If You Want To Be Closer To The Creator
Each soul is
connected to the World of Infinity by a chain or a ladder of spiritual rungs
that gradually weakens the Lights and Kelim. I awaken this system the
moment I establish a connection with Infinity. Actually, this whole system is
inside me; it only seems external to me.
There are two
entities in the universe: man and the Creator. Man has to feel that he exists
outside of the Creator in order to understand the meaning of "being separated
from the Creator." He has to learn what opposition to Him is and what it is to
be close or far from Him in order to then be able to experience adhesion with
Him.
This is why I was
deliberately created with a perception of reality that is divided into what is
inside and outside of me. This makes it easier for me to understand what the
Creator is and what I am, what the breaking and the adhesion are, what a state
of unconsciousness (concealment) is as opposed to the state of being close to
Him and merging with Him into one whole.
The Creator tosses
outside everything that I feel inside me, and as a result, my perception is
divided into two parts: internal (which is everything I receive), and external
(everything that I give, but without the correct intention).
The external world
is my Kelim that are purposefully portrayed to me as foreign in order
for me to understand what bestowal means. If I begin to relate to them as to
parts of me, then I will understand how far I am from bestowal, and how
opposite and undesirable it is for me. I will then see that loving my neighbor
as myself is not that simple; in fact, I cannot do it. And that means I cannot
bestow or come close to the Creator.
"But hold on," you
are thinking, "I want to be close to the Creator!" Well, if you want it, then
you need to show it, and bestowal is the only way to do that.
Why Do We Need This Imaginary World?
Question: What is
the science of Kabbalah's approach to
the perception of reality?
Dr.
Laitman's Answer: The approach is very simple. A human being
is a desire. This desire imagines itself from within: Who am I, what am I, what do I consist of, how
do I exist, as well as what and how do I feel? In addition, it imagines that it
supposedly exists outside of this desire, as though there is another
form of desire somehow depicted as outside of itself.
There
is a great gap between the desire which seems to belong to me (in which I
imagine myself), and the desire in which I perceive everything that surrounds
me. The desire in which I imagine my external environment is disconnected from
my internal "I."
This
external desire feels foreign in regard to my inner desire; however, I analyze
it only to the extent that the inner desire can benefit from it, meaning
receive pleasure from it in my inner desire. Therefore, I can kill this
external desire; I can rid it of all life and Light because I don't care what
happens to it. The most important thing for me is to gain in my inner desire. I
use the external desire only to benefit my inner desire.
Why
do we perceive the world and ourselves this way? Baal HaSulam explains that
there is only one desire, but it has two inner, inherent differences: the separation into the internal and the external.
Through this breaking, the Creator enabled us to feel the difference between
Him and ourselves, to feel how opposite
we are to each other and how distant He is from us. However, instead of feeling
Him, we are imagining the world that surrounds us now.
So
how else can He instil Himself: the quality of bestowal, into us: the quality
of reception? He does so by giving us an example of what these two forms of
nature represent, what it means to receive and to bestow.