We can easily see that changing our attitude toward others will lead us to the resolution of the problems on the social-human degree. This will mean the end of war, the end of violence and terrorism, and the end of general animosity among people.
However, the same crisis is occurring on Nature’s other levels, too, in the inanimate, the vegetative, and the animate. What shall become of them? How will their situations improve? It would seem that to tend to the state of the Earth, water, air, flora, and animals, we must act directly on them. It is, therefore, surprising to see that Kabbalah’s method of correction focuses on human relations and considers those relations the key to the state of all of Nature.
Can it be that correcting our human egoistic relationships will affect the state of other degrees, as well? Could it, for instance, resolve the ecological perils and the shortage of resources that threaten us?
We should know that Nature’s altruistic force is a single force. There are no divisions in it. But with respect to us, it is divided into inanimate Nature, vegetative Nature, animate Nature, and speaking Nature. In other words, there are four different degrees of Nature affecting us.
At the inanimate level, it is affecting us through the Earth, for instance. At the vegetative level, we are affected through plants and trees; at the animate degree, through animals and through our own bodies; and at the speaking degree, through our social environment. However, it is all the same force, and only our senses, as we will later learn, divide it into many levels and numerous forces.
One reaches the highest point of equilibrium with the altruistic force by being of the same thought, desire, and intention. This level of balance is called “the speaking degree.” If we love others, if humanity exists as one unit, and if we are connected to one another as parts of a single organism, we thus create equilibrium between ourselves and this force at the highest level.
For this reason, this force will be balanced in all the lower degrees as well. Thus, all the negative manifestations of imbalance—the suffering and the dearth we experience today at every level: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human—will cease.
However, when we balance ourselves with respect to Nature’s force at lower degrees than the speaking level, when we correct our attitude to the inanimate, the vegetative or the animate, we will still experience imbalance in those degrees. For example, if we relate lovingly to all of Nature’s inanimate degrees and avoid destroying land, the ozone layer and so on, we will create a balance at the inanimate level. But at the vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, the imbalances will remain.
Hence, although Nature’s force would treat us favorably, it would be a very small, limited change. If man treated Nature lovingly at the vegetative degree, too, this would certainly increase the balance with that degree. As a result, we would feel that our condition had grown a little more comfortable and easy. Similarly, if we were to behave in this way toward the animate degree in Nature, it would improve our condition a little more.
But all of the above is nothing compared to balancing the speaking degree. We human beings are the speaking degree. Hence, what must be balanced is the speaking degree within us.
This situation can be compared to an adult who approaches life from the perspective of a child, ignoring his or her talents and skills. By so behaving, the adult is not in sync with the way Nature treats each and every person: in accord with the evolutionary potential instilled in them, even if the individual is not realizing that potential.
Nature aspires to bring everything into balance, but this will be achieved only when man’s attitude toward others becomes altruistic. Hence, the balancing law that propels all existing processes also goads us to be balanced, specifically at the speaking level. It does not allow us to have a secure, easygoing life using actions at lower levels.
Thus, until we create an altruistic bonding among all people, we will continue to experience a negative impact of Nature’s force upon us. Because our senses divide Nature into different levels, we will also continue to create crises at all levels of reality. For this reason, while we are trying to cope with one problem, such as ecology, other problems will emerge from all sides, and ever more quickly.
We cannot allow ourselves to treat Nature’s lower levels in hopes of escaping the real problem: correcting the egoistic relationships among people. The whole of Nature depends precisely on correcting our relationships. If we really want to improve Nature, working on our personal relationships is the way to do it.
Humans are the only creatures whose nature grants them an opportunity for free choice; that choice is only at the level of correcting human relations. The comprehensive balancing of all of Nature’s degrees depends solely on our realization of this choice.
Everything that happens in the world depends on man alone. This is what The Book of Zohar explains (Zohar, Vayikra, item 113). It states that everything exists and occurs for man, to help us form the right connection between ourselves and others, and acquire Nature’s quality of altruism. This will bring the ultimate solution to all the world’s problems, and all of Nature will exist in a corrected form, in harmony and in perfection.
In his manuscripts (p. 170), Rabbi Kook described this state in the following words: “The power of creation and global management has been executed in utter perfection… However, there is a small part that lacks correction… and upon its completion depends the completion of the whole created being. That tiny part is the human soul, in the form of its desire and in the mimicry of its spirituality. This part is given to man to correct, and with it, to complete the whole created being.”
Nature’s laws, as presented here, are hidden laws that Kabbalists discovered as they studied Nature in its totality. They indicate how to resolve all the problems of our existence. They cannot be proven, but they can be explained in a rational and compelling manner. In the end, after all the explanations, it is for the individual to decide whether or not to accept them.
And the reason this is so is that Nature wants us to maintain our independence, our ability to choose whether or not we want to strain to find where we are deflecting from the rules—a variation that causes us to feel Nature’s impact on us as negative.
If things had appeared before us as solid facts, clear and unequivocal, it would rob us of the ability to choose freely, our only means of realizing our degree’s unique potential. We would thus decline to be of the animate degree, completely operated by Nature’s commands. Nature has placed us under such concealment to allow us to complement it by ourselves and build the complete speaking degree within us. If we make the most of our opportunity for free choice, we will succeed.