Dreaming Of Death

Comment: Scientists from the University of Grenada in Spain have found that depression is a much more serious and complex problem than we had thought. It is clear that depressions can become a reason for various diseases, ranging from diseases of the heart and blood vessels to cancer.

Answer: Depression can be found as the basis for most disease, suffering, sickness, torments, and the like.

The essential substance of human nature is desire. Unfulfilled desire arouses a sense of dissatisfaction. And a particular degree of dissatisfaction is even felt as torment, to the point of becoming unbearable agony, driving one to suicide, if only to be rid of the suffering.

Depression is the foundation of all problems and its results are revealed on the material level in the cells, in the body, and in everything else. Depression is not only transmitted to other people but also to household pets who are also currently receiving antidepressants.

A kind of depression “belt” has been created around the Earth that influences everyone, even people who are thousands of kilometers from the centers of depression of particular countries feel it.

All of the people on the face of the earth are in constant connection through the higher system that doesn’t satisfy us fully because it expects a particular movement toward it from us. It is possible to move toward the higher system that must fulfill us only through union between us, through resembling it. Without uniting and resembling it, we don’t draw to ourselves the possibility of being fulfilled by it. So the “faucet” is seemingly closed and we are unfulfilled. However, our ego is growing at every moment and puts us into a greater depression.

Question: Is it possible to say that depression is a call from the higher system to approach it?

Answer: It is a call for us to understand that it is up to us to discover the method of fulfillment.

Question: Are we heading toward a generation of intense depression?

Answer: I think that it will not be the entire generation, but a large part of it. Moreover, humanity will enter into such a depression in which people will dream of how to die. They will want to go to sleep and not wake up and will ask the doctor for a such a pill.

Question: But we are now inventing lots of antidepressants….

Answer: That won’t help. We cannot bypass the development of the ego; its lack of fulfillment provokes depression in us. So we constantly increase the dosage and consume stronger and more effective drugs.

Question: What kind of antidepressant will work?

Answer: The only thing that will help is the attainment of a sensation that will fill our inescapable emptiness, our unfulfilled desire. And it is only the Upper Light that can give this. We have already reached this situation.

Question: What is this Light that will become the best remedy against depression?

Answer: It is the feeling of the meaningfulness of existence, the attainment of this meaning supported by ascent to the level in which your desire will be fulfilled by a feeling of connection with everyone, a feeling of the one and only integral system that is full of the Upper Light. The Upper Light will give us this kind of fulfillment, which will bring about an absolute bond with all other creatures and ultimately with the higher power, the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/11/16

Tourism Of Disasters

Question: There is startling news of tourism developing in sites of nuclear disasters.

Tourists have begun to visit the nuclear power station in Chernobyl. This initiative is encouraging the Japanese who believe that in 2036, the main focus will be touring the Fukushima nuclear power plant where an accident occurred in 2011. They already are beginning to plan advertising for tours in the area.

Why would a person be drawn to places where disasters have occurred?

Answer: A person wants to view his future, to know what will happen after a nuclear disaster occurs on the face of the Earth. Tourism to places like these is not an adventure, but a clear and unconscious fear about what could happen to anyone at any minute.

In fact, they are showing places in the radiation zone that seem to be ordinary; freed from human intervention, now rivers splash with fish, magnificent forests are full of berries and mushrooms, and animals, once exterminated by man,  are revived. All of it exists in a marvelous way.

If it were possible to free planet Earth from human intervention without a nuclear explosion, the Earth would be a wonderful planet, blue, beautiful, and clean. Everything would exist in balance, and everything would be good. Humanity came and broke everything!

Question: Tourists who visit the nuclear power station in Chernobyl tell a story about five residents in the area of Chernobyl who didn’t leave the area. They are nourished by what exists there and are living well in the meantime.

Answer: This is a very interesting observation of nature, that even if nature is found in a situation that apparently seems to be contradictory to the life of protein bodies, if the protein bodies maintain relationships between them that are not egoistic, they can live in peace in those areas and radiation doesn’t affect them! It could be that radiation mainly affects people and what surrounds them only because their ego opposes it!

However, if a person relates to everything equally, and is calm and in balance with all of nature in all situations, he can walk on burning coals, enter a burning house, live in an area of radiation, and nothing will affect him. This means that everything depends on our balance with the nature that surrounds us, and first and foremost on our inner balance!

I believe that if we don’t hate nature, are not afraid of it, begin to accept it as it is, and want to achieve harmony with it, then we will not suffer from negative influences. The very strong inner state of balance with nature is called the Creator, a state in which the person enters fully into a state of adhesion with it.

Then, everything that is derived from the Creator in relation to the person has an influence as a force that is vitalizing and good.

This is not understood on the physical level, but it is possible to imagine that there exists a higher level in which all of the forces of nature are derived from a good source, the Creator, and if a person rises internally to this level, that is how he perceives all of them.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/9/16

Haman Today

Question: Who is Haman in our time?

Answer: Haman is the force that divides us and thereby weakens the nation so that it is easier to manage us. In the Book of Esther, Haman told king Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered and separate among the peoples throughout all the provinces of your kingdom…”; they are weak because they are divided, and therefore it is easier to destroy them.

This is the reason that we must unite above all of our differences, including every part in the nation, in spite of everything that divides us, without any arguments as to who is right.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is directing us toward this unity, to unity above all of our differences, so that, as it is written, “Love covers all transgressions,” since this is the only kind of unity that there can be in the nation of Israel, which otherwise would remain as a gathering of exiles, as a collection of immigrants from different counties.

Haman is the force that tears the Jewish nation into pieces. We can identify him in every part of society, religious and secular, left and right political streams, etc. Kabbalah is the method of uniting opposites, above all rejections. It is the only method that has the force of correction, the force of Esther and Mordechai.
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Playing With Sensations

Question: You often say that the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science that is grasped in the senses. But a science cannot be studied without the intellect, without thinking?

Answer: Of course, it is impossible. The wisdom of Kabbalah is not grasped in the senses, but we feel in feelings. Then we check these feelings: we divide, we compare among themselves, we give them graduating numbers as though weighing them.

In fact, Kabbalah is playing with feelings. But it orders them systematically, and we start to see the interaction of desires, what feelings arise in each of them.

In Kabbalah, we measure very precisely all the feelings and give them a numeric name, determining their power, direction, properties and so on. Therefore, we have a science of feelings, because the only matter of our world is desire.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is depicted as the science of emotions because the only matter in our world is the desire, and what is felt in the desire is called sensing, which is felt as the Light that operates and affects the desire. This means that, by measuring the changes in the desire, we measure the Light that operates and affects it.

Question: What comes first, a person’s mind or the desire?

Answer: The desire comes first and the mind follows, and this is how we develop. Where does a child’s mind come from? It is only as a result of the development of the desire.

The greater the desire that a person has, the more he needs a mind in order to acquire all of his desires and control them.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/17/16

People Who Are Close Become Part Of Our Identity

In the News (from psychologytoday.com): “A new study has confirmed that humankind’s capacity for love and friendship sets us apart from all other species. Researchers at University of Virginia have found that humans are hardwired to empathize with those close to them at a neural level.

“People in your social network literally become entwined with your sense of self at a neural level. ‘With familiarity, other people become part of ourselves,’ …

“Humans have evolved to have our self-identity become woven into a neural tapestry with our loved ones. James Coan said, “Our self comes to include the people we feel close to. This likely is because humans need to have friends and allies who they can side with and see as being the same as themselves. And as people spend more time together, they become more similar.” …

“‘The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,’ Coan said. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat. But not so when a stranger is under threat.”

“‘It’s essentially a breakdown of self and other; our self comes to include the people we become close to,’ Coan said. ‘If a friend is under threat, it becomes the same as if we ourselves are under threat. We can understand the pain or difficulty they may be going through in the same way we understand our own pain.'”

My Comment: In general, we are included in a common network, a web full of relationships, and we have yet to reveal how it is universal. Based on this, we understand how much each one of us shapes the lives of others, and this means that a complete connection between us will bring us to a perfect existence. Everyone must become close, as all are necessarily connected in a network.
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Dispelling Myths About Kabbalah, Part 3

Secular people and Kabbalah

Question: Why is there an opinion that one can study Kabbalah only after he has mastered all of the Torah and Talmud?

Answer: The great Kabbalist the Ari and his disciple Haim Vital explain in their books that one should study all the books of the Torah and Talmud, but after he has revealed the Creator. After the revelation, he can fill himself with the Light through the study of the Talmud.

People studied the Talmud with the purpose of revealing the Creator even before the destruction of the Temple. After all, the entire Torah talks about the law of love of your neighbor. If a person begins to love others, he senses and includes within himself the entire spiritual world, which exists outside of his ego.

When he obtains the property of bestowal, he begins to study Talmud and perceives everything written there in the correct way. In other words, he sees that it is talking about spiritual concepts rather than their material branches in this world.

That is, anyone who has a desire can study Kabbalah, and they can start with Kabbalah before mastering Gemara, Mishna, and Torah. I can add only that I brought forty students from Tel Aviv to my teacher Rabash. They were absolutely secular people. I suspect that most of them did not know Torah even from the school curriculum. Yet Rabash accepted them, and they began studying Kabbalah right after that.

The study of Kabbalah was banned because the Jews went into exile, during which time they were not supposed to turn to Kabbalah. We had to wait for the end of the exile, which occurred at the end of the 20^th century, about 20 years ago.

From that point on, Kabbalah is open all. As Baal HaSulam wrote, the period of exile completely ended in 1995. From that moment, this wisdom has become open for everyone.

Question: Some people think that the exile ended with the founding of the State of Israel.

Answer: I give the definition adopted in the wisdom of Kabbalah by the Kabbalists.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 2/28/16

Planet Earth Has No Parallel

In the News (Scientific American): “More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system. With every subsequent scientific revolution, most other privileged positions in the universe humans might have held dear have been further degraded, revealing the cold truth that our species is the smallest of specks on a speck of a planet, cosmologically speaking. A new calculation of exoplanets suggests that Earth is just one out of a likely 700 million trillion terrestrial planets in the entire observable universe. But the average age of these planets—well above Earth’s age—and their typical locations—in galaxies vastly unlike the Milky Way—just might turn the Copernican principle on its head.

“Astronomer Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University and his colleagues created a cosmic compendium of all the terrestrial exoplanets likely to exist throughout the observable universe, based on the rocky worlds astronomers have found so far. …

“With the estimated errors taken into account, the researchers conclude that Earth stands as a mild violation of the Copernican principle. Our pale blue dot might just be special after all. ‘It’s not too much of a fluke that we could arise in a galaxy like the Milky Way, but nevertheless, it’s just enough to make you think twice about it,’ says Jay Olson from Boise State University, who was not involved in the study. Both he and Zackrisson think the Copernican principle could be saved by some unknown caveat to the findings. ‘Whenever you find something that sticks out…’ Zackrisson says, ‘…that means that either we are the result of a very improbable lottery draw or we don’t understand how the lottery works.’”

My Comment: We exist in a world of natural laws where the Creator is the highest force of nature that combines everything. Besides this force, or more precisely, this thought, everything is just a figment of our imagination.

In general, we do not exist, except in our subjective sensations. So to talk about other planets and about the possibility of conditions for existence on them is meaningless. It is best to grow into the likeness of the Creator, to feel the true state – only the existence of the Creator, because “there is none else beside Him” (Deuteronomy 4:35).
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Correction Of The Relationships Between Us

The problem of the world is that a correct connection between people doesn’t exist. A correct connection is a system in which all the parts are found in mutual relationships between them and in harmony, where all are concerned about the welfare of the entire system and nobody is concerned about his own welfare. In a situation like this, the system is perfect.

When people attain a connection like this between them, they begin to feel nature and not themselves. The nature that they begin to feel is called the “Creator” because they discover its mind, program, and purpose.

Beginning from Abraham, people began to attain the harmony of nature in the connection between them, they discovered the Creator. The students of Abrahambehaved according to the general laws of the world, to the extent that they discovered the Creator. This behavior came to be expressed in daily activities and in the relationship with the environment, and it was derived naturally and directly from their sensations. The activities that the members of the group of Abraham implemented seemed like they were only mechanical actions to someone who didn’t belong to this group and didn’t feel nature and the system of connection between people.

A harmonious mutual connection between people is called “love,” so it is said: “I created the evil inclination, I created the Torah as a spice.” The intention of the word “Torah” is the power of the Creator that is designed to correct the relationships between us, the relationships of egoistic mutual rejection. Involvement with the correction of the egoistic nature of a person is called keeping the Torah, and learning the Torah is called learning the possibilities for correcting the ego.

The general Mitzvah (commandment) of the Creator is correction of the ego to the level of “and you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). When a person mechanically performs the associated activities without correcting himself, his ego, this is called maintaining the customs. Since the days when the people of Israel fell from the level of “and you shall love your friend as yourself” to the level of “unfounded hatred,” they have been found in a state of maintaining the customs.

In their internal essence, the people of Israel are a group of people who are found in mutual Arvut (guarantee), yearning to be “as one person with one heart,” and filled with mutual love.
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