What are Pure and Impure Forces?
“What are pure and impure forces?” is one of the questions Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) examines in his article “Introduction to the Book of Zohar.”
There are pure and impure forces: egoistic, altruistic, good, bad, evil and so on. The Zohar writes about devils, vampires, witches, all kinds of angels, and whatever else you can think of, millions of different such names. They can be good, bad, for and against, assemblies of different gods, forces, and they somehow fight with one another. There are names that we can pronounce, and there are other names that we cannot pronounce because you can cause a harmful angel to influence you, and so on.
What does all of this mean? If there is only one force of love and bestowal, called “the Creator,” which is perfectly good and benevolent, then how can all these impure forces emerge from the singular force of love and bestowal, if it is the root of everything?
How can it be that not only does the quality of love and bestowal give birth to impure forces and all these phenomena that take place in our world, such as murder, all kinds of atrocities and catastrophes, problems, diseases, and everything else that can possibly be imagined, all kinds of deformities… How can all that come from the singular force of love and bestowal that only wishes to do good and give enjoyment to the creation it created? What other root besides the Creator is there? After all, the Kabbalists also write that “there is none else besides Him,” so what is going on here?
Not only do Kabbalists say that everything emerges from the singular force of love and bestowal, they also say (in the Torah) that the Creator constantly feeds these impure forces so that they will exist. If that is really the case, then the picture becomes completely unclear. It seems as if those forces act against the force of love and bestowal, and it is as if the Creator probably battles against them, and that we stand somewhere in the middle, asking the Creator to protect us from them. However, this is not the case. The Creator created the impure forces on purpose, and revives them on purpose. Is this some kind of meanness on the Creator’s behalf?
In “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSulam examines this question and brings it to its answer. We will not examine the answers here. The book Introduction to the Book of Zohar by Dr. Michael Laitman contains this article, as well as detailed commentary and questions and answers on it, as well as for the article “Preface to the Book of Zohar”: two articles required for preparing oneself toward the study of The Zohar.
Baal HaSulam clarifies several other questions and provides their answers as well in the article:
- Why does a person need all of these worlds if he is so small? Baal HaSulam provides a very lengthy answer, voluminously describing the person’s entire path.
- Why do we need the impure forces?
- What is the soul?
- Why are the souls interconnected?
- What does it mean to “connect to the Creator” and “connect to other souls”?
- How can we connect to the Creator and to other souls?
- Why are obligated to do this now during our life in this world? I f we do not do this, we will have to descend to this world again, and so on.
The Free Kabbalah Course is based on the articles of Baal HaSulam and provides step-by-step guided learning from experienced Kabbalah instructors of Kabbalah’s basic concepts. Baal HaSulam was the first Kabbalist in history who wrote articles not only for Kabbalists, but for the broad public, in order to explain Kabbalah’s fundamentals, because he understood the need that would emerge in humanity to answer deeper questions about life’s meaning and purpose. Therefore, if you’re interested in such topics, we recommend taking the free course and start learning about the world around you and inside you anew. Click the banner below to sign up for the free course …
