...appearing in the form of lights clothed within lights, or as lights emerging from other lights. Here we have the two concepts I mentioned above: “clothing” and “the developmental chain”. A third kind of interrelationship, in which one power depends upon another (in the way that Abba and Imma are “crowned” or “encompassed” by Mazal), is more understandable after we grasp the other two.
All these forms and likenesses are what the soul sees when looking at the Sefirot. From seeing them, the soul gains an understanding of these phenomena on the spiritual plane, just as we gain knowledge of physical phenomena through the vision of the physical eye. Accordingly, we speak in terms of the soul “seeing” just as the eye sees. The soul and the physical eye each possess their own characteristic faculty of vision. (For example, there is the circle that the physical eye sees, and there is the circle “seen”, “conceived” or understood by the mind.)