In the previous section we looked at the Alter Rebbe's analogy of the flame of a candle: bound to the wick, yet straining at every moment to tear itself away and rise to its source. Now let us look at what is unique about fire as opposed to every other created thing.
At first glance, it is the nature of everything to return to its source, as the verse says, "all the rivers flow to the sea," so what is special about fire in particular? The answer is that fire has two features that nothing else has:
With everything else, you can bring it to a state in which no movement toward its source is visible at all. Water poured into a cup sits there calmly; you see in it no flight toward the sea, because where it is placed it is perfectly content. A stone thrown upward, while it is rising, shows you the motion of ascent, not the pull downward. With fire there is no such state. In whatever form fire is produced, and wherever it finds itself, it is always in motion, always fleeing back toward its source.
With everything else, returning to its source does not mean losing its existence. A stone that falls to the ground is still a stone. A drop of water that returns to the sea is still water; it is simply impossible to locate it within that vast quantity. Fire, however, upon reaching its source, loses its existence entirely. It is no longer fire as it was, but literally nothing at all.
It is worth noting: even when it appears that water rises upward, it is not the water that is rising. Rather, the water separates into its component elements, the element of air within it rising to its source and the element of earth within it descending. That is not an ascent of the thing itself but a breakdown into its elements. Fire alone rises upward on its own.
It emerges, then, that there is no logic at all to fire's wanting to return to its source. On the contrary, in rising it is nullified and becomes nothing at all. And yet, "ואף על פי כן בכך הוא חפץ בטבעו" ("and nevertheless this is what it desires by its nature"). This is the nature of fire, and there is no asking "why." We will come back to the meaning of the word "nature" shortly.
Let us return to the verse of Shlomo HaMelech in Mishlei: "נר ה' נשמת אדם" ("the candle of G-d is the soul of man"). A Jew's soul, even while it is joined to the body, is never at rest. It wants, constantly, to return to its source. That is the very essence of its love for the Holy One, blessed be He: how much it seeks to cling and to return to its root. And what would happen if it actually did reunite with its source? Exactly what happens to the flame that reaches its source: it becomes nullified and absorbed in the source and loses its individual existence. And that is precisely what the soul wants.
And this does not refer specifically to the level of neshamah, lest one think that this is said only of a Jew in whom the level of neshamah shines openly, while someone in whom only the level of ruach or the level of nefesh shines has no part in it. Therefore the Alter Rebbe adds: "כך נשמת האדם וכן בחינת רוח ונפש חפצה וחשקה בטבעה ליפרד ולצאת מן הגוף ולידבק בשרשה ומקורה בה' חיי החיים ב"ה" ("so too the soul of man, and likewise the levels of ruach and nefesh, desires and longs by its nature to separate and depart from the body and cleave to its root and source in G-d, the Life of all life, blessed be He"). Even a Jew born to the lowest of the low and to the sinners of Israel, whose soul may be of a very low level, the level of nefesh which is malchus of Asiyah, as was mentioned in chapter 18, he too, from the standpoint of his soul's own desire, wants to separate from the body and cleave to its root.
It is hard for us to speak of the Alter Rebbe's greatness, but from the stories told about him it is clear that with him this was visible literally, even to physical, external eyes: he lived in a constant state of kelos hanefesh, the soul's expiring longing for G-d.
Even before he became a Rebbe, while he was a disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch, he learned in chavrusa with the Maggid's son, Reb Avraham "the Malach." It is told that once, in the midst of their learning, they reached a state of kelos hanefesh and their souls nearly left their bodies; at the last moment their souls were restored to them by eating a bit of pastry with butter.
His prayer and his saying of Chassidus were with such fiery passion and kelos hanefesh that he would often roll on the floor, and a chassid who wanted to hear and write down every word would roll after him in order to catch what he was saying. In certain places you find three dots printed, in place of the words they could not manage to hear.
The walls of the room in which he prayed were padded with soft material, so that he would not be injured by the intensity of his fervor. Once, after davening, he was not to be found in his room; they searched and found him outside the city, clutching the prayer stand that he had torn from its place and run off with.
But this description is not said of tzaddikim alone. The Alter Rebbe is describing that every single Jew, from the inner essence of his soul, wants exactly this: to separate and depart from the body, "הגם שתהיה אין ואפס ותתבטל שם במציאות לגמרי ולא ישאר ממנה מאומה ממהותה ועצמותה הראשון" ("even though it will be nothing at all and will be entirely nullified there out of existence, and nothing will remain of its original essence and being"). G-d forbid that this means the soul is lost. It means that nothing will remain of the essence it had before, because it will become one with the Infinite.
One cannot say that the soul longs for this the way a person longs to reach a higher level. Usually, when a person longs for a higher level, it is a level he has some grasp and recognition of. A wise man wants to understand more because he knows what wisdom is and seeks greater depth; his aspiration is for something he has a hold on. But a person cannot genuinely long to be an angel, since he has no idea what that is. Something entirely outside the range of a person's perception simply cannot be the object of his aspiration.
The same applies here: one cannot say that the soul aspires to be absorbed in the Infinite, for that bears no relation whatsoever to its own essence; it is complete nullification of its existence. And nevertheless, says the Alter Rebbe, "אעפ"כ זה רצונה וחפצה בטבעה" ("nevertheless this is its will and desire by its nature"). Just as there is no explanation for why the flame seeks to tear free of the wick, so there is no explanation for why the soul's love of G-d draws it to leave and to arrive at kelos hanefesh. That is its nature.
The word "nature" is not always a term of praise. When a person is drawn after animalistic things, we tell him: why are you being pulled along by your nature? Rise a little above it. Why does the term "nature" sometimes carry a negative sense? Because nature is something that is not according to reason. But it is not only low things; something that is above reason can also be called "nature," since it too is not according to reason, not in the negative sense of foolishness, but in the positive sense: logic has no capacity to grasp why the thing happens.
So too the expression "above nature" denotes something beyond the limits familiar to us. The sun rising every day is called "nature," not because we understand why it happens, but because for us it is routine; and "above nature" means what departs from that routine. Here the intent of "nature" is something that stands on its own, something like an axiom: this is the reality, there is nothing to argue about and no explanation for it; from that starting point onward one can explain and discuss the details.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "וטבע זה הוא שם המושאל לכל דבר שאינו בבחי' טעם ודעת" ("and this term 'nature' is a borrowed name for anything that is not in the category of reason and knowledge"). Anything that has no reason and knowledge, that has no explanation and cannot be understood, is called "nature."
And so in our case too, when we say that it is the nature of fire to rise upward and the nature of the soul to desire kelos hanefesh, "וגם כאן הכוונה שרצון וחפץ זה אינו בבחי' טעם ודעת ושכל מושג ומובן" ("and here too the intent is that this will and desire is not in the category of reason and knowledge and comprehended, understood intellect"). There is no logic to it, there is no way to understand it, and there is no gain in it at all; on the contrary, there is loss, for here the soul has an existence and there it will be nothing at all. "אלא למעלה מהדעת ושכל המושג והמובן" ("but rather above knowledge and comprehended, understood intellect").
This connects to what we learned in chapter 18: the root of love in the soul is in the level of chochmah, the faculty in the soul capable of receiving that which is above intellect (and only afterward does it filter down into the frameworks of intellect). Since this love resides in the soul at the level of chochmah, what it seeks is likewise above intellect, for its whole being is rooted in a place whose entire essence is above intellect. And this is how the Alter Rebbe concludes: "והיא בחי' חכמה שבנפש" ("and this is the level of chochmah in the soul").
In summary: in this section we saw what is unique about fire in two respects: that its flight toward its source is always evident in it, and that in returning to its source it is utterly nullified, and nevertheless "this is what it desires by its nature." In the same way the soul of man, and likewise the levels of ruach and nefesh in every Jew, desires by its nature to separate from the body and cleave to its root, even though it will be nothing at all and nothing will remain of its original essence. We saw that this desire has no reason and knowledge, since the soul does not grasp the level toward which it is drawn, and we explained the concept of "nature," a borrowed name for anything not in the category of reason and knowledge, and its root in the level of chochmah in the soul.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's explanation in chapter 19.