To Choose or Not to Choose

Parashat Bereshit - Adam Harishon

Human existence begins with Adam Harishon, and therefore everything that manifests itself throughout history will always have its roots beginning at this point in creation. Sin presenting itself at any moment within time can be traced back to the first sin of humanity- the sin of Adam Harishon. Over 5,700 years later humans still battle the same temptations and for us to learn how to overcome it we must look back into how our Rabbis describe the psyche of Adam Harishon. All of the 600,000 Jewish souls of future generations are all contained within Adam and therefore all ordeals that anyone has ever encountered first arose within Adam Harishon.

First it must be understood that when discussing Adam Harishon it isn’t like talking about an ordinary person. This was a human being on such great spiritual heights that the Talmud tells us “he extended from earth to the sky and from one end of the world to the other.” When he walked by the angels mistook him for G-d and recited “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh.” Adam was able to vision all of the future generations and the outcome of every human being. When a rabbi in the time of the Gemara entered the grave of Adam Harishon his heel was exposed and the light that radiated was as bright as the sun and this was after he sinned and after his death, how much more so was his greatness when he was alive and before the sin. These sayings of Chazal together with others teach us the magnitude of Adam Harishon’s spiritual being, greater than any other man that has ever lived.

Hashem tested Adam with his obedience and required him to yield his own human will for a divine will and within moments the whole world would reach its perfection. At this point sin was external to Adam and internally he was completely good without any mixture of any smidgen of evil or any inclination towards evil. The desire of evil was outside of him and he had the choice to make it part of him or not. His level of free will is not the same way humans today perceive free will. Today we make the choice between good and evil but he was making the choice between true and false and the terms of good and bad were completely meaningless to him. That which Hashem desires is by definition called good and therefore anything that Hashem rejects has no existence. Therefore only good can be real and true and anything opposing it is said to be false. His reality and perceptions were so keenly clear that to choose evil was like for a person today to choose to walk into a fire. He knew it was instantaneous separation from Hashem and immediate death. Rav Dessler explains that Adam’s psyche would describe himself in terms of his goodness and not in terms of evil like the way people do today. Sin was attracted to Adam by “You ought to do this,” as opposed to today people think in terms of “I should do this” in terms of the evil inclination. When the good inclination is speaking it says “You must not do this” from an outside perspective. Looking at Adam before the sin would be like seeing a powerful Neshama and if you would look closely maybe you can see the outline of a body, as opposed to today all we see is the body and it would take someone with a strong perception just to notice a glimpse of the neshama.

From eating of the tree of good and evil, Adam allowed good and evil to become inextricably mingled into the human psyche and now people can perceive something as being good and successful even though it is completely evil. Our minds have the ability to distort truth and reality and live a life separate from G-d, a fantasy world which is unreal and illusionary and yet we can still believe we can be successful. Before eating from the tree Adam did not perceive good and evil and therefore could not even contemplate living in a world separate from Hashem. Once he ate from the tree he was able to relate and connect to evil just as much as he was able to relate to the good. But the obvious question is if Adam was living in a world of such obvious closeness to Hashem and his perceptions of truth in reality were so clear how can he choose otherwise?

The greater a person, the greater their tests, since Adam was on such a great spiritual state he needed a test that was suitable to his level. It couldn’t be a test between good and evil because it was not yet part of his psyche therefore he needed a test between two types of good. Adam thought to himself he could have taken a step back and watched the world reach its perfection, but how did he contribute to that perfection? By being passive in this grandiose beautiful world and not reacting? Wouldn’t he have achieved greater closeness to Hashem, by eating from the fruit, bringing the world down with him living in a physical world, with temptation and an internal Yetzer hara and then hold strong within this lower state, make the right choices and actively bring the world back up to perfection. He figured if he can allow just a little bit of evil to enter into him and lower his level just a small step down he would achieve even a greater level of Kiddush Hashem once he conquers that evil and connects himself once again to Hashem. But his mistake was that he underestimated the difficulty of this challenge that he was now accepting. At that point he was unable to imagine how powerful was the darkness to step outside of a world of Hashem’s reality. What he thought would be a simple step to bring himself back up was actually 6,000 years of turmoil and battle against evil which we are still fighting today. This sin for the sake of heaven, with the purest of intentions, disguising itself as a great Mitzvah was actually a grave darkening sin. He thought he was following Hashem’s logical conclusions. If Hashem created worlds of good and evil, what was the purpose in creation if he would just rise himself up to greater levels in Gan Eden and the lower worlds would just eventually be destroyed. He could turn himself downwards and enter those worlds in order to achieve even a greater level of Hashem’s revelation, by resisting himself from darkness in a world so obscure from spirituality. To understand one level deeper we need to discuss the purpose of creation.

Ramchal explains that the purpose of creation is to give man the ultimate good. The next world is reserved for receiving the greatest possible good, but receiving unearned, free goodness would not be pleasure at all. Receiving a free handout warrants a feeling of shame and inadequacy. One who receives charity feels helpless, dependent and incomplete. Therefore Hashem set up this world in order to earn the next world. This world is the place to build our own perfection and to create existence in the next world. This is the purpose of creation; to work and earn in this world, to enjoy the results in the next world. Why didn’t Hashem just create us in a way that we enjoy free gifts? The reason is because then we would not be close to Hashem at all. Man is created in the image of Hashem. Just as Hashem creates and destroys worlds, so too man can create and destroy worlds. We are free to create ourselves, to take our raw material and our potential and bring our lives to perfection. It is our free will that gives us features that make us similar to Hashem and without it we would be diametrically opposed to the divine as possible. If we just received our goodness without earning it we would be the takers, while Hashem is the giver and it would make us extensively far from Hashem.

Adam had to make the choice to yield his own human independence which is what makes him in the divine image. Adam would be expressing the divine image within him by actively building his world not by passively sitting by. Adam was being tested in his obedience and that would mean he needed to sacrifice his free will. The giving up of his free will is the greatest act of free choice possible. By annulling his independence and negating his ego he melts into the greater Existence of Hashem’s reality. Adam was not choosing his lower physicality by choosing evil, rather he was longing to express his higher self of free will and to become independent which was the root of his divine image. Yet this is the paradox of humanity. When we break away from Hashem we sense a will of independence and we live in an illusion of a world out of Hashem’s reality, but if we sacrifice the self we lose independence and disappear into Hashem’s reality, but it is there that we become real. The decision was up to Adam to sacrifice the ego and give up his divine free will or to express his divine self and lift himself up to higher levels than ever before.