A Soul And Its Substance

Question: What is the soul?

Answer: The Creator created the creature, which is a desire to receive pleasure. The Creator is the Light that created the desire to receive pleasure.

A state in which the Light or the Creator fulfills this desire and dwells within it is called the “world of Infinity.” And the fulfillment itself is called “Light” or the “Creator.”

In the further development of the desire, a breakage of the desire into a multitude of individual desires happens; the stipulated amount of these desires is 600,000. Since all of them were broken, each one of them has a small portion of the Light.

This state is called the “individual soul,” but it is not a soul, only a point of the soul within which we cannot feel anything except a yearning to return to the former perfect state in which all the parts are connected together and are one single soul, which is one for all of them.

In our day, we can connect all these parts, meaning we can organize a closed system among us that will be a particular segment of the soul.

In what way is a part different from a segment? The part of the soul is the point in the heart that yearns to return to the perfected soul, whereas a segment of a soul is a gathering in a group of ten, which is the minimal part of the collective soul that can function as a complete soul.

Since each soul is composed of ten Sefirot, it is possible to differentiate parts within it that will work exactly like the whole, but on a reduced scale. If we begin to connect these parts, the scale will increase.

But in principle, all the laws that are discovered in a group of ten will be identical with the laws that exist in the collective soul, but to a smaller degree because they will be less apparent, not rounded in the same manner.

Our role is to create a group of ten from people, each one of them having part of the soul, meaning a point in the heart. Ten of these points that connect together are called a “segment” and the sum of the segments is called a “complete soul.”

Question: Is a soul a desire to receive?

Answer: A desire to receive pleasure is the substance of the soul, but this is not yet a soul.

To understand where we are found, it is simply necessary to attain the characteristic of the state that is called a soul. This is the characteristic of bestowal, mutual connection, going out of yourself.

Therefore, all the examples and exercises in studying the wisdom of Kabbalah are based upon attaining maximal connection between us.

Question: Is it possible to call a segment a soul?

Answer: Yes, but it is similar to the manner in which you look with your unaided eye at a small segment of some picture and then when you add other segments to it, meaning more and more parts of the soul, you see the entire form of the picture, as if you were looking at it through binoculars.

So when you gather the souls together, you are getting an even fuller picture and see characteristics that you may not have paid any attention to before because they were hidden due to the small scale.

For example, if you look at an entire map, it is possible to see a city as a point. If you increase the scale, you see the name of the city. If you increase it more, the streets are visible, and so on. It is the same thing here. What this means is that thanks to the addition of other groups of ten to our group of ten, we begin to see more characteristics, connections, and laws.
[202722]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/6/16