What is Reality?
Kabbalah and the Perception of Reality

In the science of Kabbalah, we study what we need to do in order to enter a hidden structure: spirituality. We study how we can ascend beyond our world, to the field that governs it.

We perceive the world within ourselves. Our five senses receive some external stimulus and pass it to the brain, where it is processed forming our picture of the world, and we perceive nothing outside this picture.

The world “we know” is our reactions to external impacts. The world “in itself” is unknown. For instance, if my eardrum is damaged, I hear nothing and sound doesn’t exist for me. I perceive only within the range to which I am attuned.

Our perception of the world is completely subjective; it says nothing about what happens outside us. We grasp our own reactions to something supposedly unfolding outside us, but does anything really happen out there?

Many theories discuss this. Newton’s theory stated that there is an objective reality, that the world is as we see it and exists regardless of our own existence. Einstein later theorized that the perception of reality depends on the relation between the velocity of the observer and the velocity of the observed. In other words, by changing our speed relative to an object, we observe it completely differently: space becomes warped, compressed or expanded, and time changes.

Other theories, such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, proposed reciprocity between the individual and the world. In other words, the perception of reality is a result of my influence on the world and its influence on me.

The science of Kabbalah explains that there is no perceptible reality at all outside us. We influence nothing outside us because we perceive nothing outside us. Outside us, there is only constant Upper Light. The entire world is within us, and we feel that we are influenced from the outside because we are created this way.

If we exit our world, we begin to see how the Upper Light gives birth to ever newer pictures of the world within us. This entire world then becomes small and restricted. We see how the Upper Light determines the way we perceive ourselves and the environment, and we ultimately begin to control this process.

The science of Kabbalah grants us this ability. We begin understanding that the reason for our restricted abilities lies within us. If we equalize our inner attributes with the attributes of the Upper Light, we will reach the level of perfection and eternity called “the world of Infinity”—endless life and absolute fulfillment.

All this depends exclusively on changing our inner qualities. This is why the science of Kabbalah aims at showing us that by changing ourselves (and doing it quickly, within one lifetime) we begin to transcend this earthly existence. Our bodies remain in it and we go on living our usual lives with families, children, the world and society. But we receive an addition to all this—the Upper Reality—where we live in our supernal sense organ.

What is Kabbalah?

1. What is Kabbalah?

2. Why am I looking for something spiritual?

3. What does Kabbalah teach, and What does studying Kabbalah do for me?

4. What is reality?

5. Why do I feel bad?

6. Why Kabbalah? Why Now?

7. Rav Michael Laitman, PhD answers questions on Kabbalah