Desire: The Engine of History

Question: Having read your book “The Fate of Humanity,” (Судьбы человечества) written with co-author V. Hachaturyan, I gasped with delight: How clearly you laid out the forces in the development of world history! But to this day, my friends don’t believe that history is propelled by individual desire. How can I explain this to them?

Answer: There are two forces in creation: the Light and its opposite, desire. Light is the force of bestowal, love, and fulfillment. The opposing substance is the desire to receive.

Aside from these two constituents, nothing else exists! Everything else comes from the juxtaposition of these two forces and exists between them: the world, world history, anything you can name.

No matter what we construct or create, it all consists of two opposing forces: electron and positron, plus and minus, north and south, etc. These two forces exist within everything that is created, depending on what level and to what degree they interact with each other. The correct use of both forces, in principle, brings comfort, health, etc.

The Creator is called the force of bestowal, the created being is the force of reception. An individual consists of both forces. Moreover, the force of the Creator acts as enlivening force because the desire to receive (created being) is completely dead, as ash, devoid of any signs of life. But, gradually, as the quality of bestowal enters it, everything then comes into existence from him. This is exactly how the universe, and everything within it, came into being.

Kabbalah investigates both forces on all levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. Higher than the level “human,” that is, the spiritual human, nothing exists. When you begin to enter the material and feel the interaction of both forces, you discover absolutely all possibilities of attainment: you see where everything comes from and world history is then understood.

In everything, Kabbalists see all possible combinations of both forces. Any form, any appearance, all forces of nature exist as one against the other. There is no force that acts on its own, there is always something opposing it. Not one force manifests as purely positive or only negative; this cannot be! They do not exist outside of their interaction with each other because otherwise, we would not sense them; they would not manifest. The desire to receive exists only because it is brought to life by the Creator’s desire to give, fulfill, satiate.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/16/17