This world has existed for billions of years, but the Kabbalah does not speak of the 6,000 years that we ordinarily count in our world, but of 6,000 degrees that describe the ascent of the soul back to its root, to the place from which it came.
The 6,000 years that Jews count are the length of time of the descent and ascent of the souls. At the end of the 6,000 years all the souls should be corrected and climb back to their root. The world itself will continue to exist when those 6,000 years are over.
Time is only an inner sensation and does not exist in and of itself. The sensation of time is a subjective sequence of events that concatenates by way of cause and effect. Baal HaSulam writes in Talmud Esser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) that time and space are terms that exist only in relation to us humans, that in fact, time does not exist.
The minute one crosses the barrier between cause and consequence and begins the spiritual ascent the present and the future merge into one. Even the laws of physics have begun to discover that there are processes where the end comes before the beginning, meaning time is but an inner, psychological concept within us.
Humanity was created in order to discover its highest state, the highest point. The attainment of that goal depends on what we identify ourselves with, with our soul or with our body? That determines our outlook on life and our body.
Our souls are all linked together. When a person discovers the upper world, he sees how strong the link is between him and the other souls. Right now all we can see is our body, which is why we think we are divided to many bodies. But a soul is a structure that exists in each of us – the same soul inside all of us, that is why when a person begins to identify himself with his soul, the walls between him and the other souls fall because he can see and feel that he has something in common with all the people and all the nations – a collective spiritual body.
When everything is finally corrected, everyone will be tied in one collective soul, feeling that bond and living it. If we could see the futuristic, corrected state we would see that there is no difference between one person and the next. When that fact becomes known to man, it begins to dictate his outlook on the world.
The Kabbalah maintains that there is no need to hurt people in order to make them be ‘good’, moral, but we should open their eyes, to how the world is really built. Then, naturally, they will want to feel good from within their egoistic nature and therefore will not harm one another. Humanity should come to precisely that state.
Everything in this world was created for a purpose. There are no coincidences. Our whole world and the whole universe is built of corporeal substance, but in precise accordance with the upper spiritual forces. Each detail is built of forces, and each spiritual force has a corporeal object that corresponds to it. That is why man studies the spiritual, because it is the origin of the corporeal world. Man begins to understand why everything is ordered as it is, because everything in this world is a result of the spiritual world.
Moreover, any spiritual force is linked with its consequence in our world. That is why when we ascent to the spiritual world and correct something there, we immediately change the consequence that stems from it, here in this world.
Throughout the history of mankind, providence has compelled man to study the world around him. Beasts do not need to perceive the world, only man, who must perceive the world around him simply in order to exist. Man must discover the worlds that surround him in order to improve his situation, to sustain the increasing population, to feed and clothe it. Man must evolve, develop science in order to know how to take advantage of nature for his own benefit. Without science, humanity would have been unable to survive and would remain at the level of no more than a primitive clan to this day. Man must attain such a state where he is master of his own fate, and nature will not allow him to remain in his beastly degree. Nature will force him to actively participate in the leadership of the world. That is the essential difference between the degree of “man” and that of a “beast”.
Unlike conventional science, Kabbalah allows man to see or attain spiritual forces only according to the degree of man’s inner correction. That is why there is no danger that you will be permitted to study Kabbalah if you are unworthy of it, uncorrected, meaning with ‘impure’ aims. Unlike other sciences, in Kabbalah no one asks if you are good or bad, or with what purpose you ‘break’ into this field, how you will use the knowledge that you are about to attain, but the guiding principle is to open the door, let you in and let you see for yourself. There are no commissions of inquiry in Kabbalah to see how loyal one is to the Creator, but one acquires the ability to interfere with providence according to one’s correction. Only with His corrected attributes can one begin to belong to providence and become involved in its actions.
That is why it is impossible to take advantage of the upper forces and inflict damage upon them. That contradicts nature itself, meaning there is no possibility of causing any harm, because as soon as you correct your aim for the better, even just a little bit, precisely to that extent you are able to manipulate the upper force. That is why there are no prohibitions on studying Kabbalah. It can never be used in order to inflict harm, and throughout human history there is not a single testimony of such an act.
The leaders of the world are not free people, but are as conductors to the upper forces. They cannot be blamed personally for their actions because one way or another they do as they are dictated from above – they are also not chosen by us. Man has an ability to choose only when he enters spirituality, but before that, he is like the rest of mankind, as a “herd of beasts”.