The structure of creation is a lot simpler than we think: everything happens within one’s soul that feels within it the Creator, it’s 'I' and the connection between them.
The soul is the only creation that was ever created, and it is the only thing that exists besides the Creator. That soul doesn’t feel anything outside of it, only what is inside it. It is called “Adam” or “Adam HaRishon” (the First Man), and it is divided into many parts. Each part is an organ of the body of the first man. The soul is in fact, the very same will to receive delight and pleasure. Its parts are unique desires for reception of pleasure and they are called “souls.”
In each soul there are the 613 desires of the collective soul before it sinned (a sin means receiving pleasure for one’s own delight) and broke to pieces. It was divided into 600,000 separate parts, individual souls, each consisting of 613 parts – desires. Those desires fell 125 degrees down from their original status, called the “root of the soul.” The last degree they fell to is called “this world” and it is the lowest spiritual degree of the soul. From that low state man must correct his soul on his own, until it returns to its highest state, to the root of the soul. It must rise through the 125 degrees by a gradual correction of the 613 desires.
The Sin
The sin is misunderstood by us, as is the case with all the terms that take on a physical meaning in our world. Although it says that the Torah spoke in the language of people, it really speaks of a different matter altogether, not about the issues between people. That is why there are such misconceptions in the interpretation of the term “sin.”
The sin of the first man designates a spiritual drop from a spiritual height to the lowest possible degree, so that man will be able to start rising to the Creator of his own accord, consciously and out of his own free choice.
If man had remained in the state of sensation of the Creator in the upper world, where he was created, he would have no way of acting independently and would be under the control of the light like a robot, like a person under the shadow of a great personality. He would have no freedom of choice and would be completely subject to the influence of the great one. Hence, only when the Creator detaches himself completely from man, hiding behind every veil, behind all the concealments that separate our world from the spiritual one, does man have a real freedom of choice.
That fall from the spiritual world is called “the sin of Adam,” although we now see how compulsory it was.
The Laws of Correction
The structure of creation has 613 laws. Each law is a system of correction of one of the soul’s 613 desires. Some of these laws belong to the management of creation in general, and some belong to the individual system of providence of each and every creature. But without exception, they all operate within the soul, because besides the Creator, the soul is the entire system of creation and reality.
The more one learns about these laws and begins to spiritually execute them, in their corrected form, the closer he comes to the degree of the Creator. Meaning, there is a ladder of 613 rungs that stands between our degree and the degree of the Creator. To climb a rung means to acquire a screen and yet another of the 613 desires of the soul.
After the sin, the vessel (the desire of the first man) kept breaking ever deeper, in order to be freed from the screen in the secondary desires as well, where it is difficult to tell anything apart. That is why the Torah speaks of the sin of Cain who killed Abel, and that is in fact, the next sin, the next breakdown in the vessels of the first man. In order to complete the correction of the soul it is necessary to bring the souls deeper and deeper down to the degree of our world.
In order for this creation to begin to rise to the degree of the Creator independently, it must be completely detached from him. In order to detach, it must drop to the degree of man, below the degree of Cain and Abel, below the degree of the generation of the flood, the tower of Babylon, Sodom, all the way down to the degree of our corporeal world.
We are at the very bottom of the ladder. When the soul descends to the degree of our world and is clothed in a body, it is completely detached from the Creator, it has no sensation of him whatsoever, and then it thinks it is completely free. If we begin to rise from this situation, we will really be correcting everything. That is why the uniform soul of the first man had to be broken, to bring the souls down to the degree of this world.