In Chapter Three, we explained the making of the Kli through the Creator’s Light. In fact, of the two, the Kli is more important to us than the Light, even though obtaining the latter is our actual goal.
Let’s clarify this with an example. In the film, What the Bleep Do We Know!? Dr. Candace Pert explains that if a certain Form does not exist within me in advance, I will not be able to see it on the outside. As an example, she uses a story about how the Indians first discovered Columbus’ ships. She says that it is commonly believed that when the ships arrived, the Indians could not see them, even though they were looking straight at them.
Dr. Pert explains that the Indians couldn’t see the ships because they didn’t have a model of such ships in their minds before they encountered them. Only the shaman, who was curious about the odd ripples that seemed to come from nowhere, discovered the ships after trying to imagine what could be causing the ripples. His imagination created various shapes in his mind, and when the shape in his mind resembled that of the ships, he discovered them. At that point, he told his tribesmen what he saw, and then they, too, could see the ships.
Kabbalistically speaking, it takes an inner Kli to detect an outer object. In fact, the Kelim (plural for Kli) not only detect the outer reality, they create it! Thus, Columbus’ armada existed only in the minds, the inner Kelim of the Indians who saw it and reported it.
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If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody's around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
This famous Zen koan (a special kind of Zen riddle) can also be phrased in Kabbalistic terms: If there is no Kli that detects the sound of the tree, how can we know that it made a sound at all?
Similarly, we could turn Columbus’ discovery into a Zen koan and ask, “Before Columbus discovered America, did it exist?”
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There is no such thing as an “outside world.” There are desires, Kelim, that create the outside world according to their own shapes. Outside us there is only Abstract Form, the intangible, imperceptible Creator. We shape our world by shaping our own tools of perception, our own Kelim.
Therefore, it will not help us to ask the Creator to change the world around us for the better. The world is neither good nor bad; it’s a reflection of the state of our own Kelim. When we correct our Kelim and make them beautiful, the world will be beautiful, as well. The Tikkun (correction)is within, and so is the Creator. He is our corrected selves.
Similarly, to a night owl, a night in the dark forest is the time of best visibility. To us, it is a time of chilling blindness. Our reality is but a projection of our inner Kelim, and what we call “the real world” is only a reflection of our inner correction or corruption. We are actually living in an imaginary world.
If we are to rise above this imaginary world to the real world, to the true perception, we must adapt ourselves to the true Kelim. At the end of the day, whatever we perceive will be according to our inner makeup, according to the way we build these models within us. There is nothing to discover outside of us, nothing to reveal except the abstract Upper Light that operates on us and reveals the new images within us, depending on our readiness to accept them.
Now all that remains is to learn where we can find the corrected Kelim. Do they exist within us or do we have to build them? And if we have to build them, how do we go about it? This will be the topic of the following sections.