Is this world really an illusion?

Hello everyone. What an amazing opportunity we have today. We are here with Dr. Yuval Harari, an author and a speaker who wrote 11 books. We are going to ask him today a very fundamental question. And it's a question that I even wrote a book about it. It's called World of Illusion. Minds of the Sages, great book, thank you so much. And it's really—

Great book.

Trying to sharpen that idea of the perception of reality. What is reality? Where is the creator in this reality? How are we part of this reality? And how it's all connected into the oneness of God. You know, it's simple to say there is only one reality, He is one, and there is nothing but God. But really, let's elaborate more, Dr. Eshel Aharoni.

It's a huge question. First of all, the book is great. I love it very much. It's easy to read. It's very understandable. Thank you so much. And it's very deep. And, you know, it's recommended. But the question is so important. You know, this is the major question that all the Kabbalistic sages are dealing with. The Oliyari, the Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the author of the Tanya and the founder of the Chabad movement, they are all asking the same question. How can it be that we are living in a separate world? Everything is separate. You know, you have your phone, you have your computer, you have things, you are dealing with things, you are separate. You do not feel really, you can feel connected, but it's not like an inner connection. I want to be connected to my wife, but there is my wife and there is me. So how could it be that we are living in a world of separations and still there is unity in this world? And it's the unity of godliness that's creating everything in the moment. And you know, the first thing that we have to understand that everything is about our mindset. Our mindset, the way that we look at things, the way we understand, interpret things. This is the work, this is the job of the media, to help us understand and interpret whatever we see. And the one that controls your glasses, the point of view in which you see reality and in which you understand reality, he is the one that controls your life. And everyone is fighting to get her old, like to be the one that's in charge on your glasses, to be the one that will interpret what you are going through. Because everyone has interest, economic interest, political interest, other interest, power interest. They want something from you. And if you will be able to see the world in a gender point of view, in an economical point of view, as Marx wanted us to see, in a religious point of view, you will belong to me in a way. And you will help me trying to get my interest. So the most important thing is to be independent in the way you see reality, in the way you see yourself. That's like introduction. What is reality? That, you know, when you have appeal to my emotions, you do not respect me. Why? Because my emotions are not the way, the place that I choose. I choose in my mind. I have, I want to contemplate and I have to understand things. And the more we understand, the more we can contemplate, the more each one of us is independent in his point of view. He can get hold, he can be the chief, he is the boss of his life. And the most important thing is to get hold and to be the boss of his life. And after saying that, let's get into the major question that you raise.

Is this world an illusion? Yeah, sorry to interrupt. Yeah, continue. Two points of view.

In everything Yeah, it's great. This world, in a way, it's an illusion, but it's not a total illusion. That means that we can get deep into it and find the reality, the real truth in this world. It's like there is a shield, a klipah, something that is external, that is illusion. But if you will penetrate into the world, into everything that is happening, you will find the truth in it. And that it is not illusion. This is the real truth. What do I mean to say? There are two ways we can separate all mindsets, all different perspectives of reality to two different categories. One, that everything is separate. When everything is separate, I'm looking to see what is my interest in everything that I'm doing. What do I get out of it? When I'm listening, when I, When I hear about something that happened in Italy or in Turkey or whatever, the first question that I ask, maybe I know someone there, maybe how it is connected to me, maybe, oh, everything that I see, my glasses, my mindset is about separation and about separation is me in the middle, what do I get from this world, from this reality? In this point of view, everything is like illusion because you don't really see the reality. You see what you get out of reality. You see only things that are connected to your interest. It's very hard for you to get out of yourself and to see the inner dimensions of reality. And there is a different one, a different category. The second category is about unity. And whenever we found unity in reality, real unity, in order to get into it, in order to see real unity, you have to take yourself aside and not to be in the center, because when you're in the center, there could not be unity because it's all about me. So whenever you can You can get those classes that help you find unity in this life. Doesn't matter unity in our emotions, in the way we see things, in the way we understand things. Well, you know, whenever somebody says something clever, and a lot of people listen to this clever thing, they become one. So whenever you find unity, that means that reality is not illusion. Why? Because you found now in this special moment, you found godliness in this moment. And when you find godliness in this moment, it's like God appeared in the dynamic of what we are doing, what we are listening. So two kinds of mindsets, two kinds of perceptions of reality. One is about separation and about me being in the middle, and the other one is about unity. And both of them appear in our mind in the same time, and they are struggling like in us. And the major work is to transform ourselves from the one point of view, the one of separation, to the unity point of view. Right.

Daniel talks a lot about the Nefesh Behemith, the animal soul, and how the animal soul is distracting us. It's creating not only a separation, almost putting our godly soul in exile. So my question to you is this. When the mindset that you are talking about, it has to do with the idea that I'm not only removing myself from the center, but how can I say it? It's just like so deep and profound, but what I'm trying to say And the question that I have is that when we really reach the point that we are able to remove ourselves from the center and connect to our Godly soul, bring that Godly soul back to dominate our life, you mean that the world is not an illusion anymore. So the only thing that makes this world an illusion, it's pretty much the animal soul, is the sense. Self. It's the sense of self. So if we remove that animal soul, then we are, and we are experiencing God in us, that means that we are removing the illusion pretty much. We are entering the real.

And I have a great example for you, maybe an odd one, but a good one I think, to help, you know, to get this high idea down, the high and profound idea. I have a a cousin, he's almost 40, and but last year it was, I don't know if announced or he has been told that he had the disease, and it's very hard one, the hard one, and it's not easy, he's going through very hard, you know, treatment, and we are not, we hope for, we pray, we believe, we want, and A few months ago, I sent him a text message and asked him, can I come to visit you? And he said, no, don't come. And about a month ago, I sent another text and asked, a month or two, something like that, and asked, maybe I can come now? He said, okay, you can come if, and we spoke about mindset. And there are two major mindsets in Judaism. One about, and I think we spoke a little bit about that, wealth consciousness. And the other one is poverty consciousness. The one, the wealth consciousness is that you have everything that you need. You are in your place. You cannot think about, oh, I deserve. You are not a victim of this reality. When you have wealth, wealth consciousness, in Nibiru it's like, Todashefa, it's like I'm influencing, I have something to bring to the world. It doesn't matter if I have left yet 20 years to live, 40, 50, 100, doesn't matter because what's the difference between 40 and 20 years or 1 year if you're not using this year to do what you need to and to find unity in this world. So my cousin told me, if you are coming to visit me, don't come with poverty consciousness.

Don't come like you, what is poverty consciousness when you come to visit me?

That's it.

Yeah.

Something like that. That's it. And I don't want to live like that. Even if I have one minute more to live, I don't want to live like that. I want to live like this is the best moment that I'm living in. And I walked with my wife and she said something. She said something very odd. It will be very odd for our audience to listen to that. She said, when my time will come, I will live peacefully in a way, because I know it's not the end, I'm just moving from one place to another, it's like a transportation, transformation from, so it's like a mindset that this world has external point of view, external happening, things that very, and we need money, somebody before we die, Steve Jobs, said that if you are doing something, think like if tomorrow you will die, are you ready that, are you ready to say this is my last day, I gave everything in this day, I'm like, am I doing the thing that I really want to do? And if you are saying, and if you do not agree with this, you know, if you say, no, I want to do something else, go do this something else. And it's not only about go doing something else, it's about feeling that you are in your place and you are not a victim and you have You have everything in your reality in order to discover your inner powers and to do what you need. And it's about mostly finding unity in life. Finding unity, it's like the thing that makes couples one is unity. In a way, in a minute, they can fight. They can separate. But if they can find, you know, here and there, we'll say here and there, those moments of unity, this is all. This is the high thing that you can get out of marriage, out of relationships. So what we are saying, we are saying that this mindset, it's like if you find this unit, it doesn't matter if you have one day or reality is you don't know. Let me rephrase it. To my cousin, there are two ways to see life. One way is by separation out of why it happened to me. I'm a victim. This is all about separation. Why? Because I'm not— there is no order in reality. I'm just seeing the external thing. And in the external point of view, it's a misery. It's very hard because you have 3 small children. And it's very hard to say, you know, it's very hard. It's a challenge in the middle of life. But if you have the other mindset, behind the perception of reality, you say to yourself, no, it's not tragedy. It's like I can find in this external, from, you know, I'm struggling, right? It's not easy, but I can find something very, very deep, very profound about reality. And I'm connected to this thing. And if I have to transport myself out of here, I will transport. It's like, it's very hard to, you know, to illuminate on those ideas. But whenever you find unity in life, that's the real reality. Whenever you find separation, it's like, it's illusion. Why? Because unity reveals godliness in reality. That's what we said. That's like I try to repeat. And my cousin, And my cousin revealed reality in his point of view. And it's the best thing that you could get. And if you, just last sentence, and if you reveal all and stuff, like the infinite light of the creator in this creation.

Beautiful. So, you know, first of all, I want to wish your cousin a speedy recovery and maybe hear great news from him. You know, the thing is this, and I also write about it in the back of the book.

Thanks.

The idea that, for example, we are using Wi-Fi. We, you know, and Wi-Fi is not the only new wave. I mean, it started with radio wave, TV wave, infrared. There is so much going on around us that we cannot see with our physical body. And the Creator created us in a way that it's very limited. I mean, we are literally blind. We're blind with death. We can't even hear. Like, there is sounds that we can't hear. We know that there is other animals, other species that could hear way better and can see way better than us. And they can still even not really see or hear. So how is that? How is the idea that we are limited? In our 5 senses, makes this world a reality if we find unity in it.

What's— think about the Creator. What makes him the Creator? Not the fact that he's infinite. Being infinite, it's a great thing. We cannot catch something infinite. What makes him the Creator is that he is infinite and And he is, you know, he has— can be mukbal, like being limited in a way. And the fact that he is limited and unlimited in the same time, that's what makes him the creator. This combination between being limited and being, you know, in the small details and being unlimited, infinite, this is what makes him the creator. So when you think about it like that, The whole idea of this creation is to create something limited in order to reveal the light of infinite in it. And if you see only the limitation, it's like illusion because it's not the real truth. Because he is the one that is infinite creating now the limitation. He is the limitation. When you have limitation, it's only about yourself. Sometimes we have limitations in understanding things. And when you want to break through limitations, we need limitations. Without limitations, we cannot, you know, you cannot understand things. You must have limitations in the way, in your schedule, in the way you do things. But here and there, you need to break through those boundaries. Without breaking through those boundaries, you will always stay in your limitations. So we need limitations. Limitations are part of the creations, the creation, and part of the creator. But by breaking through the limitations and then putting again limitations, then we find that the world, it's a world of infinite combined with a finite world. So there is real godliness in it. So it's like illusion. It's like if you would say the world is illusion, why you needed a world of illusion? You wanted a real world that will look like illusion, that you will be able to find the real world in it. But the real world is the world of endlessness.

Right, right. So basically you're saying we need a limitation so we can discover infinity in that limitation. Because otherwise we wouldn't even understand it.

Right.

We wouldn't understand what is infinite.

We wouldn't understand what the Creator is.

But you know, when I really think about it, when we close our eyes and we use our imagination, that feels like almost infinite. I mean, even dream world, you know, when you have a vivid dream and you could fly from country to country and you're not limited by space, time, and motion, that kind of gives us a little bit glimpse of the infinite reality that we are living in.

So, You know, when we're talking about redemption, talking about redemption, how it will be, and our sages wants to, you know, to give you a bit of a picture how it will be in the good days and the best days that a man can think about, how it will be in the future, what is a futuristic point of view, futuristic mindset. So they are saying that, you know, they are talking about people that are, they have no anxiety and no stress and no, they do not envy one each other and they sit all day and they see things like they are. They see like the real truth of life and they are like enjoying seeing, you know, what is inside the shell, what is real life all about. And you know, We have a glimpse of it. The whole idea of living in a glimpse of redemption in our daily life. And we have a glimpse of it when you are struggling and you have stress and you have anxiety and you have a lot of things that catch your mind and you don't know where. And a glimpse of it is like tasting, oh, I know how to deal with that. I'm in my place. I know I caught it. That's why when we're saying living in the moment, being existent, existential. Being living in the moment, it's a bit of living in the future, in the good future, in the redemption future. It's like when I'm living in the moment, I'm saying, okay, I'm not bothered by the past. I'm not bothered by the future. I'm really catching the real reality because me and the reality are being one. My mother says that like the infinite God, the creator, is the combination of, "Who are you there? Who are you doing?" He's the one that knows things. He's the knowledge itself, and he is the thing that he knows about. It's like, think about, there are three things. You know that there is traffic in LA, and you are the one that knows about the traffic, and there is the traffic, and there is the knowledge, and there is you, and there is the knowledge about the traffic. And God is all the three things in the same time. And when you are living in the moment, you are being able to be in the present. That means that you are having a glimpse of how the Creator is. Because now, when I'm all with you, there is me and you and the thing that we are talking about, like one thing. And when it all becomes one, you find unity in this moment. That's why when you have anxiety and you let your thoughts run to all kinds of places, like what will happen if, and you are bothered with things. You are not living this, the present. And that means that you are not, you cannot find unity in the present because you are now living in the future or it's not really the future. It's living in the thoughts that running without you controlling them and get us back to the, to what we started with. We started with controlling my thoughts and my mindset is the most important thing because only by controlling my thoughts and navigating and not letting them run away, I can control my mindset and be one with the present. And when I be one with the present, only then I can see that life, illusion only when I let them be illusion. It's like it created illusion in order that you will discover infinite in it.

Life is some kind of an illusion, but it's God's illusion for us to find infinite. But it's not an illusion in the sense that we are hallucinating or God forbid living, you know, like psychedelic drugs, you know, like you get into people that do it, they get into hallucinations and think, oh, you know, but this is not what we mean when we say world of illusion.

We mean that, yeah, we mean that it's, you know, before the, sorry, before the Alter Rabbi passed away, right, just to, before the Alter Rabbi passed away, the Alter Rabbi is the founder of Chabad and the Baal HaTanya, He said, I do not see the— there was a wood there in his room. I do not see the wood. I see the words of the creator, the letters of the creator that creating the words in this moment. Like everything according to Jewish, you know, it's a bit like the Matrix. According to the Jewish Kabbalistic point of view, everything is being created right now. Through the words, through the letters of the creator. And it's like there are words that are holding everything in this moment. It's like whoever saw The Matrix can really— the difference, the real difference between The Matrix and the Kabbalistic point of view is that the words, the creator behind the scenes, behind the blue pill, Everything is good. And the nature of the creator is to do good things and to help. And it's like the inside of reality, the real reality, it's not that everything is bad and people are fighting and separate. The opposite is the truth. Like the old series or the old Matrix is upside down. The real truth is that the inner reality, it's a beautiful one. It's full of love and passion and connecting. —And deliver in ourselves, in our inspiration—

That's why when we are going to do something, we are going to create something, we have to have the mindset that we are working with the Creator, and the Creator is with us, is going to help us. And if, God forbid, we did not succeed, it's not us. The Creator didn't succeed. And obviously, the Creator wants us to succeed, and he will come and help us with whatever it is that we want to do. We just have to go ahead and do it and connect.

Sure. Well, I must, you know, before we finish, just one last thing. I just read something, I'll say it by heart, something from the Admon Piesetzna, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalamisha Pira. He was in Warsaw, Warsaw, as I said, Warsaw ghetto. Before, after the uprising, and you know, there are half a million Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. About 450 were eliminated, killed, murdered in one month and a half in the transport to Treblinka. And he wrote something in Purim, just a few weeks before the transport to Treblinka. And he said really what you said in this moment. You know, Purim, it's like, think about it, you are in Warsaw, there is nothing to eat. People are dying everywhere. I cannot, I don't want even to repeat what the reality, the real reality of warship was. And he said, even though we have the obligation to be happy, why we have the obligation to be happy in this unbelievable reality? Because it's not the real reality. And we have the option to change it by changing our point of view, by really asking for it. It's all in our hands. So it's like, Unbelievable, because he's there in the worst place that you can think about it. And he says, no, this is not the reality. And I thought about a little bit about the— maybe you saw the movie Life is Beautiful in Hebrew, it's Achaim Efim of Roberto Benigni. When he and his son are in the ghetto and they are playing and it's all about a play, a game for his child. Something like that. It's really something like that. So it's very hard, but when you are suffering, you have one of two options. It's not like running away of— it's not escapism. It's not like running away of reality. It's like finding the real reality. And the real reality, according to the Tanya, is the reality that the Creator is creating every moment for you. Even though you are suffering now, maybe suffering, you will find, you know, you'll find endless meaning when you get deep into it. But usually, most of us are not in the Warsaw ghetto. Most of us are having a beautiful life. We are in the best period of humanity ever. But still, we are thinking that everything is against us and we are suffering. And we have to change our mindset and to find unity in it in order to find the truth and love and passion and connection and brotherhood in this reality.

Good light warriors and just go out there and hopefully light up the world and help a lot of people reach the right consciousness so they could uplift themselves and free their godly soul, their godly spark from exile. And together, when we're going to reach a critical mass of people with that same consciousness, God willing, we are going to bring the real You know, my mother said you don't need to reach an amount of people.

It's enough that some one person maybe will do that. Everything is waiting for you. Maybe you are the one that you will do, you know, you will change your mindset and you are the one that will change the course of reality.

That's why each person is really, really important and precious. That's it.

That's it. Thank you so much. That's it. That's why, that's what, sorry, each, each thought of us, each, everything that we're doing is important. Thank you so much, my, my brother, my friend.

Again, you can just Google it, Amazon, right? Yeah, you know what, good idea. I'll put the link down below in the video. Please follow Dr. Ikhil Harari's English YouTube channel. If you speak Hebrew, he has a Hebrew one, it's @itbonenut. If you speak English, it's @JewishPsychology1, if I remember correctly. A wonderful book. You have one book translated to English that you could read, Winning Every Moment. Looking forward for our next meeting, Dr. Ikhil Harari. Thank you so much for your time. Much love. Bye-bye.