Did You Know that Reality Is Really a Desire to Receive Pleasure?

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for discovering the hidden part of reality, that imperceptible realm of reality that our five senses cannot grasp. It develops another sense in us, one that perceives the reality that exists beyond our present perception.

Kabbalah says that the whole of reality consists of a substance called “the will to receive pleasure.” This will to receive pleasure is essentially a desire to be filled with delight, enjoyment; it is what we so often refer to as “egoism.” This will to receive operates on all levels of existence: still (inanimate), vegetative, animate, and speaking.

Although the will to receive is the substance of all reality, the desire in itself is neither matter nor atoms, which came later. Everything that was created, that exists as the basis of reality, is based on the desire to enjoy, an aspiration for pleasure. In each level of reality, this aspiration takes on different forms.

Every Kabbalist, without exception, from Abraham to the last great Kabbalist, Baal HaSulam, maintained that the entire substance of Creation consists of a desire to receive. Every Kabbalah book speaks of the same thing, and all Kabbalists are in agreement in that regard.

Kabbalists are people who attain the Upper World; they speak from tangible attainment, not from theory. The word, “attainment,” refers to the ultimate degree of understanding. Let me make things easier to understand by using some drawings.

How Reality Develops in a Step-by-Step Process

Phase One in the Development of Reality: A Giver Needs a Receiver

We said that the will to receive is the basis of Creation. It is created by the expansion of the Upper Light. (In Kabbalah, the term “Light” designates giving, bestowing, love; it is referred to as “the Creator”). Thus, the Light created the will to receive that wants to be filled with the Light. Hence, the will to receive is also called Kli (vessel/receptacle), see Figure 1.

In other words, the desire to give creates the desire to receive, meaning the Light wants the Kli (vessel) to receive what it wants to give it.

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Why Evolution Is Really All About the Development of a Desire for Pleasure

The essence of human nature is its perpetually evolving desire for pleasure. To realize this desire, we feel compelled to discover, invent, and improve our reality. The gradual intensification of the desire for pleasure has been the force behind human evolution throughout our history.

The desire for pleasure evolves through several stages. In the first stage, it manifests in the need for sustenance, such as food, reproduction, and family. In the second stage, the desire for wealth arises, and in the third, there is a craving for honor, power, and fame. Development of these three stages had lead to major changes in human society—it became a diversified, multi-class society.

The fourth stage signifies our yearning for learning, knowledge and wisdom. This expresses itself in the development of science, educational systems, and culture. This stage has become associated with the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, and is still predominant today. The desire for knowledge and erudition requires that we understand our surroundings.

To understand the present state of humanity and its prospects, we must build a bridge connecting several milestones in the evolution of science. These milestones have significantly affected our approach to life.

How the Evolution of Thought Led to the Development of Empirical Science

The Scientific Revolution that occurred during the 16th century brought radical changes in our thought patterns. At the time, researchers believed that theories must be tested against experiments and observations. They also cautioned us to avoid mythological and religious explanations. At the center of scientific thinking was an analysis of reality, and the search for scientific answers to age-old questions. Until then, these topics had been ascribed to a divine power.

In his book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), Isaac Newton (1642-1727) proposed a theory of mechanics that would let us calculate the change in the motion of any body when influenced by a given force. The success of Newton’s theory presented a whole new worldview. Newton’s deterministic viewpoint stated that in any event, regardless of its nature, a certain natural law will manifest. The presence of the Divine was of little importance because the trajectory of all motion is fixed, and there was no intervention by the Divine.

The deterministic approach was well described by the astronomer, Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) as he sought to explain to Napoleon how our solar system had been formed. When Napoleon asked him about God’s place in the process, Laplace replied: “Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là” (“I did not need this hypothesis there”).

Thus, science left no room for the existence of other aspects beyond its own limits, including those realities that are hidden from our perception. Everyone believed that humanity had discovered the necessary measures to know the world as it really was.

In the late 1800s, it seemed that classical physics had provided researchers with a complete set of laws for every natural phenomenon. Many researchers maintained that these laws would help them explain even the few phenomena that remained mysteries. Since physics has always been considered “the mother of all sciences” and the forefront of technology and experimentation, its discoveries served as the foundation for research in other sciences, as well.

The Turning Point: Einstein and the Discovery of the Observer’s Relationship to Reality

The era of modern physics began in the early 1900s with Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) revolutionary discoveries. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity generated a fundamental change in attitude towards everything that had previously been known about time, space, mass, motion, and gravity. Einstein’s theory unified time and space into a single entity—time-space—revoking the premise that time and space were absolute.

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In the below excerpt, the Ari (Kabbalist Isaac Luria) describes the intermediary stages of the four stages of creation, and mentions how between the animal level and human level of evolution, there is the intermediary stage of monkeys. 

This raises the question, how could the Ari, the great Kabbalist who passed away in 1572 (three centuries before Charles Darwin, who is famous for discussing this phenomenon), state that monkeys were an intermediary phase of development between animals and humans, i.e. since Kabbalists only write about what they clearly attain & perceive?

The answer is in what is known as “Reshimot“(informational genes) in Kabbalah. Reshimot can be thought of similarly to frames and scenes in a long film reel (of our life) that unravel like a chain, from small to large, and which give rise to everything that exists.

Since Reshimot precede and give rise to our perception, we cannot see the Reshimot themselves. What we see is a resultant picture where species’ originate “one from another,” whereas in reality they originate “one after another.” This is what the Ari explains in the below except, i.e. the order of development of Reshimot.

The world was created by the desire to bestow (in other words, Nature or the Creator), and every creature was also created by this same desire to bestow. The only matter of creation is the desire to receive, which develops and expresses itself by creating an outward appearance (a bodily shell) according to its qualities. However, we do not perceive the forces of the desire (i.e. where the Reshimot reside) and only perceive the external wrapping. This is why we think that they come from one another.

Here is the excerpt by the Ari:

Indeed, in all these four inner Behinot there is one Behina that contains them all. It is a median between each two Behinot and consists of both. For example, biologists write that between the still and the vegetative there is the coral; between the vegetative and the animate there is Adnei ha Sadeh (Ledges of the field), mentioned in Masechet Kilaim. It is like a dog that grows on the ground with its navel rooted in the soil, from which it sucks its sustenance. When you cut off its navel, it dies. Between the animate and the speaking there is the monkey.

The above is an excerpt from Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) Part 3.  This text is part of the study material for lesson 10 in the Free Kabbalah Course – “Creation & Evolution Explained: From Before the Big Bang to the Future, Final State of Existence.” Sign Up for the Course Here »

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Everyone Needs Integral Upbringing

The world situation is changing rapidly, and there is a need to create an integral method of educating adults. I receive lots of various messages from developed countries: Unemployment is on the rise.

People are at a loss despite the fact that they are receiving unemployment benefits. Currently, they are still available, but what will happen next is unknown. After all, we are talking about hundreds of millions of people who will lose work because the crisis will destroy all the industries that are not vitally important. What will the people who produce what no one needs do?

We see how protest movements are growing due to the Internet, mutual communication, and our mutual influence on each other. All humanity, from ordinary citizens to governments, is interested in taking this process under control and preventing its spontaneous development because modern weapons plus an unpredictable course of events can lead to disastrous results.

In order to prevent all kinds of disasters, civil or even world wars, we need to think in advance about global, integral upbringing of the majority of the population.

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Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: How many people should there be in a group [aspiring to unity]? Psychologists have noticed that a group of 8-12 people is optimal because it simulates a model of society. If we gathered a thousand or 10 thousand people, would it be even more vivid?

Dr. Michael Laitman: The amount of people is less significance. What’s most important is whether or not they can unite with each other, and that depends on a person’s ability to transcend the ego for the sake of uniting with the society, on his sensitivity, on how developed his sense of the collective is.

Unification under the influence of a crowd does not produce any results. It is not an integral interaction. A crowd united by a common slogan, tearing at some animate goal, is not an integral society.

For people to unite into an integral society, they must be doing it to find the quality of mutual bestowal, unification, unity. In this case each of them rises above his egoism and unites with others in spite of his “crass” natural drives. He is not driven by the desire for personal fulfillment because it will never let him unite with others.

This unity is their newly acquired organ of perception that does not operate inside, but outside. That is how it’s aimed—from within outwards, toward bestowal. It can be created only by rising above the ego when each transcends oneself toward bonding with others, above one’s egoism. And therefore, this feeling cannot be private but only common.

It’s common because it exists through the fact that we create it together, and each of us perceives it as his own sense of external, altruistic perception. It is one for all of us, meaning that it is one and the same inside each of us.

This gives us the opportunity to speak about our common heart and mind, which we produced together and inside of which we exist together. In that case we perceive everything absolutely identically, with the same thoughts and feelings circulating inside of us.

We ascend to a level of feeling the world existing outside of us. In reality, this world is inside of us, but we start to feel it by coming out of the previous egoistic state, and we feel it all together. Meaning, as we develop each new level, we will attain it together.

We perceive each new level as existence that does not depend on each of us individually. This means that it does not depend on our bodies or on our current “I.” If I sympathize with “I” that exists in this integration, then I detach from my earthly life.
This life seems increasingly hazier and less real to me. I begin to understand that my body and all of my previous impressions and sensations of the world and of life took place in the egoistic perception. But now I cross over to a new state and see the world differently.

The integral perception of the world gives me new, more vivid impressions. The past becomes gradually more distant and less important, uninteresting, very flat and childish. I am so unimpressed by it that I am ready to part with it without regretting it in the least.

A person develops his new, integral state to such an extent that the past disappears.

We think, “How can it disappear!? After all, here are our bodies!” We don’t understand that these bodies exist only in our perception, which constantly changes. That’s how we change the sensation of our world to the sensation of the world that is on the next level. But there it also exists in our common desire and thought, while the bodies, as such, do not exist. Only thoughts and desires do.

The above points were taken from the book The Psychology of the Integral Society by Dr. Michael Laitman and Dr. Anatoly Ulianov. Also available as eBook (PDF, Kindle & ePub formats).

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