Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” p. 39: Now we have shown that the Creator’s desired goal for the Creation He had created is to bestow upon His creatures, so they would know His truthfulness and greatness, and receive all the delight and pleasure He had prepared for them, in the measure described in the verse: “Ephraim my darling son, is he joy of his parents?” (Jeremiah 31, 19). Thus, you clearly find that this purpose does not apply to the still and the great spheres, such as the earth, the moon, or the sun, however luminous they may be, and not to the vegetative or the animate, for they lack the sensation of others, even from among their own species. Therefore, how can the sensation of the Godly and His bestowal apply to them?

Humankind alone, having been prepared with the sensation of others of the same species, who are similar to them, after delving in Torah and Mitzvot, when they invert their will to receive to a will to bestow, and come to equivalence of form with their Maker, they receive all the degrees that have been prepared for them in the Upper Worlds, called NRNHY. By that they become qualified to receive the purpose of the Thought of Creation. After all, the purpose of the creation of all the worlds was for man alone.

Question: The sensation of others is inherent in us, by which, through love for created beings, we can obtain love for the Creator. It turns out that the attitude towards the other is the means that we just use?

Answer: In our world a “means” is what we use along the way and throw away when we reach the goal. If I found a more effective means, I give up the previous one because the main thing for me is the goal.

In spirituality, things are different: Here, the goal is revealed in the means itself, and the means becomes the goal because it is not the I who reaches to the Creator, it is the system that I reveal and put up together by my own effort, by identifying with it like one whole. If I had stayed the way I am, I would have used the means only on the way to the goal. However, the process is different; being included in the means, I obtain the willingness to adhere to the goal.

Thus, the means is sacred for me because I reach the goal not with its help, but within it. I become it. My soul is this, the entire collective system.

It turns out that who I am now is not the real me. The real me does not exist yet because my current “I” came from the Creator, it is His part from above, that does not exist on its own. It represents the force of breaking and is intended to feel itself “cut off,” separated.

This helps me to adhere to the group, and in it, one step higher, I find myself. And here, in this one whole, I find fulfillment: the Creator.

Thus, I cannot reach the Creator by bypassing the means, the group. And besides, I do not throw away the means when I reach the goal. On the contrary, by being cut off from it, I build in it the system in which I discover the life, called the Creator, the reviving inner Force, the “elixir of life.”
[82789]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/12/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
There Is A Means In This World
Valuing The Means As Highly As The Goal
I Want To Cross The Machsom!

Filed under: Collective Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, My Similarity to the Creator, Q&A | Add Comment →