About half of the U.S. public (49%) says they have had a religious or mystical experience, defined as a "moment of sudden religious insight or awakening." This is similar to a survey conducted in 2006 but much higher than in surveys conducted in 1976 and 1994, and more than twice as high as in a 1962 Gallup survey (22%). In fact, the 2009 Pew Forum survey finds that religious and mystical experiences are more common today among those who are unaffiliated with any particular religion (30%) than they were in the 1960s among the public as whole (22%).
According to kabbalists, a person constantly questions his goals, and the surfacing of all kinds of desires in him prompts changes in his life. However, all these desires and occurrences surface at the level of our world, and as such, are unrelated to spirituality. It could also be that this person starts worrying about the world to come, about what will happen to him after he dies, and thus starts noticing everything in the world as being illusive and transient, and that he’ll be left with nothing at the end of it… In either case, he is pursuing security, and religion offers him a reward for his efforts.
A thirsty man, holding in his hand a broken glass, must first repair the glass before he can fill it up and drink from it. He who feels the detachment from spirituality must first mend his bond with the Creator before he can receive the offered goods.
There is a root in the spiritual world for all that exists – a root that initiates and motivates our behavior, our thoughts, our emotions, and the various events we experience. Everything that we can possibly imagine.
Kabbalah deals with the question about the purpose of life. From a very young age man starts asking this question, but then forgets about it in the course of his life. Man cannot traumatize himself indefinitely with this unanswered question. The answer can be found only in one source – the wisdom of Kabbalah, which was available only to a chosen few throughout the centuries. Generations came and went, but only representatives of the last generations can receive the irrefragable answer to the most important question.
People, who very sharply feel this question, come to Kabbalah. They do not feel satisfied, filled in their daily life. They suffer neither manias, nor depressions – they simply cannot reach peace of mind in this life. Why? Kabbalah gives the answer to this question.
Like all others, a man tries to be satisfied with what this world can provide, but to no avail. He sees how other people crave for riches and success, and realizes it is no more than just a game. He participates in these “games”, often not without success, but it brings him no satisfaction. Gradually, trying himself in this world, disappointed and disenchanted, man begins to feel that his soul demands a different kind of filling. Having at last received a desire for the spiritual, man feels that he can no longer fill himself with earthly pleasures and feels his life is empty. Then he begins to look for the way to fill a new, spiritual desire.
Humankind is developing evolutionally starting from animal desires. Animal desires are desires of our body: for food, shelter, family, and sex. They all pertain to our body, and should we live outside of any society, or in the forest, we would still have these desires. The next stage of the development of the egoism is aspiration for wealth. Following this stage is the desire is for power, glory, and fame (combination of these). And finally, the desire that is the highest in our world, the desire for knowledge.
After having tried all these desires in the course of thousands of incarnations, after descending into our world thousands of times, a person reaches a state called recognition of Evil. In other words, each of us accumulates inner record which convinces us that nothing we do will give us pleasure.
From generation to generation, our ego, our desire to ask questions—to understand why we are living, what we’re living for, why we struggle so much, why life is so hard, and who pulls the strings—grows. All these questions make us restless.
Until a person attains true perception and real existence; until he transcends the boundaries of his world, while still living on this Earth, he will be forced to reincarnate again and again in this world; until he attains existence within the full volume of the universe.
