The Spiritual Images That Exist in the Aspirations of the Nation’s Soul Each of us lives in concert with the spiritual images that exist in the aspiration of our nation’s soul.

These images are sparks of light. We are connected—with the connection of the soul of life, the connection of all of our being—to every place where these images are hidden: whether that is a literal place (a site on earth), or whether that “place” consists of people’s actions at whose core these images are hidden, or whether that “place” consists of people’s thoughts and ideas, of whatever sort they may be.

We Must Sustain the Richness of Our Lives A person who comes to slash the branches of these images, to diminish their power, their honor, and their importance to us diminishes the richness of our lives, and we must rise against him with all our might.

The Power of Our Lives In the totality of the written and oral Torah and the interweaving of all of its particulars is hidden the most elevated and originary spiritual image of the desire of our nation from the aspect of the goal of its highest life-force. That image glows due to the totality of its comprehension and breadth, its thoughts, the ways that it expresses itself, and the outcomes of its perspectives on existence, Godliness, the world, humanity, the individual, society, good and evil, life and death.

The more that Torah understanding and awareness manifest themselves in our nation, the more is our nation’s soul well-founded, and then the more that soul’s power of life rises and grows splendidly strong.

The Harmony Within Practical Judaism And our actions are the physical basis, the tangible element, in which this grand theory, this glowing image, places its treasures. And the more the value of our theoretical understanding grows, the more the light hidden in all of our actions shines in the midst of the entire nation.

And then the power of the trait of beautiful harmony within practical Judaism for the sake of God is revealed.

We Will Not Abandon the Banner Sometimes people’s lives stumble in their courses and lack the strength to proceed bolstered by spiritual images, since their spirits are too weary to crystallize these images into deed.

Confusion is engendered, and people’s viewpoints are torn asunder.

Those of us who have a hardy spirit say: Life is susceptible to illness, but it is also susceptible to a return to complete health, and “whatever is joined to life is secure” (Ecclesiastes 9:4). Therefore, we will not abandon the banner, the precious ideals that are hidden within deeds. Those ideals will necessarily come to light precisely when they will be crystallized into deed. Those deeds are not yet completed, they have not yet reached their goal, a time when it will be possible to say that they have completed their work. They must yet illuminate all the darkness of life, a darkness that is still great and extremely vast.

But we will not abandon the banner. We will carry and bear it. With actual deeds, we will give form to the great thought of the spirit of Israel—as our nation has begun doing since it has begun to see its life as that of a collective whole.

Even though the burden is heavier now than it was before, bearing the yoke for the sake of this goal is worthwhile.

We have left the circle of other nations, children with capricious minds who tire of taking serious actions that do not bring immediate gratification. We have matured with knowledge and a fullness of personal feeling, so that we know how to live and how to bear the yoke of life with a calm heart and mighty will for the sake of a worthy goal. Although that goal is still hidden, it will ultimately be revealed.

Our Aspiration and Our Action We aspire to attain the supernal goal and, at the same time, hold onto the practical foundation. But if we lack the strength, if the nation stumbles so that over the course of time the burden of the practical—which is waiting to receive its full power when the ideal light will be revealed in it and through it—grows too heavy, then we will seek proper solutions in keeping with the spirit of the nation’s soul and in keeping with the way of the Torah in its entirety, in order to ease the weight so that this necessary alleviation will not even for a moment cause any lack of the spiritual form of the actions that express the nation’s aspiration.

When We Do Injury to Concepts When we do injury to our concepts, when—as a result of our immersion in the smallness of routine life—we grow distant from the height of supernal thoughts that generate great deeds, thoughts in which powerful Godliness is hidden, then we do injury to our deeds.

Their level sinks and their glory dims until they manifest themselves in an irate form that leads to rupture and desolation instead of the might and glory that are their natural garment.

And when our deeds are injured, our concepts grow distant, becoming a sort of weak thought that arouses the disdain of every man of action, because that thought is so far from life and has so little ability to affect life.

Our Return to the Soaring Idea To find a remedy for this terrible situation, for such a disease that consumes life’s “both extremities, with the insides charred” (cf. Ezekiel 15:4), we must strive as much as possible to guard our deeds, to cherish them and reinforce them to the extent that we can.

But we must not be satisfied with that. We will not gain anything in our efforts if we do not link the elevation of our deeds to our return to the soaring concepts stored and hidden in them.

If actions remain “the commandment of men learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13), not only are they unhelpful, but they will diminish the concepts even more, and in the end, the diminishment of the concepts will conclude with the person abjuring his deeds with disgust.

We Will Not at All Be Disconcerted We will not at all be disconcerted by those who intimidate us against flights of thought, by those who say that we are brazen to rise to the heights of heaven without a ladder.

That is not so. We have a ladder “set on the ground, whose top reaches heaven” (Genesis 28:12): the light in our souls, in the soul of all the people and the soul of the individual, that will be awakened thoroughly by the light of the secrets of the Torah.

They Are Really Saying the Same Thing Regarding matters of concepts and beliefs, which are matters founded on spiritual, abstract matters, it is a more common occurrence than in any other dispute that two disputants who, viewed externally, are very far from each other, are both really saying the same thing. And the entire essence of the dispute, which sometimes appears to flame up to the heart of heaven, is only a dispute of language, because neither person understands the other’s language.

The Self-Same Idea Regarding the basis of beliefs, everything depends on the quality of the blending of a person’s thought: how its parts depend on each other. In this, there is a great difference between one person and another—and, even more, between one generation and another.

Sometimes, as a result of some thought based on a concept, one person is the recipient of a complete structure of ethics and holy feelings, and it doesn’t at all touch his spiritual structure in which his soul lives.

And sometimes, the self-same idea causes one person to sink and descend, and another person to rise and ascend.

Improving One’s Concepts The wise person improves his concepts so that they will be properly organized.

Regarding spiritual concepts that fill a person’s spirit, to the degree that his thoughts are illuminated, their general form is correct and close to the truth and to the attribute that elevates the spirit.

Faith with Intellect Maimonides was happy when, in his teachings, the form of God’s providence took on the character of a construct in which it correlates to a person’s sapience.

And it is fitting to be happy about this, because as long as this faith, which provides the basis for life in the world, exists without an intellectual framework, it does not blend with all of the waves of life of the spirit of wisdom, which yearns to comprehend.

But after faith receives its intellectual form, it is rooted in the depths of the soul in all of its chambers and depths, and a person finds himself content, as his spiritual form coalesces into a single unit.

Obliterating Forms of Ordinary Artlessness and Piety From the hidden depths of the soul, let us take the light that will revive the entire nation and set it on its feet.

The power of life grows stronger, it blazes its pathways. But we must study the content of its spirit.

The yearning for a supernal, holy spirit—a holy spirit that emulates the spirit of the men of might girded with the power of God, whom we had in earlier days when the nation knew itself—is increasing.

As that yearning shines forth, it breaches fences, it obliterates forms of ordinary simplicity and piety. Apparently the situation is terrible, bare on all sides.

But all of that is merely a transition. We must immediately approach the supernal brilliance of the light of life that pours forth from its elevated source, exalted from the beginning, which will make an imprint with its power of a new and sturdy form, better and more filled with the holy might than anything that a middling simplicity and a stumbling piety can provide.

Healthy Souls The ideals at Israel’s source are being increasingly revealed. With the essence of their thundering power, they give life to the spirit prepared to receive them. And they demand the attainment of their role: which is that vessels will be prepared for them, many vessels—these being healthy souls of a fresh generation that lives upon its land and is girded with the might of the salvation of God’s right hand.

What Our Soul Demands of Us The Sanctuary, prophecy, and sovereignty, with all of their methods, send their beam to us, their light that is sown (cf. Psalms 97:11) in the land of life.

Rays come from them to us (cf. Habakkuk 3:4). Waves of their lights beat upon our eyelids, which have been closed throughout the entire course of time of the exile, which dissolves everything.

We are summoned to prepare ourselves for the light, to know ourselves and our purpose, to know what our soul, with all of its sturdiness, demands of us.

On Our Historic Soil The great and elevated spirit that yearns for the very greatest things—it, and it alone, comprehends life and humanity in its splendor and its might.

The only thing that parallels the might of a complete life—one that fills bodies that are pervaded with healthy blood and tremendous power, enormous energy and an immense joy of life—is the might of the spirit in its supernal vigor, shining and rising over humanity with the power of the strength of Israel, a strength that grows ever more apparent in our lives as they are now bursting forth in a current that bends toward the revival of the nation on its historic soil.

For the Sake of a Meaningful Life Without a purpose to a person’s power of life, his spirit melts away. Its strength diminishes and collapses, it is worn away and strides toward disintegration, which lies directly before it on a downward incline.

But the power of life that is crowned by the entire people, by the community of the nation, appears with its proper goal directly before it in our lives—in the care of our lives. And for the sake of that we live, exist, battle, and prevail.

Spiritual Immaturity and Illusions Illusion comes as the result of a person’s propensity to engage in exalted inquiry when that propensity bursts forth before its time, before it has been properly prepared—that is to say, before it has sufficiently learned specific practical teachings, which must always precede exploration into the supernal and the elevated.

This person’s propensity has not provided the basis of its full moral stance that will suffice for the presence of an exalted spirituality capable of aligning itself with an inquiry filled with light and spiritual strength—such as inquiry into the Divine in its sublime form.

That is why we always find that, following a person’s tendency to being inspired to seek the exalted, illusion comes: an illusory faith or an illusory heresy. And that is all due to students who have not served their full apprenticeship, who have risen to the heights of exploration without having first prepared themselves.

Closeness to God It is a great spiritual endeavor for a person to develop himself so much that in his inner being he will recognize God’s closeness to him.

When this all-inclusive propensity will be thoroughly awakened, all of the affairs in his life will straighten out.

For a person to attain this, it makes no difference how these feelings of closeness to God come to him—whether through his intellect and rational awareness or in the way of inner feeling—as long as he recognizes within himself the might and truth of that closeness.

All of the Torah’s commandments and prayers are the best preparations to broaden a person’s propensity toward closeness to God and to broaden its steps in the depths of his spirit.

Therefore, the value of every prayer recited with intent, every blessing and praise of God, every mitzvah and every good custom is very great and exalted, because they are the means via which a person lays a solid foundation for feeling close to God in his heart.

How wretched are those people who do not know Hashem, who do not pray and who do not perform the commandments together with the entire congregation, the community of Israel.

The soul’s aptitude for demanding closeness to God seeks to fulfill its function in those people as well. But since they do not fulfill their obligation to themselves, they remain wretched, dry of all dew of purity. Even if they bring the moisture of good deeds to fulfill the natural moral thirst in their character, the fulfillment of that need cannot satisfy what they lack in terms of the need that demands closeness to God. That can be fulfilled only by performing Godly deeds that are dedicated to the name of Hashem, with holy prayer and with the performance Hashem’s commandment and directives.

With the pity that we must have on all mankind, and in particular on our children and those close to us in race and spirit, we are inspired to straighten before them the straight road that leads to closeness to God. That closeness is acquired by means of the Torah: by learning it and keeping it.

And the more we attain this elevated goal, [i.e.,] the greater the increase of good and pure deeds that by their nature lead to implanting closeness to God into the power of life, the more will happiness increase in the world.

The Power of Faith The power of faith of heeding well and receiving that which has been transmitted—exists in us so that we may develop as a nation and as individuals.

This ability stands ready to fulfill that which is lacking: that is to say, to bring into a person’s spiritual treasury illuminations that are intrinsically higher than he is, so much so that he cannot gain benefit from their light.

People whose intellect is weak, who recognize their meager spiritual ability that makes them unable to judge matters satisfactorily, are graced with a power of faith that is more elevated than that of people with strong minds, who are cognizant of their strength to know and discern, to distinguish among exalted matters.

But on the other hand, when these latter people who are wise of heart come via their intellect to a place where, in truth, an exalted power that their understanding cannot attain lies, they bring the power of faith from its concealment. And in that, they stand on a level that is not inferior—from the aspect of the natural character of the human being—to that of all of the masses of the nation in whom natural faithfulness is guarded in its purity.

True Life Faith in life is found among the common people more than it is found among those who are developed, people of understanding. But that faith is illusory.

As for intellectually gifted people whose spiritual strength rises above the common avenues, they can by no means establish in their hearts faith in physical life. Instead, they are filled with the light and strength of a superior faith in a life of truth.

However, in order to be well-grounded, they must overcome all of the obstacles of physical life with the strong spirit that may be found among the wise who have attained freedom.

Then they shine like the brilliance of the firmament. Above all the clouds of illusion, the charitable sun of knowledge and wisdom—the inside of which is swathed with fine graciousness and serenity of the soul—shines for them.

A Separate Knowledge Each of the different ways of understanding what the knowledge of God is has its place in the strata of life. The character of each person’s spirit is unique. In keeping with its aptitude, it is drawn to a particular path of understanding.

No individual can completely understand someone else’s psyche regarding the knowledge of God deep within him. External similarity that results from similar speech, similar ways of self-expression, and a similar way of life—that only touches upon the outer area of this knowledge. But in its interiority, in every human being this knowledge is always separate, with its own form.

Individuality and Affinity We must always proceed on the path between individuality and affinity with others, and develop our views in such a way that every person will be able to find his unique spirit in them. At the same time, we must integrate ourselves into the temperament of affinity, which encompasses everything in one unit.

In a Time of Breakdown and Renewal At a time of the nation’s breakdown—which is, simultaneously, a time of reconstitution and revival—we must engage in great spiritual work: the work of clarifying and refining our feelings and concepts—in particular, the work of clarifying our aesthetic sense: constraining the power of the imagination in order to strengthen it upon reliable foundations so that it will be useful and strong, and to expunging it where it breaks through its border and proceeds on an unpaved way.

Spiritual Streams The root of all of the different spiritual streams in the expanse of the human world is in the Congregation of Israel, because it—in the spiritual sense unique to the yearnings of its people’s spirit, which rises to the heights of pure gladness—is the center of humanity.

Because of that, we absolutely cannot ignore any stream when we come to delineate the spiritual strength of the Congregation of Israel, the “bride” (kallah) who “is composed (kelulah) of all colors” (Zohar 3:96b).

Roots and Branches But as we contemplate and study these matters, we must do so with a broad heart, a clear mind, and a fearless spirit capable of developing in a person who knows his purpose with a clear awareness.

Together with the study of these points of view, we must equip ourselves with the best and highest ethical aspirations so that we will have a worthy personal basis on which to build our elevated aspirations—aspirations in which the established concepts of the people (concepts that are planted like powerful cedars with roots of faith and the branches of the Torah and the commandments) are rooted.

Psychology The psychology of the individual—as well as the overall psychology of nation and mankind—provides an important prologue to the ways of explaining the paths of the Torah and serving God.

In particular, we must enter into the depths of this wisdom of the soul in order to explain the content of the thoughts that affect us—thoughts that come as a result of our actions and our words, and via which we begin to understand the intent of the commandments and prayer, the great value of our moral education, and the rectification of the entire world.

Light Sown Within Us Everything we say regarding elevated spiritual matters—in particular, matters of Divinity—is connected more to the status of matters in our personal state of being than it relates to the external world. But there is a certain level of connection between the status of our personal state—its being, its reality, and the ways in which it acts—and the outer world and all existence.

And that existence is deep within us—perhaps even more than it is outside of us. When we rise, all of existence rises, and when existence rises, we too rise.

Mundane life encloses us in a narrow circle of our limited senses until we cannot know our own might and greatness. And sometimes, in order to recognize some aspects of existence, a person must turn a blind eye to his own transcendence and greatness. The “light that is sown” (cf. Psalms 97:11) blurs many worthy individual lines for us.

But although it is true that we benefit from the light of those with dimmed eyes who recognize the individual lines more than we do, we will not be like them, but we will strive constantly to soar in the fullness of the light.

A Mistake in Comprehending Divine Matters Although a mistake in comprehending Divine matters causes much damage, the essence of the damage that results from distorted concepts is not actualized to the point of killing a person’s soul—unless it coalesces into actions, or at least descends to form viewpoints and feelings that in the end will necessarily grow manifest in actions.

But as long as the mistake remains in its intangible form, there is no absolute uprooting.

Some Room for Error In saying this, we are close to the view of the Ravad, who criticized Maimonides for calling a person who believes in the corporeality of Divinity a heretic.

And we can agree that, as long as this person who corporealizes Divinity does not make a statue or image and thus has not consummated his thought so that it still remains in the realm of spirit, this cannot be classed as uprooting and abandoning our religion.

The Errors of the Christian and Moslem Faiths Regarding the faiths that move away from the whole of the Torah, such as the Christian and Moslem faiths, the essence of their toxicity does not lie in their concept of Divinity—which differs from that which is correct according to the foundation of the light of the Torah—but in the fact that they result the destruction of the practical commandments and the eradication of the hope of the nation of Israel to attain its complete revival.

Prayer and Intellect A person’s best inclinations are all hidden and concealed in the core of his spirit.

But they must be actualized. And the best action to accomplish that is speaking, which affects his thought and imagination.

Thus, prayer is of preeminent importance, because it actualizes the highest feelings of the heart. Prayer’s form parallels the feelings of the heart, whose way of perception is different from that of logic.

When the spirit of the individual and of the nation is healthy, it has a fine awareness of its strength, and it is not at all afraid of logical contradictions, because it knows that the ways in which logic and soulful feeling express themselves differ.

Then prayer flowers. It rises of itself like a flame, without any foreign thoughts and sadness of the spirit.

But when the nation is impoverished and the power of national feeling is diminished, only logic remains in place and that, despite all of its deficiency, is what supports a person’s feeling.

Since the soul’s feeling is so weak that it must be supported at the table of another and it does not gain sustenance from within itself, contradictions appear, and a battle arises at every time of prayer, as a person’s thoughts grow ever more chaotic. Thus, his prayer loses its great value of reviving his soul at its core. His intent weakens, and all that remains is that which is “learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13).

His prayer does not nourish his feeling well, just as his feeling does not nourish his feeling well. Therefore, his prayer wanders to the tents of intellect and calculation. And when intellect places its cold hands on warm prayer, which is the recipient of heavenly fire, it destroys prayer’s power, and it diminishes as well its own clear and cold light, and both grow deficient.

Clinging to the National Foundation of Israel A person can only truly cling to Israel’s national foundation if his soul has been purified through repentance from disgraceful human sins and base traits, or if his spirit from the start has been a pure spirit.

That is because the true foundation of the character of the nation of Israel is the aspiration for supernal righteousness: the righteousness of Hashem in the world. If a person has been polluted by some sin, then—corresponding to the extent of his pollution—the desire for righteousness and goodness does not shine in him properly. Therefore, he is not truly connected with the national character until he purifies himself.

Above the Limitations of Ordinary Reasoning When a person rises above the limitations of rationalistic thought, the level of goodness expands until it arouses a measure of a great flame in the entire stature of his soul.

When a person recognizes the spiritual oneness of existence with an inner, supernal awareness, that oneness draws his spirit to goodness, to good deeds and to lovely feelings that have a cosmic intrinsic pleasantness.

Faith expands within his inner being. And his sense of all goodness—which he increases when he engages in good deeds and in good thoughts and words, sweetening all of existence—encourages him and sweeps him up to the heavens.

He knows, as an abundance of holy inspiration flows onto his soul, that whenever he elevates himself—by means of good deeds or by means of a supernal inspiration to yearn for Divinity, wisdom, justice, beauty, and uprightness—he improves the spiritual character of all existence.

All people become improved in the hiddenness of their heart as a result of the supernal improvement of one of them. And the grief of a number of people sad in spirit is softened and is diluted by the droplets of that softening, when one soul experiences the strong arousal of a Godly consolation.

Even predatory animals and all harmful creatures are softened. Their venom is somewhat lessened as a result of the general propensity of this soul that takes delight in Hashem.

The best human beings grow in their goodness, and the joy they take in goodness and in uprightness grows. And all of the supernal worlds, the supernal angels, are aroused with a sweet, holy melody. They rise with a beautiful, gracious song, and the might of the supernal host grows more splendid.

All of these thoughts that expand the power of the spirit only have their place in a soul that is free—with an absolute freedom—from the shackles of the rational, which binds ideas and kills song.

Natural Self-Preservation and an Awakening Mind Every living being on the face of the earth and in the entire fullness of Creation, wherever living beings exist, is subject to the law of the propensity for self-preservation.

This law must exist in nature. But it grows weak when an analytical mind develops, a mind that assesses the value of existence not with natural appraisal but with rational evaluation.

As soon as a mind awakens even slightly, even if it cannot yet evaluate and cannot strongly indicate what the path of life is, that natural propensity immediately weakens.

This law of self-preservation is for the good and for betterment, because it compels the mind to hold firm and to be helped by the natural propensity of the desire for self-preservation, which is not completely foreign to it.

We have seen this regarding the existence of faith: in the world, and especially among the people of Israel.

Religion was safeguarded for the entire Jewish nation, and faith was well-preserved among humanity because of the power of this natural propensity. Societal life and a firm nationality could exist only as a result of the power of the existence of faith.

But as life improved and mind and moral awareness developed, this natural propensity weakened. And now religion and faith no longer exist in keeping with that natural propensity but in keeping with an evaluation that results from the awareness of the goodness and truth of religion and faith.

This awareness has not yet matured, because spiritual development has not yet reached that level. But the beginning of the illumination has succeeded in weakening this natural propensity.

And since ultimately a permanent and full steadiness can exist only with the light of faith, which is more elevated than every type of human darkness, awareness must rise until it reaches its goal.

“And the faith of your time will be a refuge, salvation that comes as a result of wisdom and knowledge” (Isaiah 33:6).

The Elevation of the Soul The elevation of a person’s soul must drive away his lowly traits.

The delight of the light of knowledge raises a person from the depths of an enslavement to delusion, something to which he is always connected.

Clear knowledge can be established only when the dross of a fearful heart, flattery and self-deception are removed from a person’s inner being.

Redemption and Revival Essentially, Judaism in exile has no practical basis. It is only a vision in the heart based on images of hope and on precious ideas about the future and the past.

There is a limit to how much strength the vision of the heart possesses to bear the burden of life and, with that strength, to forge a path for the nation’s life. And the limit, it seems, has been reached.

As a result, Judaism descends; it plunges into exile. Its only hope is to be planted in the source of life that is within tangible life.

Even one spark of tangible life will enliven a great and broad quantity of visionary life.

And the tangible life of Judaism is revealed only with the return of the nation to its land. That is the paved road to the return to life.

Everything elevated in the nation’s spirit and in the vision of its heart will rise and live in keeping with the measure to which the foundation of action will participate in reviving the languishing vision.

A Natural and an Exalted Spirit The more the world improves and man’s spirit within him develops, the more the demand to live in keeping with that natural spirit within him is awakened, and with a stronger voice.

That demand possesses a great deal of truth and justice. People with a perfected awareness must refine it and establish it firmly.

A person finds God inside himself, in his proper inclinations. And even regarding those inclinations that initially appear to stray from the good path accepted by a normative outlook, he can raise them so high that he will know how to establish everything in a program of might and happiness.

The Revival of the Congregation of Israel When the Congregation of Israel is aroused to reach for its revival, it finds its might and honor within herself. All of the purity and holiness that are typically found in subjugation and compliance now shine in the soul-filled might of the manifestation of the nation’s power.

Then, with a pure awareness, we bind new and old souls together.

Protecting Historical Judaism Protecting historical, traditional Judaism—Judaism as it expresses itself in deeds—is one of the greatest obligations of every concerned person who has any ability to act in accordance with his spirit.

The abandonment of traditional Jewish actions because of a weak spirit, the refraining from participating in the ways of life of the entire nation throughout its generations—in regard to maintaining the holiness of the Sabbaths and holidays, in regard to the details of avoiding forbidden foods, in regard to gathering in the synagogues and study halls—gradually diminishes the character of the nation and weakens its cohesion.

If these actions can be maintained only as a result of explanation and exposition of the concepts that preserve them, then promulgating the acquisition of those concepts is obligatory, equal to promulgating the acquisition of the actions themselves.

The Torah and the Spirit of Israel The Torah is integrated with the spirit of Israel.

The unalloyed spirit of Israel contains everything: the light of God, the purpose of existence, the source of souls.

When the Torah grows strong, when its knowledge spreads, when its light radiates, when its feelings grow deep within every soul, then Divine light spreads throughout the world, grows magnificent, and is elevated. And the entire world rises, linked to the elevation of those elite few who possess an exalted spirit.

Thinking and Feelings Unsullied thinkers reach their greatness due to the breadth of their thought. But they must elevate their feelings as well.

When they sink into the depths of darkness, they must call out vigorously. They must wake up and tell themselves to emerge from the gloom to the light. Then their hearts will cry out to Hashem.

Strength Strength—physical vigor—must exist in the righteous people who have upright hearts so that the phenomenon of the impulse for good will impel its influence on the world.

Any weakening of the righteous, who must be girded with might, weakens the light of the world.

Fulfilling a Spiritual Lack Sometimes we fulfill a spiritual lack not by engaging in any Divine service or repentance but by increasing our bodily strength.

A Spiritual Barrier When a person proceeds on the path of pure contemplation of Divinity, he senses within himself a barrier separating him from clear realizations. And his soul itself recognizes that this barrier consists of his wrong actions and traits.

A yearning then awakens immediately in his heart for complete repentance. And that yearning is itself the finest repentance.

Frequently, that repentance does not grow properly active until it is attached to fresh prayer.

Then the wellspring of might once again pours onto this person’s soul.

Thought in Matters of Divinity Thought in matters of Divinity affects positively all of a person’s traits. That occurs when the thought is pure—that is to say, when it is mature, with an inner yearning to recognize the truth and with a desire for justice and honesty, without any coarse ulterior motives.

Not only does it positively affect the particular traits of this individual, but it refines and purifies all existence—because this individual who is sincerely seeking God, who is constantly rising, is a component of existence.

Love for All Creatures The more the search for Hashem gains strength in a person’s heart, the more his love for all creatures expands. He loves even the wicked and the heretics, and he desires their repair—and indeed, he truly repairs them with his great faith.

However, on a revealed level, a person only has the strength to exhibit love to those in whom he can find something good, because then he can attach his love to the aspect of good; and the evil, ugly side of people whom he loves from the aspect of his good trait of loving people, which includes being good and doing good for both the evil and the good, will not harm him at all.

The Faculty of Imagination In praying and in performing mitzvot, we build the faculty of imagination so that it becomes pure and strong, and fit to be the basis of our active intelligence.

The Image of Divinity The image of Divinity that a person visualizes is always alloyed by the dross of deceitful illusions. Consequently, that image undermines the life of the individual and of society. All evil counsel regarding the ways of life and all evil traits result from that.

That is a disease from which a person is rescued only when he accustoms his mind to involve itself with the paths of a good life and the ways of wisdom and morality. Then his concept of God will be the foundation of all his aspirations, but without any particularistic form.

Then he will always be filled with clear thoughts, and his spiritual strength will constantly grow, rising from level to level.

Excess When a yearning for justice and a moral disposition greatly increase in a person’s heart, it may become a sort of disease that destroys extensive goodness as it drills constantly into the core of his feelings, finding blemishes in his moral behavior and threatening him excessively—until it stands as a barrier detaching him from the light of Hashem that shines in the joy of his spirit.

Sins and Unpurified Character Traits A person’s sins and unpurified character traits dull his heart until, when his spirit is darkened, his objective sight cannot by any means broaden and expand.

A contemplative person who wants to rise to the heights of awareness will sense this intuitively, and he will sense the absolute necessity to repent completely so that his awareness will not be impaired.

Regarding all of his transgressions between himself and God, his spiritual repentance will immediately restore the gladness of the emancipation granted by the light of the spirit.

But regarding sins between himself and others, a person’s spirit cannot be whole until it is rectified, which occurs as a result of his engaging in proper action.

However, sometimes a person encounters stumbling blocks and barriers that he cannot overcome. And as long as his sins are not rectified, they withhold the light of knowledge and prevent him from recognizing God’s universal justice, and they prevent him from yearning for this justice to emerge from its concealment.

Nevertheless, when he makes a strong resolution to take care at least from now on not to sin against others and to strive to rectify the past, then, corresponding to the degree to which he repents in action, spiritual light will shine onto his soul until the striving of his spirit will itself increase the pathways that lead him to complete his practical repentance, so that the spiritual light will be able to rest in all of its fullness and all of its goodness on his soul thirsting for that light.

Yearning A person’s yearning for spiritual clarity and for an expanse of supernal images itself arouses his preparation for the infusion of Divine inspiration.

When a Person Empowers His Mind Over His Spirit When a person empowers his mind over his spirit, and the way that he conducts himself is not in accord with the way that simple nature would determine but in accordance with his mindful judgment, he embosses a portion of all existence with the stamp of that judgment, so that its most shining aspect reveals its light and governance. And so the world improves to the degree that this person is involved in it.

If he rises so high that—because of his spirit’s vast yearning for mindfulness and uprightness—his natural decision-making accords with his mindfulness, then the hidden light shines in the essence of existence, until many of its components that are ugly and lowly are transformed and become radiant and uplifted.

Delighting the Heart The concept that all existence is solely a matter of Divinity and that there is absolutely nothing but Hashem delights the heart exceedingly.

This spiritual delight that this concept brings about is truly a proof expressing that.

Fearing Thought A person’s sin causes him to be afraid of thinking, and so he doesn’t delve into exalted concepts at length.

However, the more a person removes himself from sin, the more his fear of thinking will diminish, until with his visualizations he will be able to rise to infinite vistas and matters that stand at the pinnacle of the world with his visualizations.

Complacency Complacency—i.e., a person’s contentment with his concepts of Divinity marked by deceitful delusions embedded in his heart since childhood, the days when he lacked awareness—is due to his ardor for animalistic pleasures.

The Rarefication of the Soul Deep immersion in Divine knowing that results from full knowledge clothed in the pleasant feeling and radiant garment of rarified imagination possesses a beauty and delight that cannot be surmised.

All seers of visions and all singers of delightful love would grow weary describing even a small portion of the soul’s satiety and its Edenic currents when it is in its exalted state as it stands entirely in its Divine world.

In addition to this endless elevated delight, which is a spiritual form that the soul wears as a result of being in this elevated state, the soul is filled with royal splendor and the entire grandeur of good traits, until it is scented by the Edenic fragrances of the most lucid and enlightened ethics in a whole and radiant form that has no equal in the entire imprint of the this-worldly ethics that comes through any learning or any other perception.

The rarefication of the soul in its supernal, Edenic state penetrates so deeply into the soul’s strength and the roots of its being that the soul with its might then rarifies everything that surrounds it and touches it—that surrounds and touches the soul’s essence and reality.

And when the soul shines and is made Edenic by Hashem, and the delight of recognizing Divinity and the joy of that recognition existing on earth, then every human soul, every animal soul, every bush and plant, and the entire power of life concealed in every element and inanimate object draws forth Edenic being and elevation.

This clear outlook, which is ultimately attained by means of Divine inspiration, which is prepared to appear in the nation of Israel and through it in the entire world, is even at present the chief source of all delights.

Imagination and the Mind When a person’s mind acts upon his imagination, it clothes itself in a particular form.

That form is a holiness that form perfumes the world and purifies a person of his every uncleanness.

But when that form grows blurred and a person’s imagination is instead given form in accordance with its own character and without the mind’s influence upon it, then that imagination is the most tawdry source of every blunder, every transgression and sin in the life of the individual and in the life of the community.

The form of the imagination maintains its essential purity in accordance with the direct influence of the mind on those people who inherently possess the power to live a spiritual life in the light of the mind.

But that form can also improve and be built honorably when the proper ways of life and form of feelings that great people attain, as a result of the aspect of the influence of their mind, exercise an effect on average and small people, in keeping with the general influence of great people upon the small.

These deeds and images will direct the power of life—a power that attaches itself to imaginative forms—to the desired goal.

The Complete Mind Indeed, a person’s intellect in its fullness, which is capable of directing the steps of his imagination on the path of life, is Godly intellect. From it comes the manifestation of prophecy with the revelation of the Torah and the light of Divine inspiration.

The drawing forth of the ways of wisdom onto all those who seek Hashem, all of the characteristics in a person that are affected by that influence, and a form of life in accordance with it—these elevate the imagination from its lowliness and illuminate it with the light of the intellect, granting a person happiness.

Serene People and Changeable People There are some people whom God has made upright, whose character is calm, and whose unwavering way of life follows straightforward guidance and is marked by inner serenity. Yes, if they toil in Torah, in learning ethics and wisdom, they will rise to great levels. But at any rate, they are upright people, good and honest. These people must engage in practical employments or practical professions. Their moral aspect stands on its own, in its place, with its serenity. Possibly, it will not rise to an exalted height, but neither will it descend to a low level.

But there is another type: people who are not at ease, who are always on the edge, either rising to the heights of heaven or descending to the depths of the abyss. They must rectify their spiritual being every day. Those who find the path they need will rise higher and higher. But if they abandon it, they are liable to descend lower and lower. These people must constantly engage in Torah and service of God, learn ethical teachings and develop holy feelings. Heaven forbid that they turn aside to the way of this world and practical professions.

In the course of the generations in general, the general character of some generations is of the first type, of those with a tranquil disposition and a steady character. Their education should be like that of these individuals with a steady character.

And there are also generations of a changeable character, whose spiritual sustenance must be constant, with an ongoing flow.

Sometimes we find that in some particular area a person or a generation has an aspect of tranquility, and in another area an aspect of changeability.

We require leaders who are concerned for the good of the whole, who will focus their minds on how to educate each part of the generation in itself.

Thoughts, Imagination, and Intelligence All thoughts that are spoken and expressed in accordance with an imagination that leads to an improvement of ethics and feelings of holiness will exist always—even as the light of radiant intelligence shines on them. But they are renewed in a new form.

From a Life of Instinct to a Life of Awareness The Congregation of Israel is presently at a turning point, as it emerges from a life of instinct to a life of awareness.

Natural instinct is more assured in its procession and more directed in its activity to maintain life.

But a human being’s perfected character will not allow him to remain forever enveloped in his natural state. Against his will, he rises from his enclosure and emerges to a level of awareness in which he loses much of his natural qualities—but in the end, he adapts them into a more beautiful form.

This applies to all living beings and humanity: as long as they remain in their natural state, nature acts to give them the wisdom to protect their lives and perpetuate their existence. And the more they begin to acquire civilization and awareness, the more must they engage in all of their activities with an inner, clear awareness, and not due to a strong and blind, inner compulsion.

That has been the state of our nation in exile in relation to Judaism, to appreciating faith, and to keeping the Torah. In a state of slumber, the instinct of national self-preservation impels each individual to keep the religion and honor faith overall out of an inner, natural awareness that if each individual were to separate himself in regard to religious life the feelings of the nation would cease to exist and the nation itself would burst apart and cease to exist.

All of this was very much the case before the light of the national renaissance began to shine—with desire and awareness, on a practical basis, with a strong attraction to gather together in the land of Israel and establish anew the national life that had existed in earlier days. Earlier, when the times were not suitable for that, neither from our standpoint nor from the standpoint of the world, and when a clear awareness regarding the desire for the on-going existence of the nation and the pathways of its renaissance could not be attained, if some weakness would have affected the natural influence, the danger would have been very terrible.

Now the turn of clear awareness has come.

When this will grow complete, great things will begin—much greater than all of the activities of natural, blind awareness—moving towards the existence of the Divine light, towards the knowledge of Hashem unique to Israel, towards faith and towards keeping the Torah, which constitutes the entirety of the paths of life for Israel.

But for the present, after the spark of a small beginning, this has caused the cessation and weakness of the instinct regarding religion and faith even as awareness has not completely fulfilled its role.

Therefore, we are desolated at the sight of the destruction. But we must not be desolate and in despair, nor must we sit with folded hands, doing nothing. Rather, we must know how to grasp the roots of the renewal of the spirit and cause its branches to produce fruit.

If we cannot immediately restore all of the losses, we must at least strive to restore what we can.

When breaches come about due to a spirit of coarseness, brutishness and dullness of the heart, if we depend on being healed by the renewal of the spirit and enhanced knowledge without turning to rectify our actions, that can lead to malfunction, to thinking that the spirit and thought are sufficient in themselves. Then we will not absorb these well, and the turmoil will increase.

This is not the case when the inner cause of all of the failures is an inner illumination that is leading towards a clear awareness—which, with its being revealed, has weakened the power of instinct.

In truth, if we leave the situation this way, matters will go from bad to worse.

But when we begin to illuminate the spirit and perfect our inner awareness more and more, hastening to reveal it, then it will itself begin to restore more clearly all that was lost to us as a result of the fall of the instinct, and our spiritual life will again acquire a form that gives light, and the hearts of the sons will begin to return to the fathers (cf. Malachi 3:24, and life will begin to be more filled with the dew of the renewal of holiness and the awareness, honor, and appreciation of faith.

The desire to keep the commandments, to perfect Israelite life, will return to us with all of the beauty of its splendor and glory, and it will unveil its activity for the good in the site where the honor of the house of Israel flourishes: in the beloved land, in the places of its renaissance—particularly, in the cities of Judah, which are slowly being restored.

A Boorish Attempt to Understand the Divine A barrenness of thought that results from a minimal amount of learning and knowledge causes a person to think extensively about the nature of the Divine. And he cannot imagine how much this thought is a terrible insolence and an appalling folly.

The more a person is steeped in boorishness, the more he thinks that with this he approaches elevated Divine knowledge—something that, he has always heard, all great spirits in the world yearn for.

Over a number of generations, the habit of pondering this errant thought—as though it is possible to contemplate the character of the Divine—has accumulated, until many futile breaths have woven together, the outcomes of which are many terrible evils, leading to so much trouble and darkness that even the individual loses his material and spiritual strength.

That which comes to purify the air of the miasma of this insolence and wickedness is absolute heresy. That itself is no better than the former, but it opposes the former with an absolute antagonism.

The confrontation between these two opposites helps humanity tremendously in coming to know Hashem with a shining knowledge, a knowledge that brings a person close to his happiness, both temporal and eternal.

Then, instead of a person’s barren thought that he will burst through in an attempt to understand the Divine, a clear thought will enter his heart about pure ethics and supernal might, which will sketch his pathways of life. And with that thought, he will stand in the light of Hashem.

Two Ways of Thinking About Godliness There are two aspects of thought regarding Godliness.

The first aspect is in a form that speaks about the Creator and Creation, each in and of itself. It is as though each is a separate topic, but these are joined together, because the Creator gives life to Creation and Creation receives life from the Creator.

The second aspect is that Creation does not exist at all, and that the name “Creation” is only figurative, from our perspective. We are creatures only in terms of the constricted nature of our comprehension, whereas in truth everything is the Creator, God. The all is something different, a different content that cannot be compared with partial revelation. God is the all, and not any part in and of itself as a part. Each aspect of this thought has its own effect on a person’s spirit.

Logic and calculation come from the aspect of thought that evaluates the world and Creation as two entities, whereas song and an uplifted spirit come from the second view: that of discovering the nothingness of the all besides God, and God’s glory filling all.

Ethics is a branch composed of logic and song blended properly together. Should it lack one power, it will be unable to endure.

Therefore, when, in accordance with the guidance of the first thought involving a division between thought about God and about the world, the conception of God’s righteousness, of the greatness of ethics that appears to us in relation to the thought about God, is revealed, and the rules of that ethics are filled with logic and calculation—when, after this, once His righteousness and the splendor of an ethics filled with one’s awareness of Him has already been well-established in the soul, the second thought about Godliness comes, then song gains strength as a result of the supernal, impassioned discernment that “There is no other than He” (Deuteronomy 4:35), and it too contributes the fruit of blessing to ethics.

But if, at the outset, thought would be marked only by its single aspect of “There is no other than He,” no ethical form that has a relationship with Godliness would be able to affect us. We cannot recognize a moral value regarding one entity in relation to itself—rather, only in a relationship of one entity to others.

This elevation of thought is higher than the entire vista of the level of all ethics, just as it is higher than all thoughts and boundaries. However, a person cannot grasp the entire glory of a thought higher than his own finite level—that is why the values of ethics must constantly, repeatedly, be aroused in all avenues of life—and so a terrible danger can spread due to the second thought overcoming the first.

But even if the first thought, whose wings are clipped, is intensified, then too a person’s spirit can sink, and as a result, he can lose many precious things.

Therefore, there is no other remedy than to arrange the mind in such a way that the first thought will always clothe the second. The first should always be revealed only in the role of a garment for the second, which is higher than it. The spiritual level called Zeir Anpin clothes Erech Anpin, and “Hashem—He is God!” (Kings 1 18:39).

Elevating the Power of the Imagination Every day, a person must purify and elevate his power of imagination.

To that end, we must pray.

One cannot imagine the pollution that proliferates in the spirit of the individual, in the spirit of the entire nation, in the spirit of humanity, in the living, overall spirit of the animals living with us on earth, and in the overall spirit of existence, that results from a lapse in the constant purification of the power of the imagination.

Unless we strive to raise it ceaselessly, this power is liable to contract impurity and descend to the ultimate baseness.

This has nothing to do with the intellect. The intellect stands in its intrinsic purity. It need only be connected with us. We must be illuminated by its light via our constantly employing our intellect with concepts of truth in Torah and wisdom.

But imaginative power requires purity and elevation. And so, at every period of time, it requires encouragement and illumination.

To that end, we must recite blessings, give thanks, and recite prayers at set times. Happy is the person who is careful to engage in these matters with good intention. He illuminates himself and the entire world.

Spiritual Pollution Just as the pollution of the soul can coalesce in an individual’s spirit to dislodge it from its good character and transform it to something base, to drag it down to a mean stratum of life, so too can it coalesce within the overall spirit of an entire nation to turn it into a base and evil nation, despised and abhorrent, one that deserves to pass away from the world so that it will not interfere with the spreading of the universal beauty of the world’s loveliness.

The Spirit Requires Godly Purity When Godly purity shines suitably, it cleanses everything.

Then, as a result of the Divine light that shines the rays of its light upon the individual’s soul powerfully and fully, it grows radiant, holy, and mighty.

But to the degree that the Divine light is far from it or obscured in it, is polluted and darkened.

The same applies to the soul of the entire nation. When a living stream of the manifestation of God flows in the nation, it is healthy, strong, and pure.

But when God’s Presence leaves its midst, it immediately degenerates, and the pollution in it is revealed.

The national spirit can become impure as can the spirit of an individual. It can have base and evil yearnings that, in keeping with the quantity of its power and greatness, will grow to a much more considerable evil than the evil yearnings of evil individuals.

Therefore, the spirit requires purity: purity in the holy source of the Divine wellspring.

Deeds and Traits When the nation’s deeds are good, when its traits are clean, it dreams of supernal holiness, and its intellect shines with the light of God.

But when its deeds are diminished and its traits are sullied, its national yearnings too are lowly and ugly, and weak as well, because the only true strength is the strength of heaven above, the might of God.

God’s Assurance to the Congregation of Israel God has made a firm commitment to the entire Congregation of Israel that it will never grow completely polluted. It may be affected by pollution, which can cause it to become blemished, but the pollution cannot entirely disconnect it from the Source of Divine life.

Revealing the Light and Holiness Our national spirit has now awoken, and many of those who cleave to that spirit say that they do not need the spirit of God.

If they would truly be able to establish that type of a national spirit among the people of Israel, they would be able to establish our nation on the basis of pollution and annihilation.

But they themselves do not know what they want. So strongly is the spirit of Israel bound to the spirit of God that even if a person says that he has no need at all for the spirit of Hashem, the fact that he says that he desires the spirit of Israel shows that a Divine spirit rests within him. It is the core of his yearning—even against his will.

The individual can disconnect himself from the Source of life, but the nation, the Congregation of Israel in its entirety, cannot.

Therefore, a spirit of God rests in all of the possessions of the nation, which it loves from the aspect of its national spirit: its land, its language, its history, its customs.

But if, at any time, a spirit should be aroused that would lead all of these people to speak in the name of the spirit of the nation only and attempt to remove the spirit of God from all of these possessions and from their revealed source, which is the holy spirit of the nation, what must the righteous people of the generation do then?

To rebel against the spirit of the nation, even in speech, and to renounce its possessions is impossible: the spirit of Hashem and the spirit of Israel is one. But they must work with great labor to reveal the light and holiness in the spirit of the nation, the light of God within all of these people, until those people who maintain these thoughts regarding the spirit of the nation of Israel and all of its possessions will find that they are immersed, rooted, and living in the life of God, illuminated by holiness and the might of heaven above.

Knowing One’s Good Side Prayer both fortifies a person’s will and weakens his will. That is to say, it fortifies his good, ethical, holy will, and it weakens his barbaric, evil will.

To reach the latter goal—that of weakening the will—a person need not greatly elevate his personal character. His recognition that his ethics are corrupt, his awareness of this in himself, causes him an inner anguish, and his spirit sinks within him. When he casts himself down in his prayer, his evil will is weakened. Then even afterwards, in the marketplace of life, he acts for the good.

That is not the case with fortifying the will. The recognition of goodness and the drive to reinforce it require the illumination of a great spirit.

Sometimes, as a result of constantly lamenting over his spirit and suspecting himself of having abandoned his ethics, a person views every tendency of a strong will within himself as evil and baleful.

Regarding this, a person needs a clear reckoning and the illumination of his might, so that he will know his good side, whose goal is that he will be elevated by his prayer and that he will increase his might.

Revealing the Light in Prayer The essential cause of the distancing of people’s hearts from prayer, a problem that is characteristic of this generation, is that the core of life of the Congregation of Israel has increased in strength, and its desire for the general good has been fortified. Since prayer, which is always associated with ancient ideals, has been overwhelmed by the negative aspect of the weakening of the will, the generation does not find the might and beauty that exists within prayer.

We must reveal the aspect of light that exists in prayer, that aspect in which good desire is hidden. And with that, we must bind prayer to the idea of the intensification of the will.

Then many people will stream to prayer, and there will come about as well the goal of the weakening of the sullied will.

Instinctive Goodness When the full light of the intellect shines, there is no need for especial guidance of rules and laws.

Then the absolute good in action is drawn after the intellectual light, and all of the obstacles of life straighten themselves out.

Rules and laws then exist not as commanded rules and laws but as natural movements, as matters upon which the light of the intellect shines powerfully.

Good and evil, all of their strata and divisions, and the great toil in navigating a middle path without adding or detracting—all of these came about after the intellect diminished its light and its place was taken by feeling, impressionability and immersion in the senses, which followed the primal sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

A person may not allow [one’s] fear of heaven to override his natural morality. Were his fear of heaven [to do so], it would no longer be pure. The mark of a pure fear of heaven is that it elevates a person’s natural morality – which is planted in one’s straightforward nature – to higher levels than that which it [could] otherwise stand upon. But if we imagine a fear of heaven of such a nature that without its influence on [a person’s] life, [one’s] life would tend to result in more good and bring about [more] matters that help the individual and the community, and the influence [of that fear of heaven] would diminish this active power – such a fear of heaven is a flawed fear.

The sign of a pure fear of heaven is that a person’s natural sense of ethics, embedded in his upright nature, rises in accordance with his fear of heaven to higher levels than it would have reached without the fear of heaven.

But if there may be imagined a fear of heaven of such a type that, without its influence on a person’s life, his life would tend to bring about more goodness and matters useful for the individual and the people, whereas under its influence the power of such activity would diminish, such a fear of heaven is invalid.

From Our Inner Being Outward We must imagine all hidden matters in relation to how they are apprehended by our intellect, as well as to how they are apprehended by our power of imagination when it is illuminated by the light of our intellect.

When we do that, we enter the outer gate of all of the beloved types of knowledge about matters that lie beyond the senses.

Once the perspective is established within us that all things exist in a true spiritual existence that has a relationship to our intellectual images, we can broaden the boundary of our knowledge to the expansive existence of spirituality beyond our being.

But if we will not proceed step by step from the inner image within us to the outer world, we will not find anything at all of what we desire to gain from spiritual attainments.

An Inner Desire to Repair Everything Purity of the soul causes us to feel all of our sins acutely: those whose way to be repaired is clear before us, as well as those whose repair is blocked before us.

Therefore, a person should not be at all alarmed when he senses the entire burden of his sins, and they should not cause him any negligence in attaining perfection in the light and joy of the Torah, and in gaining freedom of thought in the movement of his mind, because a person’s alarm when he apprehends the multitude of his sins is itself a sign that his soul is purified. And certainly paths will open before him so that he may transform into complete merits even those sins that he presently cannot find any way to repair—in particular, matters between man and man that involve money and that involves having caused others to err, which are difficult to repair.

When a person feels an inner desire to repair everything, everything comes about to help grant merit to him and to the entire world. Therefore, he must always be happy whatever level he finds himself on, since the inner nature of his predisposition and temperament is for the good.

Raising Holy Sparks How do we raise holy sparks from the depths of the evil “husks”?

We purify our heart by means of the guidance of enlightened and pure ethics. We sanctify our heart by means of elevated ideas about clinging to Hashem and knowing Hashem to the worthy extent that a person can attain in accordance with his intellect and the power of his soul.

Afterwards, we peregrinate through the entire fullness of ideas that encompasses all of the chambers of our spirit, and among all of the ideas and concepts that are floating about in the world. In all of them, we distinguish what they have for the good and what they have for the bad.

Also, regarding ideas that a number of wicked people have used for evil, we meticulously discern the nucleus of good that they possess. And when we find the good kernel within the depths of the evil, we hold it, polish it, and expand it, and we extract what we can and bring it into actuality.

And with that, the spark rises to its holy place.

The Knowledge of Hashem Just as the knowledge of Hashem transcends every field of knowledge, so too it lowers itself to bring light within the smallest of hearts, and it progressively illuminates all distinguished people, each on his level.

The very possibility of possessing knowledge of Hashem cleanses the entire world, even though this potential has not yet been realized.

The Spiritually Gifted Those unique human beings who find within themselves a disposition to know Hashem must immerse themselves in that more than in any of the fields of the Torah and worldly wisdom. They do not have permission to turn away from this level that they are on due to any hindrance in the world—even if it seems to them that as a result of immersing themselves in the knowledge of Hashem they will forego a number of matters involving the performance of practical mitzvot and knowledge of the Torah, or that they will not fulfill their obligation in regard to their material well-being.

That is because all practical and Torah perfection only functions to guide a person and bring him to the supernal state of pursuing the knowledge of Hashem. And since this person has already reached this supernal trait, Heaven forbid that he should abandon a powerful holiness and engage in a slight holiness.

It is certain that via the supernal illumination of his soul that is truly immersed in the light of Hashem, all of the paths of knowledge will expand for him, and his heart will fill with the light of justice and bringing civilization to the world until he will find vast blessing and breadth of heart, making him able to engage with true holiness both in regard to the practical aspect of the Torah and in regard to his material well-being, which he will do with prodigious success—much more than those who are immersed in practical matters alone, who have not reached the measure of true thirst for the knowledge of Hashem.

Filling One’s Knowledge of Hashem A person’s knowledge of Hashem must be filled with his powerful thoughts of Torah and wisdom, all of the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of life, of all natural integrity in ethics and culture, and of all preparation for strength of the body and vigor of the spirit.

Then, to the extent that a person’s spirit—which yearns for the light of the knowledge of Hashem—is capable, his knowledge of Hashem will become actual.

Imagination, Mind and Ethics It is not only a person’s intellectual enlightenment with clear understanding of Godly matters that elevates his soul, but so too the visualizations of his imagination. However, his imagination must be illuminated by his mind as much as possible, so that his imaginative faculty will not extend beyond its proper boundary—in particular, so that it will not break through to act in this world of action in accordance only with its inner, envisaging character.

In addition, a person’s ethical purity must be truly strong and purified, and his good traits must be firmly established in his spirit. Then even his imaginative power, when it is truly devoted to Godly matters, will perform great wonders and salvations in his soul and in the soul of the entire people. It will be the fundamental factor in the renewal of the world regarding even the refined and integrated spirit of practical knowledge and positive societal intelligence.

The Material and the Holy From barley, which is animal feed, comes the omer offering.

When the animal spirit rises to its supernal source, and with its mighty strength it inclines to holiness and true purity, then the powerful, Divine love celebrates its holy holiday of Passover.

As the entire nation offers up its material powers—which are spread throughout its entirety—so that they will be holy to Hashem, its will unites with the will of the eternal God, Hashem.

And a covenant of love—[together with] the consolidation of [the nation’s] dispositions upon the path of life in the course of God’s guidance of the world (which is perfect in its holy height) and in the course of the entire sanctified nation—is established as a result of this holy activity [of the nation].

And eternal love is established between Hashem and Israel, the nation close to Him.

Purity of the Soul and Ethics A person’s soul has the power to attain true insights from deep within itself, from the very source of its spring.

These insights are high and pure to the extent of the purity of the soul in its deeds and in its wisdom gained by learning.

But more than all such purity, there shines before the soul the path of ethical purity that comes from a person’s good character traits, as well as the person’s possession of understanding in the area of faith that is in keeping with the feeling of his pure heart, a heart that is not artful with contorted ways.

Beyond a Superficial Conception of Nothingness Certainly, no information and intelligence on our level has any connection with the Infinite One. Nevertheless, although, when we consider something beyond our ability to conceptualize, we can only conceptualize nothingness, we must extricate ourselves from the image of a superficial nothingness to which a lack of intellect leads.

And we do that by constantly involving ourselves in study of the Divine, to the extent that our spirit can bear.

Although our spirit gains nothing of a positive conceptualization regarding the truth of Hashem in terms of His being “the Infinite One,” nevertheless in that way it is rescued from the image brought about by the Divine height, which leads the spirit to be impressed with a sense of nothingness. And instead the spirit is filled with an endless light of being.

A Call to Authors and Activists Listen, authors and all of the nation’s spiritual activists in whose spirit nests a concern for the existence of our nation in its material and spiritual form: we seek “counsels from afar” (cf. Isaiah 25:1),counsels that are certainly good—i.e., expansion of the Hebrew language and its literature—as we look for ways to inspire love for Israelite national feeling and elevate that feeling.

But together with these counsels from afar that are seemingly new—although in truth they were already among us in the past, but aged during the days of our national slumber and insensibility—we must strengthen as well the nearby counsel, the counsel that is in our hands and before our eyes: to guard the laws of Judaism, which affect the entire nation. All of these laws come from the source of the nation’s essential life and give the nation its essential life because, when they are kept and guarded, they guard the nation’s spiritual and practical character.

Lucid Closeness to the Divine When a person sails in the heights of Divine thought, his soul is elevated. A person can reach those heights with the freedom of his spirit and the might of his imagination. With that freedom and might, a small gleam and slight spark of the splendid radiance of the universal goal of all of the good that is stored in all of existence, in the beginning of God’s thought and at the end of His deed, sparkles in his heart.

In accordance with the degree to which a person cleanses his practical being and character, and in accordance with the degree to which he purifies his intellect and cleanses his understanding, lucid closeness to the Divine enters his heart and mind, and he rises to the heights, he rises to the peak, from where he gazes upon all of the paths of the world, intellectual and practical, and from where he descends, filled with goodness and lovingkindness, filled with might and splendor, and he shepherds with love the flock of Hashem, “flocks of men” (Ezekiel 36:38).

Faith and the Supernal Torah Faith in God gives people happiness, but only to the extent that the Divine greatness is studied and learned by that significant sector of people that is fit to do so, because then the soul is illuminated by the supernal light, since it clings with complete love and knowledge to the Life of lives. And then all feelings, concepts, and deeds are refined.

But when this sector of people ignores the supernal Torah—a teaching that leads to the recognition of God’s greatness and to a supernal perfection that is infinite and priceless—faith itself is blemished. It does not produce the good fruit that it should produce, and it does not openly raise souls from their lowness.

Then faith falls, and those who derogate it and desecrate it multiply. And it will only return to its vigor when the most elevated righteous people, the strong and wise among human beings most perfected in the knowledge of God, will strengthen themselves tremendously to intensify their yearning to examine the greatness of Hashem in all major pathways, intellectual and ethical, until faith will be elevated and will emerge from its darkness to great light, and will be a source of life for all of the highest and most refined souls in the world, as is the true nature of faith. And so its honor and preciousness will return to it as well in all human avenues.

And that which concerns the people of at this time is the entirety of the nation’s last resort: to restore its preciousness of pure, Divine faith, which is the entire foundation of its life.

Torah and Socialism The inner soul that invigorates socialist doctrine in its present form is the light of the practical Torah in its full purity and character.

But the doctrine itself is in the midst of its growth, and it does not yet know its fundamental essence.

However, days will come when it will be an established institution on behalf of the fortitude of the Torah and the mitzvot in their full exaltedness and purity.

The Divine Spark and Anarchism Anarchism comes from a higher foundation than does socialism.

Anarchism is not a foundation for the practical Torah and for keeping the Torah, but for supernal clinging to the Divine beyond all positive deed and order.

Therefore, it is farther removed from its source—which stands very far above the lowliness of present-day life—than socialism is. And anarchism, in its present state and in the state of life at present, is entirely disorderly, despite the exalted Divine spark hidden within it.

Dealing with Morose People It is very harmful to pious people, those who are filled with the might of Hashem, to bond spiritually with base people who only have an external fear of God and who are filled with a miserable dread and lowly moroseness that spreads across the entire span of their spiritual lives.

Very great is the suffering of a pious person’s soul when he participates with them in conversation, in prayer, and in all matters of holiness. He requires an immense amount of preparation to bolster his spiritual strength and the Divine, clear light in his soul in order to protect himself, so that his soul will not be pulled down by the lowly smallness of people with this external fear, who have no powerful desire for God but only the weakness of their morose dread.

Light and Repentance The inner light that shines in all existence must build its own world.

It runs along its circuit, paying no attention to its overall connection to the encompassing light outside itself, which is filled with worlds, paying no attention even to that which, in accordance with its measure, its inner being would be able to discern.

However, its inner being contains a permanent supernal yearning to be bound to the surrounding light, which is incomparably greater and vaster than itself.

When that yearning intensifies, it reveals the light of repentance on repentance’s supernal level, which is higher than complete righteousness. The inner being of repentance has never sunken but has always adapted to that which is higher than itself: to that which, in its might, encompasses repentance.

Practical Life The individual and the nation cannot guard themselves against the blurring of their spiritual form that results from the weight of practical life, by running away from it. This refers to material actions regarding physical needs and to spiritual actions regarding keeping and knowing the obligations of the Torah and mitzvot with all of their precise details, which tremendously fatigue the wise spirit that seeks the light whose brightness is unlimited.

A person is caught by practical life. The more he wishes to be freed from his servitude to it, the more it weighs down on him—unless he accommodates himself to it in a structured form so that it cannot darken the noble light of his spiritual life.

A person must accommodate himself to material, practical life by means of a good perspective and proper alacrity based on the foundation of rectifying his income so that he will earn a living honorably and in a permissible manner, and by means of properly treating himself in guarding the health of his body and spirit.

And he must accommodate himself to practical spiritual life by accustoming himself to review halachahs with a broad perspective regarding their foundations and reasons, without growing too entangled by arguments and subtleties, but learning in order to equip himself with clear knowledge. That will remove the yoke of a confused mind and an intimidated spirit, which alarms the heart of every person who gropes in the dark and which vitiates the heart and dejects the spirit—something that weakens the life of the soul so that it cannot grow stronger with its Divine light.

Relating to Lowly Individuals A person who is connected with love to the entire whole and who desires its rectification and goodness is connected as well to the evil individuals and sinners in that whole. This creates an opening for the creation of a blemish in the holiness of his pure soul, which desires only holiness and true goodness. Nevertheless, the spirit of the righteous person who loves the whole—with a love of all creatures, a love of mankind, and in particular a love of Israel—grows stronger, until he is not intimidated by anything, not even the fear that he will contract a spiritual blemish. In the end, he purifies himself so thoroughly that he connects himself to the concentrated goodness of the entire whole—and in truth, the totality of the whole is always good: “Hashem is good to all” (Psalms 145:9)—and he is elevated yet more as a result of this love.

As a result of the elevation of his spirit, the whole is elevated as well, until even the individual evil parts of the whole are ameliorated because of their connection to the spirit of the righteous person, who truly loves the whole of them.

But such a person, whose way of service this is, must purify himself greatly. And he must be alert and careful so that his deeds, his ideas, and all of his feelings will truly be dedicated to the goodness of the entire whole. This is in truth what we can understand as fulfilling that which is termed “the will of Hashem.” This person’s spiritual thought is then united with the unity of the whole, and no evil will befall it.

But if the spirit of a person who comes to connect himself to the love of the whole is enveloped within him in his own self-interested motives, then although he also possesses sparks of purity of the love of the whole, his soul is not properly focused and unified, and so his connection with the whole is unstable, and it is possible that his ability to form a connection will be directed to the inferior and evil aspect of the whole. And then the good and special quality of the whole will distance itself from connecting with his soul.

At that point, this connection between a person and the whole is truly blemished.

And so we find a natural feeling in many people, people who fear God and know Torah, of wanting to connect themselves to and love only good people and to connect themselves only to the special quality of our nation.

That is truly a proper path for all of those who have not been properly purified.

But that is not the path of Hashem that is fitting for those whose spirit is whole, who have the power to purify themselves and their dispositions. These people are obligated—in addition to being obligated to possess an extra love for the special quality of our nation—to love the entire whole, and to look forward to its salvation in its totality, to the salvation of all of the individuals of the entire whole, without any distinction whatsoever. Even if they find in their spirit any spiritual descent or lack as a result of their connection to the entire whole because of its fallen parts, they will not turn back from this overall path of Hashem that is fitting for them. They will have the alertness to acquire the proper purification so that they will be able to connect themselves to the entire whole from the aspect of the concentrated goodness of Hashem, the true goodness, that rests in it. Then their noble love will not cause them any blemish and descent at all, but rather ascent and augmented purity, might and holiness.

Classical Monotheism Can Sometimes Weaken a Person It is natural that according to the typical outlook, the understanding of Divinity that comes from the monotheistic view—which is the most widespread outlook regarding matters, including the aspect of faith—will sometimes lead a person to grow depressed and weaken his spirit, because of the languor that enters his spirit when he views himself as a being that is controlled, bounded and weak, far from Divine wholeness, which shines with the light of its powerful beauty.

In particular, his weakness is aroused because his ethical failings come to the fore in his spirit when he compares the status of the human being to the Divine perfection in regard to justice and ethics.

However, this weakness is liable to decrease to the extent that he finds that he is firm in terms of his ethics, actions, and character.

But even then, this weakness is not entirely ameliorated, because of his ongoing appraisal of his mortal smallness as compared to the Divine greatness, which overwhelms a person’s most expansive conception with its infinite immenseness.

Panentheism and a Person’s Sense of Self Less enfeebling than this above view is the monotheistic view that tends to a Spinozism purified of its dross—a view many of whose aspects are emphasized in the intellectual teachings of the new Hasidism. This view states that there is nothing besides Divinity.

A person finds that, if there is nothing in him that is intrinsic, then when in his imagination he is torn away from the perfection of the Divine infinity he is certainly mortal and feeble, and he is nothing. He is a “nothing” even more than the nothingness of relative nullification that comes as a result of the former visualization of standard monotheism.

With standard monotheism, he is considered as indeed possessing some independent existence within his limitation and within the arena of his drives, awareness, feelings and predilections—except that his world is so immeasurably small that it is weakness and nothingness compared to the greatness of the Divine endlessness. However, this is not, in essence, a complete and absolute nothingness.

That is unlike the latter view, which explains that there is nothing outside absolute Divinity. According to this, a person’s immersion in his personal predilections—which rely on a view of life that there is some particular reality that exists intrinsically within him, even if in the smallest form—is mere vanity and errant emptiness.

It would seem that the depth of such a view of the world would weaken a person’s spirit even more than the first, standard monotheistic viewpoint. Nevertheless, that is not so. Rather, this latter viewpoint immediately restores to a person the might of his eternity. It does nothing but encourage him not to forget the truth of his being, and to remind him that he must distance himself from all ways of life that come from the errant thought of the inherent existence of his particular being, whose spirituality is torn away from the Divine Infinite One. But since he strides on this road, he has nothing more of existence to vanquish except to overcome false imagination. And then he is happy in the Infinite One.

However, in truth, this work is not as easy as the imagination may visualize it. Emerging to freedom from the imprisonment of the imagination is work no less difficult than emerging to freedom from some actual imprisonment. Nevertheless, in the end, this panentheism has a spirit mightier than that of the former, standard monotheistic thought.

However, it is only possible to approach panentheism by means of greatly familiarizing oneself with and engaging in the purest intellectual learning that is possible regarding the former view of standard monotheism.

Then the former, standard monotheistic thought clothes the latter, panentheistic thought in the light of all of the details of the former view, and the former view becomes a receptacle and palace for the latter view: “Hashem is in His holy palace” (Psalms 11:4).

Blending Classical Monotheism and Panentheism However, although the intellectual and emotional-poetical world is more purified and elevated by the latter, panentheistic type of thought, which is filled with the light of humility and the nullification of being, the world of action cannot proceed on its way in keeping with this supernal view if it is constantly ongoing.

And so a person must necessarily lower his light, because he must accommodate himself to the world of action and connect himself to the former thought of standard monotheism, which is the “palace.” But he must do so while maintaining a clear awareness that standard monotheism is not a clear thought in itself and that it “has nothing of its own” (Zohar 1:181a). Rather, it is the outcome of a person’s intellect and visualization coming from the procession of the supernal thought of the latter, panentheistic viewpoint that we mentioned.

Then this tangible world is quickened, clarified, and filled with righteousness, and the world of thought gains in strength and rises as it is blessed from its source. And these two types of thought unite without cease—because of their united viewpoints and because they share a center of a unified existence—with a complete unification.

The Written Torah and the Oral Torah The written Torah is the trait of heaven.

That is to say: the beginning of overall guidance provided by the totality of the Torah and the new path that came about at the giving of the Torah as a result of the mitzvot in their totality could not have been revealed due to the relatively low level of Divine spiritual power revealed in the essential inner being of the nation of Israel. That is because the written Torah was something higher than the nation.

Therefore, it was precisely a supernal soul—Moses—who rose to the Divine height on a clear and supernal level that the spirit of the nation in its totality could not yet reach. That soul was able to reveal the light of the written Torah in the world. “Moses rose to God” (Exodus 19:3).

Then, after the Divine image was stamped in the spirit of the nation and the nation acquired this as its new nature, it brought about and brings about all of the branches of the oral Torah in keeping with its spirit, as the oral Torah branches out from the Divine source.

And it is no wonder that the nation’s great spirit, which continuously wells from its Divine flow, which is higher than the nature of the nation’s essence, is incorporated, in its supernal, original aspect, into that wellspring.

The totality of the nation’s spirit and the branches of its details as they develop in the nation are all viewed from and gain prominence due to their Divine, supernal aspect, the heavenly aspect, from where the written Torah was given to Moses, as part of the totality of that spirit being impressed into the nation, together with its details.

“Moses ceased (kalot) constructing the tabernacle” (Numbers 7:1)—“the people of Israel were like a bride (kalah) entering under the wedding canopy” (Zohar 3:4b)—with all of its ceremonies.

People Who Have Great Souls People with great souls do not have surcease from dread and depression until they reach the level for which they are destined—from the essence of their nature and the root from which they are quarried—of being incorporated, entirely and always, into the Divine light, in the great radiance of a clear awareness and the splendid desire of a tremendous will.

Everything that is lower in terms of that does not satisfy their hunger and does not soothe their spirit.

The Unclear Lens and the Clear Lens In the realm of Divinity, time is eternal. Therefore, there is no time. Nevertheless, that no-time does not lack any quality that time possesses in being time.

In the realm of Divinity, boundary exists in the infinite, where it is not boundary. But nevertheless, it does not lack any quality that boundary possesses in being boundary.

In the realm of Divinity, change is sameness. Nevertheless. it does not lack the quality that change possesses.

We can speak about the concept of Divinity in terms of what we understand from the aspect of time, boundary, and change. And we know that speech is from the aspect of eternity, infinity, and sameness.

And everything that appears within time, boundary, and change is the unclear lens, which receives from eternity, infinity, and sameness, which are the clear lens.

Love for All Existence People with great souls cannot be separated from the most encompassing totality. Their constant, entire desire and aspiration is the good of the entire whole: the whole in its full breadth, height, and depth.

In truth, the whole is filled with particulars beyond calculation: particular individuals and particular societies. The whole is crowned only when it is filled with the perfection of its particular individuals and its groups, small and large. These perfect the whole.

The supernal totality, which perfects everything, is placed in the movement of our knowledge of Hashem and our love of Hashem, which necessarily emerges from the supernal totality in accordance with the size of the movement’s acquisition of that knowledge and love and its spiritual wealth.

When our knowledge of Hashem allied with our vast love is filled with its true light, according to the level of each soul—in keeping with what it can bear and receive—the absolute light of that knowledge illuminates our “love of the world”: i.e., our love for all worlds, all creatures, and the entire circle of their lives and existence.

Love for all existence fills the heart of those who are good: the pious among beings and among human beings. They look forward to the happiness of the all. They hope for the light and joy of the all. They draw their love for all existence, multi-hued with the multiplicity of its creatures, from their supernal love for Hashem, from their love for the absolute and complete perfection of the Cause of all, Maker of all, and Giver of life to all.

When love descends from the world of Emanation (Atzilut) to the world of Creation (Beriah), it descends as it divides into details of details, into oppositions and contradictions, into the need for constriction and diminishment of level and love, into every particular detail for the sake of another detail, into many details for the sake of many others, and into details in general because they possess an overall totality.

The shining lens of love stands at the height of the world, in the world of Divinity, in a place where there are no contradictions, boundaries and oppositions, but only happiness and goodness, and breadth without end.

When its offspring, the love within worlds, draws sustenance from it, the latter has much of the former’s nature. It too does not tolerate in its descent any stinginess and meanness. When it must constrict itself, it constricts love with love, and it borders good with good.

When people who pour forth love see the world—in particular, the world of the living—filled with altercations, hostilities, persecutions and oppositions, they immediately yearn to participate with all their lives in aspirations that will lead to the integration of living beings and their unification, their peace and their tranquility.

They feel and know that the closeness to God for which they yearn in the fullness of their souls leads them solely to their unification with the whole and on behalf of the whole.

When they come to the avenues of human beings and find divisions of nations, religions, sects and opposing aspirations, they strive with all their might to integrate the all, to consolidate and unite.

With the healthy spiritual sense of their pure souls, which soar with a Divine flight above all straits, they recognize that all of the details must be full, that the best societal structures need to rise, and that these structures must congregate with all of the happiness of their individuals in the light of perfect life. They want every detail to be protected and rise, and the entire whole to be united and filled with peace.

When they come to their own nation and their heart is connected in the entire depth of their lives with its happiness, its eternity and its elevations, and they find it taken apart and disassembled, divided into many divisions, they cannot unite with a total unity with any division because they desire to unite with the entire nation: its entirety in its totality, in all of its fullness and goodness.

Clinging to Hashem Clinging to Hashem is humanity’s most natural yearning. It is developed in an intellectual and emotional form, whereas in all other existence it is in a mute and deaf form, in a potential form.

The character of the nation of Israel took this yearning for itself as the foundation of its national life, in keeping with its historical destiny.

The yearning for absolute clinging to the living God, to the light of the Infinite One, can have no substitute in the nature of existence.

Just as we must live, receive sustenance, and grow, so must we cling to Hashem.

The clinging that is demanded of us in all the fullness of our soul must continuously develop in us, continuously deepen in feeling, continuously clarify its recognition and understanding.

By no means can humanity and all existence live without the flow of yearning to cling to the Divine that lives always within it, although in a sealed and locked manner.

Humanity’s childhood, the days when darkness was thick and coarse, placed types of foundations of life in the world that prevented clinging to the Divine to emerge with all of the fullness of the light of that clinging.

One cannot imagine the suffering of the universal, overall soul and the inner soul’s suffering in every living being and every person, over the spiritual pressure, over the withholding of the good hidden in it, that shines so much, that refines so much, that revives a life of breadth, a life of eternity, a life of height and might.

Each living being must have that life. That life is the essence of its nature and being. But human weakness comes and makes mute gods, a material Divinity, crude and guzzling, limited and lacking, and it seals all of the cracks.

We envision a great soul, huge in the entire fullness of its aspirations, its mighty yearning for freedom and light, its strong suffering, its intense pain over an insulted world. That is the soul of Abraham. How embittered it is! It sees the happiness, the light that is prepared for all, for all living beings, for every soul, the Divine breadth that calls to existence: “Shine forth!,” that calls to every detail: “Be filled with happiness, greatness, height and serenity, goodness and might, love and pleasantness!”

But the wells are sealed. “The Philistines have closed them and filled them with earth” (Genesis 26:19).

How this lion breaks free from his imprisonment, how he takes his cudgel in his wrath, breaks the idolatrous images, calls powerfully for light, for one God, “the God of the world” (ibid. 21:33)!

Overcoming the Good That Is Lowly From the depths of its spirit, Israel will call out that which Abraham, the “rock from which [the nation of Israel] is quarried” (Isaiah 51:1), called out from the depths of his recognition of light and happiness, from the depths of his compassion for every tormented soul, for every struggling being. It will call out to its national, societal and ethical life, which is proceeding on paths filled with tangled thorns, lacking a living wellspring within itself, lacking permission to yearn. It will call on all of these to seek the entire soul of existence, which cries out in its pangs: “Seek me, search for me—and live!”

People have imitated that search on paths of darkness. With a heart filled with obsequiousness and weakness, they have stepped forward to exalt the King of worlds, but only as though to fulfill an obligation of proper behavior, regarding His greatness, might and vigor.

Israel must not speak this way! Such servility is lowly in the eyes of the people of Israel. Although many individuals among the people of Israel need that lowly sort of servitude, this is not the spirit of the nation, which is “an eternal nation, a sturdy nation” (Jeremiah 5:15), a nation that calls forcefully for the light of Hashem and the vigor of life.

From within itself, the nation brings forth a spirit of destruction to eradicate even the good that is lowly, an imitation that descended from outside Israel’s boundary and entered its inner being. “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of Hashem shall lift up a banner against him” (cf. Isaiah 59:19, Sanhedrin 98a).

With a flaming soul filled with life and eternal might, the nation will awaken. It will rise like a lion and declare as with the sound of the roaring sea: “Behold the light, the voice of the living God that calls me from the depth of my life, behold the light of eternal freedom for all existence, which comes and flashes from the light of Hashem upon Zion, upon the place of the Valley of Vision, where the word of the living God began to be heard like the voice of the lion!”

The Return of the Lost All of the humble of the land will hear, all of the non-believers of the world will listen. All of those who have a spark of life will return. Souls will rise from the depths of the earth. The unfortunate will ascend from the farthest reaches of the pit. Those lost in the land of Assyria and those cast away in the land of Egypt will come and bow to Hashem on the holy mountain in Jerusalem (cf. Isaiah 27:13).

Behold, a Nation Rises! They will bow and then rise, filled with vigor. They will melt away and then be renewed, valiant with light and strength.

Troops upon troops with tremendous hearts will arise. They will call out: “Behold, a nation rises! The life force of a people has begun to flow, a nation that will give impetus to the stream of Godly life in all worlds, a forceful nation that in its fortitude paves a path in the storming sea, that paves roads of the world for a dynamic life of clinging to God!”

Pure Thought About Godliness A person must always purify his thought about Godliness so that it will be clear—without the dross of false delusions, empty apprehensions, evil traits, and deficiencies and failings.

The more a person purifies the most fundamental base within his spirit, the more will his clinging to the Divine with his emotions and with the feelings of his heart have the effect of increasing his ability to guide the entire course of his life on a straight path.

The Palace of the Knowledge of God When we think about God without intellect and without Torah, that idea leads to a dark image filled with turmoil and emptiness. Then, when a person comes to subjugate himself to serve God in keeping with this earlier, empty concept, he loses the radiance of his world because he is connecting himself to words of turmoil and fleeting vapors.

When this continues over the course of a number of generations, heresy necessarily emerges in the people’s ethos to uproot the memory of God and all of the institutions of the service of God.

But what does it uproot? Merely emptiness and words of hopelessness, which only separate a person from the light of the God of truth.

And upon the wreckages ruined by heresy’s devastations, the elevated knowledge of God builds its palace.

The Necessity of Practical Repentance It is impossible to fully appreciate the necessity of practical repentance (in rectifying one’s deeds in accordance with the Torah and absolute righteousness) so as to attain the supernal qualities of the elevation of the soul—of the community and of the individual.

That distillation of repentance into practicality encompasses within its single smallest point multitudes upon multitudes of expansive ideals and thoughts, which qualify this distillation to act in the world and in life.

When that practical distillation is defective, the treasury of all expansive ideals is removed from the entire world. Those ideals have the same relationship to the world as does the etheric expanse of millions of cubic measures as they are squeezed together in one physical atom to give it its crystallized form.

The Work That Must Be Done Today The development of the spirit of man prepares the essence of his mind and his innermost desire to yearn for the complete good—i.e., the Divine good. That yearning is the basis of the goal of attaining all Divine revelation and of the Torah and prophecy influencing on the world.

In early days, humanity’s overall intellect was less developed, and its desire was more barbaric. At that time, the Divine vision was entirely dedicated to having man spurn the intransigent intellect—which was subservient only to animal desires—in the whole of human society, and to having man constantly reject his natural desire, which was aroused and directed particularly to ugliness and sin.

The refinement of the world throughout the entire course of the generations—coming about in consequence of the most supernal refinement of the revelations of God’s Presence in Israel and in consequence of occurrences of the times, the growth of societal bonds, and the expansion of the sciences—greatly purified the human spirit, until today, when, although man’s purification has not yet been completed, at any rate a large portion of his thoughts and the yearning of his natural will are directed of their own to the Divine goodness.

And correlating to the portion that has already been cleansed, liberalism necessarily spreads and anarchy takes hold.

When tradition and religion come—even in their most pristine form—with the aim of conquering this distilled part of the human spirit, they will not succeed. Rather, they must help the spirit of man in its pristine core to proceed on its road that it has already paved, and from there to direct man’s purpose corresponding to those parts of the spirit of his human knowledge and his will that have not yet been refined, but which still remain in their primitive state, as they were in earlier days.

The more the refined parts possess an effervescent movement, the greater the danger inherent within them. That is because, when the unrefined parts, the many remnants of barbarity, continue in their natural disordered state, the rectified aspect of the spirit of man cloaks them with the wing of its imagination, placing an overlay of flashing glitter on all of the abomination and falsehood.

Thus comes the holy work of those who serve Hashem to the end of days: to help the spirit of impurity pass away entirely, so that the radiance of humanity and the world will be revealed in the beauty of its might, under the sovereignty of the Almighty.

Repentance and Halachah The best and most authentic way of engaging in repentance, a way that flows from the light of Torah within the world, is to learn and review the monetary laws and all of the other laws regarding interactions between people as found in Choshen Mishpat, with the clearest overall knowledge and the most straightforward and broad incisiveness possible.

This rectifies all of the obstacles of the heart that occur in a person’s life, establishes Divine justice upon its most stable basis, and removes the wound of doubt and confusion from a person’s soul, as with its clear light it illuminates his pathway in practical life.

However, a person must always develop his heart and mind by means of the other parts of Torah—in particular, by means of the moral and contemplative influence, which is strong and broad, as found in the dew of light of the inner thoughts within lofty, Divine modes of comprehension. As a result, his soul will be capable of clinging tightly to the Divine justice within the legal portion of the Torah of life.

Then this legal field of study will come to a person’s soul like oil upon its bones, uplifting and elevating it.

Contemplating Godliness It is completely impossible that we will not look at and study matters of Godliness.

We have no need at all to consider how this study will affect us, or what benefit will come of it. We do not seek benefit regarding that which is the source of all goals.

A person’s soul grows barren and gaunt as a result of his abandoning Divine study, and afterwards as a result of his extended acclimatization to arid and inconsequential thoughts. It loses its ability to engage in Divine study, which becomes difficult and foreign to it. And consequently it sinks into the depth of griefs and the corruption of its character traits, deeds, and concepts.

It is true that not all people are competent to engage in Divine study. But those who are capable are the fruit of the overall soul of humanity. When they actualize their ability, the overall soul of humanity is elevated and soars. Covertly, people’s deeds and character traits are rectified, their ways of life are straightened in consequence of the mindful activity of the righteous people, wise of heart, who were created to always look upward—those with precious qualities, who grow enthusiastic regarding nothing in this world but solely regarding the delight of Divine study in all of its radiance and all of its sectors.

There is a person who, from his exalted station, sends forth his branches and illuminates from his refined holiness other studies as well. Then the phenomenon of learning Torah for its own sake comes to light, and the entire Torah and all wisdom, inquiry and knowledge, are elevated in the light of the supernal Torah, the heavenly Torah, whose character is the manifestation of the pleasantness of Hashem.

This person, the chosen of Hashem, looks at the vessels: the powers of creativity that act in existence to the entire fullness of the depth, greatness, height, and elevation of existence. He sees the splendor and the goodness in everything.

His ethical quality continuously expands because he derives his life from the source of justice and uprightness. The wisdom of his heart broadens because he derives sustenance constantly from the breasts of the comprehensions of the Divine radiance.

Studying Hashem’s Works The more a person studies Hashem’s works, directs his heart to recognize Divine perfection through those works, acquires clearer concepts regarding the ways of life when one possesses pure ethics and perfection of the most excellent deeds, then the more will the Divine light shine on him, and inner clarifications of the delight of the Divine perfection will begin to flow in his inner being, and his brain and heart will be filled with light and a supernal pleasantness that fill his entire soul and entire environment with purity and righteous humility, with love of people, uprightness, fairness, and joy that spreads through all worlds, a joy partnered with the abundance of the gladness of Hashem flowing from His place.

The Revelations of Divine Perfection The more that the soul’s revelations regarding Divine perfection rise, the more they are cleansed and removed from the character of expression and speech. No expression of the tongue or movement of the lips will contain them, no eloquence of expression will arrange them, and all poetry will be inadequate to relate their magnificent radiance.

Then a person is mute, as “his lips kiss each other” (Proverbs 24:26). Deep within his heart are revealed light, power, and magnificence, elevated might and supernal compassion for all existence, an abundant flow of lovingkindness and love, and an unimaginable generosity of heart in his every deed of practical charity.

The pleasantness of this soul sweetens life overall. It removes the painful sting of the curse placed upon human life by of the sin and foolishness of man, by of the lowliness and gloom of his spirit.

The word that emerges from this heart of wisdom, which is a gift to man (cf. Ecclesiastes 7:7), at the time of its elevation, at the time that it sits firm in the heights of the loftiness of Divine lovingkindness, is great and vibrant, active and decisive. Then “you will decree a word and it will be established for you, and light will shine upon your way” (Job 22:28).

Then the light continuously grows.

And when it begins to be hidden, the righteous person hurries to engage in practical charity, to learn Torah and serve God, to occupy himself with providing material goodness and lovingkindness, until the supernal radiance from the supernal hiding place will again be revealed through him.

The Necessity of Absolute Goodness In the fullness of our soul, we sense the necessity of absolute goodness, the impossibility of its not existing, and the unceasing longing in the depths of our heart to rise to it, to approach its heights, to gaze upon its pleasantness.

We feel that the fulfillment of this absolute goodness in the completeness of its being—free of every boundary, of every condition and ordinance, of every definition and alteration—is a universal fulfillment.

The only way to fulfill our hopes for such goodness is to gaze—to the greatest extent possible—upon the sparks of its radiance. Then strength and life, eternity and splendor shall descend to us and fill us.

After all this vision, we still remain thirsty for goodness to ascend. We still do not embrace the full circumference of goodness in its wholeness. We shall do so only when we shall see, besides the fulfillment of goodness, an ascent of goodness: a constant blossoming, an increase of strength, an ascent without limitations, without standstill.

The fulfillment of our ideal-oriented thirst will show us how to distinguish between the Divine light and the worldly light, which draws life from its source.

The Divine light satiates our exalted thirst for absolute goodness in its heights.

The worldly light, which grows ever brighter and which constantly rises, drawing from the life of its source, will satisfy us with the goodness of ascent, of increase of might, of additional rising—for which we so deeply thirst and yearn.

We will not be compelled to slake our thirst for knowledge and goodness—when they are united, making all existence understood, making the secret of its ethical grandeur understood—with an arid conclusion that existence and decay are the final endpoint; a conclusion that leaves us mortified and shaken, filled with desperation about an on-going, unfolding process that depresses our spirit with the groan that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Genesis 1:9).

We rise above everything to the simple vision that our senses could grasp from existence only superficially. We step forward spiritually, striding higher than the sun. Then we pronounce that there is nothing old: everything blossoms, everything rises, everything constantly increases light and life.

Nor does the magnificent spirit fall when it sees that the path of ascent is circuitous, incorporating ascents and descents, advances and very great retreats—for the descents and retreats are filled with the spirit of ascent and advance.

The comprehension of this progress—as it approaches completion, becoming well-integrated in a knowledgeable, ethical life, as it is blessed and emerges from immaturity so that it is not eaten unripe—lifts the human spirit to the heights of Divine light. It makes us assimilate within ourselves the inner goal of the knowledge of God—free of every ordinance and boundary—that exists within the treasure-house of the soul of Israel, that is revealed through the Divine manifestation unique to Israel, which is the highest blossoming of the stream of light of the human soul in the midst of all the nations.

This constant progress fills us with an idealistic, ethical outlook regarding all existence. It brings us to the fullness of a Divine, knowing, and comprehending light that unites our existence with the light of the Life of worlds, with the ultimate purity and ethics, strength and power in all their fullness.

The honor of God, wrapped in the breadth of Creation in all its rich and varied hues, becomes known to us in its ideal radiance, growing constantly.

“May His great name be magnified and sanctified” (Kaddish).

A Person’s Love for Himself A person’s love for himself might remain solely on its bottom-most level, natural and low. And due to its smallness, it is liable to decay and deviate, to become a foundation for evil deeds and evil qualities. And in keeping with the measure of a person’s ability, so can he in his own corruption corrupt everything else.

But that love can also be holy and ideal, the more that a person purifies himself, elevates his mind and intellect, and establishes his traits and deeds to be on the more exalted and upright side.

When a person purifies himself and the aspect of good in him vanquishes his character, his gaze at all existence shines more and rejoices more, and existence finds favor in his eyes, because he looks at it from his essential core.

And in truth, existence is very good when the person who looks at it, acts within it, and lives with it is good.

A person’s goodness is entirely in his control, or at least important parts of it are.

And those parts that a person has the power to bring into the realm of goodness can improve his entire being until even his parts whose goodness is not in his control will be established for the good. These are the parts and powers that are not under the control of his free will. Even though they are embedded in this person, in truth they are more connected to the totality of existence—which is entirely transformed to good, adorning itself in pleasing and heartwarming lights when a person illuminates it with his good soul and with his beautiful abilities arranged in accordance with his soul.

The Concept of Evolution The concept of the evolution of existence and of all beings both depresses and elevates our spirit. An elixir of life and a drug of death are immersed together within ourselves

When we turn to the past, we see the degradation that had existed then. We also see that as we stand now—morally, intellectually, and physiologically—we surpass that past. Then in one regard, our mind grows self-satisfied, and our moral restraints grow feeble. Regarding our present moral level, we claim—when struck by the evil spirit of some desire—that it is beyond our measure, that controlling it is much more than can be expected of creatures like us, who come from an animalistic nature and a coarse wildness.

In contrast, the outlook of evolution relating to the future exalts and elevates us: truly, to such a moral height that it is correct that we think of ourselves in accordance with our understanding of the greatness of humanity at the beginning of its existence, of humanity’s Divine dwelling-place before its exile—in that primeval era—from the Garden of Eden.

The more we rise in knowledge and wisdom, in learning Torah and in gaining good character traits, the more does our moral sense—intellectual and imaginative—soar. We proceed to the future. Automatically and continuously, the concept of evolution acts upon us, straightening our ways and supporting our moral faculties, until we enter palaces of holiness and purity with supernal might, filled with the power of God.

Then the outlook of the past girds us with a strength born of fear: we consider in our heart the terrible degradation of the past. We feel that if we disgrace our ways, we may fall back to that same dark degradation, rather than—by rectifying our private and communal ways and actions—beholding a great light that shines forever, rising without end, substantial before us.

New Perceptions of Our Era The present era has brought about the promulgation of perceptions that, as they become widely known, destroy earlier perceptions. Even though the latter do not intrinsically have a negative relationship with the novel perceptions, due to the factor of our habits of thinking, they are bundled together. That is because a person connects all of his thoughts to each other, and so when some of them change, that affects his entire mental construct.

Only with awareness and deliberation can a person establish boundaries to distinguish how far the change brought about by new perceptions must properly reach, and at what point their capacity ceases.

It is the nature of the intellect—and of the spirit’s visualization in general—to feel in its entirety any change in one of its parts. That is the nature of its life. This leads to its improvement and enhancement every time something novel appears in one of its parts.

Society, Cosmology, and Evolution In our new era, three principal changes have occurred in the course of human understanding. From these principal changes, many new branches have diverged.

Because people do not focus on understanding the principal quality of the essence of these changes in order to know how far the changes should spread, so as to lead to other changes in concepts and deeds, these changes, which are for the good, have also brought about bewilderment and confusion. But that will return to the good together with a stronger understanding—after the proper dissemination of spiritual knowledge—of human thinking and the storehouse of concepts.

These three principal changes are:

One: A change in the course of thought regarding society.

Two: A change in the course of cosmological thought.

Three: A change in the course of thought about evolution.

Understanding human society, including sociology, was a closed topic and a sealed secret to the broad populace in the generations before us, as were all of the secrets of practical and abstract wisdom.

Every community and populace was closed within its own sphere. Each individual was affected in a manifest way only by his immediate environment, and every individual and every populace thought in its simplicity in the following way: that the great world is only that which exists in its own environment, spiritual and physical.

Like all humanity, the children of Israel too were enclosed in their own sphere—and in an even greater measure than others, for two cogent reasons: (1) because of the many persecutions that they constantly endured from the great human world, as far as their eyes could see, and (2) because of the principal difference in the ways of spiritual and practical life between us and the vast masses of the nations under all the heavens, across all time.

Spiritual Unity Those rare individuals who possess a great awareness have always known the secret of spiritual unity. They have known that the spirit of man is a single universal spirit. No matter how much a multitude of spiritual and physical differences acts to differentiate one individual from another, one societal group from another, beyond all of these differences is the intrinsic unity among them. Thoughts influence and are influenced without cease, and the structures of life constantly enter into alignment. The purpose of this alignment is certainly to constantly gather all that is exceptionally good, exceptionally healthy, and especially refined in every group and to plant it upon a universally shared soil.

But the masses have never glanced beyond their own circle. They have thought that there is no relationship here with anything outside their circle, that no faculty of its intimate circle affects and is affected by a foreign environment, and certainly not an environment that is even further away.

Within the circuit of this constricted thought is impressed the form cast by the matrix of the masses’ innermost spiritual world. In accordance with this character exists the form of the masses’ ideal love for everything holy and their attitude to their own, special nation and to everything that relates to it: its hopes for the future, the vision of its spirit regarding the concealed worlds that transcend the senses, its outlook on life and death, on freedom and on enslavement, on independence and on obeisance. Everything is woven into the constricted weave of the image of the isolated environment, which appears to be the be-all and end-all of existence.

New Outlooks Among the Masses This new era has completely changed this outlook—not only in the perceptions of enlightened circles, but in the perceptions of the circle of the entire populace, from its least to its greatest.

This new societal recognition has spiraled and broadened. Each individual feels that he is not isolated, not completely enclosed in an exclusive area, but that he affects and is affected by a multitude of circles, many and extend, by various foreign environments, and that he cannot drive away any spirit, saying, “I do not have to take it into account at all,” no matter how far away it may be.

But here, the need for proper calculation has grown—and with that, confusion has increased.

The requirement to learn how to construct a structure of many hues in the narrow realm of the masses’ regular thought, how to fully retain all of the good in the masses’ spiritual world without loss after the entire transformation brought about by foreign influence, and how to derive from the all only the good and the true, the straight and the upright—that requirement has grown exceedingly. And it can be satisfied only by means of a major influence brought about by explanations of profound, good spiritual ideas. And this can only be realized by establishing a multitude of good and worthy spiritual teachers filled with knowledge and with good, uplifted feeling, people who can exert an influence, even onto those on the outside, in the most desirable manner.

A New Image of the Spiritual Universe The new thinking about the cosmos has also had the effect of causing a great change in the course of people’s spiritual lives.

The ideas that were once absorbed from the understanding that the overall universe is a small entity, in keeping with the old astronomical model showing the universe as being in a state of quiet and smallness, mirrored the smallness associated with people’s constricted sense of environment.

The new, overall spirit that has come in consequence of the scientific expansion of what we can perceive of tangible existence will necessarily, as it spreads among the broad populace, create a new image of the spiritual universe and renew the entire connectivity of the populace’s thoughts.

Considerable learning will be needed to know how to establish everything anew with the ultimate rectification while achieving the greatest success in retaining all of the fundamental goodness of the old.

And how this will be done? It will be accomplished in accordance with ongoing learning in the depths of the spirit. This will generate a great amount of explanations that will allow the entire content of the spiritual universe to shine. More light will be added by the goodness gathered from the breadth of all of the new understandings after they align with all the goodness stored in all of the old wisdom in accordance with that wisdom’s pure form.

Evolution and the Torah The course of thought regarding evolution, which has grown well-known in all avenues in consequence of the new natural sciences, has brought about a great revolution in the orbit of people’s customary thoughts.

This is so not only regarding rarified individuals, intellectuals, and thinkers. They have always perceived a graduated series of development, even in spiritual existence, which they perceive with an overview of that which is most hidden. They do not find it strange to understand the comparison of spirituality and physicality here as well, regarding the physical evolution of the tangible world: that it is fitting that the revelation of the physical world should align with the spiritual development of existence, which lacks not even a single level due to any leap and gap. But the populace was not accustomed to understand evolution with a complete and encompassing conception, and it could not connect its own spiritual world to it.

The difficulty in establishing the thought of the common people in regard to this does not lie in aligning Torah verses or other traditional statements with the idea of evolution. That work is quite easy. Everyone knows that metaphor, riddle, and allusion govern everywhere in these matters, which are the secret of the world. The common people are used to hearing the brief assertion that this verse or that statement is part of the secrets of the Torah, going beyond its simple meaning, and the people’s mind is set at rest.

And with this, the mind of the people aligns with the overview of the intellectual as he considers the secret of supernal song that exists in the expression of ancient riddles.

But how may we align this entire spiritual connection of the entire expression of the intellectual’s thoughts—which are bound together in accordance with the structure of sudden change and leaps (which rescues a person’s thought from soaring up into an area that lies beyond its realm)—when those thoughts encounter the new system of evolution, which is growing more well-known and conquering a place in people’s hearts?

For that, much light must shine so that it will penetrate all avenues, until [the doctrine of leaps] will appear—in its easy forms—even among the simplest and most common circle of people.

The Present Time Requires the Spreading Forth of Knowledge Therefore, the present time requires the spreading forth of knowledge: the highest, broadest, and most ideal knowledge.

It is impossible for the coarse form of faith, after it has sunken descent after descent and it has been clothed in bulky garments of sackcloth, to stand firm.

Who will clothe pure faith in the finery fit for it? Who will place on her head that pure diadem that is fitting for the splendor of her sovereignty—if not those great in ability, wise of heart, holy of feeling and pure of spirit, planted in the courtyards of Hashem: the Torah sages dedicated to the thought and toil of the Torah?

An Exceptional Person Cannot Be Satisfied with an Unexceptional Existence When a person is connected to something of significance, this paves the pathway of his life. If that significance is elevated and exalted, his pathways of life will accordingly be elevated and exalted. But if that significance is low and ignoble, his pathways of life will accordingly be low and ignoble. At any rate, whenever a person has an enduring connection to some matter of significance, that will create the pathways of his life.

Simple and natural people are well connected to their physical essence. Their lives have a pathway paved in accordance with their way.

Those who diverge from the boundary of the lowest avenue possess a noble content in terms of the aspect of their family life. But their connection as well is to something natural and physical, and it has much of the coarseness within life.

As for those great in knowledge and ethics, people who have been greatly purified and who are elevated above the aspirations of the common man, their spiritual connection to the supernal goal in their lives is necessarily set in such a way that their lives have their own paved pathway. Their natural connections are not in accordance with all of the measure of the might that is common among the vast populace.

But if they will forget their supernal level and they will want to be equal to the regular populace, they will be much lower than it is. The natural connections that suffice to pave the populace’s life do not at all suffice to pave a path for the greatness of soul with its multiple abilities possessed by people of quality, who are consummate in thought and feeling. Only when they stand on their own elevated level is the pathway of their lives paved and levelled in a framework more uplifted than that of the populace’s pathways. But when they descend from the height of their peak, they can lose their way, and then they will be more abject in their lives than the most abject person among the populace.

“Just as when fish in the sea go onto dry land, they immediately die, so too when a Torah sage separates himself from the Torah, he immediately dies” (Avodah Zarah 3b).

Those people noble of spirit must necessarily be set within and connected to the house of their lives, filled with light and supernal life.

“He said of his father and his mother, ‘I do not see him,’ and he did not recognize his brothers, and he did not know his children, because they kept Your word and guarded Your covenant” (Deuteronomy 33:9).

A Split Between Worlds Usually, the outlooks of the outer and inner character of the world contradict each other.

This contradiction is of course not constant and uncompromising in its nature. To the contrary, the essential reason it is ingrained is to arouse a more intense bonding, since only because of this can the inner and outer life join together.

Those people who have ingrained in them the character of being immersed in the external matters of the world cannot immerse themselves in its inner character. They find a tremendous opposition to that in their spirit.

Conversely, it is impossible for those embedded in the inner character of the world to be entirely equable with its outer character. And when they strive to grasp the two types of character together, they begin to feel the pain of the split between them.

Awareness, Will, and Ability A person’s clear awareness that stands upon the foundation of goodness engenders his will.

The more that a person refines his good desire, the stronger it becomes. The more that a person refines his awareness of the fact that the good is truly good, the stronger his will becomes.

And the intensity of a person’s will engenders his ability.

From this we learn that awareness, will, and ability are always bound together. And where awareness is unlimited, the will is unlimited and the ability is unlimited as well.

Our Awareness of Goodness and Our Free Will Every sin in a person’s fundamental spirit results from a defect in his capability: of his spirit being weak and lacking the capability to resist the inclination for evil within itself.

As this person’s lack of capability manifests itself, it weakens the power of his will for the good. The weakness of that will engenders a weakness of his awareness, so that his recognition of goodness grows blurred.

A person’s repentance comes after he attains understanding, at which time he intensifies his recognition of goodness. That recognition grows complete as he also recognizes evil. “Evil provides the contrast by means of which to delineate good” (Sefer Yetzirah 6:2). When a person knows the profundity of evil in its evil, then the profundity of good in its goodness shines more deeply for him.

As this person’s awareness of good grows clearer and the blemish that sin caused—of darkening his awareness—dissipates via the return of his good will and the inclination of his spirit to goodness, his recognition of goodness arouses in him an inclination to fortify his good will and rescue it from the blemish of sin.

With this, his spirit that had been weakened receives its goodness, allowing it to raise itself from its descent and to rectify its capability, until its capacity for good is complete.

As a result, a person’s choice becomes free. Then he can consider choosing goodness without interference.

Thus, the spiritual attraction to goodness (which exists within each person) strengthens the individual’s and community’s resolution for good and establishes the structures of life upon a nucleus of total goodness, whose ultimate expression is the light of Hashem.

Elevated Ethics Ethics is one of the visions of existence. It is embedded in the totality of existence to the degree that overall existence requires it. Thus, a significant relationship exists between the human spirit, whose ethical character is rising, and all existence.

As for a society—which, compared to the revelation of existence in individuals, constitutes an especially noteworthy part of the revelations of existence—its greatness may be recognized in accord with the level of its ethical element.

A society’s relationship with the ethical dimension of the great universe continuously grows in accord with the ethical resolve within that society’s spiritual character.

And the source of ethics in existence is God’s guidance, which has guided and will continue to guide existence until total revelation.

Those people filled with the mighty ability of awareness, of penetrating to the ethical light and recognizing it as the most radiant and beloved soul of existence—even under multiple covers of wars and even when an individual’s superficial outlook upon the soul of existence lends it an apparently appalling character—those people rise to the greatest heights of existence. Their importance in overall existence is magnificent beyond comprehension.

They are the spirits who find goodness in closeness to God. The people who possess this awareness are filled with the Divine valor and might with which to rescue many people, whom they illuminate with the light of supernal justice and the blazing torch of uprightness. They impress the seal of the search for truth and the desire for life in all of its purity and vitality upon the entirety of the universe.

God’s ethical plan spreads with its full governance in the richness of the spiritual laws governing existence. The spark of that ethical plan is not extinguished by the physical rules governing existence. The clear light of the quality that comes from supernal, universal justice will blend together with those physical rules until all people will be able to spread and receive the influence of the source of the light of ethics distilled in its Divine, pure form.

A Perverse Envy of God There is an evil inclination that is deeply hidden in the depths of the spirit: an envy that rots the bones, that brings weakness and darkness to every idea of light.

This is a strange envy.

Many people do not recognize it, because a number of factors prevent the mouth from speaking about it. But it exists. It slumbers in the concealed places of the human spirit. And it occasionally emerges in various shapes besides its true shape, as is the way of all of the outcomes of envy that are clothed only in a foreign garment, and which always bear a foreign name.

This strange sort of envy is the envy of God. A person envies God for His infinite happiness, for His absolute perfection.

This envy perverts the person’s awareness, darkens his thought, seals his intellect, and provokes his spirit. And when all of his means do not suffice to contain its wrath, it ends in absolute heresy, as the person strives to remove from his pained spirit, consumed with rot, the thorn of envy that pierces him terribly.

The only cure for this disease is a supernal illumination of the knowledge of God, with clarity and proper depth. The particular paths to remove the plague of this envy—with whose removal a person is freed as well from all of the evil consequences of the various garments in which it clothes itself, including the disease of a maddening heresy, which has spread throughout our generation as the disease of the era—these paths are two. One is the path of pure knowledge, and the other is the path of ethical knowledge.

The path of pure knowledge clarifies the fact that the difference between God and the world depends only on knowledge, awareness, and ways of life.

The higher a person’s knowledge, the closer he and the world will come to Divine greatness. With his supernal exaltedness and absolute recognition, the person finds that everything is incorporated into God, that the individual essence of every detail of existence is nothing but a Divine revelation, which shines before us in various hues. In accordance with that perspective, all of the Divine happiness is the happiness of all, and that universal happiness expands the clearer this Divine knowledge grows.

That is the secret of the supernal delight of comprehending the Divine, as a person feels his supernal happiness, his eternal perfection, filled with elation and vigor. And there is no place here for any envy.

There Is No Place for the Envy of God The second path is a combination of knowledge and ethics. According to this, the perfection and necessary existence of the Divine depend on the measure of free will in regard to being just. When a person elevates his free will to the measure of being fully just equal to God’s elevation in His complete will with free and absolute justice, he “cleaves to the body of the King” (Zohar I:217a) and he acquires Divine completeness, in that he nullifies himself to the Divine light with inner delight.

Nothing prevents any being from elevating his free will to the height of Divine justness. In accordance with the degree to which a person approaches the measure of Divine justness, he rises and becomes a godly person.

Thus, God necessarily has Divine perfection because of His freely-willed justness. A person’s ability to attain that is a merit that is equally accessible to everyone, and so there is no place for envy of God.

We Must Improve Our Inner World A person must constantly construct and unceasingly improve his inner world, even more than he constantly constructs his outer world.

Everything in a person’s spirit that is in accordance with the foundation of his inner desire for goodness constitutes his inner structure. Conversely, everything that his inner desire is distant from or with which it does not participate constitutes his outer structure.

Even a person’s intellectual awareness only constitutes his inner structure when that awareness improves so much that it directs his deepest will. But if a person’s awareness only envisions and thinks—but his heart’s desire in his life does not participate in the depth of this envisioning life—that awareness only constitutes an outer structure. Perfection—whether of an individual or of the populace—is not built into that life as a structure that will last forever.

Torah and the fear of God, wisdom and prayer, awareness and the service of God—when the elements [in these pairs] constantly come together, they beautify both the inner and outer aspects of the world.

But when one side [of these pairs] missing, there is an equivalent lack in the building: an inner lack or an outer lack.

A person’s states of awareness must always be transmitted through himself to the extent that they will shake the tendencies of his will out of their composure and arouse them to the good.

Then his awarenesses will, as they build the outer perfection of his human spirit, also build his inner world.

This constitutes a person’s essential foundation. It is inherent in the series of realizations that he has, which reveal to his human understanding of mysteries of the world. Sometimes these realizations come as a result of his searching and seeking, sometimes they come as a result of his spirit appearing to him in a revelation of inner knowledge, and sometimes they come as prophecy and a revelation of God.

The nature of a person’s spirit always comes wrapped in forms of various qualities, which accompany the essence of his awareness. And these qualities always impart something of their own essence to his awareness.

Human knowledge always struggles in regard to how to recognize the inner foundation of awareness. That knowledge stumbles repeatedly until, over the course of generations and eras, it somewhat closely approaches the original entity that exists beneath these qualities.

Why do we have all of these qualities? Why aren’t our inner states of awareness expressed and recognized in and of themselves?

The answer is that when we come to sum up the elements of our inner structure—which is the truly principal foundation of universal improvement—we find that only when our states of awareness initially come clothed in these qualities does their good purpose affect our will. Those qualities provide a complete model on the basis of which they engender the tendencies of our desire for good that correspond to the character of the good essence of what our states of awareness desire.

The more that human knowledge—individual and overall—develops, the closer one approaches the interior of one’s states of awareness. Notwithstanding that, however, once these qualities engender movement of the inner core of one’s awareness, which is the tendency of one’s good will and the ethical element in one’s awareness, that inception burgeons precisely as these external qualities are removed, and as one locates oneself in a pure source within the essence of one’s awareness.

If these states of awareness would have initially come naked, exposed, and as they are, there would have been no room for an awakening of the inner life of a person’s spirit. These states of awareness would have appeared in the images produced by his spirit like the external states of awareness of the senses of a person who enters a world that is entirely foreign to him. What he sees impresses itself on the network of his optical nerves, it makes its mark on the label of his life, but what it is does not embed itself within him. It is not rooted in his soul to bring forth branches and fruits and to be transformed into the essence of his bones within him and to cause his character to grow.

How lamentable it would be for the entire world if the character of knowledge, which is the radiance of life, would remain in such a form—unchanging, without interruption, and without any rectification at all. That would be the bitter complaint that “I write to them the great things of My Torah, but they consider these as foreign” (Hosea 8:12). Instead, by means of these qualities the hope comes that “wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant for your spirit” (Proverbs 2:10), “because he who finds me has found life and he has obtained favor from Hashem” (Proverbs 8:35).

The Final Goal Is Holiness The ultimate goal in life is holiness.

Holiness is a supernal entity that possesses none of the weakness inherent in ethics.

Holiness does not battle at all against self-love, which is profoundly embedded in the depth of every living creature. Rather, it situates a person in a supernal form where, the more he loves himself, the more the goodness within him spreads across everything: across his entire environment, across the entire world, across all existence.

It is impossible for the character of a populace to have a tendency that weakens its love for itself. A weakening of self-love—should that occur—has nothing but ethical destruction and an inner rotting away that consumes everything.

Therefore, one cannot demand the existence of an ethical nation but rather of a holy nation, a nation that—the more it strengthens itself, elevating its level within and without—elevates and intensifies light and goodness in the world.

And so the core of goodness in ethics is already incorporated into holiness in the most splendid, fine, and delightful form.

Ethics and Holiness Ethics is the entranceway, and holiness is the great hall.

When individuals improve themselves so that they attain purity of ethics, the entire populace is elevated to be holy.

At that point, public ethics shakes off the dust of demagoguery that exists within ethics. The public gathers together the sparks of ethics in its individual members, and in so doing it wraps itself in the light of holy might, which rises precisely in consequence of the public’s delving into self-love.

Conversely, should individuals abandon ethical purity, the torch of the public’s persona will aggregate into something impure, revealing a terrible monstrosity of a nation “heavy with sin” (Isaiah 1:4), more evil than any evil animal and more depraved than any loathsome creature.

The Nation’s Holiness A nation that cannot, with the power of its total being, rise to holiness cannot, from the aspect of its overall soul, influence its children to turn toward a pure ethics.

Only a nation whose spiritual core conceals the character of holiness helps its children gain purity in ethics, until even the individual will be raised to the heights of holiness.

The Great Souls from the World of Chaos Souls from the world of chaos are great, very great.

They request much of existence. They request that which their receptacles cannot accommodate. They request a very great light.

They cannot endure anything that is limited, apportioned, and assessed.

They descended from their height, from the origin of the propensity of existence to be born. They flared up and then grew dim.

Their infinite yearning will not cease. They yearn and fall. They clothe themselves in various garments, they yearn more and more, beyond measure. They see that they are imprisoned in rules, in limited conditions that do not permit them to expand endlessly to infinite heights, and so they fall into sorrow, into despair, into sadness, into anger—and then, out of wrath, into wickedness, into wilfulness, into lowliness, into ugliness, into abomination, into destruction, into every evil.

Their animated ferment does not quiet down.

They manifest themselves in the insolent people of the generation.

And most of all, they are revealed during some fin de siècle, an era before the birth of a world, before the existence of a new and wondrous creation, on the border of the expansion of boundaries—“before the decree” that transcends decrees “is born” (Zephaniah 2:2).

A storm rages within increased intensity, one breach bursts upon another, insolence overtakes insolence, without any contentment with the entire good treasury of the limited and constricted light, because that light does not fulfill everyone’s needs, because it does not remove all of the masks upon all of the faces of darkness (cf. Isaiah 25:7), because it does not reveal all secrets and it does not satisfy all desires.

These people spurn everything: the portion of good, the kernels of a happiness that leads to tranquility and perpetual serenity, that leads to everlasting Eden, to the heights of infinite eternity.

They spurn and they rage, they smash and they eradicate, they descend to graze in the field of strangers, “they please themselves with the children of foreigners” (Isaiah 2:6), they profane the glory of every beauty (cf. Isaiah 23:9), and they have no peace.

But these tempests will bring generous rains. These dark clouds will prepare the great lights. “And from darkness and from blackness, the eyes of the blind will see” (Isaiah 29:18).

When the Soul Grows, It Require More Elevated Sustenance When the soul grows, when it broadens as a result of attaining a breadth of wisdom and knowledge, then all of its small spiritual acquisitions must rise with it. And whereas, in a state of smallness, these acquisitions had derived their sustenance from a small root, they must now be embedded in a state of greatness and elevation: in a great, mighty, and exalted root.

Lack Before Ascent With every elevation, there is always a state in which lack precedes being. That manifests itself as a state of descent and spiritual weariness prior to the intensified strength that comes from the more elevated source.

Rising and Setbacks When a person proceeds in accordance with the ingenuousness of his upbringing, when he stands in a state of simplicity regarding faith and an ethical framework bound to the fear of punishment and the love of reward that serves as the principal factor impelling the entire orbit of his spiritual life, then all of his good deeds and good traits derive their sustenance from this small and lowly root.

But when he rises, he begins to open his eyes to recognize goodness and light in their true essence. He somewhat forgets himself and his individuality, and he brings himself more fully into the life of the people as a whole. Concern for the universal good begins to take hold of his heart.

As a result of this spiritual leap—as he leaps from a limited sphere with a narrow love for himself to the broad love of everyone—he is liable to lose acquisitions that are apparently small but in truth are very honorable.

The details of a good life that are well-embedded in a person’s ways—in terms of the structures of his faith—all align themselves with the exalted goal of loving all people.

But it is not easy for a person to recognize all of the discrete markers within an overall spiritual exaltedness.

Nevertheless, however hard this work is at first, it is necessary, because if a person loses [sight of] the practical impressions because they are so fine, he will obscure the strongest characteristic in his life—deed—which constitutes the basis for the most elevated life of the spirit.

And because this person’s lawless deeds then blemish his uplifted ideals, which are the ultimate goals of the deeds of the Torah and the commandments—although he does not sense any relationship between his subtle thoughts in their elevated might and these deeds—his soul is necessarily blemished. His ideals are inherently distanced from his inner personal awareness—that is to say, from the quality of life of his soul—which has already broken the practical basis of his ideals. With that, his wings are clipped and his soulful flight to supernal greatness and elevation is weakened.

He may consider, think, visualize, and imagine that he is still soaring in noble worlds, that he is yearning for elevated ideals. But his inner strength is removed and blunted as a result of this blunting of his deeds.

This person’s practical framework—which was initially so certain when it was protected, when his entire spirit was linked to a focus on reward and punishment, when his spirit had no ideal elevation and desire of universal awareness whatsoever—weakens after he has risen to the world of spiritual nobility and intellectual awareness.

Therefore, necessity presses on this person: just as his spirit has risen to live a life of awareness overall—the yearning of a spiritual life—so must it delve even more fully into a spiritual search until it will reach such a state that the universal source of ideal yearning will reveal all of its hidden treasures to it.

Then this person’s inner link to the most particular****details of the ways of his practical life—a link that stood firmly upon its foundation during his days of smallness—will remain in its place, and with even more beauty and lovely holiness during his days of greatness, as his supernal, noble thought is granted pride of place, when the principal factor in the impetus of his ethical life is no longer the truth of reward and punishment but rather an ideal yearning for a life that possesses knowledge and ethical character in its full sense.

Ethical Growth and the Pangs of the Soul It is a good sign for a person and the nation when their ethical sense develops. When this sense is well-developed, it recognizes every ethical flaw affecting it, and is repulsed by it.

Sometimes this ethical awareness appreciably precedes a person’s ability to freely actualize his will. Then the addition of this knowledge appreciably increases his pain, because he clearly sees how his ethical ruptures afflict his soul. He proceeds drearily, oppressed by his own will, which is distressed by the hostile blows (cf. Psalms 39:11) of the nature of ethical ability that has not yet developed to match his present level of awareness.

But these sufferings are the sufferings of love. In the end, they will bring complete light.

As this person’s awareness will start to work in the realm of his knowledge, it will also be able to work in the realm of his will. That is because ultimately a person’s will—and in certain respects his ability to govern himself—completes the clarification of his awareness. The instability of a person’s will and the weakness of his ability result solely from the dimness of his awareness.

The entirety of a person’s external, objective environment also helps actualize the ability concealed in his awareness. That is because movement toward elevating existence is not enclosed in any isolated, particular factor. Rather, this movement spreads out across the entire realm relevant to itself.

The size of a person’s ethical awareness and the extent of its distance from his ethical will and ability—these impel his spirit and bring it to reach its perfection until his ability and will unite with his awareness. And then these three will refine and elevate the tendency of his spirit that relates to his ability, will, and awareness to the elevated pinnacle that his awareness has already reached.

These are the pangs of the righteous, which purify the individual and the nation, preparing them to be “righteous, pious, upright, and faithful” (Pirkei Avot 6:1).

The Intelligentsia and Natural Life The rabbinic intelligentsia thinks that it can separate itself from the pious masses—and that it will then be healthier in its spirit nobler in its thought.

That is a fundamental error: an error that does not recognize the healthy aspect of natural states of awareness, natural feelings, and the natural senses—which, although they have not been rectified, have not been tainted by any negative cultural influence.

The healthy aspect of uprightness is found much more in coarse people than it is found in learned and ethical thinkers.

The learned are more outstanding regarding the details of ethics, its rules and specifics. But the essence of feeling is found in people who are naturally healthy: the masses, the common people.

And it is not only in the feeling of basic ethics that the masses are superior to the elite. So too in regard to feeling faith, Divine greatness, beauty, the senses—they process everything in life in an upright way, not filtered by conduits filled with “the liquor of the pools of the spirit” (cf. Isaiah 19:10) of knowledge and wisdom. All of this is healthier and purer in the masses.

Granted, by themselves the masses cannot maintain their might and purity. They cannot link their concepts together, and they do not know how to stand firm in the thick of battle when states of awareness and feelings oppose and contradict each other, warring within them—whether triggered from within or from the world without.

For that, they need the help of those great in counsel, who straighten the paths of the world of the masses before them.

But just as the elite pour advice and counsel onto the masses, so too do the masses pour a healthy life onto the elite.

And the shared intersection of the noble of spirit and the masses is the power that maintains both of them upon their estimable stance, and guards them from all rot and decay, whether ethical or physical.

Prophecy, which comes from the Divine conduit, comes specifically to that end: to unify the popular spirit with the noble spirit that is unique to the elite few.

The masses’ expressions are linked in prophecy with the ideal thought of those wealthy in spirit.

“We Will Have a Treaty with the Stones of the Field” There is also a special spiritual intensification in all existence: in the particulars of the inanimate, plant, and animal domains.

Without a doubt, wherever a slightest shift of inner radiance has changed a spiritual state relatively little, that shift—although it is a small, undeveloped, and rudimentary kernel—is sturdy, mighty and tough. And its might influences the developed avenues that are higher than it is: every higher avenue as it relates to a low avenue.

We cannot imagine the levels of intensity of life and spiritual creations that mute animals pour onto us as a result of our being partners in life with those animals.

Regarding the mutual influence of the members of a nation’s society, that is evident to almost all of us. For those few with a clearer outlook, the mutual influence of all members of humanity in general is evident. But our soul’s partnership with the totality of the animal domain is still hidden. No scholar of the spirit dares yet express his confidence that this knowledge will become clear.

However, distant suggestions come like dreams to the precise sciences, giving tidings of their appearance.

We can already rise to the height of unification with the animal domain in general, and from there to unification with plant and inanimate existence: with the core of life, with the spark of light that lives within them. They affect us and we affect them.

All that we say about ethics and goodness, vision and song is only our expounding about sparks. In their hidden source, in the details of mute existence, these factors are more vital, more alive with inner strength. But they are constricted and thirsting for breadth.

We unite not only with the common folk among us, with the broad masses. It is a palpable fact that most ideals must be moistened by the dew of life of the general betterment of the broad masses. The radiance of life exist in this general betterment together with the entire populace, when “the blind and lame among them, the woman with child and she who travails with child will all be together” (Jeremiah 31:7), and moreover, “we will have a treaty with the stones of the field, and the animals of the field will make peace with us” (Job 5:23).

Intellect, Emotion, and a New Spirit Every ideal thought that affects a person’s life is composed of a blend of intellect and emotion.

Intellect is small in quantity but great in quality. It is the foundation of the soul of the ideal thought, which is continuously drawn forth, weaving the thread of life.

Emotion is the body of the ideal thought. The intellectual ideal always clothes itself in emotion, so that the emotion may transmit the intellect to the active, behavioral power of life.

After many days pass, that emotion will lose its value. It will grow old and aged, and will no longer provide its strength.

But as long as the intellectual core within it is mighty and pure, that core will not grow weak and it will not age.

Truth exists forever. From its root, it will send forth streams that will bring the moisture of the dew of life and that will vitalize new branches and fresh trees, which will grow in the form of new emotion filled with strength of hidden things, and which will replace the emotion that had fallen due to its age.

Thus proceed the changes of life and death in the world of emotion.

As for the absolute life of pure intellect, it is always giving life and engendering a new generation of emotion, after the expiration of the old.

Incidents of mourning, of lowering one’s hands in immobility and grief: all of that exists in the framework of emotion. When emotion ages, when it ceases to have active power, all dispositions that were supported by it and filled with the light of life because of it will fall with it. The active camp will remain silent and stunned. It will not be able to rise so very quickly to view the vision of the survival of the spirit, to know that the intellectual core, which gave life to the emotional ideal, still lives and exists, just as the consolations of knowing that the spirit survives and that the dead will be revived do not heal the wound of death that has wounded the heart of people who cling to their relatives’ departed flesh and spirit.

But in the end, a new spirit will quickly arrive and offer consolations. The intellectual spark will emerge from its hiding place. It will provide light and joy. It will establish a large host of new emotions, girded with vigor.

It is true that the days of these new emotions too will eventually be cut off so that the emotions will be taken away, leaving room for a new host of emotions. But the course of life will always proceed on its assured course.

A Person’s Good Will and the Unity of Existence The unity of existence grows stronger in a person’s ideal awareness the higher that awareness is.

A spiritual person sees life in all of existence. He sees the power enveloped in everything from which he draws life to his spirit, and in everything from which all living things draw life.

That life is hidden in elements that provide sustenance. It is hidden in the depths of the earth, emerging to sprout and grow in the open. That life comes as food that unites with a person’s flesh and spirit. Within that life, a spiritual constitution, vitality of life, and freedom and light are revealed.

Who shall tell us that there is a rift? Who will believe the narrow illusion born of habituation that the elevation of the individual’s soul is not the elevation of the all?

Who will be overwhelmed—either by breadths of space or by dividing walls?

The great spirit that dwells in the highest, mighty heavens, in the palace of justice and understanding that produces might and power is itself might and power. It gives life, and it is itself life and the life of life.

The will develops by means of the power of the potential. That potential reaches its completion in the will.

The improvement of the will to the side of good sums up within itself the entire substance of life incorporated into the breadth of existence.

Now the will scatters goodness onto everything. The desire for goodness spreads. It shines its light back even higher, onto all of those places from which the might of life had been removed.

And does life cease at the boundary of what we call life? Doesn’t it continuously spread forth? The goodness in life has not ceased and will never cease. The goodness will not know of any limitation to its elevation and its expansion, to its beauty and its might.

All of the characteristics of uprightness, ethics, holiness, might and beauty are revelations of life across the fullness of existence. They attain their might as instruments via which the good will implements its desire.

When the good will intensifies as it draws down life, it provides seeds of light, which multiply as they bond with external might.

The Flowers of Our Soul and the Temple The Temple—which is the spiritual focus of our nation and the source of the spiritual life of its every individual, because it provides a tangible vision that astonishes the eye with its beauty and that elevates the consciousness with its powerful, awesome character—must be built every day in the spirit of every individual of Israel so that his spirit will connect the fullness of its life to the core of our nation in her perfect state.

When that will truly happen, the individual’s personal abilities will be refreshed with a life of faith and a warmth of emotion (with its light) that will blossom within his personal abilities like exquisite flowers spread in a panorama of exceedingly lovely colors.

We prepare ourselves to reach this goal in actuality when we recite the “daily order of the sacrifices” prior to the morning prayer: the passages of the washbasin, the daily offering, and the incense.

As they are recited, these passages sow the Divine greatness of the great and holy Temple within the depths of a person’s soul, so that he all but reaches the peak that each individual attained when the nation was alive and her Temple lay in her midst upon her land.

The seeds of a person’s yearning for the completion of the nation’s spiritual character continuously bear fruit, growing from the furrows of his heart. These growing “plants” increase continuously, climbing and interlacing with the entire wealth of his good thoughts that relate to this central concept.

Then ultimately the “Congregation of Israel” is built with the spirit of a firm construction, and she dedicates her might to God. That building gives her power that comes from the aspect of the eternal splendor stored in the special nature of her desires. The building does so more than would a multitude of secular physical buildings and national institutions that enhance the strength of every nation that lives only upon the basis of its flesh and physical might.

But even prior to that, the immaculate and elevated love of God is aroused and stands firm and alive, with great might, in the soul of our nation because of her memories of primal days, when the flame of the perfect God was with her.

The ideal consciousness of this exalted memory draws from the depths every exquisite idea and every tremendous and holy aspiration, and sets before the eyes of the entire nation her great Divine worth, which fills all of the chambers of the heart of each of her children with splendor and magnificence.

Swift Feeling, the Toil of Intellect Feeling is swifter than intellect. In feeling, the word “God” is filled with fecundity and reality even before the smallest fraction of the entire multitude of enigmas concealed with it is deciphered.

But this is not the case with intellect. Intellect requires toil. Without study and inquiry, one will find nothing.

If feeling is exchanged for intellect, if one will desire to engage one’s intellect without spiritual labor, in order to enjoy the benefit of what is already prepared—as it is possible to do in feeling—one’s world will swiftly grow dark. Tangled thorns will flourish in one’s spiritual portion, one will constantly be entangled, and one’s spiritual path will be filled with stumbling blocks.

“There is a time and judgement that the heart of the wise man knows” (Ecclesiastes 8:5). And that is: to enter the palace of feeling in its fullness, to take pleasure in its sweet elements, and to allow the portion of the intellect to engage in its toil. Then the knowledge of God will enter one’s heart in its most desirable form.

Piety That Comes from Divine Feeling A person’s piety in practice is the materialization of his closeness to God in the actuality of his life.

When that piety in practice comes from the aspect of a person’s ethics based on logic, it clothes and expresses itself in the sort of good deeds and kindness whose goodness his human intellect understands in keeping with its capacity.

But when a person’s piety in practice comes from the aspect of the Divine feeling within him (which is superior to the measure of his logic)—a Divine feeling that seeks comfort in a closeness to God that may be visualized, that has a spiritual form—that piety clothes and expresses itself in deeds of holiness that sometimes astonish the logical outlook.

This person performs deeds that those lowly of spirit can imitate, although without any spirit of inner life. But in the deeds’ essential purity in a vigorous soul that yearns for practical closeness to God, just as it thirsts for closeness in its visualizing mode, these astonishing ways are ways of life filled with the light of Hashem and His goodness.

They are precious conduits via which a person sprinkles the dew of life of the joy of worlds, of an attained wholeness within his spirit, to raise his spirit above all of the limited concepts of what is good and upright in which human beings are caught. And very often, people’s feet stumble because of these limited concepts, because of the pressure of the laws of narrow logic of the human intellect, which is so very limited.

A Path of Light Through the Darkness The kabbalistic “straight line” is the most cardinal element in existence, to which the kabbalistic “circles” are secondary.

That is to say, the freedom of life, the absolute freedom coming from the aspect of the source of existence, freedom in the Divine sense, from whose ethical aspect comes the creation of existence: that is everything.

And from that, we may derive that a person’s ethics in the ways of this-worldly life are the aspect of existence that will determine the character of his life.

Limited human ethics is not complete, because it itself requires a higher ethics in order to reach its state of purity.

Instead, the ethical concept that decides the character of human ethics is the most interior form within existence. It is the Shechinah, which leads a person to Divine awareness in its mighty flight. It is the mother who herself descends to the low level of the infant, who must be nursed and have its childish needs cared for. And the source of her root is high and elevated, beyond all of the rules of existence, which surround everything with the gigantic might of their necessary rule and permanence.

Within the “circles” themselves—within the necessary rules of existence, within the sturdy, iron rules that do not change in their action upon nation and individual, which apply their goodness even to all evil people, and whose burning aspect scorches even those who are good and upright—within the inner content of those circles, only the straight line continuously acts. Matters proceed in accordance with, and for the sake of, the character of the straight line.

When a person’s complete ethical awareness intensifies, it drives its path beyond all of the interposing rules, and they themselves cause the light of ethical freedom within the necessary and supposed darkness to flare.

Then great wonders are revealed in keeping with the greatness of the faith and uprightness of a person’s heart. These wonders transcend all rules of necessity even within the oppressed and limited circle of nature. Moreover, that existence continuously rises, and its principal place expands beyond the narrow limitation of the blind and deaf rules, bringing freedom to the entire framework of inherent life, filled with intellect and will, whose entire space is filled with generosity and uprightness.

Happy is the person who has not abandoned himself to the power of the environment that casts darkness, but whose eyes are open “to gaze upon the pleasantness of Hashem” (Psalms 27:4) revealed in beautiful worlds that appear to the eyes of the spirit of those who are pure.

Our Deep Questions Lead to Their Desired Conclusion Why shouldn’t all of the occurrences of overall existence be similar to the circumstance of the individual man and animal? Why shouldn’t all existence be interpreted in keeping with the part of it that is visible? Why shouldn’t all existence yearn, hope, rise and descend and again rise, with an inner feeling and with complete clarity that it is growing in accordance with its great domain, like a person on his level and an animal on its level?

Why isn’t everything envisioned to us in one complete unit? And why can’t the good portion, wherever it is found, illuminate itself and the entire totality?

Why isn’t the light of Hashem sought everywhere? Why doesn’t joy pierce through all regions of life? Why doesn’t the longing for good overwhelm all might and strength?

The more that these questions are asked with vigor, with strength and keenness, the more do they fulfill their own demand and bring about the desired conclusion.

How an Individual Completes a General Deficiency The fact that the righteous person endures the sin of the generation and attains atonement for it with his sufferings is something that may be felt.

Every individual of Israel on his level suffers from the sin of the generation. And the more the character of his spirit is refined and cleansed, the more his suffering is filled with love.

And the more that his suffering, which comes as a result of his love for the all, for the nation, depresses his heart, the more his spirit rises to the supernal height of purity and strives to go on a good and upright way, on a supernal, holy way, as though it is required to complete what is lacking in the generation.

And with that, in truth, the pure spirit of the righteous person completes the general deficiency.

And impressions of the good, which grow more intense because of the individual whose heart is touched by the spiritual suffering of the many, affect everyone. That goodness acts in a revealed manner to adorn the holiness with a necklace of grace and kindness and, more than all of that, it acts in hidden ways, in the special nature of the spirit, concealed from the eye of every onlooker.

A Person, with His Spiritual Ability, Affects All Existence How elevated it is, how much truth and hidden song it constitutes: the mystical idea that a person, with his spiritual ability, affects all existence.

The spatial dimension cannot contain the light of life within a person’s free will, which can rise—when he chooses goodness with mighty strength and elevated wisdom—to a very high realm.

How wonderful is the ethical outlook that emerges from such a great, responsible construct. A person feels responsible for all existence, for all worlds. They are in his power. He may increase their grace and light of life, joy and honor, when he proceeds in an upright way and when he strengthens himself and girds himself with pure might to become master of good, esteemed ways of life, and he rises from strength to strength.

Conversely, he has the power to cause pain “to every good portion” (cf. Kings 2 3:25) when he lowers his spirit, corrupts his ways, and darkens his spiritual light as a result of terminating his ethical purity.

This elevated ethical pinnacle—constructed in keeping with a person’s global ethical reckoning (cf. Bava Batra 78b)—is great and magnificent. When it appears, it refines a person’s spirit until his might can no longer be brought low. His spirit then rises upon the walls and towers of all existence, of all reality, of all eternity and the splendor of all worlds, and these walls and towers protect it from all evil.

How can the character of evil rise to participate in the life of a person and his deeds, when such an elevated and uplifted reckoning lies before him?

It is true that a person’s prior ethical corruption can blur his eye until it cannot at all gather strength to see the clear light of this universal ethical reckoning. His ear might be uncircumcised due to the dulling caused by his sins until it no longer heeds the voice of God calling powerfully from this elevated ethical concept spread forth before him, which embraces the fulness of infinite worlds.

But at least a good thought to return and be sanctified, to be purified from all sin, will rise in a person’s heart. His eye will open and his ear will be unobstructed after it had been uncircumcised, and the voice of God will call to him powerfully from the entire fullness of worlds, calling him to rise above the dwelling places of darkness and to be uplifted with that great spiritual elevation that is fitting and in keeping with the greatness of his responsibility for all existence.

The Flight of a Person’s Thought At times, the flight of a person’s thought—which is higher than any limited logic and, how much more, than any fixed, practical halachah—intensifies. Then his heart yearns upwards, and he can by no means constrict his spirit in limited learning.

At that point, he should free his spirit. He should soar in keeping with his penchant. He should seek God in the way that his soul, hovering upon the currents of the many waters, guides him.

And if he also turns his attention at that time to some practical learning, he cannot delve into it, because his spirit is soaring in the distances. At any rate, if his spirit lifts him, he can learn in a superficial way, because he possesses a swiftness of thought that lifts him upon its wing. He swallows information that he comes across, and all of this information coalesces.

The spirit of such a person cannot sum up everything for him in a structure and set tempo. He cannot be burdened with measured exactitude. Matters must be in accordance with the degree to which he finds a comfortable possibility of compromising with practical existence and a state of this-worldly life that demands to play its role and that cannot compromise itself entirely even for the sake of the highest claims of supernal spirituality.

The Supernal Holiness Hidden from All Eyes It is part of the nature of the general radiance of the way of supernal spirituality that it is so high and supernal that it does not have any limited ideas and clear thoughts, individual letters and organized elements. But it has greatness and inner beauty. Because of it, all practical thoughts are enveloped in splendor and magnificence, and they are filled with power and might.

And the more detailed and specific these thoughts are, the more they become good receptacles to hold the good light of the supernal holiness that is hidden from all eyes.

Science Does Not Obviate the Spiritual It is true that in previous days philosophers were more involved than scholars are today with the sacred and the spiritual, and the material sciences then stood at a low level. Conversely, in more recent days, when scholars have turned to the practical sciences, they have continuously succeeded in making many new discoveries.

But this does not at all mean that we must grow indifferent to engaging in the study of spiritual and sacred matters. Rather, we learn that it is incorrect to approach information that is dependent on the senses and on a connection to the world of action via abstract contemplation and spiritual comprehensions.

Therefore, all of those people whose portion in wisdom is sensory must distance themselves in their sensory study from all spiritual comprehensions, and focus on scientific exploration.

But in regard to the essence of spirituality at its core, reaching to Divinity and to the spiritual aspect of the human being—including ethics, justice, and all of the spiritual qualities contained within them—a person can succeed specifically when he immerses himself in spirituality.

Even after all of the success of the most recent scientists, these spiritual matters retain their stature. And whoever finds himself prepared to understand them must focus solely on these spiritual studies in order to bring light and life into the world.

Torah in the Era of “Enlightenment” The spiritual visions that must, in their mighty purity, be revealed in our spirit are drawn from the primary sources of the early generations.

We draw those spiritual visions specifically from the times that life was simple and healthy, when the spiritual content in life shone in the souls of the special few with a fullness and elevated purity.

In the days of the “Enlightenment”—in particular, practical and societal—the spiritual strength of the human being was spread outward, toward technical works and external aspects of life. And with that, the strength to gather the inner aspect of life, regarding which we must be aided by means of the great inheritance that remains for us from the earliest days—the Torah of Hashem in its entire breadth—was tremendously weakened.

Outgrowing a “Necessary Belief” All beliefs fit into one of two frameworks (as Maimonides has discussed in Guide for the Perplexed 3:28): true beliefs and necessary beliefs.

True beliefs are the foundation that maintains the totality of faith, whereas necessary beliefs are like a peel that protects the fruit. The latter are in keeping with the level of every nation and every group united under the banner of some faith. The more elevated, eternal, and true the fundamental faith, the more refined, strong, clear, and enlightened will the necessary beliefs attached to it be, in keeping with the purest requirements of ethics and in the light of the clearest knowledge.

Occasionally a time comes when a power is revealed necessary to remove some part of the necessary beliefs from the domain of faith, because a group of people has reached the stage where it need no longer be supported by the aspect of that necessary belief within its form of faith.

Then a sort of ferment begins. On the one hand, this shedding of a necessary belief appears to be a breach in the foundation of faith. But on the other hand, it appears as an illumination and bright radiance upon the horizon of faith, and as something that adds strength to the foundation of faith.

And in truth both aspects are true.

Not all people and not all communities will mature at the same time and in the same era. It will happen that one part of a society has reached a level in the development of its awareness and culture where it no longer needs some aspect of a necessary belief. Consequently, that belief is superfluous for it. That belief hinders the progress of its spirit, the holiness of its soul, and its soul’s upward flight.

But in a group of that society that has not yet reached this point and in which the necessary belief is completely required, the removal of this necessary belief constitutes the chopping down of saplings and the destruction of faith.

We Will Not Finish Our Story Prematurely Descending from the stage of history is possible only for a nation that has completed what it began, and for a spiritual vision that has brought everything hidden within it into the light of the world.

To begin something and not complete it—that is absolutely not the way of existence.

The inner feeling, which is powerful within us and makes it possible for us to establish the existence of Judaism with its perspectives and deeds together with its body and its land, comes from the public’s overall awareness that we still have a long way to go before we will finish what we have begun.

Among ourselves and in the ears of the entire world we have begun to tell something that is great—but we have not yet finished it. We are in the middle of our speech, and we do not desire, nor are we able, to interrupt it.

We will by no means abandon the ways of our national life nor our abstract aspirations—these two being connected with each other—that rise above every particular coterie, just as we will not abandon our hope to be rebuilt and to be a nation upon our historical land as we were in early days.

We cannot abandon any of these.

The ideals that enliven all existence—it is not so easy to recognize how they have a place in life, but it is they that enliven all life. When they leave, the soul of life leaves.

Nor will we be confounded because we falter so much in our self-expression when we speak about our aspiration. We know that the imperfection is not in the clarity of the idea and in its truth. The truth within us is very strong, but it is so rich, and such a wealth of ideas flows onto us, that we are not yet fit to explain it with a clear tongue.

Despite that, we will not turn back. To the extent that our power of speech will allow us, we will speak and we will explain. Within ourselves, we understand our thought.

And with the passage of time, our speech too will emerge from the heavy exile in which it has been quelled, and we will be able to speak, to describe and to explain, using clear expressions, what we seek with our entire existence.

Until that golden age, we will not refrain from our work, practical and spiritual.

We Must Fulfill the Ideal in This World of Struggle A happy life—whether that of an individual or that of the public—comes into being to the extent that this life implements in actuality the practical steps that the most exalted ideals require of it. Every practical ascent in the precise details of a person’s or the public’s movements, in accordance with the evoking of the most exalted and expansive thought—thought that transcends all of the spheres of human constriction—leads to the crystallization of these exalted ideals and to our turning to their development and elevation. Every such elevation elicits hidden blessing in the depths of life. It generates a great spiritual force, and it fortifies the power and victory of these ideals in the inner world of the individual and in the external world of the populace.

Conversely—although every withdrawal, every self-concealment and negligence regarding the practical organization that the most exalted ideals in their totality demand cannot sever the ideal sequence (it still proceeds victoriously upon its route, making use of the many powers that it finds before itself)—that withdrawal nevertheless darkens the world of the person who has retreated.

And as this practical withdrawal increases, necessarily the ideal radiance is darkened and its light dims, until at last, out of some sort of imprisonment, a mighty power that was hidden in the depths breaks through, protesting with all its might against the trampling of the ideal, and demanding recompense for the spiritual insult that it has experienced from a world that is growing impoverished and remiss.

This robust power repairs the breaches, raises those who stumbled and encourages the weak, until the ideal Shechinah returns to dwell with honor in the souls of human beings who are capable of absorbing into themselves the treasury of true life in all of its power and richness.

The Proliferating Branches of the Ideal The more a person’s awareness of the ideal rises, the more its branches proliferate. Conversely, the more that this awareness is constricted and darkened, the more those branches are constricted and unable to spread out.

We find expansion of the branches of the ideal in the supernal heights, in the Divine ideal that exists at the heart of the configuration of existence. Life in its purity, in its height, in its spirituality, in its ethics and its enlightenment, stands at the summit of the ideal. Because of the outstanding clarity of the ideal at the level of supernal knowledge, at the level of wisdom about Creation, its branches are many and they propagate copiously.

The needs of this-worldly life are many and varied. All of their configurations are extensive, and they occupy an extensive place in existence, so that not even the most obscure need is lacking. All of this is because of the power of a person’s faculty of awareness when it comes to the character of his desire and his ability to actualize the exalted ideal of life.

The Torah of Israel is outstanding in crystallizing the idealism that spreads across all of the configurations of life.

Because the structures of life implement the strategies of that idealism, they too spread out. They bear branch and fruit. Then everything is moistened by the life-giving dew that comes from the root of idealism, which vanquishes everything that stands against it and everything that wishes to reduce its ability to spread itself forth.

Sometimes, the ideal appears as a spark that is small in quantity. However, its quality is high, endlessly extensive, and deeper than the depths of the abyss. From this, we learn that ideals must be worked on, both in themselves and in their relationship with their many branches. The ideals may appear constricted as one small point, because sometimes one small and ordinary sentence contains an abundance of very many ideals, and we must clarify the wealth hidden in it. Moreover, the relationship between the essence of the ideals and their practical branches must be worked on as well.

Overcoming a Sick and Warped Idealism To the degree that a person’s awareness of the ideal and his spiritual strength increase, so does the relationship between the practical consequences of his behavior and his abstruse ideas grow more tightly bound. Then strands that could not at all being bound to each other when the ideal spirit (as it comes from its root) was lacking, suffice to make a tight and living connection—with supernal exactitude—between this person’s many deeds and the ideal, original spirit. Now the flawlessness in the realm of the practical aspect of his life, girded with might and awesome splendor, prevails over the pathways of his life.

Whenever there is a breach in the practical part of a person’s life, that is essentially because the light of universal idealism in him has dimmed. The less light there is, the less inner power of life there is to perform its function.

Then the strong bond between a person’s spirit and his deeds weakens until that bond disturbs him, and he feels repulsion at deeds that result from the elevated idealism. This is precisely due to his very propensity for idealism. This explains the common sight that we meet with in those people who rise to the heights of ethical spirit in their thought, those people who storm the heights to destroy every practical, precise, and lawful bulwark. In truth, the spiritual elevation that these people attain is not a healthy and originary, idealistic propensity. Rather, it is a dimming of the light that lives in the sources of the soul, in accordance with the soul’s nature and inner descent. That descent increases such people’s external manner of self-expression with a wealth of pompous words and ideas filled with passion and sick emotionalism, which expands the quantity of ideal ideation at the expense of that ideal’s fundamental quality.

The cure for this weakness is none other than for a person to increase his ideal awareness in its essential purity by going deeply and extensively into the most elevated original spirit. Then the spirit of the might and the active power of the ideal is revealed. And this power overcomes his practical weakness and restores the entire mighty splendor to the ideals.

The Ideal and How It Works Through Speech and Deed Postulates necessary for people to believe in order to sustain them on a path of truth are offshoots that emerge from fountainhead ideals to appear as a corporealized ideal in this-worldly life. The latter are necessary postulates that are derived directly from postulates that are absolute truths.

The foundation of necessary postulates and their placement in a person is his visionary ability, his esthetic sense.

These necessary postulates are then clothed in his speech and in his rhetoric, and are materialized in his deed, which encloses in that circle of deed the absolute truth of the spiritual realm.

The source of the necessary postulate exists in the true postulate: in its absolute truth, in its concentrated goodness and elevation within the source of life and existence, both universal and individual.

When the inner, fundamental, higher postulate grows more intense, it emanates part of its splendor and might onto the necessary postulate. With the power of the former’s emanation, the latter stands in its place. Then this necessary postulate provides a good basis for practical life and sweetens practical life. It provides the brilliance suitable for life, and it refines and perfects life.

And that necessary postulate will never need to clothe itself in garments that are not its own and to describe itself as having a character that does not apply to it—i.e., the character of the supernal postulate, the postulate of truth.

The postulate of truth raises the necessary postulate to be the practical foundation of the honor of the postulate of truth.

And the more prominent and appreciated the postulate of truth, the more is the basic, necessary postulate confirmed in its place, in its effect on a person’s life and in his life’s honor, in his power to visualize and imagine the whole as well as each particular, until he is alerted to and hates—with an inner awareness more ethical than anything on the truest and straightest this-worldly human avenue—any actions that could blemish, however slightly, the splendid holiness of the lower postulate. And thus the low postulate expands. And the more it expands in its realm, the more expansive a receptacle it becomes to receive the totality of the splendor and light of the true postulate, of the “true faith” (Isaiah 25:1).

The Torah’s Rules Uncover the Nation’s Holiness We must bring into the open our sense of the good effects that performing the mitzvot has upon us—of how the mitzvot build our world: our individual world and our public, national world.

Wearing tefillin perfects our spiritual form.

Tefillin have the special quality of engraving upon the person who wears them the essence of those matters that are stated in the biblical passages written on the parchments that the tefillin contain.

Those letters have the effect of being engraved on the person. The inner spiritual essence that is the point of these passages builds a Jew’s soul every day. That essence builds a Jew’s unique ability of visualization, which contributes a distinctive quality to the entire composition of his life: to his entire life of spirit and morality, to his entire Jewish identity.

Precisely due to the addition of this spiritual sustenance, which every day goes forth and sweetens the soul of every Jew, the Hebrew spirit has awoken and is constantly alert and alive, prepared to express its particular nature.

This is a great principle in the education of the nation of Israel, in the engraving made upon her spirit in keeping with her unique status.

Foods that a Jew eats are the nation’s foods. They are apt for the nation’s inner spirit. On the other hand, those foods forbidden to the nation obscure its spirit.

We do not need to locate this obscuring in the quality of universal morality. A human being’s universal morality proceeds on other paths. It is not especially concerned with purifying a person at the beginning of his path of developing his propensities.

Rather, this latter concern is something unique to Israel.

Forbidden foods dull the heart. They destroy the impression of the image of the life unique to Israel. They obscure Israelite holiness, making an individual unable to connect to his Israelite character.

Those people who eat forbidden foods become like limbs of the nation into which the character of the nation’s inner life, in the depth of its feelings, does not enter. Their soul is blemished.

The soul of the Israelite individual is only that which is taken from the totality of the nation. That is the special quality of “one nation upon the earth” (Samuel 2 7:23).

Oh, who will uncover the face of the facade? Then people will see and recognize how much we must honor the Torah’s every rule and law.

A More-Than-Natural Morality Out of unencumbered morality, out of human morality, let us acquire foundations with which to establish faith, the faith of Israel, which we and the entire world so greatly require.

Let us elucidate our inner visions, the depth of our tranquility in clinging to Hashem—specifically when we visualize, proclaim, and focus on the name of Hashem, the God of Israel.

Let us elucidate how much this intent quiets our spirit, how much it soothes our soul and prepares us for a pure life that possesses strength and might as well as holiness and purity.

Israelite morality is not focused solely on good deeds, deeds that are good only in their societal sense. Our morality is, first of all, an inner, refined quality that dwells in the soul to seek the good, the absolute good: so that we will be good in ourselves, so that we will cling to the good.

This holy spirit is found in us only in the context of our clinging to the Divine; and that comes to us as an outcome of our Israelite faith, expressed both practically and in our contemplations.

We have a spiritual, inner, moral requirement to be absorbed into the nation, our nation: the nation from which overall, across all of its generations, we possess the entire treasury of life, which is truly life, which we feel deep within our spirit. We feel, when we stand in this pure state, that we love the name of Hashem, the light of Hashem that dwells within us, that rests within the entire nation. We love the Torah, the mitzvot, the ordinances of Hashem and His laws for Israel.

Our knowledge broadens in our depths. It is saturated with the dew of elevated visions and blissful feelings.

We have love. We have that which to love, that which to honor, that which to hope for, and the way in which to fill the content of our lives.

We are filled with the all, filled with a phenomenon of wisdom, a phenomenon with which we have an intrinsic, inner connection, one that is powerful and eternal.

Initially, we are summoned from within ourselves, from our essence, to constrict our gaze to our inner being. Afterwards, we can broaden our thought, we can spread our thought across the expanse of the all.

But first we must connect to our true life, to our life within, to the inner being of the soul of our soul—with tranquility of the spirit, with pleasantness, with lovingkindness, with might, with love and freshness of life.

I Am Bound to My People from the Depth of My Soul Listen to me, my people.

From the depth of my soul I speak with you, from the depth of the soul of my soul, from the depth of the bond of life in which I am bound to all of you and all of you are bound to me, from the depths of that feeling that I experience as being deeper than all my feelings of life: that you, only you, only all of you, your entirety, all of your souls, all of your generations, only you are the content of my life.

In you I live, in you: in the bloc that comprises all of you, my life has the characteristic that is called life.

Without you, I have nothing. All hopes, all ideals, all the value of the worth of life, all of it I find within myself only with you.

I must bond with all of your souls. I must love you with an infinite love. It is impossible for me to feel any other feeling. All types of love, small and great, in all areas of my life, are all encompassed in my love for you, in my love of the totality of you—the totality in which all of your individuals exist and live.

Every one of you, every individual soul from the totality of all of you, is a great and significant spark from the torch of eternal life, which illumines the light of life for me.

You, you give me meaning to my life, to my devotion, to Torah, to prayer, to song, to hope.

Through the conduit of your being, I feel everything, I love everything. Upon the wings of the spirit of my affection for you, I am lifted up to the love of God, and that love of God grows more transparent to me, more clear to me. It takes flame in my heart, it grows purified in my thoughts.

With you, my nation, my people, my mother, the source of my life, with you I soar to the eternal expanses. With your eternity I live an eternal life, with your splendor I am filled with glory and splendor, with your impoverishment I am filled with pains, with the suffering in your souls I am filled with bitterness, with the knowledge and understanding within you I am filled with knowledge and understanding.

The treasure house of life for me is every rhythm and every criterion created by the stance of your feet.

Your land, the land of your hope, is holy to me. Its skies are a source of grace to me, the source of the beauty of all worlds. Its fertile field and its coastland are the source of hope, the source of blessing, the source of the joy of life. To me, even its thorns and briars are clothed in glory and eternal grandeur.

I Am Filled with Love for God I am filled with love for God. I know that what I seek, what I love, is called by no name. How can that which is greater than everything, greater than goodness, greater than any attribute, greater than being, be called by any name?

And I love, and I say: I love God.

The light of the Infinite One dwells in the expression of the Name, in the expression of “God,” and in all of the names and appellations that the heart of a man teaches and expresses when his soul is lifted ever upwards.

I cannot satisfy my soul with the love that comes from chains of logic, from the search for the light of God via the world, via an existence that penetrates into the eyes.

In our soul are born Divine lights—from the perspective of our spirit, they are many forces.

There is one true God. And higher than “one,” in the depth of His truth, God is revealed. He rules over us, He conquers all of our spirits, the spirit of all existence.

Wherever there is idea, feeling, thought and will, wherever there is noble, spiritual life, the Divine light rules, governs, conquers, scintillates, is magnificent, gives forth splendor and beauty, vivifies, elevates—all out of the clarity of the light of being.

It rules—and it dies.

That rule is limited as long as it comes from the world, from being.

At times the light waxes. God’s will desires a light that is especially refined, especially inward, especially true in itself, especially energetic in its very core.

The light overwhelms the vessel, thought overwhelms being. The structure cannot hold, the inner content is not congruent, the vessels shatter, the kings die, the gods die, their soul rises, soars to the heavens. The bodies descend to the world of separation. Existence stands bare, isolated, torn away, scattered.

It contains within itself, hidden and concealed, an eternal desire for the supernal light.

Eternal love has placed its light, its sparks, within the shattered vessels.

In every movement, in every content of life, in every quality is being. There is a spark, a spark of a spark, faint, exceedingly faint, the inner light, the light of the supernal God, building and setting a foundation, gathering the scattered, rectifying forever, organizing and joining together.

The eternal sovereignty is revealed from the light of the Infinite One that is within the soul. From God to the world, a new light is born: the light of the radiance of the glory of the face of God.

Faith Is the Song of Life Overall, faith is the song of life, the song of existence, the song of being.

And this song is the most penetrating, innermost realization in the depths of the character of what we can realize, in its inner being—something that is completely impossible for a realization gained by prose.

Therefore, the true lens that shows life exists specifically within the song of life, not within mundane life that is expressed by means of prose.

Woe to the person who wants to deprive life of the splendor of its song. He destroys the entire inner being of life and all of the truth within it.

All of prose only attains its value because it rests upon the song of life.

A Person’s Clear Perception When a person eats, drinks, or performs any other necessary physical act, or when he is moved by some feeling that has a measure of personal delight, then his potentialities are awakened—not only in accordance with a measure of intellect, justice, and integrity, but in accordance with the extent to which simple nature, even that which has been impaired as a result of the inappropriate deeds performed by him or by humanity as a whole, draws forth these acts or feelings.

This applies to an individual and to the world.

A person’s clear perception sees that the human spirit is a part of overall existence, just as a person’s superficial glance sees that his body and its abilities are a part of overall existence.

From the aspect of its spirit, humanity is great in the world of the spirit—and so humanity occupies a paramount place in existence. The elevation or descent of humanity’s spirit, that spirit’s perfection or impairment, is the most important object of study of the most outstanding thinkers and profound sages.

When a person strengthens his spirit toward the side of good—that is to say, toward the side of his character that lays the groundwork for the perfection of existence, in its totality and in its details, in its spirit and in its physicality—then, in crucial aspects, his spirit enhances the good in the entirety of existence.

This is played out fully, whether immediately or after some passage of time. Then the resulting trait of goodness comes into being—whether that is a temporary state of being or a state of being so profound that its form in terms of time is exceedingly different from anything within the character of time to which we are accustomed.

The gaze of a person with a pure spirit, a spirit that rises above the low ceiling of the senses and their objects, communicates within the parameters of the character of a human being’s spirit and personality, and it increases until it speaks through all being. It considers the powers in existence in accordance with their level in the human microcosmos, which is in truth the macrocosmos. It finds the characteristics of life in an individual with all of its concealments and with all of its causations, arranged in such a way that when it sees these it can peer upon all being, upon all worlds, upon endless worlds.