We certainly see the enormous unleashing of the aggressive impulse in the many wars and revolutionary upheavals in the world, in the rising criminality, terrorism, and racial riots. Equally dramatic and striking is the lifting of sexual repression and freeing of the sexual impulse in both healthy and problematic ways. Sexual experiences and behaviors are taking unprecedented forms, as manifested in the sexual freedom of adolescents, premarital sex, gay liberation, general promiscuity, common and open marriages, high divorce rate, overtly sexual books, plays and movies, sadomasochistic experimentation, and many others.
Egoism does not want to perceive any spiritual motions – or movements toward the annihilation of egoism – and it does not allow us to be joyful. If a person feels bad, this means he is revealing egoism’s genuine relation to the Creator’s attainment. This means a person has already begun to perceive the truth. He must be thankful that this perception has become revealed to him.
If, however, instead of this he cries and complains, he is located inside of his egoism instead of exalting the spiritual point that has become revealed in him, or being happy about the egoistic suffering of his inner enemy.
The wisdom of Kabbalah maintains that the descent of the souls to our bodies continues for 6,000 years, meaning that it began some 5768 years ago, and will continue for 232 years. In the remaining years the souls must attain the whole system of creation, that sublime form of existence, where man will identify himself with his soul and not with his body.
All the Kabbalists wrote in their books about the uniqueness of the time we live in. They talked about how gradually, over thousands of years, souls descend and dress in the bodies of our world, accumulate a certain amount of experience and climb back up to the upper world. Afterwards they come back down to this world in order to dress in new bodies, and so on.
Nothing exists besides the upper reality, the thought of creation to bestow upon His created beings, which includes us. Only in this do we really exist. The worlds, including this world, are a concealment of our senses. We are, even now, existing in the best and only state there is. Only we have a problem, a dimming of our senses, so that we are not feeling that state but only a lesser state. We must clean our senses, wake up, get up and feel the real state. Nothing changes except the perception of reality.
This means that what actually changes in us is that part that perceives reality. Besides that there is nothing. Therefore, if you are thinking about changing something besides yourself you are in trouble. Nothing will help you, you will never change anything. You can see how much the world only suffers from this, accumulating bitter experiences as if in order to understand that this is not the way. We need to correct our senses. You will see a completely different picture when you are at the end of correction, in eternity and wholeness. There are no words to describe it. And this body – there is no body, and this world – there is no world; it is simply an imagination.
Kabbalists made certain demands and restrictions for those who wanted to study Kabbalah. It is better to remain on the mechanical level of observing the commandments (the common Surrounding Light shines upon man and purifies him slowly) than to study Kabbalah alone. Unfortunately, we see self-taught Kabbalists and to what it has led them; they fabricate their own concepts about the spiritual world, populate it with all kinds of bodies, forces and their interactions, with winged angels, devils, witches, hell, and paradise, etc. They do this without understanding that the spiritual world is only inside of man’s soul, while only the Creator is outside. The Kabbalists were deeply concerned about all this. The principal commandment is not to make an idol out of your own egoism. Whether you want it or not, you worship it anyway – it is an idol made inside of you; from your birth, you worship only your own desires, thinking only about how to satisfy them. Not to make an idol means not putting your own idol in place of the Creator. If you truly desire to enter spirituality, to have any contact with it, do not make a false picture of it in your imagination, for it leads astray.
Today, many people believe that humanity’s progress is approaching a dead end. Our past hopes for a better, happier life through scientific and social progress have been overshadowed by a growing pessimism over what seems to be an impasse. We see that more and more people in the world are unable to find fulfillment. Once, we thought of ourselves as making great leaps forward, believing we were making substantial progress, but now we appear to be facing some kind of a wall. Humanity seems to be plunging into depression, suicide and drugs abound, and people are trying to disengage themselves from the world, and suppress their feelings. Terrorism and a rapid upsurge in natural disasters are symptoms of a global crisis, and all these states are leading humanity to one fundamental question: “What is the meaning of life?”
Many people have already begun searching for the answer to this question. This becomes evident if we consider the vast increase in spiritual seekers over the last twenty years. It is written in The Book of Zohar, that at the end of the twentieth century humanity will start asking about the meaning of life, and that the answer to this question, hidden in the ancient science of Kabbalah, can only be revealed in our time, precisely because of these challenging circumstances.
