Question for ML: People identify themselves with their body. Take a human body and an apple. The person eats the apple. The matter of the apple is transferred to the person, and he calls it his “I.” But we see that it’s no more than particles moving through space.

There are an invariable amount of particles in the world that continuously change location, thereby creating an illusion of time progression. Oxygen particles enter my lungs, my blood, my cells – does that make them part of my “I”? The same particles that just yesterday I called “air”?

Where do we start and where do we end?

My Answer: Everything you’re saying doesn’t exist. There is only my desire, a component that senses itself. Within my desire, I feel constant changes. They depict a picture for me, which I call “world.” Within this picture, I sense the existence of what is similar to me, and what is “other”: matter, vegetation, animals… That’s what my desires sense; that’s what I sense.

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News Story: Moses high on Mt Sinai: Israeli study

A professor of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem has come to a conclusion that Moses was under the influence of psychedelic substances at the time of receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. “’Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times,’ Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

‘As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,’ Dr. Shanon told Israeli public radio. [Read more →]

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Question for ML: It is very difficult for me, as a musician and a composer, to perceive Kabbalistic music, which, because of my musical upbringing, “seems” primitive to me, and I have no choice but to separate myself from the higher harmony, from the higher level onto which the great musicians have elevated this music, and literally force myself to listen to it as if I’ve just started music school.
I don’t know how people, myself included, that are not on the level of Baal HaSulam, can perceive what he has put into it. More likely it raises people with its spiritual force and makes them tune into the spiritual like a tuning fork. I can’t do it yet, but I’ll keep trying!

My Answer: I felt the exact same thing when I first heard these melodies! And what can we say to people who come from completely different cultures, such as Eastern countries or Africa? This is how Baal HaSulam expressed his sensations. We need to abstract ourselves from the sounds themselves. It’s similar to the scenario of a student who desires to understand his Teacher: He may not even know the language that the material is written in, but he will discover the sensations that his Teacher is conveying through his desire alone. By the way, this is exactly what happened between Baal HaSulam and one of his students.

In Kabbalah, one needs to tune oneself into perceiving “Peh el Peh” – from the teacher’s screen into the student’s screen. By nullifying oneself before one’s Teacher (this is what the screen does) the person is able to receive higher sensuous information, comprehend it within, and start working with it. You understand the approach correctly – the sounds aren’t important; instead, through them one should try to listen for “the voice of the soul.”

Here’s a link to Baal HaSulam’s melodies

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In today’s morning lesson I talked a lot about perception of reality. I recommend watching it, especially the first part [the articles of Shamati].

Shamati article #89 (Feb 4, 2008): wmv video | mp3 audio

It’s hard for us to believe the Kabbalists, when they say that our world is an illusion, because we have never disconnected from it or seen it from outside. We have nothing left to do but either disagree with them, “because it can’t be true,” or to check it on ourselves. However, I see from my teaching experience that a person gradually starts understanding our illusion and the fact that the world can exist only within us.

We know from experience that only by equipping ourselves with certain senses can we perceive something new that we haven’t felt before.

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The world does not have a reality of its own – man’s uncorrected perception paints the world for him.

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