Friday, November 19, 2010
Schools Should Teach Children Values Toward Their Environment, Not Only Subjects Toward Getting A Profession
Schools Should Teach Children Values Toward Their Environment, Not Only Subjects Toward Getting A Profession
Posted: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 03:58:16 +0000
Dr. Gary Marcus, director of the NYU Infant Center, Professor of Psychology at NYU, editor of the Norton Psychology Reader, and author of 3 books on the development of the mind, talks with Dr. Michael Laitman about evolution, free choice, selfishness and education.
Here’s an extract from the conversation:
Michael Laitman: School should not only turn children into engineers, or physicians, or economists, or maybe lawyers. First of all, they have to come out with values toward their environment, and here is where we run up against a problem that is not really up to the teachers.
Gary Marcus: I totally agree with that. I think part of teaching children about the broader picture is really to understand the limits of their own minds. We don’t really teach them about what it is to be a human being, or the limits of the human mind, the ways in which we can be selfish…
Listen To The Full Interview (MP3 Download) »
Read The Full Interview (PDF Download) »
Music and Kabbalah
Music and Kabbalah
What is the Connection Between Music and Kabbalah?
The essence of Kabbalah is shrouded in secrecy, but there has always been an interest in Kabbalah. According to legends, one who knows Kabbalah and masters its secrets can control our world and the spiritual worlds that influence our world, revealing its past, present and future.
Kabbalah is the science of the structure of the universe, the developmental laws of the spiritual worlds and our world, and the laws of man's purpose.
Kabbalah is a science of the impact of human desires on the surrounding world.
All Kabbalistic books are written in the language of feelings and desires. This language is unique and strictly scientific, employing graphs, formulae and diagrams. It explains how to alter our desires in order to purposefully influence the entire world. Through such graphs and schemes, Kabbalah describes one's feelings, the person’s soul. Music also speaks to the person in a language of feelings and emotions, and as such, is close to Kabbalah.
What is music? It is an emotion captured in its envolvement. Only music can deliver the process of transforming feelings through time. That is why, to those who have not yet perceived the spiritual world, the music of Kabbalah provides a certain analogy of the impression of spirituality that is felt by the Kabbalist.
The more evolved a person’s feelings, the more one will delight in what is heard. In music, a sensitive person can open an entire world for themselves, undergoing different emotional states from bliss to tragedy. And the more one develops one’s feelings, the more intricately he will sense that which the music transmits.
In much the same way, one who studies Kabbalah cultivates appropriate inner instruments for comprehending spirituality, through which spiritual information can be perceived. As a musician looks into notes and hears music through his- or her inner sensation, a Kabbalist, while reading Kabbalistic texts, senses the spiritual world within.
A person’s very first spiritual sensation when spirituality is revealed, is thankfulness to the Creator. One begins to sense this higher power and sees how it brought him out of a dead-end existence into an infinite, flawless world of absolute awareness and perfection. It is this sensation that Rav Baruch Ashlag (Rabash) transmitted through his music to the words of the psalm:
I thank you for saving my soul from death
My eyes from tears
My feet from entering hell.
The great Kabbalists who wrote the holy books depict the secrets of
the universe, and we are also privileged to the melodies created by the
great Kabbalists Yehuda Ashlag and his son Baruch Ashlag. Through the
language of feelings, their melodies express spiritual sensations and
information. My eyes from tears
My feet from entering hell.
Rav Yehuda Ashlag attained all of the universe’s secrets, and depicted them in his compositions, the Sulam (Ladder) Commentary to The Zohar, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot)... and he also implanted them in his melodies.
The existing location of the soul in the spiritual world is referred to as its root. The roots of souls differ. Souls descend into our world and incarnate in bodies. As the roots of souls differ, the objectives that each soul must complete in our world differ as well. That is why each body is nothing more than a mechanism for completing the soul’s plan of development.
The person begins to feel attracted to spirituality, a striving to his spiritual root, desires to attain it right now, to be able to sense all the worlds today, while still living in this world.
Kabbalistic music reveals and develops the person’s spiritual potential.
Kabbalistic melodies are not subjected to typical musical analysis. From the point of view of classical music, these melodies may appear banal in their structure and musical language.
But those persons with an inclination for the ascension of their souls in this lifetime, who wish to attain the Upper World and the entire universe, sense in this music something beckoning them into the unexplored.
We do not know how our musical comprehension is structured. Why do we feel the major chords in a different emotional and sensible tone than the minor ones? Why do we sense the major as something brighter, more open, and happier than the minor?
Many musicians with perfect musical hearing see colors in notes, chords, and tones. No one knows how this occurs and why such associations of color, sound, taste, and sensations appear within us. No one knows the structure of our receptors, which perceive absolutely immaterial information.
Kabbalists, however, understand how these devices work within us, because they know the structure of our soul. As such, Kabbalists can instill spiritual information into musical sounds. That is why Kabbalistic music is a means of infusing the inner world of the person with information of everything that surrounds him.
What the music of our world contains is connected to the personal, earthly sensations and emotions of the composers. Composers have always aspired to reflect the predicaments of creation in music, yet these attempts had never gone beyond a mere surmise or personal feeling.
Only melodies written by Kabbalists actually enable us to enter into sensations of eternity, sensations of soul’s movement, pushing us to an understanding of our essence as a part of one eternal universe.
Kabbalistic music is written by great Kabbalists as an expression of their spiritual sensations. It is inherently located at a high spiritual level.
A spiritual sensation cannot be forgotten. That which was played and felt once remains and can be repeated at any moment. This feeling can later be manipulated, creating most refined shades of emotion. In every melody there is a different feeling corresponding to each particular spiritual state. Due to the elevated level of its composer, each melody speaks of the ethereal as it elevates one across the spiritual world - to eternity and perfection.
Kabbalistic Authors
Kabbalistic Authors
Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (1884-1954) is known as Baal HaSulam (Owner of the Ladder) for his Sulam (ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar. Baal HaSulam dedicated his life to interpretations and innovations in the wisdom of Kabbalah,
disseminating it in Israel and throughout the world. He developed a
unique method to the study of Kabbalah, by which any person can delve
into the depth of reality and reveal its roots and purpose of existence.
Rabbi Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (the
Rabash) was the son and successor to the greatest Kabbalist of the
generation, Baal HaSulam. He was a prolific writer who rewrote his
father’s materials in a form that the world could understand. The fact
that we are able to advance using Baal HaSulam’s method is possible only
thanks to Rabash. In addition, Rabash took the revolutionary step of
opening up the study of Kabbalah to anyone who was interested, in
defiance of the Hassidic community in which he lived. For the last 12
years of Rabash’s life, Michael Laitman was his student and personal
assistant. Dr. Laitman carries on the teaching lineage of authentic
Kabbalah that was brought to our age by Baal HaSulam and his son Rabash.
Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (Rashbi), author of The Book of Zohar (The Book of Radiance)
was a great sage in the 2nd century CE. Rashbi’s name is tied to
numerous legends, and he is mentioned constantly in the Talmud and in
the Midrash, the sacred Hebrew texts of his time. He was a student of
the greatest Kabbalist of the time – Rabbi Akiva – who was brutally
executed by the Romans. Rashbi hid in a cave with his son for 13 years
until it was safe to return. He then gathered 9 students who helped him
write the The Book of Zohar. Baal HaSulam described Rashbi and
his students as the only beings who achieved perfection, the 125
spiritual degrees that complete the correction of one's soul.
Dr. Michael Laitman
(1946-) is the founder and president of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah
Education & Research Institute, which is dedicated to teaching and
sharing the wisdom of Kabbalah. He is a professor of Ontology, and holds
a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah as well as an MSc in bio-Cybernetics.After a lifelong search for a place where he could study the comprehensive systems of reality, Dr. Laitman finally found his teacher—Kabbalist Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the Rabash), the firstborn son and successor of the great Kabbalist Baal HaSulam (see above). For the next twelve years, 1979-1991, he never moved from Rabash's side until his death.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
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