When a person feels desire towards something, he can then make contact with its core – the divine desire to be. But only if he experiences divine pleasure in its being,[1] will he achieve the true fulfillmint of his desire, to touch its soul. However, the degree and intensity of this pleasure is governed by the object of desire’s place in the chain. The more spiritual the thing that is desired is, the more fulfilling will be the pleasure it yields – for it is closer to the source of all pleasure.[2] The ultimate experience of pleasure lies in the experience of union with the Source, where pleasure resides in its most pristine form.[3]
Pleasure as Displeasure
In its lowest reaches, the Chain of Evolution yields things that are inconducive[4] – or even contrary – to what G-d desires.[5]
[6]The capacity of these things to give pleasure is an existential paradox. All pleasure is but the embodiment of the divine pleasure in creation, while these pleasures are divine dis>pleasures – things contrary to creation>.[7] Yet they, too, are products of the divine desire, since their capacity to give pleasure fills a certain function in G-d’s purpose in creation: G-d desired that we be confronted with a choice between good and evil (so that our deeds should be meaningful and significant). But G-d wants that these things should exist only in order that man should reject them as contrary to His very existence; so theirs is an existence whose inner essence – those function and raison d’ētre – is not to exist.
Let's use the metaphor of digestion to explain the phenomenon.
Digestion is the process by which food passes through the various organs which break it down and separate its finer elements from its coarser ones. At each phase of the process, this separation grows more and more defined; ultimately, the finer elements in the food evolve into body-building cells and energy, and its coarser elements are ejected by the body. Both the nutrients and the waste are products of the digestion system; but the former is generated to be used, while the latter is generated to be rejected and therby enable the body’s absorption of the former.
By the same token, the Chain of Evolution is like the cosmic “digestive system” in which the essence of creation is processed into the substance and the energy of the universe that G-d desired. This process (like every process we know) also generates waste – elements that must be separated and disposed of in order for the desirable product to function.[8]
Of course, G-d could have evolved His world in such a manner that the good develops without any separation of waste, or, for that matter, He could have not evolved it at all. But G-d desired that the good in creation should be all the more sharply defined by its contrast with the rejected evil; that human life should be an exercise in refinement – in distinguishing between the calories of divine energy and the sludge of putrid waste in our own self and character, our environment and our world. Indeed, the very concept of good, as we know it, would be devoid of all meaning were it not for the challenge of rejecting the evil that vies for validation and indulgence.)[9]
[10]Based on the above, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, explains the following incident related in the Talmud:[11]
Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehushua and Rabbi Akiva were walking along the road when they heard the sounds of the crowds of Rome in the distance. They began to weep, but Rabbi Akiva laughed.
Said they to him: “Why are you laughing?”
Said he to them: “Why are you weeping?”
Said they to him: “These barbarians, who prostrate themselves before statues and sacrifice to idols, dwell happy and secure, while we – the footstool of our G-d (i.e. the Holy Temple in Jerusalem) was consumed by fire. Shall we not weep?”
Said he to them: “That is why I am laughing. If for those who transgress His will it is so, how much more so is it for those who do His will.” (Talmud, Makkot 24a-b)
Rabbi Akiva is saying: If the waste produced by the divine desire in creation can yield such pleasure for the hedonist, imagine the pleasure to be derived through the fulfillment of His will, which is the source of all pleasure!
On the edge of the Holy Land
Therein lies the deeper significance of the idolatory (of Peor)[12], and the explanation of why the people succumbed to it on the eve of their entry into the Land of Israel.
On the face of it, the idol worship (of Peor) was a particularly repulsive activity. In truth, however, this was but the physical encoachment of what a person does every time he prefers an unG-dly pleasure over a G-dly one: he is worshipping the offal of creation, venerating something whose only significance is its need to be rejected in favour of the energies that are extracted from it.
This is why the vulnerability (to Peor) came about at the close of their forty-year sojourn in the desert, as they camped on the east bank of the Jordan River poised to enter and settle in the Land of Canaan.
For forty-years, the people had enjoyed a wholly spiritual existence. They were fed, clothed and sheltered by daily miracles, leaving them free to pursue the divine wisdom of the Torah, without the distractions of the material state. Most telling of their state was the fact that the mann, the “bread from heaven” on which they lived, was wholly absorbed into their bodies, engendering no waste. They inhabited a spiritual idyll, in which the waste of creation was unknown.
But now they stood at the threshold of a new era: they were about to settle the land, till its soil, engage in commerce and polotics – i.e., to live a physical life sustained by physical means. For the first time in their history as a nation, they were to be in direct contact with the nether levels of the Chain of Evolution – with that part of the cosmic digestive tract which sperates the waste from the body of creation. For the first time, they were called upon to differentiate between vital matter – matter that nourishes a spiritual end – and dead matter – matter as an end in itself.[13]
Not all were equal to the challenge. There was an outbreak of Peor worship[14] in the camp, as many were enticed by the psuedo-pleasures to be found in the undesirable by-product of creation. Until one man came, and with his selfless commitment, unclouded vision and decisive action, put a halt to the plague of Peor.
NOTES
Every piece I read brings up many thoughts. I could spend the whole day working on a piece like this one.
1) What would oppose that is, upon making contact with its soul and core, the desire to destroy it – or lead it into darkness. It is as if they need to feed off this life force, this divine desire to be. They take no pleasure in its being, but only in its demise. ↩
2) It is also know that below a certain threshold, more of this thing will not bring more pleasure – but probably more pain i.e. will end up increasing the pain in the world, instead of the spirituality. (torture/blood/ritual)
These are the finite things for which we can have infinite desire, for no matter how much we desire them, no matter how much we feed on them, they will not be able to satisfy this hunger – for it is a spiritual hunger, a hunger that will only be assuaged by things that contain the essence of the divine in them. (children?)↩
4) It is similar to the process of conductivity. If we think of the Divine Energy as electricity, and it needs a conductive material to flow. If there is a non-conductive part of the path along which it wishes to flow, there will be a blockage – and eventually damage at that point.
Perhaps we are conductors of Light.↩
5) Analysis:
- If we imagined a chain, it has a beginning, source, and an end. Thus the end would be defined as the point furthest away from the source. Furthest in this sense would mean the most unlike the source. Something like the broken telephone. The further away from the source of the message, the more the message drifts from its original. Or if you imagined the light as the source, then it would be darkness on the other end. If it was life, then death would be the end.
- But what we are talking about here is process or chain of evolution from the source of evolution itself. Thus it must evolve from something to something else – and the only place the unity, perfection can move to, is the opposite of everything that it is.
- Thus this evolution becomes an evolution from the source to whatever the source is not, and thus it becomes inconducive to whatever radiates along this chain of evolution.
- Thus if we name the Source, G-d, then the statement of whatever G-d desires, is inconclusive. Because this very chain of evolution is G-d’s desire. For nothing can exist without G-d wanting it to exist. Thus, it is not contrary to G-d’s desires, unless we interpret G-d’s desire to be what radiates from the Source, and thus as it gets further and further from the Source, it begins to contain less and less of it and thus is less able to conduct the “desire”.
- Remember, this is not spatial, although we have to use spacial constructs to explain it. ↩
