182. “Come and see, a counsel for a person, etc.” Come and see, advice for a person: When one goes to bed at night, he should accept upon himself the kingship of above with a whole heart, and straight away deposit his soul with Him. Immediately, he will be spared of all bad illnesses and all the evil spirits, for they will not rule over him.

Explanation: The Lord called the light “day,” i. e., the light of cleaving and holiness that we attain from God. This is the “governance of the day.” He called the darkness “night,” i. e., the forces of separation that separate us from His light. This is “the governance of the night” [see Genesis 1:5, 16]. Therefore, we sleep at night, which is one-sixtieth of death [see Berakhot 57b], which is [under] the governance of the Sitra Aḥara. Due to these two [categories of] governance, we are unable cleave to Him constantly, because we stop cleaving to Him due to the force of the governance of the night, which always returns over us and bars us from His service.

To rectify this, Rabbi Shimon offers us the advice that every night, before going to sleep, one “should accept upon himself the kingship of above with a whole heart.” When the night is rectified like in the act of creation, as it is stated: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” [Genesis 1:5] – which means that night and day were both united into a single body and one day – then the night is called “the rule of Malkhut,” and no kelippa will be mingled with it.

Therefore, a person should likewise accept upon himself this supernal kingship [Malkhut] with a whole heart, without any barrier between himself and the Malkhut. In other words, he must accept upon himself the kingdom of heaven whether for life or for death, such that nothing in the world could remove him by any degree from the supernal kingdom. This is the mystical meaning of the verse: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” [Deuteronomy 6:5]. If he accepts this upon himself wholeheartedly, he can be certain about himself that nothing could possibly separate him from God.

He will thereby be considered through this [acceptance] as having straight away deposited his soul, i. e., he did not delay in handing his soul over to the Holy One, blessed be He. [This] means [to show] that [the person] observes His commandments in full, to the extent that [the person] would relinquish his soul [for God]. Consequently, when he sleeps and his spirit departs, he no longer tastes one-sixtieth of death [in that departure], which is the power of Samael, but only the aspect of giving his life for the path of the commandments. The power of death no longer controls him, since he has inserted it into the power of giving his life for the commandments.

Once he has done so, the governance of the night can no longer harm him and prevent him from the pleasantness of the service of God. For him, the evening and the morning are now one day, and the night is truly only a part of the day. Accordingly, he will immediately be spared of all bad illnesses and all the evil spirits, for they will not rule over him. His night has already left the domain of the Sitra Aḥara, since he can no longer imagine that anything could come between him and the holy Divine Presence, and the forces of the Sitra Aḥara and judgment no longer rule over him.