Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 

The Screen 

In this chapter we will learn about the principle tool of attainment in the methodology of Kabbalah. We will learn about the developing of an additional sense, a sixth sense that enables a person to sense and enter an Upper Reality that we call “spirituality.” It is the method of how to enter the Spiritual Worlds.

In the last lesson we looked at the creation of the creature in four phases and we saw that creation starts with a Thought, the Thought of the CREATOR, the Thought of Creation which is to create a human and fill that human with delight. Immediately, we see a response in the creation, which is a will to receive, which is the essence of all human.

The will to receive feels the Light and feels a sensation, not only of the direct pleasure, but of the quality of the Light, and because it is the nature of human to receive, it wants to receive this pleasure. And as a result of that, a new perception, or a stage, or a taste happens in which it realizes that what the pleasure comes from is giving. So because it is the human to receive and it cannot give, the only thing it can do is either to accept or not accept the Light.

To get closer to giving, it decides that it will reject the Light. In this emptiness a new discernment happens and it discovers that it’s existence depends on the reception of all the segment of the Light, that it cannot exist by this harsh situation, and it must accept a portion of the Light one step at a time. But he realize that he can only accept one color of the Rainbow, because here it had a perception that the CREATOR, the Creative Force wants it to receive. So, it accepts a small portion based only on the idea that it will accept it because it is the CREATOR’s desire that that happened. Here, in this perception, this sixth day of Creation, in this dual phase, it realizes that an even higher aspect of the Force that created it is that it wants to fill it with complete Light.

This chapter, this fourth phase, is unlike the other phases up to that point, not an action done by the CREATOR, but an independent desire in the human heart. But this desire is not a desire for the direct pleasure of the Light. It realizes the stature of the CREATOR, and it desire that. It realizes that he is a receiver, and how different he is from the CREATOR. But, instead of wanting the action part of creation, it now desires equivalence of form, the attainment of the CREATOR’s qualities itself, the thinking part of Creation.

So here is where we observe the development of the human as he climb up Jacob’s ladder. It has made a restriction on the manner in which he will receive. He will no longer receive for himself alone. It has determined that he will attain qualities completely opposite to his own selfish nature.

For in him was created a desire for the will to receive, and yet it determines that it will find a way to become like the opposite quality of selfishness, the quality of giving.

As He does this, when he can find a way to do this, then it begins to enter into a sort of build a system for himself, a system of interaction with varying degrees of proportion between the will to receive and the will to bestow. And it souls rises up the spiritual ladder also known as Jacob’s Ladder, as a result of gaining greater and greater equivalence of form  with MessiYAH, becoming more and more like the thing that it wants to become. As we experience the days of Creation also known as a system called worlds, and these kind of interaction built for the correction of the creature and for the correction of the world as a whole.

As He rises he attains the inner qualities of these worlds, which are called levels of “soul” or “Lights.” They are Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida, until the creature attains greater and greater equivalence, wisdom, capability, and achieves a cleaving and complete equivalence of form with the CREATOR Itself.

This development can also be seen in the colors of the rainbow, that makes up the perfect light. Each color we experience or past through creates a clear revelation until we achieved total clarity, equivalent of Form. But we human has a problem, we were created in exact opposite phase; it is only a will to receive. That is what the creature is; that is what we are. So, how can it possibly become something totally opposite to its nature? Even if we knows now what the purpose of creation is and its role in it, it seems to be foreign to us. There is nothing that it can do because it was created in a perfect way and it can only use that tool of reception, and yet it must use the expansion of its egoistic qualities and reception, and find a way to turn that into giving.

Previously we learned that our five senses are programmed in such a way that they prevent us from perceiving anything about the Upper World and achieving the goal that the creature now has. What we need to realize is that the programming that exists within the five senses, which we called “egoism,” is really an intention, it is a thought, it is a program that says “what is in this for me?” So, no matter what the input is from any of these five senses, it can only perceive things only in relation to the will to receive, and yet the quality above it is altruism, it is giving.

So giving also is not an action; it is an intention. In order to be able to feel this, which none of these senses can, we have to build a different program, a sense built on a similar program to what is outside of it. This sixth sense has to be in a sense built out of an intention that is like this. And that is what the screen is. The screen is an additional sense that allows us to feel the Spiritual World.

The word “Kabbalah” means reception. Actually, more precisely, it means “how to receive,” the proper way of reception. The method of Kabbalah is completely practical. It shows us precisely how we can take our created nature, which is the will to receive, and turn it into a proper mode of reception, a transformed, corrected mode of reception that becomes giving.

The human desire’s control or the unregenerate Ego when we receive into the will to receive, we find that our experience is extremely limited. The will to receive can never be filled. Let’s say there is a desire, a desire for a piece of cake, Apple pie, with whipped cream and sauce, and there is a need, an idea, a lack of this. As soon as we get the pie and it fulfills our desire, the desire is put aside; we can no longer feel it. It is impermanent. It lives and then it fade away.

The reason that that happens is because pleasure is only felt at the junction point between a need and its fulfillment. The moment that the fulfillment passes beyond the need, it can no longer be felt. So the desire dies. But what Kabbalah wants to teach us to do is to find a correct way of receiving, and that way is that even if there is something that is desired and it is filled, that that filling will never go out; that the desire will expand and the filling will expand. And the more that the desire enters the Kli, the greater the fulfillment will be. And that can only happen if we do something like what we saw in the dual phase called “Behina Gimel,” in which this reception is done not for me, but it is done only in order to fulfill the Thought of Creation. It is done for the CREATOR, so that this reception becomes a form of giving.

How do we do this? How can we achieve this? Baal HaSulam gives us an analogy, a very beautiful and profound story about our situation and how to overcome it. Actually, it is profound because it shows us the real nature of where we are, something that we don’t notice.

      

There are two friends, and one friend decides to make a dinner for his dear friend, and he thinks about everything that his friend likes. He thinks about the food that he likes, the wine that he would like, the amount of the food, the way the food should look, the way the room should feel. He thinks all the time of his friend, and creates a perfect meal for him.

His friend arrives, and sees before him an absolute wonderful feast. His first response is to want to eat everything right away because, of course, it is exactly what he wanted. Then another thought strikes him, which is, his friend the host is the giver, and he is only prepared to take, and he has a feeling of shame, because he realizes that the giver is before him.

He doesn’t just see a table filled with things and nobody there; he sees his friend, and he realizes that his friend has done everything for him and he is just there to take; overcome by shame, he refuses to take it.

You know what it is like when somebody gives you some big gift or something that you hadn’t expected. Suddenly you have this kind of response, you don’t know where it is coming from, “No, I can’t take this”, this quality of shame, of the perception of being the receiver.

He won’t eat, and his friend the host says to him: “You don’t understand; I spent all of this time just thinking about you, what you would enjoy, how we would enjoy this together, and now if you don’t take what I’ve given you, this whole meal will be ruined for me. I will get no pleasure from seeing you enjoy this.”

So, the guest realizes that in this situation he really has the control. He realizes that he is not just a receiver. If he can realize while he is eating the meal that he is only doing it in order to fulfill his friend’s desire, then he doesn’t feel the shame, he can eat it, he can go ahead and he can taste it, he can enjoy it. And he should enjoy it. It is not just that he eats it; he has to enjoy it because his friend who did this for him, his enjoyment will only come from seeing the satisfaction of the guest. And so in this response, the understanding of the reciprocal nature of this receiving, the guest not only feels the delight of the food, he also understands the thought of the host, because now he is thinking the same thing towards the host as the host was thinking towards him: “I do this to fulfill completely my friend. He could not be more satisfied than that I eat this because this was his entire goal, so I will fill him completely by this eating.”

So this miracle, which is our nature, the ability to be able to take the will to receive and turn it into the will to bestow, the thought to bestow, the action didn’t change, but the inner action changed. The intention behind why the guest took the food and enjoyed it makes the reception giving. This is how that intention to receive the pleasure in order to bestow to the host can be turned into a sensor called “the screen,” and how it allows the person, the creature, to attain the levels of bestowal that are the Spiritual World.

Here is our will to receive, our vessel, our Kli. Now, this Kli is filled with desires, it is filled with hungers for the meal. What the CREATOR, the Host wants to give to the creature exists outside in thoughts of bestowal. And always the Light presses on us and wants to fill us with a hundred percent unbounded delight, but only to the degree to which we can receive the Light on its terms, that is, through giving, can we allow it to enter into the Kli, otherwise we have no sensation of it at all.

Now here, in order to be able to enjoy the meal in terms of spirituality, a screen, which is an intention, is placed across the entry to our will to receive, to the Kli. This intention is not to receive for myself. Once that’s there, all of these other things can begin to be sensed, they can begin to be regulated, and we can determine what the experience inside of the will to receive, inside the Kli, will actually is.

So, the first thing that we feel in the meal, strikes the screen. Now, if the creature can accept that amount into it in order only to please the host, maybe it experiences it as the first course of the meal, as the soup, if it can maintain that intention “not for me,” and to do it only for the host, then a portion of the Light actually enters into the Kli, and not only the portion of taste and delight which must be fulfilled, but also the sensation, the intention of the host in giving that thing to the creature.

So twenty percent of it will enter, let’s say, into that first fifth of the stomach, and the rest of it will be rejected, not that the pleasure isn’t felt, it is just that a greater pleasure supersedes a small pleasure; it is eclipsed. The Kli does not care about it. The only thing that it pays attention to is the thing that it values, which is the Thought of the CREATOR. So eighty percent of this will cannot be felt; only twenty percent will be perception. Now if a further amount can be accepted in order to fulfill the Thought of the Host, then forty percent fills and only sixty percent of it is rejected.

Now what happens is that the Light of the CREATOR, that is, the Thought, the level of attainment of similarity within the Kli itself, within the creature, the spirit at part of the creature which as the potential to becomes like the CREATOR, begins to grow. This is the means by which we grow a soul; And so here, this first Light, which was called the first twenty percent, is the Light of Nefesh—the first level of the soul. 

If the intention matches the intention of the CREATOR on the giving of it, a second level, Ruach, enters the Kli. This is not just knowledge, this is not some kind of intellectual thing, this is actual similarity of form with the CREATOR. That is, what is inside of the Kli is a direct perception of what exists outside of the Kli. This sixth sense now is telling a person what this spiritual object actually is; not that it is religion or that it is church, but that it is a Thought in the CREATOR’s intention towards all of creation.

As the individual continues to grow, by experiencing the six days of Creation the Light of the person begins to increase, a new Light is produce after every Torah Cycle. This Light is called “Neshama,” that is, a deeper understanding of the CREATOR’s Thought, a greater similarity, and in terms of our hunger, we have passed the main course, and accepted for pleasing the host, until finally we get to the dessert and the liquor, and we get to the level of Haya and Yechida, the seventh day rest.

It is at this stage that the creature, the human has reached complete similarity of form with the CREATOR, because it instituted its own Thought of Creation. It has an independent desire that does not depend on the external delights, but only on the thought of the creature to do something equal to the Thought of the CREATOR. So, by doing this, the creature rises from below upward, across all the one hundred and twenty-five steps that are all, by the way, made up of Partzufim (faces), which are exactly this process.

What a soul become by reaching spiritual maturity is called a “Rosh” (head), and here, Guf (body). By having a Rosh, what that means is that through an independent desire, the creature can now determine what the reality inside of the vessel will be, the quality of their world, the quality of delight, and all this is done for the good of life as a whole, not for me.

This is how Rav Laitman sums this up: We receive spiritual desires directly from Above. To feel them we need a special sense called a “screen.” As soon as man acquires this sense, he begins to feel pleasure through it. The pleasure is called the Supreme Light. It enters our desire to enjoy it through the screen. The desire to enjoy Supreme Light is called “the soul.” The Light as the source of pleasure is not felt unless man acquires an additional sense capable of picking it up.

All components: the Light (pleasure), the screen (means of reception), and the soul (receiver) are in no way connected to the physical body. Hence, it doesn’t matter if man has a body or not. As soon as man established contact with the Supreme Light, he begins to correct himself so as to be filled with it. The gradual likening of ones properties to the Light and consecutive being filling with it is called spiritual ascent.

The body is only a means for the spiritual advancement in this exciting process, otherwise it is of no interest. A small pleasure cannot be felt at all in comparison with a great delight: the larger delight suppresses it. Therefore, although a Kabbalist lives in the same world as we do, he is actually already in the spiritual world.