Q: What is the difference between number 7 and 8? It seems that both point to the same thing? 7 is like the 7th day shabbat (that refers to the Being)? And 8 is the beyond the manifested also. Is there any difference?

A: Our sages teach in Masechet Berakhot (page 57b) that Shabbat is a foretaste of the World to Come. What is meant by this? Already on the seventh day, one can feel what it feels like in the World to Come, in a permanent state, as in the eighth day.

Shabbat is the day of rest, when everything is at rest, and it is a beautiful expression of non-duality. It represents a reality before the creation of the illusion of time and space. This is why the laws of not carrying objects on Shabbat exist, to give the person a feeling of a complete world, before the creation of the illusion of time.

In this way, the six days of labor are considered days of motion, organization, disruption, development, deterioration, and separation. Whereas the seventh day, Shabbat, is the day of repair or return to the source, when the soul can experience its original and free root, relieved from the temporary imprisonment of the six days of labor.

It’s funny that to answer the question you asked, we must first take a step back and understand the relationship between the six days and the seventh day, before we can address what lies between the seventh and the eighth day. This is the covenant of the word and the day of the Messiah, or the day of the soul’s conversation in permanence, the experience of the World to Come in permanence while still clothed in a physical body.

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