Kabbalah and Other Worldviews
What's the Difference Between Perception in Kabbalah and Other Views
The uniqueness of the perception in Kabbalah is discussed in relation to the goal of Kabbalah studies, and introduces how Kabbalah approaches time and movement.
The Major Difference = Nothing Outside Us
The major difference between the perception in Kabbalah and the perception in every other way we look at the world around us is that Kabbalah states very precisely that nothing exists outside the person except constant Upper Light.
Internality and Externality, Receiver and Giver
This Upper Light created the person and everything in this person’s perception as appearing externally. In the person’s state of reality—of receiving through the five senses whatever information the Upper Light has planned for him or her to receive—the person is separated from the complete picture of reality, i.e. the perception of the Upper Light itself. Put simply, the person is the receiver, the Upper Light is the giver, and these two attributes are infinitely distant from one another.
This view of the world is initially threatening because, once accepted, one can no longer look to change anything outside of oneself. It brings everything inside the person. One can then only work on changing one’s perception of reality, from a state of reception (i.e. egoism, human nature) to a state of bestowal (i.e. altruism, the Upper Light’s nature).
Kabbalah provides this process of inner change to each person. The single goal of Kabbalah studies is to attain equivalence of form with the Upper Light. Kabbalists call this “the goal of creation.”
Time and Movement in Kabbalah - A Brief Introduction
Since the attributes of the Upper Light are constant and infinite, there is no time, space or motion in the field that Kabbalah speaks of (Kabbalah doesn’t speak of our world). Each time a person ascends a degree, coming closer to the attributes of the Light, it is considered that the person “made a movement”; and the succession of these movements are what Kabbalists define as “time.”
In other words, “time” and “movement” in our definitions, through our five senses, are completely removed from the Kabbalists’ definitions of these terms, since Kabbalah speaks only in terms of qualities, attributes. In other words, a ball drops from a person’s hand to the ground, and in our physical perception it is considered that “it moved from here to there.” However, according to Kabbalah—spiritual perception—since no inner qualities changed, it is not considered that anything moved.
“Time” and “movement” in Kabbalah only relate to closeness and farness in the attributes of a person to the attributes of the Upper Light. When a person attains equivalence of form with it, there is no past or future—but the complete “thought of creation” in the present.
The entire method of Kabbalah is the method of how to equalize in form with the constant Upper Light.
Further Reading:
- Kabbalah.info - the concepts presented in this article are based on the fundamental principles of Kabbalah as taught at the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education and Research Institute: www.kabbalah.info
