Above The Universe

If we rise and look at the whole picture, besides humanity, at inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, then we will see a special, uniform law that treats all of us as a general system. Moreover, this system is closed, integral, and perfectly interconnected in all its parts.

This is the way that nature treats everyone, and only we, people, are opposite to it in our essence.

This implies the following: If we are opposite to nature, then we can study, understand, and perceive it from the side and become like it. However not naturally, like the inanimate world, flora and fauna do, but by solely and independently rising to the common, upper degree of nature that lies even above our Universe, and above the Big Bang that started it.

This is the real human degree, the level of man, from the word “Adam,” which means similar (Domeh) to the general system. In this way we will take control over it, we will understand and perceive all of nature, penetrate its depths, and be included in it. This is where the essence lays, the purpose of our lives, and our freedom of will. Only this is worth living. Otherwise we remain miserable ants that execute the commands of our body.

And this means that we need to find a method that will allow us to stand in front of nature, to study, reveal and research it, and at the same time, through this, to form ourselves in equivalence to this universal and global nature that includes in itself the entire Universe, humanity, and who knows what else.

This is what we must reach. Only if I attain this universal system, if I open it, if I find out what I exist for, how I was created, how I live and develop, and what form of comprehensive nature I must reach, only then will I realize myself.

This is my free choice: to achieve this or not, to enter into interaction, into connection, with nature, or at least into familiarity and understanding of it, or not. A person can freely build himself by absorbing the entire system, up to the smallest details into his mind and feelings. And then he will be called a man (Adam).

In this state he combines two opposite forces within himself. On one hand, according to nature of this world, he is an egoist, but on the other hand, according to nature of the global world, he is an altruist. He has a chance to acquire the second force. And this chance is waiting for its implementation. A person is led to this opportunity and then everything depends on him—does he want it or not? He discovers the method, meaning books, mentors, and a group for its implementation, in other words, the place where he implements his connection with nature. In this way a person can move forward and develop toward the stage when nature will reveal itself to him.

And he is free on this path. After all, he can, on his own accord, freely be included in the group that teaches him how to connect, to join to the comprehensive system of nature.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/28/16

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Age-Old Conflict

People are entirely and fully dependent on heredity and the environment. Free will is no more than an illusion.

But if absolutely nothing depends on me, if I am just a part of the general mechanism that has no independence whatsoever, and if I don’t act but am being influenced, then my life has no meaning and no reason at all. In that case, why do we exist? What is this all for?

And here we come to the heart of the matter: is a free choice possible in man’s life, a free action that will allow us to call him independent? Apparently, just for the sake of this action he was born and lives from reincarnation to reincarnation. And billions of people live this way.

So what is this free action, albeit tiny, around which revolves my entire existence? When I will get to it and realize it? Precisely from there the meaning of my life will grow and break free.

In researching this question we discover ourselves in the unique system. On the one hand, we all are egoists and lead an extremely individualistic life. With time we disconnect more and more and move away from each other.

Nobody needs neighbors, no one wants communication with most of them. On the other hand, nature brings us closer together; we live on the small planet Earth, in a small global village, in the global, integral connection with each other.

This contrast, this contradiction grows from year to year. Today it is especially noticeable in Europe, where an attempt to create a common market has exposed the inability of the Europeans to unite in correct mutuality.

So how do we solve this problem?
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/28/16

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Congenital And Acquired

In general there are two opposite concepts with respect to free will. The first states that a person has an opportunity to make free decisions and thereby to direct his life, giving it a significant impact.

The second concept, on the contrary, attributes everything to fate or providence, depriving a person of any free will and declaring predetermination of events. So which one is correct?

My first profession was biocybernetics, which studies the systems of the human body that control it, ensure its vital functions, and lead it to a certain task and purpose. So, according to biocybernetics there is no free will whatsoever. After all, a body is a complex biological system with two types of parameters:

· Innate properties
· Qualities acquired from outside

Within this framework, an average person doesn’t have the slightest possibility to act according to his will. Some qualities he inherited from parents, some were received from educators, and others the environment. His development is defined by a combination of these factors.

Hence the question is: Does a person choose other factors through which he will be able to change? And if he chooses, what guides him? Isn’t he guided by what is already inherent in him inside and outside, meaning genes and his environment? And even if he is given something else, it also doesn’t depend on him, right?

Heaven’s Will

A person predictably reacts to what is happening and continues on his way. We assume that he is able to make free decisions based on random circumstances. But in fact, that is not the case and there is no freedom in anything.

We simply don’t have enough knowledge about the unified system called nature or Elokim (God). It is divided into completely interconnected subsystems and there is nothing accidental in it. On the contrary, everything is strictly determined. Thus a person is a creature of inner and surrounding nature. He is unable to make free decisions that would depend on him.

So then how to treat it? Is it possible to evaluate his actions as good or bad? To tell the truth, the answer is no.

It is the same way that we don’t assess flaws of some device made by us. If some part in it is broken, we understand that this is caused either by an internal defect or by external factors with which it was in contact. There are simply no any other options.

And therefore if we understand and feel the system correctly, we would see that there is no reason to punish a person. It is no coincidence that there is no punishment in the modern sense in the Torah, but there are only corrections in it. A person should be placed in such systems where he will change through external factors and then his life would flow differently.

However, we are confused and scattered on a scale that extends from fatalism and belief in destiny to belief in blind chance. Some believe that everything is in hands of heaven; others leave just some events to the will of heaven.

Actually, heaven is an unknown component with which we try to establish some kind of relationship in order to improve our lives.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/28/16

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What makes us choose a spouse or a certain profession? Do we have any choice or is everything predetermined?

Professor Marcus du Sautoy from the University of Oxford conducted a study that examined how long it takes from the brain making a decision to it going into effect. Brain wave scans showed, to his surprise, that the decision to perform a certain action was made in the brain six seconds before the awareness of the decision, and he made the decision! One of the questions that concern modern scientists is: Do we have free will or are we the result of predetermined neurological reactions.

How we look at it, is that it seems that man is not free at all. We did not choose which family we are born into or the skills and characteristics we have. Our parents and teachers, whom we have not chosen, dictate our values of the world and the education we receive. The media shape our opinions and standards for beauty, and society dictates the codes of conduct, speech, and in fact—everything! Sometimes it seems that a person is like empty computer hardware on which any selected software could be installed through which he will function and realize “himself.”

Bound by the Forces of Nature

In fact, a person does not choose to live his life but navigates according to a system of rules set for him, and incessantly tries to please the society that surrounds him. Over the years, a person’s decision-making system becomes increasingly more complex and this complexity creates the illusion of free choice.

On a more internal level, none of us chose to be born into a system that has an embedded mechanism that drives us to achieve maximum pleasure with minimum effort. This desire manages us every single moment to do the simple arithmetic: chase pleasures of life and escape pain. Even if a person pursues pain, it is only because doing so will bring him greater pleasure.

Therefore, great doubt arises about having free choice. “Yet, this concept, expressed in that word, ‘freedom,’ remains unclear, and if we delve into the meaning of that word, there will be almost nothing left. For before you seek the freedom of the individual, you must assume that any individual, in and of itself, has that quality called ‘freedom,’ meaning that one can act according to one’s own free choice” (Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”). And still free choice must apply to some extent since, otherwise is the purpose in all this mayhem called life?! Surely it cannot be that we are doomed to be puppets on a string.

Tell Me who Your Friends Are and I Will Tell You who You Are

Although a person cannot choose his attributes or the environment he is born into, he can adjust himself to a scale of values of good and evil. How? Through his environment.

Baal HaSulam explains that human society is like soil for a grain of wheat. Just as the grain of wheat contains all the properties of a wheat plant and the soil that nourishes it determines the pace, form, and manner in which it will grow, so does a person’s genetic material contain all the features and tendencies of a person, and the social environment, through the scale of its values, determines how he those attributes will be developed For example, a person with an inclination to draw, that is born into a society that doesn’t respect artists probably will not grow up to be a painter.

Thus, when determining standards of good and evil, a person has no free choice; rather, the society he lives in dictates these values. “For example: I sit, I dress, I speak, and I eat. I do all these not because I want to sit that way, or talk that way, or dress that way, or eat that way, but because others want me to sit, dress, talk, and eat that way. It all follows the desire and fancy of society, not my own free will. Furthermore, in most cases, I do all these against my will. For I would be a lot more comfortable behaving simply, without any burden. But I am chained with iron shackles, in all my movements, to the fancies and manners of others, which make up the society” (Baal HaSulam,”The Freedom”).

Like a School of Fish

In their book Connected, Professor Nicholas Christakis and Professor James Fowler, senior researchers from Harvard University and from the University of California, reveal that it is highly probable that a person will gain weight if a close friend does. The decision of a friend of friend, a person he doesn’t know at all, to start smoking increases the chances that he will begin to smoke by more than ten percent. And there are also positive sides to this phenomenon. Another study showed that happiness is contagious. When a person is around people who are happy, his happiness increases.

The researchers examined networks of millions of people and concluded as seen in the animal world: humanity behaves like a social network, a kind of super-organism, growing and developing in which different content flows and affects all the members of the network. Scientifically, it turns out that our environment has a decisive influence on our development and on our decision-making.

If Everything Is Predetermined, Who Has the Ability to Choose?

“The point where the wisdom of scientists comes to an end is where the wisdom of Kabbalah begins” (Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, Likutey Moharan). According to Kabbalah, the whole creation, including our world, is part of one thought that generated creation, the Thought of Creation. Every creature, thought, or event created or which happened in the past, that exist at present, or which will be in the future, are derived and descend from the thought of creation as part of its implementation.

The Creator, the upper force, unlike us, does not need time in order to fulfill His plans so when the thought of creation was made, it was realized immediately. In fact, we are already in the final phase of the operating plan of creation, and not only does that phase exist, but also all the stages to reach its fulfillment. All we have to do is to reveal it. “We don’t innovate anything. Our only work is to illuminate what is concealed inside a person” (Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk).

We all think that our parents met, got married, decided to have children, and here we are. But according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our birth in this world with our specific parents existed in potential prior to our actual birth, and because it had yet to be realized, it resulted in our father and mother meeting, marrying, and bringing us into the world.

“Against your will you are born, against your will do you live, and against your will you will die” (Ethics of the Fathers). If according to science and the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person is pre-programmed and has no free choice in life, then what is the point in living? Why should nature, such a perfect and sophisticated system, create this reality and sustain it? If reward and punishment for every action we have ever performed do not apply, then what is the point? Don’t be discouraged! According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person has free choice in one place only…
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From Ynet article 6/23/16

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Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 6:14 – 6:15: Do not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are around you. For the Lord, your God, is a zealous God among you, lest the wrath of the Lord, your God, be kindled against you, and destroy you off the face of the earth.

Question: What does it mean “do not go after other gods”?

Answer: The fact is that if you follow egoism, then you follow Pharaoh who represents all by saying “Who is the Creator that I should listen to Him?” This is the reverse side of the Creator that He himself exhibits in front of us so that we would understand that the quality of love and bestowal is higher than the quality of egoism.

And so they work one against the other. Actually the Creator builds from a reverse, and we exist relative to it.

And what do we choose? He gave us organic, natural inclinations so that we would choose Pharaoh and we would have freedom of choice for it.

But when does it appear? After all, if I constantly rush to Pharaoh, am I in free choice with respect to the Creator? What does freedom mean? And what does choice mean? What are these states when I make decisions independently?

I suppose that if one thing is bigger than another from my point of view, I always choose the one that is bigger. And if they are equal, I don’t know what to choose. So in what sense do I choose?

The choice happens when I still don’t know which one is bigger and which one is smaller. It means that there is no choice as such; there is work in order to study and analyze what I should choose, what is really bigger.

When we attempt to do this we come to a state from which there is no escape. And then we have the one and only option: to cry out for the Creator. That’s when the Creator makes a choice, and not us.

Therefore our choice is only to turn correctly, according to the Kabbalistic principles to the only one that exists, controls, and fills everything, the upper force, and ask it for at least some minimal revelation, so that it will help us to advance correctly at least one step forward.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/6/16

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New Life 739 – Does Choice Exist Or Is Everything In The Hands Of Heaven?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Where does freedom of choice exist in our lives, from what do we try to be freed, and what will bring us to attain true freedom?

The first profession in which I specialized was bio-cybernetics. According to bio-cybernetics, a human is a biological system that lacks choice with data it is born with and data absorbed from the environment in the course of life. A human thinks that he chooses and decides, just like a small child feels that he chooses when his mother leaves the room. But this is due to a lack of knowledge of the natural system, divinity. So according to the Torah, there are no punishments but correction in the direction of life.

We are like components of a system, completely operated. But there is a particular action in our lives that is considered to be a free choice. Whoever carries it out becomes a free person. When we investigate nature, we see that everything in it is linked, except for humans who are individualists with the tendency to separate. Nature requires us to be linked with each other, in good connection, but basically everyone runs away to his own corner. It is specifically the contrast between human nature and the nature of the overall system that makes it possible for us to choose to emulate nature at the peak of our development and climb to a new level of existence, the speaking level.

A person who reaches this level is a free person; he includes two opposing forces, egoism and altruism, and the link between these two forces is within him. The ability to choose is developed in a person when he hears about this possibility. From that moment on, it is up to him to choose an appropriate environment for development. Through choosing an environment for spiritual development, the person begins to learn about his nature and the nature of the world. A person who realizes the choice of an environment is a free person because in the right environment he becomes free of his egoistic nature. When we realize freedom of choice, we attain a good and secure life, and endless possibilities will be open to us.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 739 – Does Choice Exist Or Is Everything In The Hands Of Heaven?” 6/28/16

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New Life 738 – Decision Making
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

How can we make the right decisions? What motivates us to reach a certain decision and why is it easier to make rational decisions when we have an important goal in life?

People find it difficult to make decisions because generally they have no clear guidelines in life. Our mind helps us decide where there is no room for emotions, but a person must balance the two.

A person needs to make major decisions when he tries to find out the meaning of life and then he has to listen to his inner voice. At the peak of his development, a person has to reach a point in which he critiques his decisions from above. In order to do so, the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches a person what his nature is and what the nature of the world that surrounds him is, and where he is headed.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 738 – Decision Making,” 6/28/16

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In the News (Society for Personality and Social Psychology): “Diminishing a person’s belief in free will leads to them feeling less like their true selves, according to recent research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. In a pair of studies, researchers from Texas A&M University manipulated people’s beliefs in free will to see how this would affect the subjects’ sense of authenticity, their sense of self. …

“‘Whether you agree that we have free will or that we are overpowered by social influence or other forms of determinism, the belief in free will has truly important consequences,’ says lead author Elizabeth Seto, a Graduate Student at the Department of Psychology at Texas A&M University. …

“‘Our findings suggest that part of being who you are is experiencing a sense of agency and feeling like you are in control over the actions and outcomes in your life,’ says Seto. ‘If people are able to experience these feelings, they can become closer to their true or core self.’”

Answer: Psychology is not a science. It is based upon experiments in limited conditions.

First, there is no person who can accept and live with the knowledge that are managed. If we could reach a state like this, it would be good.

Question: Does this mean that psychologists cannot convince a person that they are controlled?

Answer: Certainly not. They can’t even start.

You can tell a person that all kinds of external and internal forces govern him and in fact not his. And he is not the one who chooses what to do because a few seconds before making an alleged decision, the information has already been formed and shaped in his brain and he only expresses the prepared result.

Science has already proven this is so. But a person cannot agree with the fact that he does not make decisions on his own because it is against his egoistic nature.This negates his identity, his “I,” his freedom of choice.

He can agree intellectually, but in another second he will forget it anyway. His nature erases this data from him automatically and he begins to live again as usual,  as if everything were up to him.

Comment: Psychologists say that attempts to reduce a person’s faith in freedom of choice increases aggression and gives rise to deception.

Response: Theoretically yes, but in fact, if speaking about a normal, sane, and balanced person, he cannot act according to this belief and respond negatively.

Question: Does this mean that a person always feels that he is free?

Answer: Yes. When teaching “The Freedom” (written by Baal HaSulam about freedom of will), we see that even when one hears that he is managed, he agrees, “Yes, yes, yes,” and continues on his way; he doesn’t even ask how to become free. It doesn’t concern him because he needs to feel confident in himself.

So I should feel within myself that there is a higher power that controls me through all kinds of systems, circumstances, and events, both external and internal, in everything that I do.

I have to feel it, not just hear it from someone. That is when I will feel I am bound hand and foot; no matter what I did, it all came from somewhere but not from me. I begin to strive to this “somewhere.” Where is the source of my behavior, the source of my future, my fate?—so at least I will know how this is works in nature.

No matter how much we talk about this, we cannot convince a person. It requires much work for him to discover his lack of freedom. But when he does discover this, simultaneously he will begin to feel who it is that manages and controls him. This is a revelation of the Creator.

Psychologists, as usual, are immersed in their speculations. And this, of course, will not lead to anything.

We need to show man that he is not free, but along with this he must be given the opportunity to find free will. When he sees the big picture and begins to realize it correctly within a particular small society, he will begin to understand where to move.

Therefore, the correct message is: freedom of choice exists, but only in choosing the appropriate society.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/26/16

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Question: Why is a person responsible for approaching the Creator if he is basically not responsible for anything?

Answer: A person is not responsible for anything except adhesion with the Creator since he was created for this. Therefore, all of his actions in this world to which he doesn’t respond by attempting to get closer to the Creator are useless and aimed completely in the opposite direction from the goal of creation.

That is how he makes his situation worse. About this it is said: “To sit and do nothing is preferable.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/20/16

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Question: How do bad thoughts influence life, and why is a person responsible for them if they are sent to him from the Creator?

Answer: A person is not responsible for anything, except one thing: realizing the opportunity that he has been given to become independent and to ascend to spirituality.

Only in this does he have freedom of choice. Everywhere else, he is completely subject to the forces from above that influence him. He carries out their instructions without understanding that he is a puppet on a string.

Question: Do the prayers of the parents influence the destiny of the child? Are children responsible for what their parents have done?

Answer: No one is responsible for anything. A person is not even responsible for what he did yesterday. All the more so, he is not responsible for the deeds of others. This is all irrelevant to a person. He must only turn to the Creator and discern things in relation to Him because he is completely managed by the Creator.

I do not hide these things so people will get a bit of the feeling that the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks sharply, directly, and openly.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/20/16

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