The Route
To carry out the task of becoming identical to the Creator, the first thing the creature must obtain is the right environment to evolve and become Creator-like. This environment is called “worlds.”
At Phase Four, the creature was divided into two parts: upper and lower. The upper part constitutes the worlds, and the lower part constitutes the creature, which is everything within these worlds. Roughly speaking, the worlds are made of desires where the Masach allowed the Light to enter Phase Four, and the creature will be made of desires where the Masach did not allow the Light to enter it.
We already know that Creation is made of one thing only: a will to receive delight and pleasure. Therefore, upper and lower do not relate to places, but to desires that we relate to as higher or lower. In other words, higher desires are desires we appreciate more than the desires we consider lower. In the case of Phase Four, any desire that can be used to bestow upon the Creator belongs in the upper part, and any desire that can’t be used in this way belongs in the lower part.
Because there are five levels of desires—still, vegetative, animate, speaking, and spiritual—each level is analyzed. The workable ones create worlds, and the (as yet) unworkable ones create the creature.
Earlier in this chapter we said that the four-phase pattern is the basis for everything that exists. Therefore, the worlds evolve by the same model that worked in the creation of the phases. The left-hand side of Figure 4 is a look into the contents of Phase Four, showing its division into upper and lower parts, and that the upper part contains the worlds and the lower part contains the creature.
So let’s talk some more about Phase Four and how it works with the Masach. After all, Phase Four is us, so if we understand how it works, we might learn something about ourselves.
Phase Four, Malchut, didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. It evolved from Phase Three, which evolved from Phase Two, etc. Similarly, Abraham Lincoln didn’t just pop up as president. He grew from baby Abe, to a child, to a youth, and to an adult who finally became president. But the preliminary phases don’t disappear. Without them, President Lincoln would not have become President Lincoln. The reason we can’t see them is because the most developed level always dominates and overshadows the less developed. But the last, highest level, not only feels their existence within it, it works with these other levels.
This is why there are times when we all feel like children, especially when touched in places where we haven’t matured. It’s simply that these places are not covered by a grownup layer, and those soft spots make us feel as defenseless as kids.
This multilayered structure is what enables us to eventually become parents. In the process of raising children, we combine our present and previous phases: we understand the situations our children experience because we’d had similar experiences. We relate to those situations with the knowledge and experience we’ve accumulated over the years.
The reason we are built this way is that Malchut (to call it by its commonly used name) is built in exactly the same way. All of Malchut’s previous phases exist within it and help sustain its structure.
To become as similar to the Creator as possible, Malchut analyzes each level of desire within itself, and splits the desires into workable and unworkable ones within each level. But the workable desires will not only be used to receive in order to give to the Creator. They will also “help” the Creator complete His task of making Malchut identical to Him.
A few pages back, we said that to carry out the task of becoming identical to the Creator, the creature must create the right environment to evolve and become Creator-like. That’s exactly what the worlds—workable desires—do. They “show” the unworkable desires how to receive in order to bestow upon the Creator, and in so doing, help the unworkable desires correct themselves.
We can picture the relationship between the worlds and the creature as a group of construction workers where one of the workers doesn’t know what to do. The worlds teach the creature by demonstrating how to do each task: how to drill, how to use a hammer, a level, and so on. In the case of spirituality, the worlds show the creature what the Creator has given them and how they work with it in the right way. Bit by bit, the creature can begin to use its desires this way, too, which is why desires in our world surface gradually, from the mildest to the most intense.
Desires are divided in the following way: The world Adam Kadmon is the workable part of the still level, and the lower part of the still level, the creature, is the unworkable part. Actually, at the still level there is nothing to correct because it’s immobile and doesn’t use its desire. The still level (on both parts) is only the root of everything that will follow.
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From all we’ve learned so far, we still don’t know which of the five worlds we talked about is our world. Actually, none of them is ours. Keep in mind that there are no “places” in spirituality, only states. The higher the world, the more altruistic a state it represents. The reason our world is not mentioned anywhere is that the spiritual worlds are altruistic, and our world is, like us, egoistic. Because egoism is opposite to altruism, our world is detached from the system of the spiritual worlds. This is why Kabbalists did not mention it in the structure they depicted.
Moreover, the worlds don’t actually exist unless we create them by becoming like the Creator. The reason they are spoken of in past tense is that Kabbalists who have climbed from our world to the spiritual worlds tell us what they’ve found. If we want to find the spiritual worlds as well, we will have to recreate these worlds within us by becoming altruistic.
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Next, the world Atzilut is the workable part of the vegetative level, and the lower part of the vegetative level, the creature, is the unworkable part. The world Beria is the workable part of the animate level, and the lower part of the animate level, the creature, is the unworkable part. The world Yetzira is the workable part of the speaking level, and the lower part of the speaking level, the creature, is the unworkable part. Finally, the world Assiya is the workable part of the spiritual, most intense level of desires, and the lower part of the spiritual level, the creature, is the unworkable part.
Now you know why, if we correct humanity, everything else will be corrected at the same time. So let’s talk about us and what happened to us.