Anti-Life Is Victory Over Death

Today a person perceives life only as reception, absorption, consumption, acquisition, and attainment for himself. That is how he goes around until he gets tired of this life, retires, spends a few years in lines at health clinics, and finally dies.

But there is a possibility of raising ourselves to another level of existence: to conduct life through bestowal and not consumption. And this is not through benevolence and charity, where you help the poor monetarily, rather it is life beyond ourego. Life outside of the ego gives a feeling of anti-life, anti-death, anti-world, as it is said, “I saw an upside-down world” (Baba Batra 10b).

There exists another form of life parallel to our world. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to attain the new form of life. This is an upside down life, not within the ego, which swallows and absorbs everything into it, not within the desire to receive and enjoy, but within the desire to bestow, to love.

This is not the same egoistic love that is familiar to us in this world. Love is when I go outside of myself and am included in the desires of others and then I live within these desires without taking myself into account. A lifestyle like this is not limited by the intensity of pleasure that you can get.

This is not pleasure within the physical body, which cannot eat and drink without limit. In bestowal I am not limited by anything because I go out to others. I am not limited by the life of this biological body, but I am outside of it and that is where I feel my life.

My body remains, but it lives next to me, like a domesticated animal that lives by the side of a human. My inner part that goes out of me and is included in others is calledAdam (Man). And that part of me, the biological, beastly body that remains, lives as usual. It lives out its allotted time, going to doctors until it is taken to the cemetery.

Question: But a person struggling with everyday physical problems is not interested in lofty concepts like life outside of the body?

Answer: Every person is concerned about the same questions of life and death. But even normal life is impossible to arrange today without being included in the right network, without balancing our reception and bestowal, and without connecting with each other with the right mutual connections. The wisdom of Kabbalah compels us to organize our lives this way.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 3/8/15