Michael Laitman on the Times of Israel: “Can Our Perception Change?”

We perceive reality through our animal-like senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. To perceive more, we need to explore beyond our five senses’ limits, breaking through into an omnipresent field existing outside of us.

We have made various technical gadgets to broaden our senses, such as telescopes, microscopes and X-ray machines. However, they do not let us perceive beyond our senses because we—their users—translate their extensive ranges into the limitations of our understanding. Otherwise, we would not comprehend what happens with these devices. We thus do not surpass the boundaries of our senses.

It does not mean, however, that we have to keep trying to invent new devices. On the contrary, we should improve and broaden our own selves.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches that inquiry into the meaning of life indicates a need to expand our five senses’ perception. It does not mean expanding the frequency range of each sense organ. Rather, it means entering into a new field of qualities and forces.

To fundamentally enhance our perception, we need to shift from receiving to giving, making contact with the environment outside of our senses.

Understanding that our senses limit us, tying us to our animal-like body, how can we ignore our bodies and feel life beyond them? How can we experience life undisturbed by our bodies? If we do so, then we can discuss the objective existence of whatever is out there. That is exactly what the wisdom of Kabbalah focuses on, ignoring what our bodies perceive.

Kabbalah thus dismisses various accounts of out-of-the-ordinary visions and sounds that many people experience, leaving them to others areas such as psychology. The wisdom of Kabbalah has no connection to ordinary desires, qualities and thoughts, since they belong to the quality of reception that is behind our bodily sense of reality.

Instead, the wisdom of Kabbalah concentrates on helping us exit reception and enter into bestowal. It guides us on how to exit ourselves and feel space outside bodily interferences. In Kabbalah, we call it “exiting the body and entering the spiritual world.”

It then becomes irrelevant whether or not our bodies are alive or dead. We start feeling reality with entirely different qualities, unrelated to our physical bodies. The wisdom of Kabbalah thus guides us to perceive the eternal and perfect world, and our adaptation, coexistence and consolidation in such a world also makes us eternal and perfect just like it.
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