Two Different Perceptions
“Question: There is a point in the heart with its world and there is egoism with its world. Is there a connection between them?
Answer: No. This is the serious isolation layer between our world and the upper world. Our world is a world of actions and it is governed from above. The upper world is the world that governs the universe. We have to study what may be the connections between these two worlds.
The point in the heart directs a person to reveal the upper governance. It has nothing to do with egoism. The point in the heart pulls us out and raises us above our egoism. It exists within egoism. It must be torn out from egoism, elevated above it, and brought to the connection with the upper world.”
From Rav Dr. MIchael Laitman KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/16/17
There are two ways of experiencing existence so fundamentally different that a person living in one cannot truly imagine the other.
We may call them corporeality and spirituality, egoism and altruism, reception and bestowal. Yet these names are only signposts.
Words can easily deceive us, awakening familiar images and inherited assumptions that belong entirely to our present condition. The real distinction is not between two philosophies, religions, or ways of behaving. It is between two inner systems of perception.
Each system contains its own desires, intentions, sensations, thoughts, and calculations. Each produces a different picture of reality.
To pass from one to the other is not to travel somewhere else. It is to awaken in another world.
The world we construct within
We naturally assume that the world exists outside us exactly as we perceive it. It appears solid, objective, and independent. People and events seem to stand before us while we simply observe and respond to them.
Yet everything we call “the world” reaches us through our internal senses. Impressions are received, processed by our desires, and arranged into an inner picture. We live inside that picture and call it reality.
In this sense, each of us is like a closed box. We do not know what exists beyond our perception; we know only what awakens within us.
This realization reveals an extraordinary possibility: if the internal system changes, the experienced world changes with it.
When reality is absorbed through the desire for personal benefit, we experience what is called the corporeal world. When it is perceived through an intention to bestow, we experience the spiritual world. The distance between these worlds is not measured in space. It is the distance between two intentions.
The first perception asks:
What can I receive from everything before me?
The second asks:
What can I give, and how can I participate in the good of the whole?
From these two questions, two worlds are born.
Life under the first system
In the first perception, the individual self stands at the center of existence. Everything is evaluated by its effect on me.
Is it pleasant or painful?
Will it benefit or threaten me?
Can I use it?
Will it bring security, admiration, knowledge, power, or satisfaction?
This calculation can appear in crude or sophisticated forms. It may be hidden beneath courtesy, generosity, sacrifice, or noble ideals. Yet the underlying program remains the same: reality is received and measured according to personal benefit.
We do not choose this program. We awaken inside it. Bodily nature governs us through hunger, fatigue, attraction, fear, and the search for security. Society teaches us what deserves admiration and what should cause shame. Family, education, culture, and history supply the values by which we judge ourselves and others.
Much of what we call “myself” is therefore a collection of inherited desires and automatic responses.
We imagine that we are freely directing our lives, while unseen forces continuously move us between attraction and rejection.
We absorb the world into ourselves and try to turn everything toward our own fulfillment. We may use possessions, knowledge, relationships, and even spiritual ideas for this purpose. The objects change, but the direction remains inward.
This is not a moral accusation. It is simply the nature of the first perception.
Another form of life
The second perception is not an improved version of egoism. It is not the same self made more refined, polite, or generous. It is founded on an opposite direction.
Instead of receiving everything into the self, a person begins to experience reality through bestowal.
The center of calculation moves beyond personal benefit. Life is no longer measured solely by what enters the private desire, but by what can pass through the person toward others and toward the source of life.
This is almost impossible to imagine while we remain governed by the first system. Even when we picture spirituality, we instinctively translate it into egoistic language. We imagine greater pleasure, knowledge, power, peace, freedom, or immortality. We try to dress the second reality in the desires of the first.
But spirituality is not a greater reward for the same ego. It is another mode of existence.
It is experienced as wholeness, eternity, unrestricted attainment, and participation in a reality that is no longer confined within the isolated self. These qualities do not arise because the person receives an infinite quantity of pleasure. They emerge because perception is no longer imprisoned inside self-concern.
As long as everything is measured within “me,” life remains limited by the boundaries of that “me.” When perception opens toward bestowal, those boundaries begin to dissolve.
Why we need both perceptions
If the second perception is higher, why are we born into the first? Why must we pass through egoism, separation, dissatisfaction, and pain?
We do not choose the initial state, but we are required to participate in leaving it. That participation creates independence.
If we were born naturally into spiritual perception, it would govern us as unconsciously as egoism governs us now. We would exist within bestowal without understanding its nature or value. It would not truly belong to us.
The first system provides resistance. Through that resistance, consciousness can develop.
By struggling with egoistic desire, we gradually learn how it works. We discover its promises and disappointments, its pleasures and anxieties, and its ability to turn even the most elevated aspiration toward self-benefit. What once controlled us invisibly becomes an object of observation.
We do not eliminate the desire to receive. We learn to rise above its authority and direct its use.
At the same time, the second system must be consciously acquired. Every step toward bestowal is formed through effort and discernment. In this way, a person eventually comes to understand both realities rather than being unconsciously governed by one.
The goal is not to destroy the corporeal world and disappear into spirituality. It is to acquire conscious command of both systems and thereby attain genuine freedom.
Desire is not the enemy
The desire to receive is the fundamental matter of creation. In itself, it is neither holy nor corrupt. It is raw material.
The decisive factor is the intention governing its use.
An intention to receive solely for oneself constructs the egoistic perception. An intention to bestow constructs the spiritual perception. The same desire can participate in opposite realities according to the direction placed above it.
We experience egoistic intention as natural only because we were born under its control. Bestowal appears foreign because it is not yet our operating principle. But the underlying desire is neutral.
One may picture two systems standing opposite each other: reception and bestowal, impurity and holiness. Between them stands the developing soul. Its purpose is not to be swallowed unconsciously by either side, but to use both as the conditions from which something new can be created.
That new creation is the human being.
The birth of the true self
The authentic self is not the will to receive, because that desire is given. It is not the egoistic intention, which is also installed by nature. Nor is it the spiritual system waiting to be discovered, because that too is prepared in advance.
What, then, can genuinely belong to the person?
It is the intention built above all these given conditions.
The spiritual tradition calls this intention a screen and reflected light. The Creator’s desire to give life and delight to creation is represented by direct light. The created being develops a corresponding intention — to return goodness, to bestow, and to bring contentment to the source. This response is called reflected light.
Intention may seem vague, like an insubstantial thought with no real existence. Yet it is the most powerful thing a person can build. It is the new element that did not exist beforehand as an independent creation.
Everything else is material provided for the work. The conscious direction toward bestowal is the person’s own participation in creation.
The entire path can therefore be understood as the birth of Adam — the birth of a truly human being.
The force that changes perception
No egoistic calculation can transform itself into bestowal. The first system may desire the rewards it associates with spirituality, but it cannot produce the second system from within its own nature.
A transforming force is required — something capable of reaching a person while they remain in egoistic perception and gradually changing their internal program. This force is called the light, the Torah, or the reforming light.
Its action is much deeper than changing a few opinions or habits. It alters the foundations from which thoughts, feelings, motives, and calculations arise. It reaches layers of desire that ordinary self-analysis cannot penetrate.
The transition from one world to another therefore occurs inside the person. The senses begin to operate differently. The mind follows another program. The same reality is approached through a new intention.
At first, spiritual effort is inevitably egoistic. A person may seek spirituality for peace, fulfillment, knowledge, security, or escape from suffering. This is called acting “not for its own sake.” There is no shame in this beginning; a person cannot act through an intention they do not yet possess.
Even imperfect effort can attract the reforming light. Gradually, the reason for seeking spirituality changes. The desire for personal reward begins to give way to the desire to bestow.
The decisive importance of the goal
The transition becomes possible only when the second perception grows more important than the first.
A person must develop the importance of bestowal, spiritual attainment, and connection with the source of reality. The second state must gradually become essential — not an attractive addition to ordinary life, but the only form of life that feels worthy of being called life.
This is why spiritual work continually returns to the question of importance. We always move toward what appears more valuable. If corporeal rewards remain greater in our eyes, the egoistic program naturally wins. When bestowal becomes more important, an inner inversion becomes possible.
Yet even this change in values cannot be manufactured by egoism alone. The reforming light creates the preparation for it. The final crossing is therefore called a miracle — an action of a higher force that stands above both systems.
The preparation may take years, but the crossing itself is sudden. It resembles an escape from captivity: unexpected, hurried, and impossible to schedule. One cannot announce in advance the moment when the internal world will turn over.
Afterward, a person recognizes that earlier efforts were not lost. Actions performed without spiritual understanding were still contacts with the desires that would later be consciously corrected. What once appeared to be confusion, error, or failure becomes material for a higher form of work.
Why the path is filled with obstacles
The transition is surrounded by difficulty because resistance is necessary for the formation of independence.
There are internal obstacles: egoistic desire, fear, doubt, pride, impatience, and the longing for visible reward.
There are external difficulties: work, family obligations, social pressure, cultural expectations, and the opinions of those closest to us.
Get Zsolt Hermann’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
There are also obstacles hidden inside language. Words such as faith, Torah, commandments, Creator, creature, righteousness, holiness, and bestowal may evoke religious or historical images that obscure their inner meaning. Instead of revealing spirituality, familiar terminology can make it seem distant, irrational, or irrelevant.
Every person carries different barriers. Some inherit sentimental ideas; others inherit rejection, cynicism, or prejudice. Each must separate the essence of spiritual concepts from the external clothing in which they were first encountered.
This clarification is not an unnecessary complication. It refines perception. As a person changes, words gradually lose their corporeal images and begin pointing toward spiritual roots.
The obstacles are therefore not outside the path. They are the pressure through which the inner vessel is shaped. The force that seems to strike life again and again is also the force telling it to grow.
Suffering and the closed vessel
Suffering is a sign that desire remains unfulfilled. Yet the problem is deeper than the absence of a particular pleasure.
Egoistic desire cannot achieve lasting fulfillment through direct reception. It is as though a lid has been placed over the vessel. A person may carry it to countless fountains — wealth, status, relationships, knowledge, entertainment, power — but the vessel remains closed.
For a moment, pleasure may enter. Almost immediately, desire adapts, emptiness returns, and a new pursuit begins. Humanity repeats this process across generations, developing increasingly sophisticated means of satisfaction without resolving the basic emptiness.
The realization that the old vessel cannot be filled in the old way is called the recognition of evil. The evil is not desire itself. It is the egoistic method of using desire.
The solution is not to find a more powerful fountain. It is to acquire a screen above the desire. To the extent that reflected light is built, the vessel opens and becomes capable of receiving in a new way.
Fulfillment is then no longer defined by how much pleasure can be captured inside the self. It is determined by the intention through which desire participates in giving.
The long education of desire
Humanity must explore the will to receive through all its forms. It pursues bodily pleasure, possessions, honor, domination, knowledge, and increasingly subtle kinds of satisfaction.
Even a person who possesses an abundance of material fulfillment may remain profoundly empty. The decisive issue is not how much one owns, but whether the inner vessel experiences lasting satisfaction.
Through repeated disappointment, the desire gradually exhausts its confidence in direct reception. Yet despair alone cannot invent a new perception. Something from the second system must awaken within the first.
This new element is called the point in the heart.
It is a spark of bestowal, a trace of the screen and reflected light. Because it comes from above the ordinary egoistic vessel, it allows a person to suspect that another kind of life may exist.
Before its awakening, suffering drives a person from one possible fulfillment to another. After it awakens, suffering can become a question about the purpose of existence.
Why am I alive?
What can truly fulfill me?
Why does every achievement fade?
Is there a reality beyond the boundaries of self-concern?
The point in the heart does not yet provide the answer. It gives the capacity to hear the question.
There is no coercion in spirituality
A person cannot be forced to perceive what has no corresponding inner preparation. Before the point in the heart awakens, only the egoistic program operates. Advice about bestowal may sound empty, idealistic, or incomprehensible.
This is why there is no coercion in spirituality.
At the same time, humanity needs education. We cannot measure the inner development of another person or know whose point in the heart is approaching awakening. Ideas, examples, books, and environments can accelerate the final stages of preparation.
Spiritual education does not mean imposing beliefs. It means making the purpose and method of development available: explaining why egoistic fulfillment repeatedly fails, what spiritual perception is, and how a person can consciously participate in the transformation.
Such assistance cannot remove necessary experiences. It should not steal doubt, protest, disappointment, or recognition from anyone. Its purpose is to help people draw the right conclusions more quickly and avoid needless repetition of suffering.
Where free choice begins
Before the point in the heart becomes active, a person is governed by a single program. With only one operative possibility, there is no genuine choice.
Choice begins when two tendencies appear:
- The familiar desire to receive for oneself.
- The emerging aspiration toward bestowal.
Their collision produces the first experience of inner freedom. Yet both tendencies are still given. If their relative strength were decided entirely within the person, the result would also be predetermined.
A third factor is therefore necessary. That factor is the environment.
A person cannot directly choose which desire will awaken in the next moment, but can choose which influences to approach, which values to absorb, and which people will determine the meaning of success.
The environment can make wealth, fame, domination, and comfort appear supreme. It can also make unity, bestowal, truth, and spiritual attainment appear valuable.
This is the practical location of free choice.
By investing effort in a society directed toward spiritual development, a person receives strength that does not exist within the isolated self. The environment magnifies the point in the heart until it can rise above egoistic calculation.
We pay the environment through participation, responsibility, care, and effort. In return, it gives us the importance of the goal.
Freedom is therefore not the ability to obey whichever desire happens to be strongest. It is the ability to choose the influence that will determine which desire becomes strong.
Living responsibly in this world
Spiritual development does not require fleeing ordinary life or punishing the body.
Natural needs belong to the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels within us. The body requires food, sleep, shelter, family, physical care, and security. These needs should be fulfilled normally and responsibly.
The body does not become spiritual by being deprived. Even the most advanced person must provide it with calories, rest, and the conditions necessary for life.
The more complex work concerns desires shaped by society: wealth, honor, and knowledge. These are human ambitions because their form and intensity depend upon what society teaches us to value.
A spiritual environment redirects these forces rather than simply suppressing them.
The desire for wealth becomes yearning for the means of spiritual attainment. The desire for honor becomes the wish to honor the source of life rather than the isolated self. The desire for knowledge becomes the longing to understand the thought and purpose of creation.
Even envy, desire, and ambition can serve development. One may envy the sincerity of others, desire their dedication, and seek the dignity of participating in something higher than personal success.
The same energies that once bound a person to the first perception can become forces carrying them toward the second.
The scandal of an unjust world
The world often appears to contradict every claim that reality is governed by goodness. The innocent suffer, the cruel succeed, and history is filled with violence, exploitation, and loss.
From within egoistic perception, there is little justification for calling the governing force good and benevolent. If one source directs reality, it may appear responsible for every cruelty within it. Anger, accusation, and even hatred can arise.
These reactions should not be covered by sentimental answers. Genuine spiritual development does not demand that a person call suffering good while experiencing it as evil.
Protest is a necessary discernment. A person may move toward the source, recoil, rebel, and return again. Every such movement reveals another layer of expectation and desire.
The path from hatred to love cannot bypass hatred. The recognition of concealment, contradiction, and apparent injustice must become complete. Only then can a new understanding emerge — not as a borrowed justification, but as attained perception.
The purpose of guidance is not to eliminate these stages. It is to help a person move through them consciously, without losing a single necessary discovery.
Growth through recognition
Human development advances through the recognition of the egoistic system’s limitations. As desire grows, so do its achievements — and its disappointments. History accelerates because the will to receive is rapidly exhausting one promise after another.
Suffering pushes from behind, while the awakening point in the heart draws from ahead.
One force reveals that the old way cannot satisfy us. The other suggests that another perception is possible. Between them, the person begins to search consciously.
Every disappointment can then become more than pain. It can become information.
Every obstacle can become more than resistance. It can become the surface against which a new intention is formed.
Every encounter with emptiness can become more than failure. It can expose the closed vessel and awaken the need for a screen.
The “pressure that tells the grass to grow” does not always feel loving. It may arrive as dissatisfaction, confusion, contradiction, or loss. Yet without that pressure, desire would remain asleep inside its first perception.
The passage between worlds
The entire human journey unfolds between two perceptions.
In the first, everything is interpreted through the desire to receive. The person pursues fulfillment, remains dependent on circumstances, and is governed by forces that appear to be the self.
In the second, desire is used through an intention to bestow. The person begins to experience reality beyond the narrow boundaries of private benefit and participates consciously in the flow of life.
The transition requires the full involvement of existence: suffering and longing, study and confusion, ordinary responsibilities, social influence, inner rebellion, and repeated effort. Nothing is wasted. Every part of life becomes material for building the true human being.
We begin enclosed within ourselves so that opening will become a conscious achievement. We experience separation so that connection can become our creation. We are ruled by desire so that we may learn to govern its direction. We encounter two systems so that, between them, freedom can be born.
The first perception says:
Everything exists for me.
The second says:
I exist in order to give.
Between these two statements lies the entire drama of human development.
The goal is not to destroy the first perception but to rise above its unconscious rule. It is not to abandon desire but to give it a new intention. It is not to escape this world but to discover, while living within it, another way of seeing.
On one side stands the familiar reality reflected inside the will to receive.
On the other stands a reality revealed through the intention to bestow.
And between them stands the human being — struck by life, awakened by longing, strengthened by the environment, and slowly learning that every pressure to grow is an invitation to enter a wider world.
