Entries in the 'Perception' Category

Time = Motion = Place

Dr. Michael LaitmanTalmud Eser Sefirot, Volume 3, Part 8, Question 36: "Place." Time, motion, and place are practically the same notion, which determines the relative change and renewal of form (desires). However, when we are speaking of the order of the descent of the levels, this is called the change of "place," whereas when we are speaking of cause and effect, it is called "the order of time."

Why are time, motion, and place practically the same notion? It’s because they are changes taking place in our desires, Kelim. The will to enjoy undergoes changes. But why do I think and feel one change as the flow of time, and another as a change of place, motion? Why do I perceive everything that happens as changes in time, motion, and place?

Isn’t motion a place? After all, if I change my place, it means I am in motion. Yet I am told, "No, this is a completely different category." However, all the categories are changes taking place in the will to enjoy. In relation to what? Only in relation to the quality of bestowal that it has, meaning the degree of its inclusion into Bina.

Malchut can become included in Bina in three forms, which are called time, motion, and place." They give Malchut different sensations. What kind? When we are speaking of the order of the descent of the levels, meaning the successive changes of states, this is called the change of "place," which is when one’s level or inner state changes. Whereas when we are speaking of the cause and effect, of what happens first and what happens next, meaning that it is not the places that change, but their order, it is called "the order of time." And if we speak about what kind of state was present in every place, this is called "place."
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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A Person Who Draws The Worlds

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: As I advance, I should be more grateful for the fact that there is the Upper Force which advances me. But I don’t know how I can do it, how can I rely on the existence of the Upper Force?

Answer: Don’t rely on it! Don’t believe in the Upper Force  until you activate your power from below. There is no Creator without the creature. We advance only according to our request, MAN, by influencing the forces of nature with it.

When Kabbalists describe the Partzufim, they tell us only about the actions of bestowal. Partzufim, per se, don’t exist. In exactly the same manner, they write about our effort and existence: There is no Creator and no worlds; there is nothing if a person does not activate his or her power of bestowal.

As soon as a person activates the force of bestowal, the worlds immediately appear, not relative to him, but in a general sense since they don’t exist otherwise. All of reality, including the spiritual world, does not exist outside of man. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah states in its section “The Perception of Reality.”

So, what can a person rely on? Outside of man there is nothing; everything is within him only. If we don’t put ourselves in motion, we don’t construct the system of worlds.

As soon as I’m willing to give, I immediately face the Light of Infinity. Then, between it and me, the worlds are born, a communication system between me and the world of Infinity. If I am not performing acts of bestowal, then nothing exists.

All of spiritual reality (we are not talking about the material world because it’s imaginary) exists within man to the extent that he has the power of bestowal. If he has no power of bestowal, then nothing exists. We can’t say that there is something outside of man unless he himself builds it, creates and implements it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The World Through Distorted Lenses

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I believe when you say that all problems are mere effects of my distorted perception. But what should I do if for now, all of this is just philosophizing to me, whereas the problems are real?

Answer: If you connected to the group and became able to receive a sense of security, a guarantee, from them, you would feel as safe as in a mother’s arms. What would you worry about if you knew that you were surrounded by 600,000 souls that will take care of you? Nothing bad can happen with you since Shechina (divinity), the Creator, dwells among them. Therefore, you can worry about only one thing: how to learn to treat others as you treat yourself, and get to see that, in reality, they are you.

We need to stop believing our eyes and egoistic senses, which tell us that outside of us there are other people. It will free you from all your problems! Gradually, by using this method, you will uncover the correct perception of reality; the world will become transparent and behind each object, you will see the force that moves it.

You will suddenly see how everything falls together and will marvel at how blind you used to be! What awfully distorted lenses you were wearing! Truth be told, it all depends on your vision and perception. Nothing changes; I only attune my sight a bit, align the axes of vision, and a whole new picture suddenly emerges.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/10, ““A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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Reality Under Anesthesia Of The Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I feel threatened when we read these texts. I don’t understand them. How can I properly work with this feeling?

Answer: Maybe it’s a good feeling. We exist in a reality which is unfolding only within us. Right now, I am speaking with “you,” a part of my soul, and with other people all over the world, but all of them reside within me. And beside me, there is only the upper force split into multiple parts.

I should arrange all of my desires in order to mutually connect them with each other, incorporate all those who seem alien within myself, and love them as myself. I must merge with all of reality and become one whole with it. Then, I will see that all of it is mine, and there is only one Light that fills one desire.

And until then, I naturally get confused and undergo very obscure states. But it doesn’t threaten me. I must perceive the reality correctly, meaning that I have to begin feeling that all of this is happening within me. It is my “I,” and it is only due to my inner division that I mistakenly perceive my own parts as being outside of me.

For example, I had a surgery under local anesthesia. I didn’t feel anything, but in the mirror I saw what the surgeons were doing: inserting a needle and cutting a part of the flesh that didn’t seem to belong to me. I didn’t feel it as mine because of the anesthesia. However, since I was still aware that it was my part, despite the fact that I didn’t feel it under a local anesthetic, it was interesting for me to watch what was being done to it.

In essence, we are precisely in such a reality. But as soon as this “anesthesia,” the fog, dissipates, you start to experience and feel reality as your own, and everything looks different! Then, you see that you are dealing only with the Creator, the “Good Who does good.”

It turns out that your ability to feel the “Good Who does good” instead of a threat, to sense eternity, perfection, and harmony instead of your current state, depends on how you attach all of these seemingly alien desires to yourself.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/10, Beit Shaar HaKavanot

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why didn’t the Creator arrange it so we would already now feel everyone as organs of our own body?

Answer: It’s because you have to reveal the form of bestowal from its opposite. From hatred, reception, and exploitation of your neighbor, you have to attain love and unity.

Imagine that you suddenly found out that your greatest enemy, whom you desired to crush and obliterate using every possible execution technique, is actually your own son who you did not know anything about, just like in a movie.

You don’t understand this now, but try to enter the group and imagine that you are tuning into the common desire. Don’t look at the faces, but look at the desire that everyone shares and delve inside it. Then through that desire, you will feel that you are surrounded by special souls and only you are looking at them from aside. Try to enter inside them and to cancel yourself completely.

Through this self-nullification you will begin to live! Stay in this thought at all times so it won’t leave your mind. Make the decision that from now on this is how you want to look at the world.

Try to stay in this sensation until tomorrow, constantly renewing it and bringing this picture back. Then at the next lesson you will be ready to bring it to life! You will imagine what takes place inside these desires, which are connected with each other: How Partzufim AB and SAG operate and what Rabbi Shimon is telling his friends. It all speaks only about this desire and the connection among its parts.

Desires that are pure or impure, corrected or not yet corrected; everything is inside one system that you are now revealing. You want to reveal life, the vital force in this system and yourself inside of it, as well as to understand how everything works. This is exactly what all the Kabbalistic books talk about and you want this to become revealed.

When the connection between all parts of the desire and the harmony in which they operate becomes revealed, this practical revelation of the correct, operating connection is called the revelation of the Creator. After that the Creator or this connection will continue being revealed more and more, which signifies ascent along the degrees of the worlds toward ever greater revelation of the Creator.

The Creator is called Bo-Reh, meaning "come and see" how the system works in mutual bestowal, how the Light operates inside the desires or Kelim.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress"

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The Beckoning Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Where do my desires come from?

Answer: All desires come from the upper Partzuf that clothes in and awakens you. Your desire is the Light that expanded from the Upper One, a meek illumination that triggers a desire. After all, you are a mere desire, similar to a chunk of metal. When the Light descends to you, it starts “heating” you up, doing something with you.

Where do you get a feeling that you want something? The Light that is already present in you attracts you, if only with its reverse side so far. As to the desire the Light doesn’t fill, we simply don’t experience it at all.

We are living in Malchut of Infinity as we speak. So what? What do we experience? Only this corporeal world and nothing more. Why is it so? Except for this tiny place, all the other desires in me are not illuminated, and that’s why I don’t feel them. I am not even slightly attracted to them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, “Introduction from The Book of Zohar,” Article “Who Created These”

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I Don’t Want Anything But The Light!

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are all outcomes of the Light, and therefore, we have to attain it. All of our strongest desires, prayers, and yearnings are aimed toward the Light.

We subconsciously desire this alone, and, in truth, throughout our entire lives we are after nothing but it. All of the other fulfillments and sources of pleasure, such as food, clothes, new cars, and whatever else all come from the Light! We only perceive them in a certain form, as some type of pleasure, such as a car, a child, family, warmth, rest, a beautiful landscape, and so on. However, in fact, there is only Light, which depicts all of these objects for me, and I feel only it.

Therefore, people will gradually cease being interested in of all these things and will instead try to find their source: the Light itself and not its derivatives. I won’t desire to have a certain car anymore because what does it actually give me? It gives me pleasure. Yet, in truth I wish to get this pleasure in its “pure form,” without the actual car. Why do I need this chunk of metal? After all, it pleases me only when I drive it, and when I don’t, there is no pleasure. So, when I get tired of driving, it just stands by the house. But I still seek pleasure!

While we were undergoing our historical evolution, we constantly aspired to find things and "waves" that were more subtle and elusive. That is why everything in the world today is becoming smaller in size; quantity is becoming quality. We are the same: Instead of investigating the corporeal world, we are starting to yearn for spiritual attainment.

People don’t yet understand it yet, but the number of suicides and terrorist acts, the rise in drug abuse and the divorce rate are all indicators of man’s enormous lack of fulfillment. It is so great that, in fact, man is unable to fill this lack in his life. And that is a sign of man’s need for the Light itself, rather than all the other substitutes that the Light can depict in us.
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From the program "Kabbalah for Beginners" on 12/08/10

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A Black Point Against The Light Of Infinity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that there is the Light of Infinity outside of us. What does it mean, “outside of us”?

Answer: “Outside of us” means “outside” the point of our desire within which I perceive this world, myself, and everybody else. Besides this point, there is nothing since the Creator created only a single point. Everything that we perceive (the worlds and what fills them) is the sensation of that point itself.

There is only one tiny, black point against the white Light of Infinity.
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From the Introductory Lecture Series, “Perception of Reality” 11/23/10

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Place Of Residence: The Group

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: At the lesson we have to aspire to one place and unite everything into one. However, over the years I have developed different notions of spiritual phenomena. When reading about Bina and Malchut, I perceive them differently. Is it possible to reduce them to one point?

Answer: They really do have to become one whole. In essence, Bina and Malchut are the qualities of the Creator and creation. We do not know exactly what this is, but nevertheless their interconnection and relationships indicate union.

Bina lowers a part of herself into Malchut, the letters “ELE” of the name Elokim. Malchut ascends into Bina, changing the name MA to MI. Behind the descriptions of these processes in The Book of Zohar we discern the bonds connecting them.

Accordingly, we have to build our intention. By uniting with the group, I see it as the place, the focal point where the quality of Bina, bestowal, or Elokim is revealed. That is where I raise my desires and yearnings. It is where I want to unite as a corrected part of Malchut.

I hope that Bina will help me by means of its vessels ELE, which are lowered intentionally in order to take care of me in order to become a motherly womb for me and raise me spiritually. That is how I should relate to the group.

The group is the system that is empowered to present Elokim, HaVaYaH, to me. It is the place where I receive nourishment, and from where the Lights and changes come to me.

My conception of the group depends only on how able I am to reject myself before it. The Upper One may take on any forms, but it happens only to the degree that the lower one ascends the degrees of self-rejection and becomes similar to Him, going through the phases of conception, feeding, and adulthood.

This is what I want when I subject myself to the group’s influence, the place that nourishes us. This should be my intention at the lesson: to constantly search for my place in the story about the interrelationships of Bina and Malchut.

They connect through Zeir Anpin, through HaVaYaH, the quality of mercy, the Light. This is the entire system that develops us. Our territory is the lower part of Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut herself. That is where our entire life is, both the material and the spiritual.

That’s because reality is one. Even though we only see an illusory picture now, it is just a flaw in our perception, an illusion caused by meager understanding and sensation. When the fog begins to clear, the Upper World will come through from it, our connection with the group, with the other souls, which comes through in AHP, meaning in the lower part of Bina (ZAT), Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

This is what all of the science of Kabbalah talks about. This is the expression of our relationship with the Creator, with the unity of HaVaYaH and Elokim, which we have to attain.

Therefore, we have to understand that ZAT de Bina is the corrected group in which we find ourselves. We will never reveal anything more. we discern only the degree of our ability to unite in the lower part of Bina, in the group. That is our place. By giving ourselves over into its power, we will reveal our true reality, which is concealed from us for now by a veil of hazy perception.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/9/10, The Zohar

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X-ray Of My Ego

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt seems to us that we are in a world that really exists and is relatively stable. We don’t even allow the thought that everything we see is unstable and relative.

Humanity has always believed that the world really exists and that we’re living in it. This belief was strengthened by the fact that people saw our planet, the stars, and the galaxies. Although a person is born, lives, and dies, all of these things remain in their place despite the changing times. That is, everything that surrounds us exists outside of us. People believed it for thousands of years.

Then, the science of Kabbalah comes along and completely destroys the foundation upon which our perception was based. First and foremost, this science explains that everything we see before us actually exist within us, within our desire, and not outside of us.

This means that if the people I see before me exist in my head, then I exist there as well. According to Kabbalah, this is true, and our current perception of reality is false.

Kabbalah tells us that we have a “projector” in the back portion of the brain and that it projects all that I sense into images I see before me. This is how I’m able to see my own body as well as everything outside of it.

Kabbalists state this with grave seriousness, emphasizing the fact that it’s precisely due to the fact that I sense things within me and see them on the outside that I can reach special attainment, the revelation of the Creator. I see how, in each moment, everything around me changes and gains momentum. This happens in accordance with the changes in my qualities and it means that I’m drawing my reality.

The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us that besides the point called “I,” everything else is the Upper Light, the Light of Infinity, where I exist. The only quality of this Light is love and bestowal. On the backdrop of this love and bestowal I see my own qualities which are opposite to the Light.

It seems to me that there is a big world existing outside of me where everything is moving. However, all this is being projected by my desire, by my ego and its various qualities, showing me my inner picture as though on an x-ray.

Can I change reality? Yes, but under the condition that I change myself. This is very serious. I have my family, my work, and a big world around me. Although I sense all of these thing as solid, it’s still in my power to change it all.

If I begin to change myself, then I’ll change the world because a person is a miniature world that contains everything within him. On the outside, there is only constant Light of the World of Infinity.

Therefore, everything depends on the person. My perception of reality depends only on me, not on someone else.
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From the Introductory Lecture Series, “Perception of Reality” 11/23/10

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