A Cog Railway That Goes To Infinity
Question: How can we explain to simple people how the Light that Reforms works?
Answer: This can be explained with many examples that show that man is a result of his environment. For example, children who were lost in the woods and brought up near animals acquire the behavior of these animals, and animals that live near people become more human-like.
A person’s environment does everything. I can advance without the environment, similar to when nature was changing and thereby revealing in me different forms of existence as well. Once, I was like an amoeba. Then, I became a more complicated creature. So it continued, on and on, until I developed into a person that I am now, under the influence of the environment, nature. As nature changes, it changes us.
Now, we are discovering that everything changes: Explosions happen on the sun, the climate changes, and magnetic and geographic poles are shifting. We do not yet know what is happening here. We do not yet realize the thousands of factors that influence us and cause us to advance.
Everything happens through the environment, but this environment is called Nature. It seems to be inanimate, and some changes are taking place there—possibly, according to a certain program, but maybe not. We constantly want to find out about it because we think it is an accident, not a program. If we knew that everything is happening according to a plan of nature, we would have a completely different attitude toward it.
Today, we are facing a problem. We are encountering sudden, dramatic climate changes, and we want to know whether these changes are happening according to a plan or if they are accidental. Are we contributing to these changes in nature (and there are many studies regarding this), or are they so random that there is nothing we can calculate here?
Although, what kind of accident could it be? We study the processes that occur within the Earth, and we know that we live on the thin cover of a blazing volcano. This is why a really important question arises: whether or not we affect these processes? If we have no effect, then “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,” as people say. However, if we can affect them, then how do we do this? Is it with thoughts and desires or burning less oil and gas? Scientists are looking for answers to these questions because they suspect an upcoming, unpleasant course of events.
The globality of the world, which is being revealed to us now, has to ultimately make us smarter. We should realize that everything around us is a single system, and we are also inside it. There is a mutual influence: We affect the external system, and it affects us, We change through its affect on us.
This brings us to the solution that derives from the wisdom of Kabbalah. Can we intentionally change the environment so that it would affect and change us in the direction of the same goal, but in the good and fast way?
A problem then arises. We must change a lot of data placed in our mind. First of all, we must understand that we exist inside a universal, global, general nature where all the parts exist in unity, and that this entire process has a plan, a tendency, according to which we have always developed. Really, even when we look at the evolutionary process, we see that there is a certain plan of development in it. Suddenly, we forget about it because it refers to our ego, which suddenly makes us dumb. “There is nothing but me.”
If we first begin to perceive the image that there is a global, integrated, common system with humanity inside it and that we must come into balance with it, then we will be able to ask: “What does nature demand from us right now? Is it to come into balance? What kind of pressure and which conditions will it use to do it? Can we realize it on our own?”
We really begin to understand that nature cannot do it alone. We can call it the Creator (Elokim) Who has a mind and feelings, or we can consider that it does not have feelings. Either way, it is still nature; this does not make a difference.
We will only feel pressure on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, only on the level of our body. This is because we must build the environment for the human, “speaking,” level on our own so that it would change us with its pressure, giving us the proper form. This is why all the suffering, such as wars, misfortunes, and epidemics will be on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, on the level of our animal body, its life and existence.
This will continue until I realize that all of still, vegetative, and animate nature is a common, global system and that I must become like it on my level. To be global in the human sense means to treat this system as our own, where everything is interconnected and exists in unity and harmony.
Then, another stage begins. I build the environment for it to change me, to make me more global and integrated, connected to all parts of nature and all people. I want to do this since suffering forces me to do it. Suffering on the level of this world will lead to our understanding of the fact that our nature is completely interconnected, integrated, and we must be connected with all its components.
What will this provide? When I build this system, essentially, I am building an adapter between myself and the upper Light, the Creator (Elokim), the degree in nature that is above this globality and integration, above the structure of Malchut of Infinity. I as if make myself similar to the Light, even without knowing about it (we are referring to all of humanity that does not know exactly what it is doing). The Light influences me, does this work—lifts all of us to the next level.
The Light influences us and introduces into us the system of upper laws on the instinctual level, which replace the habits and laws we have artificially decreed upon ourselves. This is called “above reason.” I unify actions on my level, and I suddenly receive a new form of existence, a spiritual life on the instinctual level. I rise to the next degree. This is called “I labored and found.”
In this way, we raise our level, “modernize” ourselves. Even though we do all the actions on the corporeal level, meaning try to connect with others and treat them with love, nature influences us in order to lift us even higher. Thereby we raise ourselves with the help of the environment. Nature did it on its own on all the previous levels, but now we must obligate it to do it because this way, we acquire a new mind and feelings.
[54614]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/9/2011, Rabash’s letter
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Like the ladder, there are rungs or degrees of unity. The cellular unity that we are was quite the accomplishment. It’s result is how we behave naturally. But alas, ein sof demands we continue to grow to higher and higher unities without end, such that it becomes paradise to every one on every level of scale with enough time. The issue now is we have grow out of ourselves to some extent, rising from the previous cellular unity to the collective human one. But, we can not yet quite reach the next unity, so many people strive and strive and then break under pressure, and revert back to the old system. This is why there is such strong egoism in the world these days. People feel betrayed by the next degree because they are kept from it, and thus return to being an animal and all that implies. It is like being the creator for the inner world, which is in fact what we are naturally! We serve the collective with all our heart and soul, for we are the unity of our many parts. We need to ascend and connect to the higher human unity so that this new instinct, this new feeling, guides us. Then all will be in balance. It is important though, that we do not become mindless, for there are even higher rungs to be reached. The trick is this time, we will remember, and thus engage it willingly and with joy, as we go out into space, finding other species, and skipping the entire period of war and hatred, straight to unity, straight to the creator, for ever more.