Laitman.com » Science

The Wisdom Of All Wisdoms

admin.bb — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:19:14 +0000

Question: How can I convince myself about the urgency of spiritual work if we constantly lose the direction and strength on the way?

Answer: On the contrary, I must constantly worry for the correct direction and strength for the work. We only need to clarify these things according to the laws of creation, and this is what we learn.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a wisdom that includes all the wisdoms. It investigates the one general nature. But humanity, in the meantime, doesn’t understand that it exists in this global network. It exists in darkness and is immersed in complete unknowingness.

In order to clarify the surrounding world, humans divide it into separate parts and match them to the scientific disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, etc. In this way we have “scratched out” nuggets of knowledge from the mountain of darkness we are in.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, on the other hand, explains each field in terms of one law. It doesn’t refute the general, traditional sciences. All the laws that we discovered with the help of traditional sciences belong only to a small area of our perception, in the egoistic desire, which is opposite to the nature of creation. Therefore, we must understand that in Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction), when this desire disappears, we will find other laws that transcend time, movement, and space. There is another physics and chemistry; everything is different. This reality exists only temporarily, until we enter the real and wide perception of the world.

Our entire world exists only so that we will exit it and find independence. It gives us a base, a beginning point, central and independent, and disconnected from the Creator. It is farthest from the world of Infinity, the most deeply immersed in darkness, but it is specifically from this point that we begin our advancement.

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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

Getting Acquainted With The Universal Mind

admin.bb — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:06:34 +0000

Question: What is the meaning of “revealing the design of nature”: Does a person see, hear, or feel something?

Answer: As man becomes similar to the surrounding nature, he begins to treat it in a positive manner and to understand its design, feelings, and thought. He begins to see that nature, which created everyone including him, man who possesses a higher mind and feeling.

By the way, many speak about this, people who are close to nature, who grew up and developed in it, for example the Bedouins in Israel who live in the desert. They perceive nature, its breath.

I have spoken with many people, who have spent many years in the desert, the tundra, and the jungle with apes. They told me of amazing sensations, when the perception of nature, its design, and its mind suddenly begin to communicate with the person, and he begins to perceive that he exists inside mother nature, inside an enormous wise system. He suddenly begins to speak, communicate with it, reveal its matrix, its plan, and identify with it, and a certain union between man and nature appears which raises him to the next level of development.

The understanding of the common design of nature and the ascent to its next level, the level of controlling our own lives, is the purpose of the modern stage of development.

Question: In other words, we see certain new relationships and they become more obvious, more natural. But nature itself remains the same? Or does it also change?

Answer: I am not speaking about the still, vegetative, and animate nature. I am speaking about nature, which bares itself before man, reveals itself, and he discovers a certain enormous common universal feeling, mind, and design. Man reveals this.

When he connects to this, he begins to feel that he is on the next level of development. In other words he gains the understanding of all processes, the view of the world from beginning to end, its design: Why our Universe developed, where it came from, what there was before the Big Bang, what happened after (since our Universe has obviously existed for a certain amount of time), and the perception of the Universe, how we perceive it outside of our five physical senses, through a universal mind, a higher heart and mind. As man attains this, he begins to understand that his entire lengthy historic process of development was in order to reach this level.

Many sciences speak of this. Terminal problems, which appear in every science come from the fact that further development of sciences is directed specifically in this area. Consequently, scientists will not be able to reveal anything without upbringing, without being transformed through an integrated relationship with nature. This is why all our sciences are in a crisis.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7, 12/14/11

Two Forces – One Law

admin.bb — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:35:32 +0000

Question: The question about the existence of a single upper force, which controls the entire creation, causes an essential argument between people: Some believe that it exists, and others that it does not. Do you belong to the first, the approach that is inherent to religions?

Answer: No, it does not pertain to religions. I build entirely on the practical evaluation of  nature without any prior assumptions. This approach neither pertains to religion nor faith, nor any other direction, which has historic roots and no other basis.

Question: If we rely on the study of nature, how do we understand “the law that includes all the laws”?

Answer: If we were to supplement this lecture with scientific data from research and experiments, it would be the actual proof, which precedes the questions. There really are many opinions, but we rely on the data from the evaluations of nature and the human  society.

There used to be a notion that nature is one, and we only scrape some tiny grains of knowledge from it, which do not seem to be related to one another. But now physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and other sciences are already interconnected. We study the foundations of each one of them, atoms and their different kinds of connections. These foundations are broad, common forces, but at every level of nature: still, vegetative, animate, and human, they operate according to the level.

For example, if the force in the atom attracts and rejects the particles, in an animal body it compresses and expands the lungs, and on the level of the brain it manifests in the form of a contradiction between agreement and doubt. Two opposite tendencies operate, but they are controlled by one force, which balances them, because all of nature strives towards  balance.

The presence of two forces in nature does not contradict the existence of one law, which controls both forces. Modern science states that we depend on each other, and the manifestation of the crisis on the human level obligates us to realize that we all exist in one system. And this also pertains to nature, but to the “human” nature.

As we study the climate and other processes in the world, we learn that every phenomenon concerns everyone. However, at the given stage we see a purely broken picture because we only perceive a small part of our reality. But because we suffer and experience unpleasant states, we should study them as quickly as possible and thus turn negative forces into positive ones.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode #4, 1/1/12

An Inclination To Misconduct

admin.bb — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:09:37 +0000

In the News (from Reuters): “More than one in 10 British-based scientists or doctors have witnessed colleagues intentionally altering or fabricating data during their research, according to a survey by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Thursday.

“The survey, which collated more than 2,700 responses, also found that 6 percent of scientists said they were aware of possible research misconduct at their institution that had not been properly investigated…

“High profile cases of misconduct have led many other countries, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway and Poland, to create formal mechanisms for overseeing research integrity.”

My Comment: Since science admits everyone, not idealists, but anyone who is willing to sell scientific inventions and discoveries for money, honor, fame, wealth, and power, it’s not surprising that “scientists” adjust the results to the requirements in order to achieve something not in science but in their lives, for which science has become a way to reach wealth, power, and fame. This is the cause of the crisis in science, egoism, as everywhere and in everything….
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Not An Experiment On Lab Mice

admin.bb — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:27:11 +0000

Question: Why are there serious scientists who believe that the crisis will be over soon, that unemployment will drop, and that the European economy will flourish? Don’t they see how grave the situation is?

Answer: These scientists are clever people, they are experts in their field, but the problem is that science in general speaks about laws that have already been revealed in the world and not about those that will be revealed in the future.

If the new laws that are being revealed now are on a different dimension compared to what we had before, not even one professor can say a thing about them.

We are all egoists and act within our own selfish spheres. We are used to this kind of life. We study it and this is what we understand and explore. Human society exists on this level and this is the level that all the scientists, sociologists, and psychologists work within.

This is one collective dimension we all share and in which we all are. We study it as if we perform empirical lab studies under special conditions, like in a greenhouse: we record different readings and come up with laws.

On the basis of these laws we can come to conclusions that apply to the greenhouse only if it remains in the same conditions without change. In that case, those professors might be right, although this is also a question because there are many scientists who say exactly the opposite.

The point is that the conditions today are changing for the first time in history! In the meantime, scientists don’t understand that things are changing, but I already see it from the spiritual world. But how can we prove this to people? This is why Kabbalsits have kept quiet all this time.

Even a hundred years ago Baal HaSulam began to speak about the crisis, and about the fact that we are one family, about the danger of a nuclear war. But no one wanted to listen; they called him a communist and a mystic.

But today it is already possible to speak, although there are many scientists who won’t see the crisis until it hits them in full force.

But I don’t want it to hit them so. We see that there is no choice and that we have to explain. After all, a scientist studies real life, he studies you and me! And we can’t wait until we begin to starve, until we empty the earth of its natural resources, and until millions of jobless people go out to the streets for this scientist to wake up and say, “Oh, it turns out that there is another trend…” and then to begin to study it.

I don’t want him to study these new laws on me, so that later he will be able to tell about them and get a Nobel Prize at my expense. This is why we have been given permission from Above to reveal this knowledge in advance, before this experiment is preformed on living people.

So I can declare that I disagree with the opinion of the scientist with all due respect and the appreciation I feel for modern science. In fact, according to what he sees, he is right. But there is another process going on here, which is hidden at the moment. Many people will disagree with him because they already see that something strange is happening here. To be on the safe side, it is better to assume that they are right.

After all, this isn’t an experiment on lab mice but on living people! If Spain explodes now, it will immediately spread like wildfire to Italy, Greece, and the rest of Europe.

But this doesn’t mean that scientists don’t understand. They work with numbers and statistical data, they study the world, its processes and results according to what they see: They don’t see anything yet. This is why he is right because as it written: “A judge has only what his eyes can see.”

But there is a sage, who looks a great distance ahead and sees the future states as they are being formed.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, The Zohar

Knowledge Is A Harmful Force!

admin_bb — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:05:14 +0000

Opinion: (Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, The Guardian): “The world tiptoed closer to the apocalypse on Tuesday as scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to the zero hour.

“The symbolic clock now stands at five minutes to midnight, the scientists said, because of a collective failure to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, act on climate change, or find safe and sustainable sources of energy – as exemplified by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“The clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has been gauging our proximity to global disaster since 1947, using the potent image of a clock counting down the minutes to destruction. Until Tuesday afternoon, the clock had been set at six minutes to midnight.

“The Bulletin was founded by the scientists who helped build America’s atomic bomb, and the primary focus of their concerns remains the danger of a nuclear conflagration.

“But a number of the scientists who took part in the deliberations said they were also dismayed by a growing trend to disregard science.”

My Comment: Politicians do not listen to scientists, and billionaires do even less so. Science itself is to blame because they started to sell scientific discoveries to the rich, thus giving science, its fruit, which is a public good, to those eager to seize power and wealth. Even Plato and Aristotle warned that scientific achievements should be concealed from egoists hungry for power and wealth.
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Check For Balance

admin.bb — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:52:27 +0000

We are part of an integral global nature. It has always been this way, but we have never thought about it and didn’t notice it as long as life didn’t oblige us to. Lately life obliges us to do that more and more: We have begun to receive blows in every direction.

In other words, we cannot manage this egoistic life of ours and we don’t succeed in anything: not in the family, not with the children, not with ourselves, not with the world, and not with security. We are not sure whether we have enough stored up for a rainy day and the pension and retirement funds are collapsing.

All the systems that have provided man with comfort, confidence, and security for the future, that helped him and his loved ones with the assurance of support in times of weakness, illness, or old age, are losing their value and disintegrating. Who knows, tomorrow we may find ourselves on the street, penniless with nothing in our bank account.

These problems make people think. Otherwise we would not be thinking about them because we are all an egoistic desire to receive. Here, however, we begin to ask ourselves: “What is actually going on here?”

If we examine things correctly, we will see that we ourselves have built the wrong systems. After all, being part of nature, I can’t do whatever I feel like; I can’t act randomly not taking into account the forces that operate in reality.

According to my level of development, I discover wider and finer things in nature. They were hidden and now they are gradually being revealed, and I discover the strong mutual connection between all parts of nature, and also the mutual connection among people, the mutual bestowal on many levels, and also nature’s bestowal, which in turn influences us.

So it may be that I am not taking into account the data, the laws and relationships that exist in nature, in me, and in human society that are hidden from me? I never took any interest in them because I used anything that came my way indifferently and carelessly, seeking only to profit from them.

There is a problem of how to study these laws? After all, no matter what we study in nature, in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, botany, or astronomy, on the micro and macro and all levels of nature, we always see one law that encompasses all the levels and that reigns between them: the law of equilibrium.

All of nature tends toward equilibrium, toward balance. This includes our little system the planet Earth.

This means that if we want to live in peace, tranquilly, and good connection with other people, with the family, etc., we must maintain a balance. Our formula should be that all the positive and negative actions in receiving and bestowal be balanced so that one will not exceed the other and so that each one will receive filling.

Then each one will have the right to exist and no one will take precedence over another as we all understand that we all must maintain overall balance. This applies to all parties to the forces of nature—to man’s forces, his desires and thoughts, to the well being of the whole system both the small private system and the integral global system—all depends on the internal balance among all its components.

We see this when studying global nature and the functioning of all its systems, including computer systems, cybernetics, sociology, psychology, physiology; even while a system develops, it constantly balances itself dynamically and is sensitive to imbalances that need to be corrected. Therefore its development and actions will always be successful because it is always operating with the law of equivalence between all its forces, the negative and the positive ones. Whether it is an atom in which the protons and electrons have to be balanced, or living cells, or the solar system: Everything abides by this principle.

So, of course, we must check our adaptation to this law in the family, in human society, in education, and in general in all that belongs to the human level.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, “The Peace”

The Universe Of Infinite Wisdom

admin.bb — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:22:39 +0000

Question: I understand how an infant develops. But who knows what genes exist in human society? No one has ever seen how it develops, nor was anyone able to collect data and assert how it will develop going forward. Humanity is our only child, and this is how it grows.

Answer: We can analyze and examine the past, study the developments in philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and this allows us to detect a consistent process and its driving causes. We don’t see future prospects very clearly, but judging by our present state we can still deduce where it will lead us. As with all things, we’re always extrapolating the past into the future.

Nature demands that we observe its laws. Nature is the general organism, which encompasses the still, vegetative, animate and human degrees of development. Everybody goes through this development. First it was the Earth, followed by the plant kingdom, followed by the animals, and finally humans.

This development began with the Big Bang and has been continuing via increasingly greater unification. In every instance, the unification of various parts leads to the creation of increasingly complex and unique organisms, both in terms of quantity and quality.

At first there was only inanimate matter, but then its parts suddenly began to grow acquiring a kind of life, their own individual development. The development then reached the animate degree at which animals develop even more individually. The animate degree was followed by man. These are the results of Nature’s development.

Obviously, this development has its own laws, which we can see by looking at the past. The question is whether we understand them? It appears that we don’t, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

As a scientist, I study nature and the way it develops, developing me as its component thereby. Indeed, even with all our scientific achievements, man can never be above Nature.

We exist in a certain closed sphere that we call “the Universe,” we study where we are and the kind of laws that act here within this sphere. This sphere is infinite, boundless, and filled with unlimited wisdom. And all we’re doing is scraping up paltry crumbs from this wisdom: This is what our entire science is based on.

We don’t study anything other than nature, and within this sphere we also learn something about ourselves. We see that we cannot take control of our lives, and for this, clearly we must study the laws of nature. It’s good that unpleasant problems push us toward attaining Nature; at least, the motivation is to improve our lives.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 1, 12/17/11

The Need For A Contemporary Understanding Of The World

admin_bb — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:39:35 +0000

Opinion: (Nikita N. Moiseev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences): “I hope that in the near future our teachers will have the need for the propaedeutic [preparatory study or instruction] course “Contemporary Understanding of the World.” This is due to the fact that the crisis in the relations between nature and society is growing, and the social demand for education, which is far beyond the narrow professionalism, is increasing as well.

“A modern person must see the world in its entirety. Only the understanding of a general logic of the development of the world in which we live will help overcome the disastrous consequences of the relentlessly approaching crisis and perhaps even avoid it!

“Such a course should precede the studying of social sciences and philosophy, for which it is a necessary introduction. It is particularly necessary to the future experts in the humanities and social sciences, for whom the natural sciences and ecology are on the periphery of their interests.

“Future engineers and physicists also need it because the natural sciences and engineering departments lack the general knowledge about the processes of development of the contemporary world and the processes of cognition, although these professionals will have to solve many problems of modern ecology, politics, and ethics.”

My Comment: The course “Contemporary Understanding of the World” is required by everyone because the very cause of our problems is the lack of understanding of the meaning, reason, process, and purpose of life, which one can grasp only by being familiar with the structure of the world. Such a course is now being created by our organization. We hope that it will be basically completed and offered within half a year.
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The Science About Oneself

admin.bb — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:37:43 +0000

Question: What should I cling to during the reading of The Book of Zohar, to the group, the Creator, or Rabbi Shimon?

Answer: There is no Rabbi Shimon, no Creator, no group, no Light—nothing. There is an inner impression of a person who is divided into such terms.

I do not know what exists outside of me. I just know that there is something called “I,” and I do not know what it is. And this “I” is impressed by something. I do not know what impresses it either.

Thus, I am in a certain state called “my reality.” I need to investigate this reality now: Who I am and what do I feel? The science of Kabbalah talks about this: how to reveal this state.

We begin from here. This is called to “grasp the meaning of life.” We are talking not about our life on earth for several decades, but about attaining the very essence of reality in which I and what I feel are namely this presence in my first realization: “I” and “feel.”

The entire science of Kabbalah is intended for a person to reveal the true reality—what happens to you when you get a sense of what it is, what this imaginary world that you see presents, and in general, the entire reality, life and death, good and bad impressions.

Why do they come? In order for you to begin to form yourself: who you are, what you feel, how and so on—until you begin to discover the point of stability from which you will be able to watch and start to organize the whole reality. This is what the science of Kabbalah is.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/12, The Zohar

Synergetics: The Science Of The Laws Of Chaos

admin_bb — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:43:22 +0000

Opinion: (Nikolay E. Ablesimov, from neablesimov.narod.ru): “One of the main characteristics of the development of modern science is the desire for integration, combination of methods of various sciences, and the establishment of general laws.

“The order in any system can be either in balance or imbalance. In the former case, parameters of the system are identical with the environment. In the latter case, parameters are different. Economic and social systems are also described through parameters.

“The balanced order is more stable, and resistance to disturbances is inherent in its nature. An ability to return to its original state is a property of self-regulating systems.

“The imbalanced order is of an artificial origin and exists only due to the application of external energy. Indeed, the imbalance of systems and environments brings about flows of matter and energy; to maintain order, losses have to be compensated from outside. If the supply of energy is stopped, the system will come into balance.

“In physics, a tendency towards balance is known as the principle of least action, in biology, as the law of survival, and in economics, as the law of supply and demand. Its essence is that the system tends to change in such a way as to minimize external disturbances and to get out of changes with the least losses. All suggested principles used to govern the stability of the phenomena and to belong to organization.

“Self-regulating processes are studied in “synergetics,” the theory of collective action. If cybernetics studies the sustainability of the use of negative feedback, and a general systems theory, the principles of their organization (discrete, hierarchical, and so on), the synergetics studies imbalance and instability as natural states, as well as their multiple and ambiguous development.

“Synergetics studies the imbalanced world in the uncertainty and alternative nature of its development, in chaos in which a future order appears.

“There is a multitude of development paths coming from the present state of the system (the bifurcation point). Then, they all converge in the next steady state (the point attractor).

“Synergetics studies the properties of divergence and convergence, bifurcation and attractors, patterns of development of self-organizing open systems, and transitions from chaos to order and from order to chaos.”
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Baby Justice

admin_bb — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:04:42 +0000

In the News (from LiveScience): “Babies as young as 8 months want to see wrongdoers punished, a new study finds.

“In contrast, younger babies prefer to see individuals being nice to one another — even when that means that someone is nice to a character who deserves a slap on the wrist.

“So, the researchers [from the University of British Columbia, Canada] set up a series of experiments using puppets to act out scenarios of helping and harming while each of 32 5-month-olds and 32 8-month-olds watched separately. After each experiment, the infants indicated their preference for the puppets’ behaviors by picking their favorite puppet to hold.

“The puppets — a series of cheerful characters, including moose, elephants and a yellow duck — were first shown interacting in either nice or mean ways.

Social calculations

“The findings, reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that babies develop a sense of justice between 5 and 8 months of age, Hamlin said.

“’We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought,’ she said.

“Although this sense of justice may be learned, Hamlin said, the early age at which it develops suggests that an urge to punish antisocial types may be partially innate.”
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The Living Earth Simulator Project

admin_bb — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:03:35 +0000

In the News (from Refreshing News): “The European Union is all set to fund a 900 million-pound scheme to produce a computer system that could predict spread of diseases and impending financial meltdowns.

“The Living Earth Simulator Project (LES), which has been backed by leading scientists, aims to ‘simulate everything’ on the planet, using anything from tweets to government statistics to map out social trends and predict the next economic crisis.

“Using vast reams of data fed into the Internet, trends can be spotted by analysing information with ‘the world’s most powerful computers.’

“‘The idea is to gather live information from a huge range of sources and then analyse it using the world’s most powerful computers,’ the Daily Mail quoted Dirk Helbing, one of the leaders of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich as telling the Sunday Times.

“‘Many problems we have today – including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading – are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work,’ he said.”

My Comment: Scientist will not understand the future of the world until they themselves become like nature, with integral thinking and love towards all their surroundings. Then they will discover the connections in nature, which were hidden from them before—the connections of bestowal, love, and mutual guarantee.

They were hidden from man because he could not discover them through his egoistic properties. We need such a detector of controlling nature, but it can exist only in a “corrected” human. The project should be called “Integral Education”; it will give everyone interested the opportunity to reveal the “secret” forces of nature.

They are “secret” due to the difference between him, egoist, and nature, altruism. But to the degree of acquiring the properties similar to nature, a person reveals nature’s global management system, and he himself can be included in this system as its active part. And to the extent of his similarity to nature, inclusion into it, he takes over all its functions and becomes the master of the world because he is in complete love towards it.
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The Spark Of Infinity

admin.bb — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:57:45 +0000

Question: Can we say that besides egoism, the Creator has imprinted another element in the desire: the point in the heart, which He will evoke at the right moment?

Answer: This point begins from the shattering.

Physicists admit that the more they penetrate matter, they “lose” particles. Each particle becomes a kind of a “cloud,” and these clouds mix up and together become very thick fog.

With the point in the heart things aren’t that simple either. It is a concept that contains all of the Light of Infinity, but in the opposite form. Thus it seems to us like a spark. It appears in its minimal form so that we will be able to hold on to this initial thread of connection.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/11, Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

Why Should We Quote Scientists?

admin_bb — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:01:52 +0000

Question: In dissemination we use scientific materials. What scientists say is true. What is the difference between us and them? What do we add to their message?

Answer: With the help of different scientists we explain the general picture of reality to humanity: the beginning, the process, the end of its development, and human egoism that has become global these days and demands that we connect integrally.

We classify scientists and experts according to different fields: biology, zoology, geography, social sciences, or economics. These are respectable people, they have a reputation, and their opinions are very similar to our message. Therefore, we publish their ideas on our sites and in our materials. It helps us establish a strong basis upon which we can build the other part of our explanations.

On the basis of scientific evidence, with the help of scientists, we pave the way to the masses, to humanity. When scientists confirm that we are right, they enable us to tell about global and integral processes that oblige humanity to act.

Every scientist is limited to his field. He describes only one aspect of a phenomenon, part of the picture, but unfortunately he doesn’t present a full, global picture. On the other hand, we speak about the matter of creation: the desire and its comprehensive development by the Light. We are not limited by the traditional scientific frameworks. Experts from different fields usually don’t understand one another, but we are dealing with one, whole, and complex science.

Humanity divided knowledge into separate disciplines only a few centuries ago. Until then, there was no such division, and scientists studied different fields. They were true scholars. But eventually human knowledge expanded to such an extent that a single person cannot perceive it all. So we had to create an artificial division into different disciplines.

But the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t divide nature and reality into separate parts. In our circle we perceive sciences from different disciplines, whether it is physics, biology, or economics. We want to show people that the world is “round,” that the current crisis includes everyone, and that today we too have to be “round” and to connect.

Therefore we draw the scientists to our field. At the same time, however, their materials should be published on the Internet independent of us. After the convention we will begin to build a massive system of virtual dissemination so that all our groups around the world could start working on it.

We have to put pinpointed scientific data on wider and more general bands. Today for example, we talk a lot about the economic crisis. However, the economy is a copy of our ego, and the economic problems indicate that the crisis affects every aspect of our life. We want to make people aware of the general evil, and not to settle for local “clarifications.” We want to show them their need for correction.

When we talk about the measures that need to be taken, the Light enters the picture. The explanations don’t come from scientists alone, but from us. We describe the general approach to what is happening, we base it on other sources, and then thanks to the Light, people suddenly begin to understand that the good life they yearn for is something else, not what they thought. They realize that good life is bestowal, an ascent to another dimension. And it is the Light “nested” in our explanations that will bring them to that.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

Size Of The Brain Correlated With Sociability

admin_bb — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:04:12 +0000

In the News (from Evolutionary Psychology): “According to the social brain theory, primates have larger brains as it could be expected from their body sizes due to the adaptation to a more complex social life. Regarding humans, there were few studies about the relationship between theory of mind and frontal and temporal brain lobes. We hypothesized that these brain lobes, as well as the whole cerebrum and neocortex are in connection with the Sociability personality dimension that is associated with individuals’ social lives. Our findings support this hypothesis as Sociability correlated positively with the examined brain structures if we control the effects of body size differences and age. These results suggest that the social brain theory can be extended to human interindividual differences and they have some implications to personality psychology too.

“According to this hypothesis, the unusual brain size is due to the adaptation to a more complex social life. However, the exact social skills that resulted in this have not been clarified yet.

Social complexity requires large cognitive capacity. To live in a stable social group and sustain group cohesion members have to coordinate their behavior with others, as well as to manage complex relational information. Individuals have to maintain more relationships and be able to respond appropriately to social interactions. Individuals have different goals and desires that might not conflict with those of others.

“The authors [Barrett, Henzi, and Dunbar, 2003] suggest that ‘the ability to reason causally, the ability to reason analogically, the ability to exert cognitive control to generate and assess alternative options, and the ability to formulate these options into alternative sequences of future actions and to select between them’ are critical to develop high-level sociocognitive abilities.”

My Comment: Namely connection, altruism, rather than individual egoism leads to a greater development at the level of “Homo Sapiens.” An egoistic individualist can reach good results in a competitive society, but during the transition to a global, integrally connected society, his exclusiveness becomes an obstacle that needs to be overcome in the framework of a new society.
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What Can Ecosystems Teach The Eurozone?

admin_bb — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:08:50 +0000

Opinion (from New Scientist): “The eurozone, like the rest of the world economy, is a complex networked system. That gives it properties economists rarely consider but which could help us understand the current crisis.

“What is a complex network?

“Complex networks have many interconnected components which influence each other’s behaviour. These changes then feed back on each other. A famous example is the numbers of predators and prey in a given environment, which vary in a complex interdependent way. The eurozone – the 17 countries that share a common currency, the euro – is similarly interdependent, with similar feedback mechanisms.

“All complex networks are governed by a balance between negative feedback, such as interest rates, which is stabilising, and positive feedback, such as the self-reinforcing erosion of trust in markets, which is destabilizing.

“How does that help us understand economic crises?

“In certain circumstances, one type of feedback can end up dominating the system, causing it to change so dramatically that it flips to another state. Examples include the way animal populations can suddenly collapse or the way economies can slip into recession.

“These tipping points tend to be highly unpredictable. Even so, computer models of the system can still show how the system can change. Yet leading economics journals, he Len Fisher at the University of Bristol, author of Crashes, Crises and Calamities: How we can use science to read the early-warning signs] says, do not accept computer-modelling studies.

“Can we understand complex systems well enough to control them?

“Maybe. The diversity of a network’s components and the density and strength of its connections – called its connectivity – affect the system’s resilience, or resistance to change. More connections make a system more resilient: if one component fails others can fill in. But only up to a point. Go past a certain threshold and more connectivity makes the system less resilient because a single failure can cascade to every other component.

“The trick is to get the balance right.

“So turning 17 separate currencies into one eurozone was a cascading failure waiting to happen?

“Yes. That is why Greek debt is a crisis, even though Greece accounts for only 2.5 per cent of the eurozone’s GDP. News of its debts caused the trust that markets placed in Greek government bonds to plummet. Its creditors are mainly in the eurozone, so a Greek default is causing markets to lose confidence in other members, such as Italy – which is too big to bail out.

“Could the crisis have been avoided?

“Germany rejects eurobonds. But, says Bar-Yam [of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts], complex systems such as multicellular organisms show that ‘if you are going to accept common risk, you have to invest in defences that extend to the weakest member.’ Either that or make sure an attack on a weak member cannot spread, a technique that ant colonies have perfected: the death of a single ant has little effect on the colony as a whole.

“If connectivity is a risk, why create the euro?

“Connectivity is also profitable as it makes economic production much more efficient. And it can adapt to problems: connectivity allows other eurozone countries to help Greece, and to build better common defences.

“Trade-offs between efficiency and resilience may mean we need to sacrifice efficiency to make systems more stable, by pruning connectivity or paying for defence measures.

“Some connectivity problems could be hard to prune, though. Close coupling between major global hubs, such as the eurozone and the US, is a big source of instability; strong contributors to a network, like France and Germany in the eurozone, can be as well.

“Why don’t economists know this?

“They are starting to. Some economic theorists have drawn parallels between financial networks where bank failures are prevented, and forests where small fires are always put out… This recognition of the importance of complexity has been largely confined to banking, however. The eurozone is a network of governments. It is not clear how eagerly they will adopt a way of thinking that truly puts collective interests first.”|
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Why People Forget Why They Left The Room

admin_bb — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:52:23 +0000

In the News (from Discover Magazine): “New research suggests the mere act of walking through a doorway helps people forget, which could explain many millions of confusing moments that happen each day around the world. A study published recently in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology found that participants who walked through doorways in a virtual reality environment were significantly more likely to forget memories formed in another room, compared with those who traveled the same distance but crossed no thresholds.

“Notre Dame University researcher Gabriel Radvansky says doorways serve as a type of ‘event boundary’ that the brain uses to separate and store memories. When you enter a new room, your brain updates its understanding of what’s going on in the new environment, which takes some mental effort. This parsing of memory, albeit subtle, leaves the information encoded in the other room (i.e. ‘Now I’m going to my room to fetch some knickers’) less available in your new location.”

My Comment: In Kabbalah, this is called “change your place, change the force, controlling it.” There are three factors that determine one’s state: time, movement, and space, which we can change by affecting them with the Light.
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In Love, Similarities Attract

admin_bb — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:25:59 +0000

In the News (from The Straits Times): “The long-held theory of romance that opposites attract may be wrong, a new study suggests.

“Researchers at University of California, Berkeley found similarity rules when people find themselves drawn to potential romantic partners, the UK’s Daily Mail reported.

In what they refer to as ‘matching hypothesis,’ men and women fall for the potential partners of their own or similar league and desirability. Although personality and common interests play a factor, like is drawn to like when it comes to instant attraction.

“The researchers studied the popularity of 3,000 heterosexual users of a dating site in which popularity was measured by the number of opposite-sex individuals who had sent unsolicited messages to a user.

“High- popularity users contacted other popular ones at a greater rate than would be expected by chance, the study found. Similarly, the less popular users of the site also contacted other low-popularity users.

“As a follow-up study, researchers found a similar result where potential mates seek someone in their own league for a date. ‘Individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability approximately equals their own,’ the researchers concluded.”

My Comment: Kabbalah talks about the general law of the world: the law of equivalence of form. Now this has been discovered by scientists.
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Plastic Can Be Destroyed

admin_bb — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:51:18 +0000

In the News (From CNN Articles): “The Yale students had discovered that Pestalotiopsis microspora fungus can break down plastic. It’s a species of fungi that can be found in many regions of the world and can decompose polyurethane, a common plastic that is used to make things like insulation, synthetic fibers, plastic for electronics and sealants.

“Scott Strobel, the Yale biochemistry professor who instructed Anand and Russell during these experiments, says because of this discovery, the future looks promising for all types of plastic pollution. He says fungi’s potential to break down man-made materials could be endless, along with its possibilities in medicine and other fields of science.”
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Creation Starts Here And Now

bb_admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:18:29 +0000

Baal HaSulam, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”: “…a great rule in the Torah” … the verse of “Love thy friend as thyself.” It is difficult to understand how such a statement can contain the sum-total of all the Torah? At most it can be the rule (the collective) of the part of the Torah and texts that relate to the relationships between man and man. But how can you include the greater part of the Torah, which concerns work between man and God in the verse, “Love thy friend as thyself”?

We do not know how to use this principle. Everyone is sure that they love their neighbors. As for specialists in the humanities—philosophers, political scientists, social scientists, and psychologists—they also reason about love for the neighbor as if it were easy to implement.

In general, the notion of “love” only confuses people. They cannot separate it from the natural, instinctive, hormonal attraction that is inherent to the animate and even vegetative kingdoms. In man, who has an evil inclination, this attraction acquires even greater scope, yet it still bears no relation to real love.

“Loving the neighbor” means fulfilling his desire while not receiving any direct or indirect benefit from that. It is aimed entirely at the well-being of the neighbor, while I am like an external part of the universe, a “tube” coming out of a power station that generates all the pleasures. This tube is not part of the action in any way. It does not need anything for itself. It is just a conductor.

But how can I become such a selfless conductor if I am entirely imbued by feelings, if I want to enjoy myself? After all, unlike a tube, I have my own life.

Moreover, I am told that this rule is “the general principle of the Torah.” That is, there is nothing but this principle in the Torah. Yet the Torah describes the most diverse areas of life. Could it really be that they are all connected to the neighbor?

If so, then how can I bring all of the facets of my reality, including my relationship with the Creator, into my relationships with other people? Won’t I be narrowing things down too much? How can the entire world with all of its diversity be squeezed into several psychological models?

Question: So how is it possible to love the neighbor in the modern, global world?

Answer: In reality, there is no means in our world that could allow us to correct our egoism. Only the Light that reforms is capable of that.

After all, only the Light and the vessel exist in reality. The force of bestowal (“existence from existence”) created a point of reception (“existence from absence”), and there is nothing else besides them.

Next, the force of bestowal influences the force of reception, leading it to altruistic actions until these two forces become equal to one another: the force of bestowal gives, while the force of reception receives in order to give. In the end, they end up in unity and adhesion.

But that is not enough because the state of Malchut of infinity was created by the upper one. It was simply “lowered down” to creation. The desire that was created by the Light received the “full package” from it, including the altruistic intention, and it lives to its content in union like a “dummy.” Having emerged from absence, it cannot make any independent action and it looks into the mouth of the giver: “Do you want altruism? Go ahead. Do you want egoism? Go ahead. You can have anything you wish.” That is how the matter of creation is built.

But in that case, it cannot be called a full-fledged creation. After all, the Light performed all the actions to it. So who is unified with the Creator in the end? For now—no one. An independent being did not emerge yet. So how can it be formed?

For that the receiving desire has to be brought to total opposition to the Creator in every regard, and then it has to be given the opportunities and the means to attain itself separate from bestowal and to acquire the forces for correction. A very great preparation is necessary to make creation, and it begins precisely here, from our world. This is why the spiritual worlds descended and why the material development unfolded until the earthly evolution brought us to modernity. And now, we are starting to gradually gain awareness of ourselves and our state.

This is the source of self-awareness, whose criterion is the Light, the Creator, the human society that is already demonstrating its global, integral facets. This causes you to experience discomfort: “Something here isn’t right. Something doesn’t make sense.” That is how the realization of evil emerges, opening up the path to correction before us.

We won’t understand what is happening and what we are facing right away. Humanity is only stepping onto this path. However, this also does not involve anything more than a combination of two forces: reception and bestowal. Within their mixture we must always look for the operating mechanisms. Like inter-atomic actions, they will show us what kind of unity is possible at this stage and which qualities are inherent to it.

You are learning to connect two forces and you must always reach the right formula of their balance. If you attain balance, it means you are on the right path and you are forming yourself in the right line. In reality, all of the scientific formulas describe equivalence of form. That is what we study and attain in nature: similarity and balance of all of its parts.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

For The First Time Scientists Were Awarded For The Discovery Of Unknown

admin_bb — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:13:41 +0000

In the News (from ScienceDaily): “The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011 with one half to Saul Perlmutter… and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt… and Adam G. Riess… for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae.

“‘Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,’ Robert Frost wrote. What will be the final destiny of the Universe? Probably it will end in ice, if we are to believe this year’s Nobel Laureates in Physics. They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Laureates themselves.

The teams used a particular kind of supernova, called type Ia supernova. It is an explosion of an old compact star that is as heavy as the Sun but as small as Earth. A single such supernova can emit as much light as a whole galaxy. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected — this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.

“For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

“The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma — perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.”
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Nicholas Christakis: The Hidden Influence Of Social Networks

admin_bb — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 12:39:28 +0000

Nickolas Christakis MD, PhD, MPH is an internist and social scientist at Harvard University specializing in health and social networks. In 2009 Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.

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Science Instead Of Instincts

admin_bb — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:31:08 +0000

Contrary to animals, we develop with the help of science. However, this isn’t free will yet. Science only advances us a bit forward. Animals are driven by blows and their instincts, but since we hardly have any instincts, we develop by blows and science.

Scientific advances allow us to see and resolve problems in advance. For example, x-rays enable us to identify a disease and to start treating it without waiting for it to actually appear. Without x-rays, only the pain could tell us that there is a problem.

Thus science helps us suffer less, and we pay dearly for scientific knowledge. However, it is still the same beastly tendency: the desire to be free of troubles. Science doesn’t raise us to the human degree since it is part of the animate level. By using it, we compensate for our lack of instincts, that’s all.

Animals manage very well without doctors. They know how to eat right, how to give birth, and how to build their shelter. Animals do everything by instinct, while we replace instincts with science. This is actually the role of science—to serve our egoism so that we will suffer less.

So we also examine our development on the animate level. Even when people become aware of the necessity to unite and connect, they don’t know how to attain it.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

Friends Are Healthy

admin_bb — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:16:40 +0000

Report (From time.com): “A healthy social life may be as good for your long-term health as avoiding cigarettes, according to a massive research review released Tuesday by the journal PLoS Medicine.

“Researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill … found that those with poor social connections had on average 50% higher odds of death in the study’s follow-up period (an average of 7.5 years) than people with more robust social ties.

“That boost in longevity is about as large as the mortality difference observed between smokers and nonsmokers, the study’s authors say. And it’s larger than differences in the risk of death associated with many other well-known lifestyle factors, including lack of exercise and obesity.”

My Comment: This is just one of the egoistic aspects of the benefit of a connection with others, while the real gain is found above the body, on the spiritual plane, in the attainment of the feeling of eternal life, here and now.
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