Sin as Murder & The Tree of Knowledge

וידבר גו’ והקריתם לכם, ש”פ מטות-מסעי, מבה”ח מנחם-אב, ה’תשי”ב — הנחה בלתי מוגה

The following essay is not intended to be an accurate translation or explanation of the Maamer. Instead, it is the result of thinking about the ideas presented in this Maamer and attempting to explain them in ways that make sense to me.

I.

Adam sentenced us all to death when he ate that fruit. Justice at that moment demanded that he be punished with the fate he meted out. But it was not to be so. The Master of the World saw fit to be kind to him, and he was judged as if he had not meant to do it. Instead of being judged as a murderer, he was seen as if the death he brought upon the world had been an unintentional consequence of his actions. Instead of being killed himself, he was exiled from his paradise home.

Dovid King of Israel marvels at this kindness. While asking G-d to show him the G-dly way, he invokes this ancient act of kindness: “זְכֹר־רַחֲמֶ֣יךָ ה’ וַחֲסָדֶ֑יךָ כִּ֖י מֵעוֹלָ֣ם הֵֽמָּה” “Remember your kindness and mercy, for they always were there.” ‘Always’ that is because that kindness was evident in Adam’s sentencing back at the beginning of it all. He goes on: “טוֹב־וְיָשָׁ֥ר ה’ עַל־כֵּ֤ן יוֹרֶ֖ה חַטָּאִ֣ים בַּדָּֽרֶךְ“ “You are good and upright, this is why you show sinners the path.” The path he is alluding to is the path set out by the many sign-posts all across the Land of Israel, pointing the path towards the Cities of Refuge. It was in those cities that one who had unintentionally killed his fellow could find respite from the vengeance of the slain’s kin. It was in those cities where he would spend his time atoning for the truly terrible thing he had done. This is the very same kindness granted Adam, now granted all who mistakenly cause death.

All this has been a brief rendering of a Midrash. The question raised by all this seems obvious, in what way was Adam eating the fruit at all comparable to killing a man?

II.

Murder entails wasting life. Destroying life. Spilling the lifeblood of man. Kabbalistic literature holds any sin at all to be guilty of the same. It is a waste of precious life. The divine consciousness that inhabits us is being poured into the bottomless pit that the shallow attractions of materialism comprise. The life force that belongs to the realm of that which is good and holy, is being sacrificed at the altar of the profane. The biblical imagery employed to make this point is provided by the verse “שֹׁפֵךְ֙ דַּ֣ם הָֽאָדָ֔ם בָּֽאָדָ֖ם דָּמ֣וֹ יִשָּׁפֵ֑ךְ”, (lit. whoever spills the blood of man, by man shall his blood be spilled) which is taken to mean “The blood of The (higher) Man is spilled into Man (the lower)”.

To make sense of this metaphor, it is necessary to know what it refers to. Man is unique among organisms in that he is not unidimensional, he is composed of a highly plastic body of knowledge. Whereas the graceful gazelle has only its pre-programmed instincts to guide it, and thus it’s emotional reactions are governed entirely by a mechanism that is instinctual rather than learned. Man is blessed with a great deal of instinct as well, but he has the remarkable ability to use learned abstract information to shape his emotional state. For the gazelle to learn that traffic is harmful, it has to see for itself. Man can theorize that it presents a danger, and react to the theory (without having to ever see the tragic consequences).

Man is thus not locked into a particular emotional vibe, instead, every item he encounters can potentially elicit any range of emotional response from him.

This means that man has an almost limitless ability to encode his world with any range of meanings, and that it is not obvious what any given item means, how one experiences the world is decided almost entirely by one’s values. Two individuals from two different cultures or value structures have very different views on things. Thus ‘who’ a person ‘is’, is largely a question of the priorities which govern him.

This is not to say that man is any kind of blank slate, he is born with a tremendous amount of a priori programming regarding what he will come to value. This is to say the word ‘Man’ itself, should not be taken to mean an ‘individual’ so much as ‘a collection of emotional states organized under one hierarchy of values’. We have not one but two Men within us. Two conflicting value systems are battling for supremacy. One emerges out of our consciousness itself, the other emerges from the material world.

Supernal Man as it were, refers to the value system that the consciousness which inhabits the body has, a priori to its entrance into the body. In addition to a complete lack of appreciation for the pleasures of materialism, its primary drive is towards reconnection with its source. That source is the source of all life, and indeed all things, the infinite G-d.

By default, any consciousness which emerges from The Source shares this value system, for this value system is implicit in the G-dly desire which forced its emergence in the first place. As such, any spiritual Being not embodied in a corrupting form is part of the Supernal Man.

The worldly Man is the value system of a body designed for survival in a physical world. Not only does it value material pleasures, but that is also all it knows how to care about. It is a shell. It does not itself have much life, it is more like a filter imposed on the reality of the consciousness. A filter that causes the consciousness to see the world from its vantage point. It hides the consciousness from itself. It is the Man of Klipah, (lit. Peel/Shell) so-called because it conceals the divine value within all things, instead, it only allows you to see the shallow material shell. Instead of seeing a particular item as a vehicle by which to express G-dliness, it is seen as something base material pleasure can be derived from.

Because the values of the body are tailored to perpetuating its existence on this earth and nothing more (a prospect the soul finds utterly dreary at best), the consciousness finds it all to be a dead weight. If it pursues the pleasures of the body, it will forever find more joy in hypping itself up for the supposed pleasures the act is supposed to provide, than in the actual act itself. The serial pursuit of any pleasurable thing becomes an addiction, like a moth flying into a streetlamp. Constantly seeking, never finding, always disappointed.

Life finds fulfillment in life, not from things. If an act somehow embodies something of the consciousness, that act will energize the actor. If an act is meaningful to another person, and it is motivated for the sake of that other person, here too life is to be found. For the soul sees infinite value in another living soul, as a reflection of their common infinite source. Despite all the energy and lifeblood invested in the name of such causes, the actor does not notice the missing energy, if anything he feels more alive. Meaningful toil does not make you heavier, instead, it gives you wings.

But any act which can only be valuable as the provider of material pleasure, that cannot hold any value to the consciousness, will swallow up any energy devoted towards it. This is the core of what it means to sin. It is to waste your precious lifeforce on things that cannot but imprison it. It is to puncture a hole in the vessel which contains the divine life, spilling the lifeblood into the abyss. This is very close indeed to the definition of murder.

The Sin of the Tree of Knowledge was no exception, if anything it provided the rule. It opened the door to all the madness that has come since. It did this because it gave rise to the ego. It applied the selfish materialistic filter of a hunted animal to the eyes of the infinite and G-dly consciousness. Instead of the body being transparent to the soul, the soul adopted the identity of the lowly body. The physical body is dying always, and if a man is to be a body, then he is forever cursed to die. It was here that the confusion which causes one to donate his life to false gods was born.

III.

Based on our explanation, one would assume that the ego did not exist before the Tree of Knowledge. Until we began to give it our life, it did not have any life of its own. This is however not quite correct. A certain degree of self-aware ego did predate the Sin, but before it was corrupted it served a limited, positive role.

How can Klipah, whose only purpose is to conceal the divine value in all things and instead see the world as a playground for shallow pleasures, serve a positive role in the service of G-d?

Analogous to the peel of a fruit, which protects it as it begins the process of developing into a fully formed edible fruit. The ego can be useful so long as it is mere self-esteem and not arrogance. In beginning to blaze one’s moral journey, it seems almost arrogant to think that your actions matter. You feel like an insignificant blip, who can do no true evil, if only because nothing you do could be significant enough to register as such. Nobody will notice or care whether you degenerate into a human wreck or spend years fine-tuning your character into a paragon of virtue. So why bother? This is the moment when a kernel of arrogance is called for. Yes perhaps it is self-aggrandizing to claim cosmic importance to your actions, but that is the premise of any true moral system. That what you can do, the puny sack of flesh and bone that you are truly does matter to G-d Almighty, the King of all Kings.

The claim of insignificance is but a thinly veiled justification for an atheistic amorality. An attempt to avoid the moral responsibility that is inherent in occupying space in this world. It does so by denying the significance of the space which one occupies. “G-d cannot possibly care about me” is both a denial of G-d’s omnipresence as well as a denial of one’s own value. Ultimately it is a lie, for there is no limit to G-d’s ability to care and smallness is certainly no inhibition.

In this peripheral role, Klipah existed at peace with Holiness. Not only did it not actively destroy one’s ability to experience the divine, but it even assisted in the construction of a relationship with the divine. As a peel to a fruit.

The great degeneration of the Tree of Knowledge is that self-awareness became antagonistic to the consciousness’ knowing who it truly is. Instead of complimenting the divine-centric path of the soul, now it forced a materialistic vision of reality onto the mind.

IV.

The problem is not the existence of the ego, it is that we noticed the ego. And once seen, it cannot be unseen. It was no longer a peripheral knowledge, it became enmeshed in everything we do and feel. When we began to notice our sensation of the material, we made everything about ourselves. To us, everything we see became just a tool to get ourselves some pleasure. Even the good and holy things we do have a tinge of ego lingering in there somewhere.

The proper role of self-awareness or self-esteem is when it serves a defensive role. Its sole purpose is to answer the nagging sense that I am not worthy to do anything worthwhile. In any other capacity, it becomes evil. It belongs outside, protecting the fruit, not in the fruit itself. Unpacked, this analogy means that the ego cannot be actively experienced, it must remain peripheral, unnoticed in the background somewhere.

The peel is only useful when the fruit is growing, when it is ripe and it comes time to eat the fruit, you discard the peel. It is only there to protect the fruit from outside dangers, it cannot ever be a part of the fruit. Similarly, self-esteem is only ever healthy when it is there to combat the nagging sense of worthlessness. When one reaches a point where he has conquered the evil within him and it will no longer attack him with such thoughts, he must discard the ego entirely.

Further, it cannot be invited into the good work that one is doing, it is never healthy to make it ‘about you’. The Arizal describes this ideal as ‘The Klipos were under all worlds’, meaning that nobody experienced the perspective of the Klipah. The holy soul was completely unaware of the existence of the self as an agent that could be served.

It was the sin that mixed good and evil. Adam looked into the Klipah, he noticed the appeal of the material world, the taste of the fruit, the pleasure it could offer him. He poured some of his life force into it, and soon he was inside its shell, looking out. This forever bonded man to the shallow reality of the shell. Once seen, it cannot simply be unseen.

A man is a Pnimi (lit. internal; used to refer to direct conscious experience). He is defined by the things he experiences. The emotions he feels welling up in his heart, the ideas that flow from his mind, this is who he thinks of himself as. The totality of all his feelings and thoughts. There are parts of him that run much deeper, parts that he does not experience consciously. But ultimately, although they play a pivotal role in shaping how one reacts emotionally to the world around you, they go unnoticed.

Before the Cheit Etz HaDaas, knowledge about how you could manipulate the world for your self-interest did exist, but it was theoretical and unnoticed. Upon encountering an item, the information that seemed relevant about it was how it could be used to fulfill its purpose on this earth. But when he tasted the fruit, he realized that the world could give him pleasure and that he could use it to his ends. Realizing a thing like this changes you, the things that stand out to you when you look at the world now are how it can serve you, not any higher purpose. It doesn’t matter how much you know better, you have been robbed of your innocence. In this way, the ego which had always been subconscious entered his conscious experience. Now it became saturated into everything he felt or thought, enmeshed into the very fabric of his being. Henceforth, good and evil ceased to be black and white and became a never-ending blur of greys.

It is only under the smokescreen of this confusion that Klipah can mount actual opposition to goodness. The greatest evils are disguised as blessedly good, and kind-hearted souls willingly donate their lives to causes that generate untold suffering. Klipah no longer is dependent on the meager flow of life granted it (just enough for its proper limited role). Instead, it is flooded with the gift of life, happily given to it by confused souls everywhere. Under the cover of the blindness imposed upon us by the ego, evil can be marketed as the highest moral good. Petty, trifling matters take on airs of great importance and idealistic youngsters endlessly pursue them. Many devote their time to an endless stream of small selfish acts, in the hopes of finding something resembling peace.

Even the truly good things that we do, are besmirched by ego. Our pride upon achieving a great feat of spiritual accomplishment taints it ever so slightly. We’d like to take credit for the holiness we allow to flow through us. And thus the distinction between what is selfish and what is virtuous is deeply muddled. This is the mixture. Degeneracy markets itself as tranquility. Goodness is besmirched with petty pride.

V.

This is why the Cheit Etz HaDaas is akin to murder. The spilling of a pure life into the dark squalid dungeon of Klipah. Pouring the lifeblood of Divine Man into the lesser, messy Man. The G-dly consciousness animates all realities, as a soul inhabits the body. Sin creates a puncture in the fabric of reality, sucking a vivifying breath of life into an artificial prison. This phenomenon is referred to as creating a rupture in the Divine Name.

All this is the craft of the evil inclination, which lurks in the hearts of all men; to market falsehood in a palatable fashion. To read light into darkness and darkness into light, thus luring the innocent confused soul into its snare.

One cannot understand why any force would be so motivated to suck a man into stupid selfish acts of destruction until it becomes understood that the ego can only obtain life for itself by kidnapping some from an actual life form. All life ultimately stems from G-d Almighty, but to receive life directly from him requires one to submit to his very demanding will. Any being who wants to live must be sensitive to his desires, otherwise, he cannot tolerate inhabiting them.

A prerequisite idea here is that there is no major difference between G-d being interested in a particular aspect of reality, and that reality being given life. There are parts of reality that G-d is interested in merely because they serve some use in the grand scheme of things. And then there are things that he finds truly meaningful. But either way, to gain life, a being must serve some role in his universe. Klipa is the instinct towards complete independence, and so it is not willing to play second fiddle. It rejects the idea that it must serve anything beyond itself. And so it holds no appeal to G-d, nor the G-dly consciousness which comes to inhabit reality. No lifeforce will willingly enter into the Klipah mentality.

Thus Klipah can only ever live as a shadow, not dead per se, but certainly not possessed of life. The only way to receive life without earning it is to steal it from unsuspecting souls. This is the craft of the ego. For the ego desires nothing more than to be independent, to be responsible to no one. And it will do anything to maintain the illusion that it is unbeholden to any morality.

Not only this but whence it has tricked someone into falling for it, it ascends on high to accuse him. Proclaiming that it’s possession of this life is just. It claims that it was not acquired under false pretenses and that the sinner truly knew what he was doing.

VI.

So it arises that the primary distinction to be made between good and evil, Holiness and Klipah, is that holiness is alive, while Klipah dies if ignored. It cannot sustain life for long. It does not live, it borrows life. All its lifeforce is what is leaked to it via acts of sin.

Perhaps this does not seem fair, for no created entity is alive unless given life. Even the holiest of bodies are artificially alive in a sense. They are utterly dependent on the infinite G-d himself and his desire to create them, for their life is derived from his interest in them. As the Zohar puts it: “If he were to leave them, they would be left as a body without a soul.” If this is true, then neither the Holy nor the Klipah has any life to call its own, and instead, they both depend on G-d himself to imbue them with vitality. If so, what difference is there between them?

There is nothing truly true besides G-d himself. Everything depends upon him, but he depends upon nothing. Every entity which exists is the product of the divine desire which enters into it and becomes its soul. In fact, when we said above that “If he were to leave them, they would be left as a body without a soul” this refers only to the light which becomes the soul, but the body too owes its existence to G-d’s interest in it. If his will to create were to cease for a moment, everything which exists would vanish without a trace, as if creation had never occurred at all.

This is all true, but it is nonetheless quite unfair to put both the parasitic Klipah and the realm of Holiness in the same bucket. In the liturgy, we exclaim: “He is established and His Name is established.” Established in the sense that He is secure, is not needy for outside assistance. Just as He is alive, so to his Name, which is a classic mystical reference to the manifestation of G-dliness within structures of existence. Meaning to say, that a being whose structure is in harmony with the Divine Will, (such that its identity is one that G-dliness can call home) is alive in and of itself. To say that it is dependent on G-d for its life is not incorrect, but because its identity is in sync with G-d. The source of its life is embedded in its very fabric. Thus the tzaddikim are called the throne of G-d, because, by dint of their righteousness, they embody G-dliness to the extent that they and their G-dly souls are truly one.

To explain how it is possible for what seems to be a created entity, to merge so completely with G-d himself, that it is said to be alive of its own accord:

Consciousness as we know it must be distinguished from the way the term is applied to G-d. Our consciousness, (or what Chassidus calls a luminary), by its very existence must be aware. It cannot choose to not be aware of the reality it inhabits. Like the sun for instance, which cannot cease to shine and still be the sun. By its very nature, it must shine. It is compelled from within to shine out.

It is known to those versed in the deeper mysteries, that the light which G-d puts forth is practically (it is as if it is) preceded by nothing. האור שלמעלה הוא כמו שקדמו ההעדר. The light under discussion here is the first thing that we could begin to call awareness, not G-d’s essence, but the first thing he chooses to become aware of. This infinite light is here to express an awareness of himself, not yet seeking anything other than what he already is. It merely reveals him. Here we see the contrast to the lower ‘luminaries’ which are nothing if not light makers. G-d is not defined by the fact that he emanates light. He can be G-d and not produce an awareness, of himself, of anything. He can not exist, and still, be himself.

It is said that the Infinite Light is ‘high above to no limit, and low below to no end’. This comes to emphasize the wholeness of the Infinite Light. On the one hand, it can be drawn into creating the world, including the most base elements of the most coarse world. Even into our physical world, devoid of obvious G-dly meaning, which is the lowest place. Even here the Light is present, having been filtered into the forms and vessels which look out at this dark space. There is no place too low for him to care about, he can be found everywhere.

And yet, on the other hand, even the most refined and spiritual of forms, are too low-resolution to capture who he is. None of it must hold meaning for him. There is no place that he so sees himself that he cannot help but be drawn towards it.

He doesn’t have to care about anything, and yet he can care about everything. Such is his completeness.

Both of these tendencies are equally present within him. Because of this, it is not as if there is a potential Light lurking within his essence, there is nothing that makes him tend towards revealing himself rather than remain to himself. Nothing pushing him towards articulating himself into minor forms rather than remaining the unknowable mystery that he is. In short, absent a choice on his part, it simply does not matter to him if he shines any light or not.

But all this is the case before his choosing to emanate an awareness of himself. Once the light does emerge though, it is not something he is ambivalent about. Instead, the light is an extension of the luminary, it is everything that his unknowable essence is. Just as the essence is not dependent upon anything to be (exist is too coarse a word), neither is the light dependent upon anything else to be, for it is absolutely one with its source.

You see, ‘light’ as a physical phenomenon is unique, and there is a reason the Kabbalists prefer the metaphor of ‘light’ to the more philosophically palatable ‘flow’ or Shefa. Flow does not tell you anything about what is being put forth, only that something is flowing from one point to another. As a metaphor, light has the downside of describing what sort of phenomena is being discussed. Nonetheless, there is an aspect of light which is invaluable when trying to understand G-dliness. Light cannot exist without being connected to the luminary. It can never be an independent being. The moment anything blocks the line of sight to its source, it vanishes. This describes consciousness perfectly.

Another component of this dynamic is that the light is merely a projection forth of the lamp. There is no aspect of the lamp’s light which goes unshone. There is nothing between G-d and his unfiltered light, thus just as he is without cause, so too his light is without cause. His existence is inherent in his very being. Just as his essence can create worlds from whole cloth, so too does his light. It is not as if it also has his abilities, it is him.

So here we find something of a paradox, where on the one hand the light is not ‘natural’ to him. (For this reason, the light is called ‘light without end’ and not ‘light without beginning’.) And yet it is so very much his that you cannot say it is new. There is nothing ‘artificial’ about it; nothing that would revert to not being naturally. To the point where when the desire to create arises in the light, the essence is there with it every step of the creative process.

Thus here we find the first iteration of the phenomena where something that might be termed a ‘creation’ actually merges with G-d himself so much that it cannot be said to be dependent upon anything outside of itself for its existence. Yes, it depends on G-d’s essence for its existence, but its existence is so G-dly that it does not require creative effort for G-d to inhabit it.

This same dynamic plays out even when forms are created for the light to inhabit. Even when his infinite consciousness is inserted into particular vessels which color it and limit what it can be, if those vessels are somehow true to who he is, they too merge with him sufficiently to be considered self-sufficient. He is not hiding within them, for hiding is an active act that must be actively done. Instead, he feels at home in the forms to the point where they can be said to house the G-dliness which creates them.

It is relatively easy to see how the light can be so aligned with G-d that it can gain its existence from his, but what is truly interesting is that even a vessel can be. To fully make the G-dly life which inhabits it at home, it must align itself to the nature of this life. When a vessel fully embodies who the light is, curtailing the excesses of its nature to accommodate the sensitivities of its soul, it becomes truly G-dly. It is through its willingness to get out of the way and allow G-d to act through it, that even the limiting form gains the status of Holiness. For that matter, the souls from which our consciousnesses emerge are the product of the union of these original lights and vessels. And if both parents are so united with G-d that they can be classified as truly alive, certainly their child is as well.

The consciousness which inhabits us is fundamentally a part of G-d Himself. It is derived from that light that merely comes to reveal who he is and the form which is devoted to embodying that light in turn. The result is a soul which at its core is a spark of G-d.

The Midrash illustrates this idea with a truly profound analogy;

“A king enters a city with his various generals. He has generals of the infantry, generals of the calvary, and field marshals. The notables of the city need a way to develop a relationship with the new king, and so they each decide to begin cultivating friends in high places. One local picks an infantry general to intercede on his behalf before the king. Another picks a general of the calvary and a third picks a field marshal. But there was a clever one among them who said: “I shall pick the king himself, for all the others can be reassigned, but the king cannot be reassigned.” The Midrash concludes: “This is the meaning of that which is written — חֶלְקִ֤י יְהוָה֙ אָמְרָ֣ה נַפְשִׁ֔י — ‘G-d is my portion’ says my soul.”

The choosing of the King signifies the soul’s preference for a demanding relationship with G-d himself, who is truly alive. By describing him as ‘my portion’ it is in effect also saying that ‘I am a portion of him’. The soul is nothing separate from him, it is just that it is only one tiny refraction of him, but still completely one with his essence. Again, it is worth reiterating that this also means that the G-dly life inhabiting the persona of the soul does not feel imprisoned by being compelled to be present within the soul. It is fully comfortable with who the soul is and so it willingly dwells within the soul. Thus it is effortlessly alive.

All the above only applies to that which is Holy. An element of Klipah is however obviously not aligned to the will of the divine spark inhabiting it. Not only is it not on the same page as its life, but it is also actively opposed to acting out its wishes. Thus the life remains aloof from the unholy form which is thrust upon it; yes it sees it, and in that sense, it does inhabit the form. But it never can identify with the unholy form, and it is always an act of self-control for the life to remain present. (Because there is a certain purpose that evil does serve, and to that end, the divine spark is willing to endure the degradation of having to sit through all manner of horrors. But evil is never desirable as an end, only as a means to provide mankind with the choice to reject G-d, thus rendering their embrace of him meaningful.)

Thus when a person engages in an activity that only holds meaning to the ego, his soul is forced to sit through some deeply uncomfortable moments. His inner spark of life cannot enter into the activity and so, the act will weigh down on the actor instead of picking him up. Any energy he feels upon doing the act is just some of the effort he put into it being reflected back at him. He does not gain life, instead, his existence is heavier than before. That little bit of life which is forced to inhabit the moment within, and cannot merely watch from without, is in exile. It is imprisoned within it.

We know intuitively that to exist in an environment which does not shape itself to accommodate your wishes, is a prison. Being forced to inhabit a place that you cannot shape and make your own; this is a prison. And when the ego leads a person to behave in a manner that is completely blind to the sensitivities of the divine soul, his soul feels the body to become a prison.

So we can now clearly see the difference in the degree to which Holiness can be said to be alive and the extent to which Klipah can be said to be alive. Holiness unites with its consciousness, it embodies the sensitivities of the consciousness, and it in turn identifies with the form. The form can thus be said to be truly alive, not a drag on the light that the light would rather do without, but a space that the light is happy and comfortable inhabiting. Klipah must blind the consciousness to its own sensitivities to even stand a chance of anyone ever choosing to engage with it, and even then the life poured into it becomes exiled within it.

VII.

In general, we can say that the difference between K’dusha (Holiness) and Klipah is threefold:

1. The source from which they emerge, or the reason G-d is interested in their existence.
2. The manner in which they are created.
3. The manner in which they exist.

As previously stated, all things emerge from G-d’s interest in them. This includes evil. But since they are opposed to his wishes, he is interested in them in a manner of ‘These are not pleasant to me’, in the words of a Midrash. He does not need them to exist, he only needs them to appear to exist to us, and so, they do not truly exist. In truth anything devoid of G-dly purpose is but a mirage, any value it seems to hold is but an illusion. Held up in front of us to give us a choice, it need only be convincing enough to provide us the ability to reject G-d via it. But once the choice has been made, it’s attractiveness fades away. Only a void is left where something should have existed. This is the difference in their source, Klipah emerges from a fundamentally different sort of interest than does K’dusha. A very shallow interest.

Consequently, there is a difference in the manner in which they are created. In Holiness the life inhabiting it embraces the form and identifies with it, bringing it truly to life. But in Klipah the life is not at home whatsoever, it hangs back, transcending the moment, not willing to embrace it. The experience of the unholy act is thus left dead, a void where life should have been. The lingering sense that there are better things for you to do, even if one does not know enough to feel shame. (This is all true irrespective of the knowledge or beliefs of the person doing the act.) Thus we have the final two differences: Different in creation because the creative light remains aloof and does not inhabit the act as it does with a Holy act. In the manner of its existence because whereas Holiness is alive, having merged with its life, Klipah is dead, utterly dependent upon sinners for continual donations.

VIII.

So it was that as the Jews prepared to enter the Land of Canaan to transform it into the Land of Israel, Moses was commanded to establish cities of refuge. These were to provide a solution to help the inadvertent killer. As we have explained, this category can rightly be seen to include all committers of sin.

The solution offered by this place of refuge does not only enable one to remove the sin and its effects upon him and reality at large, instead it refines his awareness, the Pnimi that he calls his personality. This component is found specifically in Torah study, for while the specific acts of the Mitzvos do connect one to the Divine, they do not change one’s personality, at least not directly. They are as garments for the soul, but the conscious personality does not internalize the G-dliness they contain. Torah study however directly affects one’s conscious personality. The ideas that animate one’s perspective of reality, that cause specific aspects of the world to stand out to you in ways unlike that of other people, these are changed when one absorbs the ideas of the Torah. Tanya describes this union of idea and mind and the mind surrounding the idea and the idea surrounding the mind. For when one truly understands an idea, it is incorporated into the fabric of his reality. It enters the subconscious filter of presupposed ideas that govern how we see the world. Thus it surrounds our mind, forever refining us, long after we cease to actively learn it. Torah is called ‘food’ for this reason. In the same way, you are what you eat, you become the ideas you absorb. They come to comprise the body from which you experience the world.

It is through transforming one’s personality, one’s form, into a being that one’s soul feels comfortable with, that one comes to be truly alive. The life merges with the body, filling the void of existential angst, to the point that the personality itself is not a mere dead weight, but identifies with the divine spark which inhabits it. Then the soul’s innate bond with its Infinite source is revealed, and ‘you who cleave to G-d, your G-dly life force, are truly alive this day.’ אתם הדבקים בהוי’ אלקיכם חיים כולכם היום