Entries in the 'Religion' Category

From Superstition To True Knowledge Of Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe human being has always been very dependent on his environment from the still, vegetative, and animate natures, as well as on other people, be they good or bad neighbors and nearby nations. Thus, everyone wants to know what awaits him in the future.

Throughout history, people have studied different signs that exist in nature and noticed how they are related to our destiny.

Rich and extensive literature exists on this topic and stretches from the most ancient times to the present day. Indeed, even today we have not solved a single puzzle and the future still remains shrouded in mystery for us.

There are people who can predict the future, and you can see it and feel it as if they live within it. They achieve some special internal state and rise above themselves by contacting the flow of information, which is located above our perception. This state is not available to an ordinary person, but these people can grasp it and tell us what they perceive.

There are different means of achieving the ability to feel nature outside of one’s body and somehow to disconnect from it by using drugs and bringing oneself to ecstasy. These methods are known in cultures of different nations around which many fairy tales, stories, and legends were created.

Nations are either more or less inclined to believe in omens. Thirty years ago, I visited England and was struck by the tradition adopted there. Before moving into an apartment, a special service was invited to clean an apartment, not of dust, but of evil spirits. Newspapers are full of announcements of such services to ensure the absence of evil energy and the presence of good energy in your home. They say that there is almost no one who moves to another apartment without this purification.

Once a year in Mexico, the Day of the Dead is observed. It is customary to take food to the graves of relatives. It is a common tradition to broadcast this on the main TV channel in Mexico People even wash the bones of the buried and put them back into the grave, as it is considered giving special honor to deceased parents.

Every religion has rituals that are close to divination and beliefs. All this belongs to the area unknown to us. But in history there was a man who declared a war on this uncertainty, fought bravely, and started a great revolution. His name was Abraham.

At first, he was a prophet and a priest who studied astronomy and astrology, predicted the future, and sold idols and amulets. In those days, science was closely mixed with religion and all kinds of beliefs. Science was studied in monasteries and belonged to religion.

This confusion remains to this day and we have rid ourselves of medieval superstition. Technological development is purely mechanical and did not raise the human spirit higher. On the contrary, it lowered it.

Abraham was a great astrologer and famous sorcerer who sold idols. His father Terah was a high priest. They were considered very important people in Babylon and represented the supreme spiritual authority.

But Abraham gave up his honorary position in order to realize his inner desire. He explored nature and tried to understand why the whole world existed and where the the higher force was that controlled everything. Eventually he revealed this upper force, the Creator.

He worked selflessly, despite fear. After all, he went against all of his former beliefs not fearing that he could be killed for it. Indeed, he then had to flee from Babylon. Abraham was the first person on this earth who made the transition from mysticism, magic, amulets and idolatry to the true knowledge of nature.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/1/15

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The Upper Mind That Is Concealed In Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that the Israeli nation was chosen by the Creator in order to help all of humanity get closer to Him. But we don’t live in ancient times or in the Middle Ages anymore and don’t see that the modern world needs the Creator. Only religious people speak about the Creator, not people in the ordinary world, and no one feels the need for Him.

Answer: The Creator is equivalent to nature. The whole huge system of nature, the immense power that includes and sustains all of creation is called the Creator. This definition is totally different from the common religious definition.

The problem is that because our mind and our feelings are so limited, we cannot recognize the fact that the upper force also has feelings, understanding, a plan, and organizes the process that leads to a certain goal.

We picture this force as a still force, like the force of gravity that simply pulls and that’s all. We think that only us humans have minds and thoughts and nature doesn’t.

But today there are many scientific publications that speak about the upper force that develops all of matter. This force has a plan and a goal that are predetermined, and it advances us according to this plan. Our situation is no coincidence and nothing in the world happens by chance.

Even ordinary evolution, which seems to us as arbitrary, is in fact predetermined. Each time different desires connect and there is a struggle between them, they are carrying out the precise plan that is predetermined. The only thing is that we don’t know it, but today scientists are already beginning to speak about it.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/28/14

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The Maccabees And The Greek Ideology, Part 2

laitman_276_02We should understand that the Jews didn’t enjoy the Greek culture, as contemporary authors try to portray. They simply don’t understand the inner essence of the Jewish people and what it meant to be a Jew in the land of Israel, the people of Israel in the country of Israel in those days.

The Greek and the Jewish ideologies are two basically opposite perspectives. All the other ideologies, such as the Greek ideology or other ideologies stemmed from man, who is a corporeal creature, an animal, an egoist. A person can only come up with an ideology that is aimed at his own corporeal, physical benefit.

The ancient Greeks, by the way, loved athletics and sports. They built stadiums, held Olympic games, and on the whole were inclined to hedonism. Basically anything that helps a person advance towards the goal of creation is good, but if I simply enjoy strength, agility, and stamina as long as the body is alive, I live for it.

This is also true with regard to other philosophical, esthetic concepts. They are all corporeal and they all stem from the five senses of our body and do not exceed their narrow perception.

The problem is that this limitation is evasive and cannot be noticed unless a person ascends above his five senses and says goodbye to his body and rises to a higher level, not after his death but rather here in this life.

The idea is to perceive reality above the five corporeal senses that are a desire to understand, to know, and to feel what is around us. All of a person’s senses perceive everything in an egoistic manner, internally, according to the principle of absorbing into one’s self. In such a state they cannot perceive more that what is dictated to them by the limitation of time, motion, and place as well as by the tolerance of each sense organ.

It is on the basis of this perception that the Greeks established their science and the realm of myths, which includes earthly fairytales regarding the relationships between their gods. This is how they imagined the laws of nature, in the form of an Olympic pantheon where the gods flirt with one another, get married, get divorced, live in peace or quarrel…

This is a very primitive picture, which of course is totally wrong. Therefore only children’s books remain of it for the next generations and I don’t recommend them because they establish a wrong conception of nature in a person.

Consequently only the basics of nature and scientific terminology are left of all of the ancient Greek culture.

As for the traditional Jewish perspective, it is actually inclined outward. In its framework we don’t need to absorb data from nature and to process it by our feelings and our mind, no. We need to exit ourselves and be incorporated in others outside ourselves. Thus we improve our tools of perception and make them unlimited and infinite.

After all, I exit myself, leaving my body, not wanting to remain in it. It only limits me and doesn’t allow me to understand things the way they really are. I cannot even really feel anything since I am imprisoned in the narrow limits of my senses.

What is more, when I perceive information through my five senses I process it by calculating my personal gain. It is inevitable because this is how my body operates due to its egoistic force. Therefore, out of the whole world that surrounds me, no matter what it may be, I only perceive what can enter my five egoistic senses, which is surely in my benefit or may bring me harm in the limits of a certain sense.

We don’t distinguish all the other phenomena around us. At the same time we can use instruments that do expand our boundaries a little, but we also perceive this information through the prism of our personal gain.

It turns out that if I want to be a real researcher I have to be independent of everything. Is that possible? After all, I was born an egoist, and by definition I only see what is good or bad for me, what is pleasant or unpleasant, beneficial or harmful.

I filter the flow of external data automatically and subconsciously, isolating only what my ego regards as worthwhile and ignore everything else. This is the reason that we all see the world and assess it differently.

At the same time, there is a different perception that is opposite from the natural Greek perception. According to that perception, I have to transcend what happens to me here on this planet, exit my ego, and ascend above myself with my self, if I want to be a true, independent, objective scientist, which cannot be found in the ordinary format of this world.

There is a method, which by a series of exercises and with the help of the environment and the friends, allows an ordinary person to perform such changes in him: to expand his natural perception and add a super natural perception to it, which means a perception that operates beyond a person’s natural ego.

Thus I can develop additional senses inside me that are not based on absorption internally but on bestowal, when I am ready to give, to love, to bestow, and am ready to be above myself. Love and bestowal are opposite from the perception of receiving, self-enjoyment, and hatred.

It is by such an approach that I begin to notice the reality that is beyond my egoistic vessels of perception. These vessels perceive merely two miserable percent of the whole spectrum and also distort the picture by presenting it to me in the form of this world to me.

Even physicists today say that they have reached a certain limit and that they cannot transcend it. Although there is undoubtedly something beyond that, they don’t know how to touch what is hidden on the other side…
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/14/14

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Does God Exist?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science and not a religion, does that mean that you negate the existence of God?

Answer: I negate the existence of God in the sense that a religious person perceives Him as someone who exists as a corporeal figure.

God is the general attribute of love and bestowal that sustains the whole universe and all the worlds. It is the positive force (which the wisdom of Kabbalah calls Light) that created matter and develops this matter to resemble Him. This force is called God, or the Creator or the Upper, simply because He is higher than all the other forces.

Our mutual relations with that force are not based on the human principle that implies that God can feel sorry for, forgive, or punish us. We are dealing with a system of providence that perceives our actions and responds accordingly without any regret, mercy, etc.

It isn’t the God that religious people refer to when they cry and beg Him to be merciful and forgiving. We see that throughout history, our cries and our begging are useless because this isn’t what the system called the Creator demands of us.

The meaning of the word “God”- “Elokim” in Gematria (numerology) is equal in value to the word “nature – Teva,” since nature and God are the same thing.
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From KabTV’s “A Special Opinion” 8/17/14

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The Ideology Of Balance And Unity

laitman_254_02Question: You graduated from the Polytechnic Institute, studied biology and cybernetics, and then worked in the Military Medical Academy Laboratory. Then you’ve repatriated to Israel, where you found yourself to be religious. Until that time were you an atheist?

Answer: My view of the world comes from the internal Torah. I’ve always been interested in the problem of the meaning of human life, the program that controls the universe, the system that guides us, in the issues of the past, present, and future.

Comment: So, in your worldview aspiration, you postulate a religion, that is, the existence of the Almighty …

Answer: No, because the image that a religious person imagines under the term “higher force” is completely unacceptable for a Kabbalist.

Under the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the founder of it all, I mean a huge system of the universe, not only our world, but also those hidden worlds, those hidden systems that exist around us, control us, and which we can control by the reciprocal connection.

Torah in my outlook plays a very important role, but not in the sense in which it is understood by the common person or by an ordinary believer, but in its internal sense. Torah teaches how to change oneself to get out of the non-terrestrial, unlimited existence.

Kabbalah is a practical system of knowledge that enables a person for the life span that one lives in this world, to understand, to comprehend, and to achieve a highest dimension, to rise above the level of death and already feel the upcoming states.

A person has a direct influence on the control system, in which we exist. One should just feel this connection, and then take control of one’s own destiny.

Kabbalah was revealed for the first time 5774 years ago by a man called Adam. After 20 generations of Kabbalists, Abraham, the ancient Babylonian high priest, created the Jewish people. He gathered a group of people who wanted to combine the principle of “love thy neighbor as thyself.” It became the ideology of our people, their constitution. Joined together, we are one nation, which is called Yehudim from the word “Yichud” (unity).

As a result of its development, the group had to show the rest of Babylon, who didn’t want to follow Abraham, how it’s necessary to correct themselves, to rise above self-interest and withdraw from the huge crisis of human interconnection.

This is what Kabbalah was intended for, where the two components of the universe, the altruism and egoism, bestowal and reception, are combined into one creation. Reception in order to bestow is the right interconnection for people in perfect harmony.

Now we only have the property of reception. Even if we bestow, we do so only in order to receive. If we add the property of bestowal toward the property of reception, we will add a property of bestowal to ourselves, then we will be like the overall harmonious nature, the still, vegetative, and animal levels. By developing a bestowal not for the sake of reception, but just for the sake of bestowal, for a proper interconnection with each other, we will balance our egoism with altruism, the minus and the plus.

In nature, a minus and a plus balanced out on the still, vegetative, and animal level. But on the level of human consciousness, at the level of our mental connections between each other, we can’t do that. This is the current general global crisis, which is a manifestation of one egoistic force in us.

The source of the current global crisis is the disharmony between altruism and egoism. Only the Jewish people can implement this harmony, and we’ve been trying to bring it to mankind through our Kabbalah Academy.

Kabbalah isn’t a religion; it’s not a belief based on some assumptions; it is a science. A person shouldn’t believe in anything here, lower oneself in front of anything, or perform any rituals. A person just has to want to look into one’s life.

Religion is something that someone believes into, and Kabbalah, like any science, can be confirmed in practice.
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From KabTV’s “A Special Opinion” 8/17/14

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The Children Of The Universe, Part 5

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe encounter many surprises when we study the physical attributes of the universe. If we first supposed that radiation and particles could not penetrate solids, we know now that this isn’t so.

The microcosm has opened a truly amazing picture before us. A lot has changed in our understanding of the universe and of man’s place in it.

What is more, it is all because we refused to follow a whole ideological approach, agreeing that we don’t understand, feel, or know the creation at all and that we have to study it from the beginning. Thus science has drawn away from religion and left its limitations, which was very helpful.

This struggle lasted for centuries and until this very day the echoes of the church and other religious institutions’ objections to a wide variety of scientific approaches are still heard. Although this study did not go along with their faith, the basic beliefs were accepted since they helped control people and things. Our knowledge of the universe is very limited, and lately we have come to the conclusion that our view of reality is partial and fragmented. Even if we would be able to grasp it as a whole, the data from research indicates that there may be parallel universes. We simply see that without assumptions, our formulas do not agree, and so we have to take this possibility into account.

Then there are questions about the connection between the universes, and about the passage from one to another on a higher level that surrounds us but which is not accessible in our perception. Otherwise our current data does not line up.

Of course, we are looking for intelligent life on other planets. In my opinion, it’s not there,  and our poor planet is the only one where intelligent beings live, polluting and ruining the still, vegetative, and animate nature.

What a wonderful planet it could be if it were simply covered with plants. We could also add a few animals, but a few people is already too much.

Seriously and generally speaking, life on this planet is indeed a rare phenomenon. For life to appear there had to be very specific combinations of different parameters and forces of nature that enabled particles to connect into new forms and to acquire new, unique attributes of procreation in the process of biological evolution. This is a totally new level compared to the rest of the universe.
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From the program “A New Life” 3/02/14

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What Is The Difference Between Kabbalah And Religion?

laitman_227There is no connection between Kabbalah and religion. Religion emerged from the fact that people received a Kabbalistic text, but they do not know how to read and understand it correctly.

As a rule, a religious man, opening the Torah or some other book written by Kabbalists who have attained the upper world interprets it in material images of our world, i.e., in terms he understands.

For example, the forefathers’ journey, he perceives as a journey on the Earth and not within himself at different levels of egoism. He treats killing, defeats, victories, and other events and phenomena described in the Torah as all sorts of adventures in our world. He is like a little kid whom you tell about something higher, but who perceives everything at the level he sees around himself.

The problem is that there is one language for the description of the spiritual world and our world. Therefore, a person who is at the level of our world takes everything literally, and this is the source of religion. But a person who is at the spiritual level interprets it correctly because for him this is Kabbalah, the upper world, interaction with the Creator.

Question: How can a religious person relate to Kabbalah?

Answer: It is said that every man judges everything from his level, to the extent of his corruption. So here comes a big problem.

Kabbalists understand that ordinary religious people, within the narrow confines of their limited perception, interpret the Torah incorrectly. But they need to maintain their level of simple faith. They should study the Torah in their way, until the time of their correction arrives.

Religious people tie Kabbalah to the material level, not realizing that Kabbalists understand it differently (at a higher level), as a young child does not understand an adult. Therefore, they resent Kabbalists, believe that Kabbalah is a harmful thing that takes a man away from religion. Kabbalah really takes a man away from religion because it shows him true peace and the true purpose of creation.

The fact is that a religious person performs the commandments in an egoistic way: just for the sake of a good life in this world and for the sake of paradise in the next world. It has no relation to the laws of unity and to the rule of “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

A Kabbalist fulfills the commandment “love thy neighbor” because it is the basis for all his life in which he reveals the Creator and reaches the property of bestowal and love.

Therefore, Kabbalah and religion have completely different goals, different techniques, and different attitudes to the Torah. This profound contradiction separates them and makes them polar opposites. Let us hope that eventually religious people will understand the importance of the gradual transition from religion to Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/22/14

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Short Stories: Abraham’s Rough Path

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt wasn’t easy for Abraham to disseminate his ideas since most Babylonians were against his method.

He believed that everything stems from one force, although it later splits into many opposite forces that have no free will.

The Babylonians, however, claimed that there are several forces that managed the world and that they were all connected by a system of different mutual relationships. The mythologies about different gods that fight one another, devour one another, have children, and so on emerged from this basis.

Abraham refuted all these beliefs, but at the same time he understood that he would not be able to lead all of Babylon. This was the dramatic situation in which he found himself. According to his method, it is possible to attain the goal of creation only when every person in the world recognizes and realizes that there is only one way to reach one form which we create among us by connecting into one whole. The main point is the internal unity among us, despite the heterogeneity of our corporeal bodies.

We have to take care of the body, give it what it needs to maintain its existence, so that rising above it, one engages in the connection and unity between us and advances towards the goal. This is called the evolution of the human being within us. Moreover, this human being is our general image.

By uniting internally among us, we receive one general image called Adam (man – with the same root as “Domeh” –  one who resembles the Creator), which was the same name given to the first person to investigate the spiritual world.

Abraham went through a rough path before he discovered the method of spiritual connection and unity. His first teacher was his father Terah who taught him according to Noah’s method. Terah believed that paganism is justified and Abraham tried to accept his views until he rebelled against his teacher. This is the dramatic breaking point, the disagreement with the teacher, when the student outdoes his teachers by ascending to a level above.

On the other hand, however, Terah tried to force his teachings on Abraham and showed him all the bad qualities and the evil in polytheism after which Abraham could find the right way. He realized that only one force of goodness and love manages the world, and it includes the evil force, only so that it will be used to ascend above evil.

By discovering this, Abraham became an innovator, a revolutionist, who changed the course of history and showed humanity the right path.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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Laitman_115_04The name Abraham (AB-am) means “father of the nation.” Abraham is actually the spiritual father of all of humanity since he was not only the founder of many nations but the creator of the spiritual method of the correction of the world. The main idea of his method was the indication that the Creator is the only one unique and united force of nature, which manages all of creation, that “there is none else besides Him.”

The Creator’s attributes were determined by him as the “good that does good.” According to his teachings, the role of humanity was to obtain adhesion with the Creator according to the rule of “love thy friend as thyself.”

He passed on this method to his Babylonian students who joined him and called their community “the house of Abraham” (Beit Abraham), which refers to his students and to his family. Later Abraham took his group of students out of Babylon, which means that he detached from all the other studies and obtained the Creator and established an independent method that he expressed in the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira), which largely complemented the work of Adam, Angel Raziel (Raziel and Malachi).

Abraham placed the foundations of the method for the right attainment of the Creator, for obtaining His level and adhering to Him. All the other Kabbalists only developed his theory by adding their practical work to it. Because the ego kept on growing in every generation, this enabled the development of Abraham’s method on the next levels according to the conditions in a certain time.

Therefore, we cannot say that we have something new today. Everything that is revealed is revealed by Kabbalists starting from Adam until our times, but the right path begins with Abraham, although there is the unique spiritual birth on every level along this path called the “sons of Abraham.”
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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The Truth About the Three Religions of the World, Part 2

The beginning of this article can be found in the Truth About the Three Religions of the World, Part 1.

Question: How can we stop the spreading of radical Islam and divert this sword away from the world?

Answer: The solution is simple. It is not in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. It is in the wisdom of Kabbalah, a method that provides people with an instrument to work with the upper force.

Man uses it to connect to the program, root, and final objective of the plan of creation. He is connected to the upper force from the beginning until the completion of Creation every step of the way. And he will see all this sometime in this life not in some other world.

Kabbalah does not say that all people who practice the same religion are brothers but speaks about loving all of mankind as yourself.

Religions were spread with the purpose of bringing people towards unity with others, but in the wrong form, through Klipa, egoistic forces, a lie. Christianity called for unity with the purpose of helping one another and praying to the common gods. Islam says the same: “We have one higher power, let’s be brothers!”

Any ideology that is based on unity states the same. But they do not have a connection with the upper force and this is why all these methods fade. They must be replaced with Kabbalah, which initially was the source of all these temporary movements.

Their existence was needed for a certain duration of time in history in order to reveal the truth, which we would not be able to figure out without them. And now we can realize the wisdom of Kabbalah by using it to show the actual right method to mankind. After all, it contains the upper force.

Kabbalah is not trying to unite us on the egoistic level of this world, unlike all the religions. This is why they cannot be realized, and they only exist for a limited time, as long as people are still getting confused by them. But as soon as it becomes revealed that a connection is impossible through a given method, it disappears.

But Kabbalah allows people to connect with the upper force and become like it. It raises man above this world, above his nature. This way, instead of connecting on the level of this world, like the Muslim brothers or the army of Christ, we actually attain unity on the higher level, by attaining bestowal and mutual love.

This is not love in its corporeal sense and it does not unite everyone under one green flag but lifts to the highest spiritual degree while still living in this corporeal body. This directly corresponds to the definition of Kabbalah as a method of revelation of the Creator by the creatures in this world.

All methods were directed towards unity, but they worked inside egoism. Only Kabbalah works above egoism, and this is why it is revealed after all these methods. Kabbalah raises man above his egoism, and this is why it is able to connect all of us, and in this connection, we attain the higher degree.

One does not need to die physically in order to go to heaven because there is no heavenly life after death. The physical body does not stand in the way of it, as it is nothing but a piece of flesh that does not get in the way of us experiencing heaven internally. This is why it is written that you will see your world in your lifetime.

This attracts people, but they must understand that they need to change in order to defeat death in this manner. To go to heaven means to become dissolved in one’s love towards mankind. This state is called heaven, the highest level where I connect with others to the point of completely losing my “I.” The entire world becomes me, and in this way, I attain everyone. This is what we call the world to come, the higher degree.

Internally man always worked towards it, and this is why he needed to experience this entire process of Christianity and Islam. It was so he would understand his actual state, his actual goal, and how to realize it. And he must want to attain it without the carrot or the stick, just because he himself wants to grow to this level.

This requires that man be internally mature; we can only understand, accept, and realize it through such a lengthy process.

Question: Everyone can attain this?

Answer: Everyone must attain it! According to the plan of creation, all of mankind must experience the entire process of the spreading of religion: one part experiences Christianity, the other part experiences Islam. But in the end, everyone comes to the realization of the truth, rising above our nature and connecting above it, where we attain the higher existence.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/31/14

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