Entries in the 'Perception' Category

Interesting for Historians and Sad for Us?

3Comment: I read an article in which our current period is called “interesting for a historian and sad for contemporary man.”

My Response: It’s interesting because everything is developing very rapidly. “Sad for contemporary man” depends on for whom.

Question: It says that in addition to all the troubles, wars, and natural disasters, long-term friendship is collapsing, a brother stops calling his sister, children stop calling their parents, parents curse children.

Eighty years ago, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a former member of the resistance executed by the Nazis, wrote from prison and quoted the lyrics from a song by Hugo Wolf, “Over night, over night, joy and sorrow come, and sooner than you thought, they both leave you, and go to tell the Lord how you have borne them.”

How should we accept joy and sadness today? And maybe further about how should we accept sadness?

Answer: ”Blessed is he who has visited this world in its fateful moments.” But we live in a very intense era.

Comment: Yes, we don’t stop at any news. It’s different the next day.

My Response: I’m following it more or less. I am interested in how external actions affect people’s internal states, and how people change from this.

Comment: How it affects us is more or less visible. A dead end like this is approaching for people.

My Response: People can’t figure it out. They can’t in any way. There are very few true thoughts. They can’t put this together.

Comment: But all the same, humanity is sad mainly from everything that is to come, from hunger…

My Response: If there used to be some banner, slogan, future, or hope waving over everyone, today there is no hope for the future. Today the hope is only to live a good day, or at least if not very well, not very bad either.

Comment: Preferably with no scary news.

My Response: Yes. And to continue existing this way.

Question: How does a person accept this sadness that you are talking about? This pastor here said that all this goes to God and He looks at how you accepted it, so to say.

Answer: I would not say that all this goes to God. I would say that all this comes from God. Are we the builders of our spiritual future?

Comment: No, the Creator is building it.

My Response: Of course!

Question: So how do you accept sadness?

Answer: I think the whole problem is that we do not know the purpose of our creation; we do not imagine it in an explicit, clear form, but rather as in an unfocused lens, we see everything in such a fog, and it depresses us.

That’s what sadness is. After all, we don’t know how, or what, or for what, or in the name of what, which is the most important thing. For what purpose do some of the smallest events in our lives happen?

Question: And what if we knew in the name of what this is happening?

Answer: If we knew for what sake, the world would be different. We would immediately add more light and color to it inside ourselves.

Question: What is all this about? The biggest and smallest sorrows, what are they for? To add some light, maybe. Will it maybe work out somehow?

Answer: We can’t go into a sharper color state from this grayish and kind of blunt state. We cannot move from one of these states to another more elevated state if we do not reveal in ourselves all these colors and all these right attitudes to ourselves, to others, to the world, and to the Creator, who generally supplies us with all this.

The most important thing is, of course, to display the right position. Or what’s it called in the movies? To build a mise en scene. To see all this correctly, so that everything complements everything else and it becomes clear how it should exist.

Question: But still, what makes this black-and-white movie colored?

Answer: Only the attitude of a person.

Question: And what should blossom in me? What should light up suddenly?

Answer: When I realize that any events that surround me are necessary; they are mutually dependent. And if I relate them to the purpose of creation, then I will be able to focus them and assemble this whole picture so that it becomes one. What am I missing? It’s like in a kaleidoscope when the mosaic is assembled into the right picture.

Comment: In the meantime, I see fragmentarily, everything separately.

My Response: You can’t understand anything. You don’t understand anything, and therefore this is the main thing: that we don’t see the point in anything. When it all comes together, it makes sense. This is the most important thing. The meaning is always good.

Question: Why should all these fragments, all these broken pieces of glass, come together? In what picture? What’s all this about?

Answer: For me to rush to myself, to reveal the “I” itself.

Question: And what is it like?

Answer: It strives to direct everything that is revealed to me toward unity and connection so that I can form the image of the Creator out of everything.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/2/22

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From a Lifeless State to the Feeling of Life

423.02Question: How can I hate bad qualities that are outside of me? How can I hate them inside myself?

Answer: It is done gradually. It is very difficult. It takes years because we are going through the most difficult period of internal formation. After all, the universe existed for billions of years before the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels were formed.

And now we, people, are starting to develop. And look how fast we are developing compared to previous cosmic and geological periods. This is an enormous difference! One year today is like a hundred million years for the past levels or even more.

We are now developing at the inanimate level in the same way as the universe was developing. This is the bottom level of a pyramid, but it is the widest and thickest, and we do not see results while we are developing in it.

Nebulae, planets, the Sun, and galaxies collide. Everything swirls, flips, forms, explodes, disintegrates, and connects again. We do not see any of this yet because everything is happening in a kind of incomprehensible mass and, as it seems to us, it is an absolute mess.

In the end, everything gradually gathers together into the next level where the earth appears and living conditions emerge. So, we are now in the formation phase of all these conditions. We are already on Earth where conditions are being created for our spiritual life. The spiritual Earth kind of already exists, only the conditions of life have not yet been determined.

An international group where people who need to find the meaning of life gather together has already been created. That is, the support is already there, but it has not yet been shaped by us. We must take a more active part in this. Then it will turn out that vegetation will begin to grow from the ground, it will rise to the sun, to the sky. These should be our movements. This is what we do not have yet.

The transition from a lifeless state to the feeling of life and light is the most delicate, most subtle, and most dramatic period because inanimate matter must gradually come to life, turn into vegetative, animate—into a living one.

The force of life will appear in it because it consists of two qualities: bestowal and reception. What happens between them is the flow of energy and matter, the connection between the quality of bestowal—the Creator—and the quality of reception—creation—and in these mutual communications the middle, next state called man, Adam, will appear.

Question: So how can we hate external qualities inside ourselves?

Answer: The answer is simple: “You have to want to.” This is possible only through the friends. But we are still running away from this.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How Can I Hate My Bad Qualities?” 3/9/13

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The World Is Not without Good People

737.01In the News (boredpanda.com): “Photographer And His Wife Plant 2 Million Trees In 20 Years To Restore A Destroyed Forest And Even The Animals Have Returned”

“’The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed,’ Salgado said in The Guardian back in 2015. ‘Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees. Then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn – this was the most important moment.’ …

“Together, Sebastião and Lélia founded Instituto Terra, a small organization that has since planted 4 million saplings and has brought the forest back from the dead. …

“And so, after taking utmost care to ensure that everything planted is native to the land, the area has flourished remarkably in the ensuing 20 years. Wildlife has returned, where there was a deathly silence, there is now a cacophony of birdcalls and insects buzzing around. In all, some 172 bird species have returned, as well as 33 species of mammals, 293 species of plants, 15 species of reptiles and 15 species of amphibians, an entire ecosystem rebuilt from scratch.”

Question: If we promote such heroes will we be able to push a person to some meaning of life and perhaps even correct the ecological system of the world? What do you think?

Answer: This is certainly great! Unbelievable!

Question: So, are you for promoting such people?

Answer: Of course!

Comment: Naturally, they received help, but they organized it all. Millions of trees have been planted. It is even shown there in pictures, a barren area of Brazil and suddenly after 20 years, everything is overgrown with trees and plants, birds came back, animals came, and life returned. They are so happy and the husband and wife stand together and hugging.

My Response: Of course!

Question: Does it mean that there is still something good in man?

Answer: Somewhere far and deep, but there is.

Question: How can we extract it?

Answer: By somehow demonstrating that the world is not without good people. Do you want to be like them? And so on.

Question: Are you in favor of such promotions after all?

Answer: Of course! Nature really needs our sensible attitude to it.

Question: What goal should a person have? Is the goal to get out of my personal drought in this way?

Answer: Certainly. Absolutely it is only that way! It really helps.

Question: That is, if this good becomes the meaning of life, right?

Answer: It changes a person.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 7/7/22

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Origins of Time Measurement

746.03Question: How did it happen that people were able to carry accurate time throughout history? We know exactly how many thousands of years have passed since this or that event. How was it measured?

Answer: In Judaism, it is measured very simply and there is no problem with this! But when you look at some other dimensions, let’s say, some city is a 100, 600, or 1,000 years-old, then in Judaism this is not the time because the calculation comes from Adam almost 6,000 years ago. We know absolutely everything that happened on what dates: great people, great events, and everything else.

If we take what is written in our books and remove all the world philosophical and historical sources that historians and philosophers came up with by pulling them out of their heads without any reason, but simply because they think so, then you can see that everything is known and everything it is clear: who existed, at what time, and so on.

If you open Wikipedia, you will see how much is twisted there because everyone wants to say something in their own way: “This is what I think.” It turns out to be such an accumulation of all sorts of absurdities and conclusions that no one can sort out anything here.

I hope that when humanity begins to understand a little from within itself of what the truth is and will determine by the smell that this is true and this is not, then it will simply begin cleaning everything up! Then it will see that everything is clear and everything is understandable.

“We found the Qumran manuscripts and now we understand that the Bible is right!” or something else. But who are you anyway?! The chronicle has been kept for 6,000 years. Why are you with your conclusions climbing to the heights of the sages?! It seems so ridiculous.

All this is a blind human pride: nothing more than, “I want to have my say!” There is nothing new in the world, everything is described and everything is measured. We know everything that happened and on what dates.

It is written, “And there was morning, and there was evening, the first day.” That is all. Sunday is the first day and it is called so. From that day all the measurement started. Measurement of what? The period when humanity began to approach the next stage, to become humans. Before that, there was the development of inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels.

This is how all historical dates and processes are calculated. Why are they not measured by our clocks and rotation around the Sun and the Earth? Because none of this exists. All this is within us! There is no sun, no moon, no earth—nothing. These are our inner feelings.

Soon we will rise to the next stage of development and all past sensations will disappear. This whole cosmos, with everything that I now feel, will suddenly begin to move away as if in a fog, will leave my sensations until it ceases to exist at all. That is all. It also does not exist now. All matter is given to us in our sensations.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. When Did the Time Appear?” 3/6/13

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Creating a New Sensor for Perceiving the World

243.03Question: Is it possible to feel the Creator and the upper world before a person reveals the first degree of spirituality for himself?

Answer: How could this be done? What would you feel it with?

How is any sensing device arranged? It has a certain photosensitivity, i.e., sensitivity to certain waves or frequencies. It may not be our light, but it may rather be a laser, just like the way they etch motherboards, microprocessors, and so on, with one-zero, one-zero.

You need exactly these sensations: one-zero, one-zero, light-darkness, light-darkness, bestowal-reception, bestowal-reception, more-less, and where and how, in what qualities, in what connections, and so on. All of nature consists of these two forces; there is nothing else! You must create in yourself the maximum number of such comparisons: zero-one, plus-minus, bestowal-reception.

When a sufficient number of such “etched” spiritual zero-one, zero-one pairs are formed on your substrate, when you know that this is reception, this is bestowal, and this is reception, and this is bestowal, then you begin to feel the entire picture, since it can be depicted on the substrate in all its aspects, nuances, variations, and styles.

You need a great number of cells, zero-one, zero-one, reception-bestowal, reception-bestowal, in both height and width, i.e., a great number of various vectors. If you do not have such a substrate, how can you use something? You do not have a sensor!

How are our eye and brain arranged? How is everything arranged? What do we do all our lives until we become adults? We are constantly “etching” these cells in ourselves, accumulating the ability of a correct perception of the world. This is called education.

Here we have Kabbalistic, integral, spiritual education. Thus, you have to create such a sensor in yourself. Where can you escape to anyway? If you do not have it, where will you feel?

After all, you need to build it all. Kabbalah is the building of the organ of perception of the upper world that exists around us, but we do not feel. This is why it is called the wisdom of reception, the wisdom of perception.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. How to Find out My Spiritual Level?” 3/21/13

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How to Deserve a Good Attitude from the Creator

568.01On one side stands the Creator, on the other side I am, and between us in the middle is this torn, disassembled world. When I collect it more and more, like in a kaleidoscope, I gradually reveal the attitude of the Creator toward me.

Question: Is it good?

Answer: For this, I need to make myself good and then I will be able to see through this kaleidoscope, how it assembles everything correctly.

Question: What is “I am good”?

Answer: “I am good” is the one who sees only good in everything that exists in the world, the manifestation of the Creator. This is not easy. But this is what we must come to. Everyone should try to assemble the image of the Creator.

Question: Behind everything that is going on? Behind absolutely everything?

Answer: Of course, behind everything. As soon as my attitude changes like this, perfection will immediately be revealed.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/2/22

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How to See the World from End to End?

537Question: Are there periods when a baby senses everything from end to end?

Answer: No, this has nothing to do with the corporeal body. This is said in a spiritual sense, when an infant is called a person who is ready to rise above itself and become included in the upper domain because one is completely ready to obtain the property of bestowal, the second property of the world that is concealed from us.

We live in the world of reception, absorption, swallowing, and capturing, and we have to cross over to the world of bestowal and fulfillment of others, to living in the desires of others.

If we can cross over to this system, then our first state there will be called a “spiritual embryo,” development in the form of the spiritual embryo. Then, once we completely reject our egoism, we will be able to see everything in this world from end to end.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The World Through the Eyes of a Baby” 2/10/13

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214Kabbalah is the science of how to reach the revelation of the Creator in our world, to feel and grasp Him to such an extent that you can pass it on to other people and to the next generations. Kabbalah teaches how to perceive reality that we cannot feel with the five ordinary senses.

But if it cannot be sensed by our organs of perception, then how can it be perceived by our mind? It cannot! After all, our mind is the result of impressions from our world. As we develop in this world, we build different forms, discernments, and images, all kinds of connections and synapses in our brain.

This is why we are not able to perceive the spiritual world. To do this, we need to develop new organs of perception: to open up new connections between us in our mind and in our heart, which are not present in an ordinary person. But we can do it.

If we gradually build such connections, then they work like synapses in the brain and connect all kinds of concepts and opposites for us. In essence, these are formulas for connecting everything that exists in matter and space.

In this way, we build vessels for perceiving reality within ourselves that is above the corporeal senses and mind, and we begin to feel the spiritual world.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/10/22, Baal HaSulam “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”

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The Fake World

423.02Question: In theory, a movie itself is a fraud. For example, a movie supposedly takes place in New York, but in fact they shoot somewhere in an alley or a set somewhere else. It still evokes certain feelings in people. They are sort of deceived, but this deception works.

Nowadays everything is being filmed in 3D in studios. They recreate some worlds for you to view, but in fact, you see generated graphics, something not real. Is there some kind of energy behind the material image that has existed for five centuries that is identical to this 3D?

Answer: All this is so artificial! But what does “genuine” mean? What does “natural” mean? No one knows that. You can take a person and stuff him with any images as basic ones, and then build anything upon them, any civilization, any culture.

But gradually it all goes away. We are entering a completely different world, which will be a transitional world where we will get used to the fact that everything is changing. As, for example, in the movies where encounters with aliens who arrived from other galaxies are portrayed. Let’s say some huge hall in which different creatures with crocodile muzzles or with two heads walk around and bow to each other, such an international bazaar.

We are in a state where we have to get used to the fact that the world is within us, all of Hollywood is within us. One single truth will prevail above everything. This is the Kabbalistic approach.

Everything will be measured only by the relative quality of bestowal. Relative means that it is in a different way for everyone. People will communicate and understand each other internally. The feeling of our world, space, and matter will begin to disappear because it does not really exist.

Engels said that matter is given to us in sensations. And it is indeed so. Matter is what is given to us today in sensations. To the extent that our qualities, our sensations change, our idea of matter also changes.

Question: If we compare cinema with this fake world and take Kabbalistic texts, do they also awaken certain states, a certain movie, but only on a different level? Are the feelings that are awakened, for example, by The Book of Zohar and by other sources real, not like a movie?

Answer: Yes, because they are those partial qualities, types, and fragments of the whole unified image of nature. That is, they are degrees of attaining the perfection of nature, which is eternal and perfect. And all its degrees are private measures of its revelation relative to us. They also exist, but they exist relative to us.

Everything else that we feel today is absolutely illusive, invented because it is induced to us by our egoism, like in a half-dream, like in an unconscious state in which a person feels some kind of vibes.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Deception of the Movies” 2/19/13

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Rise Above the Influence of Society

423.02Question: Is it true that babies have a much greater perception of the world than an adult even  though it seems to us that they do not perceive anything at all?

Answer: The fact is that children’s perception is not constrained, not limited by the framework imposed by society, the environment, conventions, so-called “education,” and so on. It is not yet narrowed to a frame, like with the aperture of a lens, by the requirements of the environment.

Therefore, we can say that it is undoubtedly more open than in adults. We do not see very much. We see everything that society directs us to and restricts us by. Every time we hear or see something from the outside, we constantly include it in ourselves, and as a result, our field of perception narrows and distorts under the influence of the environment.

The perception of a baby is like clean photographic film on which it can record everything directly. Our perception however, can be compared with something worn-out because society with its stupidities coarsens us so much that as a result we perceive only some scanty information from the environment.

Therefore it is of course wonderful to rise above the influence of society, which means to throw away culture and all external conventions, that is to say, external egoism, to drop the inner egoism that was introduced into you, and to begin to perceive the world from your point, which you pull out of there. Then you discover yourself, not what was done to you.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The World Through the Eyes of a Baby?” 2/10/13

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