In the News (from The MIT Technology Review): “Why ET’s genetic code could be just like ours” We know that amino acids are common in our solar system and beyond. Various first experiments to recreate the conditions in the Earth’s early atmosphere have produced 10 of the amino acids found in proteins. Curiously, analyses of meteorite samples have found exactly these same 10 amino acids. The first genetic codes must have evolved to exploit these 10 prebiotic amino acids. Nature had settled on the full 20 we see today by the time the earliest common ancestor of all organisms on the planet first emerged, at least 3.5 billion years ago.

My Comment: The science of Kabbalah describes the 10 phases of the Light’s expansion from above downwards (the ten Sefirot of Ohr Yashar, Direct Light), and the 10 reverse phases of the Light’s expansion from below upwards (10 Sefirot of Ohr Hozer, Reflected Light). Life (a Partzuf) can form only when all of these phases are present.

The 10 main amino acids (10 Sefirot of Ohr Yashar) are the basis, but the protein matter appears only when there is a complete set of Direct and Returning Lights, or in other words, when there is a connecting screen between them.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Preface to the Science of Kabbalah. Items 6 – 9
Laitman.com Post: HaVaYaH – Phases of the Development of Desire (Advanced)
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Article: “The Order of Creation”

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In the News (from The Telegraph): People have “angel” and “devil” parts of the brain that are in constant battle over their self control, a study has shown. The “angel” area is strong in individuals with good self control but less pronounced in the weak-willed… The angel section leads a person to weigh abstract considerations such as “healthiness” against the basic desires of the devil part when craving rich food… Those whose “angels” did not speak loudly enough chose the tastier foods, regardless of nutritional value.

Dr. Antonio Rangel, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), whose research appears in the journal Science, said: “From the perspective of modern neuroscience, the question becomes, ‘what is special about the circuitry of brains that can exercise good behavioural self-control?'”

My Comment: Actually, it doesn’t matter what is special about it, since we cannot change the brain. The brain is just an executing mechanism that’s activated by a prior decision that one makes: one assesses the goal he is going for and how important that goal is. And the latter already depends on one’s free choice: whether he will place himself under the influence of a society that will restructure his priorities.

This is how we were created in order to be able to discover the need to surround ourselves with the right environment and to build a complete connection with one another. This way – under the influence of others – one can safeguard oneself from bad decisions and behaviors, and consequently, from suffering.

For more on this, see the section, “The Influence of the Environment,” in the article “The Freedom.”

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Laitman.com Post: The Mysteries of Our Perception
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In the News: (from BBC News): “Doctors criticize ‘gay treatment‘” Plans to promote medical treatment for homosexuality at a religious conference have been criticized by doctors. The event will hear from prominent American psychologist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi who said he had helped many people to become heterosexual.

But the Royal College of Psychiatrists said there was no supporting evidence and such treatment could be damaging. The Royal College said the American Psychiatric Association had concluded there was no scientific evidence that homosexuality was a disorder and removed it from its diagnostic glossary of mental disorders in 1973. The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases followed suit in 1992.

My Comment: This decision shows that people have finally realized (at least partially) that man shouldn’t interfere with nature, even when it appears to us that nature is expressing itself in “weird” ways.

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Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah On Astrology, Death, Homosexuality and More

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Coral Fossils Suggest That Sea Level Can Rise Rapidly” Evidence from fossil coral reefs in Mexico underlines the potential for a sudden jump in sea levels because of global warming. The study, being published Thursday in the journal Nature, suggests that a sudden rise of 6.5 feet to 10 feet occurred within a span of 50 to 100 years about 121,000 years ago, at the end of the last warm interval between ice ages.

My Comment: Any occurrence in Nature has an initial stage where the energy builds up, and then an abrupt change. And the latter is always fatal for humans! However, we can stop the threatening changes taking place in Nature by bringing the whole of Nature to balance. The way to do this is by changing ourselves, by acquiring the quality of bestowal.

Kabbalah says that Nature and the Creator are one and the same. The Gematria (numerical value) of the word Nature (HaTeva) is the same as the Creator (Elokim). In our world, the level of Nature is lower than the level of a “human being.” Therefore, by correcting ourselves, by changing our egoism to bestowal, we will become equivalent to all of Nature or the Creator. We will thereby bring all of nature in our world to balance, making our existence absolutely comfortable and secure!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like to Live In a Perfect World?
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Spiritual Search: Eighteen Talks With the Beginners.”Fifteenth Talk: Our Desire to Receive is Equal to the Creator’s Altruism”

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In the News (from WBCSD): “Japan honors ‘Limits to Growth’ science author” Japan awarded its top science prize Thursday to a US researcher who decades ago predicted that rapid economic and population growth on a finite planet would lead to the collapse of civilization.

Professor Dennis Meadows led a research team that in the 1972 study “The Limits to Growth,” using a computer model called World3, forecast that on current trends humanity was headed for doom by 2100.

Meadows, of the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the lead author of the study, which became a best-seller but was also attacked as alarmist and opposed to technology and progress. … Meadows, 65, received the 500,000-dollar annual Japan Prize from the country’s Science and Technology Foundation for “transformation towards a sustainable society in harmony with nature.” In his study, Meadows argued that “human demand exceeds nature’s supply.” Unless the human race switched from exponential population and economic growth to a sustainable system, his team argued, they would “overshoot” the Earth’s limits, leading to the collapse of human civilization.

More than three decades on – Meadows said that today he sees even fewer signs of hope. Meadows argued that the key lessons have not been learned, and that the search for solutions to the crisis remain based on “trust in the markets and the current faith in technological advances.” “Indeed, the most common policy for solving current economic problems is a desperate effort to get the growth of the physical economy back onto its historical, exponential track,” he said. “I know this policy will not work.”

My Comment: Almost 40 years has passed since he made his forecasts. And indeed, everything has changed for the worse! Everything he said has come true.

However, there is a solution: to reach equivalence with Nature by consuming only what is necessary for our existence. Then we will have enough of everything, no matter how many people there are in the world!

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Baal HaSulam Article: “Building the Future Society”

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In the News (from ABC News): EPA Holds Bedbug Summit in Arlington The federal government is waking up to what has become a growing nightmare in many parts of the country – a bedbug outbreak. Faced with rising numbers of complaints, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first-ever bedbug summit Tuesday.

The EPA, out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, has pulled many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs from the U.S. over the last 50 years – such as DDT – off of shelves.

My Comment: Kabbalistic texts mention that outbreaks are one of the signs of the crisis. However, the crisis is caused by man’s imbalance with Nature. Nature is interconnected and it requires that people:

1. Consume only as much as necessary for their existence

2. Develop a connection among each other as one body

Failure to fulfill these conditions results in nonconformity and imbalance with Nature, which leads to all sorts of negative consequences. However, all of these are caused by us, by our behavior.

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Laitman.com Post: Man Was Created to Exist In Balance With Nature
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From Chaos to Harmony: Chapter 10 – “Balance With Nature”

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The renowned ecologist, Prof. Victor Dolnik writes the following about the transition from egoism to altruism:

The public consciousness has made an amazingly quick transition from a blasphemous, sacrilegious attitude to Nature to one of superstitious worship. The latter is now called “ecologism.” But ecologism is not very beneficial, as it’s founded on the same anthropocentrism as before – “The general good is the good of man.”

If ecological thinking is to be authentic, rather than “ecologistical,” it must become biosphere-centric: “The only thing that can be good for man is whatever is good for the biosphere.”

And here is what he said about the two possible ways of managing the creation (the path of Kabbalah and the path of suffering):

I would really like to know the answer to the question: what kind of species do we belong to? Is it really a species that’s regulated by nothing but primary factors? Are we no different than yeast and rabbits, which procreate until obstructed by the primary factors? Or are we a species that can change its strategy upon receiving warning signals from the biosphere?

Most ecologists attribute man to the former. Their main argument is: man may have lost the necessary genetic programs completely. And even if these programs are not lost, they are not functioning in the present conditions, which are completely different from the primal ones.

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Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life: Realizing the Spiritual Gene, Part – IV.”The Reshimo”

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In the News (from University of Cambridge): The human brain lives “on the edge of chaos,” at a critical transition point between randomness and order. It might be operating in a self-organized critical state – the brain can spontaneously organize itself at a point on the edge of chaos between order and randomness. This point at the edge of chaos allows neurons to jump quickly between different states enabling them to alter behavior as necessary, allowing humans to respond quickly to the environment around them.

Due to these characteristics, self-organized criticality is intuitively attractive as a model for brain functions such as perception and action, because it would allow us to switch quickly between mental states in order to respond to changing environmental conditions.

My Comment: When a person is on the spiritual path, these states are especially vivid: one constantly goes from chaos, confusion, and uncertainty to clarity and confidence.

In Hebrew, the word for evening – Erev, originates from the verb Learvev – to mix. Thus, when one is in the state called, “evening,” the clarity that one felt before turns into uncertainty, confusion and then a total lack of understanding, which is the state called “night.” This is exactly the state when a person is internally preparing for new possibilities and new attainments. It is similar to when our physical bodies rest before a new workday.

In Aramaic, which is opposite to Hebrew, the word for “night” is Orta, which comes from the Hebrew word Ohr – light. This shows that the “night” is also light, but its light is opposite to the Light of day. Therefore, the states of confusion, chaos and uncertainty are necessary in order for one to systemize information and gain deeper awareness of it.

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Shamati #16: “What Is the Day of the Lord and the Night of the Lord in the Work”

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In the News (from National Geographic): Today many scientists say there is no conflict between their faith and their work, and few scientists seem to think much about religion in their research. In a 1997 survey in the science journal Nature, 40 percent of U.S. scientists said they believe in God. “In the last few years astronomy has come together so that we’re now able to tell a coherent story” of how the universe began, said Joel Primack, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “This story does not contradict God, but instead enlarges [the idea of] God.”

In the News (from The Stanford Review ): Students and staff packed Memorial Auditorium [at Stanford University] to hear Dr. Francis Collins, the renowned head of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God discuss his views on science, faith, and the ease with which the two can be reconciled. According to Collins, “naturalism has its limits.” Collins cited pointers to God in nature such as the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics,” and the precise tuning of physical constants during the Big Bang. Examples of such improbability suggest that there is a creator God. There is an obvious way to reconcile [faith and science], Collins shows, through a rejection of extremes, and the embracing of “harmony in the middle.”

My Comment: The study of Kabbalah enables people to change their intention from “for one’s own sake,” where one perceives our world, to the intention of “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” where one perceives the Upper World. By uniting with one’s “neighbors” through the intention “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” one discovers that others are a part of him and that everything in existence consists of two parts – myself and the Upper Force. See the section on “Perception.”

Related Material:
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Talk: “Perception of Reality”
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The famous American biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton said, “We will not become humanity until we realize that we are one whole, that all people should unite.”

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kHEcVNlcMQ]

The main ideas discussed are:
1. People are the cells of a large society, which unite in order to share their knowledge and create a single living organism – humanity. We are not human beings until we create the humanity. However, we will only create humanity when we understand that we are all cells of one living organism and we must work harmoniously. Then we will create the next level of evolution.

2. The internet is an evolutionary stage, a system of communication enabling all the “cells” of the body of humanity to communicate with each other and exchange information. This is why we have become united.

3. A human being is in fact a replication of a cell. The essence is quite simple: Irrespective of how complex a person is, there are no new human functions present in him which are not present in a single cell. A human being is a replication of a cell.

4. A community of people is a multi-celled structure which comes into agreement and creates unity, like one cell. This constitutes the community’s self-actualization. Once humanity will be complete, then the earth, as an organism, will complete its evolution. We will then achieve unity.

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