The world was created with ten divine utterances. Could it not have been created with a single utterance?
—Ethics of the Fathers 5:1
G-d certainly could have generated the whole of creation without any process at all, instantaneously creating the world He desired. But then, one of two things would be the case. Either every phenomenon would be a visible act of G-d, leaving no room for free choice. Or else the world would have no traceable link to its Creator at all. This is why G-d created the world through the “ten utterances,” each of which is reflected in some aspect of the nature of our existence, so that they stand as a ladder by which we ascend to appreciate the Master of All. —Akeidat Yitzchak, Bereishit 3
For thousands of years, information traveled no faster than its human bearer. Beyond the range of the human ear and eye, man could communicate with his fellows only as speedily as the swiftest means he could devise to physically carry a person (or animal) across the miles which separated them.
But a century and a half ago, the very concept of communication underwent a radical transformation: Man learned to translate words into pulses of energy surging through a wire. Then radio waves were discovered and exploited, even further freeing the flow of information from the limitations imposed by physical distance. Ideas and data could now be transmitted across vast distances in virtually no time at all.
The new communication technologies yielded a vast array of tools which man — imbued by his Creator with the capacity to freely choose between good and evil — could utilize to the betterment of himself and his world, or to their detriment. But no less significant is the way these discoveries changed our very perception of the reality we inhabit. For the first time in our history, we experienced timelessness.
As physical beings, we inhabit a world defined by “spacetime”— a virtual grid in whose context all objects and events are assigned a “place” which defines their relationship with each other, and also separates them by placing an X amount of “distance” between them. Bridging this distance “takes time”: To get from event A to event B, one must first pass through the seconds or centuries which separate them, one at a time; for object A to exert an influence upon object B, it must first surmount the millimeters or miles which separate them, one at a time. In other words, getting from point A to point B is a process — a sequence of actions occurring one after the other.
Such was our experience of reality before the advent of electronic communication. But with the invention of the telegraph, telephone, and radio, the transfer of information became instantaneous. No longer did it take any longer to communicate across the globe than across the room. No longer was time an indomitable factor in linking two points on earth, regardless of the distance between them.
Of course, it does take time for radio waves to pass through space; ultimately, our world is no less physical (i.e., no less defined by the parameters of time and space) than it was two centuries ago. But the fact that we experience a link across distances in no perceptible duration of time represents a breakthrough not only in the way we live but also in the way we think. Perhaps we, living today, cannot appreciate how incredible the notion of instantaneous communication was to the mind of pre-telegraph man. We do know, however, that despite the fact that we never actually supersede time, the concept of “timelessness” has become part and parcel of our idea and experience of reality.
Paradoxically, our newly-acquired capacity to experience timelessness has also deepened our awareness of the timeliness of our lives. As long as we lived wholly within time, we could not attain a true appreciation of what time is. Would we know that “light” exists and be able to study its characteristics if we never experienced darkness? Would we be aware of the phenomenon of “life” if never confronted by its deterioration and departure? To know a thing and appreciate its qualities and potentials we must first surpass its limits, at least in the realm of the mind.
A Meaningful World
Why is time necessary? And why is it important that we should understand what time is? Of course, we cannot even imagine what a truly timeless reality would be like. (Would everything happen at once? Or would things not “happen” at all, only “be”?) But no matter: If G-d would have created a timeless world, that would have been the only comprehensible form of existence, and we would have had no idea of what “time” might be. So is time just one of many possible ways to make our world “work”? Or is there a deeper reason for this particular formulation of reality?
Conversely, we might ask: Having been placed within a time-bound reality, why have we been granted the ability to try its limits and advance to the threshold of timelessness? Is this just so that we should better appreciate the significance of time? Or is there some deeper reason why our time-contextualized lives must also include a glimpse of a reality beyond time’s boundaries?
The Torah’s opening chapter describes the creation of the world as a series of divine communications. (“G-d said, ‘There shall be light!’ and there was light… G-d said, ‘The earth shall sprout forth vegetation…’ and it was so.”) In other words, with His every creation, G‑d is communicating something to us. A tree is not just a food-making machine — it is an insight into the nature of productivity.[1] The sun and the moon are not just celestial light fixtures—they are a metaphor for the giver/recipient dynamic that pervades our existence.[2] In addition to its “functional” purpose, every component of our world is G-d’s way of telling us something about Himself and His relationship with us.
The same is true of time, which can be said to be the first and most basic creation:[3] The phenomenon of time plays a crucial role in our relationship with G-d. For time is the essence of the seder hishtalshelut, the “order of evolution” which G-d employed in His creation of the world in order to facilitate our quest for connection with our Creator and Source.
The “Order of Evolution”
What is the seder hishtalshelut? The teachings of kabbalah describe the physical universe as the last in a chain of numerous “worlds.” We all recognize the existence of realities more abstract than that which frames the physical world: We speak of “the world of ideas,” the “world of emotions,” or the “spiritual world” of the believer and the mystic. The created reality, say the kabbalists, consists of a multitude of such worlds, each the product and outgrowth of the more abstract and spiritual world which precedes it, thus forming an “order of evolution.”
In other words, G-d began His work of creation by creating all existences in their most sublime and spiritual form. He then proceeded to cause them to evolve and metamorphose, in many steps and stages, into successively more concrete forms, ultimately producing our physical world — the “lowliest” and most tangible embodiment of these realities.
Hence, the many worlds of creation are all mirror-images of each other, each containing the same array of elements and creations, and differing only in the degree of substance and tactility they impose on them. For example, physical water is the end product of a series of more spiritual creations, such as the emotion of love and the divine attribute of chesed (“benevolence”); physical earth is the material incarnation of a string of creations that includes concepts such as “femininity” and “receptiveness,” and originates in the divine attribute of malchut (“sovereignty”). And so it is with every object, phenomenon, and concept in existence: Each exists on the many levels of the seder hishtalshelut, ranging from its most ethereal state to its most corporeal form.
With each descending step of the seder hishtalshelut, the creation not only becomes more tangible and substantial, it also grows more distant from its Creator and Source. For although spiritual entities are also “creations” (i.e., realities distinct from the reality of their Creator), they are transparent existences that reveal the higher reality from which they stem and which they serve.[4] But the more “substantial” a thing becomes, the less it exhibits its divine essence and function. A physical object exudes immanence; its very mass proclaims “I am,” belying the truth that it exists in order to serve a higher end. The more “presence” a thing possesses, the more it asserts its own self and the more it obscures its Creator and the purpose for which He created it.
Yet this was G-d’s objective in creation: that there should exist a world that obscures the truth of its Creator, and that the human being, out of his or her own free will (which only such a disconnected world could allow), should choose to overcome the concealment this world entails and direct its resources to serve the fulfillment of the divine will. So G-d evolved a chain of successively more substantial and self-absorbed realities, culminating in a world so corporeal that we must toil greatly to uncover and develop, in ourselves and in our environment, a sense of spiritual direction and purpose.
This, explains chassidic master Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezheritch, is the significance of the divine name Sha-dai, which our sages interpret as an acronym for the phrase she’amar le’olamo dai—”He who said to His world: Enough!”[5] Had G-d proceeded any further with the seder hishtalshelut, it would have passed the point of no return. Had G-d caused His creation to descend a single increment lower in terms of selfhood and corporeality; had He smothered even that faint glimmer of spirituality which the material mantle of our world allows to seep through; had our lives and consciousness been even more cut off from their Source—it would have been impossible for us to overcome the spiritual darkness of such a world. So G-d said “Enough!”, halting the seder hishtalshelut when creation reached the degree of substantiality represented by our physical world.
Spiritual Time
Not only the contents of our physical world, but also its defining parameters — space and time — are “end-of-the-line” products of the seder hishtalshelut.
We know space as the three dimensions—as the context within which physical objects are positioned in spatial relation to each other (above, below, behind, etc.). But there is also a conceptual space: We speak of “higher” and “lower” planes of reality; we describe ideas as “deep” or “shallow.” So spiritual entities also occupy a “space” which defines their position in relation to each other, and in relation to the world they occupy. Common thinking is that these “conceptual space” characterizations are merely mental projections of physical phenomena in an attempt by our physical minds to contemplate and discuss metaphysical abstractions. The truth, say the kabbalists, is the very opposite: Space originates as a wholly spiritual phenomenon, and then “descends” through the seder hishtalshelut to evolve into increasingly more concrete forms. Thus physical space derives from “conceptual space,” which in turn evolves from an even more abstract form of space, and so on. The higher we ascend the chain of hishtalshelut, the more abstract and ethereal is the space of that particular “world.”
Time, too, exists on many levels, as it evolves from its most spiritual form all the way down to “our” physical time. What we experience as a one-way time arrow through the tenses of past, present, and future is but the last and most concrete incarnation of the element or phenomenon of time. As it descends through the seder hishtalshelut, time is expressed in many forms: It is the essence of motion, causation, and change; it underlies the pulse of life, the processional nature of reason, and the pendulum of feeling.
While physical time is chronological — its “past” occurs before its “future”— spiritual time is not so limited. By way of example, let us consider the nature of the “time” which defines the world of logic. The logical concepts A (1+1=2) and B (2–1=1) occupy different positions in the timeline of this world, as A precedes B in logical sequence (because one plus one equals two, therefore two minus one equals one). But the fact that B “follows” A does not mean that there is a point in time at which A exists and B does not. They are both always existent, even as the “first” causes the “second.” Or, to take an example from the world of emotion: feeling A may cause feeling B (e.g., a feeling of reverence and awe toward a great and magnificent being produces a yearning to approach this being and be touched by its greatness), but the possessor of these two feelings always had them both; they developed simultaneously in his heart, although the “first” (the awe) is the root and cause of the “second” (the craving to come close). In other words, spiritual realities such as ideas and feelings also exist within “time,” yet theirs is a more abstract, spiritual form of time, transcending the “one at a time” and “one-way travel” limitations of physical time.[6]
The seder hishtalshelut itself is a function of spiritual time: The very concept of an “order” and an “evolution” presumes a reality governed by cause and effect. Of course, the evolution of creation from spirit to matter did not “take time” in the commonplace sense of the word—G‑d did not have to “wait” for the successive phases and stages of the seder hishtalshelut to yield the material world He wanted. In terms of physical time, the creation of the physical world—G-d’s desired end-result of the creation process—was instantaneous. But on the conceptual level, “time” is the framework within which the many levels of the created reality unfold.
Thus time may be regarded as the “first” creation. Since creation is a process in which a series of worlds evolve one from (and thus “after”) the other, it is an event which “takes time”—at least in the most abstract sense of the term. On the other hand, G-d’s act of creation did not take place “in” time, which would imply that there already was something (i.e., the phenomenon of time) that wasn’t created by G-d! This means that time came into being as an integral part of the very concept “creation” (which is itself a created entity).
In other words, time exists because G-d desired that creation should constitute a process— a chain of worlds extending from heaven to earth, each the product of its “predecessor.” Without time (on the most abstract level) there could not be a seder hishtalshelut;[7] and without time (on the physical level), we, who can only relate to spiritual concepts as abstractions of their counterparts in our physical reality, could not conceive of, much less contemplate, the “order of evolution” linking the Creator’s most sublime works to our own world.
The Three Thousand Metaphors of Solomon
Of course, G-d did not need all this. He could have created the physical world in a truly instantaneous manner—not only in terms of physical time but in the conceptual sense as well, without passing through the stages of the seder hishtalshelut. So why create an entire chain of universes populated by spiritual versions of our reality, just so that our world should congeal into being as its lowest link? Why not just create the physical reality as it is, since this was the objective of His creation?
In any act of creation or development, the method which yields instantaneous results usually represents the most direct and convenient approach — as far as the creator or developer is concerned. But what about those at the receiving end? How is such an approach — as opposed to a phased, evolutionary process — reflected in the nature of the end-product? How does it affect its utility for those for whom it is intended? Let us examine a particular case in which both these options are available to one who seeks to “create” something.
A teacher wishes to convey to his pupil a concept whose profundity and abstraction far exceed the capacity of the pupil’s mind. So the teacher must create a new reality in the mind of the pupil, implanting within it a knowledge which not only had never existed there before but which is, in essence, beyond anything the pupil’s mind is capable of attaining on its own. But how to articulate a concept to someone who has no understanding of the terms and “language” which apply to it? The teacher decides to use a parable.
What is a parable? We are told that King Solomon “grew wiser than all men… and he spoke three thousand parables.”[8] At first glance, this seems to describe a versatility of imagination rather than a depth of wisdom. The parable, however, is not just an innovative or entertaining way to convey an idea: It is the translation of a concept into a lower level of intellectual discourse. In the parable, concepts which can generally be discussed in terms comprehensible only to the most refined and abstract minds are rendered as objects and events which are part of a lesser mind’s “world” and life experience.
In other words, the teacher “lowers” and coarsens the concept, articulating it in terms to which the pupil’s mind can relate. But once it has been imbibed by the pupil in this guise, the pupil can then proceed to strip it of its metaphoric garments. Once the idea has been implanted in the pupil’s mind in a form which is comprehensible to him, the door has been opened for him to begin to relate to the deeper significance buried within it.
But what if the parable itself is too profound and abstract for the pupil’s mind? The teacher will then clothe this parable in an even “lowlier” parable, spinning a tale which employs even more commonplace objects and events to make its point. Thus the concept will be “smuggled” into the mind of the pupil coated in two metaphoric layers. Having imbibed the concept in this double guise, the pupil can now proceed to strip it of its outermost layer and comprehend the more abstract parable. This achieved, his mind will be ripe for a further abstraction, and the pupil will realize that what he has understood is also just a metaphor for an even loftier and more abstract dimension of the concept.
The teacher may thus subject the idea he wishes to convey to many levels of embodiment, shrouding it with layer upon layer of metaphor and palpability. The objective: to create a series of stepping stones, neither of which is too far from the next, to accommodate the pupil’s intellectual stride, which would lead the pupil deeper and deeper into the concept. Ultimately, it would enable the pupil to gain entrance into its innermost kernel of significance, no matter how far removed he was from it at the onset of his quest.
Now we can understand the significance of King Solomon’s three thousand parables. These are not three thousand parallel alternatives for the articulation of a concept in a story, but three thousand successive metaphorizations, each clothing its predecessor with yet another layer of tangibility, lowering it yet another level in order to address yet a coarser mind, for which the previous parable is still too abstract to digest. The greatness of King Solomon’s wisdom lay in that he could take the most sublime of thoughts and successfully articulate them to a mind so removed from his own that it took a parable of a parable of a parable— three thousand times over — to translate it into this mind’s terms.
So our teacher, who wishes to impart to his pupil a concept that, by its very nature, will represent a new and unprecedented reality in the pupil’s mind, embarks on an involved and laborious process of hishtalshelut. He begins with his own knowledge of the concept in its abstract purity and proceeds to vest it in slightly more concrete and tangible terms. He then repeats the process time and again, imposing layer upon layer of crudity and embodiment upon it, until it has descended and metamorphosed into a thought which belongs to the pupil’s intellectual world.
But why bother? Why not simply relate the concept to the pupil as it exists in his, the teacher’s, mind? Because were he to do so, his words would be absolutely meaningless to the pupil. The teacher may be espousing the most profound words of wisdom to ever reach the pupil’s ears, but to the pupil it would be pure gibberish. The pupil may record his master’s words; he may review them and learn to repeat them verbatim; he may even, if he keeps at it long enough, convince himself that he understands them. But, in truth, he has not gained an iota of insight into their significance.
Certainly, G-d could have created our physical reality in an “instantaneous” manner, without bothering with a seder hishtalshelut. But where would that leave us? We and our world would exist, but would we be capable of any insight into the significance of our existence? We could be told about our mission in life and our relationship with our Creator, but could we possibly understand it?
G-d wanted our lives to be a parable (of a parable of a parable of a parable) of a higher reality. He wanted that the world we occupy should be but the outermost layer of successively more abstract and spiritual realities, each but a single leap of insight from the one within it, so that beginning with our comprehension of our own reality, we may ascend, step by step, in our understanding of what and why we are and from where we come.
The Limitations of Hishtalshelut
This explains the necessity for the seder hishtalshelut. This is why the essence of time— the very phenomena of “process,” “cause and effect,” and “evolution”— was created: so that our physical existence should not be an island in the void of the incomprehensible, but a connected link in a chain of worlds leading to its sublime origins in the creative energy of G-d. And because we experience time on our, physical level, we can relate to the concept of a seder hishtalshelut in “spiritual time,” and retrace the process of creation by climbing the links of this cosmic chain to gain increasingly deeper insight into the dynamics of creation and our Creator’s involvement in our reality.
All this, however, is only one side of the story. The seder hishtalshelut is crucial to our mission in life, which insists that we not only serve G-d but also strive to comprehend our relationship with Him. But the hishtalshelut is not only a link, it is also a screen. Were our relationship with the Almighty to be confined to the channel offered by the hishtalshelut, it would mean that we have no direct connection with the infinite and utterly undefinable reality of our Creator and the true essence and function of our own existence. It would mean that we can relate to these truths only via the many garments in which G-d has shrouded Himself in order to make Himself and His creation comprehensible to us.
On the one hand, our lives are governed by the ordered and rational process of hishtalshelut. On the other hand, however, we are empowered to transcend it. For G-d has also granted us the ability to touch base with the very essence of our life, with a “timeless” essence which transcends reason, order, and the process of creation itself.
Let us return to the teacher and pupil. If you recall, the teacher is in the midst of expounding a parable (the last and most external of a string of parables) which will encapsulate the concept, but will also conceal it and convey only the greatly constrained and coarsened version which the pupil is capable of comprehending. Yet the teacher also wants to somehow allow his pupil a glimpse of the real thing, to accord him a true if fleeting vision of the concept in all its sublime purity. He wants the pupil to know that this is not where it’s at, to appreciate the extent of what lies buried within. Because although the “multi-parable” approach presents the pupil with the tools to rise to a full and comprehensive understanding of the concept, it is not free of its own pitfalls. There is a danger as well: the danger that the pupil will get bogged down in the parable itself (or in its second, third, or fourth abstraction), and fail to carry it through to its ultimate significance; the danger that he will come to mistake a shallow and external version of his master’s teaching for the end of his intellectual quest.
So in the course of his delivery the teacher will allow a word, a gesture, an inflection to escape the parable’s rigid constraints. He will allow a glimmer of unconstrained wisdom to flicker through the many metaphoric veils which enclose the pure concept within. This “glimmer” may be incomprehensible to the pupil (in the conventional, logical sense), but it will impress upon him an appreciation of the depth of the concept within the parable.[9]
The Window
The same applies to our probing of our world to gain insight into the divine reality which underlies it. The physical existence is a “parable” offering a link to the truth of its Creator; but it also obscures that truth. So unless one is guided by a transcendent vision of the essence and purpose of creation, there is the danger that these “garments” may distort or even eclipse what they were created to express and reveal.
Therefore, G-d did not evolve an “airtight” seder hishtalshelut. Even as He projected His creative powers via its successive phases and worlds, He allowed a pinpoint of His infinite light to penetrate this multilevel edifice from end to end. Even as He set up a step-by-step plan for us to proceed in our life’s task of comprehending, refining, and sanctif ying our existence, He also provided us with a window through which to glimpse the underlying reality which transcends it all.
In our experience of physical time, pulses of energy, moving at the speed of light, generate the effect of timeless communications in our daily lives. The same is true of our spiritual lives: Even as G-d relates to us via the seder hishtalshelut, which dictates that our experience of Him be filtered through a chain of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual processes, He also granted us moments of direct and unfiltered contact with Himself—moments of “instantaneous” connection that transcend the order of creation.
Published with permission of The Meaningful Life Center, www.meaningfullife.com.
[1] See ”Of Trees and Men,” in Inside Time (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Meaningful Life Center, 2015),Vol. II, pp. 217–220.
[2] See “Gd on the Moon,” Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 160–166.
[3] See below. Also see “The First Creation,” Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 20–30.
[4] This is even true of the more “spiritual” or abstract elements of our physical reality. For example, an idea implies and reflects the mind which conceived it; the existence of light indicates its source and serves to express its qualities. Certainly such is the case with the truly spiritual creations of the higher worlds of the “chain”—creations that are devoid of any and all vestiges of selfhood and exist solely to express and serve the omnipotence and majesty of their Creator.
[5] Talmud, Chagigah 12a.
[6] In the words of Shaloh (Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, 1560–1630), citing the great kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522–1570): When discussing the different stages in G-d’s emanation of worlds and spheres of reality, we need to bear in mind an important distinction between our physical world and the higher, spiritual realms. In a physical, time-bounded world, change and progression mean that the previous state no longer prevails. Wool becomes yarn, yarn becomes cloth, cloth becomes a coat; the person now has a coat, but the sheep is left bereft of its wool. Not so with a spiritual evolution, where all stages exist simultaneously, each on its own plane. There is no change of mind in the Creator, G-d forbid , nor a “ before” and “after” in the temporal sense, but rather a hierarchy of realities which derive from and impact each other.
[7] Spiritual space is also a prerequisite to a seder hishtalshelut, since it defines the relationship between the higher, more sublime level of existence at the “top” of the chain and the chain’s “lower” links. But time will always precede space as necessary to the very concept of process.
[8] I Kings 5:11–12.
[9] This concept also has a parallel in Torah law (halachah). On Shabbat, it is forbidden to transfer an object from a private to a public domain or vice versa. However, there exists the option of making an eiruv, a halachic procedure (involving the fashioning of an enclosure around the area and the creation of a common meal area) which “combines” a courtyard, street, or even an entire city into a single private domain, thereby allowing the transfer of objects from home to home within the eiruv area. The law states that in the case that an eiruv is made for an entire city, one section of the city must be left outside of the eiruv’s boundaries; this, so that “there be the recognition that it is forbidden to carry on Shabbat, and that only the eiruv has permitted it within a certain area.” Were the eiruv to include the entire city, the danger would exist that, in time, the entire concept of this most fundamental aspect of Shabbat rest will be forgotten by its populace. In other words, a secondary or superimposed reality has been created by the eiruv. Although it is a valid reality, sanctioned by Torah law, it is important to retain the awareness of a deeper, more underlying reality: the nature of the holiness of Shabbat, an important expression of which is the fact that one should not transfer an object from domain to domain. So a breach is created in the eiruv reality, to serve as a window through which one may behold and experience the deeper Shabbat reality.
