Kabbalah, Evolution and Intelligent Design

BS"D

Chanukah, 5766 - The Israeli Center, Jerusalem

Lecture 2

Transcript of seminar by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh Shlita

 

Now we’re going to begin with a topic taken straight out of a famous letter that the Rebbe wrote to a group of students who asked about the age of the universe and about evolution, so first of all we have to quote a topic directly from the words of the Rebbe, that’s our primary objective here, and what we’re doing is that we’re taking the very words and the very concepts of the Rebbe and once more, forming out of this famous letter that he wrote, a Kabbalistic model of reasoning. This idea actually follows the last thought of the previous session, that the reasoning faculty itself – not only are the conclusions questionable, but the thinking process is not the most analytical or exacting process and it has many loopholes to it and many weaknesses to it. The Rebbe presents these weaknesses in a way - obviously he doesn’t present any Kabbalistic model to correspond to the weaknesses, but that is what we are going to now try to do – this is our first topic. The first thing the Rebbe says - we’ll begin from below – when we have explained all of them then we will go back to see how these correspond to the worlds and we will also explain how each one of these also has a rectification to it. Because we said that more than any other science, biological conjectures have a lot of problems about them but also have a lot of rectification that can be done to them if it’s done properly. Biology more than the other sciences, has problems the theory of evolution is the most appealing theory of all science to the mind in a certain way, at least to this power of imagination in the mind. Because of that the very reasoning process is set with many weaknesses but the weaknesses can also be overcome if it’s in a proper rectification manner. That is what we are now trying to convey. The first weakness that the Rebbe says is that this is not the way that real scientists, or hard scientists, physicists, work, there is a lot of speculations it is not empirical, science is supposed to be a one hundred percent empirical occupation, discipline. You can only make a statement of something that is visually and sensorialy  evident to the eye. If you can see the functioning of the cell, so that is fine, that’s one hundred percent o.k., if you can see photosynthesis at work and describe the process of photosynthesis that’s fine, that’s one hundred percent o.k., but as soon as you’re talking about these types of topics, like the age of the universe and evolution in general, your headspace has moved to a different dimension, that’s what the Rebbe says, you’re not in the same place as a person who’s looking through a microscope to see what is happening inside a cell. So the first thing is that it’s riddled with loads of speculation in addition to empirical observation. This first point at the bottom that’s exactly what we said before, but before we called the speculation “fantasy” and the power of imagination but these are the words of the Rebbe. The Rebbe says that it’s “speculative science rather than empirical science”. That’s weakness number one.

Weakness number two, says the Rebbe, is that “it’s extrapolation and not interpolation”. What does that mean? Interpolation is that if you know the extreme conditions of a certain property of a function or an action, it’s like if you know what is going to happen at temperature zero degrees centigrade and if you know what will happen at one hundred degrees centigrade, interpolation means that you infer what will happen at fifty degrees centigrade. Interpolation means that it’s an inference based on extremes - that you know both extremes and you infer what is going to be in between the two extremes, that’s called interpolation. But if I build a scale of a certain reaction – and I know what takes place at zero degrees and what takes place at a hundred degrees, and then I say what’s going to happen at a thousand degrees, that’s extrapolation, it’s not interpolation. Now it is clear that in extrapolation itself there are a number of possibilities, some are more reasonable and others are less reasonable. If I know what happens at zero degrees and I know what happens at one hundred degrees, then to speculate on what will happen at one hundred and one degrees is not so far fetched, but to jump from one hundred degrees to what will happen at one thousand degrees – that’s a little bit out of the borders of pure analytical rationality. So that’s weakness number two, that these theories are extrapolative rather than interpolative. If they were interpolative then it would be much better, but they are extrapolative.

Each one of these weaknesses builds upon the previous one. The next weakness, the Rebbe calls... In extrapolation itself there are two possibilities. You can either extrapolate from present to future, or you can extrapolate from present to past. Which makes more sense? To extrapolate from present to future makes much more sense, because it’s cause and effect. The Rebbe even gives a simple mathematical example: 2 + 2 = 4, in a certain very abstract sense, that’s extrapolation, I have two and two and I know that when I’m going to put them together I’m going to arrive at four. But if I have four and I want to know how I arrived at four, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I had two groups of two. It could be that I had one and three it could be that I had five and one disappeared. There are an infinite amount of ways how one could arrive at four. So once more, that is called extrapolating from consequence to antecedent, meaning extrapolating from present to past. Which makes much less sense, even if you are doing extrapolation, it makes much less sense than extrapolating from antecedent to consequent, which is much more reasonable than extrapolating from consequent to antecedent. So that, the Rebbe says, is weakness number three. As we said, each one builds on the previous, except for the fourth which is a jump of inference. The fourth is that all of the extrapolation is based upon an unproven and un-provable assumption, that’s all the laws of nature are constant and that all of the environmental laws around are not in a state of change, which is called “everything else being equal.” So even if everything else is equal then it’s also very non-obvious to extrapolate backwards. It is much more obvious to extrapolate forwards. But certainly – who tells you that everything is constant? The extreme possibility in weakness number four, which is the top weakness, is that - who says that all of these fossils and even you own memory is correct, is what you think it is? Maybe just as our sages say, that Adam and Eve were created at the age of twenty, which means that they were created with a certain psychological state of a twenty-year-old, it means that they could even have been created with memory. The Rebbe says that fossils are like memory, maybe the world was created with “memory”, with “residues” - obviously he doesn’t say what he is really talking about which is the worlds that collapsed or the world of Chaos that broke and those residues, those fallen sparks, the vessels, fell into our realm and that creates past memories, like previous reincarnations, that give rise to memories in our own present state of being. Of all of the weaknesses, the greatest weakness of all is this last one, that everything is based on an assumption that “all else is equal and the laws of nature do not change” and that you just assume that to be. Even certain biologists and professionals also recognize this problem, they say though that that is what biology is based on. And all of the sciences, whether it is biology or geology, any science that probes back into the past it’s all based on this assumption and there is nothing you can do about it. But the assumption is totally unprovable.

These are the four weaknesses that the Rebbe points out. The idea is to use this to whet our imagination, which is to give it a Kabbalistic and a Chasidic model and thereby to understand how we can rectify in a certain way this whole picture, how we can strengthen these weak screws in our head by understanding the way the head operates. So first of all we’ll start at the beginning and the beginning is at the bottom.

World	description of weakness
atzilut (Emanation)	Assumption that all else is equal and the laws of nature do not change
beriyah (Creation)	extrapolation from consequence to antecedent
yetzirah (Formation)	based on extrapolation and not interpolation
asiyah (Action)	based on speculation and not empirical

The world of action, the scientist that is here in our world of Action – science is empirical. So obviously, to speculate in the world of Action is a blemish, it goes against the very grain of what the world of Action is about. In the world of Action you don’t speculate, you prove things, you observe things, you don’t philosophize, the world of Action is not a world of philosophy. Clearly, this problem of being speculative and not empirical is problematic for the rectification of the world of Action, but in higher worlds it is not so asur [forbidden] to speculate. The problem with speculation is just in this world that is supposed to be empirical.

Now let’s talk about the next level. The next level is that you go out of your bounds of knowledge. Another way of saying the next level is that instead of deducing things, deduction, you rely on induction. Induction means that you maivin davar mitoch davar, meaning that you go out of your boundaries. As we said before, what is interpolation? It is that I have known boundaries and I infer what is going to happen at all points within those boundaries, even though I have not empirically seen them, but by having the boundaries I can infer what’s going to go on inside. But from boundaries to infer what is going to happen beyond those boundaries is something else altogether, that is extrapolation it is not interpolation. Where is that problematic? That is problematic in the heart, in the world of Yetzirah, in forms, because forms are called midot. Midot are measures, well-defined measures. In the world of midot, if you break out of these measures, in a certain sense you are destroying this world, the world of Yetzirah. You have certain forms, and don’t break out of those boundaries. This is the concept of gvul – a boundary is a gvul, a world that defines gvulot that defines boundaries is the world of yetzirah and you can have as much fun as you want inferring new things within the boundaries but not trying to infer things outside of those boundaries, just keep – this reminds us very closely of the famous mishnah, in perek “ein dorshim”, that we are allowed according to certain conditions to delve into the secrets of creation and even to delve into the workings of the Divine Chariot, but it says that what no-one is allowed to do is say what’s above and what’s below and what’s before and what’s after, which is to go beyond the boundaries of creation, that’s asur. That’s like the ultimate extrapolation, because everybody has to have their boundaries. Once more, this is a problem in the world of Yetzirah. The world of Yetzirah is where those sages went up into the Pardes, they have this limitation. Had they been able to ascend to a higher level, to the world of Beriyah, this limitation would not be so relevant, mah lemaalah, mah lematah, mah lefanim, mah leachor, in the world of Yetzirah, that is. So that is called extrapolation and interpolation.

Time. All of the problem with the age of the universe is a function of time. Since time we now know is a very profound subject, it is totally linked together with space and it’s totally a relative concept, because if I’m traveling close to the speed of time then there is hardly any time that has transpired at all like we said before, the story of the Ba’al Shem Tov, so in order to condense fifteen years into one split second in modern physics it’s just a question of how fast you’re going. Because if you’re going fast enough then that fifteen year period becomes one split second, that’s all. Time is relative, it’s a totally relative thing. What is the difference in physics between going ahead from past to future and going back from future to past? So obviously going backwards negates our normal experience of time. Time only goes forwards for us. Physicists like to say that there are positrons and other things that go backwards in time but for us there is no... Science fiction writers like to invent time machines that go backwards in time, but for us that doesn’t exist. What does it mean according to Einstein, what’s the difference between going forwards in time or going backwards in time? Approaching the speed of light, with the speed of light as your limit factor, is going forwards in time. According to the theory of relativity, in order to go backwards in time, you have to leap over the speed of light, if you’re moving faster than the speed of light which is supposedly a physical impossibility, once more, it’s a limitation on the very essence of creation of the universe, would one be able to go faster than the speed of light then time would reverse would go back, well, that’s what Einstein said, anyway. This limitation is a blemish in the world of Beriyah and as we said before, the world of Atzilut is above time. In the world of Atzilut it doesn’t matter whether you’re going forwards or backwards, no problem, but in the world of Beriyah, that’s where time begins, Bereishit bara, the first creation is time. And from the moment that time was created in the world of Beriyah which is the first two words in the Torah, Bereishit bara, time is going forwards, not backwards. That’s why the intellectual limitation in the world of Beriyah is “infer ahead, don’t infer back,” even if you are extrapolating, as we said before in the world of Beriyah extrapolation is not such a big problem.

We will now summarize what we have said up until now: In the world of Yetzirah, speculation is not a problem, one world above it’s not such a problem, in the world of Beriyah extrapolation is not such a problem. What is a problem still in the world of Beriyah? A time-machine. Which means extrapolating backwards. In the world of Atzilut that is also not a problem. What is the only problem in the world of Atzilut? The only problem is the false assumption that things don’t change. What does that mean - change is also a function of time and the world of Atzilut is above time? The world of Atzilut, even though it is above time, the experiential state of continual re-creation which is Atzilut, as we described before, is that - we’ll call it “continual surprise”. The world of Atzilut is an ongoing state of surprise. This is a very important and deep concept in Chasidut, that the world of Atzilut is Elokut bipshitut ve’olamot behitchadshut. It’s looking at the creation of the world from the point of view of the “Nothing”, seeing from the vantage point of the perspective of the “nothing” “something” coming into existence – that’s the continual re-creation – it’s not the continuous re-creation of Hoyle that we mentioned before. It’s just that the name “clicks”. The world of Atzilut is seeing something coming out of nothing from the vantage point of the nothing. It’s called looking at creation through the eyes of God, through the eyes of the Creator. The Creator is the “given”, the Creator doesn’t change, but the very essence of creation is that it is continually a novelty a chidush niflah, it’s a surprise. So if your soul comes from Atzilut then the whole world is a “surprise party” every split second. That’s what chazal say that this world is a hilulah, a wedding celebration, a whole big surprise – it’s a surprise party. What goes against that? Fixing the laws of nature.

For a scientist to say that maybe the laws of nature are not fixed, that sounds really weird and he’ll laugh at you. For him it’ll be a surprise that if you have any brains, you could have even said that statement that maybe the laws of nature are not fixed. For him that is a joke. The other things - to a certain extent he can recognize the validity of the other things, the difference between speculation and empirical observation, the difference between extrapolation and interpolation and the difference between going forwards and going backwards. As we said before, he knows that that is an assumption, but anyone who will negate that assumption that the laws of nature are a constant, is a joke for him, because he is really very far away from the world of Atzilut. That’s why only someone like the Rebbe could have said something like that in the first place, that maybe the laws of nature are not constant. A person from the lower worlds would never question the laws of nature. Only a person who sees that Elokut bipshitut and the creation is a continual surprise can say, well maybe all of the laws of nature can change from moment to moment. So again, what is the blemish of the world of Atzilut – the blemish in kopf, in reasoning, the blemish is, assuming the constancy even of Shem Elokim. Nature, as we said is bigimatria Elokim, The world of Atzilut is the world of Havayah, of continual new creation, new reality. Where is this not a blemish? It’s not a blemish in Adam Kadmon. What does this mean? Before, we said that even above the four worlds there’s the crown, or we can call it by another name, “Primordial Man”. Primordial Man is the visible plan of everything – which includes the sense of purpose behind everything – after the initial tzimtzum the contraction of God’s infinite light. But in the infinite light there is also a primordial plan, when that primordial plan before the tzimtzum reflects itself after the tzimtzum that’s called Adam Kadmon. In Adam Kadmon it’s not a blemish even that the laws of nature are constant because there’s no difference between the laws of nature and Hashem Himself and about Hashem Himself it definitely does say ani Havayah lo shaniti, “I, Havayah am unchangeable.”

What we did now is that we took this famous letter of the Rebbe in which he discusses these four weaknesses and he explained that the four weaknesses are because the worlds have fallen. One of the results of the primordial sin is that the worlds fell. Every world is at least one world below what it should be. We can’t go into this, but everything has experienced a fall of consciousness. To rectify, to strengthen the “head” of all these weaknesses and to rectify the power of imagination that we said before, so virtually what that means is lifting the worlds back up to their original place before chet adam harishon. When the worlds have returned to their original positions before the fall, then speculation is not a problem, and extrapolation is not a problem and going backwards in time is not a problem and assuming that everything is the same is also not a problem. In order to do that we have to lift up all of the worlds. You have to have a good “crane” – it’s called a manof – a famous parable of the Alter Rebbe. So we have to have a very strong crane, a manof, that catches, grasps all of the worlds from below and lifts them all up together. You’re not allowed to grasp it all from the middle, because if you grasp it from the middle and lift it up then it breaks the whole structure of the worlds. We want to elevate everything, beginning - and in a certain sense - first and foremostly, we want to elevate the lowest world which is the world of evolution, that’s the world of Asiyah. Let’s just emphasize this a little bit more, as we said scientists don’t mix science and philosophy, don’t mix science and religion – let each one be a realm by itself. That’s not speculation – scientists will always say, no, I don’t want to speculate, I’m just here to prove things. The Rebbe says that he doesn’t realize that this type of “science” (quote unquote) has a lot of speculation to it – it’s not what you yourself define as pure science. Our objective is that speculation which is our philosophy, which is our Torah, should not be different from empirical fact, as we said before that miracles are also empirical. So actually the rectification of this weakness of the lowest of worlds is reaching exactly that place that we are trying to reach, that there shouldn’t be this diversion/differentiation between speculative reasoning and empirical reasoning. That is a tremendous tikun – it’s like the ultimate tikun – lifting all the worlds up from below. For the time being, while the worlds are fallen, that’s why the Rebbe points out that we have these four basic weaknesses in each world.

Now we will bring a little but important thought. People find it hard to leave their almost religious belief in evolution because it’s so attractive, it’s so nice, it so lends itself to our fantasies and illusions and allows us to even try to prove them in the laboratory. One of the basic tenets of evolution, perhaps even the greatest tenet – it seems like a really great idea, it seems like it’s straight out of Yiddishkeit – we all descend from a common ancestor, it’s called “common ancestors”. The thought that we all possess a common ancestor seems really nice because it suggests to a person who believes that the common ancestor must be God. Unfortunately, that’s not what the biologists are talking about – maybe it was an amoeba, maybe it was something else, maybe it was just one DNA cell. As an intellectual abstract idea, that we all derive from a common ancestor sounds good. The problem is, of course, that when you read the beginning of Genesis you find “discreet creation” because there are discreet days and things are created one after the other, so that seems to contradict the common ancestor theory. But, if we abstract the common ancestor theory, the Torah explicitly states in Kohelet, the thought behind common ancestor and not making necessarily at first sight not making that common ancestor being God being something altogether else, because Kohelet says, hakol hayah min haafar vehakol shav el haafar, everything came out of dust and everything returns to dust so according to Kohelet, we all have a common ancestor – dust! That’s even a more common ancestor than an amoeba cell or DNA. Now, Chazal make a very strong point: you might think that dust is only one of the four ancient elements (which now have chemical equivalents). Dust is only one of them, why do you say that everything is from dust? You could say that one fourth of reality came out of dust, but there are another three fourths. But no, chazal say that when this verse says that everything is from dust, it means what it says, afilu galgal chamah, even the sun in its orbit also came out of dust. Maybe it’s talking about stardust (!), or maybe it’s talking about what happened one split second after the Big Bang. We know that the cosmologists have a big problem whether the universe is going to continue expanding for ever or whether it’s going to shrink back into nothing. This verse [“and everything returns to dust”] seems to imply that it’s going to shrink back and just disappear. There’s some primordial dust that is not one of the four elements – this is going way beyond, because as we said before, biology and evolution seems to begin only five billion years ago with the creation of the earth and almost immediately, with the formation of the earth, comes the beginnings of life forms. The first signs of photosynthesis begin very, very close to five billion years ago. But this is going back fifteen billion years according to their time scale. So the world has this common ancestor – it’s called “dust”. Now of all the creations there is only one that it says explicitly that it came out of dust and that is man, vayitzer Hashem Elokim et haadam afar min haadamah, that God created man out of the earth, meaning that the pinnacle of creation which is man, more than any other creation, reflects the common ancestor (this is something very important which we will discuss more fully tomorrow), which is dust. After his very sin, in Genesis (this verse [“everything is from dust...”] is from Kohelet) it says ki meafar bata ve’el afar tashuv, that you came from dust and you will return to dust, meaning that before the sin there was a chance that he would not return to dust, but after the sin he has to go through the whole cycle. Before the sin the universe could have gone on expanding without contracting, but after the sin the universe comes from dust and it’s going to return to dust.

We will now make another observation about dust. Dust seems to belong to the mineral kingdom and not to the vegetable kingdom. But we are taught that the koach hatzomeach, the essence of the power of growth is inherent and innate in the dust. So on the one hand we say that dust gives rise to the very end of creation, which is man, more than anything else, but that the vegetable kingdom is already potential in the mineral kingdom which distinguishes the vegetable kingdom from the animal kingdom. How does that reflect in the Torah? So we see that once more, the Malbim explains this (and other commentaries) that the word “to create anew” is rare, even in the story of creation. It only appears in the first verse bereishit bara Elokim et hashamayim veet haaretz and then it returns on the fifth day of creation when it says that God created the taninim hagedolim, the great sea creatures and the fish and then it appears once more on the sixth day when God created man.

Once more, the concept of creation is only at the beginning; and before the creation of the first living beings of the animal kingdom; and the creation of man. So it is obvious that the concept of creation skips over the vegetable kingdom which was created on the third day. The first appearance of “creation”, the number one is the mineral kingdom which is just inanimate, domem: shamayim, aretz even light it’s all inanimate and then we go on to the third day which is the vegetation and we proceed to the fourth day which is the appearance of the [celestial bodies] and the stars and only when we reach the fifth day which is the beginning of life, the animal kingdom, does creation reappear and then it reappears for the third time with man. Now, it is very important and it is not even explained by the commentaries, that in the verse of creating man, the word appears three times. In the first creation of the whole universe it appears only once, bereishit bara Elokim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. With regard to the animal kingdom it also appears only once, vayivra Elokim et hataninim hagedolim, but when man is created it appears in the same verse three times, it says vayivra Elokim et haadam betzalmo, God created man in His image, betzelem Elokim bara oto, in the Image of God He created him, zachar unekeiva bara otam, male and female He created them. So it says and He created, created, created, three times. So no-one even points out the fact that there are three creations in man himself. But what is pointed out is that creation appears before the mineral kingdom and creation appears before the animal kingdom and creation appears before man who was created in the image of God. So the question is why is the vegetable kingdom left out? So the answer is that as far as creation is concerned, it was already created with the mineral kingdom in the very first verse of the Torah. The Torah says that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” the earth contains within it the koach hatzomeach and now for grass and trees to grow it is just revealing something from existent potential, it is not a new creation. That is a very important thing. What is a very beautiful geologic and evolutionary proof of that, is as we said before, one of the astonishing things about vegetation and early life forms, is that they appear almost simultaneously with the creation of the earth itself. According to the theory and the statistics of creating a living cell, it should have taken billions of years to just create the first living cell - or more than that. So one of the most mysterious things is that together, almost simultaneously with the creation of the earth are the first living cells. Because there is something about the earth that it gives rise, just by itself that it has the potential of life in it. So there is something about creation that creation has the vision of man, it’s called sof maaseh bemachshava techila, the end of deed is in the beginning of thought, that man is already empictured in the primordial dust of creation. On the other hand, when man finally comes to the fore and is created, it is clear that he is created straight out of this dust, but on the other hand, in potential, which is more real than vision ahead, the potential of vegetation is in the mineral and that’s why it is included in one stage of creation.

So, we have said several things, we have explained this verse that hakol hayah min haafar vehakol shav el haafar which means that we do indeed have a common ancestor. The common ancestor is this dust. Now obviously, shivim panim laTorah, - this is also a very important thing, if we give one interpretation that this dust means that the very first split second after the Big Bang, that is just one interpretation, shivim panim laTorah, if we say that the dust is the dust of the earth when it was created five billion years ago, or whenever it happened to be created - that’s another interpretation and they all relate, they all go together, shivim panim laTorah, and then finally when man is created from the dust and then, when he sins, it’s called kalkalateinu hi takanateinu, [a very famous thing about the Ba’al Shem Tov – the Ba’al Shem Tov said that he has the power to go up to Heaven and not to die, like Elijah, to ascend to Heaven in a fiery chariot, but he prefers to fulfill the verse ki afar ata ve’el afar tashuv – for him it’s more important to return to dust than to go up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. But that’s only by virtue of the sin. So we see that there is something about the sin and the result of the sin that is better than it was before even before doing teshuvah. The concept of that – the Rebbe used to love to quote this concept, kalkalateinu hi takanateinu – there’s something inherent in a fall or a breakage that is more rectified than the state of rectification previously – obviously a very deep concept to understand] .In any event, that is this whole concept of hakol hayah min haafar vehakol shav el haafar.

[Afar can be read ofer, ofer is a young deer, so it could be that our common ancestors are deers – that we came out of young men and women who are called deers in the Song of Songs – ofer ha’ayalim – I like deers – she also likes deers – so that could be our common ancestor. In fact, in one of the books over there, it’s called “Jewish Nature” so you’ll also find a picture of a deer on the cover – that’s where our Jewish nature comes from. In any event, that’s one way of reading this verse, hakol hayah min haofer vehakol shav el haofer.]

Before we get to the next point, another general thing about evolution is that one thinks of evolution as linear, that things start from some beginning point and they proceed, they advance all the time – linearly. But the truth is that evolution is a cycle. What does this imply? To say that we have a common ancestor and that we will return to our common ancestor is linear but it’s cyclic. What does Einstein say in his theory of relativity? He says that if you keep on going straight for long enough, you’re going to find yourself back at the beginning. The same truth holds for true evolution. The true evolution appears to be linear but really it’s a cycle. All of the worlds descend in a process that is called hishtalshelut haolamot. The best translation for that is the evolution of worlds. The very concept of evolution in the Torah is one of the first terms that is used in Kabbalah and Chassidut, that the words evolve from one another.

When we are speaking of the worlds evolving, we are speaking of descent. When an evolutionary biologist is talking about evolution, he is talking about ascent – things getting better getting higher, from inanimate to animate, to vegetable, to animal, to man so even though it says in the quotation we quoted before, that there is no purpose whatsoever, nonetheless, he does say that – for lack of a better word – things are ascending. So we see that the evolution of the spiritual worlds descends, but the evolution of the physical worlds ascends. This thought is straight from the Torah, that evolution is a circle, it’s not a straight line, and evolution is descent from God, and then ascent back to God. The Maggid of Mezeritch used to say that God created us something from nothing in order that we – our spiritual service is to revert that something back to nothing. That’s an abstraction of the thought that we’re now saying. We’re now saying in a much simpler, in an even materialistic way, that evolution itself is taking the lowest level, like the “rock”, and building and climbing from stage to stage until reaching man and then until reaching the Jewish people. The Jewish people is already a chelek elokah mimaal mamash, an actual, visible part of God, an empirical presence of God, that was the intention of all of mankind, who was created in the image of God.

There is one chapter of Tehillim which reflects this the most beautifully, there is a very long and exquisite interpretation of the Malbim on chapter 148 of Psalms. The psalmist, King David, praises God for all the wonders of nature and in his praise he begins with all the heavenly objects and then he continues with all the earthly objects. In describing and praising the heavenly workings of God, he descends from the inexpressible highest meromim to the angels and then to the physical heavens, it’s a descent, but then, when he reaches the physical world, he begins an ascent and he goes from the inanimate to the vegetable to the animal to man and finally the chapter ends with the Jewish people. So this chapter – and this has to be described in detail – is a most beautiful example of the full cycle of evolution. First there is a descent and then there is an ascent, the descent is called the heavens. When God created the world it says He created the heavens and the earth. That means that the heavens and the earth is a picture of the full cycle of evolution of everything coming from the common ancestor and returning to the common ancestor. The coming from the common ancestor downwards is the heavens, and the returning to the common ancestor upwards is the earth. So this sounds like the male-female principle of the universe. This is a point that we will make tomorrow and also the next day – that all of biological evolution is the female principle in our universe. Once more, evolution as described in biology, from simple creature to more advanced creature, is feminine energy, the mother energy within the world. Spiritual descent, the beginning of the cycle, the heavens coming down, that’s male energy that’s the descent part of the total cycle, but evolution in the sense that scientists use the word it’s called the earth the earth is the dust there is definitely a dust at the very top of the circle but then there is the dust that appears at the bottom of the circle and from that dust everything grows and everything advances from level to level until reaching man.

We will conclude this with a last point. We said that the basic problem is, if everything comes from the dust and we all have a common ancestor – whether that be dust or whether that be Elokim – we can definitely say that all of nature comes from Elokim and all of nature will return to Elokim. And we will go on to explain that Elokim is the mother’s womb of nature. So everything is born from that womb and everything will ultimately return to that womb. How can we explain the discreetness of the Torah story, what is the most important concept that reflects discreetness in Kabbalah? It is this concept that is written very simply called the concept of Five Points. The world originally emanated from Primordial Man it emanated through a process which is called five discreet points emanated and each one of these five discreet points is responsible for creating a whole different class of beings. The five discreet points ultimately in the rectified world of Atzilut become full persona which are called partzufim and the partzufim connect and mate with one another but they have discreet origins. Once again, the basic concept in Kabbalah of discreet origins - which is not everything coming from a common ancestor - is the concept in Kabbalah of the Five Points. Obviously, the five worlds are also related to the Five Points and everything that is five is all related to the Five Points, but this is discreet creation.

What comes first, the common ancestor principle or discreet creation? So, now we find that the Torah has both principles to it, it has both the common ancestor concept to it and it has discreet, point concept. So we have a beautiful way of putting the two things together. What comes first? First comes the common ancestor, because Adam Kadmon himself is created out of the dust, but then from Adam Kadmon, from this Primordial Man – we’ll have to talk more about him later – emerge five discreet points and these five discreet points are definitely like the different steps of creation which appear to be discreet in the story of Genesis – at least in the first story of Genesis.

We’ll say another very important thing. We know that the story of creation appears twice in the beginning of the Torah. The first story is the discreet story; the second story is the non-discreet story. In the second story we are told of God creating Adam and Eve - Eve from Adam - and then they are in the Garden of Eden and then they sin, etc, etc. There is no order to that story of creation; the creation of man comes before animals, first God creates man and then He creates the animals and brings them to man to call them by names, totally the opposite of what it says beforehand. There is no division of days. So obviously there is something very important to be learnt about the two stories. The first story uses only the Name Elokim, the second story uses both Names, Havayah Elokim, the transcendent, supernatural revelation of Hashem linked together with His natural manifestation, which is Shem Elokim. Nobody takes notice of the fact that there are two explanations of creation; one is discreet and one is non-discreet. In the non-discreet one, that is where Adam is created from the dust, but in the discreet one he is not created from the dust, he is just created directly because the discreet one is direct creation. But in the non-discreet story he is comes out of the dust and the word “creation” is not used there. In the non-discreet story the word “formation” is used: vayitzer Hashem Elokim et ha’adam afar min haadamah – as we said before, vayitzer means something from something not something from nothing. What’s the something from something? It’s man from dust. Although in the first story which is the discreet story he is created something from nothing. Once more the commentators themselves try to understand what is that something from nothing and they say that this is the tzelem Elokim – this new input into the universe of a soul which is a natural reflection of God – that is the creation, not his physical body. When creation is used with regards to the fish which is the beginning of the animal kingdom in the first account of creation, so also, the commentaries explain that that means creating the nefesh hachiyunit, creating the soul of the animal kingdom and not the body of the animal kingdom. So even in the first discreet story all of the commentaries agree that the bodies can evolve, the new input is the spiritual input and even the spiritual input appears only three times that it is a total new creation of something from nothing, but in the second story there is no creation whatsoever, it’s all formation. In a certain sense, the second story is on a higher level than the first. Like in Tanya, the second chapter of Tanya is the nefesh hashenit, introduces the Divine soul of Israel, the first chapter is nature. So the same thing is true of the two stories, as we said before, the discreet account is a reflection of the Five Point principle whereas the non-discreet account is a reflection of hakol hayah min haafar vehakol shav el haafar, which is the common ancestor principle.

The next point which will conclude our train of thought, is a very important concept throughout Kabbalah and Chassidut which derives from the early philosophic works - even from Rabbi Saadia Gaon, way before Maimonides – which is called five states of precedence - hei kedimot.

One of the basic concepts of understanding the logic behind evolution is what do we mean when we say that something comes before something else? What is the very meaning of that statement? So philosophically, it says that when you say that something comes before something, x comes before y, it can mean five different things. These five different things also correspond to all of our groupings of five. The first one is called kedimah beila, which we will call “Causal Precedence” that’s the first one.

1. Causal Precedence
2. Intellectual Precedence
3. Natural Precedence
4. Temporal Precedence
5. “Bureaucratic” Precedence

These five states of precedence also correspond to the Crown and to wisdom and to understanding and to the six emotions of the heart and to malchut. Our normal Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei together with Kutzo shel Yud. The crown of the yud and Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei.

In short, Causal Precedence, to use the example that is brought in the original text is to say that the sun precedes its light. Because of the fact that the light shines out of the sun, so what comes first, the sun or the light? The fact that the sun precedes the light – it doesn’t mean temporal – they could have been created together at the very same moment, but there’s something that suggests that the sun must come before its light because it shines the light. So it’s the cause, it’s called kedimah beila, that the sun is the cause of the light. Since it is the cause of the light – it precedes the light. It need not necessarily have anything to do with time it can lend itself to time, but it need not lend itself to time.

The next is called Intellectual Precedence which is simply, who is smarter and who is dumber? That if you’re smarter then you precede the person who is dumber, that’s all. You come first. This is actually a principle in the Torah how to give people kavod. [nowadays we say that ladies come first, that’s because binah yeteirah nitnah ba’ishah yoter miba’ish, she’s more profoundly wiser, so she must come first.] That’s called Intellectual Precedence: the smarter, the better; the smarter, the first. It’s not just something “by the way” - these are deep philosophic principles. It’s as though to say that God’s intelligence precedes everything. When God creates reality He is creating intelligences. Since He is the supreme Intelligence, just as the Rambam says. Kabbalah disagrees with defining God as “intelligent” but the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya that in the beginning of the world of Atzilut, you can say that God is one with His wisdom and He is the ultimate Wisdom and everything that derives is a lesser level of wisdom. The ultimate Wisdom precedes the lower manifestation of wisdom – that’s the second precedence.

The third precedence is evolution – period. It’s called “precedence in nature”. The example is that a simple organism precedes a more complex organism – that’s the way it’s defined. It’s taking a more abstract statement, which simply says is that simplicity precedes complexity. First you have simple things and then by combining simple things together you get more complex things. But it’s used explicitly in reference to organisms so there can’t be anything clearer to what evolution is than simply what in Kabbalah - and is based on chakirah [analysis] is called kedimah beteva, “natural precedence”.

Now if we look at this for a moment, we see that these two appear to be opposites because in the second precedence, which is called kedimah beila, the smarter you are the more previous you are, but to be smart is more complex than to be dumb. To be dumb is to be a simpleton so if you’re dumb you’re simple. So the one that corresponds to chochmah here is making the apparent complexity precede the apparent simplicity, whereas the next one the kedimah beteva, the evolutionary precedence, is making the simplicity precede complexity. That is what we said before is the full cycle of evolution. The origin of the heavens is in chochmah and the origin of the earth is in binah, that’s what we’re going to go on to explain.

Evolution as spoken of in science is a purely feminine, ultimately a mother energy in the world. According to mother energy, a fetus develops in the womb from simplicity to complexity, that’s exactly what is called natural precedence, mehapashut lamurkav – those are the words in Hebrew.

The most important thing in this whole concept is the next one, which says that natural precedence is not the same as temporal precedence. Temporal precedence is that Reuven is older than Shimon, because he was born first. That’s the example that is given. Now, Reuven and Shimon and all the other brothers that are born one after the other are born from the womb of the mother but they represent - the six children of Leah represent the six midot, the six attributes of the heart – that are born one after the other. This is saying that natural precedence, which is evolution, is not necessarily temporal precedence - it’s a different concept. Obviously there is a relation between the two, but they are not one and the same. This is the basic problem with evolutionary theorists, that there is no distinction between natural precedence and temporal precedence. Temporal precedence is a mentality which is part of the revealed level of the soul, because the two lower levels are the revealed part of the soul, whereas the pure concept of simplicity preceding complexity is still an Intelligent Design principle, at the level of Mother as we said in the beginning of the first class.

The last one is called bureaucratic precedence. Bureaucratic precedence means that the king is before the viceroy and the viceroy is before the shalish and so forth and so on. In any government or in any army or in any organizational body, there is precedence of who gives the orders to who. In that type of precedence, the king is called number one, he has the second in chief, the mishneh lamelech, who’s called the number two, then he has the shalish who is called number three. That precedence appears to be totally arbitrary in relation to the previous ones, but that is the precedence of malchut and it has very, very deep truth to it – who comes first in the organization; whose word goes before whose other word.

After all of this, the two that concern us most are called the natural precedence and the temporal precedence, mother and sons. They are not the same but they are related to one another. This is a very deep gateway into beginning to think about evolutionary biology. With this we’ll conclude for this evening and iy”H we will continue tomorrow evening and you should all have a very happy, freilicher and lichtdikker Chanukah.