Chapter 4: Our Universe

In the beginning of the previous chapter, we wrote that before anything was created, there was the Thought of Creation. This Thought created Phases One through Four of the will to receive, which created the worlds Adam Kadmon through Assiya, which then created the soul of Adam ha Rishon, which broke into the myriad souls we have today. It’s very important to remember this order of creation because it reminds us that things evolve from above downward, from spiritual to corporeal, and not the other way around. In practical terms, it means that our world is created and governed by the spiritual worlds...

Just as it happens in the spiritual worlds, everything in our world evolves along the same five stages from Zero to Four. Our world is built like a pyramid. At the bottom, the beginning of the evolution of this world, there is the still (inanimate) level, made of trillions of tons of matter...

When Kabbalists talk about spiritually evolving, they talk about climbing up the spiritual ladder. This is why Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag named his commentary on The Book of Zohar, Perush HaSulam (The Ladder Commentary), for which he was named Baal HaSulam (Owner of the Ladder). But if we flip back a few pages, we’ll find that “up the ladder” actually means “back to the roots.” This is because we’ve already been up there, but now we have to figure out how to get back there by ourselves...

As we’ve explained in the previous section, the lower part of Phase Four is the substance of the soul of Adam ha Rishon. Just as the worlds are built according to the growing desires, Adam’s soul (humanity) evolved through five phases: Zero (still) through Four (spiritual)...

The physical world evolves by the same order of degrees as the spiritual world, through a pyramid of desires. In the spiritual world, the desires (still, vegetative, animate, speaking, and spiritual) create the worlds Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya. In the physical world, they create minerals, plants, animals, people, and people with “points in their hearts”...