Directions of Development

Q: When you said that everything moves from up downward, from the root to Malchut, I understood that it is Malchut that is in all the other attributes and the whole flow is going upward. But from what I read, it seems that the flow should be toward the middle, inside, to the root phase, which is within man. Does “up” mean “inside?”

A: In the spiritual world, there is no volume or place. It is like describing our feelings: we say “deep emotion,” “high note,” ”great joy,” etc. Creation can be described as spreading from the Creator, from above downward; from the Upper One, from the exalted attributes, to the lower one, the lower attributes.

But we can also look at the development of creation from within, from the Creator outward to a point that draws farther from Him, like moving from the innermost, the most personal and hidden, to something external and less important.

We can also speak about the development of creation as though the Creator surrounds it, “wrapping” it with His goal and controlling it from all sides. Creation is within, like an egg inside a brooding hen.

There are other descriptions of just one thing: the relationship between the creation and Creator. The actual words are merely tools that we use, depending on which attributes, characteristics, qualities and interrelations we are talking about.