Baal HaSulam's Introduction to Zohar

Sefaria · Kabbalah > Baal HaSulam · 169 sections

1.1
Questions and Inquiries In this introduction [to Kabbala], I would like to clarify certain ideas that might seem simple. People mention ideas, and much ink has been spilled explaining those ideas, but people do not clearly and properly understand them.
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My questions are: • What is our [human] essence?
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• What is our role in this great chain of being, of which each of us is but a small link?
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• When we examine ourselves, we feel that we are defective and low. There is little more despicable than we are. When we examine the Maker who made us, we ought to be superior and perfect, as a perfect Maker ought to make perfect things.
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• Logic dictates that God is the Great Benefactor, and none are greater than Him. Why has He created so many creatures who suffer and experience lack during their existence? Good desires to bestow good, and certainly not to generate so much suffering.
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• How is it possible that from the Eternal, which has no beginning nor end, will emanate creatures that come into being, cease to be, and are lowly?
2.1
To adequately explain all of this, we must initially make certain inquires. [These inquiries are] not regarding forbidden things, such as God’s essence, of which we have no knowledge whatsoever and about which we can neither think nor say anything. Instead, [we should inquire] about those matters that we are commanded to study: namely, God’s actions. As the Torah commands: “Know the God of your father and serve Him” (I Chr. 28:9), and as it is also stated in Shir HaYiḥud (for Thursday): “You [God] are known through your actions.”
2.2
The first inquiry is: How can we imagine a genuinely new creation, something created that was not already contained within God prior to Creation? After all, it is clear to anyone who investigates that there is nothing that is not already included within Him. Furthermore, it is evident that nothing can produce what is not already contained within it.
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The second inquiry is: Let us grant that, as an omnipotent being, God can create ex nihilo, i.e., something completely new that is not already contained in any way in God. Still, we must ask: What exactly is that “something” that God could choose to create without it being already contained within Him, but is instead entirely new?
2.4
The third inquiry is: The kabbalists say that the soul of man is a part of God above, such that there is no distinction between God and the soul. God is the “whole” and the soul is “part.” This is comparable to a stone hewn from a mountain, in that the only difference between the stone and the mountain is that the stone is a “part” of the “whole” mountain. We imagine a stone quarried from a mountain by an axe built for that purpose, such that the “part” is separated from the “whole.” But how is that possible in the case of God? How can a “part” be separated from Him? How can we think of the soul only as a part of God’s essence?
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The fourth inquiry is: The sitra aḥra [the “Other Side,” the forces of evil] and the kelipot [“husks,” a kabbalistic expression for negative aspects of reality] are unimaginably distant from God’s sanctity. How, then, could these emerge and come into being out of God’s sanctity?! Could it be that God’s sanctity actually exists within them?!
3.2
The fifth inquiry relates to the resurrection of the dead. The body is contemptible, and from the moment of birth it is already destined for death and burial. The Zohar even states (Teruma, 284, 457) that the soul cannot rise to its place in the Garden of Eden before the body has completely decomposed, leaving no trace. If so, what is the purpose of the [bodily] resurrection? Could God not delight the soul without the body? There is a greater question. The Sages state that the dead will be resurrected with their bodily defects, so that no one will say that he is a different person. Afterward, God will heal those bodily defects (Zohar, Emor 51). Why does God care that someone might say that the [resurrected] person is someone else?! Why does God need to recreate people’s defects and then heal them?
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The sixth inquiry is: The Zohar (Tazria 40) states that man is the center of reality and that all of the upper worlds as well as all of this material world and all it contains were created for the sake of man. The Talmud states (Sanhedrin 37a) that a person must believe that the world was created for him. It seems difficult to understand that all of creation is for the sake of insignificant man, who is less than a hairsbreadth compared to the whole of existence. This becomes even more difficult to understand when man is compared to the infinite and lofty upper worlds. Why would God bother to create all of them for man?! And what does man need with all of this?!
4.1
Part 1: The Desire to Receive THE PURPOSE OF CREATION One strategy for answering these questions is to begin with the end – namely, the end [i.e., purpose] of creation. After all, one cannot understand anything from the middle, only from its end. Clearly, every action has a purpose, since only an insane person acts purposelessly.
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I know that there are thinkers – those who reject the yoke of Torah and mitzvot – who say that the Creator created reality and then abandoned it due to the insignificance of creatures. It is inappropriate for the Creator to have providence over their insignificant and distasteful actions. This is foolish. This would be a reasonable conclusion if we [humans] had created ourselves along with all of the distasteful and defective aspects of our nature. But we have concluded that God, the most perfect of beings, is the craftsman who created and designed our bodies – with all of their positive and defective traits. A distasteful and defective product will never emerge from a perfect builder. Every product attests to the nature of its maker. It is not the fault of a ratty item of clothing that it was prepared by an unqualified tailor. The Talmud makes this point (Taanit 20a): An incident occurred in which Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon...happened upon an exceedingly ugly person, who said to him, “Greetings to you, my rabbi,” but Rabbi Elazar did not return his greeting. Instead, Rabbi Elazar said to him, “Worthless [reika] person, how ugly is that man. Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?” The man said to him, “I do not know, but you should go and say to the Craftsman Who made me: ‘How ugly is the vessel you made!’” When Rabbi Elazar realized that he had sinned and insulted this man merely on account of his appearance, he descended from his donkey and prostrated himself before him, and he said to the man: “I have sinned against you; forgive me.”
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These “thinkers” claim that it is inappropriate for God to have providence over us and that He has abandoned us due to our lowliness and nothingness. This indicates only their own lack of understanding. Imagine meeting a person who suggests creating beings who are destined to suffer and experience pain for all of their lives, much as we do. Moreover, that person plans to forsake them, with no intention of offering his providence over them or assisting them in any way. We would certainly condemn and scorn such a person. Can we imagine saying such a thing about the necessary, existent God?!
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Therefore, a clear-thinking individual must realize that the truth is the opposite of what appears on the surface. He must conclude that we are good and that we are the loftiest of creatures. We are of infinite significance. We are worthy of the Craftsman who made us. Any flaws in our bodies – whatever explanations we might offer for them – ultimately stem from the Creator who created us with all of our human nature. After all, it is clear that “He made us, and we did not” (Ps. 100:3). He knows all of the consequences of our human nature and our bad tendencies, which He created within us.
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Thus, what we stated before must be true: We must look at the purpose and end of creation in order to understand everything. As the saying goes: “Do not show anything to a fool while it is in the middle of being constructed.”
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The Sages (see R. Ḥaim Vital’s Etz Ḥayyim, Shaar HaKellalim at the beginning of the first chapter) already explained that God created the world only in order to benefit His creatures. We must pay attention and focus on this, for it is the end and purpose of the creation of the world. [People] must understand that since the purpose of creation is to benefit creatures, it must be that [God] created in our souls a great desire to receive that which He intended to provide to them. After all, the greater the desire to receive a benefit, the greater the pleasure one derives from that benefit. One who has a greater desire to receive will have a proportionally greater pleasure from it, and one who has a lesser desire to receive will have a proportionally lesser pleasure from it. Hence, the intention behind creation requires creating souls with an enormous and exaggerated desire [for that pleasure], for that accords with the great pleasure with which the Almighty intended to pleasure the souls. Pleasure and the desire to receive are proportionate to one another.
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RENEWED CREATION Given the above, we can answer the second inquiry properly and clearly. We wanted to identify the reality about which it can be said that it does not exist and is not contained in God’s essence, such that we can say that it was created “something from nothing,” ex nihilo.
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Now that we know that the intention behind creation was to give pleasure to His creatures, He must have created a “desire to receive” from God all of the pleasure and good that He intended for them. This desire to receive could not have been contained in God’s essence prior to the creation of [human] souls, for from whom could He have received [given that there was nothing other than God]? He then created something new that had not been part of Him.
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Given this, there was no need to create anything other than that desire to receive in order to achieve the goal of creation. This new creation [of a desire to receive] itself supplied to God all that was needed to fulfill the goal of creation, which He had planned in order to benefit us. All of the content of the plan of creation – that is, all of the good He intended for us – would flow directly from God’s essence, and He would not have to create them anew, since they would flow from pre-existing reality to the great desire to receive [that is already in] souls. It follows absolutely that all of material existence, from beginning to end, in this unique creation is [really] nothing other than “the desire to receive.”
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THE SOULS – PART OF GOD ABOVE This explains the position of the kabbalists discussed in inquiry number three. We asked: How can we speak of the souls as part of God above? We compared this to a stone quarried from a mountain, regarding which there is no distinction between them. Instead, this [the stones] are “part” of that “whole” [the mountain]. We then asked: When the stone separates from the mountain, it is separated only due to acts that are designed to separate it. But we cannot say such a thing about God’s essence! How did the souls separate from the essence of God, becoming creatures distinct from the Creator?!
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We can now understand this precisely. Just as an axe splits and divides a physical object into two parts, a change in form [essence] separates a spiritual thing into two. For example, when two people love one another, one can say that they are connected to each another as one body. When they hate each another, one can say that they are as distant from each other as west is from east. This is not a description of their physical closeness or distance, but a similarity in their forms. Since the two of them are similar in form to one another – each loves what the other one loves and hates what the other one hates, etc. – they love one another and cleave to one another. If their form changes, such that one loves what the other hates or the like, they will become proportionally distant from one another, to the point of hatred. If they are opposites in form – such that whatever one likes, the other hates, and vice versa – then they are extremely distant from one another, as far as east is from west.
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Differences in form act spiritually much as the axe acts physically to separate things. The distance [between the two spiritual things] will be proportional to the difference in form. Understand, as discussed, that souls are imbued with a desire to receive pleasure, which, as we demonstrated, does not exist at all within the Creator. Heaven forfend! From whom could God receive?! This change in form that the souls acquire serves to separate them from God’s essence, much as the axe separates a stone from the mountain. This change in form detaches the souls from God, and they become creatures separate from Him. Still, anything that the souls acquire from God’s light flows from a pre-existing reality, from God’s essence.
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If so, it follows that from the perspective of the divine light received by the vessel – which is the desire to receive – there is absolutely no difference between the soul and God’s essence, as it [the divine light] flows from the pre-existing reality of God’s essence directly to the souls. The entire difference between the soul and God’s essence is that the soul is only a part of God’s essence. The limited amount of divine light received by the vessel, the desire to receive, becomes a separate entity from the Divine due to this change of form. Through it [this change in form], the light transformed from being in the category of “All” to being in the category of “part.” Thus, the only difference between them is that one is “all” and the other is “part,” like a stone that is quarried from the mountain. Study this carefully, since I cannot expound more about such lofty things.
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THE REASON THE SYSTEM OF IMPURITY AND THE “HUSKS” COME INTO BEING We are now in a position to answer query four. How can the system [lit. chariot] of impurity and the husks emerge from the sanctity of God, since they are so radically distant from God’s sanctity? How can God maintain and nourish them?
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We must first understand the true essence of impurity and husks. Know that the desire to receive – which, as we said, is the essence of the souls as they were created, since that enables them to receive all of the fullness planned for creation – does not remain as it was [originally] in the souls. Had it [the desire to receive] remained the same, they [the souls] would always remain separate from God, since their change in form separates them from God.
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In order to repair the separation [from God] that is present in the vessel of the souls, God created all of the worlds and divided them into two systems, as the verse states: “God made both, one opposite the other” (Eccl. 7:14). These are the four holy worlds of ABYA (Atzilut [Emanation], Beria [Creation], Yetzira [Formation], and Asiya [Action](, as well as their counterparts – four impure ABYA worlds. God established a desire to give in the holy system of ABYA, and He removed from them a selfish desire to receive (as I will explain in chapters 14–19 below). He placed that [desire to receive] in the impure ABYA worlds, which separated them from God and from the worlds of sanctity.
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This is why the husks are referred to as “dead,” as the verse describes: “sacrifices of the dead” (Ps. 106:28). Similarly, evildoers are attracted to them [the husks], as the Sages state: “The wicked, [even] during their lives, are called dead” (Berakhot 18b). This is because their inherent desire to receive, which is the opposite of the form that stems from God’s sanctity, separates them from the Life-Force of the Living; they exist at opposite poles from God. For God has no desire to receive, but only to give to others. And the husks contain no element of giving, but only receiving for their own pleasure. These are extreme opposites. It is known that spiritual distance starts with a small difference in form and ends with a form that is radically opposite, at an extreme distance, on another level entirely.
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The worlds developed [nishtalshelu] until this material world came into being, a place that contains both body and soul, and a time wherein both corruption and repair are possible. The body, which is the desire to receive, derived from its roots in God’s plan for creation, as discussed earlier. But it [the body] passed through the worlds of impurity, as Job states: “A wild ass gives birth to a human” (Job 11:12). [The words “wild ass” refer to the worlds of impurity.] It [the body] remains enslaved under that system until age thirteen. That is the period of corruption.
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After age thirteen, a person’s performance of mitzvot – performed with the intention to give satisfaction to his Maker – begins purifying the selfish desire to receive that had been imprinted in him. [Performance of mitzvot] gradually turns [that selfish desire] into a desire to give. This gradually draws [mamshikh] the holy soul from its roots in the plan of creation. It [the holy soul] traverses the entire system of sanctified worlds and becomes enclothed in the body. That is the time of repair.
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From then on, he continually acquires and reaches levels of sanctity that are part of the plan of creation and are present in the Ein Sof [the Infinite]. These [levels of sanctity] assist the person in transforming the selfish desire to receive that is embedded in him into a desire to give, to the point that he becomes one who receives only in order to give satisfaction to his Maker rather than to benefit himself. In this way, a person equates his own form to [that of] his Maker. For receiving for the sake of giving to others is considered the purest form of giving. (This is related to what is stated in Kiddushin 7a: If a woman gives a gift to an important man, she receives benefit from the fact that he consents to accept a gift from her. That benefit is adequate to be considered the exchange that is legally required for them to be married. The fact that he accepts the gift in order for her to benefit from the fact that she gave it to him is considered a complete gift to her.) The person then achieves a complete bond with God. For a spiritual bond is nothing other than an equating of form. To paraphrase a statement of the Sages: “How can one cleave to God? Rather, cleave to His attributes” (based on Sota 14a). That is how a person can become worthy to receive all of the good, pleasantness, and softness that was in the plan of creation.
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We now understand that the desire to receive, which is embedded in the soul due to the plan of creation, requires repair. For God has created the two systems [the system of purity and the system of impurity, the sitra aḥra], one opposite the other, through which the souls pass. Through them, they are separated into two aspects, the body and the soul, which become intertwined [mitlabshot, lit. enclothed in one another]. Through Torah and mitzvot, the desire to receive is eventually transformed into a desire to give. Then [after that transformation], the souls can receive all of the good that is in the plan of creation, and they also become worthy of a stronger bond with God, since the service of Torah and mitzvot transform the form [of the soul] into that of the Creator. This is the last stage of repair. Then there will be no need for the impure “Other Side,” which will be eliminated from the earth, and death shall be swallowed up forever. All of the service of Torah and mitzvot – which was granted to the entire world during the six thousand years of the world’s existence, and to each individual for the seventy years of his life – is for the purpose of bringing about that final stage of repair, in which people’s forms become equated [with that of God], as discussed.
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This also explains how the system of husks and impurity emanate from God’s sanctity. They are a necessary precursor to the creation of bodies, which can then be repaired (along with the desire to receive) through Torah and mitzvot. If bodies with a defective desire to receive had not emanated from the system of impurity, we would be unable to repair them, since a person cannot repair what he does not possess.
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Part 2; The Repaired Desire to Receive We must still understand: If the selfish desire to receive is itself so negative and defective, how did the Ein Sof conceive of it in the plan of creation? The Ein Sof is absolutely unified, in ways that humans cannot describe!
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The explanation is as follows: Prior to [God’s] thought to create the souls, His thought encompassed everything, for He needs no tools like we do. [As soon as He thought,] immediately, all of the souls emerged and came into being, as did all of the future worlds that would be created, filled with all of the good, pleasure, and tenderness that He had planned for them [the souls]. [These worlds would] contain the endpoint of the souls’ perfection, which the souls would receive at the end of the repair. [The end of the repair would occur] after the desire to receive would already be completely and perfectly repaired and transformed into a pure desire to give; [at that point,] the form [of the souls] would become identical to that of God, from which all emanates (Zohar, Mishpatim, 51; Zohar Ḥadash, Bereishit, 243). This is because the divine eternality contains past, present, and future as one. The future is, for Him, like the present, and “time for things to develop” is inapplicable to God. For this reason, the defective desire to receive in its differentiated form [tzura d’peruda] was never present in the Ein Sof. On the contrary, the equation of the forms that will be revealed in the future, at the end of the repair, was immediately present in God’s eternality. The Sages explained this esoteric idea in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 73. “Prior to creation, He was one and His name was one.” The differentiated form of the desire to receive was not revealed at all in the reality of the souls as they emerged from the plan of creation. Rather, they clung to God through the equation of forms, which is the secret of “He and His name are one.” See my Talmud Eser HaSefirot, Part 1.
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THE THREE STATES OF THE SOULS It necessarily follows that souls can generally exist in three states: 1) Their existence within the Infinite as part of the plan of creation. They already have their future form, [the one that they will have] after the repair is complete.
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2) Their existence during the six thousand years [of this world’s existence], in which they are separated into the two systems, yielding the body and the soul. In that state, they are given the service of Torah and mitzvot so that they can transform their [selfish] desire to receive into a[n altruistic] desire to give satisfaction to their Creator and not for themselves at all. During this time, their bodies will not be repaired at all; only the souls will. That is to say, [the souls] must eliminate from themselves any element of selfish receiving, which is the aspect of the body, and remain with only an element of giving, which is the form of the souls’ desire. Even the souls of the righteous cannot enjoy the pleasures of Eden after death until their bodies have completely decomposed in the grave.
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3) Complete repair of the souls following the resurrection of the dead. Then, even the bodies shall be repaired, and even the receiving itself, which is the form of the body, will be transformed such that a form of pure giving will rest upon it [the body]. The souls will then become worthy of receiving for themselves all of the good, pleasure, and pleasantness that is in the plan of creation, while still being worthy of this strong bond [with God], since they will be identical in form to their Creator. For they will not receive all this [pleasure that is in the plan of creation] out of their own desire to receive, but out of their desire to give pleasure to their Creator. After all, God has pleasure when others receive from Him.
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To simplify the discussion, from now on, I will use the terms “first state,” “second state,” and “third state.” Later, recall how I have defined these terms here.
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When one examines these three states, he will realize that they are dependent on one another. If one of them were absent, the others would of necessity also be absent. For example, without the third state, in which the form of receiving is transformed into the form of giving, the first state could never have emerged from the Ein Sof [Infinite]. All of the various perfections only emerged [from the Ein Sof] because they would eventually reach the third state. Within the eternality of God, the future [third state] was already there in the present. The perfection perceived in that [first] form was simply “copied” [haataka] from the future [third state] into the present that was there [in the first state]. If it were conceivable that the future would not happen, then there would be no existence [of the perfected souls] in the present [first state]. That is, the third state requires the reality of the first state. How much more so regarding the hypothetical elimination of something from the second state, which contains all of the service [of God] that is meant to lead to the third stage – the process of defects and gradual repair of the souls from level to level. [If the second state would not exist,] how could the third state occur? Hence, the second state requires the third to occur.
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In addition, if the first state in the Ein Sof already contains all of the perfections of the third state, it follows that the second and third states must occur, with all of the perfections that are already present there [in the first stage]. That is to say, the first state itself requires that the two competing systems [of the body and soul] must separate in the second stage, so that the body – which exists as a defective desire to receive, damaged by the system of impurity – could then be repaired. Were it not for the system of the worlds of impurity, we would never possess that desire to receive, and it would therefore be impossible to repair that desire and bring about the third stage, because a person cannot repair what he does not possess. Thus, do not ask how the system of impurity emerges out of the first stage, since the opposite is the case. The first stage requires the existence [of the system of impurity] in the second stage.
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FREE WILL Do not ask the following question: According to this, do we not (God forbid) have free will, since we are completely destined to become perfect and enter the third state, since it [the perfection of the third stage] is already present in the first stage?
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The explanation is as follows: God prepared two paths in the second stage to bring us to the third stage. The first is through fulfilling Torah and mitzvot, as explained above. The second is through suffering. The suffering itself purifies the body, and it forces us to eventually transform our desire to receive into the form of the desire to give, and therefore to bond with God. This is related to what the Sages state (Sanhedrin 97b): “If the Jewish people repent, good [they will be redeemed]; if not, I will appoint a king over you like Haman [who will afflict you with harsh punishments] and force you to repent.” “In its time, I will hasten it” (Is. 60:22). The Sages explain (Sanhedrin 98a): “If they are worthy, I will hasten it [the redemption]; if they are not worthy, it will be at its time.” This means that if we are worthy of using the first path, i.e., that of Torah and mitzvot, then we hasten our repair, and we will not require severe, bitter suffering over a long period of time to force us to return to the proper path. If not, however, [the repair] will occur at its time – that is, at the time that the suffering will bring about the repair, and the time of repair will arrive against our will. (That path of suffering includes the punishments of the souls in gehinnom.) In either case, the repair will be completed in the third stage, which is inevitable given the first stage, and our free will determines whether [the third stage] arrives through suffering or through Torah and mitzvot.
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We thus explained how the three stages of the souls are interconnected and even necessarily follow from one another.
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THE TRUE BODY Given the above, we can now answer our third inquiry. We had asked: When we look at ourselves, we see ourselves as defective. There is little more despicable than we are. Yet, when we look at the Creator who created us, we expect ourselves [as His creatures] to be most lofty, worthy of the highest praise. After all, given our Creator, [we ought to be perfect,] since it is only natural for a perfect being to produce perfect products.
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Based on the above, this is explained. Our body – with all of its contingencies and with the insignificant things it has acquired – is not our true body. Our true body – the eternal and wholly perfect one – is already present in the Ein Sof as part of the first stage. It receives its form there [in the Ein Sof], which is the form that it will take in the future in the third stage. [That form is] receiving in the form of giving [i.e., the good that one gains by giving to others], which is identical to the form of the Ein Sof. True, our situation in the first stage requires that in the second stage, we will receive the husk [kelipa] of that perfect body, with its despicable and defective form – the selfish desire to receive. That [desire] is the force that separates [the soul] from the Ein Sof. That then leads to the repair of the body, which enables us to receive the eternal, completely actualized body in the third stage. Therefore, we should not complain about this at all. For our service [of God] is unimaginable without this disposable and faulty body, since a person cannot repair what he does not contain. That is to say, even our body in the second stage is in fact perfect, as befitting the perfect Creator who made us. This [physical] body does not hurt us at all, since it will eventually die and be removed. Our bodies are prepared for us only to the extent necessary for them to [eventually] be removed so that we can receive our eternal form.
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ETERNAL CREATURES This also answers our fifth inquiry. We asked: How is it possible that from the Eternal will emerge transient creatures that come into being and cease to be? The answer to this question is now clear. For we emerged from before Him in a manner that is appropriate for His eternality; [we emerged] as eternal and entirely perfect creatures. This eternality necessarily requires that the husk of the body, which was given to us only for service [of God], be temporary and cease to be. For had it [the body] remained in eternality, God forbid, then we would remain eternally separate from the Life-Force of the Living. We have already stated (see 13 above) that this form of our bodies, the selfish desire to receive, is not at all present in the eternal plan for creation. There [in the eternal], we have the [perfected] forms of the third stage. Still, we must exist in the second form [for a time] in order to enable the repair, as discussed.
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Do not ask at all about creatures in the world other than humans. For humans are the center of creation, as we will discuss later in chapter 39. The rest of the creatures are not at all valuable in themselves, except to the extent that they contribute to humanity by bringing [people] to perfection. Hence, they [other creatures] rise and fall with him [man], and they are insignificant in themselves.
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SUFFERING The above also answers inquiry four. We had asked: It is the nature of the good to be benevolent. If so, why did God intentionally create creatures who would suffer throughout their lives? The answer is that all of the suffering is necessary due to the first stage. The perfect eternality there [in the first stage] depends on the future third stage. This forces one to walk either on the path of Torah or the path of suffering [in the second stage] in order to arrive and obtain his eternity in the third stage (see above, chapter 15). All of this suffering impacts only the husk of one’s [physical] body, which was created only to die and be buried. This teaches that the selfish desire to receive that is present [in the body] was only created to be erased and removed from the world. It is to be transformed into a desire to give. Our suffering only serves to reveal the insignificance and damage that are present in it [the body].
19.2
Note that at a time when all of humanity would unanimously agree to annul and destroy their selfish desire to receive, leaving them with only a desire to give to others, all worries and hazards would be removed from the world. Each person would live a secure, healthy, and perfect life, as the entire world would provide and supply all of his needs. Yet, at a time when each person has a selfish desire to receive, that is the source for unavoidable suffering, wars, and corruption, which weaken our bodies by causing illness and pain.
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It follows that all of the suffering in our world is designed to motivate us to destroy the evil husk of the body and to acquire the perfect form of the desire to give. That matches what we said above: the path of suffering can lead us to the desired form.
19.4
Know that interpersonal mitzvot [bein adam leḥavero] take priority over mitzvot between man and God [bein adam laMakom], because causing benefit to one’s fellow leads him to cause benefit to God.
20.1
OUR ESSENCE Given all of the above, the first inquiry is also answered. We asked: What is our essence? The answer is that our essence is identical to that of the essences of all the particulars in the world, which is none other than the desire to receive (as discussed in chapter 7). Yet, this [desire to receive] is not the way that we imagine it in the second stage, in which it is the selfish desire to receive. Instead, it [the desire to receive] is in the way that things are in the first stage, within the Ein Sof. That is, it [the desire to receive] has its eternal form, in which it receives in order to give satisfaction to the Creator (see chapter 13).
20.2
Though we have not arrived yet at the third stage, and we have still not had enough time to develop, this does not detract from our essence. That is because the third stage follows inevitably from the first stage, and [to paraphrase a talmudic principle,] “a debt that stands to be collected is [considered] as if it were already collected.” Not having had enough time to develop is only a problem if there is a doubt about whether the process will fully develop to perfection in the time available. And since we have no doubt about that at all, [since developing from stage one, to two, to three is inevitable], it is as if we have already achieved the third stage. The body that was given to us for now, with its problematic form, does not damage our essence, since it [the body] and everything it acquires will be completely eliminated together with the source of impurity. And “anything that will inevitably be burnt is [considered] as if it is already burnt” (Menaḥot 102b) and as if it had never existed.
20.3
However, this is not true of the soul enclothed in that body. The essence [of the soul] is the desire not to receive, but to give, which has flowed to us from the system of the four sacred worlds of ABYA (see chapter 11). It will exist eternally. For the form of this desire to give is equal in form to the Life-Force of the Living, and it is therefore not temporary. This shall be discussed more fully in chapter 32 and on.
21.1
Do not pay attention to those philosophers who claim that the essence of the soul is intellectual substance, that it [the soul] is actualized only through the knowledge that it acquires, that it [the soul] grows from knowledge, and knowledge is all of its being. [According to this theory,] the eternity of the soul after death depends entirely on the extent to which the soul has acquired knowledge, and in the absence of knowledge, nothing is left [of the soul] to remain. This is not the Torah’s view, and the heart rejects this opinion. Anyone who has ever acquired knowledge knows that it is an external acquisition, not the essence of the one who acquires it.
21.2
Rather, as explained, all of the substance of the new creation – whether the substance out of which is made spiritual things or the substance out of which is made physical things – is nothing other than the desire to receive. (We have said that the soul is made up entirely of a desire to give. Yet, that is only due to the repairs that occur when the reflected light is enclothed [in the soul. That light] is received from the upper worlds, from where it comes. I explain the matter of enclothing in my Petiḥa Leḥokhmat HaKabbala in chapters 14–16, 19. Still, the essence of the soul remains a desire to receive. See the sources there to understand.) For the thing that distinguishes one example of a thing from another is not its substance, but its will. For the will in every essence produces needs, and those needs produce thoughts and knowledge to the same degree [as the needs]. Then, the creature can [go out and] acquire what it requires to fill its needs.
22.1
People’s desires differ from one another. Similarly, their needs, thoughts, and education differ. For example, there are those who desire to receive only animal desires, and their needs, thoughts, and education are designed to fill those animal wants. Though they use their intellect and knowledge like a human, still, “the slave is like the master.” That intellect is therefore an animal-like intellect, since it is enslaved to the animal desires. There are also those whose desire focuses on human wants, such as honor or power over others – wants that animals do not have. Such people will focus their needs, thoughts, and education on those [human] desires to the extent possible. Those whose desire to receive is linked to intellectual understanding will focus their needs, thoughts, and education on fulfilling that desire to the maximum extent.
22.2
For the most part, people possess all three kinds of desires to different extents. But the admixture of those different needs differs from person to person. This explains the differences between individuals. People differ from one another physically in ways that are parallel to the way they differ from one another spiritually.
23.1
The spiritual souls of people have only a desire to grant satisfaction to their Creator, and this comes from the power of the reflected light that they receive from the upper worlds from which they [the souls] come. This desire [to grant satisfaction to the Creator] is the very essence of the soul. It follows that when the soul becomes enclothed in the body, it [the soul] births within the person the needs, thoughts, and education needed to fully grant that satisfaction to its Creator proportional to its [the soul’s] desire.
24.1
[On the other hand,] the essence of the body is a selfish desire to receive. All of its experiences and everything it acquires fill this defective desire to receive, which was initially created only to be destroyed and eliminated from the world in order to reach the perfect third stage and the end of the repair. That is why [the body] – along with all of its acquisitions – is lowly, mortal, and temporary, like a passing shadow, which leaves nothing after it.
24.2
In contrast, the essence of the soul is a desire to give, and all of its experiences and everything it acquires fill this desire to give. It remains eternally in first stage and in the future third stage. It is, therefore, immortal and permanent. It and everything it acquires are eternal, living forever. They are not at all affected by the non-being of the body’s death. On the contrary, the absence of the defective body’s form [after death] greatly strengthens the soul, allowing it to ascend to the heights of the Garden of Eden.
24.3
Thus, it is clear that the eternality of the soul does not at all depend on the knowledge that the soul acquires, as the philosophers had suggested. Rather, the soul’s eternality is in its very essence – its essential desire to give. Knowledge that the soul acquires is its reward, not its essence.
25.1
RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD This also answers the fifth inquiry. We explained that the body is defective, to the point that a soul cannot reach its complete purity until the body has decomposed. If so, why is the body resurrected? Moreover, the Sages say that the dead will be resurrected with their blemishes, so that others will not say that they are different people.
25.2
The plan of creation itself provides an answer, based on an understanding of the first stage. We had said that the plan [of creation] is to bring pleasure to creatures. It follows, therefore, that God certainly created a great and extreme desire to receive all of the positive influence that is present in the plan of creation. The great pleasure and the desire to receive are linked to one another (above, chapters 6–7). We explained there that this great desire to receive is in fact all that God needed to create. Nothing else was necessary to accomplish the goal of creation, given that it is in the nature of the perfect actor [to act efficiently and] to do no unnecessary actions. As we say in the Shir HaYiḥud for Friday: “In all of Your labor, You forgot nothing; You left nothing out and added nothing extra.”
25.3
We also stated above (chapters 10–11) that the exaggerated desire to receive was removed entirely from the system of sanctity and placed in the system of the worlds of impurity, from which emerge [several things]: the bodies, what those bodies need to live, and anything that they acquire in this world. After a man reaches the age of thirteen, involvement in Torah and mitzvot help him acquire a sanctified soul, which is nourished from the system of holy worlds, in proportion to the sanctified soul that the person has achieved.
25.4
We also said above (chapter 14) that no repair occurs to the body – that is, to the exaggerated desire to receive – during the six thousand years [of this world’s existence] that are meant for the service of Torah and mitzvot. Whatever repairs a person achieves through that service affect only the soul, which rises along the upward path of sanctity and purity. That expands the desire to give that appears with the soul. For this reason, the body will eventually be buried and decompose, since it was not repaired at all. But it [the body] will not remain in that state [of decomposition], for if the exaggerated desire to receive would be annihilated from the world, the plan of creation would not be fulfilled. That is because [the plan of creation] involves [creatures] receiving all of the great pleasures that God planned to bequeath to them. After all, the great desire to receive and the great pleasure received are proportional to one another, and any diminishment of the desire to receive will diminish the pleasure of receiving.
26.1
We already stated that the first stage leads inevitably to the third stage; everything in the plan of the initial stage of creation will be fulfilled. Nothing [that was present in the initial plan of creation] shall be omitted [in the third stage] (see chapter 15). Therefore, the first stage necessitates resurrection of deceased bodies. That is to say, the exaggerated desire to receive, which had been destroyed and had decomposed in the second stage, must return to life anew. It will be greater and more significant [when resurrected], with no limits at all. [The resurrected bodies] must even contain their flaws. That way, they can begin their service anew, in order to transform the exaggerated desire to receive, so that it will become an equally sized desire to give.
26.2
We have then doubled our benefit. First, we have a place to receive all of the goodness, the pleasure, and the softness in the plan of creation, since we have already had a body [in the second stage] with an exaggerated desire to receive, which leads [in the third stage] to pleasures that are proportional [to the earlier desire to receive], as discussed. Second, our receiving in this manner is only for the purpose of giving satisfaction to our Creator. Hence, this type of receiving is considered complete giving (see chapter 11). This will also equate the forms. That [equation of forms] means binding with God, which is the form of the third stage. Hence, the first stage absolutely requires resurrection of the dead.
27.1
Resurrection could occur only toward the end of the process of repair, that is to say, at the end of the second stage. [Resurrection can only happen] once we have become worthy of negating our exaggerated desire to receive, and once we have received the desire to give, and after we became worthy of all of the lofty levels of the soul – which are referred to as the Nefesh, Ruaḥ, Neshama, Ḥaya, and Yeḥida [NaRaNḤaY]. Then, due to our service in negating the desire to receive, we will have reached the greatest stage of perfection. Only then will it be possible to replace the body – with its exaggerated desire to receive – and we will not be damaged due to [the body’s] ways of separating us from our bond with God. On the contrary! We will overcome it [the body] and we will give it the form of giving, as discussed.
27.2
The same is true of any personal bad trait of which we want to rid ourselves. At first, we must remove it from ourselves extremely and completely, such that none of it remains. Only later can we accept some of that trait again, directing it toward the middle path. As long as it has not [first] been completely removed from us, we cannot direct it to the proper middle path.
28.1
This is the meaning of statement of the Sages that in the future, the dead will be resurrected with their blemishes, which will then be healed. As discussed, this means that people will be resurrected with the same body [they once had], including the exaggerated and unrestricted desire to receive. The expression “including their blemishes” refers to the ways in which the body is formed by the system of the worlds of impurity, prior to being purified somewhat through Torah and mitzvot. Only then [after the body is resurrected in an impure state, “with its blemishes,”] will it be healed. Then it will achieve the equation of the forms.
28.2
The Sages also said that the reason [for resurrection with blemishes] is so that others will not say that it is another person. This means that people should not say that the [resurrected] person is in a form other than what was part of the plan of creation. For the plan of creation included an exaggerated desire to receive, designed to receive all of the good in the plan of creation. But in the meantime, the body consists of husks and must be purified. In the end, it must be the same body, for if [that resurrected body] included anything less [than the original body], it would actually be a completely different body that is unworthy of all of the good in the plan of creation that had been present in the first stage. Understand this well.
29.1
OUR PURPOSE These explanations offer an opportunity to answer inquiry number two. What is our task in the great chain of being, of which we are only a small piece during our short lives?
29.2
Know that our service during the seventy years of our lives is to be divided into four stages: First, to acquire the exaggerated and limitless desire to receive, with all of its defectiveness, from the impure system of the four worlds of ABYA. For if we did not possess this defective desire to receive, we could not repair it at all, since a person cannot repair what he does not contain.
29.3
Therefore, it is not enough to obtain the desire to receive that is inherent in the body of a newborn. We must spend no less than thirteen years to become a chariot to carry the husks of impurity, such that the husks shall rule over us and provide their light for us, since their light encourages the growth of the desire to receive. The husks expand the desire to receive, which grows. For example, a newborn wants only a small amount, but when the Other Side grants him that small amount, the desire to receive expands and he wants a large amount. When the Other Side grants him that large amount, the desire to receive expands further and wants even more. If a person does not overcome this through Torah and mitzvot, which help the person purify the desire to receive and transform it into a desire to give, the desire to receive will continue to expand over the person’s entire life, to the point that “a person dies with only half of what he desired” (Kohelet Rabba 1:13).
29.4
The Other Side and the husks have the task of expanding a person’s desire to receive, turning it into something exaggerated and boundless. This creates for a person all of the material he needs to work on and repair.
30.1
The second stage involves the years after thirteen. At that time, there is a “point” [nekuda] in the heart, and [that point] is the secret of the “back” [aḥorayim] of the sacred soul. That point is enclothed in the inborn desire to receive, but it only awakens after the age of thirteen (for the reasons discussed above). At that time, it [the point] begins to enter into the territory of the system of the worlds of sanctity, at least to the extent that the person is involved in Torah and mitzvot.
30.2
During that time, the primary task is to acquire and expand the spiritual desire to receive. From the moment of birth, the person desires to receive only materiality. Thus, even though he acquires the exaggerated desire to receive prior to thirteen years of age, the desire to receive had not yet grown completely, since the primary desire to receive involves spirituality. For example, prior to thirteen, the person desires to grab [lit. swallow] all of the revealed wealth and honor present in the material world, the temporary world that is like a passing cloud. The same is not true of the exaggerated spiritual desire to receive, which motivates a person to grab and enjoy all of the goodness and the wealth of the eternal World to Come, which is a permanent and unending acquisition. Thus, the exaggerated desire to receive is not completed until [it develops] the desire to receive spiritually.
31.1
This [reality in the second stage] is explained in Tikkunei Zohar (Tikkunim Ḥadashim 97b), commenting on the verse, “The leech has two daughters: ‘Give’ and ‘Give.’” (Prov. 30:15). The word “leech” refers to gehinnom. The evildoers who are trapped there bark like a dog, saying, “Hav, hav – Give, give”: Give us the wealth of this world; give us the wealth of the World to Come.
31.2
Still, [this second stage] is a great deal more advanced than the first one. Not only does a person acquire an understanding of the true greatness of the desire to receive; not only is all of materiality available to [him in order to] perform the service [of God] that he requires; but this is also the stage at which he can acquire [the quality of doing divine service] for its own sake. [As the Talmud explains, Pesaḥim 50b,] “A person should always engage in Torah and mitzvot, even if [he does so] not for their own sake, as through [the performance of mitzvot] not for their own sake, one comes to perform them for their own sake.” That is why this stage, after thirteen years of age, qualifies as holy. This is the secret of the “sacred maidservant who serves her master,” which is the secret of the sacred Shekhina [Divine Presence; also a term for the lowest Sefira]. The maidservant brings the person to the level of “for its own sake” and therefore makes the person worthy of the revelation of the Shekhina.
31.3
But a person must do everything possible to reach “for its own sake.” If he does not make the effort, if he does not reach the level of “for its own sake,” he can fall into the trap of the “impure maidservant,” who stands in opposition to the holy maidservant. The task of the [impure maidservant] is to confuse a person, such that the “not for its own sake” does not become “for its own sake.” That is what the verse in Proverbs means when it states, “The maidservant who displaces her mistress” (Prov. 30:23). For the [impure maidservant] will not allow the person to come close to the mistress, the holy Shekhina.
31.4
The final level within this stage is coming to love God greatly, comparable to a glutton who becomes infatuated with a material pleasure, such that thoughts of that pleasure stand before his eyes all day and all night. This is what the poet stated: “When I recall Him, I cannot sleep” (Seliḥot for the second day of the Ten Days of Teshuva). The verse also states: “Fulfilled desire is a Tree of Life” (Prov. 13:12). For the five levels of the soul [Nefesh, Ruaḥ, Neshama, Ḥaya, and Yeḥida, referred to by the abbreviation NaRaNḤaY] are the secret of the Tree of Life, which lasts for five hundred years. Each level is one hundred years. During this time, he can receive all five aspects of the soul. (The five levels will be explained shortly, regarding the third stage.)
32.1
The third stage is the service of Torah and mitzvot for its own sake – in order to give [benefit to his Creator], rather than to receive a reward. This service purifies the selfish person’s desire to receive and transforms it into a desire to give. To the extent that the desire to receive is purified, [the person] becomes worthy of and prepared to receive the five parts of the soul referred to as NaRaNḤaY (as discussed below, chapter 43). The [five parts of the soul] want to give, but they cannot become enclothed in the body (see above, chapter 23) while the desire to receive controls the body, since the desire to receive stands in an oppositional relationship to the soul, or at least it [the desire to receive] is different in form [from that of the soul]. For the matters of enclothing and equation of the form work together (above, chapter 11). When a person becomes worthy and he becomes only a desire to give, wanting nothing for himself, he has equated his form with the higher aspects of NaRaNḤaY. (The NaRaNḤaY extend from their source in the Ein Sof, from the situation of unity, through the sanctified worlds of ABYA.) They [NaRaNḤaY] will flow to him, and will be enclothed in him, one at a time.
32.2
The fourth stage is the service performed after the resurrection of the dead. The desire to receive, which will be completely eliminated through death and burial, is resurrected with the worst kind of exaggerated desire to receive. That is the secret of “the dead are destined to be resurrected with their blemishes” (above, chapter 28). People then transform it [the body] through receiving in the form of giving, as discussed at length. There are rare individuals who perform this service even while living in this world.
33.1
Part 3: The Worlds and Man We can now answer the sixth inquiry. The Sages state that all of the upper and lower worlds were created only for man. But this is surprising. Man is not even like a hairsbreadth when compared with all of the things we witness in this world. How much more so [is man insignificant] compared to all of the upper, spiritual worlds. Why would God bother creating all of these for man? Moreover, what does man need with all of these multiple and wondrous upper, spiritual worlds?
33.2
You must know that God’s satisfaction from benefiting His creatures is proportional to the extent that the creatures feel that God is the one giving to them and benefiting them. He is greatly delighted with them [the creatures], like a father who is delighted with his beloved son, to the extent that the son realizes how great and lofty his father is and [to the extent that] his father shows him all of the treasures he has prepared for his son. As the verse states: “Is Ephraim not a precious son to me, a delightful child? Whenever I speak of him, I remember him all the more. Therefore, I long for him inwardly. I will show him great compassion, declares the Lord” (Jer. 31:19). If you examine this verse carefully, you can understand and comprehend God’s great delight, as long as those perfected [creatures] are worthy of feeling and appreciating God’s greatness in all the ways that He prepared for them. [This is true to the extent that] they maintain a dear father-son relationship, much as a [human] father does with his own delightful son, as explained by this verse to all who understand it. We need not expand on this. We need only know that it was worth creating all of the worlds, upper and lower (as will be explained), for the sake of the delight and satisfaction [that God has] from these perfected [creatures].
34.1
MAN – THE GOAL OF THE WORLDS In order to prepare His creatures to reach that lofty and elevated level, God wanted these actions to occur in four stages that follow one from the other, referred to as inanimate, plants, animals, and human [lit. speaker]. These are indeed four aspects of the desire to receive, and the upper worlds are divided into four parallel levels. Even though the ultimate goal is in the fourth level (human), it is not possible for [that goal] to appear immediately in the fourth level. It must first pass through the three previous levels, through which it is revealed and developed slowly, until it is perfected in the fourth level. (This is explained in my Talmud Eser Sefirot, Section 1, p. 5, s.v. vetaam.)
35.1
The first stage of the desire to receive is called “inanimate.” This is the beginning of the revelation of the desire to receive in this physical world. It contains only the general potential for motion that is present in each kind of inanimate object. But we do not see actual motion in the particular [inanimate objects, but only in the species of inanimate objects]. For the desire to receive begets needs, and needs beget the motions necessary to fulfill the needs. And since the desire to receive is small [in inanimate objects], it [the desire to receive] dominates only the general category at once, but its domination over each individual instance is not recognizable.
36.1
Above that is the “plant” aspect, the second aspect of the desire to receive. It is a greater aspect than that of the inanimate, and the desire to receive dominates each and every individual [not just the species]. Each individual [plant] moves independently, as it spreads out near and far to follow the sun. Individual [plants] also have the need for food and drink, as well as the need to excrete. Still, they do not contain individual feelings.
37.1
Above that is the “animal” element, the third aspect of the desire to receive. It is almost completely present [in this stage], for the desire to receive begets unique feelings in each individual. This is the distinct life-force present in each individual, which makes one individual different from others. Still, they do not possess empathy for others, in that they have no ability to appreciate the suffering of another or enjoy the happiness of another.
38.1
Above that is the “human” element, which contains the fourth aspect of the desire to receive. That is the highest level of perfection, in that it includes an element of empathy.
38.2
I will explain precisely the difference between the third element of the desire to receive, present in animals, and the fourth element, present in humans. It is like the difference between one specific creature and all of the creatures as a whole. For the desire to receive present in animals lacks empathy, and it creates wants and needs only to the extent necessary for that particular creature. Humans are different in that they are capable of empathy. [A human] can feel when someone else lacks something, and he can become extremely jealous of that which another has. If a person has one hundred, he wants two hundred. His wants and needs grow to the point that he wants to grab the entire universe.
39.1
It has been made clear that God’s entire purpose in creating the universe is to give pleasure to His creatures. That is, they will recognize the truths of God and His greatness and will receive from Him all of the good and the pleasantness that He has prepared for them, as explained based on the verse, “Is Ephraim not a precious son to me?” Therefore, it is equally clear that inanimate objects cannot achieve this goal. Neither can celestial bodies (no matter how brilliant and large), plants, or even animals. All of these lack empathy, even for creatures that are similar to themselves. How could they appreciate God’s gifts and His goodness? Only humans [can achieve the goal of creation], since they have the potential for empathy toward those who are similar to them – particularly after the service of Torah and mitzvot, which transforms the desire to receive into a desire to give, thereby equating their form with that of their Creator. After that, they receive all of the levels prepared for them in the upper worlds of NaRaNḤaY, which prepares them to receive the goals embedded in the plan of creation. In short, man is the purpose of the creation of all the worlds.
40.1
I know that many philosophers disagree. They reject the idea that a lowly and insignificant human (in their eyes) is the center of the great and lofty creation. These philosophers are comparable to a worm growing inside a radish, believing that God’s world is bitter, dark, and small, like the radish into which the worm was born. As soon as it leaves the skin of the radish and glances outside of it, the shocked worm says: “I thought that the entire world was like the radish into which I was born, and now I see such a great, light, wondrous, and beautiful world.”
40.2
By analogy, think of those who are embedded in the husk of their inborn desire to receive. They never attempt to obtain the special “spices” of Torah and practical mitzvot, which are capable of breaking through the hard husk and transforming them into a desire to give satisfaction to the Creator. They are the ones who feel compelled to claim that humans are worthless and nothing – for that is what they truly are. They cannot even consider the possibility that all of creation is for their sake. Were they dedicated to Torah and mitzvot in order to give satisfaction to their Creator with all of the proper purity, they would be able to break through the husk of the inborn desire to receive and replace it with a desire to give. Immediately, their eyes would be opened. They would see and appreciate themselves and all of the lofty levels of clear wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, which are soul-endingly beautiful and pleasant and which are prepared for them in the spiritual worlds. Then they would themselves agree with the statement of the Sages: “A good guest, what does he say? How much effort did the host expend on my behalf” (Berakhot 58a).
41.1
THE WORLDS A question remains. In the end, why does man need these upper worlds that God has created for him?
41.2
Know that the existence of all the world is generally divided into five parts: 1. Adam Kadmon [Primordial Man]; 2. Atzilut [Emanation]; 3. Beria [Creation]; 4. Yetzira [Formation]; 5. Asiya [Action]. Each one of these worlds contains infinite details. They are aspects of the five Sefirot, “KaḤaV TuM”: Keter, Ḥokhma, Bina, Tiferet, and Malkhut. That is to say, the world of Adam Kadmon is Keter; the world of Atzilut is Ḥokhma; the world of Beria is Bina; the world of Yetzira is Tiferet; and the world of Asiya is Malkhut. The lights that are enclothed in these five worlds are called YaḤNaRN (Yeḥida, Ḥaya, Neshama, Ruaḥ, Nefesh). The light of Yeḥida shines in the world of Adam Kadmon; the light of Ḥaya shines in the world of Atzilut; the light of Neshama shines in the world of Beria; the light of Ruaḥ shines in the world of Yetzira; and the light of Nefesh shines in the world of Asiya.

The True Wisdom, translated by Dr. Yoel Finkelman, 2024. Via Sefaria (sefaria.org), Sefaria-Export. Version source: https://www.sefaria.org Licence: CC-BY-NC. Source.