Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 17: Therefore, one must not wonder at how it was that the choice had been taken from us, since we must be completed and come to the third state, since it is already present in the first.

The first state and the third state are both wholeness, but we don’t exist in the first state yet, and we have no understanding, no feeling, and no self attainment. There is no human being (Adam) as such created and that stands out in his existence. He is still in theory, in the discernments that we still have yet to acquire.

It’s like a drop of semen that is not a human being yet. So where does he begin? We still don’t know when exactly an embryo in its mother’s womb can be called a human being that has a body and a life of its own. Perhaps it’s from the first division of one cell into two, or perhaps it’s the moment when the embryo begins to feel. But this doesn’t solve all the problems. Humanity is still very far from determining or defining what a free independent human being is. Yet, in the first phases of our existence in the world of Infinity we do not exist independently.

So when do we really begin to feel ourselves and become ourselves? Was it when we climbed down from the trees and evolved into a creature that is a bit more than an ape? Can we call this whole historic evolution the process of becoming a human being? The ego simply pushed us forward and demanded that we benefit at the expense of others. Did anyone really know what he was doing? If everyone is driven by the instincts of the desire to receive, where is the real us? In the meantime, we speak of creatures who are constantly operated by different factors. Yes, we suffer a little, but the pain itself is not a sign of independence yet.

The human being in us actually begins to develop from the point of connection, and even a little in the preparation for it. If we return to the example of the embryo: The father’s drop of semen enters the mother’s womb and adheres to the wall of the womb and begins to multiply due to the connection between mother and father. A common cell begins to develop between the whiteness of the father and the redness of the mother and this is a connection. The whiteness of the father is the Creator and the redness of the mother is the created being, and now there is contact between them.

Thus Bina works with Malchut and we have to accept this form of development. The moment I can annul myself and another can annul himself, we connect, or I can connect to the group, and that moment is the beginning of a human being in me.

Of course, everything is in the first state, in the world of Infinity, and we reach all that in practice in the third state. But the second state is the necessary middle state so we can have freewill, so that we will develop and understand what the secret of our development is. By going through the sequence of these states we learn about the system called the Creator, about His attributes and His actions. We learn about creation which is something we couldn’t do before.
[125021]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/6/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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