Blind and in the Dark

As a person begins to transition from an animal-like existence, concerned only with survival, to the level called “human” or “speaking” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, deep existential questions and feelings of despair often well up.  We begin to see such attainments as food, sex, family, money, honor, and power as shallow and unsatisfying, and begin to identify with an inner longing for something more.

Questions that define the human being: the Eternal Question, “Why?”

• Who am I?
• Why do I exist?
• Where did we come from? Where are we going? And what is our purpose here?
• Have we been in this world before?
• Why is there suffering in this world and can we avoid it?
• How can we attain peace, fulfillment, and happiness?

From generation to generation, people try to find answers to these painfully insistent questions. The fact that they continue from generation to generation indicates that we still have not received satisfactory answers to them.

Why the Nearsighted Don’t See the Stars

While studying nature and the universe, we discover that all that surrounds us exists and functions according to precise and purposeful laws. Yet, when we examine ourselves, the zenith of Creation, we find that humanity seemingly exists outside of this system of rational laws.

For example, when we observe how wisely nature created our bodies and how precisely and purposefully every cell in our bodies functions, we are unable to answer the question: “Why does the entire organism exist?”

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Every Material Object Has a Spiritual Force that Controls It

When a Kabbalist has risen to the spiritual level of the studied object, he or she acquires its qualities and thereby has full insight. This person can practically operate various forms of matter, even before they manifest in matter, as if observing our illusions from aside!

Just as with any other teaching, Kabbalah uses certain terminology and symbols to describe objects and actions: a spiritual force, a world, or a Sefira is called by the name of the worldly object it controls. Since every material object or force corresponds to the spiritual object or force that controls it, an utterly precise conformity is created between the name taken from the corporeal world and its spiritual root, its source.

To Master the Universe, Connect Spiritual Forces with Material Objects

Therefore, only a Kabbalist, who clearly knows the correspondence between spiritual forces and material objects, can assign names to spiritual objects. Only one who has attained the spiritual level of an object can see the consequence of its influence in our world.

How Spiritual Messages are Formatted for Our World

Kabbalists write books and pass their knowledge to others using the “language of the branches.” This language is exceptionally accurate because it is based on the connection between the spiritual root and the corporeal branch. It cannot be altered due to the invariable connection between an object and its spiritual root.  (In contrast), our earthly language is gradually losing its accuracy because it is connected only to the branch and not to the root.

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Can We Study What We Can’t Perceive?

The corporeal world is full of forces and phenomena that we do not feel directly, such as electricity and magnetism, but even small children are familiar with their names and the results of their actions. For example, although our knowledge of electricity is limited, we have learned to utilize this phenomenon for our purposes and define it as naturally as we give names to such things as bread and sugar.

How Our Senses Box Us In

Similarly, it is as if all names in Kabbalah give us a real and objective idea about a spiritual object. On second thought, just as we have no idea about spiritual objects or even the Creator Himself, so are we equally ignorant of any objects, even those we can grip with our hands. This is because we perceive not the object itself, but our reaction to its impact on our senses.

These reactions give us the semblance of knowledge, though the essence of the object itself remains totally concealed from us. Moreover, we are utterly unable to understand even ourselves. All that we know about ourselves is limited to our actions and reactions.

What’s the Matter and Why?

As an instrument of the world’s research, science divides into two parts: the study of properties of matter and the study of its form. In other words, there is nothing in the universe that does not consist of matter and form. For example, a table is a combination of matter and form, where matter, such as wood, is the basis that carries the form—that of a table. Or take the word, “liar,” where matter (one’s body) is a carrier of the form, falsehood.

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If we could turn this outbreak of desires into an outbreak of desires for spirituality, then these desires would be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. Since we are currently not doing it, they are the worst thing that ever happened to us.

When the Mishnah sages (first and second centuries CE) declare that “Envy, lust, and honor bring a man out of the world” (Mishnah, Avot 4:21), Kabbalah explains that they don’t mean it in a bad way. On the contrary, it means that if you know how to work with these desires, they will elevate you beyond your present reality, your present world, and let you into the spiritual world.

In the last several years, it has become increasingly evident that human society isn’t becoming more united. Instead, we are showing, and even nurturing, alienation, animosity among nations, among different factions of the same nation, and even among members of the same family. At the same time, globalization is forcing us to increase and tighten our level of cooperation on all the levels we just mentioned. This tension is now culminating, and humanity is on the verge of exploding.

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The Key to Organizing Life in the Best Possible Way Today

The soul is like a computer program. Before it dresses in substance, it is no more than a thought, an idea, a collection of connections between events in various situations. The system the Creator built is also like a computer program; the Creator is the program. If we study it, we will be able to organize the situations we face in the best possible way for ourselves and for society. That program is not detached from our thoughts, rather it is inside us. But it is a still an object in and of itself.

Nature Is Unchanging

The program, the Creator, doesn’t change, no matter how much we might like it to. But thoughts and prayers, meaning our desires, are what change us. The Creator is a desire: “The desire to delight (please) the creatures.” As a result of past suffering, we become better suited for this program; we feel it is suitable for us, that it seems to treat us mercifully.

Kabbalah explains that the upper force, meaning the plan of the Creator, is complete, and it is only the vessels that change. Everything depends on the changes in the vessels, not on the light, because the light does not change.

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