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Baal HaSulam

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Ramchal

Agra

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Baal HaSulam / Still, Vegetative, Animate, and Speaking

115. Still, Vegetative, Animate, and Speaking

I heard in 1940, Jerusalem

Still is something that does not have an authority of its own. Rather, it is under the authority of its landlord and must satisfy every wish and desire of its landlord. Hence, since the Creator created creation for His glory, as it is written, “Every one who is called by My Name, I have created him for My glory,” it means that the Creator created creation for His own needs. The nature of the landlord is imprinted in the creatures, meaning all the creatures cannot work for the sake of others but for themselves.

Vegetative is that which already has its own authority to some extent. It can already do something that is contrary to the opinion of the landlord. This means that it can already do things not for one’s own benefit but in order to bestow. This is already the opposite of what exists in the will of the landlord, which He imprinted in the lower ones, that they will work only with the will to receive for themselves.

Yet, as we can see in corporeal plants, even though they are mobile and expand in length and in width, still, all the plants have a single property. In other words, there is not a single plant that can go against the method of all the plants. Rather, they must obey the rules of the plants and are incapable of doing anything against their contemporaries.

Thus, they have no life of their own, but are parts of the life of all the plants. This means that all the plants have a single form of life, that the form of life is the same for all the plants. All the plants are like a single creature, and the individual plants are specific organs of that animal.

Similarly, in spirituality there are people who have already acquired the strength to overcome their will to receive to some degree but are enslaved to the environment. They cannot do the opposite of the environment they live in, yet they do the opposite of what their will to receive wants. This means that they already work with the desire to bestow.

Animate: We see that each animal has its own characteristic; they are not enslaved to the environment and each of them has its own sensation and characteristics. They can certainly work against the will of the landlord, meaning they can work in bestowal and are also not enslaved to the environment. Rather, they have their own lives, and their vitality does not depend on their friends’ lives. Yet, they cannot feel more than their own being. In other words, they have no sensation of the other. Naturally, they cannot care for others.

The speaking has virtues: 1 – It acts against the will of the Landlord. 2 – It is not confined to its contemporaries like the vegetative, meaning it is independent of the environment. 3 – It also feels others and can therefore care for them and complement them by feeling and regretting with the public, and being able to rejoice in the comfort of the public. Also, they can receive from the past and from the future, while animals feel only the present and only their own being.