On the contrary, if we attain the purpose of our lives while we are alive, then we will reach a spiritual, eternal and perfect state, i.e. one where we will have no feeling of a lack. In our current lives, we constantly live out of feeling lacks and the need to fulfill our lacks. However, we can reach a state where we have no such feeling of a lack, but that we have an abundance of everything.

Developing ourselves spiritually has nothing to do with medicine or technology. It has to do with our inner world, i.e. with how we feel that we can give and receive from everyone, and to live in a world is boundless, with no beginning or end. Then, even if our bodies die, we will not feel it as death.

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Faith Above Reason”

Selected Highlights

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Restriction means that Malchut of Ein Sof diminished the will to receive in her. Then the light disappeared because there is no light without a vessel (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Restriction and Line,” “Inner Observation,” Chapter 2).

Question: What does the principle there is no light without a vessel mean, and how is it manifested in our world?

Answer: It is very simple. Let’s say that when a person is hungry, he can enjoy food. But to the extent that his appetite decreases, his pleasure from food also decreases.

How much a person will feel and, I would even say, how much a person will seek pleasure in the things he receives depends on the desire.

Question: Did Baal HaSulam, who commented on Ari’s essay, study the inner needs of a person? Is this the basis of our desires and of our life?

Answer: Naturally, both Ari and Baal HaSulam understood and absolutely, clearly differentiated how pleasure is manifested in accordance with the size of the desire.

This principle says that there are a great number of pleasures in our world, but we cannot grasp them if we do not have a desire for them. If there is no desire, there is no pleasure.

Question: Where can a person get desires if he has none?

Answer: This is a problem. We see how unhappy people are who have lost their desire for some reason. They are depressed and ready to do anything to have a desire again.

Question: Is it possible to increase the desire for something, say, twofold?

Answer: Basically, doctors and scientists are trying to do this.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 11/20/22

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It is as our sages write: “All the gates were locked except for the gates of tears.” The world asks about this: If the gates of tears are not locked, what is the need for the gates at all? (Baal HaSulam, Shamati 18, “My Soul Shall Weep In Secret”)

The gate of tears opens only when a person is convinced that all other gates are locked and there is nothing before him. Then he bursts into crying and pleading, and he sees that the gate of tears is opening before him.

Question: It turns out that there are a lot of obstacles before a person. However, it is written: “All the gates were locked except for the gate of tears.” So, if they are open, why not enter them immediately?

Answer: No, a person does not feel that they are open. Only if he makes sure that all the gates are locked and cries from his own helplessness: “What to do!”—then he sees that the gate of tears is open before him.

Question: What in our life can be the gate that is locked?

Answer: Locked and open gates are the coupling of a person with the Creator. Either he sees that they are closed or he sees that they are open. That is, this is coupling by striking (Zivug de Hakaa), the equivalence of qualities.

If our qualities correspond with the qualities of the Creator, then at some stage the gates open.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/6/22

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We should yearn to see a friend as the greatest of the generation in a real, tangible way, which is called “within reason,” as it really is, and not as it seems to our egoism. After all, egoism always wants to feel better and more comfortable, and therefore it instinctively belittles everyone around in order to be above them. The main thing for it is to rule.

Therefore, to accept the idea of the need to connect with friends as a means of reaching connection with the Creator is possible only by faith above reason since we certainly do not see each other in our true form. Only on the basis of this small external criterion, where we see that a person is aiming for the same goal and is willing to accept all the conditions necessary to advance toward it, do we begin to treat him as a friend, as a means to connect with the Creator.

Based on such external signs, we decide to start working on our attitude to this person. If he is ready to work together, then we annul all other claims that our ego usually makes and begin to come closer to the person to connect in order to tangibly reveal our connection, and not just by faith above reason.

As we reach a genuine, sensory connection, we are coming closer to building a spiritual vessel in which the Creator is revealed.

A connection can occur above reason, at a time when it does not seem to me that a friend is worth it, but I still connect with him. I use this as the means. We call this a period of preparation, when I value my friends not because I see them as great. According to my feelings, I am above them, but I go above my feelings, do not agree with them, and I imagine my friends as great.

In order to move from faith above reason to reason, that is, to truly appreciate my friends, I need to correct my perception. The correction is in the fact that we are starting to work on our connection despite the opposite opinion. We are building a society in which everyone gives others a sense of the greatness of the group and the goal.

Through working together, we attract the reforming light, and as a result, we move from faith above reason into reason, and so we rise higher and higher. Of course, each subsequent step is more difficult. At first, the friends seemed as not too bad to me: in some ways bad, in some ways good. When it was necessary to rise above reason, I could easily do it and accept them as equals, companions on the way, or even great people of the generation. Their goal and they themselves seemed important to me.

But then I received the burdening of the heart, and I found a lot of flaws in them. It becomes increasingly difficult for me to accept them as great and see the Creator behind them and to warm myself up so that I do not notice anyone except my friends so that friends become everything to me.

Each time it gets harder and harder until I nevertheless overcome these obstacles and fulfill the measure allocated for me. Then all my efforts to go above reason turn into reason, turn into the correct vessel, inside of which the first revelation of the true quality of bestowal takes place, that is, a person is filled with the feeling of the Creator.

Thus, the principle of faith above reason always operates between the degrees, when ascending from one to the other. But when we are building our vessel, we should try as much as possible to transfer it into the reason.
[109091]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/3/13, Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “Concerning Above Reason”

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Question: You say that tears are a manifestation of passive participation in correction and a sign of a person’s spiritual weakness. That is, it is a state of Katnut (smallness), a form of protection from egoism that does not give us the opportunity to work with it to bestow. What is passive participation in correction?

Answer: Passive participation is when a person does not have the ability to ask, demand, or participate in one’s correction. He only states the fact that he is in a certain state but nothing more. As a result of this passive component, he produces tears from his own weakness.

There are the states of smallness and the state of greatness in the spiritual world. In our world, up to a certain age there is also a state of smallness (infancy) and then a state of greatness (adulthood). We see that young children cry a lot more. As a consequence of this, it is the same thing in spirituality; that is, tears are from powerlessness that a person cannot work with his egoism.

In addition, young children also learn to manipulate with their tears. It is a natural defensive reaction for them.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/6/22

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Question: The 13^th part of The Study of the Ten Sefirot describes the system of the universe where all our desires come from even before our world was formed.

It also says how tears appear. They symbolize an excess of light. When the light enters the Kli (vessel), and the Kli cannot accept it, it seems to overflow over the edge. This is called tears. How does one understand this?

Answer: When the reflected light does not have the opportunity to receive direct light, then these remnants of light seem to pour out in the form of tears.

That is, you cry because you do not have the opportunity to properly accept the highest pleasure, and you regret it. But not because you cannot accept it, but because you cannot accept it for the sake of the Creator, and this makes you bitter. This is the reason for tears.

Question: And how can you come to such a state at all?

Answer: They come.
[305369]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 11/6/22

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