Question: What difference does it make how one receives pleasures?

Answer: The difference is the following. The Creator created only one Kli (vessel), a desire to receive. He did not create different Kelim for this world and “that” world. No, there is only one Kli. What changes is only how you feel yourself within this Kli.

If you feel yourself as you do now, it means that you are at some degree of this world, since this world also contains a certain sequence of degrees. If you come to spiritual states, you will still feel this world, but in addition to it, you will also feel the spiritual world.

What is the difference? The center of pleasure remains the same. Now you can experience several strictly defined types of pleasure. And when you enter the spiritual world, you will likewise receive impressions from certain types of pleasure, both spiritual and corporeal. These are different garments of the same source.

It is precisely the corporeal garments that clothe themselves over the light that make our world appear to be illusory, or imaginary. What does “imaginary” mean? The pleasure found in this world is not imaginary.

What is imaginary are the garments, because it seems to us that we receive pleasure from the garment itself, rather than from the light within it. This is what is called an illusion or imagination. It seems to me that I enjoy, for example, looking at your beautiful face. But this is not so: in reality, there is some spark of the Creator within you. It is this spark that I enjoy, and not your beautiful external appearance.

In other words, the problem lies only within me. If I connect the pleasure with the spark that is within you, everything is in order. In that case, I am connected with the spiritual. But if I connect the pleasure with your beautiful face, then I am connected with the animalistic garment, with the corporeal world, and this is called the imaginary or illusory state.

“Imaginary,” “illusory” means an error in identifying the source of pleasure. In other words, there is nothing actually imaginary, it is simply what we call a spiritual “error,” when I mistakenly identify the source of pleasure.

This does not mean that this world disappears when one attains the spiritual. Does a Kabbalist who perceives the spiritual world cease to feel this world? He lives in it! The five senses remain. And believe me, Kabbalists experience very clearly through these senses: they eat, drink, and so on. Nothing disappears.

But through all this, the Kabbalist connects himself with the source of all pleasures, which exists only in the Creator, and all these intermediate garments no longer hinder him or mislead him. One can say that they no longer occupy the Kabbalist’s attention, he sees through them.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/4/26, Rabash, “The Klipa [Shell/Peel] that Precedes the Fruit”

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