Kabbalah Doesn't Take You Out of This World - It Teaches You How to Fix It

Question:

It seems that in this article (Peace in the World) Baal HaSulam offers practical, worldly solutions and speaks about this physical world. Is Kabbalah really concerned with practical solutions?

Full reply by Michael Laitman -

I don't understand the question.

What do you think we're talking about - mysticism?

We're talking about this world.

We're explaining how a person living in this world opens themselves to every level of reality necessary for living a truly good life.

Eventually, a person discovers that true life is not defined by the cycle of birth and death that they currently identify with because of their physical body.

Today we identify ourselves with the physical body, and therefore we experience life and death according to the body's existence.

But we can develop beyond that.

If we rather identify with that point of uniqueness that comes from the Creator - our soul's root - then we're identifying with eternity itself.

Then life and death, as we currently understand them, simply no longer define our reality.

If we connect with one another according to the higher system that created us, we attain eternity and perfection.

And this happens here, during this life.

How?

It is actually our difficult and challenging lives that push us toward spiritual development.

Spirituality is revealed within our physical life - not separate from it.

These are not two disconnected worlds.

On the contrary.

Through this physical world we reach the spiritual world.

And from the spiritual world we influence and transform this physical one.

When we attain reality correctly, we see it as one unified reality.

What is spirituality?

Does a person suddenly grow wings and fly into heaven?

No.

I remain an ordinary human being.

Here, in fulfilling "Love your neighbor as yourself," I reveal spirituality.

It is precisely in our relationships with the people in this world - with those walking on two legs or four, it doesn't matter - that spirituality is revealed.

Everything must be corrected here.

The attitude of love and bestowal that I develop toward the world - that is called spirituality.

Corporeality means wanting to exploit everything for my own benefit.

Spirituality means using myself for the benefit of what exists outside of me.

That is the entire difference between spirituality and corporeality.

Spirituality is not located somewhere beyond a distant star.

Spirituality and corporeality are simply two different attitudes a person can have toward others.

Nothing more.

As I begin relating to others with bestowal, I gradually come to value their desires more than my own.

I begin sensing reality through them more strongly than through myself.

That is what it means to rise from this world - which I perceive inside my own ego - to the spiritual world, which I perceive through others.

This is the entire distinction between corporeality and spirituality.

Yes, through this I suddenly discover a new reality - an infinite, boundless reality.

But I discover it here, together with the people who are already here.

Perhaps this disappoints some people.

Maybe they imagined they would dance with angels.

But all realization takes place in our world, within our egoistic desire, and with the people around us.

There is nothing mystical here.

Everything concerns the inner work of the human being.

Just as we study in the perception of reality, everything exists within us.

What appears to exist outside us, somewhere far away, is merely our perception.

There is nothing outside the human being.

We study this in the perception of reality.