Is All of Nature Inside Me?

Q: I was always amazed by the versatility of the types of birds, plants, fish, etc. Finally, in one of your lectures, I received understanding. It is all a result of the reciprocal penetration between the Sefirot and the cooperation between them in the spiritual world. My question is: Does man include everything within him, and how is it reflected in me? Is it in the versatility of my emotions?

A: What happens in one body, in one soul in the spiritual world, is divided into many bodies within our own. For example, inside man there is a Pharaoh, Moses, birds, fish, everything around us and anything we can possibly imagine is within us. They exist in us in the form of spiritual forces, desires.

Each of these inner attributes also exists outside us, as a separate body, a different species and a different attribute. In fact, it would be more correct to say that I am the one who divides, through my emotions, the force that surrounds me into bodies, attributes and various forces. This is what we call “our world.” But the spiritual commandment of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” for example, is obvious, because both the other and I are one spiritual body.

That is why the good attitude of one particle of the collective body toward another is obvious. And so it is with all other things that are separated in our world. All our problems stem from the fact that we feel the various parts of the universe as disconnected and independent of one another. But since inside each person there are all the forces and the attributes of our world, it is said in the Torah that he who corrects himself, corrects the entire world.

It is more accurate to say that when we correct ourselves and begin to relate to the whole world as we do to our own body, we thus correct within and outside ourselves.