Description

Anthony Kosinec outlines the four stages of desires' development in this world, and the evolvement to the desire for the spiritual world. From the lecture "Perception of Reality" filmed as part of the "Kabbalah Revealed" TV series.

Transcript

Development of Desires

We all feel desires and we feel them change, but we don't really pay attention to this system that is placed in us by nature well enough so that we can understand what it's doing for us. We all understand that our first sort of grasp of what pleasure is, is just survival-type pleasures. The first category, we see pleasure as and require: sex, food, and shelter. All of our efforts, our work, what we perceive around us, the whole goal of our lives has to do with finding and getting these things, and this is a desire that we have in common with animals. It doesn't require other people, we just need this to survive.

Once we have this filled, we realize that life is about much more than that and we can't be satisfied with it and a second category of desires appears. This is a desire for wealth. Wealth is the accumulation of the first category, so that I'll never have to worry about it again, I will be able to control it. Once we fill this desire for wealth, we come to the feeling that "is that all there is?" something else grows in us. Now, notice that it's not simply that it's another desire that's growing, but it's a greater desire - one that encompasses the one before it.

In other words, here we have a small desire and a small filling. Here, we have a desire that has grown and it requires a greater filling; and this one is incorporated in this one. Now, if I can't be filled by wealth, there's a new desire that arises in me and that is a desire for power. This doesn't happen only to the individual in their lives, but it's happened to humanity as a whole throughout history. The whole scope of history has been the evolution of these desires. Power is the ability to control both this and this, all systems that will bring me the greatest collection of that. Now, this is political power, this is empire, this is control in my job. Once I have that, I can no longer be satisfied with it. I become empty. I feel a lack, and a fourth desire is placed inside of me - a greater expanded desire for something that encompasses all of that, and that is knowledge.

Knowledge is the barrier, in a sense, of what it is that we define as the physical world. These desires, one, two, three and four, all have to do with what we perceive as pleasure. That is what we are being filled with and what we want - what will satisfy us. Well, knowledge is science, it is religion, it's art, it's the pinnacle of what we consider to be what humanity could possibly achieve. Yet anybody who seriously delves into this very great desire and attempts to fill it eventually discovers that this is empty as well; that there are no answers in science for the real causes of things. Because there's no answer to purpose; there's only mechanical answers. The answers only have to do with these desires.

Religion, though it gives us beliefs, cannot give us access to what it is that we really want - a direct knowledge. Once a person becomes empty, as a result of having this fulfilled, something very different and very special happens - a new desire arises - but this desire is not a desire from this world. This is a desire placed within our heart, which is the sum of all desires that we have - both for this world and for what's beyond it.

A desire is placed in us from a completely other level of development - from the greater reality. What appears inside of our heart is a "point in the heart" - that's what the Kabbalists call it. This point is a part of the greater reality. It has an aspect of spirituality, which if this desire becomes fulfilled, unlike these, it grows continually, until it fills our entire experience, our entire existence, and can bring us into the Spiritual World.