Entries in the 'Perception' Category

What Lies Beyond Ultimate Joy?

laitman_572_03Question: How can two realities coexist and be combined, the one of the spiritual world and the one of our world?

Answer: A person can see the spiritual world through our world. Our world is different from the spiritual world since in the spiritual world a person discovers more and more connections, the reasons and the outcomes of this world. In addition, a person begins to see and to feel this system, the souls in it, additional vessels, desires, thoughts, and so on.

How does a little child relate to the world? He lives in it just like us, but he doesn’t pay attention to all the details that we notice because we are aware of them and understand what they mean and how they are related to us, while the heart of a little boy is attracted to a small toy and that’s all. This example illustrates our lack of spiritual development. When we develop, we will see a whole world around us. We don’t need to go anywhere. We need to see the mutual ties in it through this world, and then we will reveal the upper world.

Question: Suppose everyone reaches ultimate joy, the peak of their development, and suppose everyone connects with the Creator and brings him contentment, what then?

Answer: When a person reveals the upper world, he gradually enters a system in which there is no “what then.” There is no time, space, no axes, no motion, only an increasingly greater attainment of a certain level that is called “complete correction” (Gmar Tikkun), the end of the correction of the system, the attainment of the Creator, and we don’t know what’s next. Now we have to attain this level. Then we will reach the next state, which we will attain in spirituality. When we enter the spiritual world, we will ascend the 125 steps of the spiritual ladder until our complete correction, and when we fully correct ourselves, the concepts of time, motion, and space, good and evil, etc. will disappear; everything will be absolute goodness, absolute Light, and we will enter the next world. Now we know nothing about it, so we cannot describe it in any way. We can speak about the next world only after we fully correct ourselves.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/19/16

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A Last Chance For Modern Civilization

Unity, The Way To A Good FutureQuestion: Kabbalists foresee a third and a fourth world war, which means that humanity is still advancing along the path of suffering. Is this the reason that our generation is called “the Last Generation?” Is this the last resort for mankind?

Answer: The Last Generation began from the end of the 19th century, and it will last until humanity corrects itself, that is, until we all gather into a single system and establish the collective internal connection between us. If we reach this connection, we will begin to feel that we exist on a totally different dimension, in a totally different state, beyond the frameworks of this world.

Our perception of reality is strictly individual and everyone perceives reality according to his egoism, according to the desire to receive pleasure and fill himself, which is the essence of our nature.

When we begin to connect together, we activate different laws, the laws of switching between us. They help us acquire a totally different property of the perception of reality; we begin to feel not through ourselves but through others. When we connect, we acquire a collective system of perception.

Today, people cannot attain, feel, or imagine this perception. This is possible only if a person is engaged in studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, then through studying the material and doing practical work in the group, the Upper Light gradually influences us. A person who begins to connect with others receives the Light as a result, which means the upper information, and then he begins to feel the whole creation through the connection to the general system, through the general feeling. This is called the revelation of the upper world and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah engages in.

When a person begins to perceive the whole world through a collective feeling, he operates in a totally different manner, he understands everyone is mutually connected and that he should actually act to benefit the common state, for the sake of the general system. He begins to feel the upper force that manages everything and he calls this force the Creator because he can see that this is actually the force that creates, unites, and connects everyone, manages, and determines our present and our future.

We have to consciously and willingly reach the mutual connections between us that will enable us to discover the upper force, and if we don’t, we will bring great suffering upon us.

But in the end, as Baal HaSulam wrote, “Whether after a third world war or a fourth world war, humanity will reach a state in which it will be forced to connect, in order to discover the upper force through this connection and live in it according to its operating laws.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/10/16

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On The Other Side Of Perception

laitman_928The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that any spiritual work does not imply physical actions.

Everything should take place only in human desire. Kabbalah operates with what was actually created: desire. Only it can be controlled by the Creator and by a person from below. There is nothing else.

It seems to us that all around us is a material world, but this world is illusory. It exists only in our internal representations. As Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” there is a special “screen” on the back side of our brain that projects all of our thoughts and feelings, and draws for us some supposed kind of reality that we see before us.

In fact, we see nothing. Let’s say that before us are, for example, a table, wall, a world, stars, and galaxies, but none of that exists. It just seems to us that way.

This is a very complex system of senses. The task of the Kabbalist is to go beyond ordinary earthly senses to give a person the correct view of the world, the right sensation of it. Therefore, this wisdom called Kabbalah is the science of the correct perception of true reality: what it is and how it is manifested.

The Creator didn’t envisage that a person would do anything physically because this entire dreamlike world that surrounds us is an illusion. It is written in The Book of Zohar that, when we enter the sensation of the upper world, we begin to understand that everything previously was like a dream.

Nevertheless, even if we obtain spiritual sight, we remain between the two worlds and feel them both. However, the amount we allegedly sense through our earthy qualities, called Olam Ha Medume, are invented, imposed on us by an illusory world.

The real world that we reveal is our true world, and there is a connection between these worlds. A person feels the entire illusion of this world and all of the truth of the upper world. Everything that exists in the world called other world—that is, the world located on the other side of our perception, our illusion—influences the pattern of this world, and thus we gradually adjust to the revelation of the true world.

A person is given everything in order to build and do something not physically with the hands and legs, but to perform actions in his desire because desire is the real material of creation, apart from which nothing was created.

All physical commandments, services in the temples, and so on, apply only to the inner spiritual fulfillment of our desires and intentions. That’s it! Therefore, it is said, “I don’t want from you palaces, precious garments, pomposity that lead only to violence and the struggle for power. I need from you only the purity of the heart, the work on your own desires.”

We must understand clearly what the spiritual root and its consequence mean in our world, how this root affects our perception, and how it forces us to see certain physical images that we supposedly discover through our five senses. It is “supposedly” because it is all like a dream, and sometimes it seems even more real than the true reality.

However, all of this is a projection on us from the upper source, the upper root, that, like a very tricky projectionist, shows a movie within us called “life.” It seems to us that we exist in a body in which we interact, move, and so on, but as soon as we wake up a little bit, we discover that it was all a dream, as it is written in The Book of Zohar.

When we enter into contact with the root and not with the consequence, we will begin to understand why it happened this way, why we were shown this movie called life, why it was so varied and rich in colors, sounds, and so on, that captivated us so much. In fact, we feel very small, literally microscopic influences, narrow in both the depth and spectrum of perception, but we think it is something unusual.

Everything that happens around us is projected by the small egoism of a person in the point where each of us perceives the world. But once the ego begins to expand, we feel in the developing ego the next picture of the world, but already corrected. After all, egoism can expand only by correction! Then, apart from a small point, we begin to imagine the upper world.

We attain the roots of everything that happens to us and to the world, we see how one can interact with this system, accelerate its development, expansion, and demonstration to us. Then, it becomes clear: this is the root and this is its consequence. And we, by influencing the root, can change the consequence.

In principle, at the moment, we are not able to change our world. It becomes possible only when we launch our influence on its root. Therefore, while we are in this world, we see that it doesn’t work for us and that we can’t do anything.

However, when humanity comes to a state of complete detachment, depression, and helplessness, then it will hear that there is another way, and it is the only proper one, not through our egoism that controls us, but through our controlling it. Then, we can rise up and begin to reveal the true world.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/30/16

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“Time Might Only Exist in Your Head. And Everyone Else’s”

laitman_928In the News (Wired): “PAST. PRESENT. FUTURE. In physics, they are all the same thing. But to you, me, and everyone else, time moves in one direction: from expectation, through experience, and into memory. This linearity is called the arrow of time, and some physicists believe it only progresses that way because humans, and other beings with similar neurological wiring, exist to observe its passing.

“The question of time’s arrow is an old one. And to be clear, it’s not whether time exists, but what direction it moves. Many physicists believe it emerges when enough tiny particles—individually governed by the weird rules of quantum mechanics— interact, and start displaying behavior that can be explained using classical physics. But two scientists argue, in a paper published today in Annalen der physik—the same journal that published Einstein’s seminal articles on special and general relativity—that gravity isn’t strong enough to force every object in the universe to follow the same past»present»future direction. Instead, time’s arrow emerges from observers. …

“Time moves as it does because humans are biologically, neurologically, philosophically hardwired to experience it that way. It’s like a macro-scale version of Schrödinger’s cat. A faraway corner of the universe might be moving future to past. But the moment humans point a telescope in that direction, time conforms to the past-future flow. ‘In his papers on relativity, Einstein showed that time was relative to the observer,’ says Lanza. ‘Our paper takes this one step further, arguing that the observer actually creates it.’”

My Comment: Time doesn’t exist, just as space and movement don’t. All of them appear only in our minds. So how is it possible to determine what is outside of our consciousness? We must rise above our consciousness with the help of the influence of the Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light—the Light that shines outside of us as long as we are not in a corrected state).
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We Are Living In A Matrix

laitman_929In the News (Business Insider): “In a note to clients out Tuesday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said there’s a 20%-50% chance that we’re living in the matrix — meaning that the world we experience as ‘real’ is actually just a simulation. …

“‘Many scientists, philosophers, and business leaders believe that there is a 20-50% probability that humans are already living in a computer-simulated virtual world.’”

My Comment: “We’re living”—and in the past, we weren’t living? Mankind is naïve; it constantly thinks that it has discovered something new! They finally got it. The existence of the so-called matrix suggests we are subordinate to the one law of nature. We are tightly chained to it. Each of our cells, every thought, every desire, all are within nature.

Likewise, a particular thought is sent to a person even before he thinks it. Every desire takes shape within him even before he wants something. Before he makes any move, energy, amino acids, electricity, and everything else is gathered within the body, giving him a direction. A person doesn’t do anything on his own! At best, he feels that he is moving, but actually he is being moved.

The task of Kabbalists is to discover who is moving the person, who is the master of the matrix. And why should it be otherwise? The still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature develop us: all of our cells, everything around us. How could it be that we are suddenly on our own? What are you talking about? Has the guidance disappeared? Has the force of evolution disappeared? Has the program of development stopped all of a sudden?

This is our illusion. We have become separated from what is happening with us.

Question: Why do we naturally feel that we are independent?

Answer: This illusion was given to us intentionally so that we would discover that we actually exist within the law, and we need to know this law. When we discover the main law of the matrix, then we will become more enlightened people, and then we must move onward.

This knowledge should compel us to understand the behavior of the matrix, what our relationship with it is, and why we were created such that, on the one hand, we would be within it, and on the other hand, we wouldn’t feel ourselves within it.

In principle, the person is like a schizophrenic patient. He has an absolutely split personality. In other words, on the one hand, he is managed, and on the other hand, he thinks that he is the manager. This duality begins to concern him. The world is becoming such that it seems that a person has lost his hold on the reins he previously thought he was holding.

This situation leads him to suffer so that he will search, and from his spiritual search, he finally will decide that he must understand the general law of creation. It is possible for him to understand it only if he begins to discover it on his own. To the degree that he becomes similar to the law of nature, he will discover it and get to know it. But in no way will he be able to do this from the outside as we would like to do.

Question: So, how then will his life change?

Answer: It is according to how much he complies with this law. He will live according to the laws of the matrix: total bestowal, total dependence, and all of us connected through mutual Arvut (responsibility). In fact, this is an immense joy because you acquire knowledge, understanding, and integration within an immense, infinite system that is simultaneously so close.

Question: Will a person lose his individuality with this?

Answer: Absolutely not. On the contrary, he will begin to acquire an individuality that he didn’t have before! So, first we need to be given a good shake to show us that we are not within this system at all. Then, it will be possible for us to gradually enter it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/19/16

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Is There Any Contact With Those Who Departed This World?

laitman_276_02Question: Can there be any contact with those who studied the wisdom of Kabbalah and passed away?

Answer: Our world is not a barrier when it comes to feeling the whole creation. You don’t feel the whole world now, the whole system, but you will be able to do so with time. An internal attribute will be revealed in you by which you will feel the whole universe while still living in this world.

Then you will leave this life and will feel the world not only through your body. The reason is that we don’t feel the upper world through the body but by senses that are created through the soul. When you leave the corporeal body, the soul doesn’t undergo any changes and will continue your spiritual path, your development, just the way it is even without a body.

Therefore, it is important that you discover the Creator once while living in your body and then you will be able to move onward.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/8/16

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Time And Space According To The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

laitman_928Question: How are time and space measured according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: In the wisdom of Kabbalah, time is not measured with astronomic hours; rather, it is according to the number of spiritual states called ascents and descents.

Time is a function of the intensity and frequency of the integration of a person in a group. The group is an amplifier of the intensity of the Upper Light, and the frequency of integration grows accordingly. It is possible to move the same distance in ten years or ten minutes.

Spiritual distance is not measured according to parsecs, kilometers, miles, or inches, but by the difference in intensity between the egoistic levels.

Suppose a person is on a particular level and later on a higher level. The difference between the levels is the spiritual distance. What this means is that distance is the difference between the spiritual potentials of a body that is sometimes found in one state and sometimes in another state.

Question: What is the connection between time and egoism?

Answer: Time depends on the intensity of the operation of the ego. A person can accelerate or slow down time; it doesn’t change by itself. If a person doesn’t take any action, he doesn’t go forward in time. Therefore, spiritual time is equal to zero until a person begins to create it within himself. Time, like every other parameter, depends only on me.

When a person is within a group, the upper force, the Light is in the center of the group, and time is determined according to the strength of the longing that a person has for the center of the group. This means that time is a function of the strength of his longing.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/15/16

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All With Respect To Man

laitman_549_02Question: Who created the desire to receive if there is no Creator?

Answer: The Creator.

We have to understand what is meant by the question whether there is a Creator or not. We have to ask with regard to whom He exists. Can you say now that He exists for you? No.

A person can speak about the Creator, but it doesn’t mean that He exists, and so we say that the Creator exists or doesn’t exist only with regard to the person who attains Him or doesn’t attain Him.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/8/16

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World Though The Prism Of The Common Desire

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the collective perception of reality?

Let’s say I am a biological organism consisting of billions of cells that are united and that is how I perceive the world. But each cell in me somehow perceives the world as well. Could it be compared with how the individual perceives the world and how the society perceives it? How does the Kabbalist perceive the world?

Answer: Our body organically perceives the world though all its pores, though all its cells, though all its organs of perception: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

A Kabbalist perceives the world though the common desire, which consists of both the still, vegetative, animate, and human desires taken together. That is, to some extent, a Kabbalist perceives everything that exists in the universe as his own. For the most part, it is humanity’s desire that he feels as his own.

And it is not easy at all. This imposes a big change in his impressions of the world, brings corresponding reactions within him. Baal HaSulam writes that he feels everything within himself, on himself, but not at the level of separate sensations.

Let’s say there are ten children in the family, everybody has their needs, and the mother as if feels all of her children. She feels in general: what they lack, what is best for them, and so on. She does not feel the individual egoism of each, but in general, this desire, their aspiration, and the opportunity she can give them.
From a virtual lesson in Russian 7/10/2016
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“Physicists Investigate The Structure Of Time, With Implications For Quantum Mechanics …”

Laitman_083In the News (PHYS.org): “Although in theory it may seem possible to divide time up into infinitely tiny intervals, the smallest physically meaningful interval of time is widely considered to be the Planck time, which is approximately 10-43 seconds. This ultimate limit means that it is not possible for two events to be separated by a time smaller than this.

“But now in a new paper, … physicists have demonstrated that the existence of such a minimum time alters the basic equations of quantum mechanics, and as quantum mechanics describes all physical systems at a very small scale, this would change the description of all quantum mechanical systems. …

“The scientists also suggest that the proposed changes to the basic equations of quantum mechanics would modify the very definition of time. …

“On a more philosophical level, the argument that time is discrete suggests that our perception of time as something that is continuously flowing is just an illusion.

“’The physical universe is really like a movie/motion picture, in which a series of still images shown on a screen creates the illusion of moving images,’ Faizal said. ‘Thus, if this view is taken seriously, then our conscious precipitation of physical reality based on continuous motion becomes an illusion produced by a discrete underlying mathematical structure.’”

My Comment: The discreteness of everything is determined by the fact that the basis of nature is the Upper Light, which is divided into an infinite number of parts of desire, but the Light itself is continuous, eternal, and perfect.

It is felt as discrete by the person perceiving it because a person’s desire comprehends all as graduated within the limits of his sensitivity.

We can speak only about how we perceive, not about what phenomena are in themselves as they are outside of our perception.
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