Description

Jeffrey Satinover MS, MD discusses the limits and contradictions of studying the physical world through science; that the physical world reveals “something else” that is happening and which science cannot explain. Rav Michael Laitman, PhD explains how it is possible to study the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Transcript

Question: I would like to hear if you see the connection between the two worlds: the spiritual and the physical. What can we think will be possible in the future regarding the connection between the two worlds?

Dr. Jeffrey Satinover: What the most sophisticated modern science does, in my view, if you understand it correctly, is it demonstrates that the way that the physical world operates is not only due to other physical interactions—that there’s something else that goes on. But it’s part and parcel of the scientific perspective, this scientific perspective, and in a funny way, this is very true in Kabbalistic teachings as well, that you can’t appeal to the deterministic side of the boundary to tell you what lies on the transcendental side, so to speak.

Now, living with that may be difficult for some people. But on the other hand, when it’s understood properly, I think it’s an extraordinarily powerful impetus to the development of one’s virtual life.

Rav Michael Laitman, PhD: I would like to add this. When you are in both worlds, you do see the connection between them and how one affects the other. They affect one another, the Upper on the lower, the lower on the Upper. There’s a flow, a clear connection, and clear communication. The laws are the same laws. But what happens in the Upper Law is copied into matter in the lower law. You can study the Upper World from the lower law, as it is written—it’s possible. However, this is possible on the condition that you’ve already developed the sixth sense, and you live in the five senses, in this world, in the body, as well as in the sixth sense, in the soul.

But if you’re only in one of these worlds, then of course, you cannot learn and research the connections between them. We also know this from books of Kabbalists, and there were some, the greatest of whom was the Gaon of Vilna. These Kabbalists engaged in the connection between the two worlds, and they wrote a lot about it.

Actually, our whole literature is written this way. For example, when we open the Torah, the Pentateuch, and we read a story from there, it’s a story written as if it’s happening in this world. However, the secret of the story is that through this world, you can see the Spiritual World. And then, if you know, if you have that sixth sense, then you can see that higher degree and what it’s about, and what those who wrote the holy books, actually meant.

Why are they called holy? It’s because they discuss the spiritual world, and not this world. They’re not history books. So, we’re just talking about a science, the wisdom of Kabbalah, which helps us see the whole of reality directly, from below to above and vice versa. However, if you are only on one side, even if you’re Einstein—although he really yearned to see reality’s overall formulae—or even if you’re the greatest Kabbalist, but without a body, then neither of them would be able to engage in the connection between the two worlds.