Now we arrive at the central point: what does the Alter Rebbe mean by the word "olam," world? As he writes in the line above, "this world and likewise all the upper worlds," he is not speaking about one particular level. From the very lowest rung to the very highest, angels and souls, and above them the world of Atzilus, all the worlds together "effect no change whatsoever in His unity."
To understand this we will begin with a first stage and move forward step by step, until we reach the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 20. We begin with a point stated in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah (chapter 2), which one must know before learning what is here, since the explanation in chapter 20 is built upon it and is a further advance beyond it. This point is a bit abstract for someone hearing it for the first time, but it is simple and clear once you have heard it, and it can be grasped through a parable.
The first parable, the silversmith and the goblet: a silversmith sits in his workshop and produces a goblet, a candlestick, a menorah. Once he has finished, the goblet leaves the workshop for the distributor, from there to the store, it stands in the display window, it is purchased, and it arrives in the buyer's home. Is any bond or connection left between the maker and the goblet once it has left his hands? As long as he was working on it he poured into it his energy, his thought, his wisdom, the beautiful engravings with which he adorned it. But once it has left his possession and gone on its way, there is no connection between them at all; he is entirely separate from it. Here we have a creation where, after it has come into being, no relationship remains between maker and made.
The second parable, a stone thrown into the air: alongside that there is a second kind of creation [the example of a mother and her child was suggested, where the bond continues even after birth, but we will bring an example stronger than that]: a creation that any person can bring about at any moment, and in which the energy invested must accompany it at every moment, so that the instant the energy stops, the creation reverts to what it was before. A person takes a stone, small or large, and throws it upward (and not specifically a stone, any object at all). He has produced here a state of affairs that did not exist: a stone hovering in the air. How long will this creation hold up? Exactly as long as the energy invested in it. Once the energy runs out, the situation reverts to what it was and the stone falls.
What is the difference between these two creations?
In the first case energy was invested in the goblet, but that energy need not remain in it permanently; the goblet stays a goblet without it. With the stone, however, the energy must keep pushing it at every moment, and the moment it stops, the stone falls. What is the logic behind the difference? The explanation is simple: the silversmith, in truth, did not create anything, and therefore he is not required to stay bound to his product. The one who threw the stone did do something here, and therefore he must keep acting at every moment.
How can we say about the silversmith that he did nothing? Let us examine what actually happened here:
The material: that very same material existed before the craftsman came along, and it remains in existence after he has finished his job. In the material itself he introduced nothing new, and he has no ability to create new material. You can melt the gold, alloy it, grind it, flatten it into sheets, but the gold remains gold.
The form: the one thing he did was change the form: he took the lump of material and made a goblet out of it. But even that form was already latent in that same material, for out of a single material one can make endless forms. With his wisdom the silversmith uncovered one of the possibilities hidden within it; a different craftsman would have uncovered a different form in it.
It turns out that the silversmith did not create something from nothing; he made "yesh miyesh," something from something. The form already existed in potential, and all he did was bring it out into actuality, a revealing of what was concealed. For this reason he cannot claim that his energy must accompany the goblet forever. The Holy One created the lump and hid the potential within it, and gave man the wisdom to uncover what had already been placed there from the start.
Not so with throwing the stone. Here man has been given the ability to create something genuinely new, for in the potential of the stone there is no flight at all. It is not that among the various possibilities latent in the stone there is also the possibility of being airborne, and man merely uncovered it. A stone does not fly under any circumstances; that capacity simply is not in it. Whoever produces a "flying stone" has introduced into it something that was never there, and therefore as long as his energy keeps pushing and keeps producing the novelty, the novelty exists; and the moment the energy stops pushing, the stone is left lying on the floor.
And what, in fact, do you see when you see a stone in the air?
Practically speaking, a child will say, "Look, a stone in the air." But has a flying stone really come into being here? Whoever says "I see a flying stone" is simply not seeing straight. There is no such concept as a flying stone; it is not one of the stone's properties. All that the eye is actually seeing is the energy doing the pushing. The proof: a person who sees a stone in the air immediately turns his gaze to see who threw it, precisely because there is no such thing as a flying stone.
From here to the conclusion that bears on our subject: the world is not eternal. Although it is not stated explicitly in Tanya, it is clear to us that the world was created and that the Holy One is the One who created it. And if the world was created, then it is something new that came into being from nothing, and therefore it has no existence of its own: as long as the divine power continues to create it, it exists; and were that power to cease creating, the world would revert to what it was before and would not exist.
Consequently, when we look at the world, what are we seeing? A world, or divine energy at work producing a world? We are not seeing a world; we are seeing divine energy, the ten utterances with which the world was created, producing a world at every single moment. One who says "look at this world!" is like one who says "look, we have discovered a flying stone!" You are not seeing a flying stone; you are seeing the energy pushing the stone to be airborne.
Nor can one say that the energy was invested five thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight years ago and ever since then the world has been running on its own, like someone who says: you threw the stone, from now on it will continue on its way under its own power. That is not how it is: the moment the energy stops, everything stops. This is what the Holy One revealed to us in His Torah, that He created the world, and this is why we say in our prayers, "He who in His goodness renews each day, constantly, the work of creation," for were it not for that renewal at every single moment, the world simply would not exist.
From here comes the answer to the well known question: what does the Holy One have to do in order for the table not to exist? He does not have to do anything at all. It is enough that He stop making it, and of itself it will not exist. And even right now, as we look at the table, what ought we to be seeing in it? Divine energy making a table.
And why do we not see it that way? Because the yetzer hara makes us forget the Tanya at every turn: for a moment we forget, and we see a world, a reality, matter. But that is exactly the mistake of the child who looks at the stone in the air and thinks a flying stone is before him, and that is not how one is meant to look at the world.
This explanation is what is written in chapter 2 of Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, and only once we have internalized it can we approach the explanation before us in chapter 20, where we are going to upgrade that explanation and advance one further stage within it.
In summary: in this section we clarified the meaning of the word "olam" in the Alter Rebbe's words, this world and all the upper worlds, which effect no change whatsoever in His unity, and we covered the first stage needed for understanding chapter 20, namely the explanation in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah. We learned the difference between two kinds of creation: the silversmith, who makes "yesh miyesh" and does no more than reveal a form already latent in the material, so that his product no longer needs him; as against throwing a stone, which is an outright novelty, dependent on the pushing energy at every moment. From this we learned that the world, created from nothing, is renewed at every single moment, and that what the eye takes for a "world" is nothing but the divine energy continuously bringing it into being.
In the next section, with God's help, we will upgrade this explanation and advance one more stage in understanding chapter 20. In the meantime it is worth contemplating this point and giving it a place in one's thought.