The Difference Between The Human Degree And The Rest

423.01Question: People have long been interested in the establishment of countries. There are nine widely accepted theories on the subject. Kabbalah considers this process to be the development of the desire to receive. What is this process?

Answer: I am neither a political scientist nor an expert in formation of states. But when I listen to scientists, I see how abstruse they are: each has his own theories, and there are many of these theories, scientists are full of them.

Kabbalah explains everything much more simply. The matter of creation is the desire to enjoy, that is, an egoistic desire.

In the inanimate, vegetative, and animal world, this desire manifests itself in a primitive form, in the preservation of its existence. Crystals, minerals, and metals strive to preserve their structure, like the crystal lattice or the structure of atoms or molecules.

A plant, naturally, strives to survive in order to exist according to the principle of the best fit for its desire to enjoy, to be filled with life. While animal organisms also have the ability to move, to reproduce in a specific way, because their egoism requires such realization.

As for a person, this manifests itself in him in envy, jealousy, suffering in comparing himself with others as he acquires new desires through; absorbs them by looking at others. That is, he has an infinite ability to develop due to an inflow of extraneous desires. Because of jealousy and envy, he always finds new goals for himself.

Therefore, the human level is very different from others. For example, inanimate nature, which was formed after the Big Bang and the further expansion of the universe, develops according to certain laws, and there are no problems with that.

Vegetative nature exists, dies, gets reborn, and so it has been changing for millions of years. In animate nature, too, nothing special happens; we know the habits and characters of animals. True, different animals and even their various types have relatively different characters, but it’s nothing like a person who goes through significant changes throughout his life.

People build, not natural, but some incomprehensible combinations between themselves. This is not just a family, as in the animal world where a pair give birth to cubs, bring them up, and such is the purpose of their existence.

Animals live according to the instinctive law of nature, which is expressed without fail, in the construction of their specific groupings or larger flocks. But all this, ruled by instinct, never changes. The leaders change, but the lifestyle itself is set for each type of animal.

Not so for a person. As his egoism changes, so does what he creates around him. Once people lived like animals in groups. Perhaps they had common children, common wives, and common husbands.

With the manifestation of greater egoism, it began to be shared. But when the need to support each other, protect themselves from wild animals, or go hunting together disappeared, people began to separate from each other and create their own households. This is how, gradually, specialties got established: one is a shoemaker, a blacksmith, and so on.

That is, various groups and clans were formed, a very complex system of relationships between people was established, lawyers, economists and other specialists were needed.

All this existed even in the ancient world to protect the system of interconnections: courts, army, tax collectors and everything else.

The human body, which is constantly developing due to its internal egoism, requires a new, increasingly complex and confusing organization from us that is incomprehensible to a common person.
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From Kab TV’s “Close-Up. Reference Point” 9/9/09

Related Material:
We Are At The Threshold Of The Human Degree
A Line To Rise To The Human Degree
A Human Being Is What’s Inside

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10/11/21

Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19 “What Is, ‘The Creator Hates the Bodies,’ in the Work?”

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 63

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Selected Highlights

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