In the News (Atlantic): “For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. …

“The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. …

“Galton launched a debate that raged throughout the 20th century over nature versus nurture. Are our actions the unfolding effect of our genetics? Or the outcome of what has been imprinted on us by the environment? …

“In recent decades, research on the inner workings of the brain has helped to resolve the nature-nurture debate—and has dealt a further blow to the idea of free will. Brain scanners have enabled us to peer inside a living person’s skull, revealing intricate networks of neurons and allowing scientists to reach broad agreement that these networks are shaped by both genes and environment. But there is also agreement in the scientific community that the firing of neurons determines not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams. …

“Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion. …

“The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. …The challenge posed by neuroscience is more radical: It describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.

“Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has … come to a painful conclusion: ‘We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth’ about free will.

“Smilansky is convinced that free will does not exist in the traditional sense—and that it would be very bad if most people realized this.

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah there is no free will according to the common definition. All of a person’s actions are unconscious, and are performed unconsciously and only then understood, and some of them are not always understood either. According to many Kabbalistic texts, like Baal HaSulam’s articles “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before,” Shamati articles, etc. speak about that. Another part of Kabbalistic literature describes what does depend on a person. All of the Kabbalistic literature is divided into two parts: the part that depends on the Creator and the part that depends on a person.

The study of Kabbalah actually comes down to the study and implementation of our free will, but we can define and implement it only to the extent that we understand the Creator’s actions and when our attributes become equal to His through adhering to Him like to a partner. The meaning of our actions is in our understanding and our complete connection between all of a person’s actions and the Creator’s. This is called adhesion.
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Int the News (Hi-News.ru): “Why is there something rather than nothing?

“Our appearance in this universe is too strange an event that words cannot express. The vanity of our daily lives makes us take our existence for granted. But whenever we try to deny it and think deeply about what is happening, the question arises: why the universe is all there is and why does it have and is subject to such accurate laws? Why does anything exist? …As for philosophers, they came to this anthropic principle that our particular universe manifests itself in such a way because of our presence in it as observers.”

Answer: The reason for everything that exists is thought; it is primary and gives rise to matter, the desire to fill itself. It gives the desire, matter, its attributes and consequently matter, the desire yearns to resemble the thought, its Creator.

Question: Is our reality real? How do we know that what we see around us is real and not a big illusion that was created by some invisible force? Could it be that we are the product of an intentional simulation, that our civilization is an illusion and that we are not who we believe we are? What should we consider real?

Answer: Everything is manifested in our sensations, in us, and there is no way we can discover what is beyond us. Kabbalah develops within a person the ability to feel what is external to him by faith above reason and thus enables us to answer all these questions.

Question: Do we have freewill? Are our actions managed or do we make our own decisions of our own freewill? Neuroscience shows that the brain makes a decision before we understand it. Quantum mechanics indicates that we exist in a universe of probabilities and any form of determinism is basically impossible.

Answer: There is freedom of will to explore the intended path of development and to advance along this path either by force or consciously. (See the article “The Freedom” by Baal HaSulam).

Question: Does God exist? We cannot know whether God exists or not. We don’t know about the inner workings of the universe in order to make grandiose claims about the nature of reality and about the fact that there is an upper force behind the scenes.

Answer: We have to reveal the Creator. This is the only way to solve this issue! The method for the revelation of the Creator is called the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Question: Is there life after death? We cannot ask the dead, so we can only guess. Materialists assume that there is no life after death, but it seems impossible to prove this scientifically.

Answer: Our biological life is born, lives, and dies. The eternal element is the desire, which when connected to the biological body has to undergo different phases and grow. The desire grows by drawing the force that created it, the Creator. We were given life in order to reveal the upper state, in order to attain the Creator’s level in this life.

Question: Can we perceive anything objectively? We can observe the environment only through the filter of our senses, thoughts, and minds. Everything that we feel has gone through a multi-layer filter of physiological and cognitive processes. Our world view is subjective. The only way to check this is by somehow seeing the world through another person’s consciousness. We can observe the universe only through our mind and interpret it only subjectively.

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah develops senses in us that are external to our body, through which we discover the true reality, the upper world and the reason for it, the Creator. Our efforts in uniting the group spur and summon the correcting Light, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif), and it develops a sense of perception in a person that is external to his egoistic subjective filter. This is called the revelation of the Creator and of the upper world to a person.
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Question: It turns out that there is still slavery in the modern world. 45 million people around the world are abused as slaves. This number is equivalent to the population of Spain.

According to recent research, slavery is the exploitation of a person who cannot leave because of threats of violence, coercion, or deception. People can be enslaved because of a debt and so forth.

Answer: Before the destruction of the Second Temple the slaves among the nation of Israel had many privileges. The landlord was required to take care of his slave, and the slave was obliged to work for the landlord according to his powers and his abilities. At the same time, the relationship between them was normal and mutual, just as they are today between an employer and an employee. A slave did not want to leave his landlord because the latter provided everything he needed, as it is written, “… give your slave your pillow.”

As for other nations, they had a completely different attitude toward slaves. They beat them, humiliated them, killed them, and did not treat them as human beings, not even as domestic animals, which were looked after, cherished, and fed.

Question: What is slavery from a Kabbalistic perspective?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, slavery is total obedience to your landlord, “This is what the landlord wants, so this is how I move.” A slave constantly looks to the landlord and carries out his will, and at the same time, totally suppresses his own desire. His efforts, his opinion, his desires, and his thoughts all are aimed at the landlord’s desire so as to continue the latter’s desire. A slave has no desire of his own, but only the desire of the landlord.

Question: Can we say that, in this world, we all are slaves to our egoistic nature?

Answer: Of course! We also can say that we are the Creator’s slaves, but unconsciously! This is because the Creator is the only force of nature that manages us, but He wants us to be independent. This is our problem: to be independent of Him and even above Him!

It is written, “My sons have defeated Me,” which means becoming free of slavery, becoming totally independent, and taking the leadership of the entire world from the Creator’s hands. This is His real desire, His dream. And we, unfortunately, do not want to think about something higher, more sublime, and thus we remain slaves and live as animals.

Therefore the Creator pushes us through suffering so that we will perceive and understand our absolutely poor, paltry, miserable, and limited state, and will want to rise from it.

I hope that as the sufferings grow, people will begin to perceive and understand that. There is no other way to influence people. Then, people will use what the Creator offers them: His knowledge, His method, His wisdom, the wisdom of Kabbalah.

If we begin to implement it, we will see how much we gain from becoming the masters and ceasing to be slaves. This is how we enter a completely different level of existence, a world of eternity, infinity, and perfection, a totally different entity, a different dimension. But this is for free people.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/6/16

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Question: Should a person be aware of the influence of the upper force?

Answer: A person may or may not know. He has to attain his fate and become the master of his destiny; he has to ascend above matter, above our world, and exist on the level of decision making.

In our world everything is predetermined: the forces that manage it descend from Above and a person is helpless in the face of these forces.
[187650]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/20/16

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In the News (planet-today.ru): “US researchers have combined data on the majority of galaxies known to mankind and created an impressive scale of it in their Cosmic Web project that illustrates the structure of the universe by means of links between individual clusters of stars.

“’Ultimately, the universe is a network of individual galaxies, combined with gravitational interaction. We have built a visual model of these relations and got something that with the proper proportion of imagination can be called, “A view of the universe from God’s point of view”,’ – explains one of the authors of the project Kim Albrecht.”

My Comment: Kabbalah says that not only our world but all of creation is a single organism, and among all the worlds, only the human being has freedom of choice in his behavior. The rest of the creatures are instinctively run by nature.

So the balance of the entire system depends only on human behavior, and only humans bring it out of balance, and conversely, can restore it to balance.

Kabbalah explains how to manage the system correctly and maintain its balance. Currently, the egoistic behavior of humanity takes the system of creation out of equilibrium. Kabbalah warns of the consequences ….
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Question: There are scientists today who say that we exist unconsciously. Can we say that the difference between the spiritual world and the corporeal world is in existing consciously or unconsciously?

Answer: We automatically exist in a totally unconscious manner and don’t understand who we are at all. We don’t understand what we are and why we are living. All the organs and the cells in our body, everything that surrounds us, plays on us and we feel the moment we live in.

Therefore, we have no opportunity to change anything. There is no freewill whatsoever. Everything is predetermined and we are operated in different situations so that at a certain point in our development we will be disappointed with our existence as it is and recognize its worthlessness, pointlessness, and emptiness and will begin to yearn to find the meaning of life.

The meaning of our world is to enable us to ascend consciously above it to the next spiritual dimension.

Question: What does consciously mean? Different desires constantly arise in me and I run to fill them with pleasure. Will I have to make up these desires by myself in spirituality?

Answer: At some point, a person grows tired of chasing the fulfillment of his desires and doesn’t identify with them anymore. He realizes that these are the intentions of his desires and that he constantly has to fill them. Although he feels pleasure in that, he doesn’t want it to control him anymore; he wants to independent and not addicted to these pleasant feelings.

Then he begins to think: “How can I rise above this? Why do I constantly have to chase various pleasures? Why do I always sell myself to these pleasures? Is this enough for my life? Does this satisfy me? Should I think about whether I need all this for? These are fleeting pleasures that change every second so my whole life comes down to chasing pleasure and minimizing pain.”

Question: What is the alternative for that in the spiritual world?

Answer: In spirituality a person begins to attain the meaning of his existence and this attainment fills him with an inexplicable feeling, an indescribable feeling, of attaining harmony, the upper existence, the truth, the real goal, everything that does not exist in the corporeal world.

If a person feels bad in our world, he has to change it immediately to a good feeling, and thus over and over again, and this becomes the goal of his life. In the spiritual world a person who attains the meaning of everything that happens and what is beyond him, creates a feeling of wholeness harmony, balance and eternity within him.
[181872]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/21/16

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Question: If the thought of creation is predetermined and we will all attain the Creator whether we like it or not, and the only free will we have is whether to accept His leadership or not, we may say that freewill is an illusion.

Answer: Although the thought of creation and a person’s ultimate state are predetermined, the way we accept the Creator’s leadership is very important because it is only by the right perception of the Creator’s attitude to a person that one can bring Him contentment.

First, being in our world, which is the lowest of all the worlds, and the circumstances we live in help a person reveal the right attitude to the Creator.

Second, the fact that the end is predetermined should not bother us since the Creator is concealed from us anyway. So it is actually when a person aspires to reach Him and tries to choose the way that the Creator would choose that he attains His thought in this motion, His mind, His attitude, His goal and His relationship.

A person needs this world because although he doesn’t feel the Creator, doesn’t see the ultimate goal, and doesn’t know how to advance toward it, he has the elements that motivate him to search and to try to act properly. It is in his search for the right motion forward that he begins to feel the Creator, to perceive Him, to absorb His attributes, His thoughts, and His feelings, and thus becomes equal to Him.
[180765]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/31/16

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Question: Does spiritual freedom depend on the corporeal world?

Answer: Spiritual freedom doesn’t depend on the corporeal world in any way. Special upper forces are revealed in a Kabbalist and help him attain spiritual freedom and provide him with the attribute of love and bestowal that enables him to exit himself and float above his egoism. Therefore, he doesn’t feel the limitations of his body and this world. There is no connection between matter and spirit, and a person can ascend the spiritual levels and, at the same time, remain the way he is in the corporeal world with the same character, the same tastes, and the same habits.

Question: Does that mean that there is nothing spiritual in matter?

Answer: Absolutely not. The still, vegetative, and animate levels belong to our corporeal world. These levels of development operate according to the egoistic law of the conservation of energy. According to this law, every particle wants to sustain only itself and at the expense of others, by whatever means. What’s important is constantly to maximize its condition.

Question: Does corporeal freedom depend on the spiritual world?

Answer: In earlier generations, corporeal freedom did not depend on the spiritual world. However, today, it is indeed so because in our times, the spiritual world and the corporeal world are getting closer. Therefore, we encounter increasingly greater problems in the corporeal world and, at the same time, more opportunities to discover the spiritual world. If we perceive and understand the spiritual world, we will be able to affect our corporeal world.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/17/16

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In the News (aeon): “The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do. …

“For example, it uses short messages that tell us what to do which appear for a moment and we are unconscious of them. …

“Guided by social science, marketers were quickly learning how to play upon people’s insecurities, frailties, unconscious fears, aggressive feelings and sexual desires to alter their thinking, emotions and behaviour without any awareness that they were being manipulated. …

“Relaxing music in supermarkets obligates us to move slowly and buy more products. …

“Most of the meaningless thoughts and feelings are chosen by experts in the areas of marketing, fashion and entertainment. …

“To understand how the new forms of mind control work, we need to start by looking at the search engine – one in particular: the biggest and best of them all, namely Google. The Google search engine is so good and so popular that the company’s name is now a commonly used verb in languages around the world. To ‘Google’ something is to look it up on the Google search engine, and that, in fact, is how most computer users worldwide get most of their information about just about everything these days. They Google it. Google has become the main gateway to virtually all knowledge, mainly because the search engine is so good at giving us exactly the information we are looking for, almost instantly and almost always in the first position of the list it shows us after we launch our search – the list of ‘search results.’

“That ordered list is so good, in fact, that about 50 per cent of our clicks go to the top two items, and more than 90 per cent of our clicks go to the 10 items listed on the first page of results; few people look at other results pages, even though they often number in the thousands, which means they probably contain lots of good information. Google decides which of the billions of web pages it is going to include in our search results, and it also decides how to rank them. How it decides these things is a deep, dark secret – one of the best-kept secrets in the world, like the formula for Coca-Cola.”

My Comment: This is not the only method that is manipulating us. But does it matter? After all, according to Kabbalah we have no freedom except to yearn for each other; see the terms for free will. So we must see how much a person is captive and how through using the wisdom of Kabbalah he will become totally free.
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“What the Concept of Suffering Is in the Work,” Rabash: What can a person do so that he doesn’t need to come to a descent, called “suffering,” when he feels that he is far from the Creator….How could there be a reality in which he doesn’t need to fall to a state of humility? The advice about this is when a person takes stock of himself and through his thought and desire he sees how he is still far from adhesion with the Creator. It means that even during a time of ascent he takes stock of himself and begins to feel his shortcomings. So then he apparently doesn’t need to fall from his state because he was given thoughts of humility until he feels as if he is in a deficient state. So even during an ascent, he already begins to seek advice about how to ascend a level.

We begin our way from below to above from a tiny shortcoming, from lacking the point in the heart. The lack in this point doesn’t give a person any direction and he has no power, for this is just a point. I continue toward something, but I don’t exactly understand toward what. But when I am brought to a group, my desire begins to take shape. I already know what to wish for and toward where. A few years pass until I finally understand that this aspiration must be directed toward connection and not just toward a higher power.

I am already aware that the higher power is not somewhere in the heavens, but that it is revealed within me: it is the power of bestowal and love that fills all of the higher reality. If I acquire the characteristic of bestowal and love, with this I feel the upper force, the higher dimension and the upper world.

Quite a while passes until this approach stabilizes in a person. And this time doesn’t just pass without a trace. Great changes happen every moment, and lots of time is required for it. Just like in our world, the period for stabilizing the still level of nature, the creation of the universe, was the longest and took billions of years. The vegetative world stabilized even more rapidly, the animate world stabilized even faster, and the human stabilized very quickly relative to the previous levels.

So we also went through thousands of years of regular physical existence, passing through a multitude of incarnations. And when we are finally granted an Itaruta de La’ila (awakening from Above) resulting in the awakening of the point in the heart in us, so this account has already been going on for years. In spite of everything, it took years.

From that moment, I am already placed facing the goal and know how to advance toward it. I come to a group, find a teacher and books. I realize that this is the purpose of human life in this world to which I have finally been brought after many incarnations in order to implement the goal and get some kind of result in my life without having to waste it in vain. I have already been given freedom of choice here, to go in the way of Torah or the path of suffering.

The path of suffering is when an unconscious desire is awakened in me and I start to figure out why I feel bad. Time passes until I find the cause of evil and clarify how to correct it and to transform it into goodness. The way of Beito (in its time) is very long and includes many stages within it. So then, in the way of Achishena (I will hasten), in the way of Light, time becomes accelerated. I must search for the shortcomings myself, the means for advancing.

I can get the stimuli for advancement from the environment. The main thing is that this push toward advancement initially stabilizes me in the right direction and I know for what I am looking. It is always necessary to search for a lack of the characteristic of bestowal and love, for connection, for oneness, for Arvut (mutual guarantee), for adhesion with the upper force, meaning love for others.

If I search for shortcomings like these, then I am no longer in some kind of point with a single desire that has no direction. Instead, I already know the goal that I must reach.
[127143]
From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/14

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