New Life 489 – Do The Stars Affect Our Fate?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Question: The issue of astrology and fate is very interesting, intriguing, and very unclear. Do the stars affect our fate? Is it possible to foresee our fate? How can we use this information?

After all, the hardest thing about our life is that it is unpredictable. We go through life having no idea what will happen to us in the future and what surprises fate has in store for us.

A person cannot control his life. This is the reason that so many people are interested in astrology, which can seemingly predict a person’s character and his fate according to the different signs.

Astrology was very popular in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Far East, India, China, and also among the American Indians. Even today many believe that there is a connection between the stars and a person’s state. Is there really such a connection?

Answer: The universe develops gradually, step by step, and man is the last phase of this evolutionary process and is the most developed part. But it is actually because man is the most developed creature and has a mind and feelings by which he can explore nature more and more, that he feels that he is vulnerable.

It says “a day-old calf is called an ox.” After all the moment the calf is born he already has the mind and senses of a grown ox. He knows which plants he can eat and which he shouldn’t; he will not fall from a high place, unlike a small child who has to be nurtured and taught for a long time until he grows wise.

If we don’t teach a child, he will grow up to be an animal. But if we convey to him all of the human life experience that has been accumulated for many years he will reach the human level, the level that he will be allowed to develop to. A person develops and according to the level he develops to he discovers the world.

Therefore man is a very sensitive creature, since he has to feel nature very deeply. He is strong in being able to build different systems that help him cope with nature. Man has learned to control fire, discovered electricity, learned to heat his home and light up the darkness of the night. He has learned to communicate over great distances and has invented the Internet.

Man has become increasingly more sophisticated and has added all the comfort he lacked to nature. At the same time he hasn’t changed much. There are probably very clear limits to human ability.

We can improve our daily life in many ways, but we cannot answer the most important question of: what will my fate be? What will my future be? What will happen when I die? What was there before I was born and what will happen to me after I die? What happens beyond the boundaries of this life? Why have I met the people who surround me in my lifetime? Why was I born with a certain personality, as a man or as a woman, in a certain country, at a certain time?

All these questions remain a mystery for us. There is a certain force that controls us and we cannot influence it. We can only try to live comfortably at the place our fate has brought us to: to build houses instead of caves, to prepare food and to store food products.

We develop what belongs to the body’s corporeal existence, which means that we use the human mind and feelings that raise us above the animals for the sake of the animate level, for the sake of the body. It is only for the sake of the body that we have developed all the sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and zoology, so that our body can enjoy.

But we cannot use our mind and our feelings in order to exit our body. It turns out that we use everything that was given to us beyond the animate level—our high intelligence, the ability to explore nature and to discover its laws—only for the well being of our corporeal body.

We wanted to move fast, so we built a car; we wanted to speak to someone who is far away, so we invented the radio and the Internet. But all these inventions are for the comfort of our body, for the sake of our health, for ourselves or for our children.

There is no invention that our developed mind has come up with that was for the level that is beyond the animate level. Universities, stock markets, museums are all made to provide our body with maximum comfort. It is sad to see how primitively we use our delicate feelings, our sharp minds, and our ability to develop as we evolved from one generation to the next.

We fly to outer space and have great achievements in medicine. A hundred years ago the average life expectancy was no more that 40-50, and today we are nearing 100. In another 50 years we may live to 200. We have the ability to make our life in this world much more intense, healthier, and to extend the life of the body. But what remains unclear is what we should do with the body for so many years.

We can improve the conditions the body lives in for the sake of our families and our children. We can answer practically any question except for the one most important question about our fate. The term “fate” includes what we were before our birth, what we will be after death, what will happen to us in the middle, in the time from birth until death, and what hardships we will have to cope with during this time.

On the one hand, we realize that everything is predetermined, but to us it is revealed as complete chance. Now it seems a coincidence, but what if I could rise a bit and look at the whole plan from above. This is very intriguing.
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From KabTV’s “ New Life 489 – Do The Stars Affect Our Fate?” 1/1/15

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New Life 488 – Hope Heals
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Abraham drew a clear boundary between truth, nature, and the human mind that explores our ability to advance to the human level, which differentiates man from an animal, and on the other hand, different mysticisms and beliefs that aren’t even a religion where everything is strictly organized, but are different dark superstitions.

There is the wisdom of Kabbalah revealed by Abraham that teaches a person about the Creator and there is religion in which a person operates in rigid frameworks according to precise rules.

Religion is a social framework that thoroughly binds a person and doesn’t allow him to act according to his heart’s desires. It is a certain kind of pressure with a promise of a reward or a punishment in this world and in the next world: heaven or hell.

But there is a gray area between these two major streams: the wisdom of Kabbalah (the wisdom of the upper force) and religion. It is created because people are not satisfied with the simple religious frameworks anymore and are trying to find out something about themselves: What will my future be? What will happen to me? How can I succeed in life and keep away from trouble?

They have practical questions. They don’t ask about the next world that religion promises them, but about our daily life. They care about succeeding in life and are looking for the means to achieve that: blessings, lucky charms to protect them and their children, simple symbols that give them a sense of security and hope for the future.

Indeed, a person who buys a lucky charm, ties a red string around his wrist, or wears a symbolic trinket hopes for better circumstances, which gives him strength and psychological support. People are ready to pay a lot of money in order to feel protected, calm, confident, and happy.

This actually heals. It is common knowledge that self-confidence can help a person by raising the body’s hidden resources that can support and heal him. Therefore, we cannot simply dismiss these methods and say that they don’t work. They do work, but in the rational sense, and there is no mysticism here, although they stem from an irrational source.

This is the reason that there is a grey area between the wisdom of Kabbalah and religion. In England, for example, people have experts purify a new home from all the evil spirits before they move into it. All these superstitions should be taken seriously because they give people confidence.

There are very few people who yearn for the revelation of the Creator and for whom the wisdom of Kabbalah is important. There are many people who belong to a certain religion in one way or another, but every person is somehow connected to this gray area. Everyone believes in some signs and symbols that support and sustain him through life.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 488 – Hope Heals,” 1/1/15

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Question: In the natural sciences, experiments are carried out in order to understand nature. Do Kabbalists also carry out experiments on the upper nature?

Answer: Kabbalists have nothing but these experiments. But they happen every second because a Kabbalist is in constant communication with the effort of friends in the so-called Kabbalistic guild.

When one interacts with like-minded people, they have the possibility to vary their desires and strengths in certain combinations together. As a result, they have an infinite number of mutual combinations, and thus they affect the Upper Light.

All of this happens while studying the primary Kabbalistic sources when they are in contact with the Upper Light that affects them, moreover, while they themselves affect the Upper Light. One-to-one, everyone is affected by this.

Thus, there is a huge influx of information. But it isn’t difficult as it comes to the Kabbalist not in quantities, but in feelings. The Kabbalist swims in it as in music; all is absolutely harmonious; one grasps the very essence of harmony and therefore doesn’t get tired. On the contrary, one just develops from this, filling with supreme peace.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

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Question: Are all the laws of nature the Creator’s attributes?

Answer: Of course. All of nature is the Creator, but there is a revealed part of nature and a concealed part.

The wisdom of Kabbalah refers to the Creator as the concealed part of nature because what is revealed to us is its distorted part that we feel as such as a result of our uncorrected senses, as a result of our ego.

Comment: Humanity has revealed more than 200 physical laws of nature during the last couple of centuries.

Answer: This is also the revelation of the Creator, like the force of gravity for example.

There is nothing other than the Creator and man who feels Him. The question is what a person feels exactly, how and by which attributes.

Everything we can possibly imagine is the Creator; we are inside Him, but we feel only a very small part that is totally distorted and opposite from His real attributes. When a person ascends to the 125^th level of spirituality, he becomes similar to the Creator and is entrusted to reveal all the information he needs in order to perform creative actions.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/20/16

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Comment: Bio-physicists say that a person who knows science asks merely three questions: How was the universe created? How was life in the universe created? And how do living creatures learn to think?

Answer: These are of course, serious questions for scientists.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains everything in a very simple manner. The major force in our world, the Upper Light, created a desire that is opposite from it as something from nothing. This desire is the creation created from what had not existed before. After all, the whole universe is filled only by one Upper Light.

Question: Is there no desire in the Light itself?

Answer: There is a desire in the Light, but it is a desire for love and bestowal, a desire to bestow, to give. And it created a desire to receive that developed under this influence. The Light created the desire to receive,  from the simplest to the most complex organisms.

They are all mutually connected and represent one unique system, one organism that multiplies and buds in different subsystems in four phases laid down in the Light.

The Light gradually develops the initial desire that was created until it reaches a state in which it begins to think, discern, feel, and even begins to build itself independently to resemble the Light. There is nothing new here for Kabbalists, but for scientist this is of course a problem they cannot solve.

Question: Does this mean that they cannot examine this logically?

Answer: No, no way. Science has already accepted the fact that it is finite because everything we receive, understand, and perceive is felt through the filter of our attributes, which are limited. We cannot stand in front of the filter and feel the pure Light because all our desires and thoughts are created by that filter. We cannot attain the Upper Light that created us because we only attain what we feel through the filter.

Kabbalah tells us how to create an anti-filter, which means that the wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how we should perceive, understand, and determine our connection with the Upper Light, which exists before the filter, when we are behind the filter of all our attributes and forces.

In order to do so, we have to turn our initial attribute to receive to an attribute to bestow, and then we will begin to reveal the Upper Light inside us, the upper energy, the thought of creation, and the upper mind, and then we will be able to perceive it.

This means that we have to build a model that is identical to the Upper Light inside us because it is impossible to leap over the filter. The wisdom of Kabbalah guides us in building the model of the whole universe, of the whole creation, inside us.

Question: Does the filter exist only in order to diminish the Light and to enable us to perceive it gradually?

Answer: Yes, these are five or ten Sefirot, which diminish the Upper Light, swallow it, and convey it to us.

We can build an identical system inside us that will influence the Upper Light through us outward, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is based on. Therefore, everything is inside a person and everything can be attained.

When people remain in the framework of their natural nature, of course, they hit a wall. But eventually everyone will realize that we are finite, that our knowledge is finite, and that there no way out. Thus humanity will gradually understand that the wisdom of Kabbalah has the solution.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/9/16

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Question: Can you list the characteristics of the Creator?

Answer: There is nothing simpler than this! It is the quality of bestowal and love, no other characteristics exist in Him.

Bestowal is the right relationship between us, like the connection between cells and organs in the human body. Take this as an example and imagine we need to be connected together in a single body as all of its organs.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/13/16

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In the News (ScienceDaily): “A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans’ (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies. …

“‘We have accumulated so many paradoxical findings in the field of cognition, and especially in decision-making,’ said Wang, who is an associate professor of communication and director of the Communication and Psychophysiology Lab at The Ohio State University.

“’Whenever something comes up that isn’t consistent with classical theories, we often label it as “irrational.” But from the perspective of quantum cognition, some findings aren’t irrational anymore. They’re consistent with quantum theory–and with how people really behave.’ …

“Their work suggests that thinking in a quantum-like way¬–essentially not following a conventional approach based on classical probability theory–enables humans to make important decisions in the face of uncertainty, and lets us confront complex questions despite our limited mental resources. …

“Quantum cognition is what happens when humans have to deal with ambiguity mentally. Sometimes we aren’t certain about how we feel, or we feel ambiguous about which option to choose, or we have to make decisions based on limited information. …

“As we mull over our options, we envision them in our mind’s eye. For a time, all the options co-exist with different degrees of potential that we will choose them: That’s superposition. Then, when we zero in on our preferred option, the other options cease to exist for us.

“The task of modeling this process mathematically is difficult in part because each possible outcome adds dimensions to the equation. …

“With the quantum approach, Wang and her colleagues argued, many different and complex aspects of behavior can be explained with the same limited set of axioms.”

My Comment: We are not the ones who make decisions. Our only decision is whether to be integrated in unity by using the power of the right environment, which we can construct by ourselves.

It is only in this way that we can determine all of our other decisions, whiich are absolutely derivatives of this one free decision. See the article, “The Freedom” by Baal HaSulam. In other words, the principle of superposition says that we determine our actions to the degree of their resemblance (accommodation) to the higher categorical principle of the characteristic of bestowal, connection, and love.
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Question: My fellow businessmen know how to be sneaky and they cheat their clients. And I, on the contrary, am trying to be decent and rely on the honesty of others. And in the end I am left without anything and begin to envy them: “Why can’t I arrange my matters like them?” Is this a Klipa, impurity?

Answer: Klipa—is work against holiness, against the Creator, very sophisticated work.

Regarding your example, it is possible to say that one that deceives people in the end deceives the Creator and distances from Him. It is beyond a doubt.

If I take what I don’t deserve from the public or from nature, which is the Creator, then this is already the beginning of the Klipa. And what do I deserve? I deserve something if I work in order to bestow, if I exist in order to reach bestowal. In this case, I receive even necessities only in order to exist and be in bestowal, in order to be similar to the Creator and do the work of God. All the rest that is beyond necessities, I cannot take for myself. All the rest I need only to bestow to others. This needs to be a person’s calculation. He determines for himself: “This is what I need to exist in order to bring contentment to the Creator.” Everything beginning with this decision and continuing in the same vector is called Kedusha – holiness.

And in Klipa, I am the opposite, taking from others although I don’t deserve it and maybe didn’t even earn it. This also applies to the part of the people of Israel who do not work at all and completely immerse in the study of the Torah.

In general, due to the miscalculation in this respect, we are all drowning in the sea of egoism and distancing from the upper force. Year by year, it affects all more strongly, and at this stage we are starting to decline to a state that we already experienced in the previous century.

But it doesn’t mean that everyone has to go to work, or the opposite, to live from hand to mouth. Part of the nation really needs to study and part needs to work. Maybe there needs to be a certain rotation. Why not get organized in such a way that everyone will have the opportunity to work and also study?

Of course, in the time of the Temple, many from the nation devoted themselves to study. And the question here was not in quantity but in discernments. This is our work.

Moreover, the era ahead of us will not demand the same number of workers like before. Therefore, we only needed to arrange everything in the correct form.

The problem is that the two parts of the nation, the secular and the religious, don’t know how to talk to each other, don’t understand each other. This is the only obstacle. After all, if we were able to find a common ground and corresponding positions, I think everyone would understand: the one that studies should continue in his study. But there is no contact between the parts of the nation, there is no good attitude, there is no constructive and real dialog; there is only mutual hatred, and therefore we lack the correct analysis of the situation.

Actually, the country does not need tens of thousands of workers and soldiers. The size of the job market will contract over the years, and the modern army needs more technology than people.

Therefore, the current conflict in Israel is caused by political games. The powers that stand behind are deliberately igniting the fire.

And on the other side, the serious problem of the religious audience is that they cannot create a correct contact with the secular part and explain its position. The religious part does not start a dialog from fear of being influenced by the exterior culture. But lack of dialog causes war between brothers.

Remark: Although the walls are crumbling and the exterior influences are penetrating inside.

Answer: But this does not lead to contact, to mutual understanding. The walls are crumbling not according to our will but at the behest of time.

The parts should contact each other and begin a mutual clarification. Our problem comes from having a mutual “basket.” In the US there is no collision between the secular and the religious; they “don’t eat from the same plate,” they don’t have the same army, there are no contact points, there is no conflict that someone lives on someone else’s account, or that they don’t understand each other.

And in Israel, the nation is divided, split, and thus we continue the destruction of the Temple. Actually, the two sides are participating in this process, including those that study Torah. They call the secular part “the spoiled baby.” But if he is a baby, then he needs a special patient attitude, he demands care. Isn’t this what the Torah says? Where is the big heart, the nice caring approach, and not squabbles and strife.
In the end, all this weakens us and brings us to collapse.

Question: What would you say to the religious part of the nation?

Answer: I don’t have legitimacy in their eyes. Therefore I don’t have anything to say or anyone to talk to.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 55

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Question: In what areas would you compare Einstein to the Kabbalists?

Answer: Einstein, like the Kabbalists as well, searched for a single equation of nature that would describe all of the processes in the world on all levels.

Kabbalists go further. They want to understand all of the processes not only with the intellect and those in our world, but of all of the rest of the worlds, together. Attaining them fully and becoming like these processes—meaning equivalence with the Creator, or if you will, God—this is indeed the goal of the creation of humanity. All of us must reach this level, understanding and attaining this in this incarnation or in future incarnations.

Like Einstein, the Kabbalists also think that the field—Light, the thought of creation, the Creator—is primary, and the bodies, the desires that appear, are secondary. So, the wisdom of Kabbalah is involved with a study of human desire itself and brings the person to a discovery of the field, the Light, the Creator, within him.

Einstein didn’t succeed in attaining this because he thought that it was possible to attain the formula using the intellect, whereas the wisdom of Kabbalah attains this through a change in human desire, meaning through matter.
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From Lesson from June 17, 2016

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Question: Religious people believe that we should simply keep the Mitzvot (commandments) and wait for the Messiah. In contrast, you believe that it is up to us to “awaken” and “invite” him to come to us. What is your opinion based on?

Answer: There is contradiction between the view of modern religion, and I emphasize modern, and  the wisdom of Kabbalah; they are diametrically opposed. The religious rightly claim that the differences between us are ideological and therefore are also practical. It is not just a question of whether a mechanical performance (Maase) or intention (Kavana) are more important.

The world evolves through the continuous development of egoism in every natural object on all of its levels: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. The ego evolves gradually through steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 in which the minimal egoism on level 1 is the still and the maximal egoism on level 4 is human. Likewise, there are sublevels and sub-sublevels for each one of the levels. In fact, according to the value of egoism, all the characteristics of every natural object are determined.

The general egoism of nature evolves on every level in intensity according to that level. The slowest development is on level 1 and the most rapid on level 4. Development under the influence of the obligatory egoistic force is called the way of Beito, in its time. Since in religions there is no possibility for influencing the style of development, the believers accept passive development as if it were given to them by the Creator and they consider obedience to Him as righteous, meaning that it is given from above.

The wisdom of Kabbalah discovered the Creator as nature (Elohim [Creator] in Gematria = HaTeva [nature]) and believes that everything is derived from nature and that there is no other force that determines anyhing in our world besides that. But the entire reason for the creation of Adam (Man) and therefore everything that preceded him, is intended for the development of man to the level of the Creator. So the Adam is called “Adam,” which is derived from the word, “Domeh” (similar), “Domeh LeBore” (similar to the Creator). This is to say, the goal of the evolution of the Adam is to attain the level of the Creator, as is written in the Torah, “Shuvu Bnei Yisrael Hashem Eloheinu” (Hosea 14:2), “Return, O children of Israel, to the Lord Your God, to the level of the Creator.”

It turns out that the views of religion and of Kabbalah about the development of the world and the role of humanity are diametrically opposed. Religion ascribes a passive role to humanity; whereas the wisdom of Kabbalah, on the contrary, an active role, “…know the God of your father, and worship Him…” (Chronicles 1, 28:9). First it says “Know,” and after that you will know how to work for His sake and what this work itself signifies.

But the problem is greater. Religion insists that a person must know and comply with mechanical Mitzvot only and in this way it shackles the person and absolutely limits his development. In contrast to this, the wisdom of Kabbalah claims that everything was created for the development of the person so that he will attain the level of the Creator, so he will attain the uniqueness of the Creator in his personal development. Development is determined in the form of the “adhesion” of the person with the Creator when they become equal in their actions. But this is something religions are afraid to admit, so it teaches, calls for, and permits only the mechanical learning and performance of the Mitzvot.
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