Entries in the 'Perception' Category

Life Is Change

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How is it possible to attain the true reality if a “researcher” and all his measuring tools keep on changing?

Answer: What difference does it make whether I investigate the world which is changing all the time, while I am not, or the world which is constant, while I am always changing? If neither changes, I will be unable to tell anything about the world since I won’t have the means for measuring it. After all, measurement is only possible between two changing parameters, on the basis of their relationship to each other.

I determine a relationship between them, and it becomes a unit of measurement for me. I use this unit to measure all the rest. There are two parameters unequal to each other, two points in space. I measure their relationship, which determines the difference between them, and accept it as a unit of measurement: for example, a degree of temperature or ten centimeters. Then I use this unit of measurement to measure all other occurrences.

I begin by saying that I found some sort of distinction. Now using it as a basis, I am going to measure all other distinctions between properties, forces, places in space, and desires. It doesn’t matter between what and what, but I always measure the difference, the changes. If there are no changes, nothing can be measured; I simply lose all sensations.

If no changes were happening now, the world would appear still to me. It would die, and I would lose all understanding, awareness, and sensation, as if nothing existed.

Our life is not an experience of some state, but a sensation of change from one state to another. And if the changes between states are called life, it turns out that I can have two forms of life: One is when life changes outside of me, and the other is when life changes inside of me.

If I assume that life goes on and changes outside of me, this is called life in this world. Life that changes inside of me is called spiritual life, the life of the future world. Life always means change; everything depends on where I notice it.
[42693]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/10/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Related Material:
A Simple Formula Of Reality
The Only Degree Of Your Freedom
Revealing The Giver Of Life

Growing On One’s Own Volition

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When I work in the group and search for the connection with the common net, I use my senses. Would making the senses more sensitive facilitate the formation of a sixth, spiritual sense?

Answer: We perceive the world with our animal senses in order for us to be free of spirituality, both in its positive and negative manifestations. Indeed, the evil inclination is just as spiritual as the good inclination. All of this is the Creator’s forces. The situation is intentionally arranged in a way that allows us to be free from spirituality and develop independently.

This is the preparation phase, intended for us to prepare an independent point. Afterwards, when we ascend above the Machsom into the spiritual space, this independence will manifest in us taking on the Creator’s quality, His form. This is why man is called “similar” to the Creator.

As for our present perception in the animal senses, it is merely the preparation to ensure that we become independent from the Creator. Upon revealing in practice that everything comes from Him, we can oppose it and sway ourselves on our own volition, and not because nature forces us.

It is written: “No matter how high one rises above others, the evil inclination rises above him.” We are always given an additional desire to resist, balk, and stubbornly hold our position before the Creator. Otherwise, we would simply “melt away,” having lost our very essence in spirituality.
[42895]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/12/2011, “Peace in the World”

Related Material:
Life Is Change
A Remarkable Journey Into The Unknown
The Accelerating Human

Kabbalah Is The Physics Of The Integral World

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe wisdom of Kabbalah is the physics of the integral world. What this integral world is all about, we don’t know. We attain only a tiny piece of it which we are able to perceive through the sensory organs of our physical world, similarly to all other animals.

On the other hand, unlike them, we have a more capable mind, greater desire, and hence we fit into the world a little bit better than regular beasts, while trying to take the most advantage of it. Yet, our sensory perception as based on our five sensory organs: vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch is much worse than theirs. They are quite better at sensing nature than we are.

Only our mind and ego are more advanced, and that is why we are greater than beasts and are more cruel and perverted. We can take advantage of this world that they are also aware of. However, in any case, we are able to perceive but a small part of reality.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to us our entire existence, the attainment of authentic reality. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the major difference between our limited perception of this tiny piece of reality and the ability to see a broader reality, as if to soar out of this narrow cage of our closed little world to the enormous and beautiful outer world, lies in knowing how not to make ourselves dependent on all kinds of changes, forces, and acts, but rather perceive one single force.

As soon as we start pulling this infinite number of forces, actions, chances, and thoughts, all of this surrounding mess, into one unified force more and more, it signifies that we are climbing the ladder of the worlds, until we reach the world of Infinity where there is, indeed, only one force and where all thoughts, desires, perceptions, predicaments, and actions, absolutely everything that was so confusing to me before, become unified. That’s when we attain that “there is none else besides Him,” this singular force, the Creator.
[42437]
From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011

Related Material:
The Law Of Adhesion With The Creator: 1 + 1 = 1
The Science That Studies The Self
How To Master The Creator’s Program

The Creator In The Eyes Of The Created Being

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are separated from the Creator only by a tiny black point within the infinite Light, which is regarded as “existence from absence” (Yesh Mi Ain). This is, in fact, the very basis of the entire creation, the new reality “from absence.” The rest of it is “from existence,” from the Creator.

This point is created by the Creator, while all “existence” (Yesh), which is added to this point, must come from us, our own effort. Hence, in the end, we attain similarity to the Creator, adhesion, the level equal to His.

First of all, this point of creation evolves in four stages of the expansion of the Direct Light, whereby these four degrees of bestowal instill into the point “from absence” all the basics. On the part of the Light, no more actions are necessary; it’s enough. The rest emerges as the reaction of this point that received an impression from the Light, absorbed its properties, and is able to act on its own thereby.

Thus, from the world of Infinity, from the state where it merged with the Light, it begins to withdraw into our world through the ten “Sefirot of concealment” (Sefirot Blima) that absorb (Bolim) the Light inward, inside the creature. Due to this, the creature grows from the point opposite to the Creator, reaching the utmost possible distance from Him, which is regarded as “this world.”

This withdrawal (both qualitative and quantitative) encompasses all properties and locations. As a result, the created being has no quality that would match the Creator’s to the smallest degree. We think that this means a downfall, a descent, withdrawal, darkness, but it is quite the opposite. It is the unfolding of our nature, the very black point created by the Creator!

This development is necessary to reveal how much this point from “absence” is opposite to existence, to that which “exists.” It is what we attain from this entire descent, albeit not all at once, but with time, descending deeper and deeper, after we reach “this world” and experience the development of our egoism, meaning realize our being opposite to the Creator. Thereby, we pass through the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, until we reach the lowest one, “human.”

A human becomes aware of being far from and opposite to the Creator and concludes that it is evil. From the awareness of evil, he continues to study himself and the Creator even more, as the “advantage of Light coming from darkness,” and understands that it is necessary to become corrected. Thereby, he reaches true opposition to the Creator.

When he begins his correction, on one hand, he starts ascending back to the world of Infinity by equalizing himself with the Creator. On the other, even while doing so, he attains how opposite he is to the Creator ever more.

Only in the very end of correction (Gmar Tikkun), when he returns to the initial point, Malchut of Infinity, he gains complete understanding, awareness, and experience of what existence (Yesh), the property of the Creator, means.
[42526]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/8/2011, “All Who Suffer for the Public”

Related Material:
Connecting The Creator And The Created Being
The Multi-Dimensional Creation
We Are Existence From Absence

Come And See What I Have!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How does attainment differ in the worlds of Assiya, Yetzira, and Beria?

Answer: There is a tremendous difference, which is truly impossible to explain. It is the same as to live in Israel or some other countries, in the Temple or outside of it, or to be a great priest or a regular person.

The tiniest changes, a small ascent in the worlds, evoke tremendous transformations within our souls. The worlds of Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya are internal desires of our souls. We are always present in the three worlds of BYA and cannot disappear from them.

They serve as the “wrappers” around our souls. Just like now, I reside in this world and cannot escape anywhere from it since my body belongs to this world. I live, grow, mature, and die, while still remaining in this world. My body’s entire matter is part of the material world, whether I am alive or dead and disintegrate and return to the earth.

Similarly, a soul, regardless of the state it is in, always remains in the worlds of BYA. In the meantime, we reside only there, where we ask for correction and draw the Surrounding Light. It can pass down to us and illuminate downward, beneath the Parsa, from the world of Atzilut, although the Parsa doesn’t let the Light through. But this is the “surrounding” Light, and it illuminates from afar, awakening and calling us as if from a distance: “Come and see what I’ve got!”

Then I wake up and ascend along with the worlds of BYA above the Parsa. But I can’t rise without them since I am tightly connected with them: They are the closest “to my skin,” clothing me like a dress. I live in the world, but I am wearing “clothes”—they are the very worlds of BYA. And in them, I ascend to the world of Atzilut, which is regarded as “the ascension of the worlds.”

But as soon as I ascend to Atzilut and force the worlds of BYA to rise to it with me, I thereby receive a volume, an enormous empty vessel that I fill with the Inner Light of Atzilut. This signifies that my soul has been filled with the Light.

Desire has let the Light, the Creator, in and is experiencing Him now! Hence, the Creator and I are together, merging one with the other in the degree of our equivalence of form. This is all; there is nothing else in all of creation.

And all of a sudden, I discover where all the friends, other people, the still, vegetative, and animate nature, and this entire universe are. Everything is contained within this very desire; nothing vanished, but rather acquired a different form.

All that I used to see as rocks, plants, beasts, and humans turns out to be my desires that previously seemed material objects to me, which I could touch with my hands. But in truth, they are desires from which the universe is made. And beyond it, there is nothing else.

So it goes that a person ascending to the world of Atzilut with the worlds of BYA starts revealing the true image of reality. He as if gets to see what was hidden inside the computer, behind all those images he was shown on the screen. That’s what is called revelation!
[42443]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, “Explanation of the Article, ‘Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah’”

Related Material:
Don’t Be A Donkey At The King’s Feast
The General And The Particular Attainment
Come And See Your Creator

Actually, We Are Already Home!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is joy in the work?

Answer: I constantly experience certain obstacles, pricks, and thoughts that are sent to me, and I am still happy receiving them! After all, I am constantly studying myself with this help from the Creator, the Light, who evokes these sensations in me. He seems to be pricking me in one point here, another point there, with a thought, a desire, an attitude, and demonstrates to me what is wrong in me.

Question: But how do we bring the “earned income home,” to our source of existence, unless we know where we are supposed to go? A ship on the sea can navigate by stars, a car on the road by the road signs, but in spirituality, there aren’t any signs. So how do we find our way to it?

Answer: In the instant when you prepare the correct desire within yourself, you will suddenly feel that you already are in the right place! You will suddenly reveal that you don’t need to go anywhere. Just find the right desire and you will see that you are already home.
[42355]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Move Through The Stage Of Concealment Quickly
Desire And You Shall Reveal
Don’t Be A Donkey At The King’s Feast

Desire And You Shall Reveal

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhile reading The Book of Zohar, one has to understand that The Zohar is not supposed to be processed by the mind. And if a person wishes to figure it out by way of the intellect, he will get tangled in every word since no word in The Book of Zohar points to anything familiar to us.

All of them hint at the spiritual states and properties. If a person is in the same spiritual state or world, he reveals what they are talking about. So, he knows what spiritual properties and definitions are being described; he feels, recognizes within himself this inner, spiritual world. After all, a person reveals the spiritual world inside, rather than outside of himself, as he perceives the entire reality only within.

As to someone who doesn’t possess spiritual perception yet, he is simply reading an unusual text. What are we reading The Zohar for then? We do so in order to add to it an aspiration to reach a state when we will understand, feel, recognize, and even experience all the spiritual states and properties The Zohar is telling about. All that I presently read as an incomprehensible story, I wish to experience inside myself and live in it.

We must cultivate this desire in us. In order to see the spiritual world, we only lack a desire, a yearning for it, and not more. Therefore, now, as we read The Zohar, we must, all together, to the best of our ability strive to reveal this hidden world.

Even though we don’t have a special need for it (since we don’t know what we are reading), we are still reading this text together. Hence, from this very same concealed state, we draw upon ourselves the illumination regarded as “the Light that Reforms,” “the Surrounding Light,” which affects us.

It doesn’t reveal the concealed world, but rather it awakens in us the needs, desires, and properties of perception, new sensory organs, after which the revelation occurs. The Light functions so as to create in us the capacity for sensing the concealed. Hence, we yearn for the Surrounding Light to enable us to feel the hidden world.
[42345]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, The Book of Zohar

Related Material:
The System That Connects You With Infinity
How To Enter The Book Of Zohar
The Secret Of The Zohar – Laitman Unplugged

Don’t Be A Donkey At The King’s Feast

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the Creator created everything as perfect in the first place, why should we correct anything?

Answer: Yes, but we are not yet in the state that He created. We are outside of it, behind all kinds of veils, concealments. These screens have to do only with us since we are the ones who feel concealment.

The Creator created only one state regarded as the world of Infinity. However, in order to feel that we are actually in this Infinity, we need to accumulate all sorts of experiences.

Suppose someone wants to treat me to some exotic dish, but in order for me to really appreciate its taste, I need a desire for it. I am supposed to have an idea of what it is and how it is eaten. Otherwise, I won’t get it, like the farmer mentioned in The Book of Zohar who lived on a farm all his life, grew wheat, and, until he once visited a city, hadn’t even suspected how many delicious things could be made from it. All he had ever known was the rough grain.

So, while being in the Light of Infinity, we feel it only as a donkey does, chewing on the rough grain. Except for the simple “grain” and “water,” we don’t desire anything else. We don’t sense in the Light of Infinity all the delicacies that the Creator has prepared for us.

How then do we start desiring the Light that fills Infinity and feel it in all its manifestations, through its entire depth, with total clarity? We don’t have such a need. We must create it within ourselves.

In order to build up a desire to smell the sweetest pie instead of the rough grain, in order to sense Infinity instead of the minimal Light of Nefesh de Nefesh while being in the same state and the same Light, we need to cultivate desire. Desire grows by way of concealment, when I am shown a little bit of the Light and then it is concealed again, exposed and then concealed. This is regarded as “flirting,” playing.

This is a very serious game since concealment increases desire. This is how the Light is playing with us, by exposing and concealing itself. This is why we withdraw from the world of Infinity and become separated from it by numerous concealments, until we end up in this world, in its total concealment.

All we need is desire. At the instant I do get it, I will receive the precious “pie.” As soon as it grows some more, I will be given an even bigger treat. With every new step, I need to increase my desire, and the upper Light starts illuminating me in full force. My desire opens me for connecting with Him and allows Him to enter me.

The Creator created all of these states from the start, but out of the whole of Infinity, you can feel only the minimal Light of Nefesh right now. It’s because you don’t have a desire of your own to wish specifically for it and to feel pain because you are lacking it.

This desire has to be totally new, unlike your instinctive desire. You receive it by forcing, overriding yourself and struggling with your entire nature. When you start wanting the Light this much, it will be an authentic desire. In other words, you need to wish for bestowal!

At present, it seems to be something totally silly, some strange bestowal and love. However, these are simply familiar words that mean a new type of desire which doesn’t exist in us yet.
[42186]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Related Material:
Believe It: All Of This Only Seems To Us!
There Is A Deposit In Your Name Waiting For You
My Beloved Is Hiding From Me

The Science That Studies The Self

Dr. Michael Laitman

Kabbalah is a science about reality. Man is a creature that strives to understand why and for what purpose he exists and how he can come to the truth. He yearns to uncover the meaning of such notions as “truth,” “facts,” “purpose,” or “reaching the goal.” He is made to demand this kind of fulfillment.

Man’s greatest need is to know who he is, as it is said: “From my flesh shall I see the Creator.” Indeed, to learn who I am, I need to know who the Creator is. This necessity mandates me to search.

The entire wisdom of Kabbalah is dedicated to the study of man since besides him, nothing exists. All of reality is within man, and everything occurs solely in him. I don’t see anything in this world except myself. All that is happening around me is me, images within me. I don’t have the slightest idea what is going on outside of me.

This means that Kabbalah is the study of the self, self-attainment, self-awareness. All other books describe some kind of illusions, as if there is an external reality around us. Therefore, everything but these sacred books is a total lie made up by man; they are the fruit of his imagination.

We don’t realize how unique these books are; besides, as far as the truth is concerned, we have nothing to hold on to. Without these books, we would exist in this world as some little insects that live only for as long as the time allotted to them permits. Only with the help of these books can we gradually develop ourselves and start examining, measuring, and learning “who and what we are.”

Thus we find out that we contain the whole worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, and numerous parts that seem alien to us, which in the end turn out to be the parts of your own soul. This is your very desire split into the still, vegetative, animate nature, and humans as well. And at the last, fourth degree, we must collect all these parts together in order to come to the intention “to bestow,” which is mandatory for this final, fourth, stage of creation.

When I gain this intention to bestow for all parts of creation, I will finally find out who I am; I will know myself. And there is nothing else to study in reality.
[42014]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Related Material:
The Path To Self-Attainment
An Experiential Lab Inside Of You
Kabbalah: The Innermost Science

Listen To The Creator’s Hints

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur entire problem is that we do not hear the Creator’s hints. Quietly, the Creator constantly directs us, but we do not feel it. A person has to feel that the Creator is always whispering in his ear.

This is not a psychological problem and not external voices, nor a compulsive thought. This is our inner feeling that must constantly become more sensitive to perceiving the Creator’s voice.

I have to feel this inner voice inside of me, “Is this coming from Him or from me?” If I start perceiving these hints, they will help me very much. One must feel inside how He is constantly talking and hinting.

This won’t be pleasant. I will have to restrain myself and lead myself away from many weaknesses that I have, and sometimes will do the opposite. What can you do about it? A person has to find some way to relax. There are moments like that as well because a person is human.

However, in principle this sensitivity to the inner voice, as it is written, “I heard a voice,” is very important. This is not schizophrenia. It really is a very serious attunement similar to how a musical instrument is tuned in order for its sound to match the tuning fork, the pure note “A.” That is how one must feel: At what frequency can I “pick up” the Creator?

Question: How can we learn to discriminate the Creator’s voice among many others?

Answer: Only by your desire. There is no other way to do it. No one and nothing will help you. At the beginning of the previous century the Kabbalist Hazon Ish wrote the following in his book Faith and Confidence, “The quality of bestowal is a fine movement of a sensitive soul.” This is how he begins his book. We need precisely this fine attunement to the frequency at which the Creator broadcasts.

Question: What is this force that helps us to constantly keep this attunement and discriminate where and in what state I am in? Or does it not matter whether I feel good or bad?

Answer: What helps us to tune ourselves to this “fineness of the soul”? Only movement toward others, when I connect with others in spite of myself and in spite of all of the twists, turns and problems, and I try to tune myself.

All of these twists, turns, and problems are given to me deliberately. They indicate where I am still under-tuned. They show me my deviations from the necessary frequency. All the problems, troubles, and negative things are the expression of how much I am not tuned, that I still haven’t found the right resonance.

If a person perceives everything happening this way, in spite of anything that happens to him, if he does not lose the thought, “There is none else besides Him” and also tunes himself to, “If I don’t do it for myself, who will do it for me?” Then that’s all he needs.

Question: But where does he feel this voice inside?

Answer: In the movement toward the outside. The instrument in which the Creator is felt is a new resonating region inside of you that begins to resonate in relation to others.

This instrument is what we have to create. It is called “a soul.”
[41984]
From the lesson on 4/21/11

Related Material:
“Do His Will As Your Own”
Hints About Where To Look For Him
Everyone Will Hear The Creator’s Voice