Driven by the Desire for Pleasure

We were created in such a way that wherever we go, we look for pleasures and take every chance we can to satisfy our desires. Where do these desires come from, and how do we know how to satisfy them?

At any given moment there are new desires that awaken in us, at all levels of existence: on the physical, human, and spiritual levels. We don’t feel all the physical desires, such as the desire of the cells to develop and the desire of the organs to act. Some of these desires are satisfied naturally, and some require our active participation to be satisfied. As a whole, the desires can be divided into three parts:

• Physical (beastly) desires, which exist in animals as well.
• Human desires, which exist only in human society, such as desires for wealth, honor, and knowledge, and human- spiritual desires, desires for something sublime that are clearly not of our world. Searching for supernatural phe- nomena, religious rituals, and Far Eastern techniques for the improvement of the body and the mind all express such desires.
• Spiritual desires, which aim directly at the unique Creator. The Kabbalah distinguishes the desire for the Creator from all other desires. Our desires for worldly pleasures are called “humankind’s heart” while the desire for the Creator is called “the point in the heart.”

How Desires Originate

The desires form in us as a result of the surfacing of the reshimot, the carriers of the information within us, forcing us to obey their demands. There is a chain of preliminary reshimot imprinted in us, which makes us aware of the desire that they awaken as they surface. We have no choice but to obey these desires, although we do not feel that there is something that we must obey—we simply want. It is as though the reshimot appear out of nowhere in the subconscious even before we detect them, and when they come into our awareness, we feel them as desires. There is only one thing that we want: pleasure.

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A few years ago I had the honor of being interviewed by bestselling author William Simon for an autobiography about my life. We never actually completed the book, but you can read an excerpt here below about how I found my teacher.

Michael and his family were now settled in Israel, living a penthouse lifestyle with a housekeeper, a garden fountain, and many enviable high-tech conveniences. He and Olga had chosen the comfort of Rehovot, twenty miles south of Tel Aviv, where they could hear the sounds of the night and see the galaxies without shrill interferences from city lights or sirens.

After two years of work with F4 Phantom fighter aircraft, Michael could breathe easy—he had completed his required military service. The dental clinic was successfully producing a dependable and attractive income. And he was wealthy enough to own an imported large black Buick sedan. Many people would have put their feet on a desk and said, “I’ve made it.” But not this man. In the silence of Rehovot, Michael was still in distress over the same questions that had kept his life in turmoil for so many years.

Then came a day at the dental clinic in 1978 when a clean-shaven man showed up for an appointment. He arrived at a time when Michael was busy trying to repair one of the clinic’s machines. Chaim Malka had the chiseled bone structure of a European though he was from Morocco. Despite being college-educated, he held a job as a factory maintenance technician.

Read the Full Story at the Times of Israel »