Entries in the 'Science' Category

At The Threshold Of Practical Kabbalah

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is “practical Kabbalah”?

Answer: “Practical Kabbalah” is when you act in practice and not just inside of yourself. However, inner work is also called practical Kabbalah, when you create an intention, adhesion (Zivug), and reception of Light for the sake of bestowal. It’s when you don’t just read about it in a book, but attain the instrument of bestowal called “a screen” and can use it to perform practical actions.

You have matter which you have to work on. And this work is only possible with the help of a screen. You receive a screen by virtue of the Light that reforms. All of this is called practical Kabbalah. There are no other practical actions besides giving matter the form of bestowal. The will to enjoy has to acquire the intention for the sake of bestowal. This is the only action operating in the world.

Besides the science of Kabbalah, nothing can bring this about because this science talks about how the general system operates and how we have to operate inside of it. If I take this entire science and start realizing it, this is called “practical Kabbalah.”

It’s similar to how there is theoretical physics and practical, applied physics. In the theoretical part of it, you can think about things and you may understand them or not, but then you come to the practical realization where you stage all kinds of experiments, study and measure things, and check whether they’re one way or another. It’s similar to children who play in order to grow, and once they become adults, they perform these actions correctly in real life. This is what the scientific experiment is intended for.

The actual practice is already the realization of the scientific achievements in life. And the same thing is true in the science of Kabbalah. If you study in order to realize it in practice, that means you are already at the threshold of practical Kabbalah, even though it might take you a lot more time to acquire a screen and start carrying out these actions. Still, according to your direction and goal, you are already considered to be dealing with practical Kabbalah.

The only practical action that exists in reality is adhesion with the Light (Zivug de Hakaa), the degree of equivalence of form that we attain.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/11, “The Nation”

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Give The Power To Science!

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf we look at different history textbooks, we will see how different their descriptions are. It would seem that humanity went through the same history, including all of its problems, wars, troubles, and successes, yet every nation describes it from its point of view. As a result, textbooks that are supposed to reflect the truth end up contradicting one another.

Sometimes I speak with leaders of different movements in other countries. Each of them is absolutely certain that his movement has to lead the whole world. This includes religious and secular movements, organizations related to ecology, wildlife protection, and many others. While I am among them, how do I differ from them?

Without trying to answer that question, we bring the Kabbalistic message to people in a different form. We do not try to prove who is right and who is wrong, and we don’t dissect different opinions. We don’t try to examine things from the standpoint of history or a religious direction because in each of these areas every person can present his own rationale to justify his opinion.

We invite people only to disengage from everything there is – from the past and the present, and to look into the future from the present moment. In this point we see that nature obligates us to set up the right interconnection, to enter balance, mutuality, and harmony, similar to a single body, an integral, global, pan-human system that senses itself and functions truly as one whole.

Nature obligates and pushes us to this. There is a lot of research confirming this, and we can rely on it. Besides, we don’t have anything else. All we can rely on is science, as it is written, “A person is guided only by what he sees.” Today facts are all we need, and we have to advance according to them.

The facts indicate that whether we want to or not, we are becoming a global, integral society that is internally welded by interconnection and total mutual guarantee. Essentially, this is the tendency of all of nature, and from one day to the next we see how it is becoming expressed more and more clearly.

A question arises: What is our role in this process? Can we now invent anything artificial, following whatever idea some politician, sociologist, political scientist, or other party has suddenly thought up? The world has already tried out all sorts of ideas and humanity has suffered duly due to them.

Perhaps we should simply research nature and be guided by the results of our research, not considering anything else but this? If we advance based on our research, which is conducted in nature, then there is no doubt that out of all the opportunities that little people have on this tiny earth, forsaken at the edge of the galaxy, which is forsaken on the outskirts of the universe, at least we have this one, real chance.

So let’s not sink into philosophy and demonstrate irreconcilability. From experience we already know that when you stand your ground and I stand mine, this only leads to wars and self-annihilation.

Today we desperately need a common denominator, which can only come from the inviolable laws of nature. Based on these laws, we can build the integrated society that is aimed at creativity rather than destruction.
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From a conversation about a new book on 7/11/11

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Tipping Point For The Spread Of Ideas

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from ScienceDaily.com): “’Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas.’ Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.…

“An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.”

My Comment: Kabbalah says that society is like a vessel (spiritual Kli), consisting of 10 parts (Sefirot). Thus, the tenth part of society becomes its unit, and less than 10 percent is not considered a part of it.

If this part acquires a single desire, it becomes the main part of the structure (Malchut), which absorbs in itself all the properties of the other parts (the first 9 Sefirot), not connected between themselves, attracting and using them for its fulfillment.
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In The Zone Of Choice

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the past egoism spurred us on from behind and from the sides, always leaving the path forward free. However, today the barriers are not arising along the sides, but in front of us. It’s as if a wall rises up before us, leaving us no place to run, nothing we can do.

This state is becoming more and more apparent: I don’t really want anything, I don’t feel that I can keep growing in my egoism. It is incapable of giving me answers to the questions that arise in me today. I have outgrown the previous phases and have entered the next level of questions, the level of adulthood and new necessities.

Food, sex, family—all of these are falling apart, taking on strange, “mutated” forms. Wealth, fame, and knowledge don’t seem to promise me a lot either.

Science is in a crisis and does not answer my questions, even though a mere 50-60 years ago it still seemed like it would give us answers to everything.

Power has become petty in our eyes: We see that its only objective is money. And money…. Is it really worth wasting your entire life on!? My questions have already outgrown any number of zeros that a bank account can display.

When a person loses the necessary “fuel,” emptiness emerges inside of him and he finds himself asking, “What is worth living for? For myself? But I lack fulfillment. For my children? But when they get older, they will leave the nest. And besides, why raise them at all? What bright future do they have ahead? Disintegrating families and a decomposing society?” A person does not feel attached to anything and does not have hopes for anything. That is the kind of impasse that our questions have led us to.

But there is also a completely different reason for the dead-end state: We are exhausting the natural resources. Today it is already clear that human progress won’t be infinite, both from the point of view of our demands and from the point of view of our existence as a whole. If we continue squandering the natural resources at the current rate, then very soon we won’t have any raw materials left even for the vitally necessary products.

90% of what we produce today consists of oil, be it energy, plastic materials, and so on. When the oil reserves end, we will be left with nothing. But nevertheless, we still keep on squandering it.

Thus, on one hand nature places a barrier before us in the form of ecology, climate, and resources, and on the other hand, egoism no longer pushes us forward. It asks questions that we cannot find answers to here, in our world, in this small children’s room where we had so much fun playing until now.

Today the situation already resembles suicide: We are irrationally using up the last remaining resources.

We have to understand that because of this, we find ourselves in the zone of choice. This is where freedom of will emerges, the freedom for us to start understanding the program of our development: “Who are we? Why are we here? What for?”, and together with us, the rest of the world. Now is exactly the time for us to solve this challenge. Otherwise humanity will find itself in a truly hopeless impasse.

In reality the gist of the problem is not the financial crisis, the technology crisis, or the crisis of families. We are in a crisis with ourselves. We have to understand who we are and what we are here for, both from the point of view of nature, which obligates us to this, and from our own point of view. Only then will we be able to set things right inside of us and in the world.
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From the Talk about a New Book 7/11/2011

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Top British Scientist: “The World We See Is Make-Believe”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from news.com.au): “The human brain creates its own version of reality, and the world we see around us is mostly make-believe, according to a top British scientist [Bruce Hood, Ph.D.]….

“’A lot of the world is make-believe. We’re only aware of a fraction of what’s going on,’ Prof. Hood told The (London) Times. ‘We have this impression of an expansive panorama in front of our eyes, but all we are ever seeing is an area the size of our thumbs at an arm’s distance. The rest is filled in, as the brain creates a stable environment.’

“He added, ‘Though you might think you’re an individual and captain of your ship, a lot of processes are being controlled by those around you and your environment’….

“‘One thing I guarantee is that I will leave the audience wondering if they can ever trust their brain again,’ he said.”

My Comment: Kabbalah says that we live in an imaginary world painted by our egoistic properties. If we acquire the higher properties, opposite to egoism, we will feel the true, upper, external, and eternal world and begin to exist in the newly acquired properties forever as well (see “Perception” section).
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Four Stages Of Development In Nature, An Example

Opinion: (Yuriy Tchaikovsky, The Zigzags of Evolution): When the body is stressed, it activates the genetic search mechanism. The genetic system cuts out and stitches fragments of genes until it finds an option which produces an antibody that can bind the invading antigen. The adjustment process takes about two days. Created in this way, the antibody intensively propagates (clones itself) to fight the infection and is stored until the end of the life of the organism.

This occurs in four steps (stages):

  1. The antigen is carried right through the immune cells.
  2. There, on the other end, it is dissected and presented.
  3. Antibody variants are created, which differ from one another only by one or two elements (nucleotides). Procured antibodies are applied to the stretched out, presented antigen, and the adjustment takes place.
  4. Once a suitable option of lymphocyte is found, it gets cloned and stored in the genetic system of the body for life.

This targeted selection is done by an antigen itself. It is as if the gene is at the tailor’s shop, where it acts as a fit model to produce a new garment that is subsequently put into mass production. The result is the formation of an antibody that is completely opposite to the antigen.

The formation of an antibody may even result in the production of an artificial antigen. In this case, a new piece of genetic information is born, which has never existed in nature before.
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Balance That Causes Development

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “The Peace”: Nature has prepared a wonderful foundation in the mother’s womb so that no stranger may harm the new life. It tends to its every need like a trained nanny who will not forget it even for a moment…. Like a loving mother, it brings it to such loving, loyal people it can trust, called “Mother” and “Father,” to assist it through its days of weakness until it grows and is able to sustain itself….

But those who examine that reality from the perspective of provision and persistence of existence can clearly see great disorder and confusion, as though there were no leader and no guidance. Everyone does that which is right in his own eyes, building himself on the ruin of others….

Bear in mind that this oppositeness, set before the eyes of every sensible, educated person, has preoccupied humanity even in ancient days. And there are many theories to explain these two apparent opposites in Providence, which occupy the same world.

On one hand, we see that nature is wise and assiduous toward every creature. It develops every element successively and carefully. Look at the structure of organisms, their ability to grow, to give birth to offspring, and to interact. Everything is built in an integral form, every person has his own place and is in balance with others. If we could see the balanced world, undisturbed by human despotism, we would reveal a wonderful system, one that is not static, but perfectly balanced for development.

However, we do not see the causes of this development and do not understand why everything has to be precisely this way. Therefore, we do not understand the phases of the path. Besides, we look at it through the prism of our egoism and evaluate it according to our criteria. Therefore, we see the world upside down, as if flipping it over in our perception.

Nevertheless, from scientific research it is clear to us that in order to develop the species, nature has created, produced, and formed all of the necessary systems that take care of the ideal creativity.

But on the other hand, a problem arises with the subsequent existence. Once any part of nature grows up and “stands up on its own feet,” it starts fighting for survival and integrating into the environment without parental help. This happens to all living creatures, but among people it takes on the most difficult forms because a person has to prepare for life in a society that is complex and artificial, built upon a multitude of mechanisms. Envy and lust for power ignite within him, pushing him to oppose others. Others seem successful, while he seems to be lagging behind them because of his nature or due to the circumstances.

Nature, which took such great care of us while we were growing, now places us in conditions that require efforts to survive. So does the Creator exist or not? If everything was all right, then we would say, “Thank God.” But if everything is not all right, then what you can say?

This is the problem that Baal HaSulam describes before he talks about the attempts to solve it.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/31/11

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Globalistics Is A Science About The New World

Opinion: Globalistics (from Latin “Globus,” the Globe, a science about the universal) is a science about the mechanism of development of humanity and the world in unity, in real conditions of the Earth: its finite size, limited natural resources, and anthropological overpopulation. The world is humanity and its environment.

Globalistics examines the unified world from a global perspective and describes this world, its developmental dynamics, and its inner interconnections as a single system of integrated parameters.

Globalistics studies the general laws of the quantitative development of humanity and builds quantitative models of the manageable sustainable world order in the conditions of anthropological overpopulation. Globalistics harmoniously combines basic and applied research and developments.
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A Baby’s Smile Is A Natural High

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (From sciencedaily.com): “The baby’s smile that gladdens a mother’s heart also lights up the reward centers of her brain, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers….

“To study the relationship [between mothers and infants], Strathearn and his colleagues asked 28 first-time mothers with infants aged 5 to 10 months to watch photos of their own babies and other infants while they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The machine measures blood flow in the brain. In the scans, areas of increased blood flow “light up,” giving researchers a clue as to where brain activity takes place….

“The areas stimulated by the sight of their own babies were those associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine….

“‘These are areas that have been activated in other experiments associated with drug addiction,’ said Strathearn. ‘It may be that seeing your own baby’s smiling face is like a ‘natural ‎high.’…

“’Understanding how a mother responds uniquely to her own infant, when smiling or crying, may be the first step in understanding the neural basis of mother–infant attachment,’ said Strathearn.”

My comment: This is a chemical manifestation of our egoistic nature. Say, a person obtains the property of love of the other. Will the drug of love “dopamine” get secreted in the person if he sees someone else’s child or a stranger? Is this “drug” the anticipated sensation of the Creator, “the Good Who does Good”? Can we really use MRI and blood analysis to determine whether a person has attained love of the other?
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The Whole Universe Is Integrally Interconnected

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the news (from ScienceDaily): Research conducted [by Prof Ron Naaman of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel] together with scientists in Germany, which appeared recently in Science, shows that a biological molecule – DNA – can discern between quantum states known as spin. … The biological molecules reacted strongly with the electrons carrying one of those spins, and hardly at all with the others.

Comment: The significance of these results goes beyond the boundaries of experimental physics. The issue here is that at the quantum level, the quality of quantum entanglement gets expressed between the particles, and the particles preserve it even if they end up at opposite ends of the galaxy. If the spin of one particle changes, it simultaneously changes in the other one as well, and this effectively turns the universe into a single, connected system.
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