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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New Life 787 – Life In An Imaginary Reality
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

How does the ego control the perception of our reality, are we living in an imaginary reality, and what is the higher reality the Kabbalists speak about?

What is imaginary and what is reality? There is only one reality, the higher power. As long as we haven’t discovered it, we are living in imagination. The sages of Kabbalah discovered the true higher reality, the Creator (Boreh), from the phrase, “Bo Re” (come and see).

• There is a general sense within us called a “desire for pleasure”; it is like internal glasses that are installed in us.
• Like three-dimensional glasses have been assembled and we see an imaginary reality through a program. That is how we are born. It is impossible to remove the “glasses” that were installed in us at birth and which portray the imaginary world for us.
• The higher power installed these “glasses” in us so that we will come to the conclusion that our lives are miserable and we will want more.
• There is only one single reality, the upper force, the Creator, which we must discover. Everything else is an imaginary world.
• There is a true reality that exists without any connection to a person, which is beyond time, movement, and space. It is the force of bestowal.
• The force of bestowal produces reality and takes care of it until it brings us to consciousness.
• The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to accept this reality and discover it; therefore, it is called the hidden wisdom.
• The true perception of reality depends on transcending the ego, above the desire to receive pleasure and enjoyment for oneself.
• In fact, we are living within a structured situation; it is only when we go out of it that we discover that we were like dreamers.
• We discover the true reality by changing our perception, changing our relationships with the people around us.
• The crises in our world are intended to advance us toward discovery of the true reality, the power of love and bestowal.
  [195994]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 787 – Life In An Imaginary Reality,” 11/1/16

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Question: What reality are we living in?

Answer: We are living in an egoistic reality, in a state where we feel that everything is only for our own pleasure or our own security.

We can only feel a small part of the infinite, totally boundless state we are in; it passes through our egoistic filters and is recreated inside us in a distorted way called our world. This means that this world is virtual, that it exists inside us and is created by our ego. Only what is good or bad for our ego is reflected in it, and this is the only thing we perceive with our five senses.

In the reality we do not perceive, we are seemingly asleep, we cannot feel it because we are in our egoistic desire and can draw only what brings us pleasure or can reject what can bring us pain, and this is actually what creates the contrast between plus and minus in us, between darkness and illumination, and so forth.

Question: What percentage of true reality don’t we see?

Answer: We don’t see anything. What we process and recreate inside us, in our egoism, doesn’t count as part of the true volume of creation.
[197510]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/18/16

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From my column in Ynet: “Yes, We Live in a Virtual Reality”

“Many scientists, philosophers and businessmen believe that it is highly probable that people are living in a virtual world which is simulated by a computer,” says a surprising report published by Bank of America. Could it be that we are living in a kind of matrix? Rav Laitman speaks about the origin of such theories.

The report, which was sent to millions customers of the second largest bank in the US and which was also widely covered by the world press, surprised everyone. Although its goal was to explain why we should invest in the area of virtual reality, the existential questions it brought up have intrigued the masses and started a debate on an issue that has almost faded out since the long-forgotten Matrix films.

The inspiration for this unusual theory is based on the ideas of entrepreneur Elon Musk, astrophysicist Neil de Grass Tyson, and Professor Nick Bostrom from Oxford University who claim that it is highly probable that our world is actually a simulation.

Are we actually living in a virtual reality, or are we perhaps part of a cosmic experiment? Is our universe nothing but giant computer software, a three-dimensional simulation of a reality in which matter, energy, electrical charge, our thoughts, and desires are merely the outcomes of complex mathematical calculations?

100 Percent Virtual Reality

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the “unique” idea of virtual reality is not surprising at all. Kabbalah has been engaging in it ever since the beginning of creation. Browsing through ancient Kabbalah books written more than 2,000 years ago, such as The Book of Zohar, reveals that it is not about a twenty to fifty percent probability that our reality is virtual, but a 100 percent certainty!

In fact, it is impossible to calculate the probability of whether or not such an immense reality exists. All of its details are totally controlled by clear and absolute laws like the laws of physics and chemistry, which cannot prove the actual existence and purpose of this reality, but only characterize its different components just as scientists do with regard to every little detail in our world. Kabbalists are the ones who decoded the concealed goal behind this “computer output,” which has spread before our eyes with all of its details since the Big Bang 14 billion years ago. Rav Kook wrote in his book Shmona Kvatzim “for greatest that have attainment, the tangible and temporary world does not occupy any place. They don’t consider or value corporeal life, as the people of the world that see this fixed image of the world. The constant problem of the greatest is eternity. This surrounds their soul and fills all their existence.”

Kabbalists tell us that the enormous matter that fills and surrounds the entire universe all the way to infinite distances is merely one thousandth of the matter that is revealed to us, and there is nothing real about it. So, we must explore not the revealed matter but the network of forces that are spread in the huge space and are concealed from us. These forces operate the software of the reality we live in, and the moment that we reveal them, just as thousands of Kabbalists did before us, we will be able to know where we came from, understand what the goal of creation is and how it is expressed in our world. Accordingly, we will be able to plan our future and manage our lives for the best.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the software that manages the perception of the reality of our lives throughout evolution is called egoism. This means built-in self-caring, an inclination that is evil from our youth, a desire that is solely meant to find a bit more pleasure, even at the expense of others. The negative force of our egoistic nature drives us throughout life in an endless chase after satisfaction, and for which it operates all of our five senses and makes us labor all day long, from birth to death.

Windows 2016

Our world is developing rapidly, and the technology that is becoming increasingly more sophisticated is an indication of this. At the beginning of the 1980’s, the first computer operating system was cumbersome, and based on one window and an obsolete graphical interface. A few years later, a new version already supported numerous users, numerous languages, and numerous options. Today, operating systems are even faster, more stable, more secure, and use very little of the system’s resources. Most of them are on the way to cloud computing, a service that provides access to information from anywhere and from any device. The difference between the different versions is only in how they can upgrade and improve our lives and to what extent they can offer us a better, cheaper, more convenient alternative. In fact, it is also all we ask for in life.

Try to remember your first computer. What would have happened if we had installed new advanced software on it? A bug. A crisis. It wouldn’t have worked. This is exactly what happens with the operating system of our lives. The egoism software that has been motivating us for thousands of years is no longer compatible with the new software that has entered our lives at the beginning of the 20^th century, a global reality in which all of the components are interconnected and totally interdependent. The more we care only about ourselves, using the obsolete egoistic software, the more we operate totally in contrast to the new global reality, to the operating software that is being installed. The clash between these two opposites is destructive, painful, and expressed by infinite troubles, problems, wars, and different crises.

How do we upgrade the software?

The software for creating spreadsheets (Excel, for example) is made of the same components that make up the software for processing documents and textual material (such as Word), and the only difference is the way the components in each of the software programs communicate. The same goes for the software of our lives. All of the bugs that are created are the result of the lack of the right communication between us.

Changing our software means changing our relations. Instead of caring about ourselves, using others, and living in a doomed virtual reality, we must do the exact opposite: care about others, connect with them, feel what they need, and fill them with the positive force and love. Only when the software is upgraded to a more advanced version will a whole eternal reality open up before us.
By using the code that operates the software of our lives, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” a rule that includes the whole Torah, can we bring about a meaningful change in our lives. Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) says that the entire creation is prearranged only in order to reach this goal so that mankind will develop in it and become more virtuous until they are able to feel the upper force just as they feel each other. The virtues they acquire are like the steps of a ladder, arranged step by step until a person is whole and attains his goal (The Writings of Baal HaSulam).

In the new reality, we begin to feel the goal of the operating software according to the level of our concern for others and the way the entire computer system operates us. “When a person grows tired of receiving, he becomes free of all the restraints of the creation and roams freely in the Creator’s world; he is guaranteed that nothing will happened to him and that he will not be harmed or hurt forever” (The Writings of Baal HaSulam).

Different from the egoistic software, we are given full control of our lives for the first time, the ability to become the programmers and improve the software so that it will produce an even more perfect reality for us. Then, we will clearly see and feel the true software of reality by ourselves, the reality for which great scientists and philosophers have been searching for decades with only a twenty to fifty percent success rate as the report presented by Bank of America says.
[196940]
From Ynet: “Yes, We Live in a Virtual Reality” 10/27/16

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New Life 786 – Virtual Reality
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Humanity has always looked for ways of making our grey life brighter.

Main points:

• Just like kids we invent different games in order to pass the time, but if we escape real life through these games to a virtual dream, we harm our evolution as human beings.
• I am not referring to advanced technology that makes our life easier, but to the escape from reality.
• We cannot predict how virtual games will affect human behavior.
• You can manipulate a person any way you wish, and those who gain from it will do so.
• Our evolution as human beings requires the establishment of warmer closer connections between people, but we are escaping to virtual games.
• These are not just games because a game changes me as a person. It changes my attitude to life.
• The elite think that most people are redundant anyway, and so instead of causing problems it is better if they play.
• We will have to decide where humanity is headed, since by escaping we may be opening the gate to our “graveyard.”
• The escape to a virtual world will not work since it is opposed to our evolution to the peak of reality.
  [195991]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 786 – Virtual Reality,” 11/1/16

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Question: Why do I need a mediator in the form of the group if only the Creator and I exist?

Answer: How will you find the Creator otherwise? The Creator is what we discover in the group, the attribute of unity.

Question: If we are a kind of instrument, a desire for revealing the Upper Light, how can we discover it?

Answer: Imagine that we are in an ocean of Light, that I am in a spaceship orbiting the earth. I am in an empty airless space, and I see darkness. Who is hiding the light from me? No one. So why don’t I see light instead of darkness? Because there is nothing out there that can reflect the light so that I will see its reflection. We don’t see the direct light that reaches us but only the returning light.

Think about the physical phenomenon of seeing a dark space, the travelers of a supersonic Concorde plane, for example, which rises to great heights in which there is little resistance and the light disintegrates, see a dark sky through the plane windows, not a white or blue sky.

We should understand that we can feel anything in the world only through our rejection, not by our reception. This is the reason I need a group, so that in the mutual cooperation with it, by rejecting it and by the group’s rejection of me, I discover the Upper Light. It is revealed only by our mutual rejection and attraction.
[195628]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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Question: What is the meaning of the word “history” according to the wisdom of Kabbalah if there is no time in spirituality?

Answer: Everything that happens in the corporeal world is an outcome of the upper roots that descend into our world, and so our world is a reflection of those upper roots.

In other words, different forces are revealed in the system of the upper worlds on the spiritual level and their corporeal reflection is expressed in matter in our world. Therefore human history allows us to talk about spiritual events. Although there is no spirituality in corporeal actions, they reflect the spiritual roots. The language of the branches of our world enables us to speak about spiritual processes.

As for time, Kabbalists can travel along the time axis from the beginning of the creation to its end, except for one state: a state that can be described as a “point.” On the one hand, it is a state of zero, and on the other hand, it is a state of 100%. It is the state from which the beginning of creation and its end gradually descend, and the time axis runs between them from 0 to final correction (Gmar Tikkun), the end of correction, until the end of 6,000 years.

Suppose I, meaning my soul, my Partzuf, my spiritual body (Rosh, Toch, Sof), am in the middle of the time axis, if I have a Masach (screen) over my egoism, I can time travel wherever I want to, backward or forward. This means that by using the Masach I can change and shape my egoism to bestowal, love, and connection, and move along the time axis. The initial point on the time axis is Adam’s sin, and the final point is the coming of the Messiah. I can be in the year 1000 after Adam or at any other point.

Who wouldn’t like to time travel? Humanity has always dreamed of it! In the spiritual world it is possible, but not in our world, although we can also see the outcome here. Baal HaSulam tells us about it in the book Shamati where he says that Abraham, for example, told Isaac something. How could he know what Abraham and Isaac had spoken about in the desert or in the olive grove? A Kabbalist enters the state of Abraham and thus understands the information that Abraham had to convey now to the next state, Isaac, and this is what he tells us about.

Question: Can we travel in the body?

Answer: What does it mean “in the body”? You feel these feelings, you are in them; you enter them. When Baal HaSulam read the commentaries of Chaim Vital to the The Tree of Life by the Ari, which were written 600 years ago, he called out in wonder, “but what you wrote here isn’t what I told you to write!” That is, he entered the Ari’s soul.

Kabbalists who wrote about their attainments lived in two worlds: in our world and in the spiritual world. Let’s assume, strictly hypothetically, that I could ascend to the level of the Ari. I would be able to feel everything he felt, said, and did then.

Question: Will we be able to time travel while being in our body?

Answer: You have to enter the egoism in order to imagine both our body and all the physical structure of our world. The point is that the corporeal state actually doesn’t exist. It is the outcome of the egoism that is parallel to the spiritual state, because everything we see around us is an unrealistic world that is depicted in our desire.

No one can change himself and be totally like the Ari. I can resemble him by entering his state, but I cannot be like him and at the same time also feel the events he underwent during his lifetime, which means to be in the 16^th century in the northern part of Israel. A Kabbalist cannot enter a person’s physical body or his corporeal attributes, but only his spiritual state. You can attain all these states spiritually but not physically.
[194795]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/29/16

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Question: You always talk about unification, about the convergence of people, and about oneness. It follows that “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is not a sentence dealing with morality as do religions; rather, it is a new type of perception of reality. For this it is necessary to come closer and not just love each other?

Answer: We don’t need to get closer and cooperate with each other mutually according to the principle: you for me and me for you, in order to be good. No. We must gradually disengage from our impressions of this world and understand what kind of system we can enter between us and how the collective consciousness, which we can attain in our world, is actually perfect and takes us to another level of perception and sensation.

In this way we reach the next level of nature in which no one exists and to which a person can only ascend, because it is specifically in opposition to his egoism that a person can ascend to the next level and begin to feel that he exists in an eternal and perfect dimension.
[195048]
From a Lesson in the Russian language, 7/10/16

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