Kabbalah as a Modern Science
With Dr. Michael Laitman
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Regular: Transcription of dubbed commentaries of Rav Laitman
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Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Science and Kabbalah is a vast and complex topic. It is still hard to explain this topic in its entirety. I have been dealing with science and with the Kabbalah for many years, but only lately have I begun to see the meeting point between them.
This union began approximately seventy or eighty years ago when scientists began to study sub-atomic particles, and revealed that they have a dual nature: at times we can see them as components of matter, and at other times we see them as waves, particles and waves.
The way in which we sense, understand, and see them, depends on us, on the person who has some instrument in front of him. And then the question arises, "Do particles and all matter and waves or whatever is in front of us, have a definite form?" The form is according to what extent we perceive it.
This was a marvel for scientists, because then what really is the form of the world? If we replace our instruments and our senses we would see it in a different way: not matter, but waves; not waves but some kind of plasma or some other shapes, some other possibilities.
And then there were more and more developments that began in scientific research. They ask, "How do we perceive reality? How do we sense it? And what is reality? Does it have some kind of form outside of us, or do we just envision it and then perceive it in front of our eyes?"
In recent years, scientists have begun to agree with what has been written in Kabbalah for thousands of years. There is no reality outside of man that we can talk about, that we can grasp or research. Everything is according to our senses.
As is written in the wisdom of Kabbalah, reality is some kind of an Upper Light, supposedly some type of Force-field, fields of Forces, out of which we, through the angle of our vision, according to our definitions, our conditions, perceive and grasp some picture. It is evidently a holographic kind of image, in which, as we study it, what we see depends on our angle of observation; it all depends on our senses. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains it for us in a more simple way than the scientists do.
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains it for us in a simple way, simpler than the scientists do. Kabbalah tells us tells us that it is beneficial for a person to study the wisdom of Kabbalah to excel and to complete, research a little and to know all of the wisdoms of the world. It will help them later on, "from the lower, he will learn the Upper," to feel and to penetrate a bit more into the understanding of the spiritual perception.
In actuality there is no difference between corporeal and spiritual. If a person understands the way he or she perceives the corporeal picture, how this picture emerges in front of him, then from that it is easy to move on to the understanding of the spiritual perception. That is because it is truly a single person who is grasping both of the worlds.
The wisdom of Kabbalah puts it this way: we have a desire to receive. It is the substance of the entire creation, which desires to receive fulfillment, to fill itself. The filling that it senses is felt by it according to its properties. If the desire to receive is small, it only feels its own existence, meaning its own livelihood, as we observe in the inanimate, vegetative, or animate, even in small animals such as insects, in all sorts of simple life forms.
If the desire to receive is bigger, it already begins to develop inside of it a system called, "an intellectual system," which helps it find fulfillment for itself. Then there is already a heart, a desire to enjoy, a desire to receive, and intelligence behind it.
So the larger the desire to receive is, then there is more of a need for a "head," and intelligence, which is greater, in order to fill the desire to receive. And the more sophisticated creation is, the more elaborate these two components will be. And the desire to receive reaches a state in which it can truly grasp the whole of reality, meaning to fill itself with the entire fulfillment that is intended for it, or at previous levels, previous parts, and sections.
What is the difference between the perception of the world when the desire to receive is at the level of this world, our world, and the perception of the world when the desire to receive is at the spiritual level? The difference is really not big.
We are within some reality. We have a very small desire to receive: bodily pleasures, wealth, honor, power, knowledge. This is what we have in this world—the bodily desire to receive, and a desire to receive that develops in us through society, through the environment—it's money, honor and knowledge. And if we work with the desire to receive at these levels, there is beside it, surely, an intellectual system that helps us fulfill this desire to receive, and then our perception of the world limited in such a way, as we now perceive it. Meaning that the desire to receive has certain inner properties, and the Light that fills, forms together with the desire to receive a joint picture, such that it becomes the way we see the world, the way we see reality.
Reality is not what is in front of us. It does not exist outside of us, but this reality depends specifically on our properties.
In this reality there is the revealed part and the concealed part. This reality divides into inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking. It divides into solids, liquids and gases; all is according to our properties. If we change our properties, reality would be different. It is just like when it was revealed that these particles, the electrons, that looked one way, and then we see it's matter, and then we look at it a different way, and we see that it is waves. It depends on how the observation is done.
Also, if we could change ourselves, we would see a different reality. Where there was concrete, solid matter (since that is how we sense it) we would suddenly see an entirely different picture, different properties, because they are in accordance with our attributes.
And indeed in our time, science has reached the end of its evolution. It was thirty or forty years ago that the crisis in science began, when the scientists started to realize that they could not develop any further without taking into consideration the properties of the person, the researcher. Then they reached a dead-end, the end of science because science always claims that we perceive reality according to unique formulas, no matter who is dealing with it, and then suddenly all of reality is loose, and wobbly; everything depends on how we change ourselves.
In this way we see the connection, the contact, between the wisdom of Kabbalah and science. If twenty or thirty years ago it was not possible to talk with scientists about the wisdom of Kabbalah because they wouldn’t of accepted this concept at all.
Today it is very different. They are willing to listen, they are ready to hear, and they are ready to hear that absolutely everything depends on us, everything depends on man’s properties, and all of reality is an imaginary reality, meaning that it is merely a projection of our own properties. Everything that we truly feel and where we act is in a world which we portray, which has no existence of its own. If we change our angle of observation, meaning our properties, we will see waves instead of particles, and particles instead of waves.
It is similar to comparing what scientists discovered in the twenties and thirties in the previous century. This means that now we can actually discuss this with scientists. We now can actually discuss, together with scientists, and turn to the entire world with a truly new explanation, which, I would say, would be revolutionary in most people's eyes. It would result in a great and important consequence.
It all depends on us. Everything actually depends on the internality of man. Not only do we portray the world, make it look the way that it does to us, but in general, all that we do—the rules of the world, connections, the evaluations, that seem to us as components of the world—they all depend on us.
There is no law acting on us from the outside. There is no definite reality outside of us. In short, there is nothing else besides what we do.
Therefore, all we need to know is in what way we should change, what would be the right angle for viewing the Upper Simple Light, which is in complete rest. How do we receive its manifestation in the best way, and get the optimal picture, the picture that would be best for us.
This is exactly the subject of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which contrary to all the conventional wisdoms, does not discuss researching matter which is external to us, but claims from the beginning in a simple way how the person should change in order for the world that he or she perceives to change. This is actually the entire subject of the wisdom.
We can also go to psychologists and doctors and to people dealing with ecology or anything that is related to the situation of the world and see that the big picture of the world today is really terrible. And this is something that everybody agrees on. All scientists of all fields agree that the world is in total despair. This is the reason for drug abuse, for the breakdown of the family structure, and in general, for what is happening throughout society.
All of this is happening not just because it's how the world evolves, but it is a projection of our desire to receive which is growing, creating this kind of a picture—its own projection in us, on the Upper Light, forming the picture that is in front of us.
And it was really a marvel for me, when a few years ago, I began communicating with scientists, and I saw that they were starting to grasp it, to agree with this, and accept it.
Currently, I am writing with some of the greatest scientists in the world, writing six or seven book simultaneously. Two of them are being written in the UnitedState with Daniel Matt and Barry Gordon, from the Universities of Stanford and Berkley; the others are in Russia; and also with very important research institutions and great scientists in all fields.
They are willing to participate; they understand that this is really going to be the next step in the development of science. So modern science is, in reality, the wisdom of Kabbalah, in a way that all we need today is to demonstrate for people how smooth the transition is.
Previously we could only look outside and we saw the world, thinking that there is a reality that exists on its own, unrelated to us. Now scientists are gradually understanding and accepting this because it is becoming clear to them, out of their experiments, out of what they do, their research of reality. They have already transferred the observation and the cause of what happens to them from outside into the person who is observing and performing the experiment.
So now, it is relatively easy to explain this to even regular people who don't deal with the wisdom, to psychologists, who interestingly are experiencing the same phenomena, reaching the same conclusions, getting the same results. Our work today is only to create some smooth transition and to demonstrate to humanity that the whole picture of the world is a projection of our senses, of our properties.
If we want to improve the world, we must improve ourselves. The world will not change on its own. The world itself is Upper Light, which is in total rest. This is something that we can read in the latest scientific publications on Astrophysics. They're reaching a state in which our entire universe is totally one single thought, which acts in a thoughtful and purposeful way. Ecologists are reaching the conclusion that the whole earth, along with its atmosphere is, in totality, behaves like a living creature, something that has life and wisdom, a plan, reacting to us in a unique way, like some living organism.
Out of these studies, they are actually reaching the same conclusion that both the earth and the universe, as well as all life forms, from the smallest to the entire universe, are all a projection of man’s properties.
The bottom line is that all of the wisdoms we have developed over thousands of years, really only are a small part of our study of reality. And now, the wisdom of Kabbalah comes and absorbs all these wisdoms, and works together with them, and explains to man how to research a true and correct reality. This is what is happening today right in front of our eyes.
Question: How can we grasp the true reality?
The true correct reality is that reality which we will feel, see, and sense if we change according to the Light that is inside of us.
Question: In relation to what?
In relation to the attribute of the Light. We reveal reality according to our equality of form, equality of form to it. This means that when we discuss the ordinary sciences, each phenomenon that I discover, I discover because I somehow equalized my properties with some phenomenon.
For example—I usually explain this in a simple way about waves—there are some waves outside my ear. I perceive only on the condition that I have in me a system that can portray that wave. Like, for example, a radio receiver. It has in it a circuit that can recreate the same waveform as the one outside. Then, by the effect of resonance, it receives this outside wave and passes it on to an amplifier and a speaker. If I want to perceive a certain reality, I need to know in advance what inner properties I need to have in me.
We are naturally born with five senses. In each sense there is a certain specific range in which we perceive some reaction in us, that is occurring outside. We only perceive what is outside within a special range, let's say, from 15 Hertz to 15 Kilo Hertz. And it is so with vision as well, with anything. That is the way we are built and that is why we see the world within these ranges, five ranges.
It is possible that if we would have, besides these five senses, additional senses, with other ranges, then of course the world picture would be different. This is the image that is projected inside of us: our reaction to something that is outside of us.
Outside there are waves, let's say Upper Light, a wave at an infinite frequency, but I only perceive some small fractions of it, some small impression, at certain frequencies. That is what is projected in me; that's my picture of reality. And that is how I feel myself, and that is how I feel an external reality, meaning that this picture is certainly a projection of my properties.
Question: Does the picture of reality change according to predispositions?
No, it's not a matter of predisposition. Our picture is a result of our inner properties. If I can't change my properties, then that's how I'm built. But if I can change my properties, if I could, I would see things differently, to the extent that substance would change.
My primary substance—the desire to enjoy, the desire to receive—is defined in a very, very unique way. To change it is possible only if I elevate above it, and for that I need to enter into the subject of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
What does it deal with? What does it mean "the wisdom of Kabbalah?" It is the wisdom of how to grasp, perceive, and receive reality according to what you choose to be.