Entries in the 'Perception' Category

Can We Defend Ourselves Against The Creator?

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator is revealed as the one force that operates in all of our reality inside a person and on the outside. This leaves us—those in whom the point in the heart has awakened—a point of freewill from which we can study and understand the Creator who operates on us and who surrounds us on all sides. All the other people who think that they are independent simply don’t notice that they are operated by nature or the Creator (which are the same thing) in every step they make, every thought, every word, and every action.

When we think about the meaning of life, about the cause, the source; our questions stem from our dissatisfaction with life. This is how the Creator awakens us and pushes us to search. Therefore, in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” item 42, Baal HaSulam says that the reason for all the suffering in this world is our lack of understanding of the upper Providence. “…And I tell you that that preliminary reason is none other than the ‘lack of our understanding in His Providence over His creations,’ that we do not understand Him properly.”

We don’t understand the Creator, and the blows come in order to awaken us to search for Him, discover Him, and see that He is the only one who operates on us. Thus, we rise to the same level where He is revealed to us, where he controls all of reality.

From this perspective, we begin to understand what He does. Our entire history opens up before us, the entire “map,” the entire process that each of us goes through for many reincarnations. We see where we come from, where we are headed, and why everything is arranged the way it is. Everything opens up before us, and although we can point at the past, the future, and the present, we feel that it is the same thing. It is as if we look at the picture of reality that is spread before us in order to raise us and bring us to the full feeling of the Creator.

If a person feels this way toward everything that happens to him—if he understands that everything comes from the only force so that he will discover, understand, and feel Him so that he will be able to see all of reality like Him—then he relates to all the events in his life practically and doesn’t confuse anything personal with what he feels. Something else is important to him: To correctly understand why the Creator sends him the states he goes through and what the benefit in them is.

In the article “There is None Else Besides Him” in the book Shamati, Baal HaSulam says that there is no other force but the Creator. However, in the meantime, a person sees different opposite forces. There are forces that threaten him and forces that support him. The former are friendly and the latter are enemies.

On the whole, I perceive everything that happens as good or bad. It is as if I am between the good force and the evil force since that’s how they are depicted in my imagination.

However, I must know that everything comes from one force that intentionally shows me two sides and wants to bestow upon us by two opposite forms: the rejecting force and the attracting force. If I rise above it and understand that the rejecting force also can spur me to connection, it isn’t felt as good or bad anymore. After all, I ask myself why I feel rejection and I gather my powers to overcome it. The good force, however, can confuse and weaken me, and repulse me from the desire to connect, to advance, and to keep the inner intention.

Thus, I can measure the Creator’s bestowal according to my good and bad feelings or according to my understanding of the role He plays in rejecting me and bringing me closer. These two parameters can be opposite from one another.

The Creator bestows upon us by these four forces in order to confuse us so that we will not understand where we are and what is happening to us, like a child who is lost and confused. Then, like children, we need a grownup, the upper. We need His help and we need to hold his hand to discover Him and to force Him to take care of us since otherwise we feel that we are lost. This is actually the best state we can be in.

Here, we need a good supportive environment so that we will not escape and go off-track because of our confusion and so that we won’t begin looking for other methods that allow us to find peace and security. We don’t need such means since we reach the Creator differently: A person remains confused, helpless, and doesn’t understand what is going on, and still doesn’t leave. Only by this path does he reach the right outcry when he demands that the Creator be revealed to him and that He should take care of him. Then, he finally discovers that there is none else besides Him. That one force has created all these states for him. This is exactly what we do with our kids so that they will feel that they need us.

This one force controls all of the reality that He has created. He has created us so that we will become entangled in the complexities of this world and through that come close to Him and need Him. He bestows upon us by revelation and concealment through which all of creation advances back to this force: first man and then the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. They all are incorporated in man and they all reach the same one root from which they came.

Whoever is rewarded with this revelation immediately sees the future of all of reality. You haven’t reached it yet, but you will be able to see everything from the root. When I drive, I don’t see what is hundreds of kilometers ahead, but I can clearly see the entire road network from a satellite. We must only rise and then everything appears before us.

My connection with the future depends on the height of this ascent so that if I am totally adhered to the Creator, the future and the present become the same for me. I feel the states I must go through and the final state, and so I advance.

Then, I discover that all the concealments were meant only to reveal the Creator. He conceals Himself on purpose in different states, behind evil actions and scary states, behind great confusion, so that I will hold onto Him and won’t let go, like a child for whom the father’s hand is the protection from all the troubles. This is how we also must imagine our relationship with the Creator.

When we unite with Him, we reach Ibur (gestation). We want to be in Him first because of fear, because we want to hide. Later, when we grow in Him a little, He begins to teach us His wisdom, His knowledge, and how He actually operates.

Thus, we grow during the nine months of the spiritual Ibur, until we are born into the world. Then, we go through the states of Yenika (suckling), smallness, and greatness when we already understand all of creation from the beginning to the end. We have not discovered it yet, but we are going to.

This revelation comes only out of helplessness. Otherwise, we will never want to come close to the Creator in our egoistic desire. On the contrary, we create such conditions for ourselves that will help us hide from the upper force. Everything that we do in life is meant to protect us from the Creator: a home, money, insurance, a pension fund, a health care system. Thus, we create the protective shield so that we will not need anyone. We do need social services, a state, and humanity, but not the upper force. Thanks to such systems, we have abandoned the different religions since we don’t feel that we need them anymore. A person doesn’t feel so weak anymore that he must pray to someone and depend on someone.

What does the Creator do? He sends us troubles. After we build such a strong, comfortable and safe world, hoping for eternal prosperity, we suddenly see that everything falls apart and nothing is safe, and that not only tomorrow but even the next moment is doubtful. The Creator evokes these negative forces in the form of terror, plagues, natural disasters, the breakup of the family, of society, of economy, and so on.

All this is so that we will rely less on our own powers and will feel how weak we are to a greater extent. It turns out that we have no control over our lives. If we begin to discover the upper force, we fill all our deficiencies by Him. Then, our corporal life also works out since we don’t need the negative external stimuli anymore if we see the importance of the good force and yearn for it.

So, the wisdom of Kabbalah turns to all of humanity, either in its original form or as the method of integral education, and explains that we should come closer to the force of nature that operates in all of reality. The word “Creator” equals the word “Nature” in Gematria. In the future, we will suffer even more, and no technological, scientific, or economic progress or in any other area for that matter will help us. We are very weak.

It turns out that the Creator is the only force that operates in reality. It is like a huge field that covers all of reality on all sides. Our main work is to discover this network that manages everything.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/11/13, Lesson 3

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A Desire Independent Of Anything

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: And you evidently find that the giving of the Torah had to be delayed until they came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own, so that all their needs were provided for by themselves, without dependence on others. This qualified them to receive the above Arvut, and then they were given the Torah.

Freewill is required to be independent of anything and I must feel it as mine. It is a desire that requires me to be connected with others, but not for achievements and other such results as happens with a commando, sports teams, and so forth. I want to be linked with others to discover the higher force. I require a precise and clear desire to discover mutual bestowal and mutual love of friends so that the Creator will be revealed among us and in this form, we will feel that we are giving Him satisfaction.

All this is “depicted” and realized between us specifically if we really have this as a deficiency. This comes not from someone on the outside. No one forces me about anything. I have no personal benefit. It is only for the common good.

What we want is that through love of the people, we reach love of the Creator. This desire will bring us to “reception of the Torah.” In other words, we have an opportunity to realize this, not all at once, but gradually, of course. I discover this need more and more clearly. I get the power to develop it. Accordingly, through my link with the group, the Creator is discovered in its center. This is how we advance.

Question: How can a desire be independent of anything?

Answer: The idea is that I choose the way by myself. It is not just that the reception of Torah is delayed until the “departure from Egypt.” I was always dominated by an ego that is unaware of the spiritual world. This is not about slavery to a landlord; it is not about working from dawn to dusk to provide food for my family. In that, I am not free. Rather, I must be free in my desire to choose the right way. Pharaoh still holds me, is still revealed during the exile in the wilderness, but I already have the power to be directed toward the Creator, toward bestowal, and my desire is free.

How can this be? Have I corrected myself already? How is it possible to be free of the ego? However, in spite of all this, my desire to be directed toward the Creator in the right way is truly independent.

Question: On what does the strength of this desire depend? There are people in whom it burns, and there are those in whom it barely simmers.

Answer: Of course, awakening comes from above, and the question is, will the person realize this with the right choice? The right choice is really the right environment, a group of friends. As long as I have not entered a group, the Creator chooses for me, like we choose for an infant what he needs to eat and what he will do. However, as a child matures, we leave a little room for him, allow him to choose games, offer him the choice of an omelet or porridge. We understand that individuality is awakened in him according to his degree of maturity.

Also, on the spiritual path, according to the degree of maturity, a more conscious choice is formed. They give him this choice very simply: through adding some evil, a bad feeling. As it is written, “I created the evil inclination.” The Creator says, “If you want, I will transform it into good. You only need to ask for it.” So, it follows that, for me, the question is, should I ask Him or shouldn’t I?

In general, the higher power controls everything. All the evil forces, all the disturbances, all the external factors, everything is in His hands. All good states, all the forces of Light, also come from Him. I stand in the middle. For me, the main thing is to understand that I am linked with the higher power, and It controls me, embraces, and encloses me on all sides. So how, in all the states with which He confuses me, will I be able to want the connection with Him?

The problem is found at the edge of my perception, at the threshold of my consciousness. If I feel a faint pain, I can agree that it comes from the Creator and stimulates me to turn to Him. It is said that the Creator is “jealous.” It seems that He is jealous if I turn my attention to someone else. The moment that I forget about Him, He immediately reminds me about Himself, giving me an opportunity to choose.

So, here, there is a need to understand where to find the boundary of separation: What kind of pain or what kind of pleasure must I feel to be separated from the Creator? With this, the human being in me is measured. How much I will put the restriction and the screen on myself so that nothing will separate us?
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/13, “The Mutual Guarantee”

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About Angels, Satan, And Others…

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Where did angels, Satan, and the rest of the pure and impure forces appear, and what is their status?  When did they appear, on which day of creation?

Answer: In nature no strange forces appear, just the one and only force called the “Creator.”  You can call this force whatever you want.  It always reveals itself in a way that is identical to your ego, which is constantly changing.  So hold onto its identical behavior in regard to yourself as something that is absolutely good, as the discovery of all kinds of both positive and negative influences that you discover both inside you and outside of you.
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Be Patient, Everything Will Clear Up By Itself

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does a person get from the revelation of the Creator?

Answer: By revealing the Creator a person attains the one upper force that operates in all of creation. By that everything becomes clear and understood. He sees all of reality that has no beginning and no end but only one fixed state. This one state explains everything to a person. He attains the upper dimension and has no question left.

He lives above time, motion, and place, and there is no division to past, present and future; this is the reality that exists outside our physical body. Our body lives if there is a pulse, and thus it perceives reality, by feeling itself in time, meaning in the past, present, and the future, but when we exit the boundaries of our body, everything disappears. Then we find ourselves in the same state as the Creator.

Now you are asking: “So what’s next?” But there is no such question since all our questions stem from a deficiency, from the desire to receive, which we want to fill, but when we are incorporated in the desire to bestow, all the questions disappear. We merge with the one unique force. We have to feel it and this will provide you with all the answers to your questions that cannot be expressed in words.

When I entered the spiritual feeling it answered all my questions. This question doesn’t stem from mere curiosity, but from good will. You will discover spirituality and you will see everything. It says: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Before we taste this feeling, we cannot see Him and it’s impossible to explain it. When we attain Him everything will clear up by itself.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/10/13, Lesson 1

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Growing Up To A Sense Of Community

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When people interact with each other online within the framework of the same project, they contribute to the common cause, not seeing and not even understanding completely with whom they communicate, but just feeling each other through everyone’s contribution.

Answer: If in this way they can achieve the feeling of each other, then virtual connection is useful. Then it can give them something. The question is how directly, seriously, and sincerely do people try to unite. And whether they have opportunities to do this; after all, there must be some connection: vocal, verbal, textual. How is it expressed? In addition, the fact that they don’t see each other could be even better.

The main thing is to reach the sense of community, to feel each other.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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The Technology Of The “Wisdom Of The Crowd”: A Unified Image

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In an integral group everyone needs to humble himself towards all and simultaneously rise above all. What does this mean?

Answer: When we discuss something, uniting between each other, we nourish each other. Suppose that our friend is speaking. So, on one hand, we seemingly try to enter him, to feel him, to be together with him. On the other, when I am speaking, then everyone is included within me.

It follows that when my friend expresses himself, I nullify myself completely and try to absorb everything that he is feeling and thinking, in heart and mind. And when it’s my turn, I bring everything out of myself, and everyone else is included in me in an identical manner. This is the first, smallest precondition.

In addition, people need to understand that they have to rise above the ego and not look at the faces of the others: I don’t like your glasses, I don’t like his nose, I don’t like his hair, and so forth. This is to say, I completely divest myself of the external appearance of those participating in the conversation. We try to gather our emotions, heart, and mind together. And when this shared heart and shared mind, that is, the feelings and thoughts that typify an individual are united, this creates one unified image that is called a “crowd” or a “group”; otherwise this is not even a crowd.

In our world we consider a crowd to be a mob that gathers in the town square to beat someone. It’s very easy to manage an average crowd. This is not so in the integral society. In this group of people, clear protection appears. In fact, no external force can do anything to them because they rise to another level, working at another frequency.

When people create a unified image, all of our usual earthy stereotypes, disturbances, and influences don’t affect them—they have another level of perception.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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Transmission Of Thoughts

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: It is known that thoughts can be transmitted over distance. According to scientific research, if 10% of people out of the collective whole think or feel a certain way, then this will spread like a virus to the rest.

Answer: This is in regard to egoistic thoughts. Naturally, it can be made so that people will begin to sense whatever it is that you discuss and think about in your circles, even if they don’t know or hear anything about it. They simply begin to hear.

This is usually what happens with all thoughts—people begin to have a hunch. What we discuss now, they will begin to hear a few months later through different media sources or from people on the street.

This happens due to the fact that we exist in a single system. However, this doesn’t mean people will become interested in what they hear. They will come to it gradually, actively advancing forward. A very long period of their development still needs to take place, and this is actually what we are seeing.

Transmission of thoughts in the world, even if it stems from various egoistic motives, is a natural process that in reality, always has had its place.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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Succeed For The Common Good And Not At The Expense Of Others

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person can reach the general love for all of humanity, all of nature, and all of reality from the love of friends. Then, he sees that our world also takes on a form in which there are only attributes, where there is no matter, but only a force. This force is the only thing that operates in the world in its different variations.

There is no separate corporeal and spiritual world, but only one world. If a person looks at himself and at the entire world correctly, he understands that there is nothing that was created against him, that everything was created only for the benefit of the connection between us and the ascent to mutual bestowal, connection.

So from the love of friends we reach the love of the Creator, that is, the love of all of reality—the desire to bring the Creator contentment. To bestow upon the Creator means to bestow upon everyone. The term “together” stands for the Creator. A person serves all the created beings and the inner force that created them and enlivens them, and through them he bestows upon their Maker who exists in them.

Therefore, we see that the wisdom of Kabbalah is a very practical method. We can study it as a theory for many years and not advance at all. The main thing is the actual implementation, and it can be implemented only in the connection between us.

So, when we gather in these conventions, it allows us to connect and absorb the general spirit. The amount of people coming together helps us to reach a great intensity. They don’t necessarily have to be old students with great experience. The main thing is the general force when each one wants to exit himself and enter the other, to “pour” himself outward, and burst into their arms. Thus, he opens his perception to the world and begins to discover nature, regardless of his five physical senses.

There is a special quality in the connection between the friends: Since their thoughts and opinions are conveyed from one another thanks to their adhesion, everyone is incorporated in the forces of the other, in his attributes and his perspective. Thanks to the general incorporation, each one receives the power of the whole group.

Every individual is small and weak with limited powers. But everything is arranged so that if he is incorporated in the group, which wasn’t given to him by chance, he completes himself through it. This is enough in order to fully feel the whole spiritual world. None of us can feel spirituality, but through the connection, everyone can acquire it.

Of course, a person has a chance to acquire a great spiritual desire in a big group. It is easier to do so because it is easier to annul oneself before a big society when many people influence a person. We must pressure only a little, and it can happen. We will be able to transcend ourselves and attain the upper reality in the incorporation between us. I do hope that we will fulfill that and together discover the true reality in which we are living.

It isn’t mysticism but a science, a higher psychology. By revealing the upper world, we will discover the upper laws of nature that modern physics only now is getting close to. Modern physics is on the borderline of matter, where the corporeal laws disappear, and this is why physicists cannot discover what is above time, motion, and place. We, however, will reveal all of this since our senses will be ready for that. Then, we will discover how we should behave correctly in our world and how to control our fate. We will have the key to success, not at the expense of others, but for the benefit of everyone!
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From a Talk on The Importance of Gathering 5/10/2013

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This Strange Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Alexei Chulichkov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences): “The form of our notions about the world is constantly changing. Speculative ancient models of the Universe were replaced with the medieval idea of the divine creation of the world. In modern times, there emerged a new method of understanding Nature, which created the illusion that human reason is omnipotent.

“However on a scale that is much different from what a person is used to, in the world of atomic or cosmic phenomena, our mind cannot grasp the observed because at the heart of the observed reality there is an invisible quantum reality, which becomes visible to the extent of interaction between the observed and the observer. The study of quantum reality has led to the realization of a unified picture of the world and its relationship with human consciousness.

“We are in the process of rethinking the world and human being, of forming a new vision of reality – everything that exists (human, society, and nature) is a single system, a single unit.”

My Comment: It is encouraging to read what Kabbalah has been saying for thousands of years. Based on the realization of a new picture of the world, there is a need to bring society to being one general kind, to the similarity of the whole system. This is the subject of the method of “Integral Upbringing.” After all, only in the balanced system will we be able to feel that we exist in an eternal perfect state.
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Draw A New World Inside You

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Who is entitled to cut threads that connect us with this world so that we can be born into spirituality?

Answer: Only you! It has to be done voluntarily!

We need a preparation period only to disconnect from our previous step, exit the “uterus,” and then, without having solid ground under our feet, start measuring ourselves, our actions, and our further steps using a qualitatively different tool that doesn’t include such parameters as “time” (now-then, today-tomorrow, etc.), “accumulation of goods,” “superiority over others,” or “security.”

All properties that define egoism (time, space, past, future, present, fulfillment, emptiness, and so on) disappear. They simply cease to exist. We enter a different space, another matrix, a different dimension that carries completely different values, absolutely divergent definitions, where everything is weighed on a different type of scale. Our attitude to everything around changes dramatically.

We don’t see any parallels in this world since our observations of the still, vegetative, and animate nature allow us to watch only  different levels of egoism that outline each of these layers. Animals are more egoistic than other levels of nature, and that’s why they move faster, provide nourishment, reproduce, and so on. Plants have less egoism, while the still nature is even less egoistic. And yet all of them are constructed to consume, absorb, gain, captivate, and retain.

But here everything is directed towards the opposite. And we can’t grasp this “opposite.” This is not just the same absolute value, but actually a minus sign.

After all, we build the world in our sensations, in our values and definitions: This is bigger, this is smaller, this influences me better, and this affects me worse. This is how the world is reflected in my egoism while, in reality, the world doesn’t exist. All these spaces, objects, visions, sensations, relations that something is closer, farther, better, or worse—all of it is formed in my egoism in particular.

If it disappears for me, I begin to define everything in relation to another property: the property of bestowal. That is, I start drawing within myself a new world out of absence.
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From KabTV’s “Mysteries of the Eternal Book,” 2/18/13

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