Inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human degrees in spirituality mean the measure of our participation in the system of reality. At the inanimate level, I reveal this system only passively, being under the total control of the upper force.

I am like an embryo in the mother’s womb whose entire work consists of complete self-annulment. This is work on the inanimate level: to the extent that I annul myself, I reveal the upper one.

At the vegetative degree, I maintain the inanimate level because everything comes out of it, but I already perform special actions that allow me to more deeply reveal the upper one. It means that I become a plant.

However, my growth happens in accordance with the upper one: whatever changes I discover in Him, I also change in the same way. I always maintain similarity with Him, that is, adhesion, like a plant that constantly reaches out to the light, to the sun.

Later we will see that the whole world: inanimate nature, plants, animals, and humans, everyone apart from Kabbalists, obediently repeat all the movements of the Creator, meaning that they exist in adhesion with the upper force. However, a Kabbalist must consciously reach adhesion with the Creator.

At the inanimate level of spirituality, we can connect only through our annulment. By annulling myself, I can enter the other and not be felt in him, but then communication between us is also impossible. A connection arises between us, which does not yet lead to any consequences. However, it merely provides the basis for subsequent forms of communication.

When we mutually connect in such an inanimate way, annulling ourselves to each other, we reach contact with the Creator, only we do not feel it yet.

There is a common feeling that we are under the control of some kind of power, governance, but no more than that. Although this already is a spiritual state, the general Light of Nefesh, there is a very limited perception and understanding in it—just a feeling that you are in the spiritual environment. However, there is already contact with the upper force.

The annulment of a person before the Creator is called “holy still,” an inanimate state of holiness. He becomes absolutely speechless, accepting everything that the upper one does. Therefore, he feels that he exists inside the upper one like an embryo in the mother’s womb who “sees from one end of the world to the other, a candle burns above his head and he is taught the entire Torah .” All of it is because he has completely annulled himself at his degree.
[220414]
From the 3^d part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/18, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

Related Material:
Still, Vegetative, Animate And Speaking
Voluntary Slavery: Performing The Laws Of Nature
Growing On The Creator’s Supplements

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work | Add Comment →