Question: Where do we get the sensation of time? Why is this sensation very precise, really down to the minute or second in one person and in another person a sensation of time doesn’t exist at all?

Answer: It depends upon the development of the desire to enjoy. If I want enjoyment, then I divide my desire into fractions of a second to fill every fraction of a second with fulfillment, with pleasure. And so the feeling of time is important to me.

Life never feels long because I can fill it with many pleasures, with a wide range of variables: food, sex, family, money, respect, and knowledge. And then 80 years of life is only a short time for me, even a thousand years would not be enough do to everything.

Question: Sometimes we perceive time as a negative phenomenon: With time things go bad, crumble, and our bodies get old. But on the other hand, time can be beneficial because it heals, appeases, and completes. How do you perceive time: as a good or bad phenomenon?

Answer: Time depends on what I fill it with. And first of all it is necessary to understand how I can manage time, and not to let time manage me. I don’t agree with such sayings like “time heals all wounds” and you need to accept things with more serenity, as if this time is something found outside of me. This is the sort of attitude of weak people who don’t know how to manage their time. With this attitude toward time we invite a lot of unpleasantness upon ourselves.

Time should be under our control and we must rise above it. And this doesn’t mean prolonging life to 100 years thanks to successes in biology or genetics. For then even 200 years will not be enough for us and life will seem as if it is too short.

A person who lived 500 years ago didn’t feel that the 30 years of his life were shorter, but rather, were even longer than a person who lives 80 years today. So I don’t think that it is worthwhile for us to advance in this direction. We simply need to rise above the concept of time, and this is what managing it is.

Time depends upon whether I get more or less pleasure. Changes in my desire for pleasure create a sensation of the passing of time for me. But if I were to feel some pleasure regularly with an unchanging desire, then I would not feel myself alive at all. I would lose not only the sensation of time but the sensation of life in general.

This is because no changes would occur in me, and without changes there is no feeling of being alive. Life is not just some kind of feeling, but rather a difference between one state and another. If the states don’t change, then that state continues all the time and I don’t feel myself as existing.

It follows that the feeling of time is an internal concept, emotional and completely subjective. All that I must do is change my senses (the tools of perception), the whole inner program that operates in me today as in every living body. If I rise above this program and begin to function differently, not for the need to fulfill my desire for pleasure, not to live from what comes to me, but to fulfill myself by myself and to manage my fulfillments, then I become the master of time. For this we only need to rise above our egoistic desire, to stop depending on it.
[136708]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/17/14

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The whole world is my Kli. Only one person was created in the world. This is a paradox, also known in quantum physics. Our perception of the world can transform in a moment and the situation will appear completely different, like quantum superpositions.

There is no contradiction between the fact that I the only one in the world and seeing the whole world as parts of me. Because of some kind of psychological effect it seems to me that these parts are outside of me.

It is as if they gave me an injection of an anesthetic in my leg and I stop feeling it as part of my body. Now someone could come with a saw and cut off my leg and I would not react because I don’t feel any pain. My feeling is so clouded that I don’t see that it is mine at all.

We are under an anesthetic like this in relation to the whole world. All of the still, vegetative, and animate nature, and people are parts of my Kli, vessel. All of them belong to me, to my desire to receive. I am Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity), the entire creation. So the whole world was created for me, to serve me. But my ego detaches me from the world and presents it to me as being outside of me and not as belonging to me.

The ego works like an anesthetic that disengages all of my organs from me and leaves me with only a small part of all of reality. So I must begin to correct my ego, and through the Surrounding Light, I return to myself my parts that seem to me as being cut off and distant from me, in that I work with them as if they are mine.

This is specifically what we try to do in a group: to come closer as one person with one heart and see all of reality as one. We ourselves invest effort to reach this and are not pushed backward by the crisis like all of the rest of the world is, which must be compelled to accept all of reality as one system.

I have the opportunity to not wait until the crisis will begin to push all of reality back at me, arguing that it is all mine and forcing me to recognize this through the way of suffering.

If I will begin to bring all of reality to myself, according to the advice of the Kabbalists, and relate to all of its levels— the still, vegetative, animate, and human—as my parts, then I will receive huge additional deficiencies. They will make it possible for me to see reality not through my small part, but through them, through the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking, which I bring close and adhere to me by leaping over my ego. In this way I build a bridge above all of my hatred, as it is said, (Proverbs 10:12) “Love covereth all transgressions.”
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/14

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Question: It isn’t easy to live in the present modern reality which gallops along at great speed and constantly keeps us under pressure. How is it possible to withstand a life like this in which changes are taking place at every moment?

Answer: Everything depends upon how people perceive this reality. If he thinks that it is very important for him  and he needs to have time to be successful, he wants to exploit everything that is happening and be more successful than others, to be the first in society, in science, in achievements, in the eyes of people. And so it is understandable that this wretch is in competition with others all the time without a moment of rest, and he never has enough time.

But there are people who are not included in this competition. And this is not because they are lazy; rather, they simply understand that all these successes are subjective. I don’t want to run in order to be the first among those who always lack the time. In general I want to rise above time, motion, and space and exist not within this phenomenon called “life,” but within that force called the source of life. And so I am already searching for how to rise to the source of life.
[136271]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/17/14

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We have to attach the entire world to us with all of its needs and desires, the whole Malchut of the world of Infinity. First, we draw the parts that are close to us, i.e., those who have similar views and are willing to connect with others: “Let each one help his neighbor.”

And then we transition to the parts that are farther from us, i.e., those who do not share our outlook, nor do they strive to connect with each other or reveal the goal of creation.

Dissemination starts with collecting the desires of the general public. They seem petty, primitive, and earthly, but they only look like this. In the liaison of the upper Partzuf and the lower one, the latter carries a small desire. However, the upper Partzuf regards the request of the lower one as something very important and substantial because of the huge love the upper feels for the lower. Thus, the upper becomes able to perform great work to satisfy the needs of the lower part.

This is how I attach the entire world to myself. It is said that the entire world is made to serve me. People don’t understand this fact nor do they think this way. On the contrary, they reject and even hate me. However, this should not matter to me at all. I accept their desires and know that I cannot treat them the way they treat me.

I cannot sit and wait while they suffer through troubles and wars become wiser. This is a wrong way and is incompatible with loving our neighbors. If you think this way, it means that you still need to work on yourself. This explains why we should continue our efforts to connect with others no matter what.

Imagine a family that has an obstinate, good-for-nothing son who doesn’t listen to his parents and deliberately does everything wrong. No matter what, he is still their son and they have to take care of him no matter what. This is the pattern we have to exercise with the world that becomes embittered and loses hope since it doesn’t know what’s next.

It is a revelation of people’s genuine nature, those who do not regard themselves as good, extraordinary, smart, strong, but rather feel they are weak, silly, and unaware of what exactly is going on in the world around them . The world degrades and descends lower and lower; nothing interests people except very primitive fulfillments such as food or sex.

Where did our prior culture, space programs, lofty aspirations, respect for scientists, sages, artists, and well-educated people go? We used to have all of them some 50 years ago. Everything is gone! Mankind seems like a herd of animals.

People are incapable of fulfilling even their minor needs, and they suffer. According to statistics, present material wellbeing is ten times higher than it was a hundred years ago, but at the same time, depression, desperation, and a sense of deprivation constantly grow. After all, these things are not directly related with material prosperity.

Troubles are given to us to make us work on them. We should clearly understand it. Our perception of the world is extremely “quantum.” There is a huge contradiction between the duty that each of us has: to acknowledge that each of us is the only one who has the freedom of choice and the others do not have it. This rule should apply to everybody without exception. It leads to the understanding that the entire world depends on each one of us and all of us have to serve the goal.
[136121]
From the Preparation for the Lesson 5/28/14

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Question: What is time? Does it exist by itself or only within? How do you explain time?

Answer: I can see time when I look at my watch. I sense time when I contemplate my life and think that it elapses rapidly, when I ponder about things that happen to me, and when I reflect on consequences and emotions.

Our will to receive, the basic material we are made of, feels past, present, and future. It recognizes time as changes that take place in our desire to be pleased. In other words, time depends on the sensations that take place in our will to receive. If not for those sensations, we would have no perception of time whatsoever.

If there is no difference in our sensations, no delta between feeling better or worse, we don’t notice the flow of time. If our sensations were always the same, time would stop. That is, time for us is a result of fluctuations that happen in our sensors. No change, no time. How is the preceding minute different from the next? They vary due to the processes that take place in our desire to receive. This is what we call time.

Time is the difference between the quantities of pleasure that we experience in our prior state compared to our next state. Our sensations keep changing. This explains why things that happen to us in the past, present or future are important from our egoistic point of view. We explore the states that our desire to receive pleasure experiences. The alternating states are imprinted within us as time.

The will to receive is the matter of creation. It is a sensor that feels fullness or emptiness. It measures the state that it goes through according to the sensation of fulfillment that is compared to its previous state and by evaluating the quantity of pleasure in both of them, thus forming a notion of time.

Time is a measurement tool of fulfillment that is present inside the will to receive. We want to be delighted so we develop a sensation of the future and look back into the past to learn how to organize ourselves in order to achieve the desired goal.

We organize our fulfillment; that’s why time splits into various phases for us.

We strive to know our future and learn from our past, but all of it derives from our desire to be pleased. While the desire to receive develops, its various shapes form a sensation of time in us.

According to its developmental stage, the will to receive splits into the following phases: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking. Humans are the only ones who sense time, i.e., recognize the past, present and future. These phases are different for humans from the point of view of their sensation of fulfillment.

We feel various kinds of time internally. There is time that keeps track of hours, yet there is another type of time, which we simply feel inside us. Time can be measured by billions of years or it can be split into brief moments. We measure time according to the degree of its importance to us and to the extent of our involvement in it.

A sensation of time and its essence are two totally different things. Perception of time depends on our internal individual experiences, whereas astronomical time is calculated based on the movement of planets, although it is still quite relative.

The entire universe is a will to receive inside which we watch processes that take place at inanimate, vegetative, animate and human levels.

So it means that all of them happen inside us. The entire reality is inside us; it is a product of our perception. If our perception of reality changes, notions of time, movement, space, and the whole universe, its entire picture that we live in will also change.

That’s why we have to ask ourselves a question: “What is our life? What is the reality in which we exist? Is it relative? Can it be changed?”
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/17/2014

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Question: We hope that you will tell us the secret of the complicated stories in the Torah.

Answer: An oral explanation is not a revelation. Everything is attained only in practice. We were brought up to believe that this would reveal all.

If we live in the same world that the written sources tell us about, then they do reveal something, but only to the extent that we know this world. If they tell us about a world that we don’t know at all and everything in it seems strange, then can the written sources explain anything?

It is merely an explanation that tells us that the upper world surrounds us, like a sphere within a sphere, and we are inside it, and that it constantly manages us in every aspect, each and every one of us and all of us together. I need this information only in order to understand how important it is to start engaging in it and to reveal it.

Today we don’t even understand what is happening in our world, and we feel more and more confused with every day that goes by. If we don’t attain the upper world, its influence on us, the way it operates, and its goal, we will be like blind kittens unable to do anything about our fate and will exist as if in chaotic movement. We will live a meaningless life, lost in oblivion, and will float in the current again in the same initial condition because we have not corrected anything and have done nothing to receive new feelings. We also have not developed any additional senses, and so everything will start anew.

First a person has to see that he is managed by the upper world, a world of strict laws. Living in our corporeal world, we only know some of its laws, but we have no idea what the laws of the upper world are.

If a person understands that he is in a rigid set of physical laws that operate on him, that he can influence them and discover the dual connection to the extent that he perceives and understands these laws and is able to manage them, then it will be a great step forward. People will at least know that they can regain their sight and not flow blindly in the current of life, or to put it more bluntly, not life but death.

Question: So a person should try all this himself?

Answer: That’s not enough. Sufferings are needed. If I understand that something operates on me, but I think, “Let it operate while I wait,” it is like a movie where the outlaw is sentenced to hard labor in order to teach him to work, but he allows the work manager to influence him, saying, “You will influence me while I lay down and rest.” But when he is beaten he cries out, “Oh! Mother!”

It is essential that there must be afflictions, even minor ones. We actually want the minor suffering and the great understanding, since together it will enable us to move forward.
[135550]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/18/13

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Opinion (Sergei Mats, psychologist, filmmaker, lecturer at the Institute of Psychology of Russian University for the Humanities in Moscow): “Do feelings deceive you? – Don’t worry, they have been designed mostly for this. Each of us lives in his own individual surrounding world. This world is filled with personal feelings.

“This reality contains optical illusions, strange noises, little understood sensations and smells, pseudo hallucinations (cinema, computer monitor).

“People absolutely realistically see, hear and feel things that did not and could not exist. You are looking at a white cloth, illuminated by a projector, or a panel, consisting of RGB- triads, and it definitely seems to you that there occur the events that make you laugh and cry.

“Similarly, many experienced psychic phenomena; they actually ‘saw,’ ‘felt, and ‘heard voices”; for them they are all true, ’another reality’ that leaves no reason for doubts.

“Sometimes, someone’s life may depend on the complex psychological nature of human emotions. With what degree of truth can one assert that the witness really saw and heard everything that seemed to him to be seen and heard without doubts?

“It is a strange thing: evolution, which is supposed to bring us closer to the main subject of adaptation – reality, in many cases, in fact, separates the mind from it, encloses him in an individual world, which is not always comfortable, but is always felt. Why does it do this?”

My Comment: Our development proceeds along two lines so that we, (1) as a result of our development, (2) discover its complete inadequacy. It is this frustration that will enable us to (3) realize and accept a whole new way of development, opposite to the first one (1), to development towards unity, in which we will reveal a new sense organ and through it will start our existence in a new, higher world.
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It is impossible to direct myself towards the Creator alone because I am compelled to go out of my ego. And so I must be connected with other people. It is desirable that we have ten people.

If we unite together to find the Creator, then we begin to see that only through the disengagement of each one from himself and disappearance into our connection can we abandon our old vision and focus on the Creator. This is like stereo pictures that look like a chaotic drawing with lots of lines. But if we look at this picture with unfocused eyes, then we begin to see all kinds of images in the depth of the picture.

That is also how we need to disengage from our egoistic view of the world, which is typical of everyone’e nature. In this vision, we lock ourselves artificially in a very limited world, and to leave it, we need to open our senses.

This is possible only by creating a new focus. It is necessary to see the world, not with our egoistic eyes, but with the eyes of the group, and then a new focus appears in all directions. Thus we enter, not a three-dimensional world, but a world of infinite dimensions, where in every direction and passes some plane coordinate axes. If I want to advance correctly, first of all I need to act through the group. There is no other mechanism for nullifying the focus of my vision and directing it spiritually. Only through the group can I try to feel something spiritual.

If I feel the world through the group, this is a sign that I have focused on the spiritual world, similar to the efforts to see the stereo picture. The main thing is to discern that everything comes from the Creator to teach me to understand Him. The world is His language with which He speaks to me.

Someone screams at me and there’s a set of events that takes place at every moment, while I must try to understand what the Creator wants it to tell me, what kind of reaction is required from me towards Him.

This means that first of all I must understand that this comes from Him. After that, I decide how I must react to what is happening. The reaction must be such that through what the Creator said to me and my desire to answer Him from within, between us we become closer, meaning that I understood Him and I did what He expected from me.

And then with everyone, I will behave exactly in this form: with the children, in the family, with people near and far. The clarification of my attitude towards the Creator, the reception of information from Him and responding to it, is called intention. And after that there can be action. We must be involved with this at every moment in our lives.
[135420]
From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson 4

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Question: How is a person’s work, which attributes everything to the principle, there is none else beside Him, linked to a group?

Answer: All of the work is with intention. It is not important what I do: sell watermelons or give a class somewhere. At that moment I have some kind of intention of what I want to accomplish with this activity. For the Shevirah (breaking of the vessel) was intentional and the destruction was intentionally concealed.

The desires, activities, events, and circumstances are not important in and of themselves. Rather, what is important is with what intention I am including in that circumstance, in that picture from the film. What do I want from the picture of the world that is now revealed in me and what do I do with my attitude towards the present state?

The states arrive by themselves; I don’t determine nor choose them. It is as if I pass from one picture to another in a film, one after another, and the question is only what I want from all of this. Here is all of my work. I cannot change these pictures, but my intention determines what I will see in those pictures through which I must pass;  peace or war, jealousy or hatred, or everything good and pleasurable.

All of this depends only on my intention, since  through that I change each picture in the film, the entire film and the entire picture of reality from end to end. I must return this picture to the Creator at all times, since all that comes to me in the form of the world, through adhering to Him.

To support this I have a group that is operating worldwide. I want the whole world to connect to the same idea and everyone to adhere to the Creator. This is what I am trying to attain at each and every moment.

And it makes no difference what actions are required for this. It could be that I am working as a mechanic in a garage, but this is not important. What is important is my intention through which I gather and connect all moments for correction.
[135153]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: How is my dialogue with the Creator connected to a group?

Answer: Through the group I learn the language by which the Creator speaks to me. What I receive through the world is conveyed to me in the language of Kabbalah. Yet I am not ready to answer the Creator by myself because I am not ready to create the world and influence it.

The Creator creates the reality within me, in my brain and emotions, and so I feel the world and myself. This is how the Creator created reality and speaks to me.

So that I will be able to answer Him, I need a different language, my private language. The speech is created with the help of the five parts of the lungs, and five articulations of the mouth, tongue, palate, and throat. There are also different groups of sounds depending on the pronunciation: teeth, palate, throat, lips, and tongue.

The mechanism of speech is a very unique system. It is not by chance that the level of Adam (man) is called the “speaking.” Our brain and our mechanism of speech are tightly connected. Through the throat, the lungs, and the mouth, I convey to others, the thoughts that I have in my brain. And others are able to hear them. This means that there are two separate mechanisms: one for speech and the other, which is completely different, for hearing. These are very profound matters.

I receive the entire picture of reality from the Creator through my five senses, which are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, and I then answer Him. But how am I ready to answer Him if all of my senses work on the basis of receiving information? How should I react to His turning towards me?

I cannot do this by myself, but only by means of a unique Kli (vessel) that I have built for myself called integral desire. This obliges me to bend my ego and connect with the friends, which is completely against my nature.

Even so, I try to do this, and in this way, I build an additional sense through which I can converse with the Creator. This will become my spiritual mouth, and then the Creator will hear me. He speaks with me by way of the entire world within which I am found. And I speak with Him through the integral sense, which is the group. I have no other mechanism through which I can convey information to the Creator.

When I am within the group and connected to it, I activate my inner senses. They begin to activate not my physical senses, like seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, but all of my desires and all of my thoughts. It follows that when I am included in a group, through it I fully activate all of myself and all of my inner aspirations.

Through the center of the group, I send my complete likeness to the Creator, just as He shows me a complete picture of the world and myself through the group in which are integrated all kinds of thoughts and various sensations. I speak with the Creator, “out loud.”

If I were to receive from the Creator the picture that I send to Him by way of the center of the group, I would see that this is also a picture of the world. Indeed this is my reaction to what He arranges for me in my life. The whole essence of the impressions and experiences of myself and the world, from all the experience that I have gathered, passes through the center of the group and is absorbed by the Creator.

That is how we begin to carry on a dialogue. The Creator turns to me in the form of the entire world, including the group and myself, and I turn to Him through the center of the group.
[134775]
From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson 2

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