Description

Science teaches us where the boundaries of our intellect lie and clearly defines our physical limitations that restrict our ability to perceive reality. The non-material aspects of life such as meaning and purpose cannot be understood inside the context of traditional science. Their study requires development of a new set of research tools that can only be acquired through Kabbalah. Kabbalah builds in each of us a special instrument with which to study the intangible substance of life called desire. With this instrument we can penetrate desire, scrutinize it, see how it evolves and know where it's heading. One's desire to develop spiritual instruments is awakened through the spontaneous emergence of a spiritual gene that begins to encode in a person a new, spiritual life.

Transcript

TV Program with Dr. Michael Laitman
"20 Ideas"

"The Science of Desire"

With participation of Max Golovkin

June 29, 2009
New York

Max Golovkin: I'm doing Applied Genetic Engineering studies to generate a new version of drugs and pharmaceutical preparation to cure a lot of dangerous diseases. I also have to try, as a human being, to understand the meaning of life as much as I can and therefore I came to the teaching of Kabbalah with this question, so you can understand that. Practically, the main question which comes to me: how you will combine this teaching with the very pragmatic and meteoritic studies of genetics?

Dr. Michael Laitman: What I would like or can say, is that science helps us-well, those who study Kabbalah-in the sense that it shows us that there's a limit, a boundary, and that we can't permeate the essence of life. We can know the superficial form of life, like physicists, those studying protons and electrons and other atomic particles.

But for us there's not such a big difference, because you deal with... Those who deal with physics and biology deal with an outer form of expression of life, so the question about the meaning of life remains (for both physicists and geneticists) unanswered and they will not be able to discover it. But the good thing about science is that it brings you closer to a wall, to a boundary, and you see that there is no further progress possible, like in today's quantum physics or in genetics and molecular biology. We'll get to it.

The essence of life, the meaning of life, to know that, you have to rise to a different level of research, which is really the level of substance called desire, which is the general force that exists in the world, which is a desire. That desire is divided into still, vegetative, animate, and speaking-these degrees-and if we want to know the meaning life, then we have to study that desire, where it comes from, how it evolves (how the desire itself evolves, not the outer expressions of it like manifestations, like in atoms or in molecules).

When we see, when we examine its evolution, within that evolution we find all the answers. Why? We don't find some higher spiritual force, there's some kind of a Godly image, some kind of a Creator who... We research. In the study of Kabbalah, in the teaching of Kabbalah, you research, like in physics.

You had a person who started this physics thousands of years ago and following him, every generation accumulated information and that created a science. The same applies for biology or genetics, which is a relatively new science. It's the same; we gather information and advance accordingly.

The same happens in Kabbalah, there's no difference. No book drops from Above and no one gets any kind of revelation in his ear. Nothing happens from Above. It's the research in the same way as done in contemporary, ordinary science. But what is the difference? We're studying a different substance. Not the atoms or molecules, like in quantum physics or genetics, but we study desires.

Then we have a problem. How do you research your desire? Here comes the wisdom of Kabbalah and first of all it builds within us, in each of us, those who want to be scientists. First you have to develop within you a special instrument to reach that substance called desire.

It's not psychology. You need to penetrate the desire and see how it changes and what are those changes in it, as it evolves from the beginning of its creation to the end of its creation. That's how in this research we come to a force which is called Creator. It's all within that desire.

Let's say you were studying your living material, organism, and in between those acids and molecules and what not, deeper and deeper in you, you'd research until you found the initial primordial force, which is first of all common to everything because it's the basis of all materials. It controls everything because it sustains creation-the whole of it.

From it, from that force, emerges everything (the Mendeleev's table and all the biological and chemical forms), and it takes them through all the forms of evolution, from the very beginning where you see that that force existed first and from it material began to evolve. Yes, a desire. And a desire evolves into all kinds of forms and you see... The more you delve into it, you see the end of its development, and everything emerges from that science, which is called Kabbalah.

Max Golovkin: Genetic material, it's a very stable thing. It's passed through the generations and we are practically having the verses, the code of the book of how we are built and the whole life is built. All the forms were written millions of years ago. With all the progress, or evolution as we call it, it's still the same. It was given, it was written, it was kind of assembled, and it's a very complex one.

We are just at the very beginning of unraveling actually what it is, how it's written. With all that, I'm asking the question: Why are only human beings given this gift of reaching the level of spirituality? Is it in the genetic code? Is it given to us or is it imprinted later on when we are already born? Or are we still animals?

Dr. Michael Laitman: How are we different from animals?

Max Golovkin: That's exactly it, we are not. Genetically we are not, so spirituality is imprinted in us later on.

Dr. Michael Laitman: The more you build into genetics, you won't find any human being there, but an animal.

Max Golovkin: But why only human beings?

Dr. Michael Laitman: Not the human in us. The human in us is not the beast, it's not the animal.

Max Golovkin: Absolutely, absolutely.

Dr. Michael Laitman: That's why genetics isn't studying it.

Max Golovkin: Amazingly, through all these thousands, millions of years as a species, we probably exist (at least with the new concept) several millions of years, probably even tens of millions of years. We didn't change; as human beings we are the same, but spiritually we are growing, otherwise why would we be here, right?

Dr. Michael Laitman: Only that.

Max Golovkin: Exactly. You see, and with this evolvement, is it in our genetical code, does it somehow remain? Once you pass through from egoism to altruism and probably reach the high levels of spirituality, is it somehow getting back on our genetical code? Imprinted? Can we pass it on? That is an interesting thing that I don't understand yet. Do you see the point?

Dr. Michael Laitman: Well, that's an interesting question, but the answer is simple to it, really. We're animals. We don't change. What changes is only the human in us. Either the corporeal human, as we acquire information about our world and our egos evolve more... It's our egos that evolve, not the animal in us. Well, the animal does evolve to an extent, but the main thing that evolves is the human in us (but in a bad way, if from generation to generation our egos are growing).

But the question is... In one of the moments of our evolution, something happens to us. Even though we remain animals and even though we remain people in this world, all of a sudden a desire appears in us, some kind of piece of information which I call... It's like a spiritual gene or genetic element, like a spiritual code maybe, which begins our spiritual life, our new life.

Beyond having our current life (the one that you're studying), a new form of life begins within us, a spiritual one, on a different dimension above this animate and vegetative-the spiritual human.

Max Golovkin: That is an interesting theory, because with this spiritual gene it means... And that's what actually I thought of before, at least the term, and the point is that still this spiritual development-is it only an individual that can do that once they reach a certain age and, let's say, not curiosity but understanding, that it's that important?

But it's not passed through generation to generation. We teach individuals to ask this question actually; it's not passed through the genes, even though you think that we have some spiritual gene in us, otherwise why would we be coming to that more and more?

So the people are somehow getting this bug sitting in us, provoking us to reach this level and to try and answer the question. Otherwise, we would be animals as all the other animals on this planet.

Dr. Michael Laitman: Well, yes, for now we're animals, as long as a person doesn't have the question about the meaning of life, which emerges as a result of the spiritual gene; it's not a result of just suffering in life and you want to succeed more. But if you're asking about a different form, a different level of life, that's the new gene speaking in you. If you don't have it, you're still an animal, not a person.

Max Golovkin: So it's individual work after all, so we have to work, all of us.

Dr. Michael Laitman: Well, yeah. But in the end, all of us come to that level of development where we begin to ask this question: What life is for, what's the secret of life?-when we ask about a different level of development, the spiritual level, and it has nothing to do with our current development in our corporeal level.

So genetics will remain and we'll not change, and we'll study more, just like quantum physics. They will all, in the end, see that there is something beyond matter, but what? They will not be able to discover, because for that you need new instruments.