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How to Discover the Force that Operates Your Desires Like a
Kabbalist
Two Essential Desires Every
Truth Seeker Needs to Find
The importance of Abrahams discovery
lies not so much in its scientific or
conceptual innovation, although for his
time both were absolutely radical.
Rather, the primary significance of his
discovery lies in its social aspect.
Indeed, Abrahams motivation for asking
the questions about lifes meaning and
purpose, which eventually led to his
discovery, was as much social as it was
intellectual. He noticed that his
townspeople were becoming
increasingly alienated. For a long time,
Babylonians nurtured a prosperous
society that allowed multiple belief systems and teachings to coexist in harmony. But in Abrahams time, people were
growing intolerant, conceited, and alienated from each other, and Abraham wondered why.
Through his questions and observation of Nature, he realized that the world that appears to our senses is but a
superficial blanket that covers a complex and magnificent interaction of forces. When these forces interweave in a
certain way, they induce a certain type of physical or emotional reality to appear, such as birth, death, war, peace, and
all the states in between.
This interaction exists not only on a large scale, as between countries, but in every element of life, from the
subatomic to the interstellar, and from the very personal to the international.
Abrahams thought process in discovering these forces is evident in his questions, which to him were, as Neil
Postman put it in The End of Education, the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings. In
Maimonides writings, Abraham asked, How was it possible for this wheel [of reality] to always turn without a driver?
Who is turning it, for it cannot turn itself?
Thus, through repeated pondering and observation, Abraham came to realize what really makes the world go around,
and like all great truths, it was as simple as can be: desires, two desires, to be exact. One is a desire to give and the
other, to receive. The interaction between those desires is what makes the world go around; it is the wheel that drives
all things and the force that creates all phenomena. In Kabbalistic terminology, the desire to give is referred to as His
[the Creators] desire to do good to His creations, and the desire to receive is described as the desire and craving to
receive delight and pleasure. for short, Kabbalists refer to them as desire to bestow and desire to receive.
This simple realization is what Abraham was trying to convey to his fellow Babylonians, but Nimrod tried to prevent
him from doing so by trying to kill him. And when he failed to do so, he sent him away.

The Secret Rules Abraham Discovered of Preventing Potential Destruction
Alas, deporting Abraham did not restore the Babylonian spirit of camaraderie and union. Eventually, The Lord
[Creator, meaning Nature] confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad
over the face of the whole earth (Gen, 11:9).
This did not happen to the Babylonians because some vengeful and powerful old man called The Lord was holding
a grudge against them. It happened to them because the desires that Abraham discovered possess a certain
direction of evolution. There is no random interaction here, but a set of rules that unfold by a rigid cause-and-effect
order.
When Abraham discovered these rules, he realized his local folk were headed in the wrong direction, which could
only lead them to eventual destruction, so he tried his best to warn them. As we will see, these desires are as
perpetual and as rigid as gravity, or the positive and negative poles of a magnet. But like gravity and the poles of the
magnet, both forces can be made to work to our benefit.
To understand the similarity between the current state of humanity and the state of the Babylonian society, and hence
the relevance of Abrahams discovery to the current global crises, we need to understand the direction in which the
two desires evolve. And for this, we need to start from the very beginning.

In his book, The Tree of Life, the great 16th century Kabbalist Isaac Luria (the Ari), founder of Lurianic Kabbalah,
todays predominant school of Kabbalah, wrote, Know, that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures
created, an Upper, Simple Light had filled the whole of reality. And there was no vacant place, such as an empty air
and a void, but everything was filled with that simple, boundless Light.
Since then, only one Kabbalist has ventured to compose a comprehensive explanation of these profound phrases, as
well as introduced a complete commentary on The Zohar: Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Baal HaSulam. In his six-
volume commentary on the writings of the Ari, known as Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), Baal
HaSulam explains that the Light that the Ari refers to is All the pleasant sensations and conceptions in the world. He
also defines Light as everything but the substance of the vessels [desire to receive].
In other words, there are only two beings in existence: the desire to bestow, to give, which Ashlag defines as light,
Creator, or pleasure, and the desire to receive pleasure, to enjoy, which he calls a vessel, the creature, or the
created being. To understand how the whole of reality can emerge from only two desires, we need to take a deeper
look at how they interact.
Electricity, gravity, and all of Natures other forces are timeless phenomena. In other words, you cannot point to a
specific point in time at which they were created because Natures forces are not particular events; they are potentials
or fields that cover the whole of space-time. They manifest under certain conditions and, given the right instruments,
we can detect their existence.
To prove the existence of electricity, you need a resistor of some sort, like a lamp or a current-meter. Without
something that resists the flow of the electric current, we could never know that electricity was flowing through it, and
we could never discover the existence of electricity. Similarly, to prove the existence of gravity, we need to observe its
effect on physical masses, and to discover light, we need an object that the light illuminates, meaning stops the light
and reflects it back to our eyes.
In precisely the same way, Kabbalists discovered the desire to bestow through that desires interaction with its
resistortheir own desires to receive. When they refined and calibrated their resistorsdesires to receivethey
were able to detect the force that operated those desires. That was how Abraham discovered that the force that
operated his desires and the rest of reality was a desire to bestow. This is the knowledge that Abraham passed on to
his sons and students, and this is still the knowledge that Kabbalists pass on from teacher to student, and now to the
entire world.

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlags Keys to Understanding Abrahams Stories Rationally
In his Study of the Ten Sefirot, Ashlag tells us that this desire to bestow created the desire to receive as a necessary
offshoot of its wish to bestow. In other words, because the desire is a desire to give, it created something that wishes
to receive. Thus, just as it is impossible to explain what is a day without also understanding what is a night, or to
understand the concept of left side without having the concept of right side either, it is impossible to perceive the
desire to receive without perceiving the desire to give.
To put matters in the right context, when Kabbalists speak of the Creator, they are referring to the desire to give, and
when they speak of Creation, they are referring to the desire to receive the Creators giving. Also, when they are
presenting a dialog between the Creator and the creatures, such as we find in the Bible, they are actually introducing
a specific interaction between the desire to give and the desire to receive, not an exchange of vocalisms between a
protein aggregate and a voice in the clouds.
In that regard, at the conclusion of his Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot (Item 156), Ashlag takes special
care to warn us:
Yet, there is a strict condition during the engagement in this wisdomto not materialize the matters with imaginary
and corporeal issues. This is because thus they breach, Thou shall not make unto thee a graven image, nor any
manner of likeness. To rescue the readers from any materialization, I composed the book, The Study of the Ten
Sefirot by the Ari, where I collect from the books of the Ari all the principal essays concerning the explanation of the
ten Sefirot in as simple and easy language as I could.
Thus, at the basis of existence lies not matter, but forms of desire to receive pleasure created by interactions with their
Creatorthe desire to give pleasure.
To tie this approach to more familiar territory, think of lightning. To the ancient Greeks, the thunderbolt was Zeus
traditional weapon. To us, the exact same thunderbolt is merely The visible discharge of electricity that occurs when
a region of a cloud acquires an excess electrical charge that is sufficient to break down the resistance of air, if we
consult the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Similarly, understanding the true meaning of Abrahams story requires an explanation by one who has acquired
sufficient knowledge to explain it in a matter-of-fact, rational manner, meaning a Kabbalist, and preferably one of
substantial understanding and sufficient didactic skills, such as Ashlag.
This is why today, Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlags books are the most suitable for those who wish to delve deeper into the
true grand, unified theory of everything the wisdom of Kabbalah.
How to Discover the Force that Operates Your Desires Like a Kabbalist is
based on the book, Self Interest vs. Altruism in the Global Era: How Society Can Turn
Self Interests into Mutual Benefit by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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