Out of all reality, I perceive only the things that are worthwhile for me, from the standpoint of profit or loss. Everything else I do not perceive. I may be surrounded by thousands of other things, but I remain indifferent to them all. And if I am indifferent, I simply don’t see them.

In this regard, a person does not have to change in any way, or transform himself into a “winged angel.” He only has to annul his limitations and open up his senses so as to see, hear and sense the world that exists outside him. And that is done by perceiving everything “for the benefit of others.”

Then you will truly sense the world outside yourself, and exist in the World of Infinity. But where is this World of Infinity? Is it behind some star or galaxy? No. It is here and now.

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Baal HaSulam says that when we start looking at the world through the point of the soul, we develop a different perception of reality. This is a new sense, in addition to our five corporeal senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste).

Within this new sense, I perceive an image that I call “the Upper World,” or another dimension. I then perceive both myself and this world inside this new, different sensation.

When you start perceiving the true, Upper Reality, you start seeing that your former perception is relative, that it is just one possible reality, and not the only existing reality, the way it seemed to you before. You start looking at the former reality in a detached way, and you see that this it is relative: it may exist, or, if your body dies, it may not.

However, when we switch from one perception of reality to the other, the new perception of reality does not annul the former. You begin perceiving them together and you see one of them as originating from the other.

But then you embark on yet another journey to an ever-expanding, true, eternal and absolute reality of the Creator.

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We were born into a world that came with certain conditions and was already arranged a certain way. That is how we know it. We have never felt anything else and we have gotten so used to this world (in which everything is so natural for us) that we don’t imagine that it is subjective, and could be completely different.

Our imagination and fantasies do not go beyond the boundaries of what we have gotten used to in this world. That is why it is difficult for us to understand what the Kabbalists say about another reality, which is revealed to a person if he attains a new level of perception.

Today, we are awakening to a new reality, and as the entire world reveals this new reality, this perception will cause people to change. As the new reality is born within us, the science of Kabbalah talks specifically about how we can develop the inner feeling of this new reality within ourselves and avoid the suffering that we will experience should we choose to come to this involuntarily.

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A question I received: I am a student of the virtual Learning Center and I, along with others, am awaiting and very anxious for you to acknowledge this question. In the book, Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life, on page 128, I found the following quote: “Because our caveman would not have the sense that perceives the wall as Matter or as Form in Matter, he would be able to go through walls as if they were air.”

Unless I misunderstood the information, the statement is inherently wrong. Just because one doesn’t know an object doesn’t mean one cannot interact with it. The text mixes concepts from quantum mechanics and the reality of the macro world. The applied logic is not logical. Matter will always be perceived as such, regardless of the form it takes on because our senses are made to perceive matter. In cases where our five senses are not sufficient, matter can be perceived with proper instruments.

Example: when I did my first scuba dive, I was surrounded by a huge number of forms and shapes I never saw before. Yet, my senses were able to register them. Please clarify the above statement.

My Answer: Let’s start from the opposite: there are walls that we do not perceive. Do we stumble upon them or do we go through them without noticing?

Everything exists in us, in our qualities, or in our five senses. If they were different, they would depict a different world to us. The book talks about a “caveman” because besides our qualities, we have also accumulated information and systems that create the “surrounding” illusion.

Until we acquire a quality that is opposite to us – bestowal, we won’t understand the qualities of anti-matter, and we won’t realize that the world is “depicted” inside us.

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In the News (from Science Daily): “Discoveries Shed New Light On How The Brain Processes What The Eye Sees” Researchers at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University in Newark have identified the need to develop a new framework for understanding “perceptual stability” and how we see the world with their discovery that visual input obtained during eye movements is being processed by the brain but blocked from awareness.

My Comment: We are surrounded by all the spiritual worlds, but we can only perceive them to the extent of our similarity to them. Because all the worlds, with the exception of our world, are comprised of the force of bestowal, rather than reception (attraction), we don’t perceive them.

However, if a person uses the science of Kabbalah – the method of acquiring the quality of bestowal, then to the degree he attains this quality, he begins to sense the Upper Worlds and feels his existence in them.

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A question I received: You have often mentioned that man has to bring the entirety of nature to harmony. But wasn’t nature created in harmony?

My Answer: Nature dwells in absolute harmony, but this harmony lacks one element – man’s “I.” This is missing from nature’s harmony because of the egoism inherent to man, which was intentionally created within him. When Nature is seen through man’s ego, it appears chaotic and lacking in harmony.

There is a world and a Nature that are much wider and greater, far more integral and global than what we see. It incorporates the whole system of the universe, where all elements are ideally tied together. And this entire system is governed by forces that we can’t feel or see. The reason why they elude our perception and understanding is our egoism. Our egoism stands in the way and distorts Nature’s perfection.

Thus, we see the immense global and perfect system as imperfect, because it is distorted by our egoism. However, this gives us an opportunity to correct ourselves: Through our efforts toward correction, we become equal to the Creator.

Imagine that I bought a puzzle in a toy store. I bring it home, shuffle the pieces and give them to my toddler son to put back together. Why did I break the puzzle? It was for my son to learn and to realize how to assemble the pieces correctly.

Thus, our entire society, everything man has created throughout the millennia, our entire culture and civilization, are nothing but a game that we must master in order to become like Nature (the Creator). Then, this entire world will disappear from our perception and cease to exist. When we attain the spiritual world, then our entire universe, everything we perceive today through our five senses, including ourselves and the word around us, will vanish. This world will disappear like an old toy.

Instead of it, we will perceive another level of existence, another world, different kinds of interactions, and another layer of reality – one that’s eternal and perfect.

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A question I received: What does it mean to make money for the sake of money?

My Answer: It means that people live for money, and they don’t need anything else.

Suppose I want to buy a yacht so I can enjoy it. I want to sail out into the ocean and swim far out into the open waters. It is for this sake that I am working hard now. I’m not doing it for the money, but for the yacht. Actually, I’m not even doing it for the yacht itself, but for the pleasure I’ll receive through it. I imagine how I’ll dive off the yacht into the sea and there will be dolphins skipping along in the water next to me. And I have this picture in my mind all the time.

On the other hand, there are other people who work for the sake of the money itself, just in order to add zeros to their bank accounts. I want to see the balance grow on my statement every day. This is what gives me pleasure. I look at the numbers and this activity fulfills me. I don’t need anything else. I don’t imagine anything else standing behind these numbers. I don’t see a yacht, restaurants or vacations, but only the numbers in my bank account. They give me pleasure. This is the meaning of “money for the sake of money.”

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In the News (from InterScience): “Prismatic Lenses Shift Time Perception” We took advantage of a well-known spatial modulation (prismatic adaptation) to test the hypothesis that the representation of time is spatially oriented from left to right, with smaller time intervals being represented to the left of larger time intervals. Results showed that prismatic adaptation inducing a rightward orientation of spatial attention produced an overestimation of time intervals, whereas prismatic adaptation inducing a leftward shift of spatial attention produced an underestimation of time intervals. These findings not only confirm that temporal intervals are represented as horizontally arranged in space, but also reveal that spatial modulation of time processing most likely occurs via cuing of spatial attention…

My Comment: This is because our brain perceives time, movement, and space in the same way – in the form of abstract values. In fact, these categories only exist subjectively, in our perception. If our perception were different, we would perceive the surroundings differently as well.

Everything in existence is formed by two forces: bestowal and reception. These forces produce different concepts inside us about the world, actions and events. It is similar to how electricity can set many different mechanisms in motion and cause different actions to occur, even though it is a single force.

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In the News (from News Bureau): “Those unsure of own ideas more resistant to views of others” We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see or hear… The analysis, reported this month in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, was led by researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida, and included data from 91 studies involving nearly 8,000 participants… The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent)… The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated with political, religious or ethical values.

My Comment: Most people will always hear what they want to hear, and you don’t need to conduct expensive studies to discover that. This is because our nature is founded on egoism, or the desire to fulfill our desires, whether we desire fame, prestige, power, wealth, or knowledge. And this determines what we are capable of hearing, seeing, feeling and understanding.

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A question I received: Do you really think it’s possible to convey Kabbalistic information to the masses? It seems like they are still deaf to it!

My Answer: From childhood, a person perceives this world through examples, models, and images. A person thinks by means of the images that accumulate in his memory and he perceives the world through them. He evaluates and comprehends everything, makes decisions, and performs actions based on the conceptualization of the images.

The system of images and concepts that we receive from childhood, formulates our inner image of the world and our image of ourselves. Over the course of our entire lives, we continuously acquire new images and use them to replace the former ones. It is also possible for new images to fade and the old images to return. The images form due to their repeated occurrence in our surroundings – for example, through repeated exposure to the mass media.

If a person hears or sees something that contradicts his set of images, then he does not understand it, or he rejects the message altogether. Thus, in order for people to understand what we are saying, we have to know how they conceptualize their images and address those images directly, rather than by trying to appeal to basic human logic and common sense.

The more educated a person is, the more flexible his ideas and concepts are. We have to address the masses through their underlying concepts (life values): compassion, cooperation, prosperity, health, work, safety, and their children’s future.

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