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Because knowledge is the highest of desires of this world after which we start wanting to attain the world that exists beyond our five senses. Before that we strive, first, just to feel, in our sense of touch, various plastic toys, and people, first mom, then someone of the opposite sex perhaps, we wish to rear children. These forms exist in our desire, want it or not. It’s there somewhere, eternal. We always want to delight in food, and various other pleasures of the body. Realizing the limitations of all these fulfilments, we also wish to make these fulfilments more accessible, so we desire money. It’s a quantitative way of guaranteeing I’ll have these fulfilments and also to ensure my safety, which is my ease, since my most basic need is not to have to move, since movement is suffering. Once I’ve secured these basics, I also wade into a new domain of pleasure, which is the social domain, and here I use whatever I can, to gain Respect, honor. If my desire is at this level, then I use the other desires, to this end. So it could be that I need more and more money, to get respect. It could be that I acquire vast knowledge, but it’s to aim at a lower level desire, of respect. Or, I could use the fact that I already have respect, for whatever reason, in order to get an even lower order desire, such as money. For example, I use by famous name to get money and I don’t care about the adulation so much. After moving through these degrees, where I am involved in all of them – food, sex, family, money, power, honor and knowledge – but I use them in a way that all the others serve the degree of desire that is my primary desire – I move through these desire like a baby moves from wanting to play with a ball, to wanting to play with dolls, to wanting to play with other kids, to greater and greater desires, up to, say, wanting to win a Nobel prize in physics. We too, as adults, move through the desires (not necessarily in a single lifetime) until we reach the desire for knowledge. But not in order to win a Nobel prize (honor/money) or for the sake of creating a nuclear bomb (power), but for the sake of knowing the truth itself. And within this Knowledge desire it could be that I am not developed enough to realize that to settle on a certain philosopher’s summary of “the truth” – say, Plato, Nietzsche, etc. – is not actually the complete picture and perhaps not even the correct one. And here it is possible that I discover in me a new desire that doesn’t belong to any Earthly ones. It’s the Point in the Heart, a spark that fell from the Upper World, into my desire. It demands actual attainment of the wisdom of Kabbalah specifically. It can’t settle for merely hearing about the Upper Worlds by those who attained them. When it learns the wisdom of Kabbalah, it feels like a truth that has always existed deep within, as if it somehow knows all of this already. It has to learn about the state it used to be in before it fell and became enrobed in the body of this world so that it can rise back up, in full attainment of the Upper World, even more concretely than we feel and attain this world. Every person will go through these stages of development of the desire as surely as a child goes through infancy, adolescence, etc. This means that everyone, too, will attain the purpose of this development which is the awakening of the Point in the Heart, and attainment of the Creator.
Hi SJE,
It’s ok to be lost with this material, it’s speaking of a reality we don’t feel yet, but which we can start to feel gradually.
Baal HaSulam writes in Item 155 of the Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot:
“Although they do not understand what they are learning, through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls…Hence, even when he does not have the vessels, when he engages in this wisdom, mentioning the names of the Lights and the vessels related to his soul, they immediately shine upon him to a certain extent. However, they shine for him without clothing the interior of his soul, for lack of able vessels to receive them. Yet, the illumination one receives time after time during the engagement draws upon him grace from Above, imparting him with abundance of sanctity and purity, which bring him much closer to achieving perfection.
Therefore, if you have specific questions, we can delve into them and come closer to these matters.
Hi Brad,
Let us know any you notice that are not in the definitions section. They should have been provided throughout the course, but we’re happy to define any you need.
On the one hand, you’re on the right track in your thinking that as we go more towards connection we don’t need a human leader because we are all in the revelation of the Upper Force, the Creator who leads all of reality. And then there can be no disagreement or confusion. All is clear to all. But as long as some of us are not in open attainment of the Creator, there has to be a person or a handful of persons who together, with a single opinion, lead the others. And actually, the Upper World is built in such a way (and this is why humans are prone to attach themselves to false gurus) that in the Upper Worlds there is always an Upper Degree that you must nullify to, in order to rise to the next degree. In other words your teacher is always your teacher. As you rise through the degrees, you discover them higher than before. So, on the other hand, the concept of one teacher above the student never goes away. I will always have my teacher, Rav Laitman; he will always have his, RABASH, and RABASH will always have his, Baal HaSulam.
Hi Duke,
You’re right that one can’t understand with the intellect. Not really. Because, look, our mind is a product of the world around us. Our language too: descriptions of the world we inhabit. We don’t inhabit the Upper World. It’s utterly concealed from our senses. So, no language exists in our vocabulary in any language that can describe the Upper World. But generally speaking, the Endless World means that all reality is your desire. Yours. What you see, what you don’t see yet. And it’s all for you. You also don’t feel what’s before you as an endless world, full of abundant possibilities to enjoy, fulfilling the goal of Creation, which was to delight the Creature. But it has to be enjoyed in a different way. In a form called Receiving in Order to Bestow, so that we, the receivers, would not be in an opposite form to the Creator, whose quality is bestowal, but that we would both receive and achieve the main goal, which is Equivalence with Him – since nothing is better than that. So, there is a process, long but worth it, of inverting our pure Will to Receive, first to Restrict it, then turn it to Bestow in order to Bestow, and later, finally, to receive in order to bestow. It’s a great adventure, in and of itself. But it’s all in feeling, not mind. Your mind is a product of your feeling in your current five senses. And your spiritual mind has to also be a product of your feeling (which you don’t have yet, not of the spiritual world). You can’t grasp anything of it with the mind that developed in you out of the experiences of our world. You have to start with a Point, which has no volume, a black point, that is the beginning of the spiritual sense. You have to develop it, very consciously and with purpose, strength and dedication. This happens through the Reforming Light that one draws in the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah – to more and more absorb materials by those who experienced the Upper World and wrote to us from there – especially Baal HaSulam and Rabash, as well as all kinds of exercises they give. This is the method we provide here at KabU.
Hi Esther,
All psychological states (and all of us are in a certain psychological state that characterizes our perception of reality, in which we feel ourselves existing in a world, in which there was some history before I existed and there will be people existing after I die) are a product of the shattering of the singular system, in which there weren’t different people, but one Creation, a single desire. Now, I experience a shard of this once whole desire. My whole essence is this desire. And if I would go deeper into my true essence, it’s the whole integral desire that is common to all those broken pieces of it, which include all the people that exist and ever have existed and will exist. All of us, towards the true, whole and perfect reality are truly like someone with a severe cognitive disability. Towards that reality we are blind, deaf, unable to taste, and completely distorted in all possible ways. We don’t even know in what world we exist. And that’s why people are miserable in it, and why the world is going in the direction it is. It’s clearer by the day to everyone that no good future is possible for humanity. With this comes the increase in mental illness, both inborn and acquired. All of this is a product of the shattered perception of reality, which is inborn in every person to varying extents. We need to correct this perception. Through connection with others, for which we need the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is the wisdom of how to connect the shattered desire, we reveal the whole, eternal reality, above time and space. And there, there is no mental illness. Now, those in our world who are born with a severe mental illness or disability, they play a special role in the system that includes all people. All people are on the path of suffering actually, and this is just their particular participation in the correction of the broken vessel, in an unconscious manner. And all of us are involved in the gradual, painful correction of this broken vessel. If we have an awakening to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we need to move to a conscious, proactive, and far more pleasant and quick correction process.
