LESSON 4
Perception of reality
Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Academy - Global Course 2023:
Part 1: “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
In the lesson we will learn:
For illustration, �we will watch a video clip
What is reality?
A Double Dutch | Brain Games
From the National Geographic Channel
What can be learned from watching the video clip?
Are there things we miss out on in life?��What are we focusing on that makes us miss out?��What prevents us from seeing the "big picture?”��How to expand the way we perceive reality.
According to science
Different approaches �to the perception of reality
The perception of reality �according to the wisdom of Kabbalah
It is well known to researchers of nature that one cannot perform even the slightest movement without motive power, without somehow benefiting oneself.�
When, for example, one moves one’s hand from the chair to the table, it is because he thinks that by putting his hand on the table he will enjoy it more. If he did not think so, he would leave his hand on the chair for the rest of his life without moving it at all.
(Baal HaSulam “The Peace”)
(Baal HaSulam, Foreword to The Book of Zohar, 34)
Take our sense of sight, for example: we see a wide world before us, wondrously filled. But in fact, we see all that only in our own interior. ��In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain, which portrays everything that appears to us and nothing outside of us.
He has made for us there, in our brain, a kind of polished mirror that inverts everything seen there, so we will see it outside our brain, in front of our faces.
��(Baal HaSulam, Foreword to The Book of Zohar, 34)
Dr. Michael Laitman
(from the talk about the perception of reality)
Even though we see everything as being in front of us, every reasonable person knows for certain that all that we see is only in our own brains.
��(Baal HaSulam, Foreword to The Book of Zohar, 34)
“Everything is Godliness, above time, place, and change. All those degrees and corrections we discern in Godliness are only various concealments and covers toward the lower ones [...] Likewise, all the imaginary images of time and place and actions are but various covers of His Godliness that seem that way to the lower ones.”
(“Zohar for All”, Nasso, “The Holy Idra Rabah,” 299)
“As man is not affected or changes at all because of the covers that he covers in, and only his friends are affected by his disappearance or appearance, so His Godliness does not change and is not affected whatsoever by those degrees and corrections and names in time, place, and changes of actions that the lower ones discern in His covers.”
�(“Zohar for All”, Nasso, “The Holy Idra Rabah,” 299)
"Like a worm that was born inside a radish. It lives there and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter, dark, and small as the radish in which it was born.” …
"But as soon as it breaks the peel of the radish and peeps out, it says in bewilderment: ‘I thought the whole world was like the radish I was born in, and now I see a grand, beautiful, and wondrous world before me!"
(Baal HaSulam "Introduction to the Book of Zohar", 39-40)
“So, too, are those who are immersed in the Klipa [sing. of Klipot] of the will to receive they were born with […]
[they] would try to break the Klipa of the will to receive in which they were born, and would assume the desire to bestow, their eyes would promptly open to see and attain for themselves all the degrees of wisdom, intelligence, and clear mind that have been prepared for them in the spiritual worlds."
(Baal HaSulam "Introduction to the Book of Zohar”)
Dr. Michael Laitman
(from the “New Life” #694)
We will investigate our desire according to the following questions:
(We will write down our observations)