Entries in the 'Perception' Category

Night Into Day

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can we say that the whole Israeli nation will undergo the state of the darkness of Egypt, as dark clouds are building up around us and things are getting very tense. Is this the approaching night?

Answer: Of course. Otherwise it is impossible because we have to build the quality of bestowal, which starts with a desire and the desire for it can appear only in a state of night. We must remember that.

Night, sufferings, detachment, weakness, and disappointments are part of our way. We need to collect them all and yearn to advance; otherwise, we will not feel the day. In the Torah there is no day or night. The moment we process everything, we sense the night correctly, we will begin to feel the Light instead.

After all, what do we feel as day? The attitude of love and bestowal unto others. Now, however, we feel it as night, as darkness. It is only the change in our attitude towards darkness that will invoke the feeling of Light instead of darkness.

We don’t move from one sphere of the globe to the other side where the sun shines and fills everything with light. No, we process our negative impressions of bestowal, love, and mutual help internally into a positive attitude, and then night turns into day.

Everything takes place inside us, in our attitude towards these values. There can be nothing else. We always start from night, because the attribute of bestowal is night for us.

When we correct our negative feelings and impressions and change them, we feel Light and day in the opposite state. We are the ones who determine internally what is night and what is day.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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Cognitive Simplicity: Life In Black And White

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Psychologies.ru): “Our life flows and passes losing its shades and becoming black and white, friends and foes, heroes and villains. Psychologists call this perspective cognitive simplicity.

“This phenomenon appears at infancy. We all know that we acquire the complexity of this world with time through our relationships with people.

“It is better for our leaders if people perceive the world as a simple place since it is simply easier to manage them and to control them. Many agree and are willing to accept the rules of this game.

“Simplicity as a form of psychological protection helps them cope with the complexity of the world.  A simple perception of the world allows a person not only to see the goal more clearly but also to attain it.

“Cognitive simplicity is the basis for manipulation that comes down to people’s ability to attain the goals we were given, while convincing others to also want that. These manipulations are based on ideas that have to be subordinately in common with those who resemble them. The manipulations refer to actions against cooperation trust and autonomy.

“It becomes necessary to imagine our states and those of others not only logically but also emotionally. The individual’s awareness has to include the position of those around him. A person’s fate is an attempt to unite and to care about others no less than about himself.”

My Comment: I believe that only an addition to the egoism that manages us on its own, the second force of nature, the positive force of connection and love will make our world and man living in it balanced by the two forces. We will be able to manage ourselves and the world and to build a balanced system of the world. If not, we will fall into increasingly greater egoism that leads us to terrible sufferings, and eventually after world wars and annihilations we will still acknowledge the need to complement ourselves with the positive force of life and to build humanity as a balanced system. The positive force of connection can only be discovered in the process of workshops and discussion circles that are based on the wisdom of Kabbalah and the wisdom of connection.
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Everything Is Accommodated To A Goal

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe weekly portion, “BeHukotai,” talks about the entire world being reciprocally linked and that the system of creation was determined strictly and precisely. We are found within it, and its influence on every person depends upon his deeds and whether or not he accepts the laws of this spiritual universe upon himself.

The spiritual universe is not just what we see around us. Rather, it includes all of the forces and systems that are hidden from us, with only a fraction of them being revealed.

If we become familiar with its laws and maintain them, then everything will be all right. If not, it will begin to whip us through blows.

The system is arranged and constructed such that it takes into account the same object upon which it acts and influences. We partially see this in our world. For example, the system relates to a small child more mercifully and gently than to a mature person, enveloping the infant with concern. He falls, and this is not so bad, whereas, if an elderly person falls, he is liable to break his bones.

In other words, the system is arranged and constructed such that it relates to each one of us uniquely, according to the level of the person, his destiny, his fate, and who and what he is.

Question: In other words, if the person thinks that the system has given extraordinary suffering to him, does it only seem that way to him, whereas the system, in fact, gradually gives him what he can endure in stages?

It could be that he also cannot endure it, but everything has been considered absolutely precisely, according to his fate, his purpose, and the same conditions in which he is found. Everything is accommodated to the same goal that all of us must attain.

Essentially, everything is very simple because there is a beginning and an end, and from beginning to end, everything has been considered in each stage in relation to everyone. On every level, a particular freedom of choice is given to us and we operate within these precisely defined frameworks.

All of us exist and are connected within a single system that manages us. There are those who feel this and those who don’t feel it, those who already have discovered its laws for themselves and have attained some kind of levels, and those who are only beginning or have not even begun to understand the goal of creation.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/12/14

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Together We Amplify The Voltage Of Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Does it turn out that nothing exists other than spiritual reality?

Answer: Certainly. This is the same reality in which we are now found, and we begin to see how the higher power works within it. There are only two forces: the force of desire and the higher force that clothes it.

These forces are beginning to be more and more noticeable as we see that they are the only forces working within reality, that they have no substance, it is also energy. The physicists claim that the world is a field of forces and matter doesn’t exist.

Studies show that there is energy and power within matter. So matter has no significance, and yet it exists. Only after all the inhabitants of this world are connected to the network and reveal that they are acting in a field of reception and the force of bestowal, will all matter completely fade and disappear from this world, which is called “imaginary.” However, this will only happen in the future, with the general completion of correction.

Question: From where does a person get the power to connect everything together and see the true reality?

You cannot do anything alone. You cannot change your perception, get used to the right picture nor study it. This is possible only if you are found in the appropriate environment that is working towards this, and in which each individual, along with everyone else, together understand that they must build the appropriate network of connection for discovering the upper Light.

We must at all times, work among us to transform into a single Kli, into a single system and constantly develop it, adding to it through more and more interactions. The Light will accordingly be revealed within the Kli  through ascents and descents, which will also become increasingly synchronized together. We begin to feel interconnected and have more influence on each other.

Each one will see how much his character, his soul, his inner potential, becomes accommodated to everyone else, while some of them rise and some of them descend. Even though all of us advance together and go through ascents and descents, each one acts according to his character, like various components acting within a single electrical system. One is a resistor, another is a capacitor, and the third is a coil.

Each one goes through an ascent, but the ascent in a capacitor and a coil are completely different, for in a capacitor this is expressed in changes in potential and in a coil this is expressed in an electrical field. The ascent is expressed in a different form according to the root of the soul, and in principle, all are passing through the same situation.

And since there are so many differences between us, it could be that there is an incessant ascent without descents. For each may be in an ascent or descent in regard to everyone else, but it is considered to be an ascent in regard to himself. An electrical charge constantly moves from place to place, but every change is for the improvement of the ascent, constantly raising the voltage within the system and raising it gradually.

At the moment, there is no connection between us, and because of this lack of connection, each one of us ascends and descends. But if we connect, then we no longer have such descents.  As it is written, …and the children of Israel sighed from the labor, …. (Exodus 2:23). This wasn’t darkness due to a lack of connection, but due to a lack of bestowal. But this was actually an ascent, for by each one connecting with the others, each one took the others’ work upon himself. A minus in one place is compensated by a plus in another place, and vice versa. So everyone is ascending. Therefore, if we are connected, there are no more descents, only ascents!

Since you are connected with the other components within a system, it is as if you are transforming alternating current into direct current. The only thing we lack is connection. We aren’t working on this enough.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Writing of Rabash

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Perceiving The Future Together

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Do animals feel nature as one system in which everything is connected?

Answer: Yes, they feel it at their level.

Question: And can they feel the future, for exactly that reason?

Answer: Animals can only feel some kind of threat to their life, but they are not able rise above the worry of their regular, beastly existence. This is called instinct.

Animals feel the connection to the general system, but for them it provides only the information at the level of animate. Animals know what will happen, thus they are more careful than men and their behavior is more logical.

Animals don’t make mistakes! They have all the required information in order to exist, which is called natural instinct. Man is lacking this.

Question: If I had such instinct, would it be possible that my life would be better? Maybe I wouldn’t be overdrawn at the bank, wouldn’t have an ulcer, and wouldn’t be living in constant tension.

Answer: That’s a good question. What is preferable? Since if you had such instinct, then you would be an animal and not a man. Animals have all the information for a good life, i.e., the feeling of connection with the goal of creation. And man doesn’t have this at all. Why? Because at the speaking level one doesn’t automatically receive connection to the goal of creation, but must acquire it through self development.

Every person has this potential, but one needs to advance gradually. You cannot catch the occasional passerby and begin to convince him that he needs to do this. A person needs to be ready for this. If he feels that he must know the future, then I am able to teach him how to do this.

Comment: I am ready for learning! I really must know the future because that will solve all the problems for me, and explain to me how to behave towards my children and my wife and what profession to choose.

Answer: You will know everything! If you have such a burning question that brings you to despair and demands a reply, then this is a sign that you can do this.

At the end of the course for integral education (the wisdom of connection), you will come to the sensation that all people are inseparable parts of the same system, without any difference between them, including yourself. And in the beginning, it is enough to reach this feeling towards a stranger, not towards a family member.

Question: Meaning, if I feel towards a stranger as I do myself, then based on that I will create within me the ability to see the future?

Answer: Yes. You will feel the integral sensation, exit from within your ego, and sense me, for example. You must feel me as you do yourself. If you are able to feel something outside yourself as yourself, then the whole of reality opens up before you. You open your senses and you can see all your surroundings in a real way.

Question: Why can’t I learn integral thought by myself with the help of my intellect, without needing someone else?

Answer: For whom do you exit yourself if not for someone else? This is not abstract philosophy, but it requires a lot of practice and many actions with whose help we examine all the “pros “ and “cons.” It isn’t simple. After all we need to exist beyond the feeling of our “I.” That is the first condition of integral thought.

When I exit my “I,” I begin to feel who is outside of me, and to the same extent, I feel everything else. I open the extent of my feelings, from the level of my five senses to a complete reality.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 2/23/14

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Death Is Not The End

laitman_928In the News (from Psychology Today): “Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. Our classical way of thinking is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence. But a long list of experiments shows just the opposite. We think life is just the activity of carbon and an admixture of molecules: we live awhile and then rot into the ground.

“We believe in death because we’ve been taught we die. Also, of course, because we associate ourselves with our body and we know bodies die. End of story. But biocentrism, a new theory of everything, tells us death may not be the terminal event we think. Amazingly, if you add life and consciousness to the equation, you can explain some of the biggest puzzles of science. For instance, it becomes clear why space and time—and even the properties of matter itself—depend on the observer. It also becomes clear why the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be exquisitely fine-tuned for the existence of life.

“Until we recognize the universe in our heads, attempts to understand reality will remain a road to nowhere. …Everything you see and experience right now‚ even your body, is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. According to biocentrism, space and time aren’t the hard, cold objects we think. Wave your hand through the air—if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

“Consider the famous two-slit experiment. When scientists watch a particle pass through two slits in a barrier, the particle behaves like a bullet and goes through one slit or the other. But if you don’t watch, it acts like a wave and can go through both slits at the same time. So how can a particle change its behavior depending on whether you watch it or not? The answer is simple, reality is a process that involves your consciousness.

“Or consider Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle. If there is really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But you can’t. For instance, a particle’s exact location and momentum can’t be known at the same time. So why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure? And how can pairs of entangled particles be instantaneously connected on opposite sides of the galaxy as if space and time don’t exist? Again, the answer is simple: because they’re not just ‘out there’—space and time are simply tools of our mind.

“Death doesn’t exist in a timeless, spaceless world. Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time, but resides outside of time altogether.

“Our linear way of thinking about time is also inconsistent with another series of recent experiments. In 2002, scientists showed that particles of light ‘photons’ knew, in advance, what their distant twins would do in the future. They tested the communication between pairs of photons. They let one photon finish its journey—it had to decide whether to be either a wave or a particle.

“Researchers stretched the distance the other photon took to reach its own detector. However, they could add a scrambler to prevent it from collapsing into a particle. Somehow, the first particle knew what the researcher was going to do before it happened, and across distances instantaneously as if there were no space or time between them. They decide not to become particles before their twin even encounters the scrambler. It doesn’t matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge is the only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects.

“Bizarre? Consider another experiment that was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Science (Jacques et al, 315, 966, 2007). Scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus, and showed that what they did could retroactively change something that had already happened in the past. As the photons passed a fork in the apparatus, they had to decide whether to behave like particles or waves when they hit a beam splitter. Later on—well after the photons passed the fork—the experimenter could randomly switch a second beam splitter on and off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle actually did at the fork in the past. At that moment, the experimenter chose his past.

“Of course, we live in the same world. But critics claim this behavior is limited to the microscopic world. But this ‘two-world’ view (that is, one set of physical laws for small objects, and another for the rest of the universe including us) has no basis in reason and is being challenged in laboratories around the world. …

“One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that observations can’t be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the ‘many-worlds’ interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). There are an infinite number of universes and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them.

“Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix. Life has a non-linear dimensionality; it’s like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.

“’The influences of the senses,’ said Ralph Waldo Emerson ‘has in most men overpowered the mind to the degree that the walls of space and time have come to look solid, real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits in the world is the sign of insanity.’”

My Comment: From the time of Adam to our time, every Kabbalist attains everything that has been told, moreover, in reality discovers what is happening only within himself, in his consciousness, beyond time, space, and motion.
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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is it that only the wisdom of Kabbalah has an answer about the meaning of life?

Answer: We look for answers in a clear, scientific manner and don’t believe what someone has written in some books. I have to attain the answer by myself. The wisdom of Kabbalah is based on accurate attainment, as it is said, “a judge only has what his eyes can see.” Attainment is the clearest understanding a person can have. That’s the way it should be.

Therefore, when we engage in the Kabbalistic method, we acquire scientific research tools and discover everything until we have no doubts remaining. It is through the wisdom of Kabbalah that I discover the tools, opportunities, and attributes inside me, by which I can reveal the Creator, the network that connects all of creation and the upper world.

I live in two worlds. My body lives in this world and at the same time I feel an upper reality. But only I feel it since only I attain it. Anyone who wishes to feel the same thing has to undergo the same path of study and exercises, and then he will gradually reach the revelation of the upper reality.

Question: You always talk about revelation, the revelation of the force that surrounds everything, the one force that operates in nature. Does that mean that there is something that exists now but I simply don’t feel it?  What does it mean to reveal?

Answer: There are many phenomena that you are not aware of and that you don’t detect. Do you perceive or receive radio waves? No. There are many phenomena taking place around us, but we don’t perceive or receive them. We have simply built different instruments by which we can detect such phenomena. But according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we cannot build external devices. We are the ones who have to change internally; because our perception, our mind and our feelings are limited, we have to expand them. Because we have to discover the general force of nature that is called the Creator, which stands for Bo-re, (come and see), we have to attain the state in which we will see Him, which means to reveal Him and reach attainment.

Question: What do I have to do when I attain the revelation of the upper reality?

Answer: The revelation itself obliges you just as any revelation in this world that obliges you to behave differently, because you actually change according to it. It is then that new knowledge and feelings fill you.

Question: But how does the revelation of the upper reality, of the Creator, fill me?

Answer: You feel that you are filled with love of others. It is an immense change a person undergoes. It is because love thy friend as thyself, the law of mutual guarantee, is the general law of the upper reality, and we have to ascend all the way to it and exist within it.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 1/18/15

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is there life after death?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why do humans use only 3% of their intellectual potential?

Answer: Because the remaining 97% is meant for spiritual revelation.

Question: Can we change ourselves?

Answer: No. But we can do it with the help of the upper force.

Question: Why is there so much evil and unfairness in this life?

Answer: We are the ones who bring it into this world.

Question: In your opinion, who is an Israeli?

Answer: “Israel” in Hebrew means directly to the Creator. This word stands for anybody who, with the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah, is oriented towards the upper force, to the “good that does good.”

Question: What irritates you the most?

Answer: Anything that is opposite to the answer that I just gave to your last question.

Question: Does a Kabbalist enjoy food, sex, or any other pleasures of this world?

Answer: A Kabbalist enjoys everything that a regular person enjoys. Why not?

Question: Do you observe traffic rules?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What would be the only book that you would take with you should you decide to withdraw from the world?

Answer: Baal HaSulam’s Shamati.
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From Israeli Radio Programming 103FM, 2/15/15

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The Entire World Is Inside Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah addresses only humans and speaks about things that are internal to us: the Creator, Moshe, people, etc. Each of us has to organize these elements, because no matter what we feel, we feel it inside us.

You can keep saying a thousand times that a glass exists outside of you. However, how can it possibly be so, if you perceive it internally? “No! I see it sitting on the table!”  So, it means that you feel both the glass and the table inside you.

Consequently, everything we talk about, the entire world is inside us, including the Creator.

This explains why when we portray the Creator in Kabbalah, the first thing we draw is the dot (point) of the letter “Yod”  and only afterward we write “Yod Hey Vav Hey,” the four developmental stages of the desire that start with this one point. The fourth stage is a concluding desire that feels tangible, serious, and mature to us.

The last stage of desire was instigated from the initial point similar to the entire universe that originated from a tiny spark that contained enough energy to feed this world and every one of us through today. In that minuscule point lies all the information and all matter of the universe.

It is a point that instigated everything that appeared as a result of an explosion and is the beginning of the letter “Yod.” That’s why it is said in the Torah that every person is a small world that encompasses everything.

No matter what we sense, it is inside us. This is why modern science, which has advanced by a billion light years, once again resumes exploring humans and concentrates on our potential and the particularities of our perception. Things that seemed remote and external to us must in fact be explored inside us.

Lack of comprehension of the way that we perceive external subjects prevents us from further advancement and precludes grasping the essence of life and organizing our further existence. In the near future, all sciences will end up studying Kabbalah.

It will become obvious to the scientific world that without this wisdom it is impossible to lay a solid foundation that will allow humans to correctly relate to our sensations, notions, and cognition.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 10/08/14

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Is A Person Free Or A Slave To His Nature?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I don’t feel myself enslaved; it seems to me that I am a free man. So how is the instruction on the Passover holiday to represent myself as leaving the servitude of Egypt every year relevant to me?

Answer: It seems that we are free because we don’t feel that we depend upon each other. We try to arrange our lives so as not to be associated with anyone, so nobody will bother us. That is our nature.

For the sake of this independence, we invent new computers and mobile phones. In every house there are so many household appliances that require minimal help from others. This makes it easier for our egoistic nature, and we carry out its demands: I don’t touch anyone and try not to have anyone touch me.

But basically, all of us are connected and interdependent. It becomes clear that all the still, vegetative, and animate nature also constitute a single integral system in which everything is connected with everything else. So the wisdom of Kabbalah warns us that we depend upon one another and we will yet discover this dependence in the future.

If we don’t attain unity, then it will be very bad for us. In the meantime, we don’t feel the necessity for this to any great degree and because the wisdom of Kabbalah was not disclosed in the bondage of the previous generations, thousands of years it was in hiding. We didn’t have a need for it as we were not ready to discover that we are interdependent.

But today the whole world feels this mutual dependence. To the degree that it discovers this negative connection, it will turn to the Jewish people, for only this people possesses the method that makes it possible to unite above all differences.

There is a very great demand for this method in the world today. Therefore if we don’t convey this method to other people, we will feel very strong pressure. Anti-Semitism will continue to grow and the nations of the world will bring more and more claims against the Jewish people, blaming us for all their troubles.

They won’t exactly know the reason for their hatred towards us, but it is derived specifically from that. This pressure can be expressed in different ways, as we see in the attitude of the United States towards Israel deteriorating day by day.

Question: When you look at the world today, would you define our state as slavery?

Answer: Certainly, we are enslaved to our nature. I am always carrying out the commands of my inner nature and I obey them without any clarification, criticism, or opposition. I am simply not prepared to go against it.

My egoistic desire demands that I succeed and obtain benefit without considering anyone else. And if I am in an integral connection with others, how could I not take them into consideration?  I become limited in all of my actions.

Question: So the problem isn’t in my doing well,  but my doing so at the expense of others?

Answer: I cannot even succeed that way. Today not even an entire nation can succeed if it is isolated from others. All of them are discovering the necessity for connection with each other, but they cannot do this correctly. Nobody knows how to establish good connections between them: America, Russia, China, Europe, Jews, and Arabs.

Nobody can succeed and go out in the first place if it isn’t done through a totally good connection. It follows that the most successful will be the one who most accurately takes our mutual connections into account and acts accordingly. And this is what going out from slavery to freedom symbolizes. Everyone, all of humanity, must learn this.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/15/15

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