Question: How is a person’s perception of reality built and organized?
Answer: A person’s perception of reality in our world is determined by our five corporeal senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. They correspond to the five spiritual senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut that we feel when we begin to attain the upper world. Therefore, we need to develop these senses inside us in order to attain the upper world. This is fulfilled only if we ascend above our desire to receive.
In this desire, we seemingly feel the world that surrounds us, but since it is perceived inside us, we cannot say that we feel anything that surrounds us. It is simply reflected and appears this way in our current senses.
If I look at a table that is in front of me, for example, I perceive the way I see it. But if I had different senses, I would see it differently. This means that we actually don’t see what is external to us and there are only forces that are external to us and nothing else.
Just as a computer depicts a picture with vectors and electrons that we see on the screen and perceive as a certain reality, so is the world around us nothing more than different vectors that are connected in certain ways and thus depict certain pictures of reality inside us.
The problem with the corporeal perception of reality is that our senses don’t show us the full picture of the world. How can we begin to perceive the true reality that is external to us and is a physical field that is made of many different forces?
This is done by ascending above our egoistic desires. But what is actually wrong with them? Through them we perceive only what is perceived by them and nothing more than that. We do not exit the limits of our essence. Whatever is perceived by our corporeal senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch is what we feel.
We perceive more than 90% through our vision, 8% by our hearing, and very little through our touch, taste, and smell. Taste we feel only when eating. A person’s sense of smell is very limited although the cells that are responsible for that occupy a large space in the brain. And through touch sensations, we feel ourselves in space.
In any case, these five senses attain only what can go through them, be processed, and put together into a general picture of reality that is depicted to us. There are actually no people, no animals, no plants, and no inanimate nature external to us such as galaxies, stars, and planets. There are, however, many forces that impact our senses and depict this picture inside us.
Yet, if we ascend above our senses by using the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will begin to perceive these forces that are external to us objectively and undisturbed by us. Moreover, it will be in a relatively objective manner since we will perceive them to the degree that we resemble the Creator, that is, not yet fully.
The full degree is called the Light of Infinity, when the forces are not disturbed by anything in any way and are not restricted. We cannot feel that at the moment because we feel the Light only to the degree of our partial resemblance to the upper field.
How can we resemble it in order to perceive it correctly? This is our problem. If we exit the level we are on, it will be clear to us where we truly are.
The wisdom of Kabbalah actually prepares a person to perceive the upper field. In order to feel it, you have to perform certain changes in yourself, to make efforts and ascend above the ego that locks you inside it, like a dwarf star that swallows itself to a degree that it doesn’t even let out any Light.
We have to exit this state to ascend above ourselves and begin to feel what is outside our ego. This means that I have to restrict it to stop perceiving everything only for my own sake and to try to perceive things for the sake of others.
At this point, I already begin to understand that I was intentionally created as an egoist in order to ascend above my nature. I live in a world that is made of myself and of many other people so that they will help me exit myself and perform certain work by caring for them more than for myself.
In this case, to the extent that I can ascend above myself, I perceive the space that surrounds me objectively: its intensity, size, and volume.
In order to enable me to encompass this space till the level of infinity, the ego keeps developing inside me. The moment I begin to exit myself, the ego begins to grow even more inside me so that I will ascend even higher above myself and thus get to know the upper field that surrounds me and everything it reveals to me.
What do these revelations mean? When I exit myself, I interact with the upper field and begin to actually realize its thought, its actions on me, and I try to resemble it, and thus I contact it. In practice this is called the unification of man with the Creator because the upper field is my Creator and not only mine but everyone else’s. In fact, I do not know who everyone else is. I begin to perceive them as my parts and to see my future development in an increasingly greater connection and unity with them.
At the same time the ego keeps growing and keeps trying to separate us, but the more we try to connect them, the more we attain the upper field. Inside it there are all the thoughts of the creation, everything that we need in order to enter the new dimension of the world, to ascend above all the limitations to the upper dimension, to a totally limitless space that is not disturbed by anything.
We need and can do this now! We have to attain the upper world while living in this world and to move on to it smoothly so that our world will totally cease to worry us. We will only feel it as a small springboard by which we jump and leap to the next dimension of our existence.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/27/16
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Question: If the Creator awakens desires, and thoughts grow from them, it turns out that desires and thoughts are not mine. Then who am I?
