New Life #353 – Past, Present, Future
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

On the one hand, how is it possible to conduct one’s life beyond the past, present, and future, and how can the connections between us help influence our future?

Summary

Feeling “only this moment” either means dying or learning to transcend the past, present, and future. It is possible to discover our developmental timeline, the program of creation, and to control life. This is a supreme pleasure!

One can try to train one’s mind to enjoy the “here and now,” and that’s it. But this is not the purpose of existence.

The purpose of human existence is to develop tools for managing its future like the present.

All of nature is connected, interdependent. The development of the human species is also in moving toward mutual connection. Someone who wants to enjoy maximally from now until the end of his days must build a good connection with everyone. If you hurt someone on the way to your personal enjoyment, this will come back to you. The world is round. If a person creates connections of friendship and mutual love with everyone, he assures himself of a good life.

On the way to a complete connection with others, you need to check your attitude toward them yesterday, in order to improve. Don’t eat yourself up about the past, just decide that from now on I want to correct the relationship. Through the wisdom of connection and special exercises, I begin to feel that others and I are one.

And when I begin to include all of reality within me, everything becomes me. I become unlimited.
From KabTV’s “New Life #353 – Past, Present, Future,” 4/17/14

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New Life #351 – What Is Time?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

What is the concept of time? Is it subjective? What does our feeling of time depend on and under what conditions can we understand and manage it in order to achieve something in life?

Summary

If my senses were equally impressed all the time, I wouldn’t feel time. Time is the outcome of change. Pleasure and lack of pleasure, this is what gives me the feeling of time since I am made of a desire to enjoy. Measuring whether our desire is filled or not is what gives us the feeling of time. The feeling of the future develops out of the desire to enjoy and learning how to attain what we desire.

There are many types of time, but in terms of the perception of reality, everything is in me, in my box. The perception of reality is totally subjective. Sometimes time is stretched and sometimes it goes by very quickly. We can have an objective perception of reality only if we learn how to manage our nature—the desire to enjoy. Managing the desire to enjoy means acquiring a higher desire, a desire to bestow, and working with both of them.
From KabTV’s “New Life #351 – What Is Time?” 4/17/16

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Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 8:03: And He afflicted you and let you go hungry, and then fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your forefathers know, so that He would make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but rather by, whatever comes forth from the mouth of the Lord does man live.

All the challenges are intended so that a person will fill his egoistic desires with altruistic intention, the quality of Bina (bestowal) when he doesn’t want anything for himself.

He only wants to fulfill others and that this fulfillment would be equivalent to the pleasure that he received once from his own fulfillment.

Manna is the fulfillment where a person stays empty in his egoistic desires and is fulfilled only in the altruistic intentions. In principle; manna is an illusionary fulfillment.

It’s like a mother who hasn’t had breakfast yet sits and watches as her little child eats, and it fulfills her. She calms down as she watches all her systems being filled with pleasure from the fact that her child eats the porridge she cooked.

Fulfillment takes place not in those desires that you used to enjoy, but in the desires of another person, let’s say a child, since you love him and so you identify yourself with him, so you enjoy to the extent that he is fulfilled.

The same is also with others. If you treat them with the same love, then by fulfilling them you will enjoy yourself. And what about your qualities and desires? They will remain empty all the time.

They will be changing into the quality of bestowal to others, meaning they will gradually be joining the intention to bestow. And then your previous desire with an egoistic intention will never be fulfilled since you will be able to exist only outside of yourself. This is the transition to the upper world.
[191852]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/27/16

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Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 8:2: And you shall remember the entire way on which the Lord, your God, led you these forty years in the desert, in order to afflict you to test you, to know what is in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

The most important thing is that a person would know and go through this. Naturally, the Creator knows in advance what will happen to a person, even if he will or won’t be wrong. In other words, freewill exists for us when we think, “Should I act this way or that way?” However, for the Creator, this isn’t a question.

Even more, it is absolutely clear that a person will stumble. As it is said, “There is not a single righteous man who hasn’t sinned while doing good.” However to stumble, to realize it, correct it, and do the right thing is an accumulation of deep sensations, awareness, and a tool with which you reveal the Creator in all of his greatness from the beginning of the thought of creation to its implementation.

Question: What is meant by “…to afflict you to test you…?”

Answer: To afflict my “I” means to rise above egoism. To test is a state called faith above reason.

Question: Is it when you are given tidbits, and you can be seduced by them?

Answer: It is not only that. A person is given a state in which he doesn’t know which way to go, and here he can choose faith above reason.

If it is clear that it is against egoism, then there is no problem. You know that you either have or don’t have the strength for this. You must hate it or love it; the circumstances are absolutely clear.

When they are not clear, this is to test you. Here, a person is in limbo, and this is the hardest. You don’t understand which way to go. It is not like you have or don’t have the strength, or you really want to get away from what you are given. No, your state is so vague that it is as if you are between heaven and earth.

Such states are the worst because they extend time and kill the life of a person. It is called, “Fear an indifferent person.”

For or against are good states. Make mistakes or don’t, just keep going. But when a person is neither here nor there, and he is in a neutral state, it takes his entire life.

Question: How do we lead him out of these states?

Answer: It is only with the help of the environment. A person by himself will never be able to exit them. Only the environment gives him a correct direction, shows the way he must act, and he begins to suffer, to be jealous and envious. This is what leads him away from the state of passivity.

Question: So, it is not necessary to pull him out physically?

Answer: No, pulling him out physically is the simplest thing to do. The masterstroke is when, through a small hint from somewhere far away he feels that something great is happening there.

Question: It is written, “And thou shalt remember all the way… to know what was in thy heart, whether thou would keep His commandments, or no.” What does it mean to know what was in thy heart?

Answer: A person should scan himself at each segment of the path, all ten internal Sefirot in all desires. All of them are measured with respect to Malchut, the egoistic desire, and with respect to Keter, the altruistic intention. In this way, he should check himself at any given moment.

This is what is meant by to know what was in thy heart. Does it fully agree with the Creator on the level where it is revealed to you, where you yourself know who you are, and you constantly move between Malchut and Keter like a toy yo-yo?
[191813]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/27/16

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Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 8:7 – 8:8, 8:10: For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good and, a land with brooks of water, fountains and depths, that emerge in valleys and mountains, a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a land of oil producing olives and honey.

And you will eat and be sated, and you shall bless the Lord, your God, for the good land He has given you.

Question: The Torah gives us a goal and says you won’t regret if you reach it.

Answer: It all depends on whether you will get there. But if you make it, you enter such corrected desires that really are filled with the Upper Light, and each of them gives you wine, olives, sun, and honey. In short, this is paradise.

After all, everything already has been corrected by you in the previous actions. Egypt turns into a desert because now you reject those Egyptian egoistic desires in which you had everything. You don’t want to receive anything for yourself in them. You agree to the desert, the manna that you eat just in order to support yourself a little, and the water that you drink.

Then, you prepare yourself to enter a new degree, the quality of bestowal and love outside of yourself.

It means that the same huge desires that were revealed in your spiritual internal state called Egypt gradually move to the state of the desert, and you rise above them since this is the way that they should be. Then, you build from these desires the quality of bestowal and love. There, when you rise above yourself in bestowal to others, you enjoy the fact that you fill everyone with this goodness.
[191986]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/27/16

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Question: In what sense and why do the articles of Rabash: “The Purpose of Society – 1,” “Love of Friends,” and “Concerning ‘Love Thy Friend as Thyself,’” speak about suppression of egoism? After all, we strive to transcend the ego.

Answer: This is not called annihilation of the ego but its suppression and its realization with the characteristic of bestowal and love.

Question: I cannot overcome egoism and I don’t have the ability to do anything, where is the Creator here? After all, I asked Him to help me and I tried to help Him, but nothing happened. I know that when I “nourish” my egoism, it is “satisfied,” but the “hunger” will come and overcome me again. Now it just scares me that it will appear again and dominate me.

Answer: The Creator is found in everything that a person feels. It is only up to you to try not to become distracted from this truth and to become integrated in a group because it is only in connection with the friends that you will be able to realize your characteristics correctly and transform them under the influence of Arvut (mutual guarantee) and Ohr Makif (the Light that is outside of us as long as we are not in the corrected state), to become similar to the Creator.
[191209]

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Question: Can I get a list of all the 620 desires?

Answer: I do not know how to list them because a person who has not attained spirituality will not understand anything.

For example I can say, “Netzah which is in Hod or in Tifferet, and from it the third part from Bina,” etc. What will you be able to understand from this? How do these desires form a certain pleasure within you?

We cannot define this with our material terms. For example, there are about 800 kinds of fear and depression in Psychology. They are not given names, but only have notations of the homeopathic remedies that can neutralize them.

The same happens here. A person who is able to sense spiritual desires can express them only through the language of Sefirot. At the same time only those who already exist within Sefirot are able to perceive them.
[191477]
KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book,” 4/27/16

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Question: It is said that “The Lord, your God, brings you to the land… to give you great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill…” and so on. Why is it emphasized here that you didn’t do it?

Answer: We do nothing by ourselves, but to make sure we don’t have any abilities for this, we must ask the Creator. He will give us strength that will help us enter the complete perfect altruistic system.

Therefore it is said, “Beware, lest you forget the Lord, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt…” The Creator leads us forward to the land of Israel, to the reclamation of egoism. And egoism suddenly shows us that it is not egoism at all, it just appeared so relative to our corrupted qualities. And now we see that this is the most perfect system, the world of eternity, and we are in it.

In other words, we correct our own qualities just in order to see the perfection that has always existed. Even now we all together are in the world of infinity, heaven, perfection, and eternity! But all sorts of our ugly qualities allow us to see just a small fragment of the universe that is full of terrible suffering and death. And in fact we all are in the Absolute!
[190247]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/6/16

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Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 8:5 – 8:8, 8:10: You shall know in your heart, that just as a man chastises his son, so does the Lord, your God, chastise you. And you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to go in His ways, and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land with brooks of water, fountains and depths, that emerge in valleys and mountains, a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a land of oil producing olives and honey, …

And you will eat and be sated, and you shall bless the Lord, your God, for the good land He has given you.

This is definitely a stunning picture. I would have thought that this is a description of the Mediterranean coast of France or the Greek Islands. However, it is very hard to say this about the land of Israel. Of course, here, we have in mind something completely different. It is impossible to find the words to describe the spiritual, not the geographical, land of Israel because these are the qualities of a person who is in his highest fulfillment.

It isn’t just a beautiful literary description of some picture, but an absolutely clear, rhymed, hard scientific and technical description of the qualities of a person who functions, or I would say gushes, this way.

Here all ten Sefirot of the person’s soul are described that are directed constantly toward bestowal and love of others, and, at the same time, are filled with the state of eternity because everything is directed not toward the person, but from him outward.

Question: Is this the feeling of a particular person?

Answer: Whatever happens in the desire is a feeling, and there is nothing else apart from desire.

Question: Will we come to this feeling in any case?

Answer: It is commanded to the entire world, written down, prescribed, and is waiting. We must try to achieve it through our efforts and as soon as possible. There is nothing worse than this state we are in now, and there is nothing better than what is destined for us.

Question: However, now, the Creator seemingly is helping us. He is showing us what this world is like, and it wasn’t like that before.

Answer: It wasn’t like that before because we hadn’t developed to this yet, not because He wasn’t showing this. We develop in a consistent evolutionary way to the point where we see what is happening with our egoism. We feel the crisis and develop further.

Of course, there are still many problems ahead. If we understand what is destined for us and try to apply our efforts, intentions, and aspirations to it, and help each other, then we will be able to pass the last part of the way that actually is the hardest because there is freewill here.

We ourselves must pass it through our free choice, and if we don’t do that, we will stand still like a donkey and get hit until we get smarter and understand that we need to go by our freewill. Let’s hope that we will wake up and move forward.
[191980]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/27/16

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Question: Why does time seem to go by very slowly for a person who engages in something that he doesn’t like, but if engages in something that he enjoys, time seems to fly by? What is time for a Kabbalist?

Answer: Time for a Kabbalist is the number of changes that he undergoes at any given moment, and so if he undergoes several states in a second, this second is felt like a number of seconds, and if he is in the same state for an hour, the hour is felt like a second.

That is, time is tensile, capable of being drawn out and stretched. It depends on how we fill it, on the number of states we undergo in any unit time.
[191817]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/17/16

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