He sets up a crucial question: when we talk about the sefirot (the ten emanations through which God reveals Himself), are we talking about God Himself, or just the vessels that contain and transmit God’s light? It's tempting to think that concepts like quantity and relativity only apply to these vessels, which were created along with our souls to help us perceive the Divine in manageable doses. This idea is akin to the parable of the window with four colored panes – white, red, green, and black – each tinting our view of the same light (as mentioned earlier in section #7 of Baal HaSulam's Preface). Or like the ink and parchment of a book, distinct but working together.
We might even extend this analogy to the lower worlds of Beria, Yetzira, and Asiya – Creation, Formation, and Action. In those realms, it’s easier to see the vessels of the sefirot as newly formed entities, separate from pure Divinity.
But Baal HaSulam insists this understanding falls apart when we reach the world of Atzilut – Emanation. In Atzilut, even the vessels of the ten sefirot are fully Divine, completely one with the Divine light within them. As the Zohar" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="source-link">Tikkunei_Zohar" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="source-link">Tikkunei Zohar (3b) so beautifully puts it: “He, His life, and His attributes are one.” "He" refers to the very essence of the sefirot, the hidden aspect of Ein Sof (the Infinite), blessed be He. "His life" is the light that illuminates the sefirot, the "light of vitality" – because Atzilut is an expression of Ḥokhma (Wisdom), and the light of Ḥokhma is life-giving. And "His attributes" refers to the vessels themselves. Everything in Atzilut is Divinity, pure unity.
So, if Atzilut is entirely Divine, how can we account for the changes that seem to be caused by the lower worlds? If change implies quantity and relativity – qualities that seemingly can't apply to the unchanging Divine – how can change even exist in Atzilut?
This leads to another challenging question: If everything in Atzilut is Divinity, and there are no newly created vessels, how can we make the three distinctions mentioned in the Tikkunei Zohar – "He, His life, and His attributes"? Shouldn't it all be one simple, unified whole?
These questions are not meant to be easily answered. They are invitations to delve deeper into the mysteries of Kabbalah, to grapple with the seemingly paradoxical nature of the Divine, and to consider how the infinite and the finite can, in fact, be intimately connected. What do you think? How can we reconcile the idea of an unchanging Divine with the constant flux of our own experience?