The World Is A Person’s Inner State

Question: There are several theories about the perception of reality: what reality is, what its connection with people is, and whether it exists outside of a person.

Newton, for example, believed that the world exists without any connection with humanity. Whether humanity exists or not, the world has always existed and will exist without it.

The theory of relativity says that perception is relative and depends on the location of the observer and on the speed with which he is moving.

Quantum physics came to the conclusion that this world is an illusion and depends on the observer, that is, we create this world.

What does Kabbalah say about the reality we feel?

Answer: Kabbalah says that there is only a person who perceives just what he has within himself. That is, the entire world is within me. There is no world outside of me. I feel myself, and all the changes within me seem to me as changes in the world around me.

I as if project all my internal feelings, experiences, and opinions outward, and this is depicted to me in the form of pictures of the world. The world is my inner state.

Baal HaSulam writes in the “Preface to The Book of Zohar”: “We see a wide world before us, wondrously filled. But in fact, we see all that only in our own interior. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain, which portrays everything that appears to us and nothing outside of us.”

That is, everything that appears to me as external, I actually see in my brain. There are various pictures of reality whirling inside it that allegedly exist around me, but they are nothing more than a projection of my changing desires, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I feel them in the form of a picture of the world.

If I did not see this picture in a form of an immense world with many planets, people, flowers, animals, and so on, I would feel it inside of me in such a small micro dose that I could not develop at all. And this way, everything within me is enlarged by billions of times and unfolds around me. Therefore, the world is a projection of myself.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah” 11/26/18