In the previous section we learned that the forces of kelipah and sitra achra are nothing more than agents of the Holy One, blessed be He, and we worked through the parable of the king who sent one of his servants to organize a rebellion against him, supplying him with money and helpers for the job. In this section we will see how this principle plays out in practice: the Satan never acts without permission. And we will see why a person who actually transgresses the will of God is worse off than the kelipah itself.
There are many stories told about the Satan who wants to bring a person down, and he first has to request and receive permission from the heavenly court: go and test so-and-so, for such and such a reason you have permission. And as long as he has no permission, he does not go. So when he pushes his way into a person's heart and begins to entice him and confuse his thinking, it is only because at this moment he has permission from the Creator to do so. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not dispatch destructive angels without His own authorization.
"וכמאמר בלעם לא אוכל לעבור את פי ה' וגו'" - "as Bilaam said: I cannot transgress the word of God." This is Bilaam in parshas Balak, telling Balak: you are asking me to curse the Jewish people, and I cannot transgress the word of God. Now, Bilaam was hardly a great tzaddik; he hated the Jews even more than Balak did. So we have to be precise: who exactly is saying "I cannot transgress the word of God"? It is not the flesh-and-blood Bilaam walking around the world advertising himself as a great tzaddik. When Balak hires Bilaam, he is not hiring his body; he is hiring that spiritual power of prophecy pulsing inside him, a power that God gave him, and that is what Balak wants to harness against the Jewish people. And it is precisely that spiritual power that answers out of Bilaam's mouth: "I cannot transgress the word of God." It is incapable of transgressing God's word, because its entire existence is only because God created it. That is the meaning of "I cannot transgress": the forces of evil are simply unable to.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "ואף שנקרא עבודה זרה", "and even though it is called avodah zarah." All of these impure forces are called avodah zarah, idolatry, which would seem to prove that their whole business is against God's will and that they are utterly foreign to Him. And nevertheless, "הא קרו ליה אלקא דאלקיא", "they call Him the God of gods" - as we have already learned earlier in Tanya. Those forces of avodah zarah, those forces of kelipah, do say "we have power," but they also say that God is their God and that He is stronger than they are.
It emerges, then, that the forces of impurity deny the Creator's oneness, but they do not deny His sovereignty. Their job is to act as His agents against His oneness, yet they cry out that He is their Master, and they are utterly incapable of transgressing His will. A Jew who sins, however, denies even His sovereignty. In effect he says: I do not accept Your rule, and I am going to do the exact opposite of what You want.
The kelipah has no ability to transgress God's will, and it has no desire or wish to do so either. Everything it does is the faithful carrying out of the Creator's mission. These forces call themselves a reality, an "I," but they believe and trust and know full well who their Master is.
There is a story told about one of the great Jewish leaders, who as a child struggled with that familiar laziness of getting out of bed in the morning to go daven. A person wakes up, wants to get out from under the blanket, and it is cold outside, and immediately he hears the yetzer hara telling him: forget it, it's cold, why are you getting up so early? He answered it: wait a moment, and how did you get up before me? You got up in order to do the Creator's will, didn't you? I also want to get up to do the Creator's will, so why are you telling me not to? In other words, the yetzer hara also gets up early, and he too comes to carry out the Creator's will faithfully. And indeed there is something to learn from the yetzer hara. And from here we see that whoever gives in to him is committing the ultimate absurdity: the yetzer hara is doing the Creator's will, and at that very moment he is confusing your mind and telling you that you should not do the Creator's will.
The verse says, "And Yaakov sent angels" to Eisav. And what was the message? "I sojourned with Lavan and kept the 613 mitzvos" - as Rashi explains, "garti" (I sojourned) has the same letters as taryag, 613 - "and I did not learn from his evil ways." One has to ask: what does Eisav care whether Yaakov kept mitzvos or not, and what exactly is Yaakov telling him?
I heard one explanation of this: Yaakov is sending Eisav a message and telling him, do not think I am some great tzaddik; quite the opposite. "I did not learn from his evil ways" - Lavan carries out his evil deeds with devotion and with joy, and he does not let a single detail slip, and I still have not learned from his evil ways; I still have what to learn. The 613 mitzvos that I kept, I did not keep them the way Lavan keeps his nonsense.
In any case, the yetzer hara, by whatever name we call it, Lavan or Bilaam, kelipah or sitra achra, is doing God's will: "ואינם יכולים לעבור כלל על רצונו יתברך, כי יודעים ומשיגים שהוא חיותם וקיומם", "and they cannot transgress His blessed will at all, for they know and grasp that He is their life and their existence." Those destructive angels who come to entice a person against the Creator's will know and grasp with complete comprehension that all their vitality and existence come from God, and that their nurture comes "שיונקים מבחינת אחוריים דאחוריים של רצון העליון ברוך הוא המקיף עליהם", "for they draw from the level of 'achorayim of achorayim' (the hindmost aspect) of the supernal will, blessed be He, which encompasses them." In other words, they do not receive internal energy, and this is not the Creator's inner will; if it were, they would not be called "other gods." For the Creator's inner will is that nobody should be enticed by them at all, and the fact that they do exist is only for the sake of the completeness of creation.
How should a person look at them? He should not say: God created them, so apparently I am meant to go along with them. It is like a person driving down the highway who sees a police officer standing at the side of the road. If he is driving straight and keeping the law and is an honest man, the officer says nothing to him at all, his heart does not start pounding, and he is not fazed by the presence of a policeman, because the system needs police. But if he is a lawbreaker, suddenly that officer starts speaking to him. So too with those forces that God placed in the world: He created them and the world needs them, but that does not mean a person is supposed to walk with them. He gives them vitality, but in the manner of achorayim and in the manner of makif, an encompassing light rather than an inner one.
"אלא שיניקתם וחיותם שבתוכם היא בבחינת גלות", "but their nurture and the vitality within them is in a state of exile." That divine energy which they draw from the Creator and which dwells within them is in exile, because divine energy by its own nature wants to be in a place that openly identifies with G-dliness. This is like the parable we mentioned earlier: that man whom the king sent to organize a rebellion against him, and to whom the king gave money and helpers. Those helpers who come to him are currently in exile, because they all know the real story hiding behind the scenes, and they are doing the dirty work in a state of exile, because there is no choice. So too the divine forces that give life to the kelipah are in a state of exile, "להחשיב עצמן אלקות", "to consider themselves G-dliness" - for those forces of impurity go around saying we have ability, we have power, "והרי זו כפירה באחדותו", "and this is a denial of His oneness." Any force in the world that announces "I too am something" is denying the oneness of the Creator, as we have learned.
And yet, it is a denial of the Creator's oneness but not of His sovereignty: "ומכל מקום אינן כופרים וכחשו בה' לגמרי לומר לא הוא", "nevertheless they do not deny God completely, to say 'it is not He.'" They do not come to say that there is no Creator; they feel that He exists, they just also think that they exist, "אלא דקרו ליה אלקא דאלקיא", "rather, they call Him the God of gods," "דהיינו חיותם וקיומם הנמשך ויורד עליהם מרצונו יתברך", "that is, their vitality and existence which is drawn down upon them from His blessed will." They know that the divine vitality that descends and enlivens them comes from His will, "ולכן אינן עוברין רצונו יתברך לעולם", "and therefore they never transgress His blessed will." It is simply not possible for the forces of impurity and kelipah to transgress the Creator's will. They are His agents in the world, doing work that is unworthy and denying His oneness, but they do not transgress His will.
Why then do our Sages say that in the future God will slaughter the yetzer hara? In the time to come his job will be finished and he will have nobody to work with, because there will be no people left to be enticed by him; as we said, right now he is on duty. And we should be precise about the word "slaughter." Physically, shechitah means severing the head, but on the inner level the Gemara expounds the word shechitah from the root meaning to draw and to pull something to a different place, that is, elevation. When we slaughter a kosher animal and eat it properly, have we harmed the animal, or have we elevated it to the level of a human being? So "slaughter" is not always meant negatively; it can also mean elevation.
"And he is in absolute separation":
The Alter Rebbe continues: "ואם כן האדם העובר על רצונו יתברך", "and if so, a person who transgresses His blessed will," meaning someone who actually, in practice, violates God's will, "הוא גרוע ופחות הרבה מאד מהסטרא אחרא וקליפה הנקראת עבודה זרה ואלהים אחרים", "is far worse and far lower than the sitra achra and kelipah, which is called avodah zarah and other gods." He is much worse than it, as has been explained at length, "והוא בתכלית הפירוד מיחודו ואחדותו של הקב"ה יותר ממנה, וכאילו כופר באחדותו יותר ממנה חס ושלום", "and he is in absolute separation from the unity and oneness of the Holy One, blessed be He, more than it is, and it is as if he denies His oneness more than it does, God forbid."
Someone who fails and actually transgresses God's will is worse than the yetzer hara itself. The yetzer hara always stays on his own side of the barricade, the side that carries out God's will, and the person who fails he hurls over to the other side of the barricade, to the side that stands against God's will. It is like that man who organizes the rebellion: in the end he will collect his salary from the king, while those who were swept along after him will be thrown by the king into disgrace for having gone against him. For one who actually transgresses God's will is worse than the yetzer that incited him and pushed him into it.
In summary: in this section we learned that the Satan acts only with permission from Above, as Bilaam said, "I cannot transgress the word of God" - the spiritual power within him is incapable of transgressing God's will, since its entire existence comes from Him. We saw that the forces of kelipah, though they are called avodah zarah, still "call Him the God of gods": they deny His oneness but not His sovereignty, and they carry out their mission with complete faithfulness. Hence there is actually something to learn from them, as in "I sojourned with Lavan and did not learn from his evil ways." We further learned that their nurture comes from the level of achorayim of achorayim of the supernal will that encompasses them, and that the vitality within them is in a state of exile, forced "to consider themselves G-dliness." And therefore a person who actually transgresses His blessed will is worse than the sitra achra itself, and he is in absolute separation from the unity and oneness of the Holy One, blessed be He, more than it is.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 24, exploring the depth of the separation created by an actual transgression, and the relationship between the person who transgresses God's will and the forces that entice him to do so.