Now that everything's back to normal in KabbalaLabs, we can ask the Big Question: Was there ever really a zvuv, a zapper, a clone of me and a golem? Were they actually there for a time and then disappeared—along with the memory of them—or were they never really there to begin with?

The question is a Big Question, because whatever you say about them is going to be true about us as well. Okay, not precisely, but the idea is there: We are also generated out of nothing by the Great Isifier Of All Isness. If He pulls the plug—meaning, stops generating us at any given moment—all memory of us will also disappear (heaven forbid). So the Big Question is, once this universe has run its course and its plug is pulled, will it have ever really existed? Now that's fairly relevant, because if it won't exist then, it doesn't really exist now either. Perhaps it doesn't bother all of you out there, but personally, I would like to know whether I really exist or not.

Let's look at what made the zvuv, the zapper, my clone and the golem real. Thinking into it, they would all have been benign and totally insignificant were it not for one troublemaker who took them all seriously. You recall that my clone and I were instructing Miri how to spell camel in Hebrew. Out of the confusion of two zaidies speaking at once, Miri spelled golem instead of gamal. If Feivel had not been bothered by a a nuisance fly or overly impetuous to try out his new zapper, then both I and my clone would have been able to correct Miri's error and nothing would have gone wrong. The whole thing would have been a pleasant experiment and could have been easily resolved—if only Feivel hadn't gone berserk over zapping the zvuv with his zapper, thereby accidentally pressing the button to activate the otifier input while accidentally zapping the resulting golem.

Thinking further, I was also at fault. Why did I have to take the existence of another Rabbi Infinity so seriously, almost jealously? So Miri loves her zaidy so much that she wants two of them—is that so terrible? If I had only held my head in its place and my ego in its, we could have enjoyed the afternoon's entertainment and then quietly put the whole thing to bed, so to speak.

As it turns out, it was not Miri, but Feivel and I that endowed that world with substance. Miri created a fiction. We made it a reality. A rather nightmarish reality at that.

Would it also be possible for us, then, to create a positive reality? I don't really know what the purpose of a zapper and a zvuv would be, but meeting a clone of myself could have been a wonderful opportunity for self-discovery. And Miri certainly could have learned much from caring for a pet camel, enjoying the experience and growing from it. Then, even once those isified entities would be put to rest, even once the plug would be pulled, the positive growth that both of us would have gained would still be with us.

What I'm saying is that an isified world is neither a fiction nor a reality. It is both at once; a super-imposed state of both existence and non-existence at once. It is a conditional existence. It all depends on what we do with it.

In this case, our real reality, this cosmos in which we live, is yet a more poignant example. G‑d is thinking, "Should I have a world or should I not?" Being beyond existence and non-existence, that's the way He does things: The world has to both exist and not exist at once. So He creates it conditionally. He says, "If it's a world where people take care of one another, they take care of My world, do My mitzvahs and connect to Me through My Torah, then it exists. But if not, so then it doesn't exist."

Each moment of existence, therefore, is contingent on fulfillment of those conditions. If you were doing the right stuff, that moment existed. If not, that moment never really happened. It was nothing but a fleeting dream, perhaps not even a very nice one, and in the big picture, it was never there. The right stuff that you do, on the other hand, will endure forever, since when it happened, and by virtue of it happening, your world really did exist.

Yet then it's not over. Because along comes the next moment. And remember, at every moment the entire reality is regenerated from the void once again—past, present and future. So now, once again, the conditions are in place. Once again, you are needed to determine whether this world really exists or not. Each moment, it's all up to you.

Until, at the end of time, we enter into the "day that is completely Shabbat and a cessation of time for eternal life." A time when only the good of this world, the stuff that was real and of eternal meaning, will exist in a time beyond time and life beyond death and life. A true world, as true as G‑d Himself.

This installment of KabbalaToons is dedicated to the occasion of the 80th birthday of our beloved master-teacher of the inner wisdom of Torah, Rabbi and Chassid, Reb Yoel Kahn, may he live in good health and continue to teach until the time when "no longer will one person tell the other to teach him the ways of G‑d, for all will know Me."