Why You Can Never See or Imagine Anything Outside Your ‘Black Box’

A person is like a “black box,” feeling, understanding and receiving only what enters from outside. All of our investigations are limited by our five senses, and every instrument we have built and will build in the future, ceases to escape our five senses’ limits. Our five senses’ limits are merely expanded through these instruments.

This is because we can never imagine what our five senses lack. Namely, what other additional sense we need in order to perceive the true reality around us. We feel no lack for this, as we feel no lack of a sixth finger on our hands. That for which we feel no lack, can never be something to which we would come to request. Therefore, all of the investigations of our world are only according to our five senses, and we can never begin to see, feel and understand what is beyond our senses. These are the limitations of our conceptions.

Also, our imagination is the product our five senses, and the experiences which stem from them. We can never imagine any object or creature which does not resemble that which is familiar to us from our five senses.

If I want, for example, someone to draw for me some creature from another planet, certainly he would draw it according to the elements which are familiar to us from our world. And if I asked you to describe something imaginary you would give me, without a doubt, something which is very similar to this world.

How to Understand the Boundary of Your Perception

All this exemplifies our limitations: we all live in a small world, and we are unable to feel, and therefore imagine, anything outside of it. Moreover, since our limitations are absolute, no science or philosophy can ever help us understand what is beyond this world.

It could be that in the same space, in other dimensions exist other creatures and worlds. We cannot feel them because we lack the requisite senses or “vessels” to feel them. It could be that in this other world that is vaster than ours is to be found the reason for our existence, for all of the incidences which occur to us, and the reason for our death. And we, oblivious of these causes, live without true knowledge and without a true goal, unconscious in our world.

There are people in our world who do receive additional senses with which to feel the wider surrounding existence. These people are called “Kabbalists” (“receivers”) since they know how to receive higher knowledge than ours.

Kabbalists say that there are worlds above ours, and that all these worlds are like the layers of an onion, in which our world is found in the midst of all of these worlds. We, who live in this world, according to our inborn senses, are able to feel only this world.

The Kabbalists tell us that “this world” is called so, because it is just a small fragment of the vast reality that exists outside our current sensation of reality. If we could develop additional senses, then what we would feel with them would be called the “higher world,” or the “spiritual world.” The sole purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is to develop these additional senses with which we can gain a clear perception and sensation of the higher reality.

If you’re interested in the wisdom of Kabbalah and everything it has to offer at a deeper level, we recommend starting with a beginner course in the fundamentals of Kabbalah. Courses are free, and there are self-study video classes available to start immediately, as well as a live course that starts on Wednesday, June 11, 2014. Sign Up For A Free Course Here »

By realizing our purpose in life, we attain perfection, tranquility, unbounded enjoyment and the ability to transcend time and space while still living in this world. Everyone will reach this awareness, and there are two ways to reach it…

The wisdom of Kabbalah reminds us that human desires progress from simple desires, animal desires—for sex, for shelter, food, family—and when these are satified, we move on to a greater desire, a desire for wealth. When this desire for wealth feels empty, we move on to a desire for fame and/or power. Once we fill that, we are moved on by our emptiness into knowledge. And once we find knowledge empty, we find ourselves in a confusing situation in which nothing from this world can satisfy us. It is at that point at which a completely new level of development becomes accessible to us characterized by a radically different type of desire that will change everything within the human heart.

Up until this time the human heart (when we hear the term “heart” in Kabbalah, it means the sum total of all our desires) is still filled with desires that come from the physical world such as those discussed above. This radically different desire, which is a desire to reach the spiritual, is called “Israel”—from two Hebrew words, Yashar (straight), and El (God)—a desire for a direct connection with Creator, the quality of love and bestowal. The corporeal desires are called nations, the nations of the world, in other words, the desires of the physical world.

Up until this point, the force of development—by way of physical desires—happened unconsciously. But from now on it has to happen in consciously because this new desire, also known as the “point in the heart,” is a spiritual gene and it is like the embryo of the soul. The soul is a desire and it must be filled; the heart must be filled with this desire; it must fill everything despite these corporeal desires. In other words, all of the desires we have need to undergo a transformation, a correction. It is by correcting these desires that the desire to go directly to God can be fulfilled.

Why Does the Attainment of Spirituality Require a Correction of Our Desires?

In our original state, at the root of our soul, we were connected to the Creator as the Creator and the creature. And here, we were all adhered to the Creator as one being, as one unified creature. But because of the Thought of Creation, which is to create a creature and fill it with delight, that was only the starting point; it was the beginning of the system. The quality of the creature which is the will to receive, started to expand purposefully, and as a result of the expansion of this quality, of this desire to receive for myself alone, an ever increasing difference in quality started to grow between the quality of the Creator (which is bestowal), and the quality of the creature (which is reception).

As this egoistic intention expanded in the first creature, the collective soul called Adam ha Rishon (the first man) descended through a system of worlds, through 125 steps to greater and greater egoism until the soul reached a point in which it became separated into what appears to be physicality. That is, the collective soul was shattered into 600,000 parts, each one of these parts having a piece of the original; each one of these parts being a desire. This is only the half-way point of a process—this broken, shattered aspect of the collective soul in which we experience isolation and separation from each other, a kind of antagonism towards each other, and a desire to exploit each other. This is the half-way point and it is going to be corrected. It is going to rise back up through this system of worlds, back into this state of adhesion with the Creator but it can’t do it all at once. So purposefully, it was broken into 600,000 parts.

Each one of these parts was likewise broken down into 613 desires. That is, each individual desire within Adam ha Rishon consists of 613 desires that can be corrected; the parts are small enough. It’s like dividing a huge treasure and giving a coin to each person knowing that each one will return this quality of bestowal. This point in the heart that’s placed inside of a person can be trusted to bring that point back to its origin and put the treasure back together as a collective once again.

Thus, in the point in the heart of the individual who begins to feel this desire for spirituality, this coin from the treasure of the King, plus the 612 other desires that exist in the heart must be transformed bit by bit to resemble to a greater degree the quality of the Creator, to reverse this process.

2 Ways Correction Happens: Painfully or through Attainment

This process of the return to our source and correction (Tikkun), of fulfillment of the Thought of Creation, is going to happen, and all of us, all 600,000 pieces of the collective soul are going to rejoin, and are going to ascend from physical selfish perceptions in a world of suffering, back into a complete whole inter-relationship with each other. In this way we reach the goal of creation, which is adhesion to the Creator and the complete filling of the greatest unbounded desire. It’s going to happen.

But the question is, will it happen consciously, with our agreement, or will we be pushed to it? There is one goal, which is assured, but there are two paths to the goal: One path involves going through the motions unaware of what is causing them, and how to use them optimally to realize life’s best state; the other path involves gaining awareness and insight into the cause and best possible way to relate to reality, and thus achieve the goal in the fastest and most pleasurable way possible.

If you’re interested in the wisdom of Kabbalah and everything it has to offer at a deeper level, we recommend starting with a beginner course in the fundamentals of Kabbalah. Courses are free, and there are self-study video classes available to start immediately, as well as a live course that starts on Wednesday, June 11, 2014. Sign Up For A Free Course Here »

Why Kabbalah Is the Method that Opens Your Eyes

The Kabbalistic knowledge we possess is a result of Kabbalistic investigations performed by those people whose souls were burning with the question regarding the meaning of existence. They used a special method to begin to feel the comprehensive reality, and they wrote books about what they discovered. When Kabbalists first sense the complete reality, they call it “the opening of the eyes.”

The opening of the eyes is a process of climbing up the same degrees by which we all came down from the previously mentioned infinite state (Ein Sof). The wisdom of Kabbalah comprises two parallel orders:

1. From Above downward—the descent of the will to receive from Ein Sof through all the Upper Worlds down to “this world.”

2. From below upward—the ascent of the researcher from this world, through the barrier, to the Upper Worlds, to Ein Sof.

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Why Kabbalah Is a Natural Science

Kabbalists are natural scientists, that reveal the single governing force of nature by achieving equivalence of form with it.

The first researcher to ask about the universe and the forces that conduct humanity was Abraham. He was one of many people who lived in Mesopotamia (ancient Persia), and in those days there was no division into nations. He discovered the method by which we can know the reality beyond our ordinary perception, and described his research and discoveries in his Sefer Yetzira (Book of Creation).

Abraham began to gather students and teach them the wisdom of Kabbalah. In time, this group of Kabbalists became a nation. Many years later, after the ruin of the First and Second Temples, this group of Kabbalists lost its perception of the Upper Reality; they fell from their degree of spiritual consciousness and were able only to perceive their physical reality.

This was actually a gradual process. Some lost their spiritual perception with the ruin of the First Temple, and the rest lost it with the ruin of the Second Temple. Rabbi Akiva was the last great Kabbalist to attain the degree of the spiritual law, “Love thy friend as thyself.” The intensification of egoism induced unfounded hatred, and only religion remained for people, instead of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Yet, despite the decline, a select few remained Kabbalists, and they passed the wisdom on from generation to generation until a time when all of humanity would need it. Today, we must rekindle the ancient science, revive the study of Kabbalah, discover the Upper Reality through it, and pass it on to all humanity.

It is important to note, however, that Kabbalah has nothing to do with religion, and does not imply that we need perform any physical actions. As we have mentioned previously, Kabbalah speaks only about desires and intentions with respect to the Creator.

How Is Human Nature Different from the Creator’s Nature?

As we have said above, the Kli (vessel/creature) that the Creator created became a soul in the world Atzilut. This is the collective, or general soul, called Adam ha Rishon (The First Man). In the beginning, all its parts were bonded in wondrous harmony, and it was filled with the Upper Light. In that state, the sum of the parts created perfection. Later on, the soul experienced a process of shattering and fell to a degree called “below the barrier,” where the spiritual sensation ends. The pieces of the single soul continue to exist below the barrier, but feel detached from one another (Figure 6).

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The Root of Why a Person Eventually Desires to Want to be Like the Creator

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the matter of creation is the desire to receive, and this desire goes through a four phase development, reaching the last phase where it develops it’s own independent desire for the Creator’s status on top of its original fulfillment.

In this last state, the creature receives pleasure from sharing the Creator’s status, and indulges in it. Thus, the creature indulges in two pleasures: the pleasure that comes from the Creator, and the pleasure that comes from sharing the Creator’s status. This state of being is called Ein Sof (No End), and refers to a state where there are no limitations on the desire.

This does not refer to distance, time or space in the physical sense. Rather, this is an observation that pertains to the nature of the desire, meaning that the desire itself is unlimited.

Upon receiving these pleasures, the creature finds once more that there is a source of the pleasure. It discovers that the Giver is the source of the pleasure, and feels itself as the receiver. This time the sensation is valid because the will to receive in this state is the creature’s own, not one that came to it from the Creator.

Consequently, the creature feels that it wants to escape its own desire. It shuns it, and does not want to belong to its own desire any longer. The rejection that it feels toward its own desire induces it to “restrict” it (avoid using it). The desire is still there, but now the creature refrains from using it. Hence, the sensation of fulfillment—the pleasure—ceases.

Have You Ever Wondered How the Soul Comes to Be?

Having remained with a craving, the creature resolves to reach the status of the Creator, the only status that the creature now wishes to have—that of the Giver. It senses that it must give to the Creator without receiving any reward for itself. From this point onward, all its actions will be aimed solely to attain this goal.

To reach this objective, the creature executes a complex series of operations: It builds a chain of concealments (coverings) on the Upper Light, called “worlds” (the Hebrew word for “world” is Olam, which stems from the word Haalama, concealment). At the bottom of the chain of worlds stands “this world.” Because the process that created the creature was comprised of five parts, the lessening of the Upper Light occurs through five degrees of concealment, five worlds whose names are Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya.

In the process of constructing these worlds, the creature builds a surrounding environment for itself. In the world Atzilut, the will to receive is split in two: an inner part—soul–and an outer part—environment (surroundings), in which the soul operates. This stage still does not pertain to our world.

As a result of later events, the soul and its environment will experience a process of shattering, and consequently decline several degrees down to the degree of “this world.” Only now begins the formulation of the matter that makes up our world.

How Spirituality Relates to Our World

From this stage onwards, from the broken will to receive, begins the historic evolution of the material world we are familiar with. Once the universe has been created, the still (inanimate), vegetative, and the animate degrees are made, and following them, the speaking (human) degree is formed (Figure 5).

At its preliminary evolutionary stage, humanity has physical desires for sustenance, reproduction, and family. The body always has these elementary needs to sustain itself; we would need them even if we lived alone on an island.

The second stage in our evolution features a growing desire for wealth, followed by a desire for power and respect. These drives for wealth, power, and respect are considered “social desires,” thus called for two reasons:

A) We absorb these desires from our social environment. Had we lived alone, we would not want them.

B) These desires can only be realized within a social framework.

The final evolutionary stage is the craving for knowledge and erudition. We want more and more knowledge, and want to know and research everything–hence the evolution of science.

Today, as we are nearing the conclusion of this evolution, which has taken us thousands of years, we are beginning to realize that it really did not yield anything. We find ourselves in a unique situation: we want to be filled with pleasures, but can’t find around us any sources of true pleasure. Additionally, we cannot accurately define what it is we want. Thus, we find ourselves perplexed and disoriented, like lost children, not knowing which way to turn. Although we want something, we don’t know what it is or where to find it.

Why a Person Awakens to Want Spirituality

We assign the word, “heart,” to the sum of desires that have evolved in us through our life cycles: physical desires, social desires, and the desire for knowledge. Opposite these desires stands “the point in the heart,” a “speck” of a new desire that evolves above all other desires. In fact, the point in the heart is the awakening desire to know the Upper Force, and it is the awakening of this desire that brings one to the wisdom of Kabbalah as a means to realize this desire.

The awakening of the point in the heart brings confusion, a by-product of this point’s origins in the Upper World. The laws of the Upper World pertain to a reality where time, space, and motion do not apply.

Naturally, our brains are arranged so that we always think in terms of time, space, and motion. But in this new stage, we begin to feel that what determines everything is how we personally sense reality, and that reality in and of itself is unchanging.

Thus, we gradually come to sense that reality is static and that time, space, and motion don’t really exist at all. We begin to realize that all our past experiences happened only within our sensations, that everything depends on how much we have cultivated our abilities to sense.

We need time to adjust to the concept that nothing changes except the measure by which we open our “tools of sensation.” When we have done that, we will begin to sense the world we live in very naturally, simply, without any limitations, preconceptions, rules, oppression, coercion, or exterior pressures.

The point in the heart is the beginning of the desire for spirituality. Today, relatively few people are at this stage, but their numbers are increasing all the time. Eventually, every human being must come to the point where a craving for the Creator is uppermost, a point initiated by the above-mentioned envy, meaning the inherent need in every creature to reach the status of the Creator.

Kabbalah: The Manual for How to Reach the Creator

We must understand that when we said that the Creator is good, we meant that the Creator created us with the intention of bringing us to the best possible state of being, i.e. the Creator’s own state. Hence, this is the state to which we must be brought. Any lesser state than this one will therefore not be considered adequate. It follows that the purpose of Creation is to allow us to reach the status of the Creator.

In order to reach the level of the Creator, however, we must come to feel that our desire is totally opposite that of the Creator, that the Creator wants only to give, and that we want only to receive. This is the emptiness and darkness of the Kli (vessel) as opposed to the Light. Acknowledging this oppositeness builds us as creatures. For us to know the Creator, we must first know the opposite state from his, the “anti-Creator,” a state of unbearable torments that poses a big question mark about our ability to endure these torments.

It is fair to say that we haven’t yet begun the process of knowing the anti-Creator. To feel our complete oppositeness from the Creator, we will have to emotionally decline to much lower degrees. The wisdom of Kabbalah is surfacing now because it is impossible to experience these states physically, and Kabbalah is a means of easing our way through the states of oppositeness from the Creator, to experience them in our consciousness and our minds, not in our bodies.

We can compare this process to a person in pain. That person can either wait until the pain becomes intolerable and then turn to a physician, or turn to the doctor as soon as the pain appears. In the latter case, early diagnosis of the problem will spare one the suffering that comes with the actual breakout of the disease. In other words, a clever person takes medication as soon as symptoms of an illness appear, thus preventing its onset.

By so doing, one can evolve consciously, through reasoning, and thus the Kli (creature) learns to become aware of its oppositeness from the Light. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that helps us evolve through knowledge instead of through pain, and it is appearing today to allow humankind to acknowledge the evil that lies in egoism before it fully manifests itself, inflicting horrendous ruin in all aspects of life.

Hence, the wisdom of Kabbalah as the means to achieve both our evolution and the purpose of Creation should reach all of humanity. The more people engage in Kabbalah, and the more we circulate it throughout the world, the better off we will all be.

“Here Is a Method that Is Helping People Attain Spirituality in This Life” is based on the book, Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life by Dr. Michael Laitman.

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