Rav Michael Laitman PhD

Kabbalah Revealed

part - 2 -

What am I living for?

What is the subject of Kabbalah?

Kabbalah deals with the question about the purpose of life.

From a very young age man starts asking this question, but then forgets about it in the course of his life. Man cannot traumatize himself indefinitely with this unanswered question. The answer can be found only in one source - the wisdom of Kabbalah, which was available only to a chosen few throughout the centuries. Generations have come and gone, but only the representatives of the last generations can receive the irrefragable answer to the most important question.

But even today when Kabbalah has emerged from a secret doctrine to become accessible to practically all our contemporaries, it is intended directly for those who, having matured and even grown old, do not cease to ask themselves this childlike question - what is the point of my life and the life of all mankind ?

People who feel this question very sharply come to Kabbalah. They do not feel satisfied and filled in their daily life. They suffer neither manias, nor depressions - they simply cannot reach peace of mind in this life. Why? Kabbalah answers this question.

Stages of development of desires

The development of mankind over thousands of years of its existence is a development and realization of different levels of desire. The search for ways of fulfilling these emerging desires determine this or that level of civilization's evolution and everything we define as technological and scientific progress.

Owing to the fact that desires constantly improve, i.e. vary from smaller to bigger, mankind advances.

Kabbalah divides the entire complex of human desires into five stages:

• Primary desires - for sex, food (it is said: "Love and famine rule the world".);

• The second stage of development of desire - striving after riches;

• The third stage of development of desire - craving for power and fame;

• The fourth stage of development of desire - thirst for knowledge;

• The fifth stage of development of desire - aspiration to spirituality, to the Creator .

The need for sex and food are animal desires, because animals have them as well. Even being in full isolation man feels hunger and the urge to reproduce, i.e. to have sexual relations.

Desires for wealth, power, fame and knowledge are the beginning of human desires, since to satisfy them man must be surrounded by other people.

Man is born, his animal and human desires develop, and then he finds out that their realization does not satisfy him, since his secret but true aspiration which he cannot yet realize and formulate, falls outside the limits of this world.

Man receives this desire from above. It is neither given by nature as animal desire, nor does it develop under the influence of a society as do human desires.

Kabbalah calls this level of desire - the desire of spiritual light or man's soul.

Kabbalah studies the spiritual construction named the general soul or Adam. This construction consists of 600.000 parts, each of them in turn splitting into a multitude of fragments which are located inside earthly desires.

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