January 15, 2025
March 25, 2014 at 6:30 am · Filed under Articles, Books
From the Beginning of Creation to the Big Bang
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains, that after the initially created desire to receive goes through stages of development, forming the system of the spiritual worlds, a special Partzuf, called Adam, the primordial common soul, was created.
Although this common soul was created without free choice and without the ability to become similar to its Maker, the subsequent “breakage” of this Partzuf created the opportunity for free, independent development, to achieve the purpose creation—to become similar to its Maker.
Therefore, Adam’s shattered soul is our common origin. Being a Partzuf, Adam’s structure was a perfect replica of its parent (corrected) Partzuf. In breaking, Adam extended the structure of the spiritual worlds (worlds of bestowal) to its lowest point—ultimate reception.
In consequence, all that exists in the spiritual worlds exists in our world, as well. For this reason, the same four-stage pattern by which the stages of desire evolved, followed by the four-stage evolution of the spiritual worlds, exists in our physical world. As we explore how our world has evolved, we should keep in mind the desires that evoke and guide it.
Time, as we know it, began approximately 14 billion years ago. From the Kabbalistic, spiritual perspective, the “big bang” was the shattering of Adam’s soul. The reason we see it as a material event is that we see the world through corporeal (self-centered) eyes. If we could see it from the perspective of the force that induced this massive explosion we call “the big bang,” we would see it as an outcome of Adam’s attempt to receive using the last, and greatest desire.
What Is the Difference between Survival of the Fittest in Darwinism and in Kabbalah?
As the original desires evolved in stages, their mundane parallels appeared and corrected one at a time, from the easiest to the hardest. Now, as each desire manifests itself in our universe, Nature, which is synonymous with the Creator, must “teach” it to work so that it contributes to the well-being and sustainability of the universe.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 24, 2014 at 6:30 am · Filed under Articles, Books
The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how the Creator’s quality of bestowal creates a desire, out of nothing, a desire to receive pleasure, and how this creature has similarity with the end of its development.
After an initial four phase development the creature realizes its total opposition to its source, end enters a new phase, using a bestowing intention to progress towards the desired similarity.
We learn how the creation receives what pleasure it can in order to bestow, and builds itself to be as similar as possible to its Creator. However, even after all the worlds have been established in the Partzuf, and all the lights that could be received in order to bestow are received in the Partzuf, there still remains one desire that cannot be made to work in the Partzuf—the desire to be like the Creator. This is the desire that the host in Ashlag’s allegory was referring to when he said, “In this case, there has never been born a person who could fulfill your wishes.” This is the most intense desire, the core desire of Stage Four, and at the same time it is utterly unachievable.
So once all the desires were exploited to the maximum, the creation’s (the company) marketing department (surrounding light), reminded the company management—the Rosh (head) of creation—that there was still more light to be received. Now it was the Rosh’s duty to examine this new desire and determine if it could receive this desire with the intention to bestow.
Do You Fall for this Hidden Temptation that Is Impossible To Resist?
For this reason, the Rosh assembled a special board meeting to discuss the fate of this last desire. In this meeting, the argument for not using it was that it was too strong to handle. Indeed, how can one handle a desire to be like one’s parent? If the Partzuf actually received what it wished for in that desire, it would be similar to a child instantly becoming an adult, without the knowledge and experience acquired over the years of growing up. Clearly, this was too complicated and too dangerous a desire to handle.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 21, 2014 at 10:10 am · Filed under Articles, Books
In “What Are the Four Developmental Stages of the Primordial Desire in Creation?” we discussed the emergence of the desire to receive in Stage One, and the desire to give in Stage Two, as offshoots of the primordial desire to give in the Root. We also showed how because of its desire to give, the desire to receive was reactivated in Stage Three and maximized in Stage Four. Maximizing the desire to receive caused it to want not merely to enjoy, but to actually become like its progenitor—the Root Stage—and even to have the status of the Root Stage’s primacy. The subsequent realization that this was not (yet) possible induced a sense of inherent inferiority in Stage Four, which induced a restriction—elimination of any sensation of pleasure (light).
Also, because Stage Four’s real desire is for the Root’s primacy, it does not settle for the unbounded pleasure received in Stage One. Instead, it wishes to obtain the nature of the Root, the Thought of Creation, and consequently the Root’s primacy.
Thus, the elimination of pleasure in Stage Four is neither a result of its inability to receive, nor a consequence of the Root’s inability to give. The Root gives incessantly, but the desire to receive does not want to receive something as degrading as charity (as described by Ashlag in “The Giving of the Torah”). for this reason, because Stage Four wishes to acquire the giver’s thought and become like its Creator, its restriction is an offshoot of its decision to not receive unless with the intention to bestow, as this reciprocates the Creator’s desire to bestow.
The Structure of a Partzuf
To achieve that, Stage Four builds a three-part mechanism, called Partzuf (face), to determine if it should receive light, and if so, how much, with the aim to bestow at any given moment opportunity. The top section of the Partzuf is called Rosh (Head). Its task is to determine how much of the abundance (light) is to be received by the desire to receive. The desire to receive itself constitutes the bottom part of the Partzuf, which is called Guf (Body).
Read the rest of this entry »
March 20, 2014 at 10:57 am · Filed under Articles, Books
In “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Baal HaSulam divides the onset of Creation into five stages and one restriction, but we can cluster them into three groups. Think of the first two groups as a car and the fuel for its engine, and imagine that the third group is the driver.
The first group contains only Stage Zero, the Root. This is the desire to give, the energy that creates and sustains the car called “Creation.”
The second group—Stages One and Two—builds a “platform” for evolution. This is the car itself. In a sense, the platform that the two stages have built resembles what Richard Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene as “The primeval soup,” the oceanic substrate that contained the ingredients for life’s inception.
The third group—Stages Three and Four—is “the driver.” Its role is to start the engine of evolution—the interaction between the desires. As we will explain below and in the next chapter, the restriction is the wheel with which creation is driven toward its purpose: discovering the Thought of Creation.
Stages Zero and One
In Kabbalistic terms, the existence of a desire to bestow without a desire to receive is called “the Root Stage” or “Stage Zero.” The Root Stage is immediately followed by its mandatory offshoot—“Stage One”—the desire to receive, which is permeated with the abundance given to it by the Root, the desire to bestow.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 10, 2014 at 7:56 am · Filed under Articles, Books
Who Else Knows How Widespread the Current Crisis Is?
The world is feeling the effects of a seemingly unsolvable global crisis, affecting all levels of human activity. Since 2008 tens of millions of people throughout the world have lost their jobs, their savings, their homes, but most importantly—their hopes for the future.
Our health, it seems, is not more wholesome than our wealth. Modern medicine, the pride and joy of Western civilization, is grappling with resurfacing diseases previously believed to be extinct. According to a report published by the Global Health Council,
“Diseases once believed to be under control have re-emerged as major global threats. The emergence of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, viruses and other parasites poses new challenges in controlling infectious diseases. Co- infection with multiple diseases creates obstacles to preventing and treating infections.”
Earth, too, is not as hospitable as before. Books such as James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia, Ervin Laszlo’s The Chaos Point, and films such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth are just three examples of a cavalcade of alarming reports on Earth’s deteriorating climate.
As global warming melts the ice caps in the poles, sea levels rise. This has already caused dramatic shifts and tragic events. A report by Stephan Faris in Scientific American lists some of the places already affected by climate change.
In March, 2009, Peter Popham, a writer for The Independent, provided another angle to the climate predicament: “Global warming is dissolving the Alpine glaciers so rapidly that Italy and Switzerland have decided they must re-draw their national borders to take account of the new realities.”
A more tragic result of climate change is hunger, caused by extended droughts in some areas and constant flooding in others. According to the World Food Program, nearly a billion (1,000,000,000) people worldwide are constantly hungry. Worse yet, in excess of nine million (9,000,000) people die every year from hunger and related causes, more than half of whom are children. This means that today, in the most technologically advanced era in the history of humankind, a child dies every six seconds due to lack of food and water.
In our homes, problems abound, as well. The New York Times announced that according to a census released by the American Community Survey, divorce rates have risen to the point that today there are more unmarried couples in America than married ones. It is the first time in history that single-parent families are the norm, and double-parent ones are the exception.
Many scientists, politicians, NGOs, and UN related organizations warn that humanity is facing a risk of unprecedented catastrophes on a global scale. Anything from mutated avian flu through nuclear war, to a massive earthquake could wipe out millions and drive billions into destitution.
What Everybody Ought to Know about Interdependence
Yet, crises have been occurring throughout history. Our era is not the first in which humanity has been at risk. The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century and the two World Wars easily outweigh the peril that our current plight presents. Nevertheless, what distinguishes the current crisis from those previous is the tension characterizing the current state of humanity. Our society has gone to the extreme in two directions that seem to conflict with one another—globalization and the interdependence it entails on the one hand, and increasing alienation and personal, social, and political narcissism on the other. And that is a recipe for a disaster such as the world has never seen, whether in the financial sector or beyond.
Read the rest of this entry »
« Previous entries
