Chapter 1.9 – What Exists Between This World and the Next?
It is quite possible that there are other worlds that exist in the same space as ours that we simply don’t make contact with because these worlds are in a different dimension. But if we remain confined to the boundaries of our own nature, we will remain confined to the boundaries of our own nature, we will never be able to discover them. These other worlds are where our roots are, the reasons for everything that happens in our world. There we will find the reasons for our own life and death.
There are some among us who succeeded in acquiring a new sense - one that imparts the ability to feel a broader reality than we generally see. The expansion of the limits of our senses allows them to skip the boundaries of time and see everything that happened before they were born and what will happen when they are gone.
These people can remain outside the bounds of their normal emotions and see the general and real picture of Creation. They are able to connect causes and their consequences, while the rest of us are able to see no more than a tiny part of this reality. We cannot see the reasons for what happens to us, let alone the consequences of our actions.
Although such people are just as human as we are, they have succeeded in developing additional sensory organs. They are called "Kabbalists" because they have an ability to receive the Upper Knowledge, eternal pleasure and the force of the Creator. The method that allows them to move beyond the boundaries of our nature and its limitations is called "the wisdom of Kabbalah.”
Such wisdom reveals how any person can understand the reality beyond our world perceive the actual reality, the seemingly external one. Kabbalah is called "the wisdom of the hidden" because this wisdom is hidden to everyone who is confined to the framework of our five senses.
This method enables us to receive additional desires to the ones we are born with, and in them receive the actual sensation of reality. Although this method is complex, serious and profound, it is one that anyone can understand and use.
Furthermore, Kabbalists claim that until we attain the real sensation of our existence and reach beyond the boundaries of our physical world, we will have to be reborn into this world over and over again.
Kabbalists live and feel our world and the spiritual world at the same time, and pass their knowledge and insights on to us. They say that there are many other worlds other than our own. These worlds are like circles that surround one another. Our world is at the innermost circle. We call this tiny circle our "universe".
Each of the circles is a world in itself. There are five circles altogether, or five "worlds". Each circle can sense itself and the lower ones, but not the upper ones. For that reason we, who are in the lowest circle, can feel only our own world. But if a person can ascend with his senses to the spiritual world, to a higher circle, he becomes able to feel that world as well as the worlds below it.
Thus, Kabbalists live in several worlds at once, and are therefore aware of all the reasons for and the consequences of the events in our world. With the wisdom of Kabbalah and their additional sensory organs, such people begin to perceive the broader picture through every feeling. Their thoughts and acts become clear because they discover their origin, their spiritual roots.
We see a wider picture of reality in every new degree, which we call “this world,” or “my world,” because it becomes "our world". Our “next world” is what we have yet to attain, meaning the segment of the picture to be discovered in the next spiritual degree. The name, "next world," indicates that this is the picture we will attain in the next degree, which might be in the next instant.
The way to enter the spiritual world and understand it clearly is based on a single spiritual attribute: because there are no boundaries in the spiritual world, the difference between spiritual objects is measured in attributes. If two objects are identical in their every property, they unite and become one. Thus, the spiritual world is a world of attributes and desires. The separation or unity of two spiritual objects/desires is measured by the degree to which they are identical.
The spiritual sphere is not a physical one, but one of desires, the highest being that of the Creator, and the lowest, its total opposite. There are five principal spiritual degrees between these opposing desires, called "worlds". We can transverse them according to the changes in our attributes and desires. When our desires become identical with those of a certain spiritual degree, we immediately bond with that degree on a feeling level.
We are born in the lowest spiritual degree, one of absolute egoistic desires, called “this world.” But our goal is to climb all the spiritual degrees of the worlds and bond with the attributes of the Creator, the highest spiritual degree, while living in our physical, corporeal body. Thus, after having equalized in form with the Creator, we will contain all the worlds and desires inside us. Indeed, the purpose of creation is to be like the Creator.
Much as in the Upper World, we, too feel what happens "outside us" by the principle of equivalence of attributes. In order to feel something external, an organ must have identical attributes to the phenomenon it feels. It is like a radio receiver where the wavelength in the radio must be the same as the wave that one wants to receive. One can only feel a transmission with an identical wavelength as that of the receiver. Thus, we only feel the environmental phenomena that correspond to our sensory system.
Moreover, we cannot really feel anything outside us, only our responses to the external influences. For example: we cannot perceive the actual sound, only the movement of our eardrum that is a consequence of the pressure of the wave in the air that pressures our eardrum, coming from the generator of the sound.
Therefore, it is not the wave itself that we feel, but the response of our eardrum to the pressure of the wave. All our sensory organs operate by reacting to an external stimulus. In the end, we only feel ourselves.
But in order to react to an external stimulus in such a way, we must have the same properties as the stimulus. For example: a person would respond to an insult, but a mouse would not, because a mouse doesn’t have the corresponding property to perceive this stimulus.
Thus, if we acquire the spiritual attributes, we will immediately begin to receive the spiritual forces that correspond to the acquired spiritual attributes. A person can feel the new, spiritual world, only by receiving new spiritual attributes.