Entries in the 'Kabbalah Study' Category

Why Does A Kabbalist Listen To The News?

Laitman_912I remember that at the time of the first Lebanon War,  my teacher Rabash and I listened to the news on the radio all the time, and he shared his impressions with me about how he perceived all that was happening. And I was surprised about how such a great Kabbalist was worried about events in the country and the world.

And for him it was a map of the battlefield. He completed everything through his internal calculations with higher Sefirot, and somehow this worked for him.

During the military operations Rabash was very focused, more quiet than usual. In general he was a person who very much loved jokes, but the moment the war began, his state changed sharply. This was truly derived from within; he was terribly concerned and very happy about our victories and successes on the battlefield.

I felt that this was terribly close to him, unlike the rest of the people around him in Bnei Brak. At that time I was a beginning student, and I was quite surprised about how much a person believed or didn’t believe in the Creator, His power and how everything comes from above.

Rabash always wanted to know the factual news, without any commentary, to react to them correctly. And when they asked him why he needed it, he answered: “And if your children were there, even then would you act calmly and dispassionately like this?” That is, he felt that his children were there in Lebanon. That is really how he felt about it.
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Life And Pleasure, Part 2

laitman_547_02

Spiritual Anti-Matter

Question: What is so bad about everyone yearning to get the greatest pleasure, and why are there so many problems and so much suffering in our world?

Answer: The problem is that each of us receives pleasure at the expense of someone else. By enjoying myself, I take pleasure away from others. I steal from them. I limit them somehow. This is what arouses war between people. Besides this, we were created with an evil, egoistic nature, and we want more pleasure specifically from having more than others. Enjoyment at the expense of others is a much greater pleasure. It is enough to see how we behave on the highway, cutting each other off and not giving each other the right of way. Is there really anyone for whom another minute would determine his life? Not at all, we simply get pleasure from moving ahead of everyone. This is our evil inclination. There is nothing bad about yearning to enjoy oneself. It is typical of any animal. However, a person specifically wants to have pleasure at the expense of others, rising above them and trampling them, and this is what is destroying our society. So the world has come to such a crisis.

Question: But there are many people who sacrifice themselves for the good of society.

Answer: They also are acting from their desire to enjoy. In fact, no one thinks about others. They themselves simply don’t understand the true motivation of their actions. If we were to take away the pleasure that humane people get from helping others, they couldn’t even make the smallest movement. If a mother were suddenly to stop feeling pleasure from her baby, he would die of starvation.

All matter works only according to this single principle. However, there is more matter, which is called “spiritual,” that is not felt by us and that acts according to another principle, bestowal, not reception. Spirituality is based upon this, giving pleasure and not receiving pleasure. This is antimatter, an upside-down world.

The spiritual world exists, and even ordinary science is discovering some borderline phenomena, but we are not ready to catch them with the help of our instruments. However, a person can attain a feeling of the upper world, of antimatter, and it is specifically with this that the wisdom of Kabbalah is involved.

Through special exercises, we can transform our matter into new matter, a desire to bestow, instead of a desire to receive. Then, we can enjoy bestowal, instead of reception.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 11/29/15

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The Secret Of The Islamic State

Laitman_002Comment: A secret document of the “Islamic State” was published in the British newspaper The Guardian. It was a detailed program for building a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, which involves world control not only through the use of the sword, but also through the careful alignment of administrative, bureaucratic, social, and international components.

This 24-page document details the future state agencies: a propaganda machine, a diplomatic department responsible for international relations, centralized control over oil, etc. It devotes a lot of attention to educating the young generation to master new technologies.

Answer: The people of ISIS have common sense and know exactly what they want. From the outset, they adhere to a very clear ideological goal, and all their actions are detailed in line with this. They take into account that their plan is to control the world, so their tactics are structured correctly.

Indeed, they create their own venues and ideologies, and apart from them, also terrorism, bringing their new weapons of mass destruction: chemical, gas, radioactive, and others. They know how to disperse and hide them. In addition, they recruit foreign scientists to develop those kinds of weapons for use in guerilla warfare.

Their only weak spot is that they do not have their own state, on behalf of which they could expand.

Therefore, all the efforts of Western countries should be directed to destroy the country in its “embryonic” state, and to prevent the education of the young generation in this spirit.

As soon as Western Europe and the US allow the appearance of such a nation, just like a cancerous growth, it will immediately spread to the entire world. This is the first thing.

Second, they attract people by saying, “We want to unite and thereby save the world from ideological conflicts and a new world war. If one state is formed, one opinion, one single ideology, then there will be no war.”

The background is this: if the world surrenders, then everything will be fine. So the world, which by and large is opposed to this ideology, has only one option: to give in to them.

Only the ideology of Kabbalah, which is against this backdrop that will awaken and emerge more and more, confronts the ideology of the Islamic State.

As a result, the world will confront this resistance and will understand that the Kabbalistic ideology allows people not only to unite, but to do so without losing the freedom to follow the plan of nature. After all, this system wasn’t artificially set up but was taken from the depth of nature, from its laws. Thus, it is specifically this system that has the right of existence.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about how humanity needs to rise to the next level of its development and enter the next dimension in which we will exist together as one whole. And then with our unity, we will feel the manifestation of a single force of nature, which is called the Creator.

Comment: This Islamic State also wants to be a single entity, a unified whole.

Answer: Yes, but this is a whole that is egoistic and doesn’t correct man’s nature; it unites everyone through fear and pressure, and is therefore not viable. The period where people try to unite under the pressure of a dictator will quickly end and will bring much bloodshed.

From the perspective of Kabbalah, unity reveals the upper force, which connects us. This means that we don’t unite under pressure of fear or some human factors, but under the influence of the upper force of nature. We feel how it brings us together!

We feel it brings us together. Therein lies difference between the two ideologies. Thus the world, in any case, will come to unity, but it’s advisable to avoid the terrible and bloody dictatorship, and do so in a good way. I think that it will be this way.

As for today, the main thing for all of humanity is to not to allow the formation of the Islamic State in either Iraq or Syria.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 12/8/15

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A Universal Science For Everyone

laitman_214Question: How can I show an example to others that by studying Kabbalah I am in a better place?

Answer: There’s no way. When a person begins to study Kabbalah, he sees in it such knowledge, logic, and depth that it simply amazes him.

He will understand that all the rest of the sciences of our world are explained very simply within it, and it advances them further. Kabbalah tells a person what must be done to reach general integral knowledge about our world and the upper worlds, about the management system of our world.

We need to see the system of creation because then we can not only manage ourselves, but also rise to the system of management itself and exist in it in the form in which we existed prior to the physical body.

Before entering our body, we were within the program of creation. But now we have the possibility of achieving this program and living simultaneously in two worlds. And then from our perspective there will be neither time nor death. We must yearn for this.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

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How Does One Read Kabbalistic Texts?

laitman_216_01Question: How do texts like The Book of Zohar and Shamati work and influence me when I read them together with others, and how do they influence me if I read them alone? And which is preferable?

Answer: In both cases the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) is awakened; we must read them both alone and together, but it is more effective to read them together.

Question: Which particular prayers are worthwhile for me to read before going to sleep so that sleeping will open me spiritually?

Answer: Any part of an article by Baal HaSulam or Rabash that seems appropriate to you.
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Is Religion Important To You?

laitman_567_04Opinion (Steven Reiss, The Ohio State University): “Religion is not just about fear of death. Religion couldn’t achieve mass acceptance if it only fulfilled one or two basic desires. …)

“People are attracted to religion because it provides believers the opportunity to satisfy all their basic desires over and over again. You can’t boil religion down to one essence….

“We all share the same 16 goals, but what makes us different is how much we value each one …

“How much an individual values each of those 16 desires corresponds closely to what he or she likes and dislikes about religion. …

“Religion has to appeal to both introverts and extroverts. For extroverts, religion offers festivals and teaches that God blesses fellowship. For introverts, religion encourages meditation and private retreats and teaches that God blesses solitude. …

“Religion attracts all kinds, including peacemakers and those who want a vengeful God. …

“Religion competes with secular society to meet those 16 needs and can gain or lose popularity based on how well people believe it does compared to secular society. …

“In 16 Strivings for God, I discuss a mystical personality type – the kind of person who would likely find value and meaning in mystical experiences and would be attracted to religion for that reason.  …

“We can test that and find out if there really is a mystical personality type. …

“I’m not trying to answer theological questions about the existence or nature of God. What I’m trying to answer is the nature of why people embrace religion and God.”

My Comment: As I always keep on saying, the foundation of human nature is egoism, the desire to fulfill oneself, to come to material and psychological satisfaction. Its demands become greater than normal existence can offer to a person.

There must be a versatile psychological wholeness that religion always provides. But material and psychological desires grow, both quantitatively and qualitatively, towards the discovery of the meaning of life.

In the past, this was partially satisfied by the sciences; today the demand and the need to attain the meaning of life has moved beyond science, and science recognizes the inconsistency in this.

Suffering forces us to search for a solution to the question about the meaning of life, about the meaning of enduring suffering, and, here, against all the sciences, religions, methods, philosophies, only the wisdom of Kabbalah appears in the final run towards the finish line, not just providing the answer for a person, but revealing the upper world and introducing him to a new existence.
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The Main Mission Of Kabbalah

laitman_276_01Life according to Kabbalah is existence within the Light, in the property of bestowal. It is perceived as a sensation of boundless existence when you endlessly flow within this state and see it as eternal.

At the same time, the perception of corporeal reality, the sensation of time, space, and limitation disappear. You enter a different coordinate system. It has different limitations where you define yourself in relation to others.

We must get used to this, as it is a necessity for entry. Sometimes it takes a few years before a person begins to sense the upper world. However, our task is to come to the sensation of the upper reality before we physically part with this world. Generally speaking this is the main mission of Kabbalah.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/1/15

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Answers To Your Questions, Part 119

laitman_565_02Question: How must one relate internally to other people’s suffering?

Answer: With balance, as with everything.

Question: If an event happens in my life that makes me very happy and I want to thank the Creator, how should I behave in such a case? Can there be thanks to the Creator that is not egoistic?

Answer: You should always thank the Creator and for everything.

Question: Why don’t I feel that the group is correcting me? I was an egoist, and that is how I remain. Likewise, there is no feeling of unity, and I have not found any special happiness in a group. What should I do?

Answer: You must force yourself to yearn for the unity of the whole group until you feel an attitude toward them as toward your beloved children. In our world, only a state like this will create a spiritual field of revelation for you.
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Brain Research

laitman_543_01Comment: At Tel Aviv University conducted a study, which conclude that there are no difference between the structure of the brains of men and women.

Answer: Certainly, because the brain is a machine, a computer.

There are no differences in the structure of the male and female brains. Everything depends on desire, or as they say, on the heart. But the heart is just a motor, a pump. A person’s desire is not found in any physical volume.

There is no initiator of desire within our body, it is found outside of us, and the body is its receiver that absorbs the desire, begins to process it, and reacts to it in a particular way. So men receive particular types of desires and women other types, and in this manner their brains are activated. But in themselves, their brains have no differences.

Desires come from a network that links between us, but we don’t feel it. And all of our actions go there: the mental, physical, moral, ethical, whatever. All of our reactions on all levels go back to this network.

I receive stimuli from this network, react to them, and these reactions go back into the network. The problem is learning how to accept and grasp the signals that reach us emotionally, react to them properly, and transmit them back correctly.

If I do this, I feel this network as a new world, the upper world is revealed to me. The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks precisely about how to react to this system correctly, use it, and manage it. The cybernetics of the future is the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/10/15

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“The World, Is It Muslim?”

laitman_282_02From the News (slate.fr): “Demographic projections on increasing global population projections have added developments of religious believing people. We can not say if the estimate of the volume of religious populations accurately describes those believers or those of people from a certain tradition. The rise of spirituality compensates the decline of certain dogmas. In other contexts, fundamentalist affirmation prevails. Nevertheless, the general outlook…sees very significant progress of Islam in the world… .

“Among the few sources for these prospective analyzes, the Pew Research Center…won. The Pew delivered last spring, a serious extensive study. The work is based on available data, around the world, on differential fertility and mortality, migration and even more complicated operations, conversions from one religion to another….

“… What might the religious distribution of the world be in 2050? Christians should remain the majority. Islam, in its diversity, should grow much faster than all other major religions. Over the period, the number of Muslims (1.2 billion) could grow by almost 75%, against 35% for Christians (750 million) and 34% for Hindus. By 2050, the number of Muslims (2.8 billion, 30% of humanity) would be roughly equivalent to that of Christians (2.9 billion, 31%). The inertia is strong, it is not until 2070 that the number of Muslims would exceed that of Christians.”

 

My Comment: Our observation in this world regarding the amount and “who will prevail over whom,” can be achieved only if the two sides are found on the same level. But if the levels are different, meaning one is at a higher level and has more power and connection, then it outweighs the quality of the larger number on the lower level. And this is because the higher level generates and nourishes the lower. So even though everything happens according to the script of “The Days of the Messiah,” the options of the this script are in our hands!
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