Kabbalah and Philosophy

Lesson 4

A gift compared with love

• What is more important: the gift or the giver of a gift?
• The structural wisdom of Kabbalah
• Four levels of development in the attainment of love
• The limitations of the human intellect
• The starting point - increasing the importance of the Creator

Matter and form in Kabbalah

"And the point is that this love, even though it is only an end result of the gift, is immensely more important than the gift itself. Similarly to when a great king gives a small object to a person, even though the gift itself has no value, the love and the attention of the king are infinitely valuable and precious."

Suppose I have received a postcard which is worth 10 cents from a great man, I would appreciate it and be proud of it as it gives me a sense of importance. This means that the gift itself is not important at all. The difference between myself and Him and how important He is to me is what actually determines the value. "According to that it is abstracted" this love, or the result of receiving the gift, "completely from the matter, which is the light and the gift, in a way that the entire action and impression remain imprinted in the attainment only as the love itself and the gift is virtually forgotten and erased from the heart. Accordingly, this part of the wisdom is distinguished as the formative wisdom of Kabbalah, which is the most important part of the wisdom." That is because it begins to deal with the relationship between Him and myself in a direct way. In that, man constructs a relationship between himself and the Creator out of a revelation within his own senses.

Why is a relation a form?

A relation is a form because the relation is just a general force that is between us, and common to us both. But this force has all kinds of forms and different ways of relating, that is why it is called "form". The extent to which I learn how He relates to me and how I relate to Him is called formative knowledge.

What is the definition of "force"?

Force is the matter of the vessel. The matter of the vessel attains some form, and it is this form that we discuss.

ABYA

"In this love there are four parts" meaning that on the path to attaining this love we go through, our matter goes through four levels of development. The four parts "are similar to the love of a person, in that the first time I receive a gift I still do not call the giver a loved one." How do I know if he loves me, if he has any relation to me, and what he wants from me? "Even more so if the giver of the gift is an important person, which the receiver can not be compared with." If it is a regular person, a friend, a relative, or someone lesser than myself then I sense him. I can perceive him, "read" him and understand why he gives to me. In this way we are somehow close, he is equal or even lesser than me. I can understand his attitude that he has some interest in me. However, if he is really great (such as the Creator compared to a small man), then this gap may not be felt, we can not even sense where we are and where He is, and we do not feel Him.

This is actually occurring in reality, it turns out that we are not able to determine a relationship between us. I receive all sorts of things from the Creator but I do not know Him, and I don't sense Him. Even if I would sense somehow that things come from Him, I would not be able to determine love in it, because He is too elevated in relation to me for there to be any relation to me called love.

"By the multitude of the gifts and the extent of the persistence" (even though He is very great, I am very small and we do not understand each other) "it is realized that even the great important person will be known as a true loved one, equal in value." Why? "Because the law of love will not be realized between a great and a small, since two real lovers need to feel equality between them as it is known." So the multitude of the gifts helps me to lower to my level the giver of the gifts. It is as if I draw the Creator closer to me. He becomes closer to me as He constantly gives and He builds the connection with me. As He gets me accustomed to receiving from Him, He becomes equal to me in my eyes, and from this I am able to begin to feel love towards Him.

There cannot be just one gift from the Creator, but rather a multitude of gifts, so that the created being will be able to sense the Creator as equal. These are things that have to be thought about and felt through examples from this world, but they certainly exist in this world.

What are the gifts that the Creator gives?

When you will begin to receive gifts from the Creator you are in the spiritual "world of Asiya": this is the first gift. The multitude of gifts is in "the spiritual world of Yetzira", and the love which is above the gifts is called "the world of Beria".

The philosophers dealt with love without receiving the gifts from the Creator, at the level of the world of Asiya, at the human level. I do not want to go in depth into who the philosophers were, how they lived, at what human or moral level they lived. Some of them had some young boy, with whom they used to make love, and overall the level of the morals in which they used to live was an entirely human level. They studied using the human intellect. There were certainly some lobby groups such as Stoicism, which claimed that it is necessary to avoid all pleasures, such as Duggan, who put himself in a barrel and so on.

There were all sorts of philosophers, but they all researched out of the human intellect, from their senses and their human nature. I am not dismissing them; there were very wise people among them. Today there aren't any such people as Appleton or Aristotle. Baal HaSulam and other Kabbalists even say that since those times there have never been any other people at the level of those two. But still, it is only human intellect. Take a cat, as smart as you can find, and educate it in any way you want, and this is what will come out. What can a cat understand? Out of its nature, how can it understand you? Who you are? What you are? - Only through its senses.

Without dismissing anyone, this is a different level of research. That is why whatever they researched above their abilities is only imaginary. We see it in all philosophies. There have been at least two hundred philosophers from all the great nations, including even the Bezants, Arabs and Japanese.

Is it more like the philosophy of Spinoza?

It is not even related. This is very far from spirituality because in general these are just methods of research with the human intellect, which set some rules for themselves, researching in some way. They themselves do not understand why Spinoza decided to research in one way and Hegel or Deckard in another. This is natural, each went his own way. It is very simple; they have not modified their nature, only researched with their intellect. They did not develop the spiritual vessel, but they were wise. At the human level they were really at the peak of intellectual development. Morally, whether at a high level or low, they lived according to their culture.

At this stage we are under the barrier, but this was also given to us by the Creator. The fact that we are here is also a gift. Can we think this way?

Of course we need to think this way. We begin by differentiating the gifts within our reality. We begin to value the Creator and the importance of the Creator. This is what I always tell the group that this needs to be worked on. First that the Creator needs to be great, and only then it is possible to determine that His relation to us is a gift. Once we feel the gift (according to His greatness) we will begin to feel another gift and another gift and so on. Later on, out of the multitude of the gifts (even without working on the greatness of the Creator and the greatness of the gift), we feel the gifts because we search for His relation to us; we begin to sense that He is great, and at the same time also close and loving. Out of this, we develop a relationship of love to Him, and beyond these gifts, we begin to feel what love is, and what all forms of love are. We begin to ignore the gifts and become attached to the feeling of love itself; the gift looses its importance. Just like it is with children: there are among them good ones and not so good ones, but you love them in any case.

What do I need to do so that all other things will develop naturally? Only to glorify the Creator. Then I will feel that I receive from Him, not just one but many gifts. In spite of His greatness I do not lower Him so that He would be equal to me, and so that I will feel love for Him. Rather, out of sensing the multitude of the gifts without lowering Him from His greatness, I will begin to feel that He is close to me, that He loves me, and out of that I begin to love Him.