Kabbalah divides everything in existence into pleasure and the desire to receive that pleasure. Nothing else exists in nature. Objects in nature consist only of the desire to receive pleasure and its fulfillment, and they differ only by the degree of their desire to receive pleasure.

The desire divides into the following levels:
1. Still
2. Vegetative
3. Animate
4. Human (Spiritual)

Desires 1-3 are desires to receive pleasure for oneself (at someone or something else’s expense). These desires are natural, i.e. nature gives them to us. When the body dies, the sensation of life disappears. Desire 4 is the desire to please others (and receive pleasure by doing so). Nature doesn’t give us such a desire. It appears under the influence of the Upper Force, which is attracted through the study of Kabbalah. Since this desire is independent of the body, whoever acquires it comes to feel his existence as eternal.

Everything in our world – including love – is determined by the egoistic desire to receive pleasure. Both humans and animals buy and exchange love, as with any other type of pleasure or fulfillment. This shows, yet again, that our desires stay within the limits of the animate level.

Monkeys also pay for sex. Michael Gumert (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) discovered this fact while researching 50 macaques. On average, female macaques have intercourse 1.5 times per hour. But if a male grooms a female, that number increases to 3.5 times per hour. The macaques grooming is done by picking fleas off each other. If there are many females around, then the “cost” of sex drops – a male can “buy” a female for eight minutes of flea picking. If, however, there are few females, then the male has to groom her for sixteen minutes before she gives her consent. According to Ronald Noe of Strasburg University, the same kind of socio-sexual interaction also takes place universally among human beings.

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