New, improved Kabbalah Series			BS''D
Chapter 10 - Part 8	Previous	Close Window	Next

The Bold Print is the original translation, plain print is explanation and annotation

This series is a continuation and should be read in order. If you are not familiar with previous posts you may have trouble understanding later ones.

And now Chapter 10.08

For example, take the various properties of water. It boils at one hundred degrees Celsius, freezes at zero degrees Celsius, it expands when frozen (a most unique and important property for the existence of life, for it prevents bodies of water from freezing from the bottom up killing all of their inhabitants), at room temperature it is a clear liquid, it can dissolve many substances, etc. etc. Yet each of these properties does not have an individual existence within the water molecule, meaning that there is not one part of the molecule that makes it boil, while another that makes it freeze and so on, but rather each of these properties are different aspects of water’s unique make up and nature. Therefore, it is understood that it is not possible to remove any of these properties from the water, nor is it possible for any of these abilities to get used up in some way. For each of these properties are the essential nature of water, a part of what it is, and to change even one of them would mean to create something that is not water. This type of inclusion is similar to the way that fire is included within a flint, not that there exists any actual fire within the flint, as there is within a coal, but rather it is a property of a flint that when struck it will produce a spark. This ability resulting from the essential abrasive nature of a flint and the essential nature of fire that it is produced by such heat, so that the connection between a flint and fire is such that their very essences and natures overlap. Unlike a coal where the potential for fire comes from the fact that coal is composed of organic materials that trapped the sun’s energy within them, these materials combining to form coal, so that when this energy is released and the coal is burned the coal itself it is destroyed, losing some of its components in the chemical process of burning.

So too the various attributes of the soul are a part of its essential nature and self and are completely inseparable from it. However, the unity expressed by the analogy of the flint and water is not quite comparable to that of a true Heyuli, for a true Heyuli is completely above the limitations of its power so that it does not even have a specific aspect of its nature that causes the particulars that come out of it, but rather only the possibility for them to come out. Also, the particulars are made to come into revelation by choice and are a creative expression of the Heyuli’s potential. This higher level of unity and complete removal of the Heyuli form its particulars is better expressed by a different analogy, that of the power of movement as well as the other powers of the soul that are vested in the body.

Previous

Close Window

Next

The material in this series is copyrighted by Rabbi Yossi Markel