The Life Within Life

by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook

As long as a person thinks of nothing but the life within life—within the life that he sees, hears and feels—everything is alive for him. As a result, he comes to a state of the perfection of life within himself.

But if he isolates the Life of all worlds in a separate locus, then the radiance of the life of the entire world leaves him. And it does not return to him until he at last learns that in order to find the Life of the worlds he does not need to seek any particular spot.

Then, as before, he can without any weakness find the life within life inside life itself, within the life before him, in the reality that extends in its beauty and all of its hues before his eyes.

This is true in regard to a person’s soul, which only needs to soar in the breadths of spirituality, to rejoice and take pleasure.

But in our limited life, which is filled with many obstacles, confusions and realms of darkness, the Life of worlds is not revealed to our eyes of flesh.

And so when we wish to draw life into the pathways of this world, which are so difficult and filled with anger, we must raise our eye to the heavens and find Hashem above our world, sitting in the heavens.

But a person who comes to seek God sitting in the heavens in answer to the demand of his soul is making a mistake, because “Hashem God is in the heavens above and upon the earth below—there is no other.” Even in the midst of the world, God embraces and surrounds all, and fills all.

A person who is unaware of the One Who dwells in heaven as being here upon the pathways of actual life is in danger of sinking into the depths of wickedness and he will find no peace, because the pathways of the world require Torah from heaven.
Pinkas Hadapim 1:24