Kabbalah Revealed ---previous page -- next page

Emergence of a new kind of desire

The set of earthly desires is called man’s heart. And the fragment (desire), placed from above into the heart, is referred to as a point in heart.

During his biological life in this world man should completely fill his spiritual desire. He will repeatedly come back to our world, until this goal is reached. Thus, each generation in our world constitutes the same 600.000 souls, vested in the bodies of our world.

Each generation are the 600.000 souls in a rank which are progressing forward in order to be filled by spiritual light: the body dies and the soul moves and dresses in a new body, works in it again for the sake of being filled and so on until at a certain stage of development it will be filled with the Supreme Light.

Most people only feel the needs limited by the framework of our world. These include man’s creative, intellectual, cultural aspirations and the need to research and understand the structure of our world. This testifies, or indicates that souls dressed in the bodies of these people have not yet reached a desire for spirituality - the fifth stage of our desires’ development. Souls of this type do not cause aspirations to develop for what exists outside of the worldly bodies in which they are installed.

But there are a small (so far!) number of souls of a different type. Being installed in a protein body, such a soul forces man to long for something unearthly and eternal. Like others, he tries to be satisfied with what this world can provide, but to no avail. He sees how other people crave for riches and success, and realizes it is no more than a game. He participates in these "games", often not without success, and it brings him no satisfaction.

Gradually, trying himself in this world, disappointed and disenchanted, man begins to feel that his soul demands a different kind of filling. Having at last received a desire for the spiritual, man feels that he can no longer fill himself with earthly pleasures and feels his life is empty. Then he begins to look for the way to fill a new, spiritual desire.

Search and disappointment are the highlights of this new kind of desire, so characteristic of our time. Starting from the middle of the 20^th century forward, more and more people are awakening to this spiritual desire sent from above. Being combined with all other desires, it creates a conflict in man’s heart. The fifth desire causes inner discomfort and ultimately leads a person to Kabbalah. Such people come to us and we begin to explain how they can fulfill this desire.

However, since spiritual desire descends from above, it cannot be filled with objects of our world. Kabbalah shows man how this most exalted desire can be filled.

Kabbalists, who fill this spiritual desire ("Kabbalah" means "reception" in Hebrew) call this filling the Light or, rather, the Supreme Light.

This Supreme Light is called the Creator, because He both creates this desire and fills it. However, if this desire does not manifest in man he goes on living like all others.

Searching for satisfaction and the process of filling

Human life is a process of endless search. Man incessantly looks for something that can satisfy his new desires: he keeps seeking after food, wealth, sex, power and knowledge. All these desires constantly pop up and alternate in him. Man devotes his entire life to satisfying them.

There are many people in the history of mankind who managed to fill their spiritual desire. In their books they tell us about the search for satisfaction and the process of filling. Their explanations and the description of this process have developed into a science called Kabbalah. Such people call themselves Kabbalists.

Kabbalists explain that while being in our world man should fill his soul with the light so that it will rise to the same spiritual level which it was prior to descending and dressing in man’s heart, i.e. his earthly desires. Our task, regardless of all other desires called "heart" or "body", is to fill that point in heart with the Supreme light.

Kabbalists say that filling the soul with the light gives man a sensation of the upper world. This means that he can simultaneously live (feel) both in the upper world, and in ours. He unites these two worlds in him. The state, when man in our world completely corrects and fills his soul at the highest spiritual level, is referred to as the End of correction of a soul or simply "the end of correction".

From the moment he begins to feel aspiration to spirituality a person receives his initial information on Kabbalah. Kabbalah enables the person to master a method of filling his soul, to attain a state of infinite delight, sensation of eternity, absolute knowledge and perfection. Moreover, he receives an opportunity to realize it now, in this world, in this life, instead of coming back again and again to this "not the best" of worlds searching and suffering from birth to death.

Since souls continuously change, develop and improve, the task of Kabbalah is to create a method of reception of the spiritual filling suitable for each generation. This science is called "Kabbalah" — reception, because it offers a method of filling the soul with the light. Kabbalah teaches man to receive the Supreme Light and fill the soul with it, i.e. both desires of the heart and spiritual desires. This is possible, since all our desires are created by this very light. Hence, only direct filling with the light can satisfy us.

Spiritual desire — what is it?

The first four categories of desire are clearly understood and felt, but we have no idea about spiritual desire.

Man won’t discover what "the spiritual" means as long he keeps satisfying his desires by means of objects of this world. He sees these objects and knows exactly what he is after. But when a spiritual desire awakens in him, he sees no source that can possibly fill it. Man feels helpless and lost: life loses meaning and taste; there is nothing to fill it with. He simply feels bad. Something uncertain "pulls" him. But to where? Man doesn’t know where to turn because the source of pleasure is concealed from him. Normally he chooses to forget all about it.

As children we ask ourselves: "What are we living for?", but later hormones ignited by adolescence suppress this question along with the will to discover the meaning and source of life. Our sexual and intellectual aspirations lead us away from the solution to this problem. Then it arises again to disturb us. Those, who can’t fill the emptiness and demand an urgent answer to that question, find Kabbalah or rather, are led to it from above: when this happens the time of filling the human soul arrives.

Spiritual space

When the human body dies, the soul passes to a new-born one. From one life to the next the soul gradually accumulates readiness to manifest in man. He lives many lives without feeling his soul - an aspiration to the upper world. Take care not to confuse it with the earthly "aspiration to loftiness", which normally stands for creativity, poetry, music and art.

Man feels the manifestation of the soul as a new desire, longing, as emptiness and has no idea how to fill it. The search begins from this moment; ultimately it leads man to Kabbalah. Thus all people in the world are led to Kabbalah, because it is the only method of filling the soul.

When a man discovers Kabbalah, i.e. finds a Teacher, books and a group, a so-called "preparatory period" (for discovering the upper world) begins. This period can last for a few years (minimum 3 years).

Spiritual space opens up before him. Man finds himself on the periphery of that space with the Creator being in the very center. The spiritual space is a realm of properties similar to a physical field with a maximum manifestation of power in the center and the gradual weakening of it towards the perimeter until this property completely disappears on the border beyond which our world begins.

By changing his properties according to the properties of the Creator, man can move in spiritual space: the difference of a man’s properties from those of the Creator makes them remote from each other, while the similarity of their properties leads to their closeness. A complete equivalence causes them to merge.

We, in our initial state, are opposite to the Creator’s properties; hence we are totally outside of this field and cannot feel the Creator.

Having completed the preparation period, man reaches the first, minimal degree of similarity with the Creator and crosses the barrier (Machsom) between our world and the upper one.

He then begins his spiritual advancement; distinctly feeling the Creator he consciously corrects his properties becoming ever closer to Him.

Kabbalah describes the process as an ascent through 620 steps. This gradual rapprochement with the Creator through the similarity of properties consists of consecutive correction, i.e. the substitution of all 620 egoistic properties for altruistic properties. It speaks about the method of correcting desires on each of these steps. As a result, man each time attains the Creator on a new, higher level. Man must correct all his 620 desires step by step, i.e. climb all 620 levels, while existing in his physical body, living in this world.

Upon completing his spiritual ascent, he fully associates himself with the soul and need not return and incarnate into the material world.

Man’s death — What dies the body or the soul?

Man does not die, his biological body does. To begin with, we all feel only our body — the earthly desires. Then a desire for spirituality awakens in us.

This desire is not of this world, it belongs to the Creator. If man develops it he starts feeling not only the properties of his body, but those of the soul which is a part of the Creator’s properties within himself.

If man corrects himself so that the spiritual desires suppress the desires of the body and the body completely associates itself with the soul, he perceives the death of his body as shedding a cover from the soul. The body dies but man feels detached from the body while still living in it.

The body dies, but man feels detached from the body while still living in it. If we live inside the desires of our world (sex, food, wealth, power and knowledge), we receive filling through our body, i.e. through its five senses. We may irritate our brain with electric impulses by sending signals through electrodes attached to it and feel pleasures ostensibly received through the five senses. In this case we directly influence pleasure centers by sending the same signal they receive from the sensory receptors.

This is an example of directly affecting the pleasure centers, which receive all signals.

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