A question I received: What does it mean to make money for the sake of money?

My Answer: It means that people live for money, and they don’t need anything else.

Suppose I want to buy a yacht so I can enjoy it. I want to sail out into the ocean and swim far out into the open waters. It is for this sake that I am working hard now. I’m not doing it for the money, but for the yacht. Actually, I’m not even doing it for the yacht itself, but for the pleasure I’ll receive through it. I imagine how I’ll dive off the yacht into the sea and there will be dolphins skipping along in the water next to me. And I have this picture in my mind all the time.

On the other hand, there are other people who work for the sake of the money itself, just in order to add zeros to their bank accounts. I want to see the balance grow on my statement every day. This is what gives me pleasure. I look at the numbers and this activity fulfills me. I don’t need anything else. I don’t imagine anything else standing behind these numbers. I don’t see a yacht, restaurants or vacations, but only the numbers in my bank account. They give me pleasure. This is the meaning of “money for the sake of money.”

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In the News (from InterScience): “Prismatic Lenses Shift Time Perception” We took advantage of a well-known spatial modulation (prismatic adaptation) to test the hypothesis that the representation of time is spatially oriented from left to right, with smaller time intervals being represented to the left of larger time intervals. Results showed that prismatic adaptation inducing a rightward orientation of spatial attention produced an overestimation of time intervals, whereas prismatic adaptation inducing a leftward shift of spatial attention produced an underestimation of time intervals. These findings not only confirm that temporal intervals are represented as horizontally arranged in space, but also reveal that spatial modulation of time processing most likely occurs via cuing of spatial attention…

My Comment: This is because our brain perceives time, movement, and space in the same way – in the form of abstract values. In fact, these categories only exist subjectively, in our perception. If our perception were different, we would perceive the surroundings differently as well.

Everything in existence is formed by two forces: bestowal and reception. These forces produce different concepts inside us about the world, actions and events. It is similar to how electricity can set many different mechanisms in motion and cause different actions to occur, even though it is a single force.

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In the News (from News Bureau): “Those unsure of own ideas more resistant to views of others” We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see or hear… The analysis, reported this month in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, was led by researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida, and included data from 91 studies involving nearly 8,000 participants… The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent)… The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated with political, religious or ethical values.

My Comment: Most people will always hear what they want to hear, and you don’t need to conduct expensive studies to discover that. This is because our nature is founded on egoism, or the desire to fulfill our desires, whether we desire fame, prestige, power, wealth, or knowledge. And this determines what we are capable of hearing, seeing, feeling and understanding.

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A question I received: Do you really think it’s possible to convey Kabbalistic information to the masses? It seems like they are still deaf to it!

My Answer: From childhood, a person perceives this world through examples, models, and images. A person thinks by means of the images that accumulate in his memory and he perceives the world through them. He evaluates and comprehends everything, makes decisions, and performs actions based on the conceptualization of the images.

The system of images and concepts that we receive from childhood, formulates our inner image of the world and our image of ourselves. Over the course of our entire lives, we continuously acquire new images and use them to replace the former ones. It is also possible for new images to fade and the old images to return. The images form due to their repeated occurrence in our surroundings – for example, through repeated exposure to the mass media.

If a person hears or sees something that contradicts his set of images, then he does not understand it, or he rejects the message altogether. Thus, in order for people to understand what we are saying, we have to know how they conceptualize their images and address those images directly, rather than by trying to appeal to basic human logic and common sense.

The more educated a person is, the more flexible his ideas and concepts are. We have to address the masses through their underlying concepts (life values): compassion, cooperation, prosperity, health, work, safety, and their children’s future.

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Every process of growth and development on the vegetative and animate levels, each change, consists of two steps: the action itself and the outcome, which is predetermined and simply revealed to us.

A bullet hits a piece of glass, and the glass breaks. We think that the cause of this event is the firing of the gun, and the outcome is a broken glass. However, this is not so. Everything is planned ahead of time, the results of our actions already exist and they precisely bring into effect the causes, which we see.

When politicians all over the world scream, wave their arms around, and try to do something, this means that the events, which have existed in the spiritual for a long time, need to materialize in the physical world. This is why particular material objects are used.

Meanwhile, it seems to us that politicians actually determine these events. However, this is an illusion – a game, a puppet show of sorts. During the breaks, at which time the scenery changes, man is pushed to rise above all this and to realize the Upper governance, which has been producing the show for humanity throughout all its history.

We need to rise from one step to the next, until the complete correction.  All of these steps were  prepared for us long ago, since everything was determined from the moment that the world was created. All that’s left for us to do is make an effort. All that’s being asked of us is to try to reveal, to feel, and imagine our next state. To the extent that we wish to imagine our future state independently, we grow and advance toward it, like an infant who wishes to become fully grown. This is the difference between the animal and the human levels. With his desire and effort, a person draws his more advanced state closer.

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A question I received: Why do you liken a Kabbalah book to a magic book?

My Answer: We perceive ourselves as living in a body, in the world. There is an object before us that appears to us as a book. Inside of the book we see symbols that appear to us as letters, but we don’t know the essence of things and events.

A Kabbalah book is a magic book because if I meet certain conditions, I obtain a magic result, a miracle: revelation of the Upper World!

I was given a sort of device that I don’t comprehend and with which I am not familiar. My eyes, my mind and the book, together turn out to be a marvelous apparatus that has links leading directly to the Upper World and to a different reality.

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A person lives in his own reality and suddenly begins to understand that this entire reality simply unfolds in front of him and that he has absolutely no freedom of choice. It is as if he sits in a theater and watches a movie that shows him sitting in a theater, watching a movie, and so on into infinity.

Where then is true reality? With this question, the internal search begins. This search brings one to the point where he starts to see that there is nothing external to him: everything happens inside of him. As long as he has a body and emotions, he receives some internal picture which he perceives as his reality.

Rabash describes this in the story of the coachman. The coachman had a house, a wife, children, a horse and a carriage and was very happy with his life. All of a sudden, he loses everything: his family, his wife, children, and even the horse died. In the end, grief-stricken, he also dies.

He arrives in Paradise and because of all his suffering, it is decided that he will be granted a gift. He receives that which he most desires: the sensation that he has a house, a wife, children, a carriage and several horses! So he imagines that he is riding in his carriage led by strong horses, is successful with work; all in all, he is enjoying life!

Maybe we also are in such a state? How can we determine this? How can we exit ourselves and see what is really happening? It could be that we are sleep-walking. Or perhaps we are being controlled by aliens who placed us in formaldehyde and are showing us a movie, while in reality we exist in glass bottles and have been sleeping for millions of years. And this we consider to be our world…?

But there is a method which allows us to rise above this entire reality and see it from the perspective of the Upper Force, the Creator. It’s like fish that suddenly start to wonder: “Who changes the aquarium water?”

And thus begins a different path that leads a person toward his Creator. This happens when one attains this system and by using it, ascends toward Him.

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A question I received: A man who knows that the entire world is a single system can begin to correct himself. But what about people who know nothing about it and continue to act incorrectly within the system, harming all the rest?

My Answer: We have to continue our efforts to explain it to them, and the more they understand what is needed for the correct actions, the better off all of us will be.

You have to see the world as part of yourself that’s not yet corrected and therefore seems external to you. However, if you correct it, you will attach yourself to it and feel it as your own part. That’s how it is revealed.

If you truly feel how deeply you are dependent on others, then at that same instant, you will discover that all of them are parts of you, but still out of your control. They’re like your own children, whom you feel as an inseparable part of you, although they disobey you and don’t want to be together with you.

Thus you reveal that all of the souls, all of humanity are parts of your own soul. But you are being purposefully misled by feeling that they are apart from you, that they are strangers. Otherwise, correction would be impossible. If I had felt the entire world as part of me to begin with, I would not have been able to correct anything. My sensation of them being strangers, that there’s distance that separates us, is precisely the reason why it’s easy for me to correct them. If I felt these parts within me, it would be terrible and a very hard thing to do; I wouldn’t be able to touch them.

That’s why the Creator “pulled” them outside of me and gave me an opportunity to relate to them as to strangers. If I wish to bring them closer to me and to receive good influence back from them – that means I’m correcting them. Such an illusion of separation between myself and strangers serves the purpose of my correction, but in reality, they are my own inseparable parts.

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In the News (from Augmented Environments Lab): “AR Second Life”- “Massive Multiplayer Online Worlds (MMO) are persistent virtual environments where people play, experiment and socially interact. In this research project, we demonstrate that MMOs also provide a powerful platform for Augmented Reality (AR) applications. We introduce the notion of AR Stages, persistent, evolving spaces which encapsulate AR experiences in online three dimensional virtual worlds. Based on the 3D virtual world Second Life, our custom client software blends together locations in physical space with corresponding places in the Second Life virtual space and leverages the power of the MMO to create a powerful AR authoring environment targeted at a wide audience. We examine the technology necessary to integrate AR in MMOs as well as work flows and user interactions to keep such a system accessible and easy to use.”

My Comment: The only thing is that man will outgrow these possibilities, and they will not satisfy him. Then, he will come to see the necessity of experiencing real revelation through attainment of the Upper World!

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A question I received: When a person feels bad, he usually puts the blame on those around him. This could be his wife, his friends, his colleagues, something in the system, etc. When will people begin to understand that the cause behind everything is not the banker or some other human factor but the third, nonhuman force? It is similar to Hollywood movies where everyone looks up at the sky to see a great monster menacing the entire world…

My answer: “The enemy lies within the flood.” This is how it is revealed to a person. When his suffering is still small, he is satisfied with blaming himself or others. As the suffering increases, he descends along all the levels of his selfish desires and in the last of them, discovers that all of them came from the Creator. Such is the progression of the development of desires.

This is why even the greatest scientists who rise higher than others in their understanding of matter come to the notion that there is some sort of intelligent force, a higher intelligence that governs matter. Dealing with things that are strictly material, these people do not generally believe in supernatural powers. But it is precisely by dealing with these matters that they come to such conclusions.

This force lies within us. Man will continue to discover that the entire world lies within him. The science of Kabbalah speaks of this in the article “What Is Reality?” This is how it will be revealed to us.

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