Why Each Person Lives a Timeless Existence
The evolution of the generations in the world is nothing more than an appearance and disappearance of physical bodies. The souls, however, that fill the physical body, the primary “I,” do not disappear. They only change the body that carries them. Therefore, all the generations, from the first to the very last, are considered to be one generation that has been stretched over thousands of years, from the cradle of humankind to its final correction and the attainment of complete rest and wholeness.
Because its substance comes from an upper level, the demise of the body makes no difference to the soul. Physical death is as meaningless to our soul as cutting our nails or our hair is to the physical body. Nails and hair belong to the vegetative part in us, whereas the physical body belongs to a higher degree, the animate level. By studying how the soul is dressed in the body, a person is freed from death in his or her life.
Introducing the First 2 (of 4) Elements that Define a Human Being
To understand what the upper force allows us to choose, what is left to our free will, we must first examine our “I,” the four elements that comprise us. The first element is called the “bed,” the foundation. It is the basic, primary substance of which we are all made. That is what we received from the Creator. It is what defines our essence. The Creator created it ex nihilo, out of nothingness, something new that did not exist before. This is the substance that is imprinted in every one of us and predetermined in advance.
The second element is made up of the laws of the evolution of our essence. These laws do not change; they are predefined by the Creator, because they extend from the nature of the essence and its predetermined form, which the essence strives to come to as the purpose of its creation. Every seed, animal, and human being has within it the program and the laws of its evolution, and we cannot influence it.
Why the Last 2 Elements that Define a Human Being Are of the Most Importance to Human Progress
The other two elements, the third and the fourth, relate to our development, but they are external to the soul itself. Those are the external conditions that make voluntary changes in us, of our own free choice, but put pressures on us that we cannot control, sometimes against our will. Hence, the third element in our evolution is the external conditions that can partially change our path of evolution to the “right” way or the “wrong” way.
Take for example a seed of wheat. If we sow the same kind of wheat in two parts of a field and influence each part differently, such as blocking the sunlight on one side, not giving enough water, not weeding out the weeds, while the other side gets the best possible conditions, we will see how much external elements affect the growth process. Although we will get the same wheat from both sides of the field, the final quality of that wheat will depend on what difficulties it encountered during its growth.
The fourth element is changing the external conditions. We cannot directly affect ourselves, but if we provoke a change in our external conditions, we can determine our own future— our future thoughts, aspirations, and, in one word, the quality of our future.
How a Positive Social Environment Can Improve a Person’s Fate
The first element, the bed, and the second element, the laws by which our essence evolves, can be expressed negatively through inheritance: physical weakness, feeble-mindedness, or a psychological or spiritual weakness. Therefore, if one finds oneself the right place to develop, by going under a positive influence of society, he or she can attain wonderful results, much like the seed.
Kabbalah Is a Method that Gives a Person the Means to Rise Above Their Nature
Only when we rise above nature both in mind and heart will we be able to observe it from a higher degree. For example, we can meticulously research the evolution of the wheat seed and influence both the course of its life and the number of lives it will have by putting it in the ground, and thus “killing” it, but also reviving it from its previous condition to a new life.
These processes can be done only with vegetative nature, because there are no cycles of life and death among inanimate objects. It is impossible to rise above our animal nature without help from above. Thus, we cannot investigate outside this nature with our ordinary senses; even the most sophisticated instruments cannot help us here because they were also built on the same level. Perceiving outside nature can only be done by means of attributes received from a higher degree.
We will be able to understand the nature of human life only if we rise above our level, which is the highest in our world, to an even higher level, the spiritual world. Once we reach that level, we will be able to research ourselves and influence our own lives, much like we research and influence the wheat. That is precisely what the wisdom of Kabbalah enables us to do.
“The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Rising Above Your Human Nature” is based on the book, Awakening to Kabbalah: The Guiding Light of Spiritual Fulfillment by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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