Part 6 · Chapter 28

End of פרק כח and introduction to תיקונין 0:04

So here at the end of פרק כח, דהיינו, we're talking about תיקונין now. What's the difference between a כלי and a תיקון? So דהיינו, and this is what it says in תיקוני זוהר, מה שכתוב, וקראית לון י' ספיראן וכו', that God called them ten ספירות, לאתחזאה to reveal Himself, הנהגה and to conduct the world, וכו'. And then it says that He called them, says that God אפיק י' תיקונין, that He took out ten garments, וקראית לון י' ספיראן, and He called them the ten ספירות.

So these are called תיקונין and they're called garments. כי תיקונין, the garments, הם בחינת הכלים, are the vessels לאורות דאצילות, to the lights of אצילות.

But it's a little different than what we were saying. כמו על דרך משל תיקון העין, for example, like the way that you fix up the eye שיתפשט ראיה גשמית שבה יותר, that its physical sight should go further, הוא על ידי אמצעות כלי הבטה וכו', is through a vessel for seeing, either a telescope or a microscope or regular glasses. In other words, when we're talking about the type of garments that are called תיקונין are garments that fix the thing, that's why it's called a תיקון, כמו לשון that it fixes it, that helps it do something that it couldn't normally do.

כך תיקון התפשטות ראיה הרוחנית על ידי אמצעות כלי העין הגשמי וכו'. So too the physical eye is like the glasses for the soul. It fixes the soul's power of sight that it should be able to focus on physical things, because really the soul has the power of sight. It just needs something to channel it to physical things, just like you can really see, you just need somebody to channel your sight to something very small, like a very far away like a very far away star that's very faint, or like in a microscope where you're looking at something very small.

So the same way, the eye is just like channeling the power of sight to focus on physical things, but it's just like a microscope or something.

Limitations of the eye’s resolution and pixel analogy 2:14

Yeah, the only problem is that your eye, the lens of your eye doesn't focus that well. But as far as your power of sight, there's no difference. Why can why what does a telescope do when you look through a telescope?

All it does, it makes your eye focus on a much smaller point than normal. So it takes let's say five inches of like a lens that's five inches wide that's like a bit of view, whatever it is, however much light hits that five inches, and it focuses that on your eye, which is like a quarter of an inch or something, or less than that, an eighth of an inch.

So now you're able to you get a lot more light hitting your eye, whatever it is, I don't know, a couple exponentially a couple more times worth of light, so you're able to focus on something very faint that you wouldn't normally be able to see because it's either it's too small, because your eye doesn't have good enough resolution to notice those details, or because it's very little light and so it's too faint for you to see.

So you're able to see with a telescope. Microscope does the same idea, takes something very small and it focuses it on your eye. All it does is it blows up the image a little bit so that it's able to your eye is able to notice the details. That's all it does.

Because really you could see it. The problem is that your eye only has a certain resolution. It only has like 288 pixels per degree of vision.

So you have whatever, I don't know, if they call it 360 degrees of vision or 180 degrees of vision, but for each degree you have like 288, approximately 288 cells that can see in your main like vision. If it's like in your peripheral vision, you have less.

So depending on how close something is to your eye, that you'll be able to see more and more detail, but eventually something that's too small will just slip in between the pixels of your eyes, you won't be able to notice the detail.

But if you blow up the image, then you can see it. It's not it's no different than anything else. So you just have to fix fix your eye to focus on that kind of a thing.

But it's not like this: are you fixing the eye, or are you fixing the image?

Well, I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's the same thing. Yeah, in a way, you're right. You're just fixing the image so that it can focus in the eye, and kind of like a two-way thing here.

Right, on the other hand, the eye is trying to see, so now you're just you're, you know, refocusing it so it's able to see it. כמו שמבואר במקום אחר, as explained elsewhere, על כן, therefore, מצד בחינת הכלים המגבילים, על ידי זה דווקא יוכל להיות כל בחינת ההשפעות והמשכות למטה מטה.

Vessels limiting light and mind as a vessel for emotion 5:19

Therefore, specifically when the light goes into the vessels that limit the light, it's able to be revealed down to the physical world. וכמו על ידי כלי המוח שישיג השכל ימשיכנו למידות.

So therefore, if you through the mind grasping the שכל, an intellect, it's able to bring it down to the emotions, או להשפיע לזולתו, or it can be explained to someone else. That when you have something, in order for you to be able to like explain it, even to yourself, to bring it to an emotional feeling or to somebody else, it has to be brought out בפנימיות that you actually understand it well, because you can have something like in a way of אמונה where you like feel it, but you don't it didn't really settle into the vessel of your mind.

But when it settles in the vessel of your mind, then you're able to bring it down to to yourself or to someone else. That's the whole thing of one of the main things of learning חסידות is that you really a Jew has this essential אמונה in God, but you have to through studying it, you're able to bring that to affect you emotionally and in your actions, you're able to affect other people with it.

Yeah, that only happens when it goes into the כלי, because otherwise the אור isn't fixed, so it doesn't you don't know how to focus that to an emotional response or to actions. So you can believe in God, but you don't know what to do about it unless you learn the תורה, and you understand that this is what God wants you to do, and so therefore you should do this and not that.

Belief needs Torah study to become actionable vessel 6:41

And even the actual idea itself of just like you believing in God, you have to understand like, well, so what does that mean about how the way I the way I relate to the world?

So, how can the soul see without the how do you say the soul could see without the eye? Well, it's just not a physical sight.

But you see, you're just used to physical sight, so that's what you call sight, is only physical sight. But really that what's the that real idea of sight doesn't have to be what what you call sight.

A real idea of sight is just being is a thing of being able to like perceive an essence directly. So the way the soul is in like גן עדן and stuff like that, it perceives Godliness in a way of of a ראייה.

And even you even see in yourself that when you can dream without your eye, and you see things. So you see that that you don't really need your eye to see things.

Your eye is just what triggers the initial perceptions, because it's מצמצם the כח. But the כח is really in you before that. And the truth is, but now then you ask, well, you still need your brain.

But that's not really true. You're just, you know, you're just used to you're only used to being conscious within your body, so you don't you know, I'm also, I can't I don't know what it's like to be just a soul. But you don't, just like you don't need your eye, you don't really don't need your brain either. And not only that, when the soul goes up and it leaves the body, it still carries the memories with it of the world.

I don't know what's a really example for like, I mean, the example they give it's like גן עדן, but you know, who knows about that.

Yeah, the way it goes before it goes in the כלי, it's like the משל for before אצילות. And this is the same thing in Godliness. Before אצילות, the lights in Godliness are all hidden, just like your it's like just like your soul is like a hidden thing before it goes in your body.

Because those are all like the essential lights of God that you can't really know,

because it's already a thing of like אילו ידעתיו הייתיו, that it's like totally infinite, and it's not something that you can really, you know, know.

That's why it's like a משל for like a soul before it goes in the body, that it's like, you know, what how can you really know what it is?

Even our soul, that's the thing, even our soul, we don't really know, we don't really have a השגה, you don't we don't have a השגת מהות of our own soul.

Not really, we only have it through our body. That's the way we understand it. Like I said, that's exactly what it is. It's just like our soul is hidden when it's not in our body, so too Godliness is hidden when it's not in the vessels of אצילות, to the point where it's called רישא דלא ידע, that it's not even that even it doesn't know what it is.

It's not revealed and it doesn't even know, because it's not like a it's not yet a known thing. We already know, there we just know, we know what it is, it's a hidden thing.

That's what it is. No, that's what it is. It's a hidden thing. That's exactly what we're trying to know. We're trying to know that it's a hidden thing.

We don't want to know what it is as a גילוי thing right now. We want to know what is a hidden thing. So the משל for the hidden thing is like our soul before it comes to the body, and we know what that is. That's a hidden thing.

No, right now, no, we're trying just to understand the relationship. But then it's like totally hidden just like our soul before it comes to the body, and it's like totally just like a similar relationship where you can't even like say really like a thing of sight yet because like a totally higher thing, and like it's in a way has nothing to do with all this stuff.

Before it comes to the eye, well, before it comes to the eye, I can tell you dreams, but because the eye is obviously just triggering it. But the truth is even the brain, it must be coming from the soul because the brain is just a bunch of dirt.

The consciousness can't be coming from the brain.

So even now, it's really your you're seeing your soul itself. You're just seeing it through the vessel.

When when when you're having when you experience consciousness, you're actually having השגת העצמות of your soul then. That is actually your soul. Just that it's the way your soul comes into the vessel of your body. But it's ממש that's ממש your soul itself, because only your soul can be conscious.

The נמשל for that point is that the way God reveals himself in the lights before אצילות, those are just like essential lights. And there, like even though it includes like the ten ספירות, but it's all just, in other words, that you just appreciate that God is כל יכול and he's beyond limitations. So automatically he also has the ability of חכמה, whatever, but but you don't see like that you can define God as being like wise or like the way we know it.

He's really beyond that, just that he could also do that because he's כל יכול. But you're perceiving his essential qualities of being, or essential quality of being infinite and transcending limitations and being כל יכול.

God’s infinite attributes revealed through the vessel of אצילות 12:05

And that's what you're perceiving. And then when it comes to the vessel of אצילות, it's like God expresses his infinite abilities. You say, "Oh, God, yeah, can you really do anything?" He said, "Yeah, I can really do anything." So, "Let's show me what you can do." So he said, "Okay, I can be infinitely wise, and I can be, you know, infinitely kind, and create infinitely." Those are showing like thing of creating something from nothing, something that only that shows כל יכול, only God could do it, but it's already being showed through a specific vessel.

And the same thing with such wisdom, you know, it's only could be from God, and all these kind of things. Did I say I didn't say that it's only a vessel, but it is. It's the it's but that's like the one vessel of, you know, like עקודים where there's ten things are all in one vessel.

That's really the ענין, yeah. That that it's all one is just like the thing of רצון, which means that God can do whatever he wants basically.

And that's one vessel that includes everything. And that's the מקור, by the way, of the Jews, that we come from like the level of that one vessel that's like that's really like still בלי מה, and then not the particular things.

We come from the מחשבה קדומה, the one מחשבה that includes everything, which is like that general limitation.

Within the השתלשלות, the רצון קדום is to reveal

like that he's כל יכול. By revealing that he's כל יכול is not the ultimate thing. That's that's like it says משלמות כח מעשיו ופעולותיו, right?

That's not the ultimate thing. Like it says here, לאחזאה, to reveal himself, right, לבני נשא, right? That's not the ultimate thing. Ultimate thing is דירה בתחתונים, which is the גילוי of the עצמות through our עבודה.

That's the main thing that God wants. Yeah, דווקא, it should דווקא be through our עבודה.