Rav Michael Laitman PhD

Kabbalah Revealed

part - 5 -

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.

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