In the News (Tel Aviv University ): “Most of us think that friendship is a two-way street — but that’s true only half the time, according to research from Tel Aviv University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Their new joint study says only half of your buddies would consider you their own friend. People have a very poor perception of friendship ties, and this limits their ability to influence their “friends,” according to the research, published in PLoS One on March 22, 2016. …

“‘It turns out that we’re very bad at judging who our friends are,’ says Dr. Erez Shmueli, who conducted the study with Dr. Laura Radaelli, both of TAU’s Department of Industrial Engineering, in collaboration with Prof. Alex Pentland and Abdullah Almatouq of MIT. ‘And our difficulty determining the reciprocity of friendship significantly limits our ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. We learned that we can’t rely on our instincts or intuition. There must be an objective way to measure these relationships and quantify their impact.’

“The researchers conducted extensive social experiments and analyzed the data from other studies to determine the percentage of reciprocal friendships and their impact on human behavior. The team also examined six friendship surveys from some 600 students in Israel, Europe and the United States to assess friendship levels and expectations of reciprocity.

“They then developed an algorithm that examines several objective features of a perceived friendship (that is, the number of common friends or the total number of friends) and is able to distinguish between the two different kinds of friendship: unidirectional or reciprocal.

‘” Dr. Shmueli says. ‘If you think someone is your friend, you expect him to feel the same way. But in fact that’s not the case — only 50 percent of those polled matched up in the bidirectional friendship category.’

“Why is this important? According to Dr. Shmueli, influence is the name of the game.

“’Reciprocal relationships are important because of social influence,’ says Dr. Shmueli, who utilized the ‘FunFit’ social experiment in the course of the research. ‘In this experiment that analyzes different incentives for exercising, we found that friendship pressure far outweighed money in terms of motivation. We found, not surprisingly, that those pressured by reciprocal friends exercised more and enjoyed greater progress than those with unilateral friendship ties.’”

My Comment: Indeed, we only see ourselves reflected in our environment. Therefore, we need to fix this some how.. On the one hand, we see an incorrect and absolutely false world. On the other hand, we don’t want to correct the incorrect mutual relationships between us, even though it is possible to correct them.

Question: At what point would there be correct assessment of reciprocal friendship?

Answer: This would be when all of us begin to work for closeness between us, without any connection to what is happening between us. This would be when our goal becomes connection between us in the center of the circle in order to attain the next level of development, to rise to the next level of nature, of creation, of formation. Then, we would no longer have any problems.

Question: This is very difficult for people.

Answer: No, we can do this as a “guided tour” on a spiritual roller coaster, and this will be a joy. This is wild spiritual fun. I recommend this to you!

Question: Even the researchers concluded that friendship is a stronger motivation than money. So, the most useful method for attaining results in every area is to perform work together with friends.

Answer: This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about. It is up to us to work together for the sake of unity. Then, we would have everything, including money, undoubtedly! This is because the upper force that manages everything in our world, including the regulation of all of our commercial problems, only comes down to a place where unity exists.

Question: Does this mean that everything I have will be enough for me?

Answer: Even more than that.
[183552]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/11/16

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Opinion (The American Conservative): “A people’s religion, their faith, creates their culture, and their culture creates their civilization. And when faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, and the people begin to die. Is this not the recent history of the West?

“Today, no great Western nation has a birthrate that will prevent the extinction of its native-born. By century’s end, other peoples and other cultures will have largely repopulated the Old Continent.

“European Man seems destined to end like the 10 lost tribes of Israel—overrun, assimilated, and disappeared. And while the European peoples—Russians, Germans, Brits, Balts—shrink in number, the U.N. estimates that the population of Africa will double in 34 years to well over 2 billion people.What happened to the West? As G. K. Chesterton wrote, when men cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

“As European elites ceased to believe in Christianity, they began to convert to ideologies, to what Dr. Russell Kirk called ‘secular religions.’ For a time, these secular religions—Marxism-Leninism, fascism, Nazism—captured the hearts and minds of millions. But almost all were among the gods that failed in the 20th century.

“Now Western Man embraces the newer religions: egalitarianism, democratism, capitalism, feminism, One Worldism, environmentalism. These, too, give meaning to the lives of millions, but these, too, are inadequate substitutes for the faith that created the West.

“For they lack what Christianity gave man—a cause not only to live for, and die for, but a moral code to live by, with the promise that, at the end a life so lived, would come eternal life. Islam, too, holds out that promise. Secularism, however, has nothing on offer to match that hope.”

My Comment: But beyond the promise of eternal life is the ability to attain in this world something that is not promised, but which the wisdom of Kabbalah offers as a method for the revelation of the Creator to His creatures in this world.
[182614]

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Opinion (brainpickings.org): “Questions like why our world exists and what nothing is have occupied minds great and ordinary since the dawn of humanity, and yet for all our scientific progress, they continue to do so, yielding only hypotheses rather than concrete answers. …

“Alan Lightman points to fine-tuning — the notion that the basic forces propelling our universe appear to be fine-tuned in such a way as to make the existence of life possible — as a centerpiece of how modern scientists have attempted to answer these age-old questions. …

“‘On one thing most physicists agree. If the amount of dark energy in our universe were only a little bit different than what it actually is, then life could never have emerged. A little larger, and the universe would have accelerated so rapidly that matter in the young universe could never have pulled itself together to form stars and hence complex atoms made in stars. And, going into negative values of dark energy, a little smaller and the universe would have decelerated so rapidly that it would have recollapsed before there was time to form even the simplest atoms.’ …

“‘Out of all the possible amounts of dark energy that our universe might have, the actual amount lies in the tiny sliver of the range that allows life. There is little argument on this point. It does not depend on assumptions about whether we need liquid water for life or oxygen or particular biochemistries. It depends only on the requirement of atoms. As before, one is compelled to ask the question: Why does such fine-tuning occur? And the answer many physicists now believe: the multiverse. A vast number of universes may exist, with many different values of the amount of dark energy. Our particular universe is one of the universes with a small value, permitting the emergence of life. We are here, so our universe must be such a universe. We are an accident. From the cosmic lottery hat containing zillions of universes, we happened to draw a universe that allowed life. But then again, if we had not drawn such a ticket, we would not be here to ponder the odds.’”

My Comment: The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals a different cause for the universe and life within it—the existence of a higher intelligence. It reveals the reason and doesn’t put forth a new theory.

In addition, the question still remains in the theory proposed about the cause of matter, energy, and information. So Mr. Lightman, in my opinion, is wrong.
[179697]

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Comment: 160 years have gone by since the birth of Sigmund Freud. Many great Jews who transformed the world were born in the 19^th century, including Freud, Marx, and Einstein.

Attitude: The second half of the 19^th century was the golden age of Europe, a period full of the flowering of all of humanity! But after the revolution in Russia, after the First and Second World Wars, national opposition and resistance began and instead of scientific and psychological discoveries, instead of cultural understandings, technology began to work for the sake of war, annihilation, subjugation, etc.

Ultimately everything was revealed as a phenomenon of the complete alienation of humanity from itself. And today we are “reaping these fruits.” We have again immersed into complex states. Compared to the 19^th century, our 21^st is certainly losing everything!

Question: How do you relate to the psychology that Sigmund Freud established?

Answer: These were magnificent attempts of making inquiries about a person’s inner world, although they are certainly fragmented and not based upon precise internal studies since the “psyche,” meaning the soul, doesn’t belong to science, on the one hand. On the other hand, it directs all of human activity, all thoughts, everything that stands behind our attitude toward us and the world. It stands behind all of our thinking: how we behave, how we relate to each other, how we receive signals from the outside, how we send signals from inside.

So a great leap was expected from this area for solving questions that a person must know: What is it that directs him, what are his internal instincts, drives, and movements, and what kinds of relationships does he have with his parents, relatives, himself, and the Creator? All of these create a basis for understanding what motivates a person.

In principle, a person needs psychology very much, especially in our time when we are found in constant contact with each other. But psychology cannot be a science. We cannot rely on it; we cannot bring it to the entire system.

Ultimately nothing came from it, even though materialistic psychology did very great work. It took the person out of fragmentary and complex images about himself, about the Creator, about religion, about the subconscious and about the unconscious. It “died” successfully in spite of all this.

Here the wisdom of Kabbalah is essential for us because only it is involved with the study of the soul, entering our animal soul as well, in which we are working when we are found in this world. So Freud did great work and had good followers.

Comment: I would like to read a few of Freud’s catchphrases and have you respond to them. He wrote: “We don’t choose each other by chance. We meet only those who already exist in our subconscious.”

Answer: Of course! This is because otherwise we don’t see others. We see and react only to what has already been prepared in us from the start.

Question: Is that the way we choose a mate?

Answer: Yes! All of this was already registered from the start.

Comment: “The task of making a person happy was not included in the program of the creation of the world.”

Response: Making a person happy in the egoistic sense, as we imagine to ourselves in this world, no, not in any way! On the contrary, the task of the Creator is to show a person that he is found in a miserable world to push him so that he will raise himself to the level of true happiness.

Comment: “We enter the world alone and we leave it alone.”

Response: This truism is understood by all. Yet I don’t think that we enter into the world alone because we are naturally connected to that body from which we were born. But we leave the world absolutely alone. Already in old age, before death, we feel completely torn and detached from others.

Question: And if, a person begins to study the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah, on the contrary, links the person with all of creation, with all of the souls: present, past, and future. above time, beyond everything! It’s completely different, not according to the teachings of Freud.

Comment: “You never stop searching for power and security on the outside. But you must search for them within yourself. They were always there.”

Response: There is no power in a person, he only has a tiny egoistic force through whose help it is up to him to understand that he completely lacks power and he can receive the correct force only from the Creator.

He receives both the inflexible, dark egoistic force and the bright and great altruistic force from the Creator. And with their help, like two legs, he climbs the ladder, he rises up to a state of absolute happiness in which these two opposing forces connect together and create his soul.

Comment: “The masses have never known a thirst for the truth. They require delusions without which they cannot live.”

Response: This is correct. But these illusions must be replaced by the discovery of the truth. However, the truth will not be discovered by the masses but by spiritual leaders, a spiritual aristocracy that is found above them. The masses will simply cling to them and will be nourished by them to attain spiritual truths, but passively, like the head and body of one spiritual creature. That is how Judea still was before the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) and we are now returning to this.

Comment: You will certainly agree with the saying that, “Every person has desires that he doesn’t tell to others, as well as desires that he doesn’t even admit to himself.”

Response: That could be, but not with a Kabbalist. A Kabbalist rises above envy, above insults, and especially above shame. The moment he begins to understand that everything within him was created by the Creator and he is himself an empty puppet that the Creator manages, he no longer associates himself to any instincts, thoughts, movements, and even the most despicable acts.

So if he works within himself, he can say clearly that everything within him comes from the Creator, and even his correct behavior today also comes from Him. So we have nothing personal within us, nothing!

If a person is not a Kabbalist, he certainly always has something to hide; he cannot get rid of the feeling of shame, self-criticism, and so forth. But if he attributes everything to the Creator, then in that point where he merges with Him, he becomes like a fetus in his mother’s womb and is not aware of what he has to hide, if all of this is the creation.

Comment: It follows that if everything comes from the Creator, it is possible to justify everything that way.

Response: First it is necessary to attain a direct connection with the Creator, and then from this it is possible to justify the situation.

Comment: “It is typical for a person to appreciate and want what he cannot attain above everything.”

Response: Certainly, because in the framework of our world we cannot achieve everything we want; I am not a painter, not an author, not a dramatist, not a great scientist, not a billionaire. Generally I am not this or that or that. So in this world there are very many limitations to the realization of my “self.”

But a person is given the possibility of exiting to the upper world, to the world of the wisdom of Kabbalah. There he can attain the infinite world in which he will begin to receive all the great desires that exist in creation and to fulfill them. So the wisdom of Kabbalah is called the wisdom of fulfillment.

Comment: “The person never refuses anything; he simply replaces one pleasure for another pleasure.”

Response: This is completely correct. The same thing exists in the wisdom of Kabbalah. We exchange small, temporary, meaningless pleasures of our world for the one eternal, infinite, absolute, and complete pleasure of the upper world.

Comment: “Before you have diagnosed yourself with depression and low self-esteem, make sure that you are not surrounded by idiots.”

Answer: A person always evaluates himself in relation to others. But this is not enough. Today we exist in such a world in which we are beginning to feel great depression, even without seeing it in others. A person no longer is measured in relation to those around him, but in relation to the next level to which we must ascend. So it is not enough for a person to equalize himself with those around him. What does it matter to him if they are suffering or not? And me?!

In this case, my “self” leaves the general society in that it demands its personal and unique realization. Here it will no longer help me to look among those “idiots” around me.

I am depressed not because of them, but because within me appears a true desire to ascend to the next level, not to realize myself with those around me, but with the Creator, with the higher level, to attain the true meaning of existence and to realize myself on the level of eternity, infinity, wholeness! This desire is latent in us. So the world is immersed today in such a depression. So Freud’s advice no longer works.
[183433]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 5/8/16

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Comment: The wisdom of Kabbalah explores egoism, yet psychology also explores the reaction of our egoism to various external stimuli and can record this with the help of formulas. What is the difference between them?

Answer: Psychology cannot record anything with the help of formulas because a person has nothing that will upgrade his egoism; he cannot manage it.

It is possible to manage egoism only if a person directs a particular “Light” (the desire to bestow) toward himself like a laser, a beam that directs it toward an object, and under a particular frequency and wavelength of the Light changes occur in the object. If the person doesn’t control the management of his egoistic desire, then all of the reports and results are absolutely spontaneous. It is impossible to predict conclusions in advance.

Therefore psychology is not a science. It gives correct results, yet is not possible for them to lead to a general method and common denominator because a person has no precise and clear influence over his egoism. It is impossible to say: “If I add 10 grams of effort, something like this and that will happen, I add another 10 grams of effort and something else happens.” There is no such thing. So it is impossible to determine differences between people.

In psychology, statistical data work according to averages, but they are imprecise because a person doesn’t have the Upper Light in his hands, an instrument that will influence his desires and characteristics.

But the wisdom of Kabbalah does. By changes in a person’s attitude and the efforts that he makes toward others, he attracts quanta (portions) of the Upper Light that carry out gradual changes in his desires. With each quantum of Light, desire changes and the person feels how he changes in one direction or another. He upgrades and re-calibrates himself on his own.
[182808]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

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Comment: In one of the last interviews the BBC conducted with psychiatrist Carl Jung, he said: “We need more understanding of human nature, because the only danger that exists is man himself — he is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man — far too little..”

Answer: The human psyche – is the source of all that awaits us in the future. I am sure that just as we shifted from mechanical to electronic machines in the past and from electronic to computerized machines, now is the time to gradually shift from computerized systems to three-dimensional technologies and instruments and we will gradually discover that this is not what we should engage in at all.

All this is external and crude, while we have to engage in our system, in the internal human being that is inside us.

Inside us are all the secrets of nature. The world is attained and depicted in a person.

We also see this in numerous studies that have been conducted especially on astronauts. There is a great amount of data regarding the changes in a man’s psyche while in space, when returning to earth, etc., which have no scientific basis.

But more reliable data is gradually accumulating about how a person’s hearing and sight totally change when the conditions a person is in change. He can see a sandbox in which kids play from a distance of 300 kilometers, and he can suddenly hear what his friends who are next to him think. So we have to study man who contains all the secrets of nature.

Advancing toward the lower levels of nature—animate, vegetative, and inanimate—is an unnatural direction in the evolution of science. Science has to develop higher! And above man there is only his soul. This is what a person attains by himself. It is actually from his mentality, from his psychology, that he can find the way to the next level.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is the highest psychology. It tells us which levels of attainment man is made of and which levels of attainment in him still have to develop, and it tells us exactly how to ascend through these levels, from the feeling of this world, which we see and build inside us, to the feeling of the upper world, which we also have to build inside us. This is the whole problem.

It has nothing to do with wars. Playing with weapons, tanks, and planes are just kids’ games. We have to put an end to that because humanity needs to aspire to something more intelligent and more important.

I still hope that there will be a breakthrough in the right direction and that we will stop thinking about a third world war. Wars don’t solve anything anyway, just as crises don’t.

So let’s engage in the most sublime matter we can, in the human soul.
[181673]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 4/12/16

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Question: The greatest scientific discoveries took place under certain conditions. Can we say that a scientist receives a Masach (Screen) when he makes a discovery?

Answer: When a scientist makes a discovery, he receives a kind of second wind because he is burning with the desire to achieve.

Something is revealed to some extent to all of the great scientists, as well as to great writers, and the reason that they are so loyal to science or to literature is because they are in contact with what they call a muse or inspiration.

Question: How could it be that Isaac Newton, a true scientist, suddenly began to study the wisdom of Kabbalah and even wrote Kabbalistic texts?

Answer: Newton was not at all a typical scientist True scientists first appeared in the 18^th century, starting from Michael Lomonosov onward. Until then, all of the scientists, including Newton, studied Latin and ancient Hebrew, as well as the Torah and the wisdom of Kabbalah. They respected and appreciated all of that.

A true researcher is someone who is attracted to nature, a person who is ready to carry out experiments on himself for the sake of science and even drink poison if necessary, as scientists did in the past. It is a spiritual ascent for them, but they lack the pure scientific mechanism that is found in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

A Kabbalist, on the other hand, discovers the path of the Upper Light. He is influenced by a special attribute, by a certain quality, and at the same, he undergoes changes according to a certain Reshimo (Reminiscence), which means according to certain initial data. Later, he undergoes spiritual states like Tzimtzum (Restriction), Masach, the growing of his Aviut (Coarseness), and so on.

Scientists don’t undergo these processes. Although their feelings change, it isn’t an accurate deterministic state, but rather an analog one.
[183165]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

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Question: It takes quite a few years to understand a certain field of science in our world. Since the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science, how long does it take to attain the right perception of reality?

Answer: It takes about twenty years of serious study in order to become a true Kabbalistic scientist. It may take less time, but I don’t want people to have any false hopes or illusions.

The goal is not to fill auditoriums for no reason and not to bother people who are busy. If someone truly wants it, he must approach the wisdom of Kabbalah like a science since, after all, a person doesn’t study a science in order to write a thesis, to receive a medal, or to boast of his doctoral degree.

Question: Studying for an academic degree takes five years, then another five years to write a master’s thesis, and another five years for the doctorate. Then, there is a chance that a person might receive a Nobel Prize.

Answer: Ordinary scientists are encouraged by society, but studying the wisdom of Kabbalah is different. A person who dedicates twenty years of his life, or even his entire life, to studying the wisdom of Kabbalah at least will know what he is living for.
[183171]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

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Question: Science today has reached a dead end. Is this related to the fact that scientists explore the world through their five senses?

Answer: We have reached the maximum fulfillment of the ego today, so it is folding in on itself. It is like the Hydra (the mythological serpent) that begins to eat itself.

Therefore, all of the sciences, arts, our society, our mutual relations, and mankind gradually are reaching an end. This process is not typical only of the sciences, but also of the economy, commerce, and the family. Everything in the world is managed by the ego that has reached a dead end and is beginning to devour itself.
[182776]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

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Question: In what way is the wisdom of Kabbalah different from psychology?

Answer: Psychology is not a science because it cannot measure the internal parameters of a person.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person can arrange internal changes and see how the world that he perceives changes. It follows that it is not the world that is changed; rather we are the ones who change.

We think that we run the world and are investigating it, but actually, when we begin to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, we see that we are not investigating the world but ourselves, seeing the inner changes and how according to them the world that we perceives changes.

From this is derived that the world is not changed, but only we are the ones who are changed. We think that we manage the world and investigate it, but in fact, when we begin to learn the wisdom of Kabbalah, we see that we don’t investigate the world but ourselves, our disturbances, changes, reactions, and so forth. Externally, only one permanent parameter exists and this is the Upper Light.

Comment: Psychology also investigates the reactions of a person to the external world.

Answer: Psychology cannot measure anything, even though it is somewhat “correct.” Therefore Baal HaSulam welcomed materialistic psychology. He believed that it would inflict a final “blow” to religions, mysticism, various spiritual pursuits, as well as philosophies that invent anything from unverified data.

In contrast, the wisdom of Kabbalah says that there is one and only one force, one and only one parameter, that is immutable and absolute in relation to which we are changing. This is the Upper Light. And since we are made in a particular set of properties, through our changes in relation to the constant Light, we depict the world.

Thus, by changing the parameters within us in relation to the absolute characteristic of the Upper Light, we can make measurements according to the results we receive from these parameters. This is the wisdom of Kabbalah.
[182282]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

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