"This world is no longer a true replica or a true projection of the higher worlds.
Only in its original state, that of the Garden of Eden, was it structured as a more or less perfect duplication of the physical world and the spiritual worlds.
Since then all the worlds, and our world in particular have become increasingly distorted, and much of the original essence has changed in various ways.
Only those persons who know the secret of existence in the universe can know the extent to which the duplication between the worlds still exists and can perceive the essential analogy between the physical world and the spiritual worlds.
They can make out the hidden paths in the concrete reality of the world leading to the upper worlds, and they read into whatever is apprehended as real the symbols and models of a higher world taking us step by step upward to the very pinnacle and source of all the levels."
From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
