THE EVOLUTION of the WORLD S FOREWORD T O T HE PREFA C E T O T HE WISDOM OF KABBALAH INTRODUCTION TO THE PREFace TO THE WISDOM OF KABBALAH 1) All the worlds, Above and below, are within man, and the whole of reality was created for man alone. This is written in The Book of Zohar. So why do we feel different? We feel that we are within reality, not that reality is within us. Moreover, why is this world not enough for us? Why do we need the Upper Worlds? 2) The reason for the creation of reality is the Creator’s desire to benefit His creations. Hence, the Creator created the creature with a nature of wanting to enjoy what the Creator wishes to bestow upon it. The Creator is above time and place; His Thought operates like the act itself. Hence, when He wished and contemplated creating the creations, so as to fill them with delights, the creatures were immediately created, filled with all the pleasures they had received from the Creator. Yet, we do not feel that state, since it is merely our root, which we must achieve, according to the design of creation. In creating the sequence of the worlds from the world of Ein Sof through this world, the Creator removed the creature from Himself down to the lowliest state. It is important to understand why He did that. Does this act indicate imperfection in His actions? The Ari answers this question in the book, The Tree of Life: “to reveal the perfection of His deeds,” so the creatures would perfect themselves and achieve the Creator’s degree, which is the only true perfection. To help them, the Creator created the ladder of worlds. The souls climb down this ladder down to the lowest degree, where they clothe in corporeal bodies of this world. Then, 499 5 0 0 KABBALAH FOR T HE ST UDEN T through the study of Kabbalah, the souls themselves begin to rise and climb up that ladder, by which they had descended, until they return to the Creator. 3) The soul consists of Light and Kli. The Light of the soul comes from the Creator, from Atzmuto (His Essence). Through this Light, the Kli (vessel) of the soul was created, being the desire to receive Light, to enjoy the Light. Hence, the Kli perfectly fits the Light that comes to fill it. The Light is a part of the Creator. The soul is the actual Kli. Hence, only the Kli is considered a creation. It was created from absence, meaning there was no desire before the Creator decided to create it. And because the Creator wished to give the perfect pleasure to this Kli, as is becoming of Him, He created this Kli—the will to receive—enormous, according to the measure of Light (pleasure) that He wished to give it. 4) Creation means initiation, something new that did not previously exist, and this initiation is called “existence from absence.” But if the Creator is complete, how could something not be included in Him? From what has already been said, it is clear that prior to creation, there was no will to receive in the Creator, since the Creator is whole and wishes only to bestow. Hence, what is not in Him, and should be created, is only the desire to receive the pleasure from Him. The will to receive is the whole of reality. Hence, the only difference between the elements of reality is in the measure of desire to receive in each element, and no two elements contain the same desire. 5) There are no physical bodies in spirituality. The spiritual world is a world of desires, “raw” forces, devoid of material clothing of any kind. Hence, all the words used in the wisdom of Kabbalah are actually appellations of the desire to enjoy, or its impressions of the fulfillment of the Light within it. The Creator is the desire to bestow, and the creature is the desire to enjoy the Creator’s bestowal. If the creature enjoys only because the Creator enjoys its reception, such an act is considered bestowal, according to its intention, and not as an act of receiving. This is regarded as the Creator’s desire and creature’s desire being equal, with nothing to separate them. Thus, following the spiritual law of equivalence of form, as a result of equalizing their qualities (desires), they become one. In that state, they are not two identical desires, but are literally one. That spiritual state is called “equivalence of form” or Dvekut (adhesion). FOREWORD T O T HE PREFA C E T O T HE WISDOM OF KABBALAH 501 However, if they do not have the same desire, the same intention, they do not have the same goal and they are separated. Because they have different qualities (desires), they are two, and not one. In spirituality, that state is called, “disparity of form.” The measure of equivalence of form between Creator and creature determines how their closeness and measure of disparity of form determine their distance from each other. In the beginning, the Creator’s desire to bestow and the creature’s desire to receive are equal, since the creature’s will to receive was born from the Creator’s desire to bestow. Hence: • If all their desires (intentions) are the same, they are one; • If all their desires (intentions) are opposite, they are as far as two extremes; • If, of all the desires (intentions), they have only one common desire, then they are touching one another through that common desire; • If some of the desires (intentions) are similar, they are as far or near as their measure of equivalence of form or disparity of form. 6) We have no attainment in the Creator Himself, in Atzmuto, since we attain only the sensation of the Light in the Kli, the filling in our desire. And what we do not attain, we cannot call by any name, since we assign names according to our impressions of the filling. Hence, we cannot say a single word or assign any name to Atzmuto. All our names and appellations, with respect to the Creator, are only reflections of what we feel towards Him. We can feel Him and His actions only by the measure of equivalence of form (desire, intention) with Him. Hence, to the extent that we are similar to the Creator, we feel His desires and actions, and we name the Creator accordingly. When we feel them, we can name Him according to what we feel of Him. This is called “By Your actions, we know You.” 7) Kabbalists are people who are living in this world and connect to the Creator according to their measure of equivalence of form while living in this world. Worlds are the different measures of sensation of the Creator. A “world” is the measure of disclosure or concealment of the Creator towards the creatures; and complete concealment is called “this world.” The beginning of the sensation of the Creator is the transition between this world and the spiritual world. The transition itself is called “barrier.” There are 125 degrees of revelations of parts of the Creator to the creatures between concealment and complete disclosure. These parts are called “worlds.” 5 0 2 KABBALAH FOR T HE ST UDEN T Kabbalists climb the spiritual worlds by correcting their desires (intentions). They tell us—verbally or in text—that the Creator has only the desire to benefit. He created everything to give us all His abundance. This is why He created us with a desire to receive, so that we can receive what He wishes to give us. The desire to receive for ourselves is our very nature. But in that nature, we are opposite in form from the Creator, since the Creator is only a desire to bestow, and does not possess a desire to receive. Hence, if we remain in the will to receive for ourselves, we will remain forever far from the Creator. Kabbalists tell us that the Creator’s purpose is to bring the whole of Creation to Himself, and that He is the absolute goodness. For this reason, He wishes to bestow upon everyone. They also say that the reason for the creation of the worlds is that the Creator must be complete in all His actions and forces. And if He does not execute His forces in complete actions, He is seemingly considered incomplete. But how could imperfect operations stem from the perfect Creator to the point that His actions would require correction by the creatures? We are His actions! If we must correct ourselves, does it not mean that His actions are imperfect? The Creator created only the desire to receive, called “the creature.” But when the creature receives what the Creator wishes to bestow upon it, it is separated from the Creator, since the Creator is the Giver and the creature is the receiver, and in that, they are opposites. In spirituality, equivalence of form is determined by equivalence of desires (qualities, intentions). And if the creature remains separated from the Creator, the Creator, too, will not be complete, since perfect operations stem from a perfect operator. To grant the creature the possibility of achieving perfection of its own free choice, the Creator restricted Himself—His Light—and created worlds, restriction by restriction, down to this world. Here man is completely subordinate to the desire to enjoy, but not to enjoy the Light of God, but rather the beastly clothes on top of it.