Question: For a person who is immersed in the material world, the spiritual world seems like an illusion. Does the material world become an illusion for a Kabbalist who attains the spiritual worlds?

Answer: This world is not an illusion. It absolutely and clearly exists and must be treated as a reality. When it gradually begins to disappear from your sensation you can say that it is illusory. The wisdom of Kabbalah relates to everything materialistically.

Question: Does this world become an illusion for a Kabbalist? What does existence in two worlds mean?

Answer: For a Kabbalist, this world is not an illusion. I exist in this world. I have a wife, children, grandchildren, friends, students, and my egoism that I am working on. Existence in two worlds becomes possible when a Kabbalist, in addition to his egoism with which he was born and which has developed in this state, acquires additional possibilities for investigating the extent of creation found outside of the ego.
[197518]

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Question: If we are born with the egoistic glasses that show us an illusory world, how can we distinguish between illusion and reality?

Answer: This is impossible for us now, we have to develop new organs of perception. Then we’ll be able to make such scrutinize with the help of the upper force that will show us the difference between the reality that exists within our ego and the reality outside of us.

The reality that exists within our ego is changing day by day and every moment. If we rise above our egoistic feelings, we attain an external reality, the true reality. This reality does not change and that’s why we can depend on it; after all, it is indeed eternal.

I perceive everything through my ego now, through the “glasses” embedded in me from birth. And that is why everything I see is an imaginary world. Egoism is the will to receive pleasure from the world, and that is why I see the corresponding picture through my glasses, only from that perspective. This is the reality for me, but for others it is a fantasy already.

We can not imagine anything else because we live inside this program, inside the picture presented within our ego. But as soon as a person manages to get out of this imaginary picture, he starts noticing the difference between the two worlds: the one seen through his internal, innate “glasses” and the other perceived by feeling the upper force directly.

It is the force that paints the illusory picture to us, but at the same time, it gives us an opportunity to know this force itself. The attainment of the upper force without it being bent by our internal glasses is called the attainment of the Creator. And the method of achieving this attainment is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. Therefore, it is considered a hidden wisdom that uncovers the hidden reality for us.
[196904]
From a TV Program “A New Life,” No. 787, 11/01/2016

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Question: Am I constructing a spiritual image within me, and basically, relating to my inner image?

Answer: The Book of Zohar says that the whole world is found within us, which is eventually what a person discovers. A person cannot talk about what is outside of him because everything is within his senses.

Even though I am portraying images as existing in front of me, they actually exist inside me, in my imagination, in my consciousness. A person constructs an image within himself and relates to it; in other words, he exists in the model he builds himself. If he had different senses, he would construct a completely different image.
[197447]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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Question: This year in June, businessman Elon Musk again declared that humanity is living in a computer simulation and must create another imaging device that cannot be distinguished from reality, otherwise humanity will cease to exist.

Is he right? Does humanity need to restart the current simulator or must it create a new one? Or is there another way out?

Answer: It is possible to say that we are living within a simulator, in some matrix, but this cannot be proven. Only a person who exits this state and sees our situation from the outside can prove this.

The wisdom of Kabbalah makes it possible to do this. But it doesn’t belong to our state, to our creation at all. It is possible to say that people like Elon Musk are making the right assumptions, but all of the reasoning and the basis for these assumptions are built on our human psyche and psychology, all of which are connected to our world.

A person cannot devise anything that will not be a reflection of the reality that surrounds him. He cannot “draw” an extraterrestrial creature without hands, eyes, and so forth.

It is possible to say that we are in a matrix. We can exit it, move to another, moving through many such states. But in any case, it cannot be based upon something within our current psychology, because in any case, it will be an imagined image.

To tear us out of our own “I” requires an external force that will influence us and truly create new characteristics within us and we will have a new reality.
[197505]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/18/16

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Question: If our entire world is an illusion, what is reality then?

Answer: Reality is what exists outside of a person irrespective of him. Whether there is humanity or not, whether the world exists or not, this reality exists eternally, above time, movement, and space. It is not dependent on any of our three-dimensional restrictions and time.

We live in an imaginary reality where there is up and down, right and left, forward and backward, and the flow of time in which everything is changing. But the true reality exists beyond time, meaning above the speed of light. After all, it is not dependent on time and does not change.

We can reveal the true reality, and then we will discover that only one force exists, the force of bestowal. This force is called upper because it created all of our reality and sustains it, leading it to the attainment of the Creator’s force, the force of bestowal and love. This is the way we discover Him to be. We do not know what He is, and can perceive Him only according to how He manifests himself in our qualities, our perception, relative to us.

The Creator’s attitude toward us, the way we perceive it, is what we call the Creator or Boreh, from the words “come” (Bo) and “to see” (Reh), discover Him.

Question: Will each person discover the Creator in his or her own way?

Answer: Certainly. Even the same person discovers the Creator in a new form all the time.

Question: So is there only one true reality or many?

Answer: The upper force is one, but we perceive it differently each time due to the changes within us.

Kabbalah is called a hidden wisdom because it studies what is concealed from us and helps us to reveal it. It teaches a person how to rise above the egoistic glasses, to get out of their boundaries, and to discover the true reality.

Question: And what is the final goal?

Answer: The goal is to reveal the upper force. To the extent that we reveal it, we ourselves rise to its degree and become eternal and perfect just like it. We get out of an illusion, a deception, and return to the truth, to the world of truth, and that is why Kabbalah is called a true wisdom.
[196755]
From a TV Program “A New Life,” No. 787, 11/01/2016

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Question: Could it be that people who attain the upper world simply live in a different illusion that seems to them as reality?

Answer: No, people who attain the upper world exit their state and begin to feel the world that is external to them. This is a world that doesn’t go through their ordinary senses and is not distorted by their personal properties. Therefore, it isn’t an illusion, but the true perception of reality which, in fact, exists externally to our egoistic perception.

Kabbalists say that the question about the meaning of life is what pushes us to ascend above our reality and that if we use it correctly, we will find the method of ascending to the upper reality. Then, we will see our reality from the side.

We swim in the ego like in water, and it is only through our egoism that we see our reality. A person is merely an organ of perception of what exists around him.

The world is arranged so that a person will be able to exist in it for a certain period of time and go from his current state to the next state, to the upper reality, that is independent of the human ego. By neutralizing his egoism, a person begins to exit himself and become totally objective. Then, there are no more limitations of time, motion, and space.
[197515]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/18/16

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New Life 789 – The Senses And The Feeling Of Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

We don’t know what is outside of us, but only what we perceive with our senses.

• A person is not able to exist without receiving information from the environment; he is a part of it, he receives and emits information.
• As a part of evolution, our desire to receive developed five senses to serve it. If a person would cut all of his senses off from absorbing information, within a few minutes he would collapse and become disconnected from life.
• The sense of touch is the most basic sense, without the sense of touch a person stops feeling his existence. When the tactile sense ceases to function, it stops a person’s life.
• Even imagination is only a result of the senses.
• The general sense is the desire to receive, to enjoy, and the senses are like its branches, its limbs.
• It is also possible to develop a spiritual existence through a desire to bestow. This desire to bestow is a spiritual concept that we don’t understand; it is possible to develop it through the wisdom of Kabbalah.
• When the desire to bestow is developed, five spiritual senses are developed within it: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut.
• The difference between the various senses is in the kind of waves they absorb.
  [197174]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 789 – The Senses And The Feeling Of Life,” 11/8/16

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The world we see in front of us is not an external reality, but a sort of 3-D movie. We think that we see people, but actually we see our own qualities that supposedly exist outside of us.

Question: How does it happen that two different people look at a third and see the same thing?

Answer: Obviously, we do not see the same thing. We can’t even compare what we see and evaluate what the other person feels. We just have an agreement to call this picture our world. We can even discuss somebody’s qualities; after all, our perceptions differ.

We all see the same illusory reality that we imagine, whereby everyone as if looks through his 3-D glasses.

Question: Why do we see the same reality?

Answer: It’s because the reality we perceive has to be imprinted in the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. There is a matrix through which everyone is capable of looking at the world and that is why we perceive only certain qualities. However, everyone interprets and perceives them according to his character.

There can be only one reality—the upper force called the Creator, which we have to reveal. He is the true and only existing reality. Everything else is an illusion, including us and this entire world, which is called an imaginary world in Kabbalah.

It seems to me that there is I and everything that I imagine: all other forms and billions of people, the Earth, our galaxy, and the universe. But all this exists only in my imagination.

Modern technology is capable of producing glasses that paint a holographic picture and give a person the impression that a cup of coffee is standing in front of him, while in fact the cup is nonexistent.

But even if we do not wear such glasses at the moment, we were born with other glasses. They are located inside of our heads and that’s why we always perceive the imaginary reality. We can not take them off because they are implanted in us from birth.

That means that even without putting on the 3D glasses, we nonetheless reside within the 3D illusion. The entire world is an illusion we imagine from the moment we are born.
[196750]
From a TV Program “A New Life,” No. 787, 11/01/2016

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New Life 788 – The Five Senses
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Everything in nature is divided into five, that is the nature of creation.

Main topics of the program:

• Each one of the five senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—are composed of five subsystems.
• There are people whose range of the senses is much greater than that of others.
• The sense of touch consists of impressions from the environment that are not absorbed through the other four senses.
• The sense of sight made the development of reading and writing, the transfer of information, possible.
• The function of the senses is to make it possible for a person to be in connection with the environment and to portray within us an internal picture of reality.
• There is a lot of information that is not perceived through our senses. We don’t absorb the complete reality, only a part of it.
• To develop the ability to absorb, we must study the wisdom of Kabbalah.
• Plants feel if a person next to them is good or bad.
• The desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment, the desire for pleasure, which is the substance of creation, developed the senses to serve it.
• A desire is a lack. If I lack something, a desire for it develops within me.
• People, like animals, have five senses because they are a part of the animate world, and plants are on a lower level of development.
• Beyond the corporeal desires of the animate level—nourishment, sex, and family—humans have a desire for wealth, respect, and knowledge.
• The degree of sensitivity of our senses depends on our needs. Animals feel more than us because they have to hunt for their nourishment.
• We are about to acquire one additional sense that is fundamentally different than the rest of the senses. It is called the “sense of bestowal,” love, whose meaning is going out of oneself.
• The desire to receive will be replaced by the desire to bestow, to give, to love, which will develop five new senses in us.
  [197143]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 788 – The Five Senses,” 11/8/16

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Question: Sometimes a person thinks that real things happen with him, but then he wakes up and understands that it was just a dream. What is reality and what is illusion?

Answer: There is only one reality—the upper force. To the extent that we reveal that force, we exist in reality. If we do not reveal the upper force, it means that we remain in illusion.

It follows that our current state, in which the upper force is hidden from us, is an illusion. It is written in “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” that the entire world that we see in front of ourselves is only our fantasy, but a highly complicated one, you can even say, a tricky one.

Actually, as the wisdom of Kabbalah explains, we do not see the reality in front of us, but rather imagine it within ourselves. And it seems to us that this internal fantasy actually exists, and it is outside of us.

Imagine that everything we see around us, everything we feel, hear, and breathe, all the impressions in our five senses essentially exist within us. And not inside the body, because it is an illusion too, but in the organ of perception called the will to receive pleasure. This desire includes sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

In essence, we detect not what occurs outside but what happens inside these senses. Sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch are five levels of internal impressions within in us, meaning in the will to receive pleasure. By reacting to waves and fluids that enters it, the will to receive imagines the reality it supposedly exists in.

It is almost like putting on the 3D glasses and seeing yourself in the forest or outer space. Only these glasses are permanent, implanted within us. Through them, we discover our imaginary reality. But it is indeed “ours,” as we have become so accustomed to and united with it that we can not separate ourselves from it.

Kabbalists reveal the true reality existing not inside of us, like the imaginary one, but outside of us. This upper reality, the upper force, is called the “Creator” (Boreh) because it means two actions: “come” (Bo) and “see” (Reh) Him. And then we see that as the upper force governs all reality, which is in fact the will to receive pleasure.

The upper force is the desire to delight, to bestow. By revealing it, we discover how this force fills the entire universe, the entire creation, meaning the will to receive, to be fulfilled.

Question: Do we feel the upper reality with the same senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch?

Answer: We feel the upper reality in the five senses called Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. It is the higher form of perception than the ordinary sight, hearing, smell, and touch.

Question: Does it feel as a true reality?

Answer: It feels much stronger than our current one.
[196380]
From a TV Program “A New Life,” No. 787, 11/01/2016

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