Michael Laitman on the Times of Israel: “Knowledge vs. Wisdom: Unraveling the Secrets of the Book of Life”
A sage once said, “A person must acquire both knowledge and wisdom.” When he was asked about the difference, he replied: “Knowledge is achieved by reading books, and wisdom is achieved by reading the book that you yourself are.”
What kinds of books are we? We are the book of life with all of the experiences we have in life.
Reading this book of life requires remembering and understanding how we live. Our lives write this book but only we can be imbued with it and understand it if we leaf through it. Writing, in this case, means that we write this book. At every moment of our lives, we solve various problems that are set for us, and move them into action. We thus need to understand how it all unfolds.
We write the book of life with doubts and blood, i.e., suffering. We have been living in such a way for thousands of years, and everything that has taken place is written in this book. There is no other way, and there is nothing for us to regret. Rather, all the suffering that we have been though was necessary to write this book of life.
The last lines in the book of life, which it leads to, are those that encourage us to open our eyes wider and observe the world with clarity. We would then see that only we paint a picture of this world and ourselves inside it, and there is no reality other than what we determine.
We determine the existence of this world and make it exactly the way it is. In reality, there is no world. We define it. For instance, do we exist? It is whatever we define. In other words, we determine that we live in such and such a world, and we determine that it is us inside this world. There is nothing but our impression of what and how we write. If we reach such a level of awareness, then we can say that it is where the book has led us. In other words, the last lines in the book of life are that we get to know the world we find ourselves in. That is how we are guided by various blows of suffering—to acquire knowledge of the world where we live.
The result of reading the book of life is that we accept and agree with everything that happens and has happened to us. People are generally afraid and hope that they will receive something good at the end of their hard lives. The good that we can receive is that we accept everything. That is the result of our lives and this book of life. In other words, the result of our lives is to understand the real nature in which there is a clear law, that of “each according to their work on themselves.” We accept and agree with this law to the extent in which we realize it.
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Question: The basis of our work is faith above reason. The more faith we have, the more light there is. We should not take the attainment of the lights of the Torah as a basis.
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