Snap Out Of Everything Earthly! – Laitman Unplugged
Posted on January 7th, 2013
Question: In the article “Body and Soul” Baal HaSulam says that everything, whether it is concealed or revealed is in a person’s consciousness. What is hidden from me today will be revealed tomorrow. What is “concealed” from us now during the preparation phase?
Answer: First, it doesn’t refer to some abstract concept of the unknown, but a reality that actually exists but which we cannot study for the time being. I know that it exists and I know that it is hidden from me. In other words, it is as if the Creator is behind a “curtain” according to my calculations and all my experience.
It is also a kind of knowledge, but not a clear fact yet, for which I can testify and present to others. I have some elements, some proof, but the essence hasn’t yet been revealed. Baal HaSulam says in this article that the knowledge that is not fully part of our consciousness yet is “concealed.” He speaks about knowledge here and not about philosophy.
Experiments with the collider and particle accelerators, for example, enable physicists to come up with different theories about the structure of the micro cosmos. Its components are still unknown, but the data they have received allows them to come up with hypotheses and discuss these matters, since it is already clear: there is something behind this “curtain.” The facts may be a bit different than the theories and even opposite from the scientific hypotheses, but this approach is perfectly “legitimate.”
In our case, the “point in the heart” says to a person: “There is some force that controls everything, that encompasses everything, and that closes everything in one, and I want to discover it.” This desire already builds some kind of model of what we are looking for—the meaning of life, its source, its reasons, and its plan, “who is turning me around, who is managing me and everything around me?” A person guesses, he “senses” the Creator, and so he reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah, in order to get an answer to the question that has already been evoked in him. On the other hand, those who don’t have this question regard the wisdom of Kabbalah as mere speculation.
Later we will discover that the Creator is the force of connection, and that there is nothing but unity, and that it is through unity that all the other forces that make up our reality are revealed.
As for studying the unknown, we don’t examine the Creator but His actions. The wisdom of Kabbalah puts this principle very clearly: “From Your actions we shall know You.” We never speak about the Creator, since it is already an abstract form, and essence, which means something that it is unattainable. Our research refers to a form that is dressed in matter. This form is actually the Creator (Boreh) for us, literally “Come and see” (Bo – Reh). I am the matter, and the form that dresses in me is Him. I become increasingly more similar to the Creator and He is revealed in me, “dresses” in me.
Question: How do I study His actions?
Answer: On yourself. This is all our work. But first we have to receive His forms, His “fingerprints,” and prepare a place inside for it, correcting everything that needs to be corrected, and then receive the form of bestowal and pass on this attitude to those around you, to the friends. This is the form of the Creator that you study, and by that you study Him, which means that you attain what bestowal is, unity.
Question: But today I cannot attribute the Creator’s actions to Him.
Answer: In research a negative result is also a result. The negation in this case is the preparation for the revelation of the Creator. You reject Him and don’t accept His existence—that’s the way it should be. Everything is attained by its oppositeness.
[97069]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”
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Question: As part of my job, I have been in contact with several professors lately and among other things we speak about Kabbalah. I must say that they understand the principles, but they don’t believe.
Answer: True. They have a rational approach. “We have studied so much about our world by different sciences that the picture is clear on the whole. But here this guy who doesn’t seem ‘mad’ comes along and starts talking about some concept that we are not sure where he brings it from. He says that this is the basis of all sciences and he ties everything to Lights and vessels.”
“We don’t know anything about this. We don’t see any evidence of what he tells us about. His explanations may well sound very logical, but he establishes his wisdom on a virtual assumption. ‘Let’s suppose that it is so,’ he says, and on this assumption he bases a whole perfect philosophy.”
“But why should we accept it as a science, if according to our standards it is not a science? A science is what can be studied and thought about. He is saying that his science only requires living according to it and changing internally. We’ve never heard about anything like that. What does it mean ‘to change human nature’? We have a culture, and education, we teach people to be kind, empathic; what could be better? What does this have to do with science?”
Scientists cannot acknowledge the relativity of their perception. They don’t understand that the changes in a person change his reality since it is all created by internal responses.
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this accurate mutual connection; to the extent that I change myself, the world that I feel changes. This is the key formula that has a fixed coefficient and a changing parameter that reflects the vessels, my desires, my sensitivity, my intentions, my thoughts, etc.; they change and then the world changes.
But scientists are not ready for this. They lack a new desire that pulls them out of this world. If they haven’t developed to reach it, they will not listen. One has to be sensitive not only to worldly phenomena but also to phenomena of the spiritual world.
Question: So what does that mean? That intelligent people, scholars, cannot understand us?
Answer: They are actually the most “resistant” since they are sure that they already have a solid foundation.
Question: So who can we turn to then?
Answer: There is a Kabbalistic fable about a man named Ptachiya who came to a town and took all the “empty” people to the desert. After all, if the new question about the taste of life is evoked in a person he feels that he is miserable and empty.
However, if a person doesn’t feel that, if he has no vessel, no desire that matches it, it means that he hasn’t reached a certain level of perception.
We don’t stop disseminating, of course, but only a person who has a point in the heart can hear the message of the wisdom of Kabbalah. The alternative is to feel that you are a beaten animal that has nowhere to run from the endless blows that hit it. Then it will be ready to follow us, just to get rid of the troubles.
[97078]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/13, “Body and Soul”
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Baal HaSulam, “Body and Soul”: And they depict the body as an electronic machine with wires that stretch from the body to the brain, and operate by encounters with external things.
Also, they send their sensations of pain or pleasure to the brain, and the brain instructs the organ what to do.
Question: Is everything the body feels, is all our life actually like a “movie” that is being projected to it?
Answer: There are two approaches that are integrated here, the subjective and the objective. On the whole, if you already see, if you perceive a certain picture of the world, you cannot erase it and say that it is your imagination. It may be your imagination, but this “imagination” is our life and we have to accept it as a fact.
Question: So where is the truth?
Answer: There is no truth. Everything is relative with regard to a person. There are seven billion people on earth and each one has his own truth. After all, we don’t have an absolute scale according to which we can measure the truth. We are all hanging in space, just like earth, just like the whole universe; who knows where he is “hanging?” You are alive now, but in a moment you may be dead, and who is controlling this? In whose hands are the strings?
In our current state, when there are no basic standards, we cannot measure things accurately. We have established many systems and measuring units, which are relative: the Greenwich meridian, a kilogram, a meter, a watt, an ohm, but these are relative units for comparative measurements. They only confirm the fact that actually there is nothing we can hold on to and that we cannot actually measure anything.
We don’t know what the truth is, and we agree on a certain framework of nominal comparisons since we need a common language in order to lead a normal life. Otherwise, how would we be able to keep the connection between us and to live off one another? So there is no truth. No one needs it. If people discover something that is absolute, I would have to accept it as a fact, and I prefer my own “truth.” It is true that we can reach absolute values, but our ego doesn’t let us do that, and so we are immersed in relativity and instability.
We have to get used to this state and to accept it, to accept it as a fact. It is normal to show that I have changed with regard to yesterday. A person who advances understands that nothing is certain and stable. If what was good yesterday also seems good today, it means that I am “still,” not even on the “vegetative” level, but on the level of “still nature.” On the “speaking” level, however, I see “an opposite world” each day. After all, every level is opposite from the one that preceded it.
On the spiritual path, I don’t simply add new things to what already exists; I am transforming each time and there is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no need to be an “indestructible rock”; we are all constantly changing, which is good. Only small children who are constantly restless and uneasy can grow.
Well, we cannot determine that anything is absolute, and so we have to believe that “a judge only has what his eyes can see,” and to accept this picture as real. There is only one truth—that there is nothing stable, and that everything changes with regard to a person.
[96921]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12, “Body and Soul”
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We read so much from different Kabbalistic sources, we see ourselves and the world in different potential situations, and it seems that correction is a very complex and difficult thing which is practically impossible.
That’s the way it seems until a person understands that all he has to do is to check for and to identify the corruptions as much as he can and ask for their correction. We don’t have to think about how they will be corrected since we can never understand and even imagine what state will come instead of the corrupt state. We only have to want to correct each and every state.
Our problem is only in what we mean by the concept correction. Suppose I have a car and I see different malfunctions in it: There is flat tire, a problem in a piston, or in some other part. My request should be not about fixing the car, but about using it. Then I will discover that it is fixed.
We have to correct our intention and not the action. This is what we forget, because we want to see the corrected state. But things can be corrected only according to how we can and want to use it correctly, in the right direction, in the right action. Otherwise…the car is on the edge of a cliff, and I have to say in which direction I want to drive it. It will remain out of order unless I choose the right direction, because we “rise in Holiness and not lower in Holiness.” That’s the only way!
It is very important to know this: We don’t correct the action but the intention. This is a totally different level of perception; it is as if I choose different glasses in order to look at life, in the derivative. If this is how I begin to see things, then the correction itself is not difficult any more and is not a problem at all, since it isn’t my responsibility. I only have to choose how to use correctly what is being corrected. It says: “make you desire His desire”; if my intentions in using this part of the desire are absolutely identical to the Creator’s intentions, then it is corrected immediately; the Light completes everything.
To a certain extent this is a wonder. Look at it this way and it will help you differentiate between the action and the intention, since this is a mistake that constantly drags us to actions and constantly takes us to a plane that is totally irrelevant for us, to a corporeal plane and not to the “human” level. The “human” level is similar to the Creator, and if it is similar, then the Host and I are at the table and the table is only the reason for being connected to one another. The main thing is the intention, the relations between us and not all the delicacies on the table.
So don’t look at the world as something that is difficult to correct. On the contrary, sensitivity in identifying what needs to be corrected, that must be corrected on my part, is the whole problem.
[96984]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 01/01/13, The Zohar
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Question: What does it mean to be impressed by the Creator?
Answer: To be impressed by the greatness of the Creator means to be impressed by His creation since we are not able to grasp Him Himself. It is “from Your actions we will know You.”
You are impressed by everything that you discover within you and surrounding you, in all of reality, that in the meantime you don’t connect to yourself and don’t feel that it is you yourself. You are shown only your inner world in a kind of external mirror so that you will study it better. We need to thank the Creator that He gives us the opportunity to see our inner pictures from the outside, and in this way can learn to know ourselves.
If you don’t connect together with the friends, the teacher, and the Creator, then, for certain, you are degrading them. It occurs automatically. If the importance of the Rav, the group, each of the friends, and the Creator aren’t completely equal for you, as something above you, given to you so that you understand yourself and the reality in which you exist, then it turns out that you degrade them.
You can’t just value the Creator. It isn’t the Creator if you don’t connect Him to the teacher, the group, the studies, and to all the components of this concept, the “Creator.” The main thing is to connect all the factors together; otherwise, it is impossible to talk about anything that is real and concrete.
“There is none else beside Him” signifies that all the rest, except for the single point inside me through which I am able to research the reality, is the Creator. And “the point of breakage” of mine that is separated from me was given to me so that by using this breakage, this special act of the Creator, I will get to know myself and Him.
We are both separated by the attribute of severance, purposefully created by the Creator. And only this one point doesn’t belong to the Creator, so that I will invert it into a point of adhesion.
And when I begin to work on this point of separation between us, it suddenly turns into five worlds, a black abyss that I constantly try to skip over. To skip, means to connect above this abyss that separates between us.
[96988]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Nothing in the spiritual world is valued by its quantity, and so the smallest detail is as important as the greatest detail. Everything depends only on how things are valued in a person’s heart. We always see the same reality before us. The extent that it’s revealed to us (whether more or less) depends upon our perception, to what extent we can develop and refine our spiritual vessels and make them precise and delicate, so that they can detect the smallest discernments.
Reality itself, however, never changes. It’s said, “There is no partiality in spirituality.” Therefore, great and small only seem that way to me according to the scale of whether I am looking at it through my near-sighted eyes or whether I am wearing glasses, or using binoculars, or even a telescope. This means that everything depends upon my vessels of perception, on the desires, and to what extent I enlarge and correct them.
Everything depends on my scale. So it makes no difference whether it’s a small or a great thing: If I focus on the right goal, if I only worry about attaining the feeling of the Creator’s greatness that leads me forward, if I constantly develop it and respect it, by not letting myself disrespect it or forgetting it, then by that I will necessarily advance in the right direction towards the goal.
[96914]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/31/12
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Question: What is the difference between a person who overcomes the evil that is revealed in him through his efforts and the person who doesn’t make efforts in order to overcome and waits until the suffering accumulates to the extent that in the end it will force him to move from his place?
Answer: By a person making his own efforts, he saves himself from suffering and saves time. The sufferings that were spared multiplied by the time he saved gives a huge advantage according to the intensity of the suffering that he avoided. And with all of that, one needs to multiply by another factor included in this formula, the Creator. Through this state He gives you the opportunity for contact with Him, but you degrade the opportunity and don’t go toward the connection.
All of these opportunities that you degraded and didn’t realize accumulate with you as additional Aviut (coarseness/thickness) and as punishment since you didn’t want to pay attention to the fact that it was a call that came from the Creator. Rather, you turned it into a regular problem, which came from relatives or from a friend that insulted you.
You didn’t see that the Creator sent His messenger to you, and according to your level, you should have recognized it. So what do you suggest to do with yourself in this situation? We are forced to give another few blows, pinches, so that you will feel that it isn’t by accident that all these people are surrounding you, but everything comes from the Creator since there is none else besides Him.
It’s because you are in a state of unconsciousness and don’t feel it. You need to be brought back to consciousness so that you will be able to rise to the next level. Each level, except your relationship, includes the relationship with the Creator: “Israel, the Torah and the Creator are One.” But if you don’t pay attention that everything is connected to the Creator, that from the beginning everything came from Him and in the end will return to Him, then you will not complete your clarification.
Thus, you need to see the entire world as angels—whether good or bad, meaning with pleasant sensations and unpleasant sensations—directing you towards the right path. They can be relatives or your children, those who touch your heart, or they can be total strangers, or it can be some event in the world.
No matter what form it comes to you—via your wife, your children, your friends, the police, your manager at work, health problems, the weather, or the news—you must accept it as different manifestations of the Creator. It is He who stands before you and asks: “Well, when are you coming to Me? I so want to embrace you! Come climb my mountain already!” However, you turn your back on Him and look down at your feet. You don’t pay attention that the entire world is the language of the Creator who is talking to you.
[96879]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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Question: How can I increase my awareness of the fact that there is none else besides Him, and at the same time not turn it into mysticism?
Answer: Only by the environment! If a person is withdrawn, he doesn’t see the right picture. Only the environment can reset him and direct him to the right perception so that he’ll see every revelation as a sign from Above but not become a mystic who sees signs of mysticism everywhere.
It’s about “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator” that connect at one point so that they give me the right direction. I connect everything to one path on which I want to reach adhesion with the Creator, and according to it, I clarify everything that takes place inside me and around me according to the level of importance in their relation to adhesion. Everything has to end in adhesion, which means in the Creator.
There is only one way to check if this is right: Does my action go through the group and lead to a greater connection in which I hope to discover the Creator. It has to be incorporated in this system accurately and clearly, like the last piece that is missing in a jigsaw puzzle that makes the picture whole and infinite once it’s in its place.
There is nothing but the Light and a vessel. We are the vessel and the Creator is the Light. This Light comes to us through a kind of a filter, which is this whole world, different forms and manners. But in fact, it’s all the Creator’s actions and influences.
I perceive everything you are saying to me now as the Creator’s attitude towards me, who thus wants to evoke me and to add something to me. “There is none else besides Him” means that the Creator operates through everyone. It seems to me that they exist in this world, and so I have to treat them from this point of view; for this reason, we reach the love of the Creator through the love of the created beings.
But through the group you have a different account compared to the rest of the world. It is because the Creator presents His friendly attitude through the group, while through the world He usually presents the negative attitude. These two attitudes direct you to the goal. Through the group, you get sympathy, support and understanding. By the group you acquire another force; it’s as if the Creator is with you.
A group is part of the Creator that is always with you; while the world is part of the Creator that seems to be against you. Eventually, however, all this has to unite into one whole.
[96876]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”
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When people were closer to nature, they felt nature in such a form that looks almost mystical to us. But actually real phenomena of nature were revealed to them. For example, tribes in the Amazon feel the forest much better than we do; they smell its scents from miles away; they read signs and traces, and they can decipher all kinds of sounds.
After all, they don’t have anything else. A man lives in it; his life depends on it, and that’s why he increasingly develops his connection with the environment. According to the flight of the birds, according to the blowing of the wind, he knows many things. He connects together all of the still, vegetative, and animate nature and perceives it as one.
But we are the opposite. We shield ourselves from the environment. We close doors and windows just not to see the urban cacophony and not to hear the noise of the cars. As a result, we are blocking our vessels of perception. We are isolating ourselves from life and from the universe.
Question: But people often confuse between closeness to nature and something supernatural.
Answer: All of these are feelings, sensations, that we can develop in ourselves. There are people that can hold your hand and tell who you are and what your plans are. There are those that can predict the future; they read thoughts. These are natural sensations that we lost in the path of the development of civilization, and they are not some kind of “extrasensory perception.” Nature installed in man much sharper senses than the current feelings. And it leaves no doubt that there are no miracles.
[96789]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/12, “Body and Soul”
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