Chapter 2

Chapter 2:  

Perception of Reality

Kabbalah is a wisdom, a science that enables humanity to feel, understand and know our upper spiritual reality. It addresses the purpose of life, by causing us to question our existence: Who am I? Why was I Created?  What is my ultimate destination? What is it that enables a person to feel, know and enter the ultimate reality, the Sabbath Rest?

 Drawing 2:1

When we examine ourselves from the perspective of Kabbalah, we will see that we live, our existence within a limited reality, the 10%, also called our flesh; this reality, this flesh is similar to a solitary confinement, that house our spirit, that should be unbounded; in which everything is completely interconnected, that is filled with infinite pleasure, complete knowing and contact with everything that exists in this physical world.

Yet the Kabbalists tell us, the ones who have attained the whole system, for a certain purpose we descended from this way of existence, through this way of being, through a system called “worlds.” Worlds are Olamim, from the Hebrew word Olam, which comes from the root He’elem, which means “to hide,” “hiddenness.” We descended from this complete connection with the Spiritual Reality called the CREATOR, until we reached a place, a cross over point called a barrier, and our existence happens in a very limited way here, in a experience, a cocoon called “our Flesh, the world.” Our world is a place that has no sensation whatsoever of any of these spiritual worlds, all of this is what is considered to be the physical world, corporality, the world of the flesh. It is through experiencing this cocoon called the flesh that we graduate like a butterfly into the Spiritual reality.

If anyone wants to know the purpose of life, the meaning of your life, it would be a good thing if you knew what the overall plan of Creation was. It seems like that is an impossible thing; it is almost a source of jokes that anyone could possibly answer that question today, about the meaning and purpose of life, but that is where the Kabbalists start. Those who have attained this entire reality tell us that there is a plan, a blue print for all of reality and for all of creation. They tell us that the purpose of life is to create a creature “Messiyah” and to fill that creature with unbounded delight.

 That is the complete and total meaning, purpose, direction of everything that ever can occur, being occur, and will occur, and it only happens for that purpose. In that thought, in that intention, in that thought behind all of creation, all of the rules for everything that would occur were set down. All the principal laws that govern the spiritual and physical worlds, all are rooted in that one thought. Nothing that is happens in this world happens for any other reason than in order to create a creature and bring that creature to unbounded delight. That was fulfilled perfectly in the Messiyah Yahushua.

What is it that keeps a person out of Spiritual Maturity? What is a person? Well, we have to understand how our perception of this reality, the way in which we perceive reality, causes a hidden-ness for us.

A person is like a closed box with five openings. These five openings are our five senses. Now, surrounding the person is an upper reality, a complete reality, the spiritual world, and from that spiritual reality things approach us. That is what appears to be an exterior reality of some sort of unformed entity, approaches the person and through the five senses that we possess, we determine what that entity or thing is; in other words, what does that reality consist of, according to my senses.

When a spiritual entity “inanimate, vegetable or human” approaches the box “us”, the flesh, something abnormal happens. It doesn’t actually enter the box. The flesh is a closed system, rather than allow this spiritual object to come in, it hits a barrier, a kind of transducer, like an eardrum or a retina or a nerve, or a taste bud on the surface of the skin. Instead of understanding the entity on the outside, this entity gets reduced and is passed through a program. As it passes through this program, it gets interpreted into something that we can understand according to certain values within the program. Once it passes through this filter, it enters our box or this body, and what it produces is our reality.

It doesn’t matter how sensitive these five sensors are. For example Let’s say it is your eye; it can be the Hubble telescope or an electron microscope, or you could be completely nearsighted and unable to see the thing directly in front of you. It doesn’t matter the degree of sensitivity. What matters is the programming, what happens here within this subjective system called our body, or the box; whatever it is that it comes into contact with, it can only be what the program of our Ego says that it is. Not what it really is, but a reduction that can be understood by the program.

Here is a case in point. Mar 6:47  And when evening was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and YAHusua was alone on the land. 48  And He saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night He cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them. 49  But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out: 50  For they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid. 51  And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. It was not yet the spiritual reality of the Disciple, but it was that of YAHushua. The Disciple were afraid when they saw someone walking on the water coming towards them. When in their limited reality this should not be happening.

What is this program that causes this limit? This program is called “egoism.” It is self concern, “What is in it for me?”  “How is this going to affect me?” As a result of this, the person is locked into a subjective view of all these things, only in relation to how it feels inside of the box. At no point during the experience did the disciple had any sense of what really exists outside of the box. This is objective reality; and this is the limited portion of it that we can perceive.

We’ve got a problem because every single one of our five senses works by exactly the same program. Not one of them can tell us anything about what exists outside of that program. Why is this? Because, we are eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.

In order to know what surrounds us, what the greater reality is, we need to develop an additional sense, this is what the Kabbalists call “a sixth sense.” Not the sixth sense of the lady who tells your fortune, but a sense that we actually can make contact with what exists outside; that is not restricted by the programming of the knowledge of good and evil.

In order to do that, well you have to posses the desire to do it. It is not possible to work outside of the influence of the box, to build something outside of this box as long as we are satisfied only with “What’s in it for me?”

The thought of Creation has built on the laws that bring a person to this complete fulfillment. There is a motivating force that allows us to come to the point where we need to get out of the box. If we understand both what we are, which is the will to receive, “What is in this for me?”, that we are built as egoists; but that is okay, because it is actually what we need in order to reach this fulfillment, there is nothing wrong with it. We just have to learn how to use it properly, how to harness its desire, and how to harness the force of development that is the thought of Creation has provided for us.

What is it that moves things in reality? What makes things happen? No one does anything in this world, whether it is an inner thing or whether it is a spiritual thing that is beyond this world. Everything that happens happens only as a result of a desire.

You’re sitting there. Maybe you’re shifting in your chair; where your eyes are moving too and fro, maybe you picked up something to drink. Any motion that you are now involved in, is happening only as a result of one calculation, that you have become uncomfortable where you are, that a need has evolved in you, has appeared, and you have moved to a new position or a new situation, that you believe will bring you more pleasure than the one that you were in before.

This lack off and the feeling of pleasure and the force of desire is what motivates everything in reality; and this will eventually take a person from the corporal world, from our perceptions of the physical world, the limitations that we experience, and the suffering that goes along with it. It will bring a person, if properly used, past that barrier and into the Spiritual World in this way.

We all feel desires and we feel them change, but we don’t really pay attention to this system that is placed in us by nature, well enough so that we can understand what it is doing for us. We all understand that our first sort of grasp of what pleasure is, is just survival-type pleasures. The first category, we see pleasure as and require: sex, food, and shelter. All of our efforts, our work, what we perceive around us, the whole purpose of our lives has to do with finding and fulfilling these Desires, and this is a desire that we have in common with animals. It doesn’t require other people; we just need this to survive.

Once we have this fulfilled, we realize that life is about much more than that and we can’t be satisfied with it and a second category of desires appears. This is a desire for wealth. Wealth is the accumulation of the first category, so that I’ll never have to worry about it again, I will be able to control it. Once we fill this desire for wealth, we come to the feeling that “is that all there is?” something else grows in us. Now, notice that it is not simply that it is another desire that is growing, but it is a greater desire, one that encompasses the one before it.

In other words, here we have a small desire and a small filling. Here, we have a desire that has grown and it requires a greater filling; and this one is incorporated in this one. Now, if I can’t be filled by wealth, there is a new desire that arises in me and that is a desire for power. This doesn’t happen only to the individual in their lives, but it is happened to humanity as a whole throughout history. The whole scope of history has been the evolution of these desires. Power is the ability to control both sex and wealth, all systems that will bring me the greatest collection of what I desire. Now, this can be political power, this is empire, this is control in my job. Once I have that, I can no longer be satisfied with it. I become empty. I feel a lack, and a fourth desire is placed inside of me, a greater expanded desire for something that encompasses all of that, and that is knowledge.

Knowledge is the barrier, in a sense, of what it is that we define as the physical world. These desires, all have to do with what we perceive as pleasure. That is what we are being filled with and what we want, what will satisfy us. Well, knowledge is science, it is religion, it is art, it is the pinnacle of what we consider to be what humanity could possibly achieve. Yet anyone who seriously investigate into this awesome desire and attempts to fill it, will eventually discovers that this is empty as well; that there are no answers in science for the real causes of possessions. Because, there’s no answer to purpose; there’s only mechanical answers. The answers only have to do with our desires.

Religion, though it gives us beliefs, cannot give us access to what it is that we really should desire, a direct knowledge of the CREATOR. Once a person becomes empty, as a result of having these selfish desires fulfilled, something very different and very special happens, a new desire arises; but this desire is not a desire from this world. This is a desire placed within our heart, which is the sum of all desires that we have, both for this world and for what’s beyond it.

With knowledge of Kabbalah, a desire is placed in us from a completely new level of development, for the greater reality. What appears inside of our heart is a “point in the heart”, that’s what the Kabbalists call it. This point is a part of the greater reality. It has an aspect of spirituality, which if this desire becomes fulfilled, unlike these, it grows continually, until it fills our entire experience, our entire existence, and can bring us into the Spiritual Maturity. Luk 13:18  Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of  YAHVEH like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? 19  It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it. 20  And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of YAHVEH? 21  It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

So what is an upper reality? The Kabbalists who have attained the totality of reality tell us that it consists of a particular quality of life, where the fruit of the Spirit is evident. They tell us that we were created in exact opposite phase to that quality, that exists in the Upper Worlds and this is why we cannot perceive what is there. It appears as though there is nothing there at all.  We know that what we consist of, what the man or the person or the creature consists of, is egoism. That is what is place on the inside of the box at birth.

What is inside of the box is called “the will to receive.” This will to receive makes us experience limited existence, makes us experience suffering, isolation and all of the things that we find difficult about life. What exists outside of this, in the non-subjective condition of egoism, is an objective reality that the Kabbalists tell us is “the will to bestow.” The will to bestow is unconditional generosity, selflessness, the fruit of the Spirit. In other words, the experience out here is unlimited love, joy, peace, existence, unbounded pleasure and delight. Yet, we can’t feel this because we have no means to get there by ourselves. Or do we?

There is a quality of the Spiritual World that differs also in its quality from the physical world. In the physical world, movement, what would get us from one place to another is purely mechanical. That is, I can take two objects that are completely different in their form, even in their purpose, and I can bring them close together mechanically and I can say, “We have closeness here!” But in the Spiritual World, things can only be considered to be close under completely different conditions, because there is no time and there is no space, there is nothing mechanical there.

The Kabbalists tell us that the Spiritual World is made up only of feeling-states, of spheres of influence that have to do with certain attributes, qualities, inner qualities, and that all movement in spirituality consists of similarity or dissimilarity between two desires or two qualities. In other words, we can see this in friendship. If my friend takes a certain delight in sport and I don’t care for sport, I’m just a serious person, and then it is not very likely that we’re going to be very close friends. If I hate sports, then we are considered to be distant.

But if I love comedy, and I love the same comedians and the same films that they did, then in this respect of the love of comedy, my friend and I are close in that feeling. In other words, in spirituality, if two attributes, two desires are similar, they are considered to be close; if they are different, they are considered to be distant. But, this is the most beautiful and the most precious thing for us, the thing that can actually move us from the physical into the spiritual, and that is what if they have exactly the same desire, purpose and intention, then they are the same thing, they are bonded, connected. It is this principle, called “the law of equivalence of form” that can get us from our egoistic state of separation to be able to build an additional sense that can feel what is really outside the box, what is spiritual.

What we need to do is to build within ourselves a similar desire, a similar quality, an additional sense that has a quality of this bestowal within it. Though we’re not yet capable of perceiving it in its simplicity, the Kabbalists tell us that there are only two things that exist in reality, there is only the CREATOR and the creature, God and us, the Will to Share and the will to received.

Everything that we perceive is simply the quality of the CREATOR and the qualities of the creature. The CREATOR is the Upper World and the creature is the lower world. The quality of the CREATOR is the will to bestow “Share”; the quality of the creature is the will to receive. This is all that exists. Getting out of the box means that what we need to do is to move in physical space.

Moving in physical space means to change our selfish desires, to the will to receive, of the quality of the creature, to become more and more similar to the quality of the CREATOR. The way in which all of reality has been hidden from us through a descent through these worlds, well, these worlds are only made up of ratios of the will to receive against the will to bestow.

The entire ladder, by which we descended into this world, can be climbed simply by changing our inner quality of reception, egoism, the desire to receive for myself, to greater and greater ratios of the will to bestow rather than the will to receive. Each one of these desires, these states, or steps of the ladder, are increasing ratios of the will to bestow over the will to receive. By this increase in desires or similarity, by being able to feel what the quality of bestowal actually is, what it means to love and support everything that exists, and to build that similarity in myself, that is what Kabbalah deals with. It is a method of being able to sense delivery and to create an inner similarity to this quality.