January 22, 2025
November 7, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
Blind and in the Dark
As a person begins to transition from an animal-like existence, concerned only with survival, to the level called “human” or “speaking” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, deep existential questions and feelings of despair often well up. We begin to see such attainments as food, sex, family, money, honor, and power as shallow and unsatisfying, and begin to identify with an inner longing for something more.
Questions that define the human being: the Eternal Question, “Why?”
- Who am I?
- Why do I exist?
- Where did we come from? Where are we going? And what is our purpose here?
- Have we been in this world before?
- Why is there suffering in this world and can we avoid it?
- How can we attain peace, fulfillment, and happiness?
From generation to generation, people try to find answers to these painfully insistent questions. The fact that they continue from generation to generation indicates that we still have not received satisfactory answers to them.
Why the Nearsighted Don’t See the Stars
While studying nature and the universe, we discover that all that surrounds us exists and functions according to precise and purposeful laws. Yet, when we examine ourselves, the zenith of Creation, we find that humanity seemingly exists outside of this system of rational laws.
For example, when we observe how wisely nature created our bodies and how precisely and purposefully every cell in our bodies functions, we are unable to answer the question: “Why does the entire organism exist?”
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November 4, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
Can We Study What We Can’t Perceive?
The corporeal world is full of forces and phenomena that we do not feel directly, such as electricity and magnetism, but even small children are familiar with their names and the results of their actions. For example, although our knowledge of electricity is limited, we have learned to utilize this phenomenon for our purposes and define it as naturally as we give names to such things as bread and sugar.
How Our Senses Box Us In
Similarly, it is as if all names in Kabbalah give us a real and objective idea about a spiritual object. On second thought, just as we have no idea about spiritual objects or even the Creator Himself, so are we equally ignorant of any objects, even those we can grip with our hands. This is because we perceive not the object itself, but our reaction to its impact on our senses.
These reactions give us the semblance of knowledge, though the essence of the object itself remains totally concealed from us. Moreover, we are utterly unable to understand even ourselves. All that we know about ourselves is limited to our actions and reactions.
What’s the Matter and Why?
As an instrument of the world’s research, science divides into two parts: the study of properties of matter and the study of its form. In other words, there is nothing in the universe that does not consist of matter and form. For example, a table is a combination of matter and form, where matter, such as wood, is the basis that carries the form—that of a table. Or take the word, “liar,” where matter (one’s body) is a carrier of the form, falsehood.
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September 15, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
Why Your Perception Is Limited
The evolution of humankind on an egoistic basis (for myself alone) caused the creation of a deep chasm between the moral level of humanity and the technological level it reached. That is exactly what Plato and Aristotle feared when they prohibited the study of sciences to those of unworthy moral standards.
There is not a shadow of a doubt that there is a connection between the moral degree of a person, meaning their intentions, and their scientific ability. Without the intent to discover the Creator and understand the purpose of creation, scientific studies only reveal a certain aspect of the laws of reality and how they work in our narrow world. After all, we study reality from an egoistic perspective, and therefore we perceive only certain connections out of all the details of our surrounding reality.
Each law acts in all the realms of creation, in this world and in the spiritual world. But we can see its full range of operation only if we too are in a realm that encircles the whole of creation. For that we must be compatible with the attributes of the realm we want to encircle—altruistic attributes of giving, the attributes of the degrees of the upper worlds.
How Your Internal Properties Dictate What You See and Feel
We do not change nature on our own. The attributes of nature never change, and there is also no change in the interconnections between the forces of nature. But nature looks different according to the attributes of its researcher. Nature shows a different aspect, not a different law, and we understand only what we perceive and feel through our five senses. Hence, our feeling is forever personal and subjective.
Because all people have a common nature, we perceive the world in the same way at first. Nature remains unchanged, but when we change ourselves, we feel that nature’s laws operate differently on us. We change the way we are exposed to the laws of nature. That is why Malachi says, “I the Lord do not change” (3:6). It is indeed surprising that we can change the things around us, when in fact nothing really changes but ourselves. We feel as though nature changes because of the change within.
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September 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
What the Creator Is
Reality consists of two elements: Creator and creature. We feel this in our senses in various ways, but it is unchanging in and of itself. The sensation of the Creator is what we call “the world,” or “creation.” The creature can sometimes sense that the Creator is being partially or fully revealed; at other times He is altogether concealed. The creature may even lack awareness of the Creator altogether. The extent of awareness of the Creator depends solely on the creature, because the Creator, like the sun, never stops shining.
The Creator has the attributes of bestowal and benevolence. When the creature acquires these Creator-like attributes, this state is called equivalence of form with the Creator. The individual then senses the Creator as fully revealed, to the exact degree that his or her attributes resemble those of the Creator. When the attributes of a person are incompatible with those of the Creator, he or she feels the Creator as concealed. When these attributes oppose those of the Creator’s, the individual feels the Creator does not even exist.
How Your Attributes Determine Your Closeness to Spirituality
The creature feels the Creator as pleasure, as wisdom and peace and wholeness. Therefore, the intensity of those sensations depends on the intensity of the sensation of the Creator. The Creator formed all the creatures from an egoistic desire to enjoy. The Creator is perceived by the creature as pleasure in all its manifestations. Pleasure means the sensation of the Creator, or the light of the Creator, which are actually one and the same.
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July 13, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
A Crash Course in How You Perceive Reality
We might compare a human being to a closed box with sensors: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands, representing the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
As we have previously said, the fundamental principle in perceiving reality is that of “equivalence of Form,” which means equilibrium of pressures. The senses function as sensors, each with a different reaction to the pressure, depending on the make up of the sensor. The sight sensor evokes a reaction of light, darkness, and colors; the sound sensor evokes sounds; the smell sensor evokes scents; the taste, flavors; and the touch, sensations such as hard, soft, warm, and cold.
The reaction of the senses is transferred to the brain’s control center, where the information is compared with the data that already exists in the memory, the reservoir of prior impressions. In this manner, we process what our senses gather, determine the most advantageous reaction, and study where we are and how best to function in our environment. When the process is completed, the information is “projected” unto a “screen” within the brain, portraying what is ostensibly in front of us (see diagram).
Why What You Perceive Outside of You Is Really Inside of You
In this process, the surrounding unknown becomes “known,” and a picture of the external reality is created. However, the picture is not one of external reality, but merely an internal picture, a result of the structure of human senses and preexisting data. If we had different senses, we would produce an entirely different picture. Quite possibly, if we perceived through different senses, what appears as light would appear as dark, or even as something so fundamentally different that we cannot imagine how it would appear to us.
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