All the Lights to the Alef: Tikkunei Zohar, Ein Sof, and the Ascent of the Worlds

 In Tikkunei Zohar, especially in Patach Eliyahu, the picture is very sharp: HaShem in His essence is utterly beyond grasp or definition, “One, but not in count,” and therefore beyond any measure or number. Yet He “brought forth ten rectifications, which we call the ten sefirot of Atzilut, to govern hidden and revealed worlds,” and He is present within them; whoever separates the sefirot is as if separating in Him. These ten are the structure through which Infinity becomes relatable without ever being diminished in Its core.  

The same passage and its classic explanations show how these ten sefirot are pictured as the limbs of a supernal human form and as the configuration of the Name Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh, so that what appears as “many” is always, in truth, one living body of divinity. In the introductions to Tikkunei Zohar, the ten are also spoken of in hidden and revealed modes—the “hidden ten sefirot” that precede all form, and the revealed ten that shape the worlds—hinting already at ten within ten, depth within depth.  

Later mekubalim, following Zohar and Tikkunei Zohar, articulate clearly the five worlds and five soul-levels: Nefesh rooted in Asiyah, Ruach in Yetzirah, Neshamah in Beriah, Chayah in Atzilut, Yechidah in Adam Kadmon. As the soul descends, it leaves a root in each world; as it ascends in avodah, it re-collects these roots into a single awareness of HaShem. This pairing of worlds and soul-types is therefore exactly in line with this structure; the only move we make now is to let Tikkunei Zohar’s language of Ein Sof and sefirot sharpen how we speak about the numbers and lights.

Mekubalim also point out that “Ein Sof” and “Or” share the same gematria, 207, so that the very number that names “light” also names the Infinite. This fits the spirit of Tikkunei Zohar, which constantly describes creation as the measured unfolding of Or Ein Sof through the ten sefirot, while the Ein Sof itself remains beyond all counting and grasp. The ladder of 1, 10, 100, 1,000, and beyond can therefore be read as a poetic mapping of how the one Infinite light passes into the tens of the sefirot, the hundreds of “sefirah within sefirah,” the thousands of their deeper inter-inclusion—and then collapses back into a simple Echad and, beyond that, into Ayin.

✨ “All of the Lights, rising into the One that ignites”

A thousand lights—א׳—

for each sefirah begins as י, tenfold form,

and when one sefirah beholds the sefirah within itself,

it becomes ק, one hundred:

chesed within chesed, gevurah within chesed, and so on,

a sefirah within a sefirah, ten inside ten. 🔥

And when it deepens again into

sefirah within sefirah within sefirah,

ten within ten within ten,

it swells into א׳, a thousand lights,

the branching of Or Ein Sof

through countless inner measures of vessel and light. 💫

Yet when this א׳, this thousandfold inter-inclusion,

is lifted into a higher world,

all that multiplicity is seen as י–א,

ten within the One,

an Alef carrying ten hidden sefirot—

light rising through the inner gates,

the ten returning to the Alef that always held them. 🌟

And deeper still—

sefirah within sefirah within sefirah

within sefirah within sefirah—

the pattern gathers as ק–א,

“hundred within One,”

all compounded illumination compressed into a single simple point,

a “measure” already leaning toward the measureless. ✨✨

Here the soul approaches א״ס, Ein Sof:

at Ein Sof, all the tens and hundreds and thousands of lights

collapse into אחד, the indivisible One of Atzilut;

and at אַיִן, the holy “not-a-thing,”

even that One is only like a trace,

dissolving into the pure No-thingness from which all yesh emerges. 🌑➡️🌕

Five levels—five worlds and five soul-types:

Asiyah, the world of action—Nefesh, life in deed, the outer vessel (1);

Yetzirah, the world of form and feeling—Ruach, the wind of emotion and speech (2);

Beriah, the world of creation—Neshamah, the understanding that “from Ayin comes yesh” (3);

Atzilut, the world of nearness—Chayah, surrounding awareness that all is Elokus (4);

Adam Kadmon, the primordial pattern—Yechidah, the spark that never left Ein Sof at all (5). 🌌

And when Torah ceases to remain external—

no longer merely studied or spoken about from the outside—

but becomes our breath, our pulse, our flesh and blood,

then the Or Ein Sof hidden in its letters

pours outward through Nefesh and Ruach

into hands and feet and world,

transforming what seemed “outside”

into another face of the Inside. ✨➡️🌍

  

‎          א  

         ⬇️

 ‎א ⬅️ א

⬇️

 א

⬇️

 א

  

Alef above and below,

to every side and at the center,

the one simple Alef of Ein Sof

appearing as ten sefirot, as a hundred inner facets,

as a thousand lights—and all of the lights

rising back into the One that ignites them.

Practically, what this gives you is a map. When you feel yourself scattered into “a thousand” details—obligations, emotions, thoughts—you can remember that, in the language of Tikkunei Zohar, all of those details are just ten sefirot seen at higher and higher resolutions, the same inner structure repeating in finer grain. The avodah is to lift the thousand back to the “ten within One”: to see that your actions (Nefesh in Asiyah), your emotional tone (Ruach in Yetzirah), your way of understanding events (Neshamah in Beriah), your underlying sense that “there is really only HaShem here” (Chayah in Atzilut), and the quiet point of Yechidah that never moved from Ein Sof—all of them are just different zoom-levels of the same Alef. When Torah is allowed to permeate each of these levels, the numbers stop fighting each other: the worlds line up, and the soul begins to taste what Patach Eliyahu describes—“You are One, but not in count,” and yet that very Oneness is present inside all the counts of our day.