Today many already realize that man is the only destructive element in nature. The reason for it is that we are not really part of nature. Our bodies belong to the animal kingdom, but our minds don’t. Our minds are the reflection of our higher, spiritual self, which is still hidden from us.
Animals don’t need to be taught how to behave because their behavior is hard-coded in them, written in their genes before they are born. If we were made of only the animal part in us, we’d be the same. But we’re not, and therein lies the problem.
When babies learn to crawl, we must watch so they don’t hurt themselves because their bodies can do things that their minds cannot monitor. For the children to avoid trouble, they don’t need to develop their bodies further; they need to develop their minds so their minds will know what to do with their bodies.
There is a rule in Kabbalah: “General and particular are equal.” It means that what is true for an individual is true for the whole, and vice versa. Just like a single baby, the whole of humanity must develop its mind so that its body—the collective body of humanity—will not harm itself.
Regrettably, we are slow learners. And this is why we are harming every creature and place on Earth, extinguishing its life and exploiting its minerals. In the process, we’re also harming ourselves, probably more than we’re harming any other creature. Just look at the rate of degenerative diseases today, and you’ll see what we’re doing to ourselves.
To stop this exploitation, we first have to correct our minds, and our minds can be corrected only if we correct the spiritual element in all of us.
Spirit over Matter
In Kabbalah, the most basic rule is called “The higher degree rules.” Spirit is Above matter. There is probably no dispute about that. So to change our world, we have to go to the place that corrupts it, and that place is the human mind.
As long as humans were only sophisticated animals, the world was fine. It was not in danger. But when we began to want to control it, when we started developing our egoism, that’s when the troubles started, not just for ourselves, but for the world at large.
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Spiritual Sparks
A will in the Upper One is a mandatory law in the lower one.
—Rav Yehuda Ashlag, The Study of the Ten Sefirot
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If we correct our spirits, our bodies will act naturally, in harmony with the whole of nature, and hence with the Creator. Then we won’t have to worry about saving virtually extinct animals. Nature will do it. After all, it had been doing it for millions of years before we came, and far better than we have ever succeeded.