The Creation of Time
Before there was a beginning, before there was time and physical existence, there was the Endless One, the Ancient of Ancients. His light of beneficence was in brilliant radiance everywhere as it shone through the infinite vessel of the spiritual realm, a world without time, space, form and motion.
In this realm, the energy intelligence of the eternal light was to share and to be completely received while the energy intelligence of the eternal vessel was only to completely receive the light. Thus all was glued and bound together as One. So perfect was the union that there was no way to tell what was vessel and what was light.
Then the light, which took great joy in anything which has an affinity to the Creator, urged the vessel to be more like the Creator. With this suggestion, the vessel felt the desire to evolve. Not only did it want to receive the light, but it wanted to bestow the light it received. For the only way it could increase its closeness to the Creator was to be like the Creator and to actively bestow the light, not just passively radiate what it had received.
Now bestowal of the light is very different from just passively receiving the light. Bestowal is not passive. Bestowal involves an active choice and state of consciousness to give what is received. Active choice means the vessel must have free will. And if the choice is to mean anything at all, which it must if the vessel is to really bestow, it must happen in a context in which what choice to make is not always easy or transparently clear.
To fulfill the desire of the vessel, the Creator had to change the nature of the vessel. Its underlying energy intelligence became one of desiring to receive for itself alone, which is the nature of our physical world. In this context, it would have to use its free will to consciously reject receiving for itself alone and instead choose to receive for the sake of sharing. It would have to earn the light it would receive by working against its nature of receiving for itself alone.
The result of this change in the vessel's nature was an immediate and eternal restriction of the light it had previously been open to receive. It was as if the light became covered or deeply shaded because the vessel no longer wanted to receive without doing something on its own initiative to share. To bestow the light, the vessel now had to actively choose to elevate its own basic nature, which was the desire to receive for itself alone. It had to choose to receive in order to share for unless it chose to receive in order to share, the light would stay deeply shaded and concealed and could not enter the vessel.
This created a tenuous state of affairs in the timeless spiritual realm. For if there was the possibility of no light entering the vessel, because the vessel had a desire to receive for itself alone, the vessel would disappear from the realm of spiritual being. It would become a non-entity for nothing can be maintained which has even the possibility of not completely receiving the light.
And this is the reason that the Endless One, the Ancient of Ancients created time. The Holy One, in the beneficence of His bestowal of the light, in His infinite compassion, created time so that should for any moment the possibility be realized that a vessel not receive the light, because it used its free will to receive for itself alone, there would be time for T'shuvah. There would be a chance, for the vessel to make up the deficiency by changing its free will to receive for the sake of sharing and thereby avoid its disappearance from the realm of spiritual being.