October 26, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Daily Kabbalah Lesson
Question: Do we correct the world at the same time as we correct ourselves?
Dr. Laitman: Yes. We correct ourselves and of course, in the correction of each and every one of us we correct the whole world. This is because it is a closed system, and as such, you can only correct yourself through your participation in every single person. Moreover, through your correction, you already prepare corrections in all of the souls, because you are integrated with everyone.
Therefore, if you correct yourself, then that corrected part of yourself exists in all the other souls and, as a result, they already begin to feel something.
This is because there is no single “I.” “I” is integrated in everyone, and there is no “you”—“you” is integrated in everyone. So if, let’s say, a million people correct themselves, and you are integrated with everyone, you therefore start sensing that same part from those little million people who are incorporated in you. How do you sense it? You suddenly get thoughts and desires about things you’ve never ever dreamed of previously, things you’ve never been attracted to.
That is the interconnectedness. We are in the same system of Adam ha Rishon (The First Man), we can’t escape it, but it’s broken, and that’s why those who correct themselves sentence themselves and the entire world to a scale of merit.
Source: Dr. Michael Laitman, in the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee): WMV | MP3 (55 min)
Image: "new world-4" by rené van haeften.
September 15, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
Why Your Perception Is Limited
The evolution of humankind on an egoistic basis (for myself alone) caused the creation of a deep chasm between the moral level of humanity and the technological level it reached. That is exactly what Plato and Aristotle feared when they prohibited the study of sciences to those of unworthy moral standards.
There is not a shadow of a doubt that there is a connection between the moral degree of a person, meaning their intentions, and their scientific ability. Without the intent to discover the Creator and understand the purpose of creation, scientific studies only reveal a certain aspect of the laws of reality and how they work in our narrow world. After all, we study reality from an egoistic perspective, and therefore we perceive only certain connections out of all the details of our surrounding reality.
Each law acts in all the realms of creation, in this world and in the spiritual world. But we can see its full range of operation only if we too are in a realm that encircles the whole of creation. For that we must be compatible with the attributes of the realm we want to encircle—altruistic attributes of giving, the attributes of the degrees of the upper worlds.
How Your Internal Properties Dictate What You See and Feel
We do not change nature on our own. The attributes of nature never change, and there is also no change in the interconnections between the forces of nature. But nature looks different according to the attributes of its researcher. Nature shows a different aspect, not a different law, and we understand only what we perceive and feel through our five senses. Hence, our feeling is forever personal and subjective.
Because all people have a common nature, we perceive the world in the same way at first. Nature remains unchanged, but when we change ourselves, we feel that nature’s laws operate differently on us. We change the way we are exposed to the laws of nature. That is why Malachi says, “I the Lord do not change” (3:6). It is indeed surprising that we can change the things around us, when in fact nothing really changes but ourselves. We feel as though nature changes because of the change within.
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