Entries in the 'Perception' Category

The Wisdom Of Connection In An Era Of Isolationism

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn everyday life we generally hide our egoism. If I depend on my enemy completely, my ego begins to disappear and hatred evaporates. There is nowhere to escape to and I start to look for how to love him and cause him to love me. The self-preservation instinct begins to work, and I cannot hate someone when my life, the most precious thing I have, depends upon him.

But in our case, we are not succeeding. The hatred is being revealed between us more and more and the separatist movements are taking over the world. The more that our world is discovered as whole and mutually connected, the stronger the opposite trend becomes.

Each one aspires to isolation and ultimately we will reach the same situation as in ancient times, where every city and area became a separate nation. The whole world will be divided into such kingdoms.

On the one hand, egoism is growing, feeling its limitations and areas of control with more precision. And in this way, it separates itself from the others. As a result of this, the world in which seven billion people are living will create 10,000 nations that cannot get along with one another.

Even solitary individuals are no longer able to get along with each other. There was a time when families would live in one room: parents, children, grandchildren. And today two people cannot live in peace in the same apartment. This is called hatred.

To the same degree that our interdependence is appearing, the desire to shatter this dependency, separate and move away from each other is appearing as isolationism and separation. These two tendencies will not disappear and will develop more and more within human society, and there is no way to resolve this! Both will grow to the skies and there will be no possibility of solving this conflict.

The art of connection is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. Ultimately the relationships between everyone—children, adults, in schools, at work, in international relations and within society—will reach such a state that we will not be ready to speak to one another and will need the wisdom of connection!

This wisdom will be required simply to be able to arrange normal relationships at work, in school, in the family and in all areas of our lives. People will need this wisdom because hatred, rejection, the inability to speak to one another or even look at others will reach such a threatening degree that we will not be able to bridge this gap.

It will not be possible to overcome the lack of desire to see and feel others. A person will search for isolation so that nobody will be near him, and he will not want to get close to anyone. But on the other hand, he will have to sit in class at school or university and be in connection with others.

Today, one person cannot do anything; even scientists carry out research in large groups. In addition, in our jobs everywhere, we need to connect in teams. But a person will lose the ability to cooperate even with one person who is like him as this hatred will grow to such a degree.

So the wisdom of connection will be very much in demand. The whole world is going to need it.

We need to understand that all of the spiritual worlds: the five worlds, Olam Ein Sof (world of Infinity), the entire ladder of levels, and the Partzufim are revealed in us through the unnatural connection between people. According to nature hatred and interdependence are revealed in us. But if we arrange for a connection between these polar opposites, the hatred and dependence, and communicate with others above our intellect, desire, and all calculations, we will discover new relationships and a new world.

Now we feel this world through our five senses, meaning the five kinds of egoistic connection between us. We see everything through our egoism, meaning that in every situation we search for the opportunity to be confident and enjoy. Thanks to the wisdom of connection, the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will reach new relationships above the egoistic relationships, which are relationships of “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (“Leviticus” 19:18), and within the connection between us we will begin to discover the five additional senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Within these senses, we will discover phenomena called spiritual worlds, until attaining the complete connection called Olam Ein Sof. The spiritual world is revealed in the connection between us, in the levels of our relationships that go from total detachment to complete adhesion. This is the ladder of spiritual levels.

To the degree that I try to develop love above my egoism and hatred, I discover the levels of the spiritual worlds. So it isn’t necessary to search for the spiritual world in any other place, such as in books or mechanical actions with the hands and feet. Everything depends only on work in the heart and how much I can connect emotionally with others above the rejection and hatred without wanting to delete or annihilate it.

After all, everything is built precisely above the hatred, as it is written, “Love covereth all transgressions” (Proverbs 10:12). So with love built above the hatred, I will discover a new world called the world of men. After all, we are all within this world and will be connected as one and receive the form of Adam – man  (Domeh – similar to the Creator).
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14

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Disorder In Nature Or In Me?

Laitman_728_01Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot U Masbirot,” Item 11: …On the other end, when we regard the order of existence and sustenance in the modes of existence of the whole of reality, large and small, we find confused orders, as if an army is fleeing the campaign sick, beaten, and afflicted by the Creator. Their whole life is as death, having no sustenance unless by tormenting first, risking their lives for their bread.

Question: What is the meaning of “sick, beaten, and afflicted by the Creator?”

Answer: On the one hand, we see that nature has prepared and arranged everything for us, all the laws that govern the life of the created beings. But on the other hand, everyone devours each other and everyone benefits from the troubles of others. Each animal thinks only about how to devour another to fill itself, for its entire life, it spends its time looking for food.

A person worries about food even more than other animals. Prehistoric man lived like the animals and ate whatever he could find. He had no way of keeping food and preserving it and therefore had to look for food and collect roots and fruit. This was his daily worry. He had no spare time to do anything else but that. Man lived like an animal and was constantly busy looking for food.

Then man learned to domesticate animals, and so he began to cultivate domestic animals like cows, dogs, chickens, and so forth. He developed agriculture and didn’t need to hunt for food anymore since he had a farm with animals living by his side. There was no need to look for plants to eat since he could harvest his crops in his field. People ceased to wander from place to place and began to settle on their lands.

But this didn’t make their lives easier. It seemed that they could live in peace, but wars and disputes over territory broke out and people began to enslave other people. Life became worse than a dog’s life. On the one hand, everything seemed to be ready on nature’s part, but the management of the still, vegetative, animate, and especially man seemed to be very confused.

Why is there no peace among all parts of nature, and why can’t the prophecy, “And a wolf shall live with a lamb, … and a small child shall lead them” be fulfilled? Instead, everyone devours everyone else. We don’t understand why nature is this way. We have gotten used to this kind of life, but it is wrong. Why is life so? This is where people begin to doubt godliness. Everyone thinks that he can manage the world better than the Creator because he sees the great disorder in nature.

However, we must change ourselves and then we will see that nature and the Creator’s attitude toward us is correct. We must only connect to the upper force, and it will fix us and make us equal to it, which means that it will make us human beings.

The moment we change, we will perceive a different world. This will be a world that is totally good. Suddenly the wolf will dwell with the lamb and will lick it as its own cub. The little child will come to play with them. Everyone will help one another. Then, I will see that life always has been that way, and only I saw that everything was the opposite because my perception of reality was corrupted. I looked at the world through glasses that were totally shattered and therefore thought that the world also was shattered. Now, I have been given new lenses and I see that the world is wonderful, round, beautiful, and pure. It seemed totally shattered before because of my perception of reality.

Therefore, our goal is to correct ourselves to such an extent that we will see the whole upper providence as good and benevolent—the only force that operates in reality, the attribute of love and bestowal.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/14

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The World To Come, Here And Now!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In what way is the world that I am seeing now in my life different from the world to come about which it is said: “You will see your world in your life,” (Berachot 17a)?

Now I am now alive and see what everyone sees, a world full of hatred. What kind of benefit do I have from this “immense” computer about which you speak, that brings the entire system to a state of separation, hatred, and distrust in our relationships with each other?

Answer: I see this entire gigantic, higher mechanism and how He plays with us to bring us to develop so that we will become like Him by rising to His level. It is said, “And the children will return to their father in heaven (the Creator),” (Vayikra Rabbah 1:3). Then I begin to justify Him, understand Him, and see in what manner I now need to behave in order to live on that level  at all times and not have to wait!

The moment I begin to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, I have the possibility of ascending to this level of the force that manages this.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 4/12/15

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Being Ready To Handle Any Situation

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can the Elyon (upper) give a Masach (screen) to the Tachton (lower)?

Answer: He can, but then the Tachton becomes his slave and enter sunder his full bondage, or will be by his side like a little child. Once during the Intifada, my teacher Rabash and I entered an Arab village. The local inhabitants looked at us as if they were about to draw out their knives and surround the car.

I was very frightened. “Well, that’s it, it’s over for us,” I thought. Real terror took hold of me. When we went through the village and came out onto the highway, I stopped the car in exhaustion, took out a cigarette and smoked. Rabash looked at me and said, “I wasn’t afraid.”

He really wasn’t frightened and was absolutely relaxed because he was ready to handle the situation. And this was not some kind of boldness, but control of the situation, when all of those who were standing next to the car with knives were in his hands. This is a very high level, a very serious Masach.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/19/14

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The Illumination Of Malchut

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” 26:18 – 26:20: And if, during these, you will not listen to Me, I will add another seven punishments for your sins: I will break the pride of your strength and make your skies like iron and your land like copper. Your strength will be expended in vain; your land will not yield its produce, neither will the tree of the earth give forth its fruit.

“I will add another seven punishments for your sins,” means that  instead of the right state of ZON, the six Sefirot of Zeir Anpin and one Sefira of Malchut, I get only the darkest Malchut.

Many years ago when I felt this state for the first time, I nervously asked my teacher, Rabash, “What is this?” He entered into my state a bit, felt it and said, “This is the illumination of Malchut.” This felt like darkness, like an abyss under foot, much like a terror that binds a person in darkness and he can’t do anything about it. Everything simply freezes in its place.

This state continued for a few moments, maybe only a thousandth of a second, but the impression that remained was imprinted within me. In spirituality, nothing ever disappears! However, this feeling can be pulled from the memory and partially experienced.

Thus, if Zeir Anpin doesn’t illuminate Malchut, the punishment is 70 times greater. Or, it could be vice-versa: Zeir Anpin shines, but Malchut feels the Light as darkness, an abyss, and as a black body that swallows everything. This happens when the Light enters a Kli that is absolutely not ready to receive it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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The Brain Processes Words Like Pictures

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from MedDaily):” A recent new study that found the brain processes words like pictures. It doesn’t see letters and doesn’t add up sounds, but instead perceives each word as a picture. The neurons distinguish whole words and not their parts nor letters.

“The brain remembers what each word looks like and then uses a special, illustrated dictionary. We identify the faces of people we know in the same manner. But the identification of faces is related to the right hemisphere of the brain, while the identification of words is related to the left hemisphere.”

My Comment: According the wisdom of Kabbalah, only  clear attainment of increasingly newer depths of the world by our internal sight will allow a person to attain all of creation, which is the Creator. The attainment is divided into two parts: creating an internal tool of attainment, the Light of Hassadim, the attribute of Bina, which in our world is called hearing, and self-attainment, the Light of Hochma, the Light of attainment, that in our world is called sight.
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Goodness In The Opposite Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” 26:14 – 26:17: But if you do not listen to Me and do not perform all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes and reject My ordinances, not performing any of My commandments, thereby breaking My covenant, then I, too, will do the same to you; I will order upon you shock, consumption, fever, and diseases that cause hopeless longing and depression. You will sow your seed in vain, and your enemies will eat it. I will set My attention against you, and you will be smitten before your enemies. Your enemies will rule over you; you will flee, but no one will be pursuing you.

Everything we read about here is inside a person. It is the fear of our own shadow, since if we are not ready for the spiritual ascent, the Creator’s face seems as a terrible darkness to us. The greatest fears, scares, and horrors a person can experience appear when he encounters the attribute of bestowal to which he is the complete opposite.

Everything is based on the fact that we must prepare ourselves for the revelation of the Creator. Otherwise, He turns His face to us, but we are seemingly opposite to it, and so we turn this picture and perceive it as the opposite part, since we are not ready for it. Then, bestowal seems to us as the most terrible punishment, when we are actually the ones who create the darkness through our incorrect internal images.

All the troubles and the afflictions that seem to be sent to us by the Creator are perceived as sufferings because a person wrongly perceives the good states that the Creator reveals to us because the time for these revelations has come. Instead of feeling that they are good, a source of life, and mercy, a person feels them as …shock, consumption, fever, and diseases… .

Because we are not prepared to perceive the Light correctly, we feel the Light as darkness. The Creator never conceals anything from us. On the contrary, He constantly reveals things to us, but because we are totally opposite to Him, the revelation is very painful. There is no greater horror for us than the revelation of the attribute of bestowal and true love because this feeling is worse than death for our ego. It is because we cannot perceive this attribute, assimilate it, and melt it inside us.

Therefore, we are told: But if you do not listen to Me and do not perform all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes and reject My ordinances, not performing any of My commandments, thereby breaking My covenant, then I, too, will do the same to you; I will order upon you shock, consumption, fever, and diseases that cause hopeless longing and depression.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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The Search For The “God Particle”

laitman_277Question: Dozens of nations are investing billions in a particle accelerator in Switzerland. They hope to discover the “God Particle.” Why do the scientists call it that?

Answer: In the eyes of the scientists, it is the “God Particle” because this is imagined to be the last particle missing from the standard model of quantum theory. So, they see some kind of component from some higher level in this particle.

It is considered that the particle originated in the Big Bang, but the idea is that this entire universe, with all of the galaxies within it, exists only within us. This universe doesn’t exist without human existence, for that is how it was created in our perception of reality.

The scientists don’t accept this approach, so all their research won’t lead to anything. Nevertheless, the wisdom of Kabbalah respects the natural sciences. However, ultimately, science is designed to prove to us that the truth is found in the inner development of a person where he discovers the true reality, and that same nature that we discover now, with all of the laws known to us, doesn’t go beyond the limitations of the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate that depict our ego on levels one, two, and three for us.

The study of behavior and all kinds of shapes and forms of our ego on the first, second, and third levels is called the study of the science of this world. Certainly, the scientists will discover more and more particles and new phenomena because we advance from day to day and make new discoveries in the spiritual world, and accordingly, we discover phenomena that were previously unknown in the substance of this world.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/15, Writings of Rabash

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What Is Hatred?

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (psychologies.ru): “Hatred, unlike fear and happiness, doesn’t belong to elementary human emotions and is itself a symbiosis of several simultaneous emotions. The foundation of hatred is disgust, one of the primary emotions.

“Disgust, revulsion, is an emotion with a significant physiological cause and purpose to protect a person from the influence of a harmful object (toxic) on him. This is the reason that vomiting and nausea accompany the perception by the person of something disgusting, revolting.

“The main function of disgust is to bring the maximal contact with the unpleasant or dangerous object to zero. When we experience disgust or revulsion, we run away or become petrified. Fear attracts our attention, whereas disgust, on the contrary, rejects. The disappearance of an object that arouses disgust or revulsion relaxes us.

“Psychological or ethical disgust awakens in us values or behaviors that are unacceptable to our education. Together with this, the natural counter reaction is identical to physiological disgust.

“It is worthwhile to add several additional components to disgust, by which we get hatred. Most of the time, hatred is a product of the mixture of disgust, revulsion, fear, insult and the inability to move away from the object that arouses the emotion.

“If there is no possibility of moving away, this means that it is necessary to annihilate the object. This feeling presents the option sharply and unambiguously: It’s either me or him. Disgust, unlike hatred, presents the option in another manner: Get out of my sight.

“How is it possible to create hatred? The answer is simple. Supply people or a group with disgusting or revolting features, add fear, invoke old insults and suppress the ability to see the good. The more limited the worldview, the easier it is to arouse hatred and there are more reasons for its manifestation. When hatred develops, it limits the perception of the world and fixes the attention only on the object that arouses disgust.

“It is not possible to stop hatred through hatred. Only love, which is the opposite characteristic, acts as a neutralizing force. Releasing oneself from the shackles of hatred is possible when you focus on what you are doing with yourself. This will help in turning away from hatred.”

My Comment: The wisdom of Kabbalah instructs us not to listen to ourselves, but to engage in connection with others. In this way we remove all characteristics other than love!
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Workshop: The Particle Accelerator Of The Soul

laitman_934Question: After two years of reconstruction, the biggest particle accelerator in the world that is on the border between France and Switzerland finally has been reopened. Physicists are looking for the elementary particle, the “God Particle.” Does this mean that the world is in a search for something upper?

Answer: Scientists kindle public interest in this quest because they can thus satisfy their curiosity, as well as get a chance to work. It is clearly impossible to find the “God Particle” this way. It is impossible to touch things that are above matter. Scientists want to discover the “God Particle,” but it is a paradox. If it is a material particle, it cannot be a “God Particle.”

God is spiritual; it is not perceived by our senses or our lifeless machines. Therefore, it is impossible to perceive the “God Particle” by the collider that they built. However, they have already spent billions, which could be have been used for something useful. These experiments are funded because there is a hope that, thanks to them, it will be possible eventually to create a more powerful bomb.

Question: Isn’t there a connection between spirituality and corporeality, between a root and a branch? Can’t we discover the spiritual world through this particle?

Answer: This is absolutely impossible. How can there be a connection between any corporeal phenomenon that is revealed in our egoistic consciousness and something that exists in the world of absolute bestowal?

There is no connection between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds; there is no bridge. We cannot build a passage from one world to the other. There is a great partition between them. Scientists don’t understand what godliness is and what spirituality means, although there were great minds like Einstein and Huge Everett III who realized that they didn’t understand this matter and spoke openly about the limitations of their theories.

Question: Why is it impossible to discover spiritual phenomena through the Higgs boson search with the Large Hadron Collider? Doesn’t corporeality affect spirituality? If it doesn’t, why do we have discussion circles and believe that it does have an effect on people?

Answer: We create a special accelerator of correction in the circles. This is already a totally different process that has nothing to do with quantum physics, but is related to the wisdom of Kabbalah. Something new indeed is formed inside it that is created by the thoughts of people who annul their egoism and wish to connect. Thus, they turn themselves into an amplifier, a great spiritual accelerator, but any physical instruments cannot measure this action. A person comes out of the circle greatly impressed, but it is impossible to assess and measure such feelings that are a result of the connection. There is no connection between the two. These phenomena can be the result of endless reasons since they are merely physiological phenomena in our corporeal body. There is no connection between corporeality and spirituality. There never has been, and there never will be.

Question: Doesn’t spiritual work affect the corporeal life?

Answer: I correct my inner vessels of perception through spiritual work, and then I see and perceive the world that is inside me in a new way because my inner vessels of perception have changed. I see a different world that is reflected differently in my consciousness. It is the result of the change of my attributes, the inner accelerator, which we form in the circle, that changes our attributes, and we see a different, better world. When a person sits in a circle, he is incorporated in a machine that accelerates his development. He is under the influence of the Light, the upper force of nature. Therefore, he suddenly discovers that it is actually possible to connect, that it is really good and that we should do that. People come out of the circles with a feeling of great elation. This isn’t the result of persuasion, like in some lecture, but the direct effect of the Light that operates on us and advances our development.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/15, Writings of Rabash

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