Entries in the 'Perception' Category

New Life #514 – A System Of Forces

New Life #514 – A System of Forces
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

There is a lot of information in the place we exist. As we develop, we communicate with this database, with everything that touches upon a link with the forces. This is an area in which there are many questions. It is an area that is completely unruly.
Kabbalah makes it possible for a person to build five additional spiritual senses (soul). With them he feels beyond this world.

Everything that I feel, I absorb with my “desire to receive.” I have the ability to open the desire to bestow to expand my perception. Through the desire to bestow and the five new senses that work outside and not inside, I feel a higher world. This perception doesn’t depend on my body, so I will sense an eternal, unlimited, and whole life.

The person then begins to see a round world, that everything is linked to everything. He begins to move toward connection. The spiritual world is the system of connection between us, the connecting link between everyone. It creates a new attitude toward life in him.

In the links between us, a stream of information about everything is found, about giving, about love, about links of mutual guarantee (Arvut) . The information streams between us all the time, between our desires.

The entire creation can be summed up as a desire for pleasure. A person who can restrict his desire to receive and wants to bestow, goes out to a network and he sees others who have the characteristic of bestowal in it. Like a flower that was closed and opens, he sees from one end of the world to the other, feels everything and understands everything.

The first tip on the way to opening your “flower” is – open your heart!
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From KabTV’s “New Life #514 – A System of Forces,” 1/29/15

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New Life #513 – Regarding Illumination And Spiritual Attainment

New Life #513 – Regarding Illumination and Spiritual Attainment
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

A person who is working according to the method of Kabbalah reaches illumination at some point. He feels that the world is full of a good force, love, and connection. This is like a cloud that descends upon the Earth. Then this passes, he continues to work; his definitions of what is considered an ascent and a descent change.

He wants to improve. For several years all the fundamental data in him are corrected, and he then enters into permanent illumination.

All of the evil that we see in the world is because our characteristics are broken. If we correct the ego, we see goodness. All the people in history who discovered the Light, found the tendency to love others.

The Rav chose the method of Kabbalah not because he was a Jew, but because this was a scientific method appropriate for everyone. In Kabbalah there are no physical exercises, there is daily training, studying the sources, and a group where we connect.

A person who discovers the Light sees that everyone is found within it unconsciously; his role is to help everyone feel the power of goodness, love, and connection.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #513 – Regarding Illumination And Spiritual Attainment,” 1/29/16

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Spiritual World – One For All

laitman_938_02Question: Is the spiritual world we attain the same for all or does each one have his own spiritual world?

Answer: The spiritual world we attain is the same for everyone, but each one attains it from some different perspective, in his own properties, just like our world.

In our world we are also supposed to exist in the same volume, but we still attain it in a different way. This happens because each of us has a different set of basic properties, the criteria through which we attain the world.
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From Lesson in Russian 12/27/15

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The Perception Of Reality: Body And Soul

Laitman_712_03Question: What is body and soul?

Answer: Before we begin to speak about body and soul, we must understand how we perceive ourselves and our reality. We feel everything in the same way that a television set operates. There are electric forces that operate inside it, and vectors appear on the screen and create a picture that we perceive.

The same thing happens inside our head. As Baal HaSulam said, there is a screen inside our head in which there are vectors of forces in motion that depict different pictures for us. However, these vectors are our own internal forces that depict the picture of this world on the background of the white Light.

This principle of the perception of reality is also characteristic of the spiritual world. After all, if we consider the relations of altruistic vectors instead of egoistic vectors, we will receive a picture of the spiritual world, which means that everything I perceive in my egoistic desires depicts the picture of our world for me, and everything that I begin to perceive with my altruistic desires, if I acquire them, is called the picture of the upper, spiritual world and nothing more than that. This is the whole difference.

There are corporeal bodies in our world that we feel as our own and as independent forces, although they are also vectors, forces that give us a feeling in our senses of something warm and alive. We call the soul a virtual force that revives the corporeal body, and both are merely forces that depict pictures and images of this world for us.

As for the spiritual world, if we depict everything by altruistic forces and not by egoistic ones, our spiritual body will be a desire to bestow that is opposite to my current desire to receive, and the reviving force that now fills it (which means the soul) will be a force of love and bestowal, not a force of receiving for myself the way it is now. But a person who has not acquired this force and is in the intermediate phase now cannot see that.

The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t prove anything. This method teaches a person how to see that reality is fuller and more perfect, that the way one feels today is only a small part of the whole. A person who implements the method of Kabbalah develops his senses until he can depict the picture of the spiritual world on the background of the Upper Light (the attribute of general bestowal) through the help of the force of bestowal. Then, he can exist both in our world and in the upper world at the same time.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/20/15

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New Life 496 – Where Do Dreams Come From?

New Life 496 – Where Do Dreams Come From?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazuz

Question: What are dreams? There are many myths and legends about dreams, this phenomenon has gripped humanity throughout all of history. Even the ancient Romans and Greeks tried to explain dreams. But until now this phenomenon has remained a mystery.

A person spends one-third of his life sleeping, and he dreams all the time even though he doesn’t remember most of them. This is the way our brain processes and sorts all the information that it gets throughout the day.

But there are some dreams that apparently convey a special message that reveals the future. Generally, where do dreams come from?

Answer: Even the Torah talks about dreams: the dream of Jacob, the dreams of Pharaoh and his ministers. A dream is a natural phenomenon, but sometimes we perceive dreams as things that are not serious, like unrealistic daydreams.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is of the opinion that during sleep the brain summarizes all the information that it gets throughout the day, and this is specifically what we perceive as dreams. These data has some kind of fluidity that appears in the brain without even any connection to real substance, they take on special forms so that we see unusual pictures of people, animals, and strange events.

The result of this is that dreaming, unlike reality, has no material foundation. So it is as if everything is happening in the air, without any connection to our actual desires.

Besides this, in a dream we can discover those desires that we would want to realize, but are not ready to do so, fears that torment us from which we cannot free ourselves, all kinds of fantasies, as well as pleasant and unpleasant impressions that we have experienced.

Among them are those that we would like to forget. And it could be that in real life we have been successful at this, but subconsciously they are still living in us. So when we sleep, when we are cut off from the real world and our environment doesn’t affect us, all of these fears and concerns are awakened in us and begin to live in a dream.

Dreams can tell a lot about a person: his inner state, desires, thoughts, all kinds of plans, fears, and disturbances. When he is under hypnosis, it is possible to interrogate him and get a lot of information from him. In this state a person loses control over himself and opens himself to interrogation.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 496 – Where Do Dreams Come From?” 1/11/15

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New Life #648 – Exiting Myself To A New Life

New Life #648 – Exiting Myself To A New Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

We perceive reality through a filter of “is it good for me or bad for me,” but we don’t feel what actually happens. But the human being in us wants more. He wants to know what he is living for, what actually happens in reality. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how to do that. We simply need to connect to more people who also want to “come out of the radish.” Together we perform exercises with each caring for the others, and thus we build a network of mutual guarantee and spur the concealed force.

Nature is made of two forces: the positive and the negative forces. This is true on the levels of nature: the still, vegetative, and animate, but when it comes to us, only the negative force operates. When we practice in a circle, we stimulate the positive force toward ourselves, and it balances the negative force in us. The positive force flows among us like a spring, builds a new attribute of bestowal in us, and pulls us out of the radish. This is how a network called “man” is built between us in which there are five spiritual senses.

Once we enter the upper dimension, the negative force among us grows again and separates us, and once again we work against it. A person then gets rid of all of his problems, understands why everything happens, and promotes his advance toward others, toward love. The force of bestowal that we invoke is the plus that balances the minus in us. The human being in you is not inside of you, but in others. When you exit yourself, you discover that the whole world is you.

The upper world means the upper reality, the upper dimension. It is impossible to explain what it is before you feel it. Now we live in the attribute of receiving, and it is the transition to life in the attribute of bestowal. The reality we feel now is false, while the upper reality is real, eternal, the world of truth. The human body dies, but the human being in it, the attribute of love and bestowal that he has developed, is eternal.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #648 — Exiting Myself To A New Life,” 1/18/16

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From A World Of Illusion To The World Of Reality

laitman_222_0Question: For a few years, I have tried to understand who I am and what my mission is in life. How is it possible to continue on the way without becoming confused and to be able to differentiate between truth and illusion?

Answer: In fact, all of us are found in a completely illusory world, and we are beginning to reach this understanding by studying the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

But how do we find the true world, the true image where we really dwell, and not this nature that we supposedly feel ourselves in now, this  alleged world—this is the problem. To do this we must study and engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Kabbalah translates to reception, perception, and feeling. Our imaginary world, which is formed for us today through our very limited physical senses, splits and opens before us and we begin to see another world, which is the next level of human development.

Those people in whom is awakened a need to feel life in its true form and not remain in an illusion, generally come to the wisdom of Kabbalah and begin to study and become seriously involved with it.

But to develop new senses within us, we must go outside of ourselves, out from our present senses. So we were given the illusion that we are in this world so that it will seem that near us are people like us who yearn to attain their true state and the surrounding reality.

Going outside of ourselves means to begin to link, participate, and connect with people like us, such that our mutual integration with each other helps us to begin to feel what is outside of us instead of what is inside of us. Then we will begin to perceive the world that is outside of us and not what is inside of us.

This is our main task, which is implemented through a very simple law, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). It means that we begin to relate to others as we do to ourselves, and we look at the world through their feelings. This is what is called, “going out of yourself.”

The Kabbalists gave us a complete list of advice on how to attain the right connection between us, and through realizing that advice by working in an organized group, we reach a state within it in which each one of us feels the others and not himself.

In this way a person goes outside of himself into the others, he feels within them a higher state, and in this way they become detached from themselves and are integrated with him, they feel their higher state, and then each one of us begins to attain a new system of the structure of the world, what is found outside of him.

Along with this, all the limitations of the perception of this world disappear, and we begin to feel everything that is outside of us, and we reach this through new external senses, not the five physical senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching.

The external senses are built such that a person is found above his desire, against his egoistic drive to soak up and absorb everything into himself. So then he acquires new characteristics, characteristics of bestowal, characteristics of love, characteristics that go outside of himself.

The new senses that are acquired by us are called the “soul” in which we feel the upper world, and we are no longer bothered by our limited perception. Then we begin to understand, attain, and feel everything that is truly happening with us and in all of creation.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/13/15

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New Life 678 – 613 Mitzvot (Commandments) And The Perception Of Reality

New Life 678 – 613 Mitzvot (Commandments) And The Perception Of Reality
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

There are forces underlying reality that even precede the creation of the elementary particles. A scientist cannot perceive forces that exist before matter while a Kabbalist, who is changing his perception of reality, can. In studying the forces before the creation of matter, we find answers for the purpose of our existence and its goal.

First, there was Light, one upper force, that wanted to bestow and created darkness, which is the desire to receive its abundance. Light and darkness—the desire to bestow and the desire to receive—are two attributes that created five worlds through connecting.

Our world was created so that man would feel that he is not satisfied by the force of receiving alone and wants to bestow also. Today as we develop, we see that the ego is a destructive force, and therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah comes to teach us how to summon the positive force, the force that is awakened by special relationship exercises between us that draw the Light that Reforms to us.

The ego is built on 613 internal levels in a person; they are 613 desires that we must correct from receiving to bestowal. Through the desires that are corrected to bestowal, we begin to perceive the upper world, which is the network of forces that operates on our world and controls every detail in it.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, observing the Torah and the Mitzvot refers to the correction of the 613 egoistic desires through the power of the Light.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 678 — 613 Mitzvot (Commandments) And The Perception Of Reality,” 1/19/16

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New Life 672 – What The Torah And Mitzvot (Commandments) Actually Are

New Life 672 – What The Torah And Mitzvot (Commandments) Actually Are
 Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

People today don’t understand and don’t know the real meaning of the Torah and Mitzvot. The Torah and commandments are a system of laws of the upper world that control us, and it is our duty to get to know it.

Abraham explained the Torah and Mitzvot to the people of Babylon, and they reached an equivalence of form with the upper operating system of nature and Judaism was born. The upper system includes a network of forces operating in the primary law of mutuality, connection, and complementation. Man’s nature is totally opposite to the law of nature; he wants to draw away from, disparage, and dismiss others.

Abraham spoke about mercy and the love of others as a means of resembling the upper system since eventually all parts of reality have to be totally connected. Later Abraham’s students received additional egoism, went to Egypt, and received the Torah, the method of correcting the ego, at Mt. Sinai, which symbolizes the mountain of hatred between them. According to this method, they had to work on the connection between them, feel mutual guarantee toward each other, and expect the correcting force, the Torah.

The Torah is the Light that awakens in us when we try to get closer to one another. Rabash explained that there are 613 egoistic desires in a person and that there is a special correcting Light for each of them. The Torah was written in the language of branches and tells us how to relate to all the desires on the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature.

He also explains that the picture of this world a person sees is the picture that his desires depict for him when they are reflected against the white light, and the Torah, which is the correcting Light, enables a person to see a new world instead of the dark egoistic world. The difference in perception is expressed in the relations between us, and it is described in the Torah by expressions like: Mt. Sinai, the Golden calf, the desert, etc. The land of Israel is the good attitude, the desire to love and to bestow, and a state that is similar to the upper force.

To observe the 613 Mitzvot means to correct the 613 egoistic desires and every person is obliged to do so. Abraham’s students discovered how they had to relate to the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature, and taught the next generations. They used the language of branches and behaved in corporeality just as they behaved in spirituality since the corporeal life is only an addition to spirituality; it doesn’t affect it in any way and certainly doesn’t replace it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 672 – What The Torah And Mitzvot (Commandments) Actually Are,” 1/13/16

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New Life 671 – Where To?

New Life 671 – Where To?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Where is nature pushing us to through the climate problems and terrorism that is spreading throughout the world? How do we behave as a society as if we are united under a common goal and how can you use the ego for the good of connection and not against others?

Celebration of the beginning of the civil New Year has begun to take on a ritual nature: fir trees, fireworks, and so forth. Marking the beginning of the year is considered in the eyes of people as an event of great importance, even though this really is not talking about any scenario of a new beginning on the face of the Earth.

Rather, there is a continuing process in which humanity is advancing toward new situations. Changes in climate are placing our planet in a very dangerous situation. The causes of climate change are more internal that we think. We don’t understand the reasons for what is happening: increasing terrorism and the various factors that cultivate and encourage worrisome phenomena like the Daesh organization; advances in technology the ejects unemployed and unclear what their fate will be. There is a feeling that the Earth doesn’t require that many people to continue to exist, which may lead to a world war.

After having experienced socialism and capitalism, humanity is beginning to understand that integration between these approaches is required. Competition is required in the labor market, in trade, and in industry while equality is required in the system of relationships between us in the family and in society in general. We can attain this only with the help of a unique general social education, and the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to do it.

My hope for the New Year is that humanity will understand that we are compelled to correct our human nature. Materially, we don’t lack anything thanks to developments in technology. The problem is only in our relationships through which we cause symptoms like Daesh and allow them to exist. Today, we are not prepared to unite and react correctly to phenomena like these.

Therefore, as stated, general social education is the solution that will help us understand the world that we are facing.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 671 – Where To?” 1/5/16

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