Adam ha Rishon—The Common Soul

Adam ha Rishon, the common soul (the creature), is the actual root of everything that happens here. It is a structure of desires that emerged once the formation of the spiritual worlds was completed. As we’ve said above, the five worlds, Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya complete the development of the upper part of Phase Four. But the lower part still needs to be developed.

In other words, the soul is made of unworkable desires that couldn’t receive Light in order to give to the Creator when they were first created. Now they must surface one by one and become corrected—workable—with the help of the worlds, the workable desires.

Thus, just like the upper part of Phase Four, its lower part is divided into still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of desire. Adam ha Rishon evolves by the same degrees as the worlds and the four basic phases. But Adam’s desires are egoistic, self-centered; this is why he couldn’t receive Light to begin with. As a result, we, the parts of Adam’s soul, have lost the sensation of wholeness and unity in which we were created.

We must understand how the spiritual system works. The Creator’s desire is to give; this is why He created us and sustains us. As we’ve said, a desire to receive is self-centered by its nature; it absorbs, while a desire to give is necessarily focused outwardly towards the receiver. This is why a desire to receive cannot create. This is also why the Creator must have a desire to give, or He wouldn’t be able to create.

However, because He wants to give, what He creates will necessarily want to receive, otherwise He will not be able to give. So He created us with a desire to receive, and with nothing else. This is important to understand; there is nothing within us other than a desire to receive, and there is nothing that should be in us other than a desire to receive. So if we receive from Him, the cycle is complete. He’s happy and we’re happy. Correct?

Actually, not quite. If all we want is to receive, then we can’t relate to the giver because there’s nothing in us that turns outwardly to see where the reception is coming from. It turns out that we must have a desire to receive, but we must also know the giver, and for that we need a desire to give. This is why we have Phase One and Phase Two.

The way to have both desires is not to create a new desire that was not instilled in us by the Creator. The way to do it is to look solely at the pleasure we are giving to the giver, regardless of the pleasure we may or may not experience in the process. This is called the “intention to bestow.” It is both the essence of the correction, and what turns us as human beings from egoists to altruists. And finally, once we have acquired this quality, we can connect to the Creator, which is what the spiritual worlds are meant to teach us.

Until we feel connected to the Creator, we are considered broken pieces of the soul of Adam ha Rishon, uncorrected desires. The moment we have the intention to bestow, we become corrected and connected, both to the Creator and to the whole of humanity. When all of us are corrected, we will rise again to our Root Phase, even beyond the world Adam Kadmon, to the very Thought of Creation, called Ein Sof (No End), because our fulfillment will be endless and eternal.