Question: What is the relationship between the two worlds: the spiritual and the physical? Is it possible to influence the spiritual world from the material and vice versa?
Answer: The world is grasped through my selfish desires when I absorb impressions and information through my five senses: sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch.
Everything I feel in the material world, by maximally absorbing pleasant things and maximally rejecting unpleasant things, passes through my egoistic filters [1] and I categorize them. I want see only the good, so I distance myself from all the evil, so much so that I cannot identify much of what is happening because I just don’t want to see it.
But the upper world is built according to a different principle; I don’t draw to myself what is good for my ego, but I interact in an opposite direction: I love others and not myself; I go out of myself for a good relationship with others.
And so I begin to see a completely different picture around me; it’s a completely different world! It is said to be higher because it is above my ego, above my present existence.
The connection between the two worlds is very simple: If I relate to everything egoistically, I feel the material world, and if I relate altruistically, I feel the upper world. This connection exists within me, I connect the two worlds; everything is happening only in relation to me. The wisdom of Kabbalah [2] speaks only about the subjective perception of a person.
Question: Doesn’t a person who goes out to the spiritual world become detached from this world?
Answer: No. His egoistic, beastly, habitual feelings remain in him, and with all his human drives, he moves out of himself to a connection [3] with others to bestow to them according to the general rule of “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). And with this intention to exit himself, he discovers a world that is upside down.
Question: Doesn’t this seem too simple for a person? After all, anyone can say, “I love others.”
Answer: It’s very easy to say that. When he tries to see the upper world, he will understand that this is just impossible to do except according to a specific system of work in a particular group, with clear support according to particular books and a special method. In addition, it takes a number of years.
So someone who says, “What is the matter with you?! I love everyone!” is profoundly mistaken. This is a human mistake.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson [4] 10/27/15
Related Material:
A Spiritual World? It’s Simple! [5]
A Virtual World [6]
The Spiritual World Isn’t Mysticism [7]