Entries in the 'Science' Category

We Must Come Out Of The Aquarium

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do I need to explore everything with regard to myself in the upper world while we don’t have to do so in this world?

Answer: This is because you exist in a different form in the new reality. In our world, you receive everything into your body; you feel the reality in your senses, and therefore you see this room, the walls, the windows, the table, and me.

How do you know that it all exists? It is depicted this way to you by your senses.

The perception of the true reality is revealed only in the upper world. In our world, you are limited and live in an aquarium my dear friend! You are locked inside yourself saying that you don’t need other senses except the ones that you have in your fish body. Those are enough in order to feel this corporeal life, and you don’t need anything more than that.

You don’t believe that beyond the walls of the aquarium there is a different world, and you are not trying to explore beyond the walls. However, I already have such a desire, which is the beginning of a higher level of desires. These are the same five types of perceptions, but they are on the next level. You perceive everything on your level in the desire to receive, while I develop my perception in the desire to bestow.

Comment: But I use objective measuring tools without involving my subjective feelings.

Answer: That’s what you think, but you are mistaken.

Comment: But being inside the aquarium, I cannot understand my limitations and my influence on the picture that is depicted to me.

Answer: You can. Modern science speaks about this because it has attained the limits of this world. Einstein was the first to speak about the relative perception of our world, followed by the physicist Hugh Everett and other scientists.

The moment we understand that everything is relative, we already have a problem. Everything being relative means that we have no way of measuring anything in an accurate objective way. Each time we have to add the statement that the observation is with respect to the observer who is in a certain frame of reference and in certain conditions. In that case, nothing is absolute and there are no objective facts.

Question: How does the theory of relativity help us discover new horizons?

Answer: Although Einstein’s theory was revolutionary, it is still limited since it refers only to the limitations of our perception and not beyond. It is impossible to exit the boundaries of corporeal perception by a corporeal scientific approach.

Einstein managed to reach this boundary, but didn’t manage to cross it, although he tried. We see that his attitude towards the Creator was like that towards an upper mind, an upper force, and an upper desire and thought. He believed it was very important, since it was clear to him that there is something beyond the limits of the corporeal reality that we feel.

But the only way to enter this upper reality is by special development of the initial desire of this point inside the fish that pulls it beyond the limits of the aquarium. There is a special technique of developing this point, and when it becomes a real desire, a person begins to work with it by drawing on new forces that exist outside the aquarium.

He draws these forces towards him, using everything he has in order to discover and start feeling them, to reach bilateral contact and mutual cooperation with them. Thus he attains a new life.

People who have already attained the upper perception throughout history help a person in order to spare him from wandering in the dark. They leave us their writings and their impressions on which the wisdom of Kabbalah is based. By studying the Kabbalistic sources, we awaken ourselves in the right direction and eventually also attain the revelations of the new perception and feeling of the new world.

This is the real world, since it is independent of our limited corporeal perception. We have to come out of the aquarium!
[151175]
From KabTV’s “The Meeting of the Worlds” 5/12/14

Related Material:
Objective Reality or Common Misconception?
Life In An Aquarium
Is It Possible To Attain An Objective Picture Of Reality?

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.
[151389]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/1/15

Related Material:
Do The Stars Affect Our Fate?
Short Stories: The Source Of The Spiritual Practices
A Common Superstition

People Live In The Past

People Live In The Past

laitman_959In the News (from RT): “A team of vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed this secret of the human brain: To save us from insanity induced by a constantly changing torrent of pictures, shapes and colors – both virtual and real world – the brain filters out information, failing in most cases to notice small changes in a 15-second period of time.

“It actually means that what we do see is, in fact, a mixture of past and present. According to the research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, stability is attained at the expense of accuracy.

“’What you are seeing at the present moment is not a fresh snapshot of the world but rather an average of what you’ve seen in the past 10 to 15 seconds,” said study author Jason Fischer, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at MIT.”

My Comment: In fact, we do see not the world but our internal state that is projected on a screen in our brains, and this gives us the illusion of what is supposedly happening outside of us, in front us.
[151210]

Related Material:
Life Is Perceiving What Seems Non-Existent
Top British Scientist: “The World We See Is Make-Believe”
The Multiverse

Do The Stars Affect Our Fate?

Dr. Michael laitmanQuestion: The Zodiac signs and fate, the topic is exciting and intriguing and not much understood. Do the stars affect our destiny; is it possible to predict it and what you can do with this knowledge?

After all, the most difficult thing in life is its unpredictability. We live not knowing what will happen to us in the future, what surprises are in store for us.

A person cannot control his life. And that is why people are so interested in astrology, which supposedly can predict a person’s character and his entire fortune by the stars.

Astrology was known in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, in the East, India, China, and among the American Indians. And today, many people believe that there is a connection between the stars in the sky and the human state. Does this connection really exist?

Answer: The entire universe develops gradually, step by step, and the human being is the last stage of its development, the most developed of them. But just because people are developed more than animals and have such a mind and feelings with which they can reveal nature to a greater degree, they feel very vulnerable.

It is said that a two-day calf can already be called a small bull. Having barely been born, he already has the same mind and feelings as an adult bull. He knows what plants can and cannot be eaten, and will not fall from a height, as opposed to a small child who should be taken care of and educated until he becomes wiser.

If a child is not educated, he will grow as an animal. But if we give him the entire human experience, accumulated over many years, he will become a human being at the level to which he was given an opportunity to develop. A human being develops himself, and as he develops, he reveals the world.

Therefore, a human being is a very sensitive creature because he has to feel nature in a subtle way. He is strong because he is able to build for himself the systems that protect him against the adversities of nature. The human being has discovered fire and invented electricity in order to heat his home and light the darkness of the night. He has learned to communicate over long distances and invented the Internet.

Human beings perfected nature, adding to it all the amenities that he lacked. And at the same time, he himself has not changed much, and it is obvious that there are very clear limits of human capabilities.

We can improve our lifestyle in every way, but we cannot answer the most important questions, “What is my destiny? What awaits me in the future? When will I die? What happened to me before I was born and what will happen after my death? What happens beyond the boundaries of this life?”

“Why in my life, did I meet the people who surround me? Why was I born with this character, of this gender, in a particular country, and in a certain period of time?”

All this remains a mystery to us. There is some power that controls us and we cannot influence it. We are able only to make ourselves more comfortable in the place where we were brought by fate. We build houses for ourselves rather than living in caves, and we prepare and store food for future use.

We are developing that which relates to the material life of the body. That is, we use the human mind and senses, which raise us above animals, for the benefit of this animal level, our bodies. For the purpose of satisfying our bodies, we have developed all the sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, and zoology.

We cannot get outside of our body with our human mind and feelings. It turns out that we are using all that was given to us above the animal level, such as  great intellect and the ability to study nature and reveal its laws, just for the sake of our animal welfare.

We wanted to move quickly and created a car, we wanted to talk over distances and invented the radio and the Internet. But all these inventions are made for the convenience of the body and its health, either for oneself or for one’s family and children.

There is no invention made by our highly developed mind which was intended for the benefit of  rising above the degree of the animal level.  Universities, stock exchanges, and museums were all designed to provide maximum comfort for our bodies. It is sad to see in what primitive way we use subtle senses like a sharp mind and the ability to evolve and  develop from generation to generation.

We fly into space and make huge advances in medicine. A hundred years ago the average life expectancy was no more than 40-50 years, and today we are getting close to 100 years. In another 50 years, we may live for 200 years. We have the opportunity to make our life in this world much more intense, long lasting, healthier, prolonging the existence of the body. But what we can do with it for such a long a time?

We can improve the conditions for the existence of the body and for our families and children. We can answer any question, except for the main one concerning our fate. The concept of destiny includes the form in which we existed before birth, what this form will be after our death, as well as what happens to us in the middle interval from birth to death, and what tests we will have to go through in this life.

On the one hand, we recognize that all this is planned. But with respect to us, it appears as a complete accident. We think that now it is a coincidence, but maybe we can rise up a little bit, then look down and see the program, which is extremely curious.
[151260]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 1/1/15

Related Material:
The Right To Change One’s Destiny
Perception Of Reality: From Antiquity To The Present Day
How to Change One’s Destiny?

Objective Reality or Common Misconception?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: They try to eliminate the impact of human factors on the results of experiments as much as possible while conducting experimental research. On the contrary, why does Kabbalah put a person at the center of research and connects everything through one?

Answer: It is obvious that everything depends on the perception of a person; however, we forget about this all the time. We understand that our feelings are all we have. We still get confused, thinking that everyone sees the same world and agrees with this picture. So it seems to us that the picture does not depend on our feelings.

Here is where the error lies. We think that if seven billion see the same thing, it is an objective picture. But suppose we look at an object flying in the air and say that its size is two meters. Everyone measures it and agrees with it. Then this object approaches and everyone can see that it is two kilometers in size. But, before when we measured it, we agreed it was two meters in size, thinking that to be the truth.

We perceive the true picture of the world rather than the relative picture based only on general opinion. We do not add that it exists only in relation to our senses, but this is an extremely important addition. Although it is not necessary in our world, we only want to explore the true objective reality outside the world.

An objective reality in our world is what most people think exists.
[151172]
From KabTV’s “The Meeting of Worlds” 5/12/14

Related Material:
The Entire Universe is Within a Man
The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And Corporeal Sciences
A Picture Of Reality Not Distorted By The Ego

Life In An Aquarium

laitman_928Question: The picture that you draw is depressing and even angers me. Is it really so, that all of my perception of the world is absolutely subjective and limited by my sensations?

Answer: Why does the perception of our world depress you? If we look at a fish in an aquarium, it lives calmly. For him, this aquarium, the water, and everything in it is his life.

A fish wants to live and take care of itself; it is satisfied with life in an aquarium. This is because it is important to it for there to be water saturated with oxygen and food. And it doesn’t want anything more.

The aquarium is his world. The fish doesn’t know what is to be found and what exists outside of the aquarium. That is how we also live in this world, in such an aquarium without knowing what is happening outside of it. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science about the perception of reality that makes it possible for a person to expand his horizons.

Question: But the life of a fish in an aquarium doesn’t anger him. Why are we worried about what is found behind its walls?

Answer: This is because we have been chosen from all people to be born and develop such a desire that goes outside of the aquarium. We want to go out of the aquarium and discover what exists outside of it. This is a new desire that is irrelevant to a person in this world. It already belongs to the next level that is outside of our bodies; and that is what we need to explore.

I feel that I must discover what is concealed there, behind the glass of the aquarium. This life within the aquarium chokes me and I feel as if I am in a prison. I would prefer to die than to live a life like this because my desire is much greater than what can be fulfilled in this world.

I want to get knowledge and a feeling of a wider reality, of the outside world. And so I feel myself in this world as if I am locked in a dungeon or buried alive. Even though I am alive, I feel as if I am in a narrow coffin and am trying to break out of it.

There are people for whom life in an aquarium is absolutely enough for them; they are 99% of all of humanity.

Question: But aren’t all people dissatisfied about something?

Answer: They are dissatisfied that food wasn’t put into the aquarium on time and that the pump supplies oxygen poorly. Their desire is not developed beyond this. But there are people whose desire is much greater and they want to discover what is found beyond the limits of the aquarium.
[151104]
From KabTV’s “The Meeting of Worlds” 5/12/14

Related Material:
The Entire Universe is Within a Man
Life Behind The Walls Of An Aquarium
Before Dawn

Kabbalah And Jungian Psychology

laitman_205Question: I have found many answers to questions and an understanding and awareness of the world in Jungian psychology. Is there a connection between the wisdom of Kabbalah and psychology?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah and materialistic psychology are closely linked. But the idea is that psychology is involved with investigating the psychology of an animal called the “human.”

For every beast—a horse, an ape or an elephant—has its own behavioral psychology and so forth. So it is possible to learn the psychology of the human as a beast through the works of Jung and the rest of the scientists, because they investigate ordinary human nature.

But if you want to learn the psychology of the soul, then ordinary psychology won’t help you; it won’t be enough. Scientific psychologists cannot investigate it because they haven’t attained their own soul. Here the wisdom of Kabbalah is required.

Those who come to the wisdom of Kabbalah are people who feel that they must attain the meaning of life. But if ordinary psychology is enough for you, be involved with that; that’s your business.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is required for someone who cannot live without a clear answer to the question: “What am living for?”  But if this question doesn’t burn in you, then you can be involved with whatever you want. We don’t invite people who are involved with something else to us.

If we are talking about human behavior in our world, then this is ordinary materialistic psychology. It is correct and justified in the framework of our daily behavior and it investigates people and society with the help of our materialistic characteristics, and after that it is recorded and compiled into an entire method.

But if we want to investigate human behavior that rises above its egoistic characteristics, then psychology becomes the wisdom of Kabbalah there, because a person must change receptive characteristics into the characteristics of bestowal, transforming egoism into altruism, feeling himself exiting the egoistic body. And if he investigates these states and records them, then for him the result is a psychology called the “wisdom of Kabbalah.”

He will record this in the form of Aviut (the depth of the desire), Sefirot, worlds, and levels. Precise knowledge will appear in him about how his actions change according to his ascent above the ego, from connection with others and so forth. This will be a science based upon a revision, a precise perception of reality. Everything that we investigate in ordinary science we can investigate in this higher psychology called the “wisdom of Kabbalah.”

But the wisdom of Kabbalah is not at all involved with the behavior of an ordinary person in our world. Materialistic psychology is involved with this. That is its use. Before a person discovers the upper world, where he feels his altruistic desire, we are dealing with psychology.

And from that moment on, we are involved with the wisdom of Kabbalah. So Jung and all the rest of the psychologists were interested only in the level of our world. And they don’t exist above it.
[139751]
From the International Summer Camp In Bulgaria “Day Two” 7/12/14, Lesson #4

Related Material:
A View From Above
The Psychology Of The Spiritual World
Transition From Material Psychology To The Spiritual

Everything Is Predetermined

laitman_746_01In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.

“Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

“Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident?… For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist.”

My Comment: The existence of a higher intelligence with the plan of creation, predestination, and the system of control of creation does not deny the existence of freewill in the created beings. Kabbalah reveals the nature of the Creator and everything that was created by Him in order to enable every person to reach the peak of knowledge, eternity, and perfection of existence.
[151160]

Related Material:
The Balanced Universe
The Multiverse
The Universe Is Like A Biological Cell

The Entire Universe is Within a Man

laitman_739Question: Why does the wisdom of Kabbalah explore all the laws of nature by bringing a person inside the study as one of the parameters and trying to understand it through the entire universe?

Answer: Do we have any other opportunity to study and possibly exit our skin, our body? The whole picture of the world appears inside my feelings only. And if I disappear, then this picture will disappear in relation to me.

This world exists without me, and if so, does it exist in a way I see it or in some other form, in different wavelengths; that I cannot say. I still perceive everything only from my body.

Question: How does a Kabbalist see the world?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is the science of “reception” (Kabbalah), so a Kabbalist explores one’s perceptions of reality. Due to certain actions, one begins to change oneself and explores how, depending on the internal changes, one’s worldview varies as well.

A Kabbalist changes one’s internal properties, the form of desire, perception of, and communication with what is happening outside in the surrounding reality. A person begins to work with one’s desires and connection with external reality in such a way where new worlds will be built upon this.

Now we feel we are in a huge world that contains many different objects and phenomena. A person who begins to actively work with one’s desire, builds a new world upon it, a new reality.

A person remains living in a physical body and still perceives an earthly picture of the world in the five physical senses. This picture is constant, as the necessary foundation. But in addition to it, the Kabbalist creates five new senses with which one feels an additional world. A Kabbalist sees this world, feels it, works with it, and lives in it, in addition to the body that exists in the five physical senses.

This additional sense is called the higher or spiritual world. And the old perception through the five physical senses in which a person existed before and remained there is called this or our world.

If there are other people who also have this perception in five additional “out of body” spiritual senses, they can communicate with each other.

Question: If I were able to realize that the whole picture of the world is perceived by me, according to my internal properties, would it be able to open many new phenomena for me?

Answer: First of all, we must agree that all perception depends on a person, on an observer. And if there were no people, no one would reveal the existence of the reality of this universe. It exists only in our perception.

It did not exist before humans appeared on earth and found it. After all, it is apparent only in relation to a person. For example, ten years ago I discovered that the universe emerged fourteen billion years ago. But in fact it is me that perceives this reality in my mind versus this reality existing objectively in such boundaries of time and space. All of this is relative and exists only in a person.
[151068]
From KabTV’s “Meeting of the Worlds” 5/12/14

Related Material:
By Changing Ourselves, We Are Changing The World
The Secret Practices Of A Kabbalist
The World Where “There Is None Else Besides Him”

A Flight To Inner Space

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can a person understand the Creator‘s greatness and His providence?

Answer: The whole goal of creation is the revelation of the Creator to the created beings in order to do them good. The Creator does the created beings good by revealing Himself to them and by filling them. The Creator is dressed in the created being, which means that the Light of Hochma is dressed in Light of Hassadim.

But do we know how to advance towards the revelation of the Creator? By what attributes do we look for Him and in which direction should we advance? How do we make sure that we don’t draw away from the right path? We have to be stabilized in order to do that. If I were in space not knowing where I am, I would find my way according to the stars.

It is the same in spiritual work. We cannot say anything about any phenomenon, outcome, force, or attribute if we don’t measure it in relation to something. It is important to make sure in relation to what we measure something.

For example, we assess the behavior of animals that devour one another and it seems very cruel to us. But the point is that we assess it wrongly, in relation to human feelings. This is why we reach wrong conclusions. It is the same in regard to any phenomenon.

The problem is how we should assess every phenomenon. This is important both in spirituality and our world, and in order to assess phenomena, we use tools such as compasses, measurements, and specific units to measure distances, weight, and different frequencies. Humanity has created these systems of measurement in order to determine and measure different phenomena.

Before measuring systems were invented, it was very difficult for people to communicate. If I wanted to exchange my chickens for your donkey it was difficult to measure how many chickens the donkey was worth. Today we have money for that.

The increasing accuracy of different measurements allows us to measure different attributes. This is exactly how we bring up a child, teaching him how to see himself with regard to his environment in order that he has the right orientation with regard to space, the furniture in the room, his parents, to other children, and to himself.

When we enter the spiritual world, we have no means by which to feel it. It is because we lack a standard and we don’t know in which way we should change ourselves and what we should do with our attributes.

Therefore, it is impossible to exist only by the positive force, so we need to use the two forces together. This is the reason that there is always light and darkness. It is impossible to see anything in contrast to one light and neither is it possible to see anything in the dark. The only way to see something is in the contrast between light and darkness. This principle is true in every aspect.

Just as a small child begins to recognize attributes and differences through his close environment and to gradually learn how to establish increasingly wider connections until he knows all of humanity, so we also establish connections between us in the group and begin to know the spiritual world.

It is impossible to do this in any other way. The Creator is revealed in the group, in the relationships between us. If our relationships are egoistic, there is no standard of measurement since there is only one force at work, which is help against us. We also need the opposite force. When I develop the force of bestowal and it begins to operate against the force of receiving, I can begin to turn and manage myself and measure the diversion.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, just as in any other science, the main thing is the measurement: NRNHY, KHB ZON, Partzufim, levels, Hassadim, and Hochma. It is all based on measurements, when different things are compared and thus new phenomena are discovered.

It is written: “Thou shalt not make other gods,” which means that different forms intentionally appear before us so that we will be able to measure and format the Creator in relation to them.

When the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity) fills Malchut of Ein Sof it does not leave a shadow within it and everything is totally filled with the white Light. It is thanks only to the fact that phase four, which becomes coarse, appears within it and sees itself as opposite from the Light. From this oppositeness, we can begin to measure things.

Therefore we cannot manage without “other gods” although they are fictitious and a lie and don’t really exist. But we need them in order to measure things in relation to them. This is how the Creator plays with us. This is the reason that He created the evil inclination and the Torah a as a spice, “since the Light in it reforms.”

Thus we have 613 desires and opposite them there are 613 lights by which we acquire our senses. If there are 613 lights that fill 613 desires, we have 613 elements by which to measure. We can assess and clarify many near and distant concepts with regard to every desire and the light inside it. We can find out in which direction they operate, whether in the direction of Hassadim or Hochma, bestowal or receiving.

It turns out that after we correct our desire to the intention of in order to bestow, according to the principle of “the advantage of the Light from the darkness,” we get a chance to know the Creator, the Light of Ein Sof. Other gods stem from the Creator, so that we should know them and stabilize ourselves by using them. Without them, there is no way we can get to know the one upper force, the One who is “there is none else besides Him.”
[149328]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/09/14, Shamati #15

Related Material:
A Flood Of Light On The Potential Difference Of Desire
There Is No Evil Without Goodness
Light And Darkness: Reevaluation