Entries in the 'Kabbalah Study' Category

Spiritual Concepts As Perceived By Ordinary People

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You use terms like a soul, the upper world, or spirituality that are also used by many religions and different spiritual methods. But I feel that they give these concepts a different meaning.

Can you explain more accurately what the wisdom of Kabbalah refers to by concepts like the upper world, a soul, or reincarnation?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah was founded 5,774 years ago. The first Kabbalist was called Adam.

He wasn’t the first human being on earth, because humans had existed and developed tens of thousands of years before he appeared. The only thing special about Adam was that he discovered the system of forces we are living in and described it in his book The Angel Raziel.

An angel is not a winged creature that can fly, but a force. Adam called it a hidden force because we cannot perceive this force in our corporeal senses but only can perceive the implications of its consequences. Adam was the first to attain this force that manages the whole world and he was the founder of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Modern science can discover many forces by means of research in physics, chemistry and other sciences. But there are forces that we cannot discover because we don’t have the tools to do so. These are basically forces related to thoughts, the mind, and desires. These forces exist, but we cannot perceive them.

We can identify, with the help of measuring brainwaves how a person concentrates thoughts, but we cannot examine the quality of the thought, especially if these are ideas that relate to humanity and are part of nature. Today, physicists say that our world and the whole universe seems to them like a thought and that we exist in the universe in a thought. This thought is the thought of creation.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to feel this thought, this force, the thought that existed before the creation of the universe and which created the universe through the Big Bang and leads it to its final definite form. There are no coincidences in nature. Everything is accurately connected and defined.

The wisdom of Kabbalah helps us develop additional senses through which we can feel the forces and the attributes that our body doesn’t feel. In order to do so, we must exit our body and connect to other people, be incorporated in one another, and create a kind of a collective emotional, energetic, mental platform that is not in each of us, but among us.

Thus, by the cooperation between us, we can begin to perceive the force that exists around us, the thought of creation, the thought of our evolution. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is called attaining the Creator because this force created and develops us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah revealed this long before religions appeared. People began to read Kabbalah books, but at the same time they didn’t engage in practical fulfillment by way of self-correction, development of the connection between them, and in ascending above their egos. They couldn’t understand what the books said exactly, and all religions stemmed from this as a result of this lack of understanding.

They took the names of the forces that exist in nature (spirits, angels, demons, etc.) and began to embody them in different images. Kabbalah books speak only about forces, but because people perceive these concepts through their corporeal senses, they began to imagine reality through these concepts.

The point is that everything we see and feel inside us are only forces that are perceived by our mind and are depicted in our minds like electromagnetic forces depict different images on a computer screen. In fact, nothing really exists.

By putting together a picture of the different forces and placing electrodes in a person’s brain, we can change this picture and do practically anything. But does all that really exist externally to us? No. It is only a fictitious reality that we perceive in that way.

The wisdom of Kabbalah tells a person how to correct his perception of the world and feel it, not with his body, but by using totally different senses. We are gradually approaching this level.

As for the spiritual concepts, they were really taken from the wisdom of Kabbalah by different spiritual methods. Many people use them without any reference to the wisdom of Kabbalah and this is very confusing for a person who demands correction. The right perception of reality requires a great deal of work on myself.
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From the International Summer Camp In Bulgaria “Day Two” 7/12/14, Lesson #4

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Dispelling Misconceptions About Kabbalah

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere are great misconceptions about the wisdom of Kabbalah. People ask, “Why is it necessary to study the wisdom of Kabbalah? Is it interesting for us to know how many angels there are in heaven and what they are called? Is it important what we call the worlds, the Partzufim, or the Sefirot? Why should we sit and learn impractical things like these that are irrelevant to real life?”

We open the book and read: Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created, the upper simple light had filled the whole existence. Where is all of this found? This is so far from us, outside of this world and universe, outside of this space in which all of us exist together with our planet, the sun, and all the stars. All of this is absolutely abstract and detached from our world.

No practical benefit is seen nor any concrete means that would make it possible to improve our lives and perform any actions. It is suggested to us simply to study. So what is the meaning of this?

Besides that, there are those who say that because this study is too abstract, it is possible to go crazy. Since studying the Talmud and Mitzvot (commandments), the Shulchan Aruch makes it possible to apply the study to practical activities and is preferable for the organization of our lives. We are able to provide a good education and information to children so that they will be able to proceed in the way of their ancestors.

It is customary to think that religion brings benefit to people while the wisdom of Kabbalah is like some kind of philosophy. So why does an ordinary person need this? Such an opinion is widespread and common in the world.

Or people think that with the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is possible to do miracles by activating forces from the next world. And so the wisdom of Kabbalah seems even more dangerous for you are apparently working with mysticism and are liable to harm yourself and others. People are against anyone being involved with it at all, for who knows what you are liable to do? Maybe you will get access to some red button through which it will be possible to blow up the whole world.

But all of these erroneous opinions are the result of absolute ignorance. People don’t understand that the wisdom of Kabbalah is the most practical of sciences and by being involved in it, it is possible to attract the Light that reforms.

In truth, it is difficult to explain this. Even those who come to study in the beginning don’t understand what they really want and what they came for. After years of study and learning, it is gradually revealed to a person that Kabbalah is a practical method only. This is because with its help, we awaken a unique power that changes everything in our world, a power that is called the Upper Light.

If we don’t attract this Light, it still acts according to its plan. And so it controls us in any case, but only in a form that is quite unpleasant and not desirable for the upper force or for a person.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/08/15, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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We Must Come Out Of The Aquarium

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do I need to explore everything with regard to myself in the upper world while we don’t have to do so in this world?

Answer: This is because you exist in a different form in the new reality. In our world, you receive everything into your body; you feel the reality in your senses, and therefore you see this room, the walls, the windows, the table, and me.

How do you know that it all exists? It is depicted this way to you by your senses.

The perception of the true reality is revealed only in the upper world. In our world, you are limited and live in an aquarium my dear friend! You are locked inside yourself saying that you don’t need other senses except the ones that you have in your fish body. Those are enough in order to feel this corporeal life, and you don’t need anything more than that.

You don’t believe that beyond the walls of the aquarium there is a different world, and you are not trying to explore beyond the walls. However, I already have such a desire, which is the beginning of a higher level of desires. These are the same five types of perceptions, but they are on the next level. You perceive everything on your level in the desire to receive, while I develop my perception in the desire to bestow.

Comment: But I use objective measuring tools without involving my subjective feelings.

Answer: That’s what you think, but you are mistaken.

Comment: But being inside the aquarium, I cannot understand my limitations and my influence on the picture that is depicted to me.

Answer: You can. Modern science speaks about this because it has attained the limits of this world. Einstein was the first to speak about the relative perception of our world, followed by the physicist Hugh Everett and other scientists.

The moment we understand that everything is relative, we already have a problem. Everything being relative means that we have no way of measuring anything in an accurate objective way. Each time we have to add the statement that the observation is with respect to the observer who is in a certain frame of reference and in certain conditions. In that case, nothing is absolute and there are no objective facts.

Question: How does the theory of relativity help us discover new horizons?

Answer: Although Einstein’s theory was revolutionary, it is still limited since it refers only to the limitations of our perception and not beyond. It is impossible to exit the boundaries of corporeal perception by a corporeal scientific approach.

Einstein managed to reach this boundary, but didn’t manage to cross it, although he tried. We see that his attitude towards the Creator was like that towards an upper mind, an upper force, and an upper desire and thought. He believed it was very important, since it was clear to him that there is something beyond the limits of the corporeal reality that we feel.

But the only way to enter this upper reality is by special development of the initial desire of this point inside the fish that pulls it beyond the limits of the aquarium. There is a special technique of developing this point, and when it becomes a real desire, a person begins to work with it by drawing on new forces that exist outside the aquarium.

He draws these forces towards him, using everything he has in order to discover and start feeling them, to reach bilateral contact and mutual cooperation with them. Thus he attains a new life.

People who have already attained the upper perception throughout history help a person in order to spare him from wandering in the dark. They leave us their writings and their impressions on which the wisdom of Kabbalah is based. By studying the Kabbalistic sources, we awaken ourselves in the right direction and eventually also attain the revelations of the new perception and feeling of the new world.

This is the real world, since it is independent of our limited corporeal perception. We have to come out of the aquarium!
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From KabTV’s “The Meeting of the Worlds” 5/12/14

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From Superstition To True Knowledge Of Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe human being has always been very dependent on his environment from the still, vegetative, and animate natures, as well as on other people, be they good or bad neighbors and nearby nations. Thus, everyone wants to know what awaits him in the future.

Throughout history, people have studied different signs that exist in nature and noticed how they are related to our destiny.

Rich and extensive literature exists on this topic and stretches from the most ancient times to the present day. Indeed, even today we have not solved a single puzzle and the future still remains shrouded in mystery for us.

There are people who can predict the future, and you can see it and feel it as if they live within it. They achieve some special internal state and rise above themselves by contacting the flow of information, which is located above our perception. This state is not available to an ordinary person, but these people can grasp it and tell us what they perceive.

There are different means of achieving the ability to feel nature outside of one’s body and somehow to disconnect from it by using drugs and bringing oneself to ecstasy. These methods are known in cultures of different nations around which many fairy tales, stories, and legends were created.

Nations are either more or less inclined to believe in omens. Thirty years ago, I visited England and was struck by the tradition adopted there. Before moving into an apartment, a special service was invited to clean an apartment, not of dust, but of evil spirits. Newspapers are full of announcements of such services to ensure the absence of evil energy and the presence of good energy in your home. They say that there is almost no one who moves to another apartment without this purification.

Once a year in Mexico, the Day of the Dead is observed. It is customary to take food to the graves of relatives. It is a common tradition to broadcast this on the main TV channel in Mexico People even wash the bones of the buried and put them back into the grave, as it is considered giving special honor to deceased parents.

Every religion has rituals that are close to divination and beliefs. All this belongs to the area unknown to us. But in history there was a man who declared a war on this uncertainty, fought bravely, and started a great revolution. His name was Abraham.

At first, he was a prophet and a priest who studied astronomy and astrology, predicted the future, and sold idols and amulets. In those days, science was closely mixed with religion and all kinds of beliefs. Science was studied in monasteries and belonged to religion.

This confusion remains to this day and we have rid ourselves of medieval superstition. Technological development is purely mechanical and did not raise the human spirit higher. On the contrary, it lowered it.

Abraham was a great astrologer and famous sorcerer who sold idols. His father Terah was a high priest. They were considered very important people in Babylon and represented the supreme spiritual authority.

But Abraham gave up his honorary position in order to realize his inner desire. He explored nature and tried to understand why the whole world existed and where the the higher force was that controlled everything. Eventually he revealed this upper force, the Creator.

He worked selflessly, despite fear. After all, he went against all of his former beliefs not fearing that he could be killed for it. Indeed, he then had to flee from Babylon. Abraham was the first person on this earth who made the transition from mysticism, magic, amulets and idolatry to the true knowledge of nature.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/1/15

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People Live In The Past

People Live In The Past

laitman_959In the News (from RT): “A team of vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed this secret of the human brain: To save us from insanity induced by a constantly changing torrent of pictures, shapes and colors – both virtual and real world – the brain filters out information, failing in most cases to notice small changes in a 15-second period of time.

“It actually means that what we do see is, in fact, a mixture of past and present. According to the research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, stability is attained at the expense of accuracy.

“’What you are seeing at the present moment is not a fresh snapshot of the world but rather an average of what you’ve seen in the past 10 to 15 seconds,” said study author Jason Fischer, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at MIT.”

My Comment: In fact, we do see not the world but our internal state that is projected on a screen in our brains, and this gives us the illusion of what is supposedly happening outside of us, in front us.
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A Wisdom That Guarantees Success In Life

laitman_214Question: Only two groups are interested in the Creator: religious people or great scientists who study nature, people like Einstein who are trying to understand whether an upper force exists and are trying to find it. But all the other people aren’t interested in the Creator at all. How does He affect the daily life of an ordinary person?

Answer: This question has nothing to do with whether a person is religious or not. He lives and goes through different phases of development throughout his life together with all of humanity. If he discovers and knows at least according to which laws he and all of humanity develop, he will be able to manage his life more successfully.

By knowing what is expected the next day or two days in advance, where everything is moving to and advancing, he will be able to manage better. Suppose you wanted to know which profession is better for your son when he finishes school. Everything will be clear to you: how to study, what to study, what is better to buy. Everything will be known in advance since you will discover the general plan according to which you develop and you will be included in its stream.

Therefore, the revelation of the Creator is essential for every human being. Today we experience so many failures because we operate blindly. All of humanity is acting blindly despite all the high technology, the great sufferings it has undergone, and the rich bitter experience it has accumulated, all because it doesn’t know the plan of nature.

No one is expecting us to bow to the upper force like in religion. We have to discover it and to get to know it in order to ease our life and to prepare our children for an even better life. Otherwise life will become worse from one generation to the next.

Our children’s life will undoubtedly be much worse than ours. Fifty or sixty years ago we thought that life would gradually improve and that humanity would make new discoveries and achieve greater successes, that there would be no more world wars, and that the world would be a wonderful place. But suddenly we see that everything is actually the opposite.

Attaining the Creator is actually attaining nature, attaining the general plan. This opens our eyes and allows us to see the world we are actually living in, who manages it, and the network we live in. All that helps us become more successful, which is what humanity needs so much these days since it suffering.

We feel that we are increasingly more connected among us in global connections and don’t know how to break free. The EU now wants to break apart after many unsuccessful attempts to unite, but that will harm all the countries. This is all because they don’t know how to unite correctly so that it will be good for everyone.

The plan of how to connect to the good is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. I recommend it to everyone. After all, every person wants to succeed in life and the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to do so. This will be absolute success, which will not harm others not like today when we succeed at the expense of the failure of everyone else.

The chosen people are the people who have the plan of correction and we have to know it. In addition to that, being chosen means that we have to bring this plan to all of humanity. As long as we don’t do that, they will hate us and pressure us more and more. This is only the beginning of the general global pressure.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is meant for the most ordinary person and has nothing to do with religion: not Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, and not to any Eastern philosophies or any mysticism. It is only about the revelation of the upper force to every human being.

Thanks to this revelation, a person will no longer make mistakes in life. What is more, he will begin to discover the upper dimension and understand that our life doesn’t end with the death of the physical body. If it were so, then what would be the meaning of this limited existence for several decades, which one lives through with great pain and wars.

The meaning is that we should ascend to the next level during our life in this world. It is not the level of the physical world anymore but a level of consciousness, a new level of sensations. We ascend to a different dimension, discover new horizons, a new world.

This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah invites everyone to, to the revelation of the upper force and the attainment of the Creator, the revelation of eternity and wholeness in nature.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/18/14

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Life In An Aquarium

laitman_928Question: The picture that you draw is depressing and even angers me. Is it really so, that all of my perception of the world is absolutely subjective and limited by my sensations?

Answer: Why does the perception of our world depress you? If we look at a fish in an aquarium, it lives calmly. For him, this aquarium, the water, and everything in it is his life.

A fish wants to live and take care of itself; it is satisfied with life in an aquarium. This is because it is important to it for there to be water saturated with oxygen and food. And it doesn’t want anything more.

The aquarium is his world. The fish doesn’t know what is to be found and what exists outside of the aquarium. That is how we also live in this world, in such an aquarium without knowing what is happening outside of it. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science about the perception of reality that makes it possible for a person to expand his horizons.

Question: But the life of a fish in an aquarium doesn’t anger him. Why are we worried about what is found behind its walls?

Answer: This is because we have been chosen from all people to be born and develop such a desire that goes outside of the aquarium. We want to go out of the aquarium and discover what exists outside of it. This is a new desire that is irrelevant to a person in this world. It already belongs to the next level that is outside of our bodies; and that is what we need to explore.

I feel that I must discover what is concealed there, behind the glass of the aquarium. This life within the aquarium chokes me and I feel as if I am in a prison. I would prefer to die than to live a life like this because my desire is much greater than what can be fulfilled in this world.

I want to get knowledge and a feeling of a wider reality, of the outside world. And so I feel myself in this world as if I am locked in a dungeon or buried alive. Even though I am alive, I feel as if I am in a narrow coffin and am trying to break out of it.

There are people for whom life in an aquarium is absolutely enough for them; they are 99% of all of humanity.

Question: But aren’t all people dissatisfied about something?

Answer: They are dissatisfied that food wasn’t put into the aquarium on time and that the pump supplies oxygen poorly. Their desire is not developed beyond this. But there are people whose desire is much greater and they want to discover what is found beyond the limits of the aquarium.
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From KabTV’s “The Meeting of Worlds” 5/12/14

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Kabbalah And Jungian Psychology

laitman_205Question: I have found many answers to questions and an understanding and awareness of the world in Jungian psychology. Is there a connection between the wisdom of Kabbalah and psychology?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah and materialistic psychology are closely linked. But the idea is that psychology is involved with investigating the psychology of an animal called the “human.”

For every beast—a horse, an ape or an elephant—has its own behavioral psychology and so forth. So it is possible to learn the psychology of the human as a beast through the works of Jung and the rest of the scientists, because they investigate ordinary human nature.

But if you want to learn the psychology of the soul, then ordinary psychology won’t help you; it won’t be enough. Scientific psychologists cannot investigate it because they haven’t attained their own soul. Here the wisdom of Kabbalah is required.

Those who come to the wisdom of Kabbalah are people who feel that they must attain the meaning of life. But if ordinary psychology is enough for you, be involved with that; that’s your business.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is required for someone who cannot live without a clear answer to the question: “What am living for?”  But if this question doesn’t burn in you, then you can be involved with whatever you want. We don’t invite people who are involved with something else to us.

If we are talking about human behavior in our world, then this is ordinary materialistic psychology. It is correct and justified in the framework of our daily behavior and it investigates people and society with the help of our materialistic characteristics, and after that it is recorded and compiled into an entire method.

But if we want to investigate human behavior that rises above its egoistic characteristics, then psychology becomes the wisdom of Kabbalah there, because a person must change receptive characteristics into the characteristics of bestowal, transforming egoism into altruism, feeling himself exiting the egoistic body. And if he investigates these states and records them, then for him the result is a psychology called the “wisdom of Kabbalah.”

He will record this in the form of Aviut (the depth of the desire), Sefirot, worlds, and levels. Precise knowledge will appear in him about how his actions change according to his ascent above the ego, from connection with others and so forth. This will be a science based upon a revision, a precise perception of reality. Everything that we investigate in ordinary science we can investigate in this higher psychology called the “wisdom of Kabbalah.”

But the wisdom of Kabbalah is not at all involved with the behavior of an ordinary person in our world. Materialistic psychology is involved with this. That is its use. Before a person discovers the upper world, where he feels his altruistic desire, we are dealing with psychology.

And from that moment on, we are involved with the wisdom of Kabbalah. So Jung and all the rest of the psychologists were interested only in the level of our world. And they don’t exist above it.
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From the International Summer Camp In Bulgaria “Day Two” 7/12/14, Lesson #4

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Everything Is Predetermined

laitman_746_01In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.

“Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

“Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident?… For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist.”

My Comment: The existence of a higher intelligence with the plan of creation, predestination, and the system of control of creation does not deny the existence of freewill in the created beings. Kabbalah reveals the nature of the Creator and everything that was created by Him in order to enable every person to reach the peak of knowledge, eternity, and perfection of existence.
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The Entire Universe is Within a Man

laitman_739Question: Why does the wisdom of Kabbalah explore all the laws of nature by bringing a person inside the study as one of the parameters and trying to understand it through the entire universe?

Answer: Do we have any other opportunity to study and possibly exit our skin, our body? The whole picture of the world appears inside my feelings only. And if I disappear, then this picture will disappear in relation to me.

This world exists without me, and if so, does it exist in a way I see it or in some other form, in different wavelengths; that I cannot say. I still perceive everything only from my body.

Question: How does a Kabbalist see the world?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is the science of “reception” (Kabbalah), so a Kabbalist explores one’s perceptions of reality. Due to certain actions, one begins to change oneself and explores how, depending on the internal changes, one’s worldview varies as well.

A Kabbalist changes one’s internal properties, the form of desire, perception of, and communication with what is happening outside in the surrounding reality. A person begins to work with one’s desires and connection with external reality in such a way where new worlds will be built upon this.

Now we feel we are in a huge world that contains many different objects and phenomena. A person who begins to actively work with one’s desire, builds a new world upon it, a new reality.

A person remains living in a physical body and still perceives an earthly picture of the world in the five physical senses. This picture is constant, as the necessary foundation. But in addition to it, the Kabbalist creates five new senses with which one feels an additional world. A Kabbalist sees this world, feels it, works with it, and lives in it, in addition to the body that exists in the five physical senses.

This additional sense is called the higher or spiritual world. And the old perception through the five physical senses in which a person existed before and remained there is called this or our world.

If there are other people who also have this perception in five additional “out of body” spiritual senses, they can communicate with each other.

Question: If I were able to realize that the whole picture of the world is perceived by me, according to my internal properties, would it be able to open many new phenomena for me?

Answer: First of all, we must agree that all perception depends on a person, on an observer. And if there were no people, no one would reveal the existence of the reality of this universe. It exists only in our perception.

It did not exist before humans appeared on earth and found it. After all, it is apparent only in relation to a person. For example, ten years ago I discovered that the universe emerged fourteen billion years ago. But in fact it is me that perceives this reality in my mind versus this reality existing objectively in such boundaries of time and space. All of this is relative and exists only in a person.
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From KabTV’s “Meeting of the Worlds” 5/12/14

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