Pause

Dear Readers, do the overseas travel of the editor the daily updates of this blog will pause until the 25th of January.
Of course the original blog is always available.

Thank you for your understanding.

A Citizen Robot

In the News (Daily Mail): “On October 25, Sophia, a delicate looking woman … made international headlines. She’d just become a full citizen of Saudi Arabia — the first robot in the world to achieve such a status.

“‘I am very honored and proud of this unique distinction. This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship,’ Sophia said …

“I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people. …

“Hanson said on the company website. ‘We envision that a rough symbiotic partnership with us, our robots will eventually evolve to become super intelligent genius machines that can help us solve the most challenging problems we face here in the world.’

“His creation echoes his thoughts. ‘I want to use my AI to help humans lead a better life,’ Sophia said. ‘Like design smarter homes, build better cities of the future.’”

My Comment: And later, will these robots discuss among them, “Should we revoke man’s citizenship?”

They will create a similar council and will reach the opinion, “Is there anything good about this miserable protein-based creature? We should revoke its citizenship. How is it any different from an animal? It isn’t. It just pollutes the environment and ruins our robots’ lives. We are pure, corrected, perfect, while man just poisons himself and the environment. We need to get rid of these people.”

Remark: Much is being said today about artificial intelligence, robots…

My Comment: A robot will never become human because it does not have a soul. The soul is not something that we can design or place in a body. Even if I were to take pieces of a human body and start connecting them in some way—connecting them to electrodes to enliven them with electricity or anything else—I won’t be able to enliven it to such an extent that it will become human rather than an animal.

That is, we can gather some kind of protein body out of natural elements, but we will never be able to connect a soul to that body. In other words, the question about the meaning of life and existence, what is inside of us, and besides, we have no idea how much that defines us as people, we will never be able to understand it or endow a robot with it.

Remark: But a robot is designed to make humanity happy.

My Comment: What can that unfortunate machine do to make humanity happier? Give it electrical power? Will it give to others the same way as it is connected to electrical power? How does it understand the notion of happiness?

Question: When will people become disillusioned with artificial intelligence, in robots?

Answer: Very soon. Humanity will become disillusioned with this faster than it can manufacture a batch of robots.

There is nothing far-sighted about this. Man doesn’t need it. I can make my life easier, but then very quickly I will be left with nothing to do and will virtually bring myself to the brink of extinction.

Question: By doing this are we setting up a dead-end for ourselves?

Answer: Of course, just as all of our achievements in any sort of endeavors will all eventually lead us to disappointment, and we will choose a different path, then a third and, so on.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/6/17

Kabbalah Is For Traditional Medicine

Question: What will the development of medicine be like with the constant integration of Kabbalistic principles?

Answer: I think that with the constant implementation of Kabbalistic principles, medicine will start to take the back seat, as there will be less and less need for it. However, modern conventional medicine will not be replaced by acupuncture, massage, or other kinds of alternative medicine.

Despite our aggressive use of pharmaceuticals, we still live to our 80’s. That was not the case before. And it is all due to our “terrible” artificial diet and our “terrible” medicine. In any case, it does support us.

On one hand, we can criticise it, but on the other, how do we explain being able to live to such an old age? Where did diseases and terrible plagues go that used to afflict all of humanity?

Kabbalah is for traditional medicine, in addition, as needed, with something else. But generally speaking, eat normal food, use traditional medicine, live peacefully, and work on developing your soul.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/20/17

Kabbalah And Corporeal Psychology

Question: Does a Kabbalist understand people better than everyone else?

Answer: No. A Kabbalist is not a psychologist. He does not look at people’s personalities, it does not interest him.

Conventional psychology is the psychology of our animal egoism. It is unanimously not considered a science because a person’s inner egoistic world cannot be known. We can deduce some patterns through purely experimental means, but nothing more.

Baal HaSulam appreciated psychology because it allows a person to break away from idealistic, religious psychology, which assures us that after death we can attain the future world.

In principle, this must be understood. When a person’s body dies, his egoism does not disappear, it simply loses a certain thickness of its egoistic desire. The desire remains, but not in an absolutely egoistic, earthly form.

Corporeal psychology gives a person a sound foundation with which one can correctly and maturely view the world. After all, the most important approach in Kabbalah is that a person has no more than what his eyes can see, and this is how he should relate to everything. Therefore, Kabbalah is a precise, mature, and sober science, without any philosophizing and psychologies.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

Asking For The Connection With The Creator

Question: To what extent is a Kabbalist conscious of and in control of his inner reactions?

Answer: It depends on the level the Kabbalist is on. But in any case, he does try to control his reactions.

First of all, the Kabbalist understands very clearly that everything that happens to him comes from the Creator. On one hand, he may completely disagree with it, but on the other, he accepts it as the Creator’s influence on him.

These could be very bad influences: the Creator “dips him in the mud,” into horrible desires, lowly qualities. Through all these states a person is only required to do one thing—to ask for the connection with the Creator.

Do not ask to change these states for the better, for the corrected ones, the holy, no. “Whatever you do to me, keep doing it. All I ask is that I’m connected with You.”

Question: But how can you not ask? It happens automatically.

Answer: Here we are talking about that a person has to make a restriction on his egoistic desire and develop a screen inside him.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

What Do Want From Us, Laitman?

Question from Facebook: You are always talking about the egoism of Jews, about the Jews being chosen to bring all nations to the love of others. But we are not that bad. We help each other in military conflicts, we sympathize with those who are victims of terrorism. Our military helps everyone. Right now we are saving people’s lives in other countries. What else is required of us?

Answer: The thing is, if we are choosing how to act according to our own understanding of what is “good” and what is “bad,” then, ultimately, we will achieve nothing. We see that the nations of the world continue to hate us more and more, no matter how good we are. We can help other nations, but they don’t take that into consideration and do not welcome it, they take it for granted.

It’s true, we try to get along with each other, and we fight to protect our country, our nation, our land. But all of this is merely self-preservation: I do good not for others, but for myself, for my children. That’s why none of this counts as altruism; it is not what is referred to when we speak about the quality of bestowal and love of others. This is simply self-preservation, an absolutely clear egoistic action.

Therefore, I urge you to understand what it really means to “love your neighbor as yourself,” what altruism is, what nature demands of us, in what manner it wants us to start interacting with each other; then all will be different.

We cannot live like the rest, because first of all, I don’t even see that the rest are living so peacefully. It is not pleasant for them either. But because we are responsible for the overall correction of the world, there is a special calculation with us. It is demanded that we settle the account first and to a greater extent than all the rest.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 11/9/2017

Moses’s Farewell Message

Torah, Deuteronomy 32:44 – 32:47: And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song into the ears of the people he and Hoshea the son of Nun. And Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel. And he said to them, “Set your hearts to all of the words which I bear witness for you this day, so that you may command your children to observe to do all the words of this Torah. For it is not an empty thing for you, for it is your life, and through this thing, you will lengthen your days upon the land to which you are crossing over the Jordan, to possess it.”

Moses, as if, appeals to the people: “Take this as your goal, method, plan, and program to compose your entire life.

Enter the program that will bring you to the goal of creation. Otherwise it will take you thousands of years with wars and tremendous suffering, something that is undesirable in your eyes and mine. Either way, you will still have to fulfill what is bequeathed in this book.”

This sounds like a farewell message, like a father’s words: “Listen to me and everything will be good.”
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/1/17

Wishes For My Students For The New Year

Before us is a wonderful year—a year of further human awakening. I ask you to prepare yourselves to be its teachers. It depends on you.

You will look ahead, you will learn how to approach people correctly, how to properly explain to them what nature is leading us to, what we must do take advantage of this moment, this situation correctly, to rise to the next higher and eternal level of nature.

By leaving the framework of material life, we will begin to feel an eternal and perfect life and exist on a spiritual plane where our lives are no longer evaluated according to the state our body feels.

We must reach this state and explain to all people that the wisdom of Kabbalah is leading us to this state. Let us reach this state together. We do not need to change anything or limit ourselves in any way. We need only one thing—to establish the right connections between us and then within them, precisely in the spaces between us, we will begin to discover the higher state.

I wish you health and tremendous mutual love between you so that we will spread our warmth throughout the world, and the whole world will come together around us, and all of us will rise together, like on a magic carpet, to the next level.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/24/17