As we’ve said throughout this book, Kabbalah provides a method by which you see that what happens inside you is how you experience the world outside you. We have also pointed out the interconnectedness of everything in creation. Tying these two is the key to correction.
At the end of the day, the wisdom of Kabbalah is very simple: there is an infinite desire to give, which created an infinite desire to receive. Because the desire to receive is infinite, it wants to receive its own Creator. The whole “story” of creation describes our attempts to realize that this is really how things are. As long as we feel separated from others, we have to work on how to experience this unified structure of desires. But when we are corrected, we will know that we are all one creation, and then correcting ourselves and correcting society are one and the same. So let’s start breaking down the correction process into pieces we can work with.
Living in a Creatorless Boat
What you do affects the whole, and vice versa. A Kabbalah story from Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai perfectly brings home the point. One of two people in a boat suddenly began to drill a hole in the bottom. His friend asked, “Why are you drilling?” The person drilling replied, “What business is it of yours? I am drilling under me, not under you.”
Because all humankind is connected into one system, the irresponsible egoists subject themselves and all the others to suffering. It is the transformation activated by Kabbalah that makes us see the irresponsible egoists in ourselves and transform them into responsible adults, altruists in Kabbalistic terms.
Think back to Chapter 3 and remember that the Creator created only one soul, Adam ha Rishon. Then, in Chapter 8, we learned that he fell and his soul split into 600,000 parts. We’ve been trying to put them back together ever since. But for Adam to become equal to the Creator, he has to do something that will make him equal to the Creator. He must engage in giving.
Adam (you and I) is in a bind. If he gives because the Creator compels him to, it is not considered that he is giving, but that the Creator is forcing him to do it. To bring Adam to a state where he wants to give because the quality of giving is, in itself, of the highest value, without any thought of himself, the Creator must be concealed.
We have to feel as though we live in a “Creatorless” world, without guard and government from Above. We have to feel as though we alone make all the decisions and draw all the conclusions, including the conclusion that the quality of giving is the most worthy quality in reality. We are given the concealment of the Creator and the sensation that we are in contact with other people. Because the Creator (quality of giving) is hidden, we are egoistic and hate them, and they hate us. But at the same time, we are dependent on them, and they are dependent on us. This is precisely what globalization has been showing us so clearly in recent years.
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Spiritual Sparks
When man is converted to loving others, he is in direct adhesion, which is equivalence of form with the Maker, and along with it man passes from his narrow world, full of pain and impediments, to an eternal world of bestowal to the Lord and to the people.
—Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
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So how do we reconcile our attitude toward society, where on one hand we need others and on the other we hate them and want to exploit them?
The Creator has put us between two forces, and we have a chance to see how we will choose. We can freely build ourselves as someone who gives to society, Above our nature, and without any consideration of ourselves, or we can choose to remain as egoistic as we are today.
By choosing to give above self-interest we make ourselves similar to the Creator. To the extent that we do it, the Creator opens up to us. He doesn’t have to be hidden anymore because we have become like Him.
Salvation in Bonding of Egoists
By the way, this explains why Adam fell. We had to first be created as a single creature and then be separated into egoistic, distanced, and detached individuals because this is the only way for us to see our complete oppositeness from the Creator.
There are many, many others like us around. The one soul of Adam divided into a multitude of souls (or bodies) to give each of us a chance to determine his or her attitude and choose whether he or she wants to be similar to the Creator.
The original soul was very pure when the Creator created it, with very small desires. But to receive all the pleasures that the Creator wants to give, a person must have an exaggerated, infinite desire to receive. The original soul had it, but unconsciously. These desires had to be made conscious and felt.
In addition, the creature had to feel that these desires are egoistic, which required that the creature be broken or divided, for a number of reasons.
First, it is impossible to correct a powerful will to receive if there is only one person. The Creator split Adam so that each person could correct the little egoism within. Even more, Adam split to have other people with whom to work. You and I need to bond with other egoistic people just like us in order to become similar to the Creator.
Finally, in a state of depravity, we can acknowledge the pettiness, limited nature, and hopelessness of our egoistic nature. We may then develop a desire to unite in order to transform our nature into the opposite, altruistic nature.
Now that you know the Kabbalistic explanation of Adam’s story, what do you do? Others are treating you the way you are treating them because they are reflections of your attitude to the world. Because we try to exploit the world and treat it badly, we think that that’s the way the world is treating us. The “scenario” of reality in our brain is negative, so reality seems negative to us. This naturally makes our world seem threatening and unsafe.
In that state, the only way to restore security and confidence is to unanimously agree to correct our egoistic desires. This is why we are discovering that simply to exist, we need each other. Moreover, we need to be treated well by everyone or we will not be able to escape the threat of destruction.
When we realize that we have no choice but to treat each other well, we will decide that we have to love our fellow beings and we will ask for this power from Above. This power will come from the Creator, from the Upper Light, and we will reach correction. Therein lies the inherent optimism of Kabbalah.
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On Course
Kabbalah’s statement that we are one interconnected soul isn’t a philosophical statement; it places the responsibility for correction squarely in our laps. There is no correction to the world and to ourselves—on any level—without our active participation in mind, heart, and action.
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