TK page 2 of 10

The following conceptual figure might help to give an idea of the change:

To use an earthbound analogy, the change might be compared to what happens in a high-school class in the first few days of school. At day one the class has the potential to create any kind of social network. After a few days (or hours) a certain part of these potentials are manifested, leaving other - potential connections - unmanifested.

However, the change is at the stage of Ein-Sof merely planned or intended. So how does God move from the inclination to a changed state of being, to the manifestation of this change?

To get to a more complex state of being, a decision must be made of which potentials to be purged out. To do that God must get an awareness of his potential states of being, and then use that awarenes to purge out a certain part of these potentials. Since the potential states of being are, as the name implies, only potential, they do not exist. In other words God must get an awareness of what-is-not. This is not possible at the stage of Ein-Sof where God is everything everywhere, there is only Light and everything simply is. For the knower (God) to achieve an awareness of the known (what-is-not), a distinction between the knower and the known is needed. This distinction does not exist at this stage.

God hides from himself

To overcome this problem, God conceals a part of himself from himself, through a process referred to as Tzimtzum (hebrew for concealment or contraction). Out of his own being God produces garments to conceal a part of his being.

The garments is at this stage in their essence unknowable, but their reflection in the mind of man is archetypal ideas or traits, referred to as the ten Sefirot by the kabbalists. They are Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, Judgment, Compassion, Endurance, Majesty, Righteousness and Submission. These ten Sefirot are arranged in a special relation to each other, called the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life can be thought of as the garments that God creates to conceal a part of his being. The Ein-Sof, illustrated as a circle, is being dressed in garments and becomes the Tree of Life. To illustrate that a part of God is concealed at this stage, we will shade a part of the circle. In the ocean analogy it corresponds to a ripple on the ocean. This is stage two of seven.

At this point the concealed part is still a part of Gods total being; the ripple can not be distinguished from the ocean.

Go to page 1, 2, 3, 4,

Part I: Page 2 of 7

Tree of Life

(large version)