Now we are reading The Book of Zohar. How can I tie this text with the Light that Reforms, with the changes I have to feel that I go through, and by them to reach the goal of creation? How can I feel that? What do I have to do when I read or listen to The Zohar?

Actually I am required to find an inner expression to what the authors of The Zohar say. In what desires, in what feelings, in what internal states or changes do I see the fulfillment of what I read about in the book? A person is a small world. All the worlds are in a person. All these states, all these patterns are already inside me. I only need to reveal them; I want to see them. I want to reveal in me what we read about in The Zohar.

Question: Does it mean that I must always look inside myself and try to find the inner reactions to what we read about? But we always try to incorporate in others and to feel them.

Answer: Of course, everyone is in you, and you also see us inside you. The same system by which you reveal everything, including the Creator is in you.

Question: I can understand it in my mind…

Answer: No, it has to be in your feelings. Gradually you will feel that everything is inside you; there is nothing on the outside. All this resistance, all the conflicts between me and what is on the outside is gradually erased, this disparity, this distance is emotional. It disappears.

The more we speak about the fact that what is external to me is increasingly more important for me, all the way to “love thy friend as thyself,” when your friend who is external to you becomes more important to you than yourself, the more you erase the distance and you advance towards the state in which what is external and what is internal become the same for you or close to that. You begin to perceive reality in a more realistic way and that it is inside you.

Where does this perception come from? From the fact that what is on the outside becomes emotionally closer to what is inside. This is where the feeling that all of reality is internal comes from. This is how a mother feels her child inside her, although he is actually on the outside. Therefore, first he is in her womb and then he comes out.

These are the phases of our development. But it doesn’t mean that he is getting further from her. On the contrary, a person grows, gives birth to children, and what is external seems to exist internally too. In fact there is no internality and externality, everything becomes one whole.

Here we have to overcome an emotional barrier, so that I will feel that what is on the outside is equal to what is on the inside. Then I will discover that all of reality is inside me. It isn’t in our mind but in our feelings. The mind is already a result of this correction.
[92907]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/12, The Zohar

Related Material:
Focusing On The True Reality
“Holy” Means To Bestow
Under The Upper Providence

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Perception, Q&A, Zohar - No Comments →

Question: Sometimes there is a feeling in the group that we all understand and feel a certain phenomenon, but suddenly we feel fogginess in our minds and thoughts, a kind of stupor, and there is the feeling that we develop very slowly. Why is that?

Answer: Why do we constantly forget our goal while in the group, why do we connect and then it all disappears, why do the pictures of the world conceal the real picture in which we should see that everything around us is our desire and that we have to connect in order to discover the Creator in it? Why do we detach ourselves from the true picture of the world and the mirage and imaginary picture that we see conceal spirituality from us? Why is our world stronger than the spiritual world?

It is all because you haven’t focused yourself together with the group on connection.

If you make efforts by yourself, you cannot attain anything by that, you can only succeed when we mutually help one another so that the picture of connection will become a spiritual picture, that it will acquire life, acquire Light in it, and will show us that it is the only true picture of the world.

The external picture that you now see will suddenly lose its intensity and its influence on you and will gradually fade. You would feel that everything that is happening here is like a dream. I drive somewhere, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, go somewhere, all this suddenly begins to fade. You suddenly begin to see that it all stems from your attributes and it stops being so real, clear, and alive and becomes blurry and foggy.

The same picture that is focused on connection, which you imagined before, now becomes real and in it you discover new states. It is this picture that becomes the important one, which means that you begin to feel where the signals are coming from, the Providence, the higher level.

Thus you gradually change one attribute for another.
[92462]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

Related Material:
Collecting The Splinters Of Perception
On The Way To Infinite Adhesion
Progressive Double Vision

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Suppose people have been playing for a while and in the process of integral study, humanity changes. Sitting somewhere in a cave is a hermit who doesn’t know about that, how can we advance without him?

Answer: It makes no difference. He will feel it. Distance does not matter.

Question: Will he feel it and run to that group?

Answer: He will connect to the world according to his state and his position. He doesn’t have to run anywhere, but can continue to live on a desert island, or in the tundra, or in a cave in the Himalayas, but he will feel that the world is changing according to the changes in him. After all, the Light operates on all of humanity. If there is a critical mass, everyone feels the changes.
[91980]
From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 10/3/12

Related Material:
A New Paradigm Of The Universe
Every Person Will Attain Infinity
A Critical Mass Of The Collective Soul

Filed under: Group Work, Integral Upbringing, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

Filed under: Laitman Unplugged, Perception - No Comments →

Question: Where is a person’s desire located: in the body, outside of it, in the air, or next to the person?

Answer: There are no desires in the body at all. We can replace every single organ in one’s body, make as many transplants as we want, but we won’t impact the human in that body whatsoever.

When half a century ago Professor Barnard from South Africa made the first heart transplant ever, everybody worried: “What will happen with the patient? What will he feel afterwards?” Nothing at all! The heart is simply a mechanism that pumps blood, nothing more than that.

Even if we make a brain transplant, nothing will change. Our brain is not a thinking unit; it doesn’t form thoughts. It’s only a conductor that connects us with the universal field of reason. Our desires also exist in the same field, and not in our bodies. Our body seemingly exists in that field and merely perceives it. A little induction brought upon us is in fact life that we sense.

Question: In other words, in the integral reason, when a person enters the general field of love, he starts to use his conductor by all 100% and thus develops it further?

Answer: Yes, but it will be not the same brain that we currently have!

We only have a tool similar to an induction coil that picks up the field outside and it triggers certain currents in it. And what we feel is these currents, those of them that we are able to recognize, master, and be aware of. In reality, however, the field that surrounds us is tremendously powerful and intense.

Question: By intensifying our “coil” by 100%, do we expand our awareness?

Answer: It expands only when we connect with others. So, if we want to “launch” ourselves and turn into a reliable “solenoid,” we have to penetrate into and acquire other people’s desires, to contemplate and feel how we can get closer to others and help them get closer to each other.
[92157]
From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 11/3/12

Related Material:
Where Is The Microchip Of The Soul Within Me?
Head And Body – Thought And Action
In-Between The Heart And The Mind

Filed under: Integral Upbringing, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: How can we tune ourselves to one force, to one Light, and not get off this path?

Answer: This is possible only by mutual adhesion of the friends who want to clarify everything only with regard to the connection between them. All of the Torah is the history of this connection and nothing but that.

Gradually we get to know the desire to receive which at first seems to be good; this is called the “seven years of satiety” in Egypt. Then we discover that our desire is bad. This is evidenced by the cities of Pithom and Ramses. The position of the ego doesn’t change, and if you identify with it, you live a comfortable life. But if you identify with Israel, it is bad, since the point that doesn’t let you rest appears and forces you to detach yourself from the previous attitude. Thus you don’t change the reality, but only divide it and prolong it according to your ego or according to the Light.

First you determine that the desires and the thoughts that cut you off from your property are bad. This approach is called “the opinion of the landlords.” Then the evil becomes something that cuts you off from the Creator and this is called “the opinion of the Torah.” These two opinions are opposite from one another, and the Torah tells us how a person moves from one world into another. If a person determines that everything has to exist within the desire to receive, it is a state called “this world,” which means the current level. From this point a person moves into the “next world,” to the next state in which everything has to exist in the Creator.

The story of the exodus from Egypt is the general story that repeats time after time, each time in a different quality, on a new level of perception that reveals deeper layers and exposes smaller details and a more accurate assessment. In this story we leave Egypt, but we are still quite far from the end point. Egypt returns to us during the wandering in the desert. In other words, it returns to us on a higher level as you see and live the “movie,” but in “higher resolution.” This is in addition to different wars and problems. Everything returns and rediscovers finer details of our clarification.

Everything always revolves in a triangle: “I—the group—the Creator.” We clarify the point of unity, the adhesion between the group and me. I am the vessel and the Creator is the filling. Then we examine what disturbs us and what helps us. We constantly clarify this; we clarify the necessary attributes every second, in order to correct them and to connect them. By that we ascend the spiritual ladder. So if you are looking for the most efficient way, there is only one place you should focus on.
[92232]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/12, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Egypt: Abundance and Emptiness
The Decline Of Egoistic Development
The Time Has Come To Complete Our History

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Kabbalah predicts absolutely everything in the development of human history. What does it say about the current millennium?

Answer: Kabbalah predicts everything if I know in advance the general system, its motion, because everything occurs deterministically in it; that is, there are forces that interact according to a particular program, and I study this program.

The program exists; it is perfect, complete. And while I do not even know it completely because I have not reached this level to see it entirely, I can already foresee something, predict.

So it is in our world. If I have learned some laws of nature, for example, certain weather conditions, then I can calculate all the weather conditions and say with some degree of probability that during this week it might rain, or snow, or be sunny, or cloudy. Can I predict this? Yes. That is, on the basis of previous studies and the current state, I can predict the future state. This is already the knowledge of laws. Of course, this is not the knowledge of the absolute law, when there is a formula before me and I clearly see what and how, but I can forecast something approximately. It is the same thing with Kabbalah. We deal with the system.

Once I studied Bio-cybernetics; it is absolutely the same. This is the same system. I also work with the forces that affect our world. If I know these forces, know the nature of this world, then I can predict ahead of time, that is, calculate in advance how they come into contact with each other over time, and what the result would be. There is no surprise.

When we turn something on or off for a young child, it is a miracle to him, that is, we show him something he does not understand, but for us it is not a miracle because we know what we’re doing. So it is with Kabbalah.

Rising to the next level of understanding, knowledge, you see what happens, and it becomes work for you because in principle a Kabbalist is a person who is engaged not only in study but in the practical application of the management systems, the practical implementation of the program of development of the world.
[92309]
From the Georgia Convention 11/05/12, Lesson 1 

Related Material:
Everyone’s Duty
The Group Is The Ground For The Revelation Of Nature’s Secrets
The Next Phase Of Human Development

Filed under: Conventions, Perception, Q&A, Science - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, Preface to The Book of Zohar, Item 38: …there are three categories of man (Adam) in the Sefirot: Adam of Beria, Adam of Yetzira, and Adam of Assiya.

There is a “rock” called a “desire to be pleased.” The “rock” has a shape that is somewhat similar to the Creator. It explains the term “Adam,” meaning similar (Domeh) to the Creator.

We are talking here about the forms and degrees of similarity to the Creator. At any level, a Partzuf is always called “Adam.” Inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels also represent various forms of Adam. There’s nothing at all that’s not a part of the state named Adam except the authentic amorphous matter of the desire. The three prior levels (animate, vegetative and animate) serve as a way of advancement to the speaking (human) level. Ultimately, these levels are the ones that give “shape” to the human level.

The matter of the universe, the Earth’s material flora and fauna altogether constitute a pyramid; at the top of the pyramid is man. So, they all are included in Man, therefore they ascend and descend together with man.

When we perceive reality correctly, it becomes obvious that the entire material of creation is a part of man. There’s nothing outside us; even cosmic objects are only another form of our desire to receive.

From this we see that the desire to receive has no boundaries. A myriad of stars, gigantic nebulae, everything is inside us, in our perception. To the extent of our growth, we discern in the depths of our desire to receive and find a elementary particles and the whole galaxy. There is nothing new under the sun; everything has already been created, but while we are still “on earth”, meaning in the desire to receive, we keep revealing new details of this marvelous picture.
[92005]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/2/12, Preface to The Book of Zohar

Related Material:
Growing On The Creator’s Supplements
Everything Comes From The Earth, But Depends On Man
The Point Between Acceleration And A Jump

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Perception - 1 Comment →

A replica of the last shattered spiritual level is revealed in us as the corporeal world, which we feel with our five senses. At the same time both matter and the senses are imaginary, and they depict spiritual contours, like a picture on a wall. The picture is old, but it isn’t real. Reality is there behind the wall and there is only a projection on the wall.

People watch movies and experience different feelings, is it real or not? These are just reactions and impressions. It is as if we are living in a movie that is being projected to us.

But besides the movie, I don’t see anything and don’t know anything. My whole life takes place in it and goes through it and so all my feelings reflect this movie. My sight, my hearing, my sense of smell, and touch are all reflected in this movie.

Today we are being shown three-dimensional films that present an even greater reality. It is no secret that a person can be placed in a certain sphere and be shown that it is his life; if he gets used to his tiny world, it would be hard to prove to him that there is an external reality, “Here there are human beings, and here is the earth, and here are the stars, everything is in its place. …” He doesn’t leave the limits of this sphere in his senses. For him there is nothing beyond the limits of his current feelings. He doesn’t feel a deficiency for something in some extra sense or that his reality is inferior.

Today, I too, by using my five senses, perceive only what is inside my sphere. Where is the extra sense, a vessel that cannot be filled by anything that is here, no matter how hard you try? The extra deficiency is called a “point in the heart” (•) and it is aimed at what is outside our universe. When a person feels this desire, he doesn’t find his place, he begins to search and eventually he finds us. Our goal is to connect him with the outside world. He needs to break out, outside the “fence” and get rid of it.

The whole point is that our sphere is built as a replica of the upper world, and they are similar. We should only use what is here correctly. I take my spark, the point in the heart, and insert it into the mutual relations with the friends, as if I want to love them. Then I see that I actually don’t want that, but the deficiency has already been created, and the spark already has a direction and I can demand correction.

So the main thing is to insert my spark into the “playing field” and to force myself to play according to the rules. By this game I acquire a real mind and the right deficiency. Thus from a demo model, from a parallel similar form, I can move on to the real world.

This world is merely an imaginary “playing field” and only my spark is real. This tiny “point in the heart” is a Godly part from Above, and if I use it correctly in the game, I succeed and I grow.
[92099]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/4/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

Related Material:
Jumping Out Of Your Skin
A Game Of A Higher State: Everyone Plays Off-Key At First
125 Degrees Of Drawing Closer To The Light

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Perception - No Comments →

In the News (from ScienceDaily): “That snake heading towards you may be further away than it appears. Fear can skew our perception of approaching objects, causing us to underestimate the distance of a threatening one, finds a study published in Current Biology.

“’Our results show that emotion and perception are not fully dissociable in the mind,’ says Emory psychologist Stella Lourenco, co-author of the study. ‘Fear can alter even basic aspects of how we perceive the world around us. This has clear implications for understanding clinical phobias.’ …

“People generally have a well-developed sense for when objects heading towards them will make contact, including a split-second cushion for dodging or blocking the object, if necessary. The researchers set up an experiment to test the effect of fear on the accuracy of that skill. …

“The participants tended to underestimate the collision time for images of threatening objects, such as a snake or spider, as compared to non-threatening images, such as a rabbit or butterfly.

The results challenge the traditional view of looming, as a purely optical cue to object approach. “’We’re showing that what the object is affects how we perceive looming. If we’re afraid of something, we perceive it as making contact sooner,’ Longo says.

“’Even more striking,’ Lourenco adds, ‘it is possible to predict how much a participant will underestimate the collision time of an object by assessing the amount of fear they have for that object. The more fearful someone reported feeling of spiders, for example, the more they underestimated time-to-collision for a looming spider. That makes adaptive sense: If an object is dangerous, it’s better to swerve a half-second too soon than a half-second too late.’”

My Comment: Feeling stems from the desire to get pleasure; this is our essence, and that is why the space that we feel is a function of our relation to it, to what we find in it. We see only what we want to see either because of joy or because of fear. If the object does not make any impression on us, we do not see it. The other sense organs function likewise. It is only through the additional opportunity of relating to the world through the property of bestowal that we reveal an additional part of the world—the upper world, the opposite of ours.
[92113]

Related Material:
A Deadlock With A Way Out
The Perception Of Life: A Dream Or Reality?
Top British Scientist: “The World We See Is Make-Believe”

Filed under: Perception - No Comments →