Why have we evolved?
Evolution and where it's leading us according to the wisdom of Kabbalah
Why have we made religion, art, education, politics, drugs, etc.? Why weren’t we happy as cavemen, just with our inborn pleasure-needs for food, sex, family and shelter?
It is because we have a program inside us, and it forces us to evolve. It evolves us by growing our desires. When I have a bigger desire, I can no longer be fulfilled by what I used to be, and I need something more to fulfill me.
We have evolved through four stages of desires:
- Inanimate;
- Vegetative;
- Animate;
- Speaking.
The first stage is called inanimate because these desires don’t move. They aspire for rest and comfort; that is their purpose. In humans, they relate to desires for food, sex, family and shelter.
We call these desires “inanimate” because we cannot live without fulfilling them. They form the basis for all our desires. In evolutionary terms we can think of cavemen who only had these desires, and lived and worked to satisfy only them.
The second stage is called vegetative because movement is inscribed in them, but like plants, only a very limited amount of movement. Plants only desire “to grow”; growth is their purpose. In humans, these are desires for money, exchange, and to a greater extent, control, honor and power.
In evolutionary terms we can think that after the initial set of desires were satisfied, our desires grew and made us want what other people had—“I want their fruits, and they want my nuts”—so emerges an exchange system—money—and out of this exchange system arises a person who says “I can control this system!”—power—and people who pride themselves in their produce and ownership—honor.
The third stage is called animate because, like animals in relation to plants, they have more freedom of movement. In humans, this relates to the desire for knowledge. Once exchange systems are operative come the questions “How do these fruits grow out of the ground?” “Where do they go once I eat them?” “What is inside my body?” “What is in the sky?” and so on. And thus emerges science, philosophy, the humanities, arts and culture, and a more progressive movement in the world.
The final stage is called human or speaking, and relates to the way a human has the most freedom of movement out of all the above. This relates to our current period where our progress in the desire for knowledge is reaching its limits, in that we cannot find answers concerning the purpose of our existence with science, only mechanical answers. Through this recognition of a limit, we are entering into the desire for spirituality, where increasing confusion, emptiness and pain spawn the questions: “What is the meaning of life?” “Why do I feel bad?” “Where did I come from / Where am I headed?” “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” “What is reality?” and so on. The purpose of this stage of desire is the purpose of our existence.
There is one thing common to all of our desires: they all aspire for pleasure, fulfillment—a state of rest.
On the one hand, every one of our desires points in the direction of a fulfillment, but on the other hand, we never achieve complete fulfillment that never fades away. Why? It is because new and bigger desires keep popping up inside us.
Why can’t the fulfillment of a desire be enough for me? It is because after it’s fulfilled, I’m left empty again, and I then have to follow another desire that enters me, achieve it, feel empty again...and this process keeps repeating itself.
Our whole evolution is governed by this process, of chasing fulfillments which constantly leave us empty, and then the more we discover this emptiness after every fulfillment, the more we want; and when we want more, we suffer more.
As our desires grow, we feel that we need more to satisfy ourselves, and thus we suffer more and need to put in greater efforts to achieve what our bigger desires demand. When we start asking about our life’s purpose, it is a sign that our desires have grown to such an extent that nothing in this world can fulfill us, and we need to know what is beyond it. In other words, it is a sign of a highly evolved desire.
Since fulfillment or pleasure is the goal of every desire, we can equally say that emptiness or pain is the source of every desire. The goal of the greatest, most evolved desire must therefore be the ultimate pleasure, and opposite it, must be the most intense pain and yearning.
Those who have discovered the end of this process—Kabbalists—tell us that unbounded happiness, eternal life, perfection and complete fulfillment await us at the end. Now, they say, we are still in the middle of the process, and while being in the middle, we have no perception or feeling of its end.
They liken this process to that of a ripening fruit: In its early stages the fruit is bitter, and grows increasingly bitter until it reaches its fullest bitterness, and then a major transition takes place—the fruit ripens and becomes sweet for the eating.
The fact that our desires are growing, and that the discovery of more and more emptiness and pain in ourselves and in the world is taking place, these are the signs of humanity’s major transitional phase; where our desires will grow so big that we will not be satisfied with anything in this world anymore, and will start to demand the truth, really wanting to ascend out of this world.
The vast increase in spiritual seekers and the increasing diversification of beliefs and niches in the last twenty years verifies this growing desire, that we are looking for something more or different than what our everyday lives offer us.
Our time is unique because now that we experience the biggest desires, we also experience the biggest feelings of emptiness.
While we want things in this world, we don’t need spirituality, because we don’t feel a need for it. And then, we are brought to wanting spirituality through our desires being evolved to a point where everything in this world can no longer bring us fulfillment. We then either start consciously asking the questions “What is the meaning of life?” and “Why do I exist?” or we simply feel these questions as a growing inner dissatisfaction, purposelessness and disapproval with the world around us.
Have I reached the point where no religion, art, music, education, politics, sex, drugs, family...where nothing in this world can fulfill me anymore and I want to achieve something more than everything here?
Do I have a choice to choose this desire for something beyond this world over all my other desires, and work on it in order to attain its completion in my lifetime?
Related Material:
- Kabbalah.info - all concepts presented in this article were learned from the free materials and resources available at the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education and Research Institute - www.kabbalah.info
Evolution of Desires
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