Kabbalists On Perception Of Reality, Part 8
Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.
We Have Neither Attainment Nor Perception of any Matter
We have no perception whatsoever in the essence of the person in himself, without the matter. This is because our five senses and our imaginations offer us only manifestations of the actions of the essence, but not of the essence itself.
For example, the sense of sight offers us only shadows of the visible essence as they are formed opposite the light.
Similarly, the sense of hearing is but a force of striking of some essence on the air. And the air that is rejected by it strikes the drum in our ear, and we hear that there is some essence in our proximity.
The sense of smell is but air that emerges from the essence and strikes our nerves of scent, and we smell. Also, the sense of taste is a result of the contact of some essence with our nerves of taste.
Thus, all that these four senses offer us are manifestations of the operations that stem from some essence, and nothing of the essence itself.
Even the sense of touch, the strongest of the senses, separating hot from cold, and solid from soft, all these are but manifestations of operations within the essence; they are but incidents of the essence. This is so because the hot can be chilled; the cold can be heated; the solid can be turned to liquid through chemical operations, and the liquid into air, meaning only gas, where any discernment in our five senses has been expired. Yet, the essence still exists in it, since you can turn the air into liquid once more, and the liquid into solid.
Evidently, the five senses do not reveal to us any essence at all, but only incidents and manifestations of operations from the essence. It is known that what we cannot sense, we cannot imagine; and what we cannot imagine, will never appear in our thoughts, and we have no way to perceive it.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 12
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Related Material:
Kabbalists On Perception Of Reality, Part 7
Kabbalists On Perception Of Reality, Part 6
Kabbalists On Perception Of Reality, Part 5
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the perception of reality is from inside out or the reality that we see is somethiing outside of us?
my understanding is that we percieve the reality according to our properties. I am the lord do not change. the light is around us there is no change in it. what change is us. our impression that make us think that the world is outside of us.