News Report (from The New York Times): “Project Created to Restore Ancient Babylon” A master plan is being developed for the restoration of the Mesopotamian site of the ancient city of Babylon, in present-day Iraq. The “Future of Babylon” project, financed by a $700,000 grant from the State Department, will map the city’s archeological sites, develop conservation plans and pursue possibilities for tourism and education.

My Comment: This is a landmark event because our global civilization is a replay of ancient Babylon. In the past, Babylon was a place with the same conditions as we have today – those of a “small village” and “the Butterfly Effect.” In other words, people’s egoism grew by leaps and bounds, and they stopped “understanding one another.” This is how we got the expression that “they began to speak different languages.” Yet, at the same time, people revealed that they were completely interdependent.

That’s when one of their priests, named Avram, began to examine the crisis and revealed its cause: it was happening because Nature (or the Creator) was pushing people towards unification. As a result of his research, he attained correction – the revelation of the quality of bestowal and love within him. He also realized what kind of connections are necessary in a closed system in order for it to survive and function correctly. He changed his name to Abraham, where the additional letter ה (Hey or “h”) designates the addition of the Upper Force (bestowal and love) to him. Thereafter, he wrote a book called The Book of Creation.

Abraham taught what he had learned, and thereby formed a group of students. He called them Israel (Isra – El = straight to the Creator), and together they went to what would become the land of Israel. As for the Babylonians who remained behind, they got rid of the crisis by breaking the connections between one another and dispersing all over the planet.

Today, just like Abraham’s science, Kabbalah,  predicted, from the end of the 20th century on, we have once again entered the state of “a small village” and “the Butterfly Effect.” However, this time we have done so on the global scale, so there’s no place to run in order to destroy our globalization. Hence, there are two paths before us:

1. Suffering, due to the discord in our civilization’s system, or
2. We can use Kabbalah as the method of correction.

Either way, we are obliged to correct ourselves so as to reach the level of observing the conditions of existence in a closed system, where every person will have to live by the rule of, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Foundation of the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: The Book of Zohar. Chapter “Avraham”
Laitman.com Post: The Book of Zohar. Chapter “The Letters by Rabbi Amnon Saba”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Building the Future Society”

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News Report (from BBC News): “Is love just a chemical cocktail?” Writing in the respected scientific journal Nature, Professor Young argues that love can be explained by a series of neurochemical events in specific brain areas. … Researchers have found that oxytocin is involved in the bonding of male and the female prairie voles, which like humans, form an intense bond with each other that lasts for a very long time.

My Comment: Love, like any other feeling, brings about physio-chemical reactions in the organism. Otherwise, we wouldn’t feel it. However, these reactions are just an external manifestation, or the result, of our feelings.

Scientists are solving our problems backwards: they suggest influencing our feelings with drugs or chemicals. Science is approaching the situation from the only angle that it is able to.

On the other hand, Kabbalah explains that the foundation of all matter is the desire to enjoy. Furthermore, Kabbalah teaches us how to change our desires and control them. Then we will be able to control all other changes, which are just the results of the desires and the changes happening to them.

The division of nature into the still, vegetative, and animate levels is also nothing but a gradation of the desire to enjoy – “to preserve oneself and to develop,” or “to draw closer to what’s beneficial and move away from what’s harmful.”

Science cannot unlock the mystery of love – this cannot be solved with chemical means. Kabbalah, on the other hand, teaches us how to change our feelings, and even to ascend above them. In our transformed feelings, which will change from hatred to love for the neighbor, we will perceive “the world outside of us” – the Upper World, a state that’s eternal and independent of our bodies.

This is love, but not the corporeal type.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Quantum Physics: A Journey to Flatland
Laitman.com Post: Some Quotes by Albert Einstein
Kabbalah Today Article: Love, Deciphered
Lecture: Unconditional Love
Article: “Kabbalah as Compared with Other Sciences”

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News Report (from Phantoms & Monsters): The CEUFO (Center for Studies UFO) of Argentina received an email from a photographer (Fabián Romano) that claimed to have captured a strange being on his camera while taking some shots around the Macachín airport. The CEUFO analyzed the image and declared it to be that of a flying “entity.” They also said that the image was of a “high strangeness.”

My Comment: Spirituality consists of forces that are not clothed in matter. They descend to us from their source – the Creator, and they are called “angels” (in Hebrew “Malach” – singular, “Malachim” – plural). We cannot see or perceive these forces, but only their influences, their manifestations in matter. It’s similar to how we can only perceive the influence of a magnetic or gravitational field, but not these fields in and of themselves.

We perceive the Creator in the same way – in our desires of bestowal and love. That is how this force of Goodness, Love and Bestowal is revealed in us. Its revelation in us is called “the part of the Creator from above,” or the soul. To perceive one’s soul, to have a soul, or to perceive the Creator – is one and the same (Israel, the Torah and the Creator are One). The “Preface to the Book of Zohar” talks about our perception, explaining that everything is perceived within us, and not outside. Hence, this leaves no room for “miracles!” In this world, everything is prosaic and bleak. But once you reveal the Upper World, there you will discover true miracles.

And here’s another explanation: All the forces of our world, (the forces clothed in matter that we can perceive) are also angels. Even the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature, man included, are angels, because they are completely controlled by the Creator. So who isn’t an angel? Only a Kabbalist, because he becomes independent, a Man (Adam, one who is similar to the Creator), one who is independent from the Creator. A Kabbalist isn’t just one of the Creator’s forces or messengers, and hence, a Kabbalist is not an angel.

One time, Rabash and I went to a zoo to talk about the roots and branches in both worlds. When we got there, he exclaimed: “So many angels in one place!”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: There Are No Images In the Spiritual World
Laitman.com Post: Don’t Get Lost In All the Angels
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
The Introduction to the Article “The Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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A question I received on my German blog: There are Rosicrucian societies in the world, which are partially based on Kabbalah. The main premise in the Rosicrucian theosophy is that the Creator created elevated spiritual structures with freedom of will for executing different tasks, such as regulating karma or creating a spiritual human body. There were also spiritual structures which broke and are now impeding human development. This is a general summary. What is Kabbalah’s perspective on this? What does it have to say about this?

My Answer: Kabbalah describes the structure of the spiritual world in the book Talmud Eser Sefirot. Kabbalah studies the Upper World, examines it, and describes it just like a scientist accurately describes our world. For beginners who study in German, I recommend my books: Quantum Kabbala, Leben aus der Kabbala, and Das Licht der Kabbala.

Related Material:
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Interview: What Lies Ahead of Us

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News Report (from Financial Sense Editorials): Andrew Gelman of Princeton stated, “The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple. It operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.”

Examples of Unintended Consequences of the Last 100 Years:

• The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria: All sides envisioned a short painless war. The war lasted 4 years and killed 20 million people, with another 20 million casualties.

• Treaty of Versailles: The harsh terms inflicted upon Germany by the victorious Allies eventually led to the rise of Adolph Hitler as dictator and ultimately to the deaths of 70 million people in World War II.

• Manhattan Project: Led to an arms race with the Soviet Union which almost led to nuclear war in 1962. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of the biggest dangers to world peace today.

• Richard Nixon takes U.S. off Gold Standard: The U.S. dollar has lost 93% of its purchasing power since 1971. The welfare statists have confiscated middle class savings through inflation.

• China Embraces Capitalism: Peasants in China were turned into workers (so as to narrow the gap between rich and poor), resulting in an economic crisis and social unrest.

• Cheap oil: will halt projects aimed at developing alternative energy sources and create an energy problem in the future.

My Comment: These were just the naive errors of the past, before we revealed the closed global system of the entire planet’s absolute interdependence. Today, however, any mistake made in any part of the world will lead to an unpredictable domino effect in various parts of the planet and on various levels. In this case the best thing to do is, as written in a Kabbalistic text, “Sit and do nothing.” Or in a word – freeze!

The only chance we have of making the right actions is to take into account the well being of all humanity. But this is only possible when one perceives everyone as one family. It is impossible to calculate this legally or mathematically! It is only possible to act this way under the influence of the Upper Light, which transforms our innate egoism into Nature’s quality of bestowal and love – the quality of the Upper World. This is the transformation we’ll have to undergo.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Financial Crisis May Trigger a World War

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News Report (from Science Daily): “Our Unconscious Brain Makes The Best Decisions Possible” Neuroscientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky received a 2002 Nobel Prize for their 1979 research that argued humans rarely make rational decisions. Contrary to Kahnneman and Tversky’s research, Alex Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, has shown that people do indeed make optimal decisions – but only when their unconscious brain makes the choice.

My Comment: No doubt, our earthly mind does not feel the goal which the Creator sets for us at every instant, whereas the unconscious is closer to the truth because it is led by the by the instinct rather than the corporeal circumstances. When one’s consciousness isn’t bound by egoism, which desires and calculates everything to make a profit, then one sees the truth!

Hence, we must first rise above egoism and see the world truly objectively, outside of ourselves, of our “I.” Only then can we use our egoism to attain “outside.” This attainment will indeed be called the “Upper World” – a world that’s above egoism, above our nature.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: There’s a Grand World Outside Our Bitter Radish
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Kabbalah Today Article: Rising Above the Ego to a New Level of Consciousness
Article: “Kabbalah – The Key to Perceiving Reality”
Kabbalah for Beginners: “Stage One”

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Two questions I received on development through Kabbalah:

Question: It says in a book by Rav Kook that there are two kinds of redemption: redemption that comes in due time (בעיתה – Beito), and redemption that comes in response to a person’s plea (אחישנה – Ahishena). Either way, redemption will come eventually. According to Kabbalah, we have to change from within, and then we’ll attain happiness. And by spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will make everyone happy because they will receive the same Light. But then it would seem that Kabbalah contradicts the notion of the existence of time for correction.

Answer: You’ve mixed it all up! Kabbalah was given to us so that instead of progressing “in due time,” we will speed up time (progress through אחישנה – Ahishena). This means that we can develop without waiting for the suffering to come (without בעיתה- Beito).

Question: What do you mean by the point in the heart? Also, do you mean that fate – or circumstances in our life that might be difficult – push us to this point so we will discover our purpose?

Answer: Suffering and emptiness lead a person to the question about their meaning, cause and purpose. Gradually a person starts feeling that he needs to understand the cause of all that’s happening, and this feeling is a subconscious desire to reveal the Creator. A person then discovers the source of this knowledge (the books, group, and teacher), and reaches the goal.

The point in the heart is the desire to reveal the Creator, and Kabbalah is the method or means to reveal Him. The point in the heart is your soul’s initial desire, and your soul then begins to develop from this point. The point in the heart is similar to a seed: when it’s placed in the environment that’s right for its development (the group, books, and teacher), it begins to develop into a vessel of the soul – a desire in which a person begins to sense the Upper Force, the Creator.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Freedom of Will Lies in Acceleration
Laitman.com Post: The Path of Light Versus the Path of Suffering
Interview with the Future: “The Acceleration of the Reshimot”
The Path of Kabbalah: “The Awakening of the Point in the Heart”

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From item 40 of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” by Baal HaSulam:

“And I know that it is completely unaccepted in the eyes of some philosophers. They cannot agree that man, whom they think of as low and worthless, is the center of the magnificent creation. But they are like a worm that is born inside a radish and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter and as dark as the radish it was born in. But as soon as the shell of the radish [of one’s egoism] breaks and it peeps out [comes out of the egoism, of the intention, “for his own sake,” and enters bestowal and love for others], it wonders [in awe of the Upper World that it revealed] and says: “I thought the whole world was the size of my radish, but now I see before me a grand, beautiful and wondrous world!”

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News Report (from Psychological Science): (By Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard University) When someone steps on your toe on purpose, it seems to hurt more than when the person does the same thing unintentionally. The physical parameters of the harm may not differ – your toe is flattened in both cases – but the psychological experience of pain is changed nonetheless. Intentional harms are premeditated by another person and have the specific purpose of causing pain. In a sense, intended harms are events initiated by one mind to communicate meaning (malice) to another, and this could shape the recipient’s experience.

My Comment: This comes from the Upper Root of our relationship with the Creator: if we desire to receive without paying attention to Him, the Giver, then we perceive what we receive as this world – bitter, difficult, and temporary. However, if we desire to feel what we receive together with Him, the Giver, then we feel the Upper World, which is eternal and perfect. Then, when our world disappears (when the body dies), our perception – the sensation of the Giver we attained – stays with us forever, as do He and we.

For example, suppose I receive a present. I enjoy it. But then I begin to feel that it has a defect. This helps me to think about the Giver. My egoism cannot stop thinking about Him and asking, “Why isn’t this gift perfect”? As I think about the Giver’s action, I start to scrutinize this action (which is the thought of creation). I examine: what is happening to me from the moment when I started being aware of receiving something from Him, and what is His goal for doing this?

As I reveal His behavior, I begin to understand Him and see that He is kind, good and loving. I start to feel something new: I forget about (and lose the perception of) the gift itself – of our world and our life. What remains is only He and I (without the gift) and our relationship, the sensation of the Upper Life that emerged by virtue of the gift. But we don’t need the gift any longer.

Related Material
Laitman.com Post: Learning to Understand the Creator Is the Key to Happiness
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On Roots and Branches
Article: “The Alternative of Our Life”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Acting Mind”

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News Report (from Times Online): The Milgram experiment was one of the most infamous experiments in history, offering compelling evidence that almost everybody is capable of great evil. Almost 50 years on, it has finally been repeated by scientists – showing that people today are still willing to hurt others when prompted by an authority figure.

The new research [by Dr. Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California], published in the journal American Psychologist, suggests that little has changed since Professor Stanley Milgram’s work. … Dr. Burger found that 70 per cent of participants were willing to continue delivering electric shocks once the learner had cried out in pain at 150 volts.

My Comment: If the experiment was done under natural conditions, the researchers would find that the subjects are 100% willing to use others in any way they can, even for the tiniest gain, and even without any gain at all. It’s because we assess our situation relative others, “The worse off others are, the better off I am.”

The events taking place will force us to reveal our evil nature and to recognize its evil power over us so much that we will agree to change it to love and goodness. In principle, it doesn’t matter if we receive or bestow, because it’s all about fulfillment! If we were born with the quality “to bestow” instead of the quality “to receive,” we would similarly be completely unable to understand how it is possible to “receive” rather than to “bestow.” This transition is simply a psychological problem. After all, fulfillment is the most important thing! For the time being a person sees fulfillment only within himself and evaluates it according to the misery of his neighbor.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We’re All Zombies Before Entering the Upper World
Laitman.com Post: Falling In Order to Rise
Laitman.com Post: The Difference Between the “Letter of the Law” and the “Spirit of the Law”
Article “Attainment of Unity of the Universe”

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