If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream- -and not make dreams your master; If you can think- -and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same:. If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on! ‘
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings- -nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And- -which is more- -you’ll be a Man, my son!
(An abbreviation of Dr. Laitman’s presentation at the public panel before students and teachers from the universities of Berkeley and Stanford)
The wisdom of Kabbalah (“reception” in Hebrew), as its name implies, teaches us how to receive. It explains how we perceive our surrounding reality. To understand who we are, we must first learn how we come to sense reality around us, and how to cope with the events that befall us. The wisdom of Kabbalah provides us with all these insights.
The wisdom of Kabbalah does not come to an individual naturally, but only when one reaches the right level of ripeness. This is why Kabbalah is being exposed to so many these days, and this is also the reason why it was hidden for thousands of years.
Previous generations believed that the world exists by itself, whether or not we are there to perceive it, the world is the way it is and exists objectively, independently. Afterwards, people began to understand that our picture of the world is shaped by who we are. In other words, the picture of the world is a combination of our own attributes and external circumstances.
Therefore, we perceive only a part of everything around us. For example, right now there are numerous waves outside us, but we can only perceive one of them, the wave that we are attuned to perceive. Hence, we perceive external conditions according to our internal qualities. If we have nothing in common with the outside world, we will not perceive or feel any of it.
Kabbalah speaks extensively of our perception of time, space, and motion. Why does it seem to us that reality expands, that it is at a certain distance from us? What is the source of our perpetual sense of movement and change? Is this a result of internal processes that we are experiencing, or does it exist regardless of them?
The more we progress in the study of our internal being, the more we find that our perception of reality depends on us. Once humankind sufficiently evolves in knowledge, science, and technology, we will be able to perceive what the wisdom of Kabbalah has to offer.
The wisdom of Kabbalah says that around us there is only “The Upper Light,” a single force in a permanent, unchanging state. Nothing exists besides this Upper Light. In such a state, the words existent or nonexistent mean the same because we only measure changes. When there are no changes, there is nothing to measure.
Within each of us is a “gene,” a bit of information that constantly evokes in us new sensations and emotions. We picture the world from within these sensations, which is where we derive the awareness that we exist. All these processes occur within us and design our perception of the outside world.
Actually, nothing exists outside of us, but our picture of reality appears as if it were outside of us. The concept I am presenting here was described by the greatest Kabbalists thousands of years ago, and is both fascinating and awesome in the richness of experiences it provides. It is written in The Book of Zohar (The Book of Radiance) that only when we understand that perception, experience it, and master it will we understand the writings in the Kabbalah books and in the Zohar itself.
Once we have recognized the limits of our perception, Kabbalah can teach us how to discover what really exists outside of us. Through Kabbalah, we can transcend our natural qualities, build new tools of sensation, and through them fully experience the external reality.
When we are liberated from the chains of our innate perceptions, we can discover a whole new world and begin to experience life’s eternal, complete, and unbounded flow. We will be able to experience the forces that operate on reality as a single power, and events that seemed accidental to us, unexpected or incomprehensible will suddenly make sense.
For such people, the spiritual world can become a system of forces that stands behind our perceived reality, the forces that propel reality. It is similar to examining embroidery: from the front, it looks like any other picture, but from the back, you can see the threads that comprise the picture, and their interconnections. Discovering these threads and interconnections provides knowledge about ourselves and the world around us.
The wisdom of Kabbalah is appearing now because we are living in a special time: on the one hand, we have many ways to succeed at being happy, but on the other hand, we cannot seem to achieve it. Kabbalah does not repeal any other teachings or sciences. Nor does it challenge humanity’s progress over the generations. It cherishes humankind’s achievements, but as we come to the crest of these achievements, humanity is beginning to experience a growing need to sense the complete reality. This is the reason for the growing interest in Kabbalah today.
To reach this goal and to experience the spiritual world, we must cultivate within us identical qualities to those of the spiritual world. Everything we perceive in reality is through an equivalence of qualities. Therefore, we see and discover new things in the world according to the qualities within us.
As we mature, we acquire new qualities, both from our parents and from our surroundings. After absorbing them, we can use them to study our surrounding reality. We acquire many different kinds of attributes, some of which awaken in us naturally in time, and some that are acquired by the influence of our environment. However, some qualities cannot be acquired naturally, and must be developed within us through a special method.
The wisdom of Kabbalah builds such qualities. The act of studying authentic texts by genuine Kabbalists affect us as readers in a unique way, evoking subtle discernments. There are no other texts or methods in our world that can do so. The study of Kabbalah creates a special perception with which we can begin to see what appears to be “ordinary reality” from a new perspective.
We can compare it to looking at a stereogram (A picture in which the delineated objects have an appearance of solidity). When we look directly at the picture, it appears to be a medley of incomprehensible lines. But if we blur our gaze, we will be able to “penetrate” the picture and discover a rich, three-dimensional image.
The wisdom of Kabbalah acts on us in much the same way, helping us “capture” that picture. In fact, Kabbalah doesn’t present anything new, but simply refocuses our gaze so we can begin to “see.”
When a person begins to perceive the correct picture, and experiences the opening of the Upper World, this discovery is accompanied by the wondrous sensation of eternal life, and endless, boundless stream of pleasures. This is where our lives are leading us.
From the aspect of Kabbalah, philosophy (from Greek: φιλοσοφία, philosophia, ‘love of wisdom’) has remained at the level of the senses, which in Kli and is called the vessel for receiving pleasure (Kli) or desire. And according the Kabbalah, desire is the basic matter of man: I seek to fill my emptiness. As a result, thoughts appear to choose how I can fill myself. There is no reference to such concepts as feelings, the emotions in Kabbalistic sources. There is a desire and there is the mind that helps fulfill the desire. The intention is an additional level above the desire that expresses what exactly a person wants to use it for.
But philosophers were not Kabbalists. Because they did not study Kabbalah, they couldn’t fully understand the depth of Kabbalistic knowledge. As a result, knowledge that should have been developed and treated in a very specific way was developed and treated incorrectly. When Kabbalistic knowledge migrated to other parts of the world, where there were no Kabbalists at the time, it also took a different course.
Thus, humanity made a detour. Although Western philosophy incorporated parts of the Kabbalistic knowledge, it ended up taking an entirely different direction. Western philosophy generated sciences that researched our material world, that which we perceive with our five senses. But Kabbalah is a science that studies what happens beyond what our senses perceive. The changed emphasis drove humanity in the opposite direction from the original knowledge that Kabbalists obtained.
Kabbalah became hidden about 2,000 years ago. The reason was simple—there was no demand for it. Since that time, humanity has occupied itself with developing monotheistic religions, and later on, science. Both were created to answer man’s most fundamental questions: “What is our place in the world, in the universe?” What is the purpose of our existence?” In other words, “Why were we born?”
But today, more than ever before, many people feel that what has worked for 2,000 years no longer meets their needs. The answers provided by religion and science no longer satisfy them. These people are looking elsewhere for answers to the most basic questions about the purpose of life. They turn to Eastern teachings, fortune-telling, magic and mysticism. And some turn to Kabbalah.
Because Kabbalah was formulated to answer these fundamental questions, the answers it provides are directly related to them. By rediscovering ancient answers about the meaning of life, we are literally mending the rupture between humanity and Nature that occurred when we turned away from Kabbalah and toward philosophy.
Philosophy, being that it has remained on the level of the sens it subordinated love to reason, so through reason she sought to feel love.
Kabbalah made its “debut” about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, an ancient country in today’s Iraq. Mesopotamia was not only the birthplace of Kabbalah, but of all ancient teachings and mysticism. In those days, people believed in many different teachings, often following more than one teaching at a time. Astrology, fortune-telling, numerology, magic, witchcraft, spells, evil eye—all those and more were developed and thrived in Mesopotamia, the cultural center of the ancient world.
As long as people were happy with their beliefs, they felt no need for change. People wanted to know that their lives would be safe, and what they needed to do to make them enjoyable. They were not asking about the origin of life, or most important, who or what had created the rules of life.
Plato once said, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and he was right. Similarly, Kabbalah teaches us that the only way we can learn anything is by first wanting to learn it. It’s a very simple formula: when we want something, we do what it takes to get it. We make the time, muster the energy, and develop the necessary skills. It turns out that the engine of change is desire.
Although its origins are rooted in deep antiquity, from the time of ancient Babylon, the wisdom of Kabbalah has remained virtually hidden from humanity since it appeared more than four thousand years ago. To this very day, only a few know what Kabbalah really is.
For millennia, humanity was offered a wide variety of things under the name “Kabbalah”: spells, curses, and even miracles – all except for the method of Kabbalah itself. For over four thousand years, common understanding of Kabbalah has been cluttered with misconceptions and misinterpretations.
There is an upper, all-inclusive force, or “the Creator,” controlling everything in reality. All the world’s forces descend from this comprehensive force. Some of these forces are familiar to us, such as gravity or electricity, while there are forces of a higher order that act while remaining hidden to us.
Kabbalah holds the map or the knowledge of how these hidden forces are structured, and the laws by which they influence us. It teaches us (through books such as The Zohar and other means) how to develop a sense of these forces, and finally, discover their only purpose – to bring us to the revelation of the Creator, the all-inclusive law of nature, while living in this world.
Kabbalah is it is a fascinating journey in self-discovery and spiritual upliftment. Her learning method focuses primarily on the internal processes that people experience, each according to his or her speed.
Johannes Reuchlin a humanist, classics scholar, and expert in ancient languages and traditions, writes in his book, De Arte Cabbalistica: “My teacher, Pythagoras, the father of philosophy, took his teaching from Kabbalists … He was the first to translate the word, Kabbalah, unknown to his contemporaries, to the Greek word philosophy… Kabbalah does not let us live our lives in the dust, but elevates our mind to the height of knowledge.” It does not allow us to spend our lives in the dust, but elevates our intellect to the highest purpose of understanding.
It teaches us how to become Adam ( a-dome Elion) what means I will be as Upper One, similar to the Creator (Nature, for in Kabbalah, Nature is equal to Creator, they have the same numerical value, 86). God in Kabbalah means the general force of nature, except for it, nothing exists.
In His article “The Peace,“ the great Kabbalist of XX century Yehuda Ashlag wrote: ’’… it is best for us to meet halfway and accept the words of the Kabbalists that HaTeva (the nature) has the same numerical value (in Hebrew) as Elokim (God)—eighty-six. Then, I will be able to call the laws of God “nature’s Mitzvot (commandments),” or vice-versa, for they are one and the same, and we need not discuss it further.
Gottfried Leibnitz, a great mathematician and philosopher, candidly expressed his thoughts on how secrecy had affected Kabbalah: “Because man did not have the right key to the secret, the thirst for knowledge was ultimately reduced to all sorts of trivia and superstitions that brought forward a sort of ‘vulgar Kabbalah’ that has little in common with the true Kabbalah, as well as various fantasies under the false name of magic, and this is what fills the books.”
Who is Kabbalist?
Kabalist is a person who studies nature and discovers it’s unifying force. This forces produces the energy that has constructed the entire Universe. Kabbalist studies this unifying force and it’s effects on matter that it created and is the most general science. All the other sciences are included in it.
Philosophy has gone through a great deal of trouble to prove that corporeality is the offspring of spirituality and that the soul begets the body. Still, their words are unacceptable to the heart in any manner. Their primary mistake is their erroneous perception of spirituality: they determined that spirituality fathered corporeality, which is certainly a fib.
Any parent must somehow resemble its progeny. This relation is the path and the route by which its sequel extends. In addition, every operator must have some regard to its operation by which to contact it. Since you say that spirituality is denied of any corporeal incidents, then such a path does not exist, or a relation by which the spiritual can contact and set it into any kind of motion.
However, understanding the meaning of the word, “spirituality,” has nothing to do with philosophy. This is because how can they discuss something that they have never seen or felt? What do their rudiments stand on?
If there is any definition that can tell spiritual from corporeal, it belongs only to those who have attained a spiritual thing and felt it. These are the genuine Kabbalists; thus, it is the wisdom of Kabbalah that we need.
Philosophy with Regard to His Essence
Philosophy loves to concern itself with His Essence and prove which rules do not apply to Him. However, Kabbalah has no dealings whatsoever with it, for how can the unattainable and imperceptible be defined? Indeed, a negative definition is just as valid as a positive definition. For if you see an object from a distance and recognize its negatives, meaning all that it is not, that, too, is considered seeing and some extent of recognition. If an object is truly out of sight, even its negative characteristics are not apparent.
If, for example, we see a black image from a distance, but can still determine that it is neither human nor bird, it is considered vision. If it had been even farther still, we would have been unable to determine that it is not a person.
This is the origin of their confusion and invalidity. Philosophy loves to pride itself on understanding all the negatives about His essence. However, the sages of Kabbalah put their hand to their mouth at this point, and do not give Him even a simple name, forwe do not define by name or word that which we do not attain. That is because a word designates some degree of attainment. However, Kabbalists do speak a great deal about His illumination in reality, meaning all those illuminations they have actually attained, as validly as tangible attainment.
The Spiritual Is a Force without a Body
That is what Kabbalists define as “spirituality” and that is what they talk about. It has no image or space or time or any corporeal value (In my opinion, philosophy has generally worn a mantle that is not its own, for it has pilfered definitions from the wisdom of Kabbalah, and made delicacies with human understanding. Had it not been for that, they would never have thought of fabricating such acumen). However, it is only a potential force, meaning not a force that is clothed in an ordinary, worldly body, but a force without a body.
A Spiritual Vessel Is Called “A Force”
This is the place to point out that the force that spirituality speaks of does not refer to the spiritual Light itself. That spiritual Light extends directly from His essence and is therefore the same as His Essence. This means that we have no perception or attainment in the spiritual Light that we may define by name. Even the name, “Light,” is borrowed and is not real. Thus, we must know that the name, “Force,” without a body refers specifically to the “spiritual vessel.”
Now that we are facing a fourth jab, or a second booster shot, pick your term, it is obvious that we are going about the pandemic the wrong way. It makes no sense to get vaccinated every six months or so. We cannot beat the virus because we do not understand that it is not an external enemy, but emerges from within us for a reason. Until we understand why it is here, we will not know how to deal with it.
Our negative behavior induces negative change in the virus, just as it induces negative changes in all of nature. The virus is a signpost in the sense that it indicates that we have gone astray. If we return to the right path, the virus will disappear. If we do not, it will stay until we do, or another painful signpost will take its place until we understand.
SARS-COV-2 is a signpost. Like all signposts, it is in the ideal place to keep us on the right path. However, instead of following the sign, we think it is an obstacle in our way and try to run over it.
To know how to deal with the virus successfully, we first need to know what it is for. Why has it come specifically now and not before or later? For example, just recently, a combination of new algorithms and technologies identified hundreds of previously unknown microbes that live in our bodies. There are countless more that we do not know about, and many of them are viruses.
A virus is not necessarily pathogenic. It becomes noxious when we excite it to act against us.
In other words, our negative behavior induces negative change in the virus, just as it induces negative changes in all of nature. The virus is a signpost in the sense that it indicates that we have gone astray. If we return to the right path, the virus will disappear. If we do not, it will stay until we do, or another painful signpost will take its place until we understand.
The only way we can stay on track is to lead a balanced way of life. If we switch from coal to solar and from gasoline to electricity, but do not change our abusive and exploitative attitude toward other people and the environment, nothing will change for the better. We will see escalating disasters on all levels, from earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and fires, through droughts, storms, and rising sea levels, to epidemics and finally to social breakdown, chaos, and war.
They are all signposts. They will stop harming us when we stop bumping into them. When we adopt a balanced way of life, where we live in harmony with one another and with all of nature, when we nurture reciprocity and mutual development instead of swagger and degradation of others, we will not be at odds with one another or with nature.
As long as we set ourselves on a collision course with the people around us and with nature, we will have accidents. When we foster mutual consideration in society and align ourselves with the planet we live on, our lives will be a smooth and joyful ride. It is basic common sense.
There is nothing else in nature besides a thought. It works above space and time, with no delay. The thought is the uppermost force of human nature, that is, all is scrutinized in the thought. We too exist in a thought: we feel through our vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We experience a world with galaxies and stars. It is all through our senses and thoughts. There is nothing more than thoughts.
Thoughts come to a person from the thought of creation, which includes everything and everyone. Thus, you have control over them. In fact, you do not control anything else in nature, only your thoughts.
Everything is scrutinized in thought. To change your thought means to change your attitude toward creation, which is expressed through people and all those things that stimulate you. This is the way to reach a correction, which is indeed all we want—to be just like nature—drawn to balance. You also want to be in balance with all parts of nature, including matter, plants and animals. Balance means love.
Does a kabbalist control his thoughts? A kabbalist tries to be aligned with nature by annulling his ego, allowing nature, which is the Creator or the general force of nature, to use them correctly. A person adds the force of his free choice to nature and then he truly exists in a good and balanced way.See less
Source: video by Dr. Michael Laitman Face Book playlist
You can watch this video following the link below:
Did you know that the matter in your body is billions of years old?
According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today — including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies — was created at the very first moment of time, thought to be about 13 billion years ago.
The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic explosion the Big Bang.
The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today. For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose center registers approximately 100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about 300 meters per second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a million times faster than the H-bomb) and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. Even the cores of the hottest stars in today’s universe are much cooler than that. There’s another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That’s because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.
A Cooling, Expanding Universe
photo: Space Telescope Science Institute As the early universe cooled, the matter produced in the Big Bang gathered into stars and galaxies.
For a brief moment after the Big Bang, the immense heat created conditions unlike any conditions astrophysicists see in the universe today. While planets and stars today are composed of atoms of elements like hydrogen and silicon, scientists believe the universe back then was too hot for anything other than the most fundamental particles — such as quarks and photons.
But as the universe quickly expanded, the energy of the Big Bang became more and more “diluted” in space, causing the universe to cool. Popping open a beer bottle results in a roughly similar cooling, expanding effect: gas, once confined in the bottle, spreads into the air, and the temperature of the beer drops.
Rapid cooling allowed for matter as we know it to form in the universe, although physicists are still trying to figure out exactly how this happened. About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons formed, and within a few minutes these particles stuck together to form atomic nuclei, mostly hydrogen and helium. Hundreds of thousands of years later, electrons stuck to the nuclei to make complete atoms.
About a billion years after the Big Bang, gravity caused these atoms to gather in huge clouds of gas, forming collections of stars known as galaxies. Gravity is the force that pulls any objects with mass towards one another — the same force, for example, that causes a ball thrown in the air to fall to the earth.
Where do planets like earth come from? Over billions of years, stars “cook” hydrogen and helium atoms in their hot cores to make heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. Large stars explode over time, blasting these elements into space. This matter then condenses into the stars, planets, and satellites that make up solar systems like our own.
How do we know the Big Bang happened?
Astrophysicists have uncovered a great deal of compelling evidence over the past hundred years to support the Big Bang theory. Among this evidence is the observation that the universe is expanding. By looking at light emitted by distant galaxies, scientists have found that these galaxies are rapidly moving away from our galaxy, the Milky Way. An explosion like the Big Bang, which sent matter flying outward from a point, explains this observation.
Did you know that the static on your television is caused by radiation left over from the Big Bang?
Another critical discovery was the observation of low levels of microwaves throughout space. Astronomers believe these microwaves, whose temperature is about -270 degrees Celsius, are the remnants of the extremely high-temperature radiation produced by the Big Bang.
Interestingly, astronomers can get an idea of how hot the universe used to be by looking at very distant clouds of gas through high-power telescopes. Because light from these clouds can take billions of years to reach our telescopes, we see such bodies as they appeared eons ago. Lo and behold, these ancient clouds of gas seem to be hotter than younger clouds.
Scientists have also been able to uphold the Big Bang theory by measuring the relative amounts of different elements in the universe. They’ve found that the universe contains about 74 percent hydrogen and 26 percent helium by mass, the two lightest elements. All the other heavier elements — including elements common on earth, such as carbon and oxygen — make up just a tiny trace of all matter.
So how does this prove anything about the Big Bang? Scientists have shown, using theoretical calculations, that these abundances could only have been made in a universe that began in a very hot, dense state, and then quickly cooled and expanded. This is exactly the kind of universe that the Big Bang theory predicts.
Our default state of mind is that everyone is out to get us, a dog-eat-dog reality. We’re living in constant fear that everyone wants to take advantage of us, abuse and humiliate us, and that if we don’t stand guard, we will be hurt every step of the way. Worse yet, we feel that this is how all of reality works. But if that were the case with all of reality, would cells ever create colonies and form organisms? Would molecules ever join to create organs, would atoms ever join to create molecules? If this were the case, there wouldn’t be life; there wouldn’t even be the universe. There would only be discrete particles existing separately, never creating anything more complex than themselves.
The reality we experience is therefore not the real reality—the one that has created us, sustains us, and allows us to read these lines. In the true reality, everything exists in harmony with everything else, and together, all parts of it create a perfect whole. In the real world, nothing and no one takes more than is needed to sustain oneself, and the system is perfectly harmonious.
As our cells function automatically and form the harmonious organism that is us, so does everything else in nature. The “mindset” of reality is not exploitation, but harmony, and everything and everyone follows it but us, humans.
We are the only element in reality that wants to take for itself more than it needs, that wants to consume and destroy, humiliate and conquer, abuse and patronize, and takes pleasure in hurting others. Because we think and act this way, we think that everyone thinks and acts that way, as well. And because we live by that premise, we have created a foul world after our own foul image.
But there is a good reason why we were created so malicious. Striving to emerge from this distressing state will lead us to understand how all of reality truly operates. We have been denied the natural instincts that drive all creations to harmony precisely so as to develop this harmony of our own volition and through our own consciousness. We are made ugly precisely in order to be able to choose beauty.
The difference between operating in harmony with all of creation instinctively or consciously is as the difference between being a part of an organism and being the mind that governs the organism and directs its actions. The destiny of humanity is to become that mind, that consciousness.
To get there, we need to start practicing harmonious relationships instead of following our inherent, exploitative nature. To achieve this, it is imperative that we realize that we are living in a false reality, that the true reality is harmonious and complete, and that it is only our flawed perception of it that prevents us from seeing the truth, and living in that perfect world.
Give LOVE 