Kabbalah Perspective: Through Hubble's Eye

Technology invites humanity to tour the universe! With the quick click of a computer mouse, we can now explore the universe through Hubble's eye. Hubble is a telescope that orbits the Earth. According to NASA, Hubble's eye gives us a view of the universe from above the atmosphere while "searching out clues to fundamental questions about the universe and life itself." What is interesting to note is that Hubble's view is raw data- data that remains meaningless without someone to interpret it. When it comes to perceiving reality the question remains, how do we interpret the data we receive?

How we receive data is really important. Inside of a person, there is a question about what exists outside. We use our five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch to receive this data. The data contacts our body and reaches a barrier of resistance: the retina, eardrum, olfactory cells, taste buds, or nerve fibers. This resistance gives us some kind of sensation. The sensation is then interpreted by the brain, whose job is to receive these signals. The brain has another very important role: it calculates every single input against the question "How does this affect me?" In other words, everything we perceive is a result of this program of reception in a person. The program of reception determines everything that we understand and feel about the data, even the terminology we assign to it. This is an inner process, and not any kind of direct contact with the data.

Different experiences in life lead people to interpret the same data in very different ways. We cannot recognize data beyond what our senses can perceive and research. Even when using an instrument like Hubble that expands the range of our limited senses, our perception is still limited to our five senses and our will to receive. For example, what do we sense from the data shown above? How do we interpret it? Team Hubble interprets this data as a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of a star's birth and death is taking place. Others might see it as simply a neat picture.

We receive data in our senses constantly, yet we are unable to interpret it to answer the most fundamental questions about life: Why do I exist? Why is there suffering in this world? How can we attain peace, fulfillment, and happiness? No matter how much we progress technologically, we remain unfulfilled. We accumulate an array of stand-alone data, which we readily forget, confuse, and from which we never gain a complete picture of how the pieces come together. Yet some small part of us knows that what we sense is only a fragment of what actually exists.

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) explains that, in fact, another whole world exists that we do not perceive because it is not in a "wavelength" that affect our senses. Our program of reception cannot sense it any more than we can see X-rays without special instruments. In order to perceive this other world, we must develop a new, sixth sense that operates from an entirely different program than our will to receive.

This sixth sense enables us to "see" how everything in the world is interconnected. Once this reality becomes apparent to us, we can understand that what is good for the whole is also good for the individual. Rather than "How does this affect me?" the calculation now becomes "How does this affect everything and everyone else?" The program of reception has been transformed into a program of giving. When we operate from this realization, it is referred to as "spiritual attainment."

It turns out that spiritual attainment is when the attaining (an individual) and the attained (humanity and all of Nature) come together. We cannot perceive the spiritual world and find answers to our spiritual questions with the five senses and the will to receive we are currently applying. Kabbalah provides the methodology to develop the sixth sense that can perceive the spiritual.

What is this sixth sense? It is not a sense in the usual meaning, but rather an intention with which we use our senses. In fact, we don't need to use any special instruments or look for anything outside ourselves; instead, we just need to transform the intention that already exists within us. By developing the intention to perceive outside of our existing will to receive, tuning in to the interconnected frequency of the universe, we are able to expand the boundaries of our perception and perceive a wider reality. The Kabbalists tell us that by developing the intention to attain the spiritual world, we can discover the complete picture of reality, the interconnectedness of everything, and our place in this interconnected reality.