How Can the Spiritual Reality be Perceived?

The gist of our work is the making of the Kli. If we know how to build our tool of perception correctly, we will understand where we truly are. Our substance consists of a desire to receive delight and pleasure.

If we can make this substance sensitive to insights concerning reception and bestowal, we will be able to use it to perceive the spiritual world. It is similar to the way a block of crude iron is melted to create engine parts. When assembled correctly, they yield a working engine.

Similarly, we must work with ourselves to perceive spirituality. Building the spiritual Kli is a lot like sculpting—you must carve the raw material and file it until the desired shape appears. The raw material, in this case, consists of our desires, our thoughts, and intentions.

How a Change of Intention Enables a Person to Feel Nature

The Creator formed Creation with the intention of doing good to His creatures. To realize His goal, He created a Kli—a will to receive—that would receive His benefit. At first, this will is shapeless. Shaping the will to receive is the work of us all until it is robed in its final form—bestowal, the form of the Creator.

The substance itself remains as it was first made—a will to receive pleasure—but changing the intention to bestowal likens its modus operandi to that of the Creator. Thus, the intention is the form.

Kabbalah books depict the forms that one should create in the will to receive, degree-by-degree, to finally sense the benefits that come from the Creator. The general will to receive consists of 613 desires, and each of these is topped either by an aim to receive, or an aim to give. These forms of reception or bestowal that “cover” each desire determine one’s degree of spiritual attainment.

A degree is a certain level of strength of the Form of bestowal. This enables the benefits of the Creator to manifest within the will to receive. The diverse fillings within the will to receive are the origin of the many names of the Creator. It is the perceiving individual who names the Creator according to the flavors he or she feels within the Creator’s bestowal.

What Kabbalah Researches

Once the Kabbalists attained the nature of reality and studied it, they divided the manner of recognition of reality into four levels: Matter, Form in Matter, Abstract Form, and Essence. Kabbalah is a practical study method that leads researchers thoroughly and systematically along the evolutionary trail. As in any other scientific method, Kabbalah teaches the researcher what to do, which results are to be expected, and expounds on the reasons for them. Kabbalah does not engage in depicting theoretical states that one cannot carry out independently and with full awareness.

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Why We all Strive for Balance in Our Lives

As children, many of us believed that the world was filled with all kinds of forces, like ghosts in fairytales. As we grew, we gradually relinquished this belief, but every now and again we still feel as though these forces actually exist.

The truth of the matter is that we are searching for them every single moment. We want to know about the world we live in because if we do not, we will never be freed of the sensation of uncertainty, to live in peace and confidence. We are curious to understand the world we live in and to improve our state of being. This curiosity evokes questions such as, “Who am I?” ”Where am I?” “What shall become of me?” Such questions prompt us to strive to know the reality in which we live.

Reality is divided into two parts: the human being and his or her surroundings. Some claim that we should only study and change ourselves, asserting that by so doing, we will feel tranquil and regard the world more positively. Others, however, say that we should stay as we are, make the most of what the world brings to our doorsteps, and change the world to fit our needs. Either way, it does not seem that our lives are working very well.

The best state in which we can get along with the world is that of equilibrium. If everyone understood me and wanted exactly what I want, that would be a state of equilibrium. There is no state more perfect than the sense of being in balance with the world. It can only be compared to being a fetus in my mother’s womb: everything exists only to care for me; there is no need to erect any defenses.

Science refers to that state as “homeostasis.” The Greek word, homo, means same or similar, and stasis is Greek for condition. This is the state of being that every object in reality strives to achieve.

Here’s a Quick Way to Understand the Limits of Your Perception

The laws of physics, chemistry, and biology explain that the only reason for any movement of matter, whether still, vegetative, animate, or speaking, is its longing to be in balance with its surroundings. For us, as human beings, to be in balance with our surroundings, we must know about the nature of the surrounding world and how we can equalize with it.

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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 »

Are You Aware of the Amount of Reality that Exists that You Don’t Perceive?

The wisdom of Kabbalah (“reception” in Hebrew), as its name implies, teaches us how to receive. It explains how we perceive our surrounding reality. To understand who we are, we must first learn how we come to sense reality around us, and how to cope with the events that befall us. The wisdom of Kabbalah provides us with all these insights.

The wisdom of Kabbalah does not come to an individual naturally, but only when one reaches the right level of ripeness. This is why Kabbalah is being exposed to so many these days, and this is also the reason why it was hidden for thousands of years.

Previous generations believed that the world exists by itself, whether or not we are there to perceive it, the world is the way it is and exists objectively, independently. Afterwards, people began to understand that our picture of the world is shaped by who we are. In other words, the picture of the world is a combination of our own attributes and external circumstances.

Therefore, we perceive only a part of everything around us. For example, right now there are numerous waves outside us, but we can only perceive one of them, the wave that we are attuned to perceive. Hence, we perceive external conditions according to our internal qualities. If we have nothing in common with the outside world, we will not perceive or feel any of it.

Kabbalah speaks extensively of our perception of time, space, and motion. Why does it seem to us that reality expands, that it is at a certain distance from us? What is the source of our perpetual sense of movement and change? Is this a result of internal processes that we are experiencing, or does it exist regardless of them?

The more we progress in the study of our internal being, the more we find that our perception of reality depends on us. Once humankind sufficiently evolves in knowledge, science, and technology, we will be able to perceive what the wisdom of Kabbalah has to offer.

Here Is a Method that Is Helping People to Perceive the Entirety of Reality

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that around us there is only “The Upper Light,” a single force in a permanent, unchanging state. Nothing exists besides this Upper Light. In such a state, the words existent or nonexistent mean the same because we only measure changes. When there are no changes, there is nothing to measure.

Within each of us is a “gene,” a bit of information that constantly evokes in us new sensations and emotions. We picture the world from within these sensations, which is where we derive the awareness that we exist. All these processes occur within us and design our perception of the outside world.

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If we want to obtain a different, opposite perception of reality, we should acquire the additional properties suitable for this: the quality of giving instead of receiving, and bestowal instead of consumption. Our constant desire is to absorb everything into “ourselves,” but this is only half of nature. The other half is bestowal, the tendency toward the outside.

People who have already received this second force of nature and, together with it, have acquired the perception of the whole of reality, are called Kabbalists. The science itself is called the science of Kabbalah, the science of reception, because a person acquires all of reality, rather than just the tiny part he is able to absorb in his current qualities. Then, as Kabbalists say, a person reaches a state where he rises above the current perception to an eternal, perfect reality. [Source: Dr. Michael Laitman, “The Path to a Perfect Reality.”]

What Is Unique about the Wisdom of Kabbalah?

Philosophy and any other of our attempts to understand reality are based not on research but solely on reason, which is really based on what is not known, as a rule, they are based on our egoism, but we do not realize it.

As a result, philosophy died a long time ago. All so-called spiritual teachings are gradually vanishing, since people rise above them and see that they are invalid. There are no substantiations or verifications concerning the seriousness of multiple spiritual teachings. They’re exclusively based upon our sensations, but as we all know, feelings can be very diverse; that’s why presently there are about 2,800 religions and belief systems, and we see them gradually disappearing.

Kabbalah is not for or against them. It stands aside them; it explores nature as physics or any other regular science does. The major principle of Kabbalah is investigating nature, becoming similar to it, and by doing so, succeeding. Kabbalah is a very concrete science; it does not discuss the soul in the way other religions do.

A soul in Kabbalah signifies an extremely serious and profound attainment and understanding of the world in which we currently live. The purpose of this kind of realization is staying afloat and protecting ourselves from a huge storm that approaches us in response to our ignorance and unwillingness to follow the laws of nature. [Source: Dr. Michael Laitman, “Kabbalah and Occult Teachings.”]

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