You might say that these concepts do not refer, God forbid, to the Divinity itself, which is enclothed and illuminates in the sefirot, but only to the vessels of the sefirot.24That is, perhaps all these conceptions involving quantities and relativity do not refer to God Himself, but rather to the sefirot which are vessels. These are not Divinity, one might suggest, but were newly formed together with the creation of the souls in order to conceal or reveal measures of perception in accordance with the appropriate amount and degree for souls, so as to bring them to the desired completed state of rectification.
This suggestion is like what was stated earlier (section #7#) regarding the parable of the window with four panes with four different colors – white, red, green, and black – and similarly the white in a book and the substance of the letters in a book. Such a suggestion can be made with regard to the three worlds of Beria, Yetzira, and Asiya, as there one finds that the vessels of the sefirot are newly formed and are not Divinity.
However, it is completely unjustifiable to understand the world of Atzilut in this manner, as in Atzilut it is also the vessels of the ten sefirot that are fully Divine; they are one with the Divine light that is within them. This is as written in the Tikkunim (Tikkunei Zohar) (3b): “He, His life, and His attributes are one.” “He” means the essence of the sefirot, which is the mystical meaning of Ein Sof, blessed be He.
“His life” is the mystical meaning of the light that illuminates in the sefirot, which is called the “light of vitality,” for the whole world of Atzilut is an expression of Ḥokhma, and the light of Ḥokhma is called the light of vitality, and therefore the Tikkunei Zohar states “His life.” And “His attributes” means the vessels of the sefirot. Thus, everything in that level of existence is Divinity and complete unity.
If so, how is it possible in Atzilut to understand those changes caused by the lower creations?25In other words, since change implies quantities and relativity, qualities that cannot apply to the intangible Divine, how can the concept of change be applied at all to the world of Atzilut, a world that is purely divine, and thus, not changeable? At the same time, it is necessary to understand the following: If everything is Divinity in that world, and there are no vessels there that are newly created entities, how can one make the three distinctions stated in the Tikkunei Zohar – “He, His life, and His attributes”? After all, it is an absolutely simple unity.