Murphy’s Law: Murphy’s Law states that if something can go wrong, it will definitely go wrong. This law has many variations: If you drop a slice of bread, it’s sure to fall butter side down; the change in the cash register will always end just before it’s your turn; if you just washed your car, then it’ll start raining, and so on. People think that Murphy’s Law is nothing but folk wisdom, which ironically portrays our perception of the world. However, this law stems from real “wrong” things happening to real people.

The Law of the Torah: How do Kabbalists feel about the law that they discover? In my blog post “Klipot (Shells) – Harmful and Helpful (Advanced),” there is an explanation about the role of evil (Klipot), stating that everything takes place with the aim of bringing humankind to correction, either by way of good or evil, i.e. according to how one perceives good and evil. There’s just one force operating in nature, but it manifests in different ways depending on how we act. When we aim our actions at the goal of creation, this force helps us. On the contrary, when we aim our actions in opposition to those of this force, it holds us back.

Moreover, this force (of the Creator) that helps everyone who aims themselves at the goal of creation, also creates disturbances for them, which helps them develop by motivating them to move faster toward the goal. In Kabbalah, Murphy’s Law, the law on the level of our world, manifests as the law of the Upper World: “There is none else beside Him. He is good and does good!”

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A question I received: The article “Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them” states that, according to a research that was performed, “researchers using brain scanners could predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.” So my question regarding this is simply, do we have freedom of choice?

My Answer: A person doesn’t realize that his inner system of desires has already made all the calculations and put out the result. Such studies prove what Kabbalah has been saying all along: everything depends on our desire, and not on our external, philosophical reasoning. Thus, only the Upper Light can correct us; we cannot correct ourselves on our own.

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A question I received: How can you empirically prove that this faith (Emuna) is the right one? For example, you know that the sun exists because you see it up in the sky.

My Answer: You’re confusing faith as it’s understood by people in our world with faith as defined by Kabbalists. Faith (Emuna) is the quality of bestowal, which enables you to see a different world. It’s a different sense of perception, where you perceive outside of yourself, above your personal calculations. This is the reason why people who have faith change completely.

On the other hand, you are defining faith as believing in something somebody said. In other words, you believe that what you heard is a fact. Since it is a science, Kabbalah denies such an approach. In Kabbalah, you accept something in order to test it yourself. To acquire faith means to acquire a screen, the ability to feel, define, and measure sensations that are tuned to bestowal and love.

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A letter I received:

Shalom Rav Laitman,

Scientists explain that so called religious experiences, the sensation of spirituality can be explained by neuroscience and the structure of the brain. They are identifying the chemical pathways and brain structures that generate religious experiences.

Sony is building a new technology called, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which sends a magnetic wave of activity through the brain. Depending on the wave’s frequency, it can either accelerate or suppress processes in the areas it sweeps over. These magnetic waves can generate all kinds of sensations, but the most intriguing one is the religious experience. Tested subjects claim that they met God.

Can Kabbalah ensure us that we will not experience fake sensations of the Creator?

My Answer: It’s impossible. Anything we can do to ourselves can only suppress or arouse sensations within the limits of our egoistic nature. Moreover, anything that is higher or spiritual (the Creator), exists in the qualities of absolute love and bestowal. Therefore, only by attracting the influence from Above – the Upper Light – can we correct our egoism, and turn it into altruism. And furthermore, only to the extent of such a correction within ourselves will we be able to perceive the Upper World, the Creator.

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I have received many letters expressing concern about the future…

Our perception of the world depends on our understanding of what’s going on here. If we would understand the Creator’s plan, we will discover happiness, safety and perfection.

Prior to the 21st century, humanity didn’t have any free will! We had no free will in our development as it was automatically driven by our constantly growing egoistic motivation – until it had reached its peak.

Today, our free will is becoming apparent as we have the opportunity to rise above our egoistic nature and no longer depend on it. By realizing this opportunity properly, we will directly – with the least amount of suffering – exit our present nature. Then, we will enter another dimension of the universe, where we will experience a different sensation of life – one that is eternal and perfect.

Our egoistic nature imprisons us; it attempts to absorb everything into itself, and thus remains empty and ultimately dies. And even if we don’t choose the path of conscious transition to the altruistic dimension, nature’s plan will be carried out anyway – just as it has been up to this point – only by the harsh influence of its strict laws.

We are the only intelligent creatures in the universe. Everything was created for us, because only we have the ability to enter the higher dimension. This task is serious and its goal is marvelous. Currently, humanity is in a state that induces a search, which is good, and that is why I’m not afraid, but full of hope.

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An article in this month’s Current Biology magazine has Justin Marshall from the University of Queensland, Australia, describing how stomatopod crustaceans can see circularly polarized light. While the human eye has three types of “color” photoreceptors, they have twelve types of visual receptor cells. A human being perceives light as color (the length of the wave) and brightness. Then there are bees, which perceive linearly polarized light, and as such, see things that we cannot. Moreover, the stomatopod crustaceans perceive circularly polarized light, and see other things altogether.

This is a good example of how limited we are in our perception of the world around us. We cannot perceive a characteristic like polarization, and we don’t know what else is around us that we cannot see. Such an example is one of many that supports what The Book of Zohar says: that there is a World of Infinity around us, and we only perceive as much of it as our sensory organs allow us to.

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“And that is how I made another crucial discovery: our entire planet is only as big as a house!” (Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince)

From a Cnet Blog Post: Proof of Six Degrees of Separation
“In a research paper from June 2007, titled ‘Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network (PDF),’ Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon University analyzed 30 billion conversations among 240 million people using Microsoft Instant Messenger in June 2006. It turned out that the average path length, or degree of separation, among the anonymized users probed was 6.6.

Six degrees of separation posits that a person is a step away from people they know and two steps distant from people known by the people they know – thus the magic number six.”

My Comment: This research simply shows how we’re externally connected to each other. Soon, however, we will start discovering how internally connected we are, where we will see each other as living not in the bodies we see today, but in each other’s hearts.

Today, we lack the understanding of how the world becomes disclosed to us. For instance, our senses perceive something to the extent that this “something” is disclosed to them, and beforehand, it is as if this “something” had never existed. In other words, something we perceive is born in the same moment we discover it. Just take a look at the laws of nature we know about today: until we discovered them, it was as if they had never existed. Obviously, they had always existed, but we simply couldn’t perceive them: they existed in potential, instead of in action, with regard to us.

Baal HaSulam explains that the world is divided into a revealed and a concealed (secret) part. Therefore, the time we will discover the true connection among people (souls), we will know (with Mocha – mind) and feel (with Liba – heart), simultaneously, that everyone in the world is solely dependent on everyone else’s goodwill: People’s attitudes of love or hate will determine whether or not they will bring life or death upon others.

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Question for ML: Do you really think that eventually people will regard Kabbalah as a science and seriously consider the possibility of moving from an egoistic society to social equality?

My Answer: Do you remember The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, when the astronomer announced his wonderful discovery at the International Convention of Astronomers? No one believed him, and only because he was dressed in Turkish clothes. (If Kabbalah wasn’t being mistakenly associated with mysticism, religion, and especially Judaism, then perhaps people would hear what it has to say.) A year later, the astronomer announced the same discovery once again, only that this time he was dressed in the latest fashion, and everyone agreed with him!

Oh, these grownups are so weird!

Myths About Kabbalah

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Question for ML: You define God as laws of nature. In the times of Tanach, Moses spoke to God and God spoke back to him and to the nation. Why then, is your definition of God different? I find it very difficult to think of God as laws, as opposed to someone I can cry to or talk to in times of trouble. I understand that the Creator’s laws and orders must be followed, but I don’t understand why your definition of Him is different.

My Answer: We often project our qualities onto nature and then expect nature to react in the same way. For example, we get mad at the computer or at traffic lights. The Creator is absolute, and as such, He is perfect and invariable. He is kind and creates only goodness. His actions are wonderful, but I sense the opposite! So what should I ask Him? I should ask Him to change my perception, so that I can understand Him and see the perfection of His actions in everything. In other words, I’m asking for the correction of my qualities – from egoistic to altruistic. I will then understand His actions and justify Him, because I will be like Him. I will sense eternity and perfection just like Him. This is what I have to ask for!

Talking about the Creator and talking about Nature is the same.

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Philosophy has placed a lot of effort into proving that the corporeal is produced by the spiritual, that the soul begets the body. This is, of course, nothing more than philosophy’s invention. The spiritual has nothing to do with the corporeal; there’s no connection between them whatsoever.

Philosophy’s whole uselessness and confusion lies in that it takes pride in a theoretical understanding of the Creator. Kabbalah, on the other hand, is based on and speaks only about actual attainment.

The spiritual represents a force unclothed by a body, and therefore, it is without corporeal form, without any connection to the corporeal. As far as the soul goes, philosophy considers spiritual entities to be unattainable, attributing them to the category of pure reason.

How can the spiritual beget and sustain the corporeal? Such a question is only difficult for philosophers. This question presents no difficulty to a Kabbalist, because Kabbalists attain the total opposite of what philosophers imagine. Moreover, according to Kabbalists, any property of a spiritual object is similar to its corporeal property.

The time of philosophers has passed, and their reign has ended – thanks to materialistic psychologists. Materialistic psychology was built on the ruins of philosophy. Today, everyone understands philosophy’s uselessness, because it lacks a legitimate foundation. The opportunity to disclose Kabbalah to the world arose when materialistic psychology came about, and inflicted a victorious blow to philosophic theology.

Today, Kabbalah will be able to prove its validity by clarifying the uselessness and falsehood of philosophic theology, which inherited the throne of Kabbalah such a long time ago.

Based on: Y. Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

My Current Mood: confused

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