Question: Can a person who studies Kabbalah be interested in astrology and use this knowledge in life?

Answer: A person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah can be interested in exact sciences that are meant to reveal nature in our five senses according to exact scientific laws! Everything else simply doesn’t interest him! He becomes totally indifferent to all the other sciences.

He may still be interested in different arts, but he loses any interest in astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, red strings, or different kinds of spells. He loses interest in anything humanity has made up to psychologically calm itself.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/20/16

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Comment: Research shows that people are basically ready to cooperate with others, but it is the environment they live in which makes them indifferent and cynical.

Answer: It is human psychology and not the results of a certain experiment.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the ego is the basis of human nature. The Creator said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice,” and that’s all.

This means that evil, egoism, caring about yourself as opposed to caring about others, is living according to the principle that the better off I am, the better I feel compared to others, or rather, the worse they feel, the better I feel, and this the basis of human nature. Human history throughout the ages proves this claim.

Although philosophers and psychologists from Harvard University have come up with their own theory, life proves the exact opposite.

Question: Is it better to say to a person, “you are kind and your nature is based on connections of love” or rather “you nature is basically the ego and this is your starting point?”

Answer: It is always better to speak the truth since it pushes us to start the correction of mankind before it totally deteriorates and loses its humanity! After all, our egoism grows bigger every day, and so the sooner we begin the correction, for which we must reach the recognition of our evil nature, the sooner we will manage to better our life.

If we don’t do that, we will let our egoism erupt in the form of neo-Nazi regimes in most countries and a world war will break out between them.

The great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam in his writings told a parable about training cats to be waiters in order to attempt to prove that their basic nature could be altered. But the moment one of the guests lets out a few mice, all the tamed “waiters” throw the trays they were holding and began to chase the mice.

This is exactly how our nature operates! Therefore, I advise all of us to observe nature and accept it the way it is,

Question: Does this mean that you are in favor of the hard truth?

Answer: Of course, we shouldn’t confuse people. We have to rely on serious knowledge and not on a few random studies, and at the same time we need to change our attitude to nature.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/27/16

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Comment: From time to time I publish your commentaries on the news on my Facebook page and many write to me and claim that you are confusing Islam and Muslims. Sometimes you make sharp remarks regarding Islam.

Answer: In my commentaries I don’t mean the religion itself but its extremist clerics.

I have nothing against the Islamic religion because after all, thousands of wonderful things were written in the Koran, and as a philosopher, I can say that the Islamic religion is a positive religion at its foundation.

On the one hand, there certainly is an extremist side to Islam, but if it is not artificially inflated, if it isn’t developed and put above all other faiths, it is a religion with which every person in the world can live in peace.

On the other hand, what is presented to us today as the religion of Islam is not really the original Islam.

I have met with many Arab religious leaders, particularly the Sufis who are representatives of the Arab Kabbalah, and I can say with certainty that in the past among them was a very developed aspiration toward love, toward connection between people. But today everything has completely changed. Many contemporary scholars who are involved with this phenomenon have written about it.

In my commentaries I talk about the extremist Islamic religion of our day. You can not be extreme, kill others indiscriminately, and then hide behind religion. There is no connection with this behavior and religion. Everything depends on the way in which you use religion.

The same thing can be said about Judaism. There are many people who promote hatred, while Judaism itself relies on the principle of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), and “your friend” is every person near you. This means that everything is inherent in religion but not in the same form that people interpret it.

If you enter into a religious area in Israel, you can see how the religious people move to the side and avoid contact with strangers. That is how they also behave in America in the areas where they live. So it is possible to say the same thing about Islam and even about other religions.

The problem is that today the Islamic religion is flourishing and bears an extremist religious character and there are people who under the guise of religion convey their policies in that way. Of course you can close your eyes to this phenomenon, just as we do with everything else, but it will not make you any safer.

I am not a politician, I am a philosopher, so I am completely neutral and don’t belong to any political party. I express my point of view as a person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah and understands the evolution of nature, the general internal law and its power, which is called “Allah,” Elyon (higher). The problem is that it is necessary to interpret it correctly. The higher power is the power of love and connection between everyone in the world.

Only then will we see that between true Islam and the wisdom of Kabbalah (true Judaism), there are no differences.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/23/16

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Question: In quantum physics there is an established size (stable, unchangeable, constant size) that is called “the fine-structure constant” which determines the structure of the microcosm and equals – 137.066….

The Gematria of the word “Kabbalah” is equal to 137. Is it possible to determine that the wisdom of Kabbalah is the spiritual root of the structure of the microcosm? If so, then what does a fractional part represent? Are there fractions in Gematria?

Answer: Gematria cannot be considered without attaining the essence of the phenomenon it describes. So I suggest attaining the essence of the phenomenon, comparing them with our corrected nature, and then the knowledge of Gematria will be revealed to us.
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New Life 502 – Magic For Sale
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Spiritual Weapons

Question: Is there really such a thing as magic or witchcraft? Can we use supernatural powers in order to change our reality?

Answer: No. In fact, the term “supernatural” needs to be reset. If we speak about what is above our nature, it includes all the natural phenomena.

We cannot influence the movement of the earth and other planets, but we can calculate them. Thus, many phenomena moved from the mystical realm to scientific concepts.

But at the same time, there are still many things we don’t know and the roots of which we cannot perceive, and this is an area we are still weak in, still faced with nature that we cannot calculate in advance. Meanwhile, man aspires for security; he needs an insurance policy for all his troubles.

This is where magic stems from. First it allegedly provides protection from any possible threat, including enemies, which a person can now resist with “spiritual weapons.” Second, there is the option to switch to the offense and establish one’s superiority, to clean the area of any troublemakers that stand in a person’s way.

The Supernatural, Affordable

Here many make promises declaring they know how it is done and that they will help a person if only they are paid for their services.

There are concepts such as black and white magic. The former is meant to cause harm and the latter promises to help a person. But this division is random, just like children play good and the bad guys. A person feels that he is weak when confronting the forces that determine his life. He would like to control his own fate and he goes to “experts” to hear their advice.

Moreover, the inevitable death of the body and the uncertainty about what lies ahead scare us. What will happen to my soul? Where will it end up? Can we avoid hell and guarantee ourselves heaven? People are very worried about these questions and others can make good money here.

Question: Does this mean that there is no magic?

Answer: No. But the problem is that anything that we attribute to a person’s internal world is related to his psychology. Consequently, a person can be influenced in a way that may seem like magic to him. This also happens with many religious people.

There is nothing we can do about it, since these are the properties of our psychology. Eventually it all stems from ignorance.
[152331]
From KabTV’s “New Life 502 – Magic For Sale,“ 1/18/15

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In the News (Psychologies): “Each of us at least once had a sudden epiphany: all the known facts, like puzzle pieces, add up to one big picture, we did not notice before. The world is not so, as we thought. A person close – impostor. Why we do not notice the obvious facts and believe only to what we want to believe?

“Insights associated with unpleasant discoveries: betrayal by a loved one, betrayal by a friend, a loved one cheating. We repeatedly scroll pictures from the past and wonder – all the facts were before our eyes, why didn’t we noticed anything? We accuse ourselves of naivete and lack of attention, but they are not to blame. The cause is the mechanisms of our mind and psyche.

“The reason lies in the blindness of information on the neurobiological level. The brain is faced with a huge amount of sensory information that needs to be processed efficiently. To optimize the process, one constantly designs models of the world on the basis of previous experience. Thus, the limited resources of the brain concentrate on processing new information that does not fit into his model. …

“We ‘remember’ what is beneficial for us to remember at the moment, and just as easy to ‘forget’ the wrong information. …

“Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Daniel Gilbert (Daniel Gilbert) warned – people tend to manipulate the facts in order to maintain the desired picture of the world. This is how the defense mechanism of our psyche works. Faced with conflicting information, we unconsciously give preference to the facts that fit our picture of the world, and reject data that contradict it. …

“Our eyes only notice in the literal sense what it wants to find the brain.

My Comment: These facts are not new and have even been studied extensively, but the problem remains. Because our whole nature is a desire to receive and to enjoy—there is nothing more to us—everything is aimed only at our filling ourselves, despite the research results, we will still serve our desire blindly.

Only the wisdom of Kabbalah allows us to ascend above our nature, and then we will not see the distorted picture that our egoistic brain depicts for us, but the true picture of the world. It is upper world, the world above our narrow self-interest.
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In the News (lenta.ru): “In science, to enlighten humanity, there are only three questions: How did the universe come to existence, how did life begin, and how to animals learn to think? …

“Many processes can be explained with the help of such a thing as ‘self-organizing active media.’ …

“In other words, the mechanisms of self-organization in the physical and chemical, biological, ecological and social systems can be treated with common positions. Having an idea of the self-organization of active media, you can create models that describe such seemingly disparate processes as working laser coagulation, chemical reactions, the heartbeat, or the appearance of annual rings of a tree. …

“The active medium of self-organization follows the same principles, regardless of size. …

“Self-organization – is the basis of all life on earth. It is important to bear in mind that this is determined by the self-organization of primarily physical laws – even in biology, but people are used to interpret biology through chemical compounds. …

“You can often hear the expression ‘the organism is in balance with the environment.’ Physicist interpret this phrase clearly: ‘the organism is dead.’ We are essentially in non-equilibrium and far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and even if we talk about our relationship with the environment, then we are in thermodynamic, energetic and material balance. It can be a stationary or non-stationary relationship, but not equilibrium. Equilibrium can only be in the grave.

“The very essence of life – is a difference of chemical interaction and electrical potentials, concentrations and so forth. Only in the case of inequality and imbalance can there be a chemical process. From the viewpoint of biophysics, the energy of life – is a parabola. At the lowest point, life dies, in a sense; it’s not there. Self-organizing processes begin in an active environment when balance ends and the system is removed from it.

“If we take the two systems with the same electrical potential – no matter how big it is – then there is no movement of charges can not be. Asymmetry is needed. This – the main condition for the beginning of the process. Chemical processes are driven by physics.This built the modern systems of biology and biophysics. And now, one of the most promising areas – the science, which, on the one hand, includes biophysics, and on the other – Synergetics.

“Synergetics, or the theory of complex systems, is an interdisciplinary field of science that studies the general laws of phenomena and processes in complex nonequilibrium systems (physical, chemical, biological, environmental, social and others) based on the inherent principles of self-organization. Synergetics is an interdisciplinary approach, as the principles that govern the processes of self-organization, are represented by the same, regardless of the nature of the systems, and their descriptions must be suitable general mathematical formalism.

“The famous French physicist, Nobel laureate Pierre Curie said that nature is driven by symmetry breaking, movement itself is essentially a distortion of symmetry, because symmetry – is a static state.

“Keep in mind that nature is often not subject to the fact that physics is traditionally called ‘the law.’ For example, Hooke’s law – the claim that the deformation that occurs in an elastic body is directly proportional to the force applied to it, this law does not apply to large deformations… . So, not every law of physics is a law of nature. It is necessary to understand the proportional linear dependencies. Here it becomes clear that far from equilibrium can undergo smooth sections and can enter the so-called bifurcation point – that is, split.”

“Very often, (especially politicians) say that development should follow the path of evolution, not revolution. But evolution, including biological, after a smooth development is the bifurcation, and predicting what will be, after passing the point of bifurcation, is very difficult.”

My Comment: Kabbalah speaks about a single source, a single nature and development of everything that exists on the basis of four phases of HaVaYaH. Development happens under the influence of the Ohr Yashar (Direct Light). The basis and foundation of creation is desire. Its developmental law is the attainment of resemblance and equivalence to its origin, the Creator.
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New Life 494 – The Secret Of The Zodiac According To Kabbalah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

What will happen to me tomorrow? How will I take care of myself and my loved ones? What does the future hold? For such serious and disturbing questions…the answer exists.

From the need to know the future and control our lives, we have developed many ways to interpret the signs around us. Curious eyes have turned upward to the stars whose trajectories can be anticipated thousands of years in advance, and from them, human beings have learned about possible times and events in life.

It is not surprising that there are such ways for predicting the future, because our world and the entire universe is one closed system in which all the levels of existence—still, vegetative, animate, and human—are connected according to permanent and complete laws, yet we still don’t know what we can expect the next minute, because astrology and similar methods make it possible, at best, to read some of the signs, but do not grant a person the ability to influence his fate and change it.

The Method of Connection

One method does make it possible to influence fate: the wisdom of Kabbalah. Most of us think that life is a matter of luck—I am lucky or I am unlucky. According to Kabbalah, “luck” (Mazel) is derived from the word, “Nozel” (fluid). The Zodiac consists of forces that descend and “drip” on us, activating all the phenomena and events, present and future together, that we call life. These forces reach us in drops, there are breaks or intervals between them and they arrange each and every moment for us.

The signs of the Zodiac are not accidental, as it may seem to us; rather, they are orderly and move in a single predetermined direction. It is possible to imagine this as a car we are traveling together in that has a single predetermined final destination, a preset destiny. The forces that work on us to bring us there are called luck. If we prepare ourselves for that goal from the start, every time a “sign” reaches us, we have already adapted ourselves to it and the direction it is advancing us, so we accept it as “good luck.” And vice versa, if we have not accommodated ourselves to it, without a choice we are pushed forward through difficulties and problems, and we accept this as “bad luck” and suffering.

Separately and together we can equip ourselves with the knowledge of which way to turn ourselves, what every detail in our lives wants to teach us, and how to relate correctly to society and the environment. At each and every moment something pushes us, either as a hindrance or help, and we can gather all these forces together and build a map of our lives from them.

Kabbalah speaks about the goal of life that all of us are advancing toward either through desire and understanding or through suffering and confusion. It teaches us how to direct ourselves so that every sign that reaches us will be felt as good and a blessing. Moreover, it teaches us how to summon these signs and attract them even more forcefully, embracing the force that comes and enhancing its action. This is how we shorten our path and reach the predetermined goal more rapidly, in a nice, good, and pleasant way.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 494 – The Secret Of The Zodiac According To Kabbalah,” 1/8/15

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New Life 489 – Do The Stars Affect Our Fate?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Question: The issue of astrology and fate is very interesting, intriguing, and very unclear. Do the stars affect our fate? Is it possible to foresee our fate? How can we use this information?

After all, the hardest thing about our life is that it is unpredictable. We go through life having no idea what will happen to us in the future and what surprises fate has in store for us.

A person cannot control his life. This is the reason that so many people are interested in astrology, which can seemingly predict a person’s character and his fate according to the different signs.

Astrology was very popular in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Far East, India, China, and also among the American Indians. Even today many believe that there is a connection between the stars and a person’s state. Is there really such a connection?

Answer: The universe develops gradually, step by step, and man is the last phase of this evolutionary process and is the most developed part. But it is actually because man is the most developed creature and has a mind and feelings by which he can explore nature more and more, that he feels that he is vulnerable.

It says “a day-old calf is called an ox.” After all the moment the calf is born he already has the mind and senses of a grown ox. He knows which plants he can eat and which he shouldn’t; he will not fall from a high place, unlike a small child who has to be nurtured and taught for a long time until he grows wise.

If we don’t teach a child, he will grow up to be an animal. But if we convey to him all of the human life experience that has been accumulated for many years he will reach the human level, the level that he will be allowed to develop to. A person develops and according to the level he develops to he discovers the world.

Therefore man is a very sensitive creature, since he has to feel nature very deeply. He is strong in being able to build different systems that help him cope with nature. Man has learned to control fire, discovered electricity, learned to heat his home and light up the darkness of the night. He has learned to communicate over great distances and has invented the Internet.

Man has become increasingly more sophisticated and has added all the comfort he lacked to nature. At the same time he hasn’t changed much. There are probably very clear limits to human ability.

We can improve our daily life in many ways, but we cannot answer the most important question of: what will my fate be? What will my future be? What will happen when I die? What was there before I was born and what will happen to me after I die? What happens beyond the boundaries of this life? Why have I met the people who surround me in my lifetime? Why was I born with a certain personality, as a man or as a woman, in a certain country, at a certain time?

All these questions remain a mystery for us. There is a certain force that controls us and we cannot influence it. We can only try to live comfortably at the place our fate has brought us to: to build houses instead of caves, to prepare food and to store food products.

We develop what belongs to the body’s corporeal existence, which means that we use the human mind and feelings that raise us above the animals for the sake of the animate level, for the sake of the body. It is only for the sake of the body that we have developed all the sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and zoology, so that our body can enjoy.

But we cannot use our mind and our feelings in order to exit our body. It turns out that we use everything that was given to us beyond the animate level—our high intelligence, the ability to explore nature and to discover its laws—only for the well being of our corporeal body.

We wanted to move fast, so we built a car; we wanted to speak to someone who is far away, so we invented the radio and the Internet. But all these inventions are for the comfort of our body, for the sake of our health, for ourselves or for our children.

There is no invention that our developed mind has come up with that was for the level that is beyond the animate level. Universities, stock markets, museums are all made to provide our body with maximum comfort. It is sad to see how primitively we use our delicate feelings, our sharp minds, and our ability to develop as we evolved from one generation to the next.

We fly to outer space and have great achievements in medicine. A hundred years ago the average life expectancy was no more that 40-50, and today we are nearing 100. In another 50 years we may live to 200. We have the ability to make our life in this world much more intense, healthier, and to extend the life of the body. But what remains unclear is what we should do with the body for so many years.

We can improve the conditions the body lives in for the sake of our families and our children. We can answer practically any question except for the one most important question about our fate. The term “fate” includes what we were before our birth, what we will be after death, what will happen to us in the middle, in the time from birth until death, and what hardships we will have to cope with during this time.

On the one hand, we realize that everything is predetermined, but to us it is revealed as complete chance. Now it seems a coincidence, but what if I could rise a bit and look at the whole plan from above. This is very intriguing.
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From KabTV’s “ New Life 489 – Do The Stars Affect Our Fate?” 1/1/15

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New Life 488 – Hope Heals
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Abraham drew a clear boundary between truth, nature, and the human mind that explores our ability to advance to the human level, which differentiates man from an animal, and on the other hand, different mysticisms and beliefs that aren’t even a religion where everything is strictly organized, but are different dark superstitions.

There is the wisdom of Kabbalah revealed by Abraham that teaches a person about the Creator and there is religion in which a person operates in rigid frameworks according to precise rules.

Religion is a social framework that thoroughly binds a person and doesn’t allow him to act according to his heart’s desires. It is a certain kind of pressure with a promise of a reward or a punishment in this world and in the next world: heaven or hell.

But there is a gray area between these two major streams: the wisdom of Kabbalah (the wisdom of the upper force) and religion. It is created because people are not satisfied with the simple religious frameworks anymore and are trying to find out something about themselves: What will my future be? What will happen to me? How can I succeed in life and keep away from trouble?

They have practical questions. They don’t ask about the next world that religion promises them, but about our daily life. They care about succeeding in life and are looking for the means to achieve that: blessings, lucky charms to protect them and their children, simple symbols that give them a sense of security and hope for the future.

Indeed, a person who buys a lucky charm, ties a red string around his wrist, or wears a symbolic trinket hopes for better circumstances, which gives him strength and psychological support. People are ready to pay a lot of money in order to feel protected, calm, confident, and happy.

This actually heals. It is common knowledge that self-confidence can help a person by raising the body’s hidden resources that can support and heal him. Therefore, we cannot simply dismiss these methods and say that they don’t work. They do work, but in the rational sense, and there is no mysticism here, although they stem from an irrational source.

This is the reason that there is a grey area between the wisdom of Kabbalah and religion. In England, for example, people have experts purify a new home from all the evil spirits before they move into it. All these superstitions should be taken seriously because they give people confidence.

There are very few people who yearn for the revelation of the Creator and for whom the wisdom of Kabbalah is important. There are many people who belong to a certain religion in one way or another, but every person is somehow connected to this gray area. Everyone believes in some signs and symbols that support and sustain him through life.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 488 – Hope Heals,” 1/1/15

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