Question: What are “angels”?

Answer: Angels are auxiliary forces under whose influence the desire becomes correct and whole: it asks for the forces, correction, and fulfillment.

The desire itself is incapable of performing any action other than feeling and sensing itself. This is similar to the way our sense organs work. They react according to similarity of properties, perceiving something that acts upon them from outside. Apart from this reaction to a change in state, the desire is capable of nothing else; yet, the sensation within the desire itself constitutes the action.

What is action? In each of its states, the desire reaches a certain limit of sensation (i.e., attainment) by feeling that state in all its aspects, and the Reshimot (informational records) of the next state are revealed to it. Then the desire passes into it and begins to feel its influence, until it realizes that it has reached the limit and has fully experienced this state, and then it moves on.

It follows that the desire itself is capable only of feeling what is happening to it. And if so, what, in fact, changes? Reshimot are revealed to the desire. Through the interaction of a Reshimo with the surrounding light, it awakens a certain phenomenon, a feeling or sensation, within the desire.

Sensation is a phenomenon that arises through the interaction of a Reshimo and the light within the general desire. This is not yet creation, but rather a certain material created by the Creator, into which He placed Reshimot—stages or states of development—and the light acting upon these states develops them. There is still nothing here that could be called creation.

And although this material is capable of sensation, it cannot be called creation, because it remains under the authority of the Creator and does not even sense His presence. It perceives only the presence or absence of pleasure on the basis of its Reshimot.

A Reshimo is a memory of a state of absence of fulfillment, emptiness (Hisaron), and of fulfillment, pleasure. When the Reshimot are realized, pleasure is felt upon the Hisaron.

The creation that can emerge in such a situation is a specific relationship of the desire—involving its Reshimot and the light acting upon it—directed not merely toward the pleasure itself, but toward the source of the pleasure. This too comes from above; otherwise, where could such an attitude suddenly arise in the desire? How could it create something fundamentally new within itself that had not previously existed? This happens because together with the light, its source is revealed.

On the other hand, the material developing under the influence of the Reshimot is given the ability to determine for itself that, first and foremost, it wants to develop in order to know the source, to feel the giver of the fulfillment, rather than the fulfillment itself, and also to determine the pace of its development.

In the spiritual world, there is no concept of time; time is a function of desire. Therefore, the intensity of the desire to feel the one who fills it, what is called the host, accelerates the development of the desire as it increasingly reveals itself before the Creator.

In other words, there is a desire upon which another desire is built, and upon that, in turn, another desire is created. First comes the primary desire for pleasures; then the desire to attain the Giver, and finally the desire to be similar to the giver. Only the third desire can be called an independent creation.

The use of the two previous natural desires, namely, the desire for fulfillment and the desire to feel the host (which are both included within the general desire), to determine the degree of equivalence with the Giver, is what is known as “angels,” the means of achieving Devekut, adhesion.

There are angels that seem to act against adhesion, and there are those that promote adhesion, because every state is felt and brought into action only through two opposite forms of attitude toward it; otherwise, it is impossible to act.

Since these forces cannot control the state independently of one another, there are what are called good and evil angels, opposing forces, through which it becomes possible to precisely determine the direction toward the goal.

Angels are not a separate creation, something created outside the desire to receive and the light. They are simply the purposeful use of the desire to receive and the light. That is, they are particular, temporary forces that are used in various states for the purpose of advancement.

In other words, in any state in which creation might find itself, these forces act upon it so that it will receive whatever it needs for that state, to perceive its own condition and be able to advance. Broadly speaking, it can be said that everything that exerts an influence upon creation—both its internal and external environment—is referred to as “angels.”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/22/26, Rabash, “What Are ‘A Layperson’s Vessels,’ in the Work?”

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