Becoming A Vessel For The Light

Question: What is the connection between us, the place where you told us to look for all the qualities we read about in The Zohar? What is a connection between?

Dr. Laitman's Answer: It is a connection between all parts of the universe including the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels, corporeality and spirituality, and between everything. The connection has to be common, integral, and complete in every way. All the parts have to be connected to the full extent, 100%. This will be called Malchut of the World of Infinity-the vessel for the Light.

It is a corporeal and spiritual vessel where everything in existence connects together without any differences. All desires, all phenomena, and anything I can possibly think about, imagine, feel, and understand must all merge together in a single harmony, complementing each other.

Right now all of this seems imperfect, divided, distant, opposite, and opposed to each other in all kinds of ways because we are looking at it with the wrong outlook. This is why we are seeing a corrupted picture.

Even in the physical world, quantum physicists are discovering that when they observe a phenomenon, they influence the occurrence by their observation. This finding is really true; they're not imagining it. They have revealed an objective law. But they have only revealed a part of the law-the fact that everything is attained through a connection. But the second half of the law states that we feel everything inside of us, rather than outside as it seems to us.

I am the observer and everything happens inside of me. This is why I change what is happening with my outlook and attitude. It's because it all happens inside me in my changing qualities. When I look at the world, I judge it according to my own flaws because it is through them that I observe the world. I influence the results by changing myself.

The whole world is the Creator's kingdom, but it depends entirely on how I look at it. If I look at things positively, then everything is good, and if I look at them negatively, then everything is bad. Thus, the only thing I have to correct is my outlook.

A Compass On The Way To The Creator

Before reading The Book of Zohar, a person has to aim at the goal. All the previous life cycles that we went through in our developmental process were developing us in the material plane, where we were closed off inside ourselves. We only aspired to increase our internal will to enjoy, trying to fulfill it as much as possible. In this case a person experiences a connection with others only in order to use them for self-gratification.

This developmental process eventually brings us to a point where we have exhausted all the possibilities of being fulfilled. We grow disillusioned in our attempts to feel perfection or pleasure in this manner. We know we cannot attain a perfect, eternal life, even though our developing desire had hoped for this. Then we feel that there is nothing left for us to do with this aspiration for ceaseless self-gratification.

Suddenly, together with the disappointment with this life, we reveal a point in the heart-a desire to find the answer to the question of how, despite everything, is it possible to attain that sensation of a perfect, eternal life. This desire pulls us outward instead of inward, away from the place where we had always tried to find fulfillment and perfection in life.

"Outward" means changing your attitude to other people (although you will realize this much later). Previously you always aspired to use your neighbor in order to fulfill yourself. But now you have to understand that there are no other opportunities besides changing your attitude to your neighbor from reception to bestowal. 

By bestowing to your neighbor, you acquire a new desire-the desire of others who are actually inside of you. You will discover that their desires are actually yours; they are the desires of your soul. If you acquire the right connection with them, then all these desires will become yours. They will be your vessel of perception (your Kli).

But is this really possible? Indeed, it would never be possible if we tried to achieve this on our own. However, this is what we have to accomplish in order to acquire the sense to perceive the spiritual world.

The spiritual space lies beyond your body. It is your attitude to that which is "outside of you." Right now it seems non-existent, unreal, and unattainable. You reject these desires, which are "outside of you." You cannot imagine that they belong to you, and therefore you can't imagine what the spiritual world is. You can't even surmise that when you attain these desires, within them you will reveal a fulfillment called "the Creator." In the meantime, however, they seem non-existent or empty to you.

This blindness keeps you from feeling that the spiritual world is comprised of those "foreign" desires which are outside of you. Right now you perceive your attitude of reception to them as "hell." If, on the other hand, your attitude to them will change to one of bestowal, then you will feel that you are in heaven because you will feel everything that fulfills them-and you will desire for all of it to fulfill them! In other words, you create hell or heaven yourself, "outside" of you.   

Therefore, in the beginning of your spiritual development, the Creator brings you to a Kabbalistic group. However, you don't see it as being great or spiritual. It is written, "Every person judges others to the extent of his own faults." Baal HaSulam explains in the article, "The Creator's Concealment and Revelation," that your attitude to others determines what you will find in them: emptiness or fulfillment, this world or the spiritual world, and even the World of Infinity. 

Therefore, you have to convince yourself that spirituality lies in your attitude to everything outside of you, which is beyond the limits of your corporeal desires. It is written, "The Shechina dwells outside of man" (beyond man's skin or surface, which refers to our animate desire on the level of Aviut Dalet, the skin of an animal).

A person has to accomplish this inner change using help from outside-from the group, which will give him the right sensation, understanding, and confidence. The group will convince him of this, because the environment is capable of convincing us of anything. This is our primary task.

This is why we hold the friends' gatherings, meetings, congresses, and all sorts of events; it's to enable every person to be influenced by the right environment, which will convince us that spirituality is attained precisely by changing our attitude to others.

The entire study of the science of Kabbalah is intended to help us understand this, to be convinced of it, and to reveal the right attitude of bestowal, even love, for our neighbor. Through this attitude we will also reveal our true selves-our soul, or more exactly, our common soul, Malchut of Infinity. We will reveal the Shechina and the Creator ruling over everything together, as it is written, "He and His Name are One."

This is the intention we should have when reading The Book of Zohar.