Everything Is Preordained
We innovate nothing. Our work is only to illuminate what is hidden within man.
Rabbi Menahm Mendel of Kotzk
The same with one who has been granted the gift of knowing that he is the Creator’s son; no change has been made in his actual reality but the awareness he had not had before.
Baal HaSulam, The Writings of the Last Generation
In the depth of the existence of the realistic life lies the answer, as it precedes the world. Prior to the sin, its repent was already prepared. Thus, there is nothing as certain in the world as repentance. At the very end, all will return to correction.
Rav Raiah Kook, Orot HaTshuva [Lights of Repentance],
Chapter 6, Item 2
There is nothing more natural than coming into contact with one’s Maker, for He owns nature. In fact, every creature has contact with his Maker, as it is written, “The whole earth is full of His glory,” and not that one does not know and does not feel it.
Actually, one who attains contact with Him attains only the awareness. It is as though one has a treasure in his pocket, and he does not know. Along comes another who lets him know what is in his pocket, and now he really has become rich. Yet, there is nothing new here, no cause for excitation. In fact, nothing has been added.
Baal HaSulam, “The Solution”
The Creator truly resides within the heart of every person of Israel, and that is from His side. Hence, what does one lack? Only to know that. And the knowledge changes, and the knowing completes.
Baal HaSulam, A Sage’s Fruit, Vol. 1, “Letter no. 32”
All is set ahead of time and each and every soul is already in all its Light, goodness, and eternity. It is only for the bread of shame that the soul came out restricted until it clothes in the murky body, and by its power does she return to her root prior to the restriction, with her rewarded from the whole of the terrible journey that she performed. And the entire reward is the real Dvekut [adhesion]. This means that she was rid of the bread of shame because her vessel of reception has become a vessel of bestowal and her form is equal to her Maker’s.
Baal HaSulam, Letter no. 25
Similar to a teacher and a student, where the teacher’s sole purpose is to provide the student with the power to be like him, and to teach other students like him. Similarly, the Creator has contentment when His creations create and renew, like Him. Indeed our whole power of renewal and development is not actual innovation. Rather, it is a kind of emulation, and our development is measured by the extent to which our emulation matches the work of nature.
Baal HaSulam, “The Meaning of Conception and Birth”
The thing is that by the very thought to create the souls, His thought completed everything, for He does not need an act, as do we. Instantaneously, all the souls and worlds that were destined to be created, emerged filled with all the delight and pleasure and the gentleness He had planned for them, in the final perfection that the souls were intended to receive at the end of correction, after the will to receive in the souls has been fully corrected and was turned into pure bestowal, in complete equivalence of form with the Emanator.
This is so because in His Eternalness, past, present, and future are as one. The future is as the present and there is no such thing as time in Him. Hence, there was never an issue of a corrupted will to receive in its separated state in Ein Sof.
On the contrary, that equivalence of form, destined to be revealed at the end of correction, appeared instantly in the Infinite. And our sages said about that: “Before the world was created there were He is One and His Name One,” for the separated form in the will to receive had not been revealed in the reality of the souls that emerged in the Thought of Creation. Rather, they were cleaved unto Him in equivalence of form by way of, “He is One and His Name One.”
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” 13