The Creator’s Guidance Is a Purposeful Guidance
The only tactic is to examine the end of the act, that is, the purpose of Creation. For nothing can be understood in the middle of the process, but only at its end.
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 4
The Creator is the Absolute Good. He watches us in complete benevolence without a hint of evil, and in purposeful guidance. That means that His guidance compels us to undergo a series of phases, by way of cause and effect, preceding and resulting, until we are qualified to receive the desired goodness. And then we shall arrive at our purpose as a ripe and fine-looking fruit.
Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
His guidance over the reality that He has created is in the form of purposeful Guidance, without taking into consideration the order of the phases of development, for they deceive us and prevent us from understanding their purpose, being always opposite to their final shape.
It is about such matters that we say, “There is none so wise as the experienced.” Only one who is experienced has the opportunity to examine Creation in all its phases of development, all the way through completion, and can calm things down, so as to not fear those spoilt images that the Creation undergoes in the phases of its development, but believe in the fine and pure completion of its ripening.
Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
The conducts of His Providence in our world, which is only a purposeful Guidance. The attribute of goodness is not at all apparent before Creation arrives at its completion, its final ripeness. On the contrary, it rather always takes a form of corruption in the eyes of the beholders.
Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
From all of Nature’s systems presented before us, We understand that any beings of the four types—still, vegetative, animate and speaking—as a whole and in particular, are found to be under purposeful guidance, meaning a slow and gradual growth by way of cause and effect, as a fruit on a tree, which is guided with favorable guidance to finally become a sweet and fine-looking fruit.
Go and ask a botanist how many phases the fruit undergoes from the time it becomes visible until it is completely ripe. Not only do its preceding phases show no evidence of its sweet and fine-looking end, but as if to vex, they show the opposite of the final outcome.
The sweeter the fruit is at its end, the more bitter and unsightly it is in the earlier phases of its development.
Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
The corrupt conducts in the states of humanity are the very ones that generate the good states. And each good state is nothing but the fruit of the work in the bad state that preceded it. Indeed, these values of good and bad do not refer to the value of the state itself, but to the general purpose: each state that brings humanity closer to the goal is considered good, and one that deflects them from the goal is considered bad.
By that standard alone is the "law of development" built—the corruption and the wickedness that appear in a state are considered the cause and the generator of the good state, so that each state lasts just long enough to grow the evil in it to such an extent that the public can no longer bear it. At that time, the public must unite against it, destroy it, and reorganize in a better state for the correction of that generation.
And the new state, too, lasts just as long as the sparks of evil in it ripen and reach such a level that they can no longer be tolerated, at which time it must be destroyed and a more comfortable state is built in its stead. And so the states clear up one by one and degree by degree until they come to such a corrected state that there will be no sparks of evil.
Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”