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Chapter 11
And one set against the other: a rasha (a wicked person) and it is good for him, set against a tzaddik (a righteous person) and it is bad for him. That is, the good that is in his nefesh elokit (the soul from God), in his brain and in the right chamber of his heart, is bent and null before the evil from the kelipah (a husk that hides holiness) in the left chamber. And this too divides into tens of thousands of levels, separate in the matter of the amount and the quality of the nullifying and the bending of the good to the evil, God spare us. There is one in whom the bending and the being null are a very small bit, and even this is not constant, and not frequent at close intervals, but at rare times the evil gains strength over the good and conquers the small city, which is the body. But not all of it, only part of it alone, so that it yields to his orders and becomes a chariot for him and a garment, for one of its three garments mentioned above to clothe itself in it. That is, either in deed alone, to do light transgressions and not severe ones, God spare us. Or in speech alone, to speak the dust of evil talk, and mockery, and things of this kind. Or in thought alone, musings of a transgression, which are harder than a transgression. And even if he does not muse on a transgression in order to do it, but on the matter of the pairing of male and female in the world, so that he crosses the warning of the Torah (Deuteronomy 23:10), “and you shall guard yourself from every evil thing”, that one should not muse by day, and so on (Avodah Zarah 20b), or that it is a fit time to be occupied in Torah and he turns his heart to idle matters, as it is taught in a mishnah in Avot (Mishnah Avot 3:4): one who is awake at night, and so on, and turns his heart, and so on. For by any one of all these, and whatever is like them, he is called a rasha at that time, because the evil in his nefesh (the lowest level of the soul) gains strength in him and clothes itself in his body, and makes him sin and defiles him. And afterward the good in his nefesh elokit gains strength in him, and he regrets, and he asks pardon and forgiveness from Hashem (God), and Hashem will forgive him if he turns back in the fitting return, according to the counsel of our sages, of blessed memory, in the three divisions of atonement that Rabbi Yishmael expounded (Yoma 86a), as is explained in another place (in Iggeret HaTeshuvah, the Letter of Return).
And there is one in whom the evil gains strength more, and all three garments of the evil clothe themselves in him, and make him sin in transgressions more severe, and at times more frequent. But in between he regrets, and musings of return come to him from the aspect of the good in his nefesh, which gains a little strength in between. Only he does not have such strength as to defeat the evil, to separate from his sins completely, so as to be one who admits and forsakes. And of this the sages of blessed memory said (see Nedarim 9b): reshaim are full of regrets. For these are most of the reshaim, in whose nefesh there is still an aspect of good.
But one who never regrets, and to whom musings of return do not come at all, is called a rasha and it is bad for him. For the evil in his nefesh is alone what remains inside him, because it gained such strength over the good that the good withdrew from inside him and stands in the aspect of encompassing him from above. And therefore the sages of blessed memory said (Sanhedrin 39a): Over every company of ten the Shekhinah (the divine presence) rests.
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