In the News (from Deccan Chronicle): “Neurons in our brain are wired like a social network, according to a new research. Researchers at Biozentrum, University of Basel in Switzerland, found that each nerve cell has links with many others, but the strongest bonds form between the few cells most similar to each other. …

“Sites like Facebook keeps us in contact with large numbers of acquaintances, but most people have a much smaller circle of close friends, researchers said. These are usually the friends with which we have most in common, and their opinions can be more important to us than the views of the rest, researchers said.

“‘Weak contacts in the brain have little impact, despite being in the majority,’ said Mrsic-Flogel.

“‘The few strong connections from neurons with similar functions exert the strongest influence on the activity of their partners. This could help them work together to amplify specific information from the outside world,’ added Mrsic-Flogel. Learning may be the reason neurons share such large numbers of weak connections, researchers believe.

“‘If neurons need to change their behaviour, weak connections are already in place to be strengthened, perhaps ensuring rapid plasticity in the brain,’ said Dr Lee Cossell, one of the lead authors of the study. The results are published in the journal Nature.”

My Comment: As the connections of nerve cells through neurons in our brains are connected so should connections between us be arranged; we have to bring them both to good connection and balanced interaction. Then we will be able to perceive the perfect creation of the Creator.
[153749]

Related Material:
“Neuroscientists Confirm That Our Loved Ones Become Ourselves”
Group As A Guarantee For Success
The Brain As A Supreme Coordinator

Filed under: Crisis, Health - No Comments →

In the News (from Business Insider): “Genetically engineered human beings could have IQs of 1000 or higher. At least that’s the theory from scientist Stephen Hsu.

“He thinks that by tweaking our genomes we could make humans drastically smarter. Hsu makes his case in Nautilus — and the implications are as tantalizing as they are terrifying. He’s also published the theory in more detail at ArXiv, though it wasn’t peer-reviewed. …

“The prospect of such superhumans roaming the same planet as us normals is, frankly, terrifying. As Hsu writes, ‘[t]he corresponding ethical issues are complex and deserve serious attention in what may be a relatively short interval before these capabilities become a reality.’

“He speculates that some countries will make genetic engineering legal before others, and, perhaps obviously, that elites will be the first ones who can avail themselves of the benefits of superintelligence for themselves and their children. But he believes — and we should hope — that access to this kind of technology will become democratized so that everyone can benefit.”

My Comment: The human being needs a little bit of happiness, or as it is written in the Torah, “he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” In addition, getting ahead of nature, we call suffering on ourselves. After all, if you do not balance knowledge with education, care for people and nature, then IQ, abilities, and knowledge will be turned into evil!

We are an integral part of the world and must ensure that our knowledge is not higher than our moral level, otherwise we will fall into existence full of suffering. Knowledge must be balanced with upbringing! Otherwise, we will produce brainy freaks!
[153547]

Related Material:
Have We Found The Niceness Gene?
Researchers Discover Ruthlessness Gene
Engels Was Right

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Health - No Comments →

In the News (from The Huffington Post): “It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned – and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems manifestly true.… But what I learned on the road is that almost everything we have been told about addiction is wrong — and there is a very different story waiting for us, if only we are ready to hear it.

“If we truly absorb this new story, we will have to change a lot more than the drug war. We will have to change ourselves….

“Experiment 1: “Put a rat in a cage, alone, with two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with heroin or cocaine. Almost every time you run this experiment, the rat will become obsessed with the drugged water, and keep coming back for more and more, until it kills itself.

“Experiment 2: “Professor Alexander [a professor of Psychology in Vancouver called Bruce Alexander] built Rat Park. It is a lush cage where the rats would have colored balls and the best rat-food and tunnels to scamper down and plenty of friends: everything a rat about town could want. What, Alexander wanted to know, will happen then?

“In Rat Park, all the rats obviously tried both water bottles, because they didn’t know what was in them. But what happened next was startling.

“The rats with good lives didn’t like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did. …

“At first, I thought this was merely a quirk of rats, until I discovered that there was — at the same time as the Rat Park experiment — a helpful human equivalent taking place. It was called the Vietnam War. Time magazine reported using heroin was ‘as common as chewing gum’ among U.S. soldiers, and there is solid evidence to back this up: some 20 percent of U.S. soldiers had become addicted to heroin there, according to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Many people were understandably terrified; they believed a huge number of addicts were about to head home when the war ended.

“But in fact some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers — according to the same study — simply stopped. Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage back to a pleasant one, so didn’t want the drug any more. …

“Experiment 3: “After the first phase of Rat Park, Professor Alexander then took this test further. He reran the early experiments, where the rats were left alone, and became compulsive users of the drug. He let them use for fifty-seven days — if anything can hook you, it’s that. Then he took them out of isolation, and placed them in Rat Park. He wanted to know, if you fall into that state of addiction, is your brain hijacked, so you can’t recover? Do the drugs take you over? What happened is — again — striking. The rats seemed to have a few twitches of withdrawal, but they soon stopped their heavy use, and went back to having a normal life. The good cage saved them. …

“Here’s one example of an experiment that is happening all around you, and may well happen to you one day. If you get run over today and you break your hip, you will probably be given diamorphine, the medical name for heroin.  In the hospital around you, there will be plenty of people also given heroin for long periods, for pain relief. … So if the old theory of addiction is right — it’s the drugs that cause it; they make your body need them — then it’s obvious what should happen. Loads of people should leave the hospital and try to score smack on the streets to meet their habit.

But here’s the strange thing: It virtually never happens. As the Canadian doctor Gabor Mate was the first to explain to me, medical users just stop, despite months of use. The same drug, used for the same length of time, turns street-users into desperate addicts and leaves medical patients unaffected. …

“The street-addict is like the rats in the first cage, isolated, alone, with only one source of solace to turn to. The medical patient is like the rats in the second cage. She is going home to a life where she is surrounded by the people she loves. The drug is the same, but the environment is different. …

“So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection. … Ironically, the war on drugs actually increases all those larger drivers of addiction. For example, I went to a prison in Arizona — ‘Tent City’ — where inmates are detained in tiny stone isolation cages (‘The Hole’) for weeks and weeks on end to punish them for drug use. And when those prisoners get out, they will be unemployable because of their criminal record — guaranteeing they with be cut off even more. …

“There is an alternative. You can build a system that is designed to help drug addicts to reconnect with the world — and so leave behind their addictions.

“Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do something radically different. They resolved to decriminalize all drugs, and transfer all the money they used to spend on arresting and jailing drug addicts, and spend it instead on reconnecting them — to their own feelings, and to the wider society. The most crucial step is to get them secure housing, and subsidized jobs so they have a purpose in life, and something to get out of bed for. …

“This isn’t only relevant to the addicts I love. It is relevant to all of us, because it forces us to think differently about ourselves. Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love. The wisest sentence of the twentieth century was E.M. Forster’s — ‘only connect.’ But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live — constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us. …

“The writer George Monbiot has called this ‘the age of loneliness…’ We need now to talk about social recovery — how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.”

My Comment: Restoring good mutual communication between people, in spite of our egoism, is an absolute panacea for all our ills. And then, through the attainment of unity, it leads us to the Upper World, to perfect eternal existence.
[153133]

Related Material:
Education Can Fix The Addicted Brain
The Goal Of Life Instead Of Drugs
Worrisome Demographics

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Health - 1 Comment →

Question: It is believed that depressed people are the greatest realists. Psychology examines optimists as people that live in a certain illusion. Why are we kidding ourselves?

Answer: It is because our essence is the desire to receive pleasure. Why see the truth and suffer? I would rather deceive myself and enjoy life.

Question: There is evidence that suggests that only 2% of the population sees reality as it is, without embellishing it. All of them are psychiatric patients. Why is reality such that I constantly have to defend myself, my desire to enjoy? Why do I always feel some kind of threat?

Answer: In fact, you are asking the question, “Why am I not an animal? Why am I a man?” Animals do not have issues. They need to know everything about their life, otherwise they have no chance to survive. We feel a threat and we have the ability to stay afloat only through the correct relationships between us.

And, unlike animals, we have been provided with a choice. Nowadays we have reached such a development where we are required to build a society that will fill us with something that is not given by nature. Then we will be able to completely fill our desire with joy, which is the essence of our nature because nothing else will fill us.

Question: Why shouldn’t I go to a psychologist?

Answer: If your psychologist knows what integral education is and can help you set the correct relationship with the surrounding reality, of course, go. Today, we really need to create a profession called an “integral psychologist.”

Question: Will this person, sitting across from me, help me to know myself?

Answer: The psychologist cannot work with you face to face. Integral education requires group work. Your psychologist is obligated to give you exercises for you to utilize within your environment, under the influence of which you will undergo changes, and thanks to him, you will learn how to properly interact with the world.
[152397]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 11/7/14

Related Material:
The Goal Of The Future Society
Social Justice: Possible Only As One Big Family
The Crisis: Invitation For Correction

Filed under: Education, Health - No Comments →

Question: Is there any special meaning in our dreams?

Answer: Usually, dreams are connected with our prior experiences or with our secret, subconscious desires and goals that we don’t even suspect we have. However, there are dreams that disclose our future.

I remember once having a dream before taking a test. The dream vividly showed the situation that later happened in reality. Previously, I had an ability to foresee things. However, we are not capable of using this information, nor can we disclose this kind of knowledge to others. So, our passive revelations are useless.

You don’t have strength or desire to talk about this kind of information, as if it’s locked inside you. At some point, I foresaw what would happen to people near me as if I knew their lives scenarios. Still, I could tell them nothing. However, the things that I foresaw happened later.

Kabbalah doesn’t decipher dreams since they belong to materiality. Our body is just an “animal.” All animals see dreams. Small children constantly have dreams. Dreams help them grow.

Usually, our life consists of superficial, obvious, and habitual situations that bear no novelty whatsoever. All our days are alike. That’s why we see dreams that push us to our genuine, higher role in the future. Dreams promote our sensations and intelligence. They prepare us for the next stage.

Dreams help us cope with the states that are awaiting us in the future—our spiritual ascents. Without dreams, our life would be too monotonous and would resemble the lives of animals. We would live according to the routine: wake up in the morning, go to work, come back home, have dinner, watch a silly TV program, and go to bed. Nothing but that!

We can even say that in dreams people become connected by one common thought, one joint force, one desire, even though they are material in nature. This is how we grow.

That’s why little primitive creatures never sleep and can stay awake day and night. They only have seasonal cycles that are connected with yearly seasons. More complicated animals follow the same sleeping pattern as humans.

It is not accidental that we cannot live without sleep. After several sleepless nights a person loses one’s mind. Our brain is unable to function without a break for sleep. Why?

We have no other opportunity to transition from one state to another without separating them by a state of a sleep. This phenomenon can be explained in Kabbalah terms. The state of awakening is called “GAR” (the Upper part). In this state, we stay active and awake. We receive and bestow, exchange sensory and intellectual information with our surroundings.

However, in order to transition between active states, we need a sleep break. A sleeping state is the lower part of a step, called VAK. It is a state of disappearance of the Light of Hochma. It is a part of a larger state. It is not true that people turn into animals while they are asleep. They still are human beings in a state of a sleep. It doesn’t matter if we see dreams or not. The main thing is that dreams “go through” us.

That’s why we wake up all ready for a new day. Nature “prepares the tools” in us while we sleep that we will further need for fulfilling our next task.

It is not accidental that people sleep 8-10 hours a day. Those who sleep less than 6-7 hours, feel bad. Lack of enough sleep can become a spiritual obstacle. Sleep and dreams at night are purely a material phenomena that are a part of our egoism. There is nothing spiritual about them.

Question: Are we under the power of the egoism even when we are asleep?

Answer: Of course! Who else’s power? Our body, all its systems, are egoistic. Just because we fell asleep, it doesn’t mean that we are moving towards spirituality. It is impossible to suddenly acquire the property of bestowal and love of our neighbors. The fact that we don’t possess the quality of bestowal means that we still belong to this material world. The only difference between the materiality and spirituality is intention: whether we act for our own sake or for the sake of others.
[152337]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/11/15

Related Material:
Full Access To The Program Of Life
The Origin Of Dreams
The Right To Change One’s Destiny

Filed under: Health, Kabbalah Study, Perception, Science - No Comments →

The Torah, “Leviticus,” 19:19: You shall observe My statutes: You shall not crossbreed your livestock with different species. You shall not sow your field with a mixture of seeds, and a garment which has a mixture of shaatnez shall not come upon you.

In our times we do exactly the opposite by creating genetically modified food products. This phenomenon has entered into the general destruction of humanity. We have changed greatly and don’t even imagine how the consumption of these food products is influencing us.

If I buy a kilogram of tomatoes and keep them in the kitchen at room temperature of eighty-six degrees and they remain as they were when I bought them a month ago, this is a sign that they are not alive. It is something that has no vitality in it!

Tomatoes like these aren’t growing or vital and are food that in principle the body doesn’t need, for in fact, this is a collection of all kinds of chemical elements. And even though they nourish my body, this is not at all what should be from nature. Finally, we are only now beginning to discover in what manner these actions influence us, whether there is a connection between them, social morality, and our world view.

Together with this, within me there could be a replacement not only of the internal programs but also the elements of my body themselves. There was a time, 10-15 years ago, when we thought that hackers who inserted viruses into a computer could only harm the computer programs but not the system itself. Eventually, we became aware that they can also harm the computer itself.

We don’t imagine the consequences of consuming genetically modified food. Nothing in the world should be changed in such a manner. But on the other hand, in distancing ourselves from nature, we are beginning to understand what kind of a blind alley we have entered. In other words, this is the law of denial. And even though our “beast” isn’t particularly suffering, the “human” in us will become worse and worse. And that is how it will be with everything! Otherwise, there cannot be any recognition of evil.
[149567]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/9/14

Related Material:
“GMOs Could Cause ‘Irreversible Termination Of Life’ On Earth”
Effects Of The Upper Roots
A 3D Edible Printer

Filed under: Commandments, Crisis, Health, Torah - No Comments →

Question: How does nature develop us with the help of dreams?

Answer: A vigorous, energetic state is called a day. When we are asleep, we exit from our prior state and connect with the next, active one. A dream is a small state (VaK – Vav Ktzavot), through which our prior, awakened state connects with the next active state.

It is similar to the neutral gear of a car transmission that is used in between the gears when we switch from first gear to second and then third gear. They are separated by a neutral gear, this is the dream at night.

If not for the neutral gear, we would not be able to switch from the first, to the second, and then to the third state. We cannot ascend to other states without sleep.

This explains why sleep is so important and why it takes so much time: 8 hours! When we are still in our egoistic nature, i.e., if our natural intentions are oriented towards our own sake, we just have to follow the demands of our physical needs. RAMBAM writes that a regular person must have enough sleep.

While we live in this material world, we must behave normally, and a night’s rest is a simple, physiological process that helps make this possible. If a person has already attained a spiritual level and acts for the sake of bestowal, then why does he need a night’s rest?  What does it mean to us?

Dreams may be consequences of the events that we experience during the day. Our aspiration to attain higher spiritual states during the day allows us to make a spiritual ascent while we sleep, or to at least make relevant clarifications.

The wisdom of Kabbalah refers to the night’s sleep as a continuation of the day, a continued vigorous state. Sleep is physiologically essential, both for those who live only within the boundaries of this world and those who dwell in the upper world, at a spiritual level.
[152341]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/11/15

Related Material:
Full Access To The Program Of Life
The Origin Of Dreams
Why Sleep Is 1/60th Of Death

Filed under: Body and Soul, Health, Spirituality - No Comments →

Question: What are dreams? There are many myths and fairy tales around dreams and this phenomenon has concerned humanity throughout its history. The ancient Romans and Greeks tried to decipher dreams. But until now, this phenomenon remains a mystery.

A person spends one-third of his life sleeping and has dreams during all this time, but does not remember most of them. In this way, our brain processes and organizes all the information received during the day.

But there are dreams that seem to convey a special message, to reveal the future. Where do dreams come from?

Answer: Even the Torah talks about dreams: the dream of Jacob and the dreams of Pharaoh and his ministers. Sleep is a natural phenomenon, but sometimes we perceive dreams as something not serious, like fantasies.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that during sleep, the brain summarizes all the information received during the day and that is what we perceive as dreams. This data and some fluids that rise in the brain without any connection to real matter, take special forms, and as a result, we see unusual images of people, animals, and strange events.

All this is due to the fact that sleep, as opposed to reality, has no material basis. This is why everything happens as if in the air and without regard to our specific desires. In addition, a dream can reveal those desires that we would like to realize, but are not able to, fears that torment us and from which we cannot escape, all kinds of fantasies, and pleasant and unpleasant experiences that we have been through.

Among them, there are those that we would rather forget. Perhaps, in real life we managed this, but they still live in us subconsciously. Therefore, while we sleep and break away from the real world and the environment that does not affect us, all these fears and feelings awaken in us and come to life in a dream.

Dreams can tell a lot about a person, such as his inner state, desires, thoughts, all sorts of plans, fears, and obstacles. When he is under hypnosis, it is possible to study and learn a lot information. In this state, a person loses control over himself and opens himself to the study.
[152253]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/11/15

Related Material:
Sleep Prepares The Brain To Process New Information
The Perception Of Life: A Dream Or Reality?
Wake Up In The Spiritual World

Filed under: Health, Perception, Science - 1 Comment →

Question: They say that there are unique powers in the letters of the Torah. One of the powers that are connected with the letters is the power of healing. How do they heal?

From what I understand, all of these letters, together, form the lines of a code that manages me (and every person) at every moment and determine everything that happens to me, but in this code there are intervals. If I am sufficiently developed and wise, then will I be able to write these intervals myself and then change the course of the process?

Answer: In the Torah, it is written, “For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh” (Proverbs 4:22). These letters, themselves, are forces, but this is not talking about letters that you write on paper. With every letter that you perceive, you are changed. You must change according to each letter to allow these letters to be embedded into you.

Our entire problem is that we are in an egoistic state, always wanting to receive for ourselves. This is the opposite of the material into which the Torah can embed itself. It can be embedded only in material that is entirely bestowal and love, which is the opposite of our ego.

Every letter is a symbol, a form or a manner through which I provide the best to others. Both the form of the letters and their combinations indicate how we can take the material, the desire to receive, and make from it a desire to bestow. We work with the desire to receive in the form of a desire to bestow, and then the letters are created from the desire to receive.

It is said that you had a formless heap of the desire to receive like a mountain of sand, and now, by adding water and cement to this sand, you make a solid mass out of this mountain, and from that, you already can make the form of the letters.

However, what does every letter symbolize? In this form, your formerly egoistic desire now wants to bestow to others, to give something to them, to help in some way, to arrange something, and it is the same thing even for the Creator, for the general program, so that it will be realized and will be good for everyone. This is what you make out of your natural substance.
[151315]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/21/14

Related Material:
Cameos Are A Lie!
The Creator’s Typewriter
The Letters That Came To Life

Filed under: Health, Language of Branches, Spiritual Work, Torah - No Comments →

The Midrash “BeShalach,” The Creator says to Pharaoh: “I will give you just as much respect! I will not punish you by a messenger, I will punish you Myself!”

The Creator Himself kills Pharaoh since he is the ego that was created as something from nothing. Only by the Light from the uppermost Sefira Keter can perform such a correction, and it symbolizes the death of the ego.

It is the last plague, which is the correction of the stony heart. From that moment onward Egypt begins to wither and not only in the spiritual sense but also in the corporeal sense.

Until then the Egyptians used to embalm mummies and build pyramids. Their corporeal culture was full of spiritual forces. We can say that they lived in the egoistic feeling of the connection with the spiritual world. But now they cannot restore their earlier desires anymore.
[151723]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/23/14

Related Material:
The Creator, Pharaoh, And Me Between Them
This Is My Pharaoh Suffering
Spies Are Thoughts And Desires

Filed under: Health, Spiritual Work, Torah - No Comments →