Righteous and Wicked
(from manuscripts of Baal HaSulam that have never been published)
When a person becomes cleansed so as to adhere to the Creator, he is all to bestow and has nothing in him of the will to receive. Thus, how will he receive His abundance, with which He wished to delight His creatures? For this reason, the Creator has imprinted within each person that he will consist of all the people in the world. That is, the views and natures of all the people in the world will reign and unite in each person in the world, since the thoughts and views of people pass from one to the other.
Therefore, once a person has been cleansed and becomes a complete righteous, then, too, he is connected to the wicked of the whole world, who impart upon him their will to receive against his will and inadvertently. For this reason, the righteous is ready to awaken with a desire and receive His delight, which is the purpose of heaven and earth.
In this manner, this righteous truly consists of sparks of souls of wicked and righteous from the whole world, from the past and from the future. After he corrects the souls of the righteous with whom he is included, and properly adheres through them in order to bestow, the souls of the wicked included in him begin to open their mouths to receive pleasures. At that time, a person becomes a Kli [vessel] to receive His delight, and he achieves his purpose since he has a desire to bestow, which causes Dvekut [adhesion] in equivalence of form, and he has a desire to receive through the souls of the wicked included in him. This makes him a Kli to receive His delight and abundance.
Then the souls of the righteous envy the actions of the wicked since they see that the Creator’s desire, to delight His creatures, comes mainly through the actions of the wicked, for the actions of the righteous cause only Dvekut, which is the desire of the lower one, but the actions of the wicked cause the purpose of the Creator’s will, namely to delight His creatures.
However, in truth, the souls of the wicked are unfit to hold the abundance they received since they connected to the righteous only in order to evoke in them the desire to receive His delight, while the righteous, who have already been rewarded with Dvekut with Him and a desire to bestow, gain twofold now: They have Dvekut, and they also receive His delight in order to bestow, which is mainly what is desired. He said that the righteous have already been fully completed through the wicked, and then all the souls of the wicked are taken off from the level of the righteous since they can receive only for themselves and not in order to bestow, as do the righteous.
Private Providence and Guidance of Reward and Punishment
The path of suffering is private Providence, and the path of Torah is guidance of reward and punishment. This explains the questions about knowing and choice, since indeed, each created being must sin, as it is written, “There is not a righteous in the land who will not sin” (Ecclesiastes 7:20), and every creature must repent, as it is written, “No outcast shall be cast out from Him” (2 Samuel 14:14), and also “The earth shall be full of knowledge” (Isaiah 11:9). However, this necessity becomes clarified through nature’s reins of physical pleasure and suffering that lead a person to where Providence wishes, as it is written in the essay, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose.”
However, there is also the path of Torah, for people who are closer and more capable of development, as it is written, “He saw that the righteous are few; He stood and planted them in each and every generation” (Yoma 38b). Also, “There is not a generation without the likes of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (according to Midrash Rabbah, Beresheet 56:9). They can pass on from their wisdom to the masses, who are not developed, and this passing is called “the path of Torah” [author’s note: meaning Oral Torah, since the written Torah is also Oral Torah because he who tells you ABC can also say XYZ]. Because of this, the masses who have accepted the path of the righteous become fit to receive their completion in their own generation although according to the order of private Providence, they must reincarnate a hundred more generations before they accept the law of their development from nature, and all this time and suffering are considered for them a great reward if they follow the words of their teacher, or as heavy punishments if they do not follow them. This is the meaning of “Cutting off and dying are in the hands of heaven,” meaning they fall once more into the hands of nature because of the offense.
This is the meaning of Teshuva [repentance/returning], that they become tied once more to the path of Torah (this is also the meaning of Hell and the Garden of Eden, which concern the cleansing of the soul that it undergoes in the period between one body and another incarnation. In the meantime, it acquires a certain correction until all the matters and good or bad forces that it did in the first incarnation are tied to it. This is the meaning of reception, and we will not clarify it here.).