The Alter Rebbe now brings a source for what he has said, from the sefer Eitz Chaim: "וכמו שכתוב בעץ חיים שער מ"ב סוף פרק ד', שהרע שבעולם הזה החומרי הוא שמרי הקליפות הגסות כו' והוא תכלית הבירור וכו', ולכן כל מעשי עולם הזה קשים ורעים והרשעים גוברים בו וכו'" - "As is written in Eitz Chaim, Shaar 42, end of chapter 4, that the evil of this material world is the dregs of the coarse kelipos, and it is the end point of the refining process; this is why all the affairs of this world are harsh and evil, and the wicked prevail in it."
What is meant by "this material world"? As was mentioned earlier, it is specifically one who is clothed in a physical body in this material world who is capable of reaching a state of transgressing the will of the Creator. In every higher world, on every loftier level, there are forces of evil as well, yet they do not transgress Hashem's will: they are forces of evil that the Creator brought into being for certain purposes, and they carry out His mission.
The "dregs" are the sediment that settles at the bottom of a barrel of wine. An analogy: a lump of gold mixed with dross and other metals. The smith gives it a first refining, extracts the large pieces and casts the waste aside. His job is finished, but the waste is not thrown in the trash: it is passed on to a greater expert, who knows how to draw a bit more gold out of it, and from him to another, and so on, until one reaches absolute waste in which nothing at all remains, and there is nothing to do with it but throw it away.
So it is with evil. In the higher worlds there is a mixture of good and evil, and the good can still be extracted from there. Once the good has been extracted, the evil remains, and from what remained the Holy One created a lower world. In that lower world too there is a mixture of good and evil, and from what remained a still lower world was created. What has reached this physical, material world is the final residue: absolute evil with no good in it whatsoever. This is the meaning of "tachlis haberur," the end point of the refining: after one refines and purifies again and again, what is left at the very end is the absolute dross.
This is how it descends, world after world:
Atzilus - entirely good.
Beriah - mostly good with a small measure of evil.
Yetzirah - half and half.
Asiyah - mostly evil with a small measure of good.
Physical Asiyah - almost entirely evil, "and the wicked prevail in it."
"ולכן כל מעשי עולם הזה קשים ורעים" - "and this is why all the affairs of this world are harsh and evil." In this world things move along with difficulty; there are "sticks in the wheels" in all sorts of matters. When everything is good, everything flows, and every obstacle and delay testifies to something that is not good. The not-good is present here in everything, for in every single thing there is a mixture of good and evil, and this is something we see and feel in daily life.
"והרשעים גוברים בו וכו'" - "and the wicked prevail in it." It is specifically here, in this world, that the capacity to transgress Hashem's will exists, a capacity that does not exist in any higher world. This is the deficiency of that Jew, one of whose three garments has become enslaved to kelipah and sitra achra, through which he becomes worse than the kelipah and sitra achra themselves.
"ולכן אמרו רז"ל על פסוק 'כי תשטה אשתו'" - "and this is why our Sages said regarding the verse 'if his wife goes astray.'" In Parshas Naso in the book of Bamidbar the law of the sotah is set out, with the whole procedure of how she is brought to the Beis Hamikdash and how she is examined. Ostensibly the word should have been spelled "tisteh" with a samech, yet the Torah deliberately wrote it with a sin, so that the word could also be read as an expression of shtus, foolishness. From here the Sages derived: "אין אדם עובר עבירה וכו'" - "a person does not commit a sin unless a spirit of folly has entered into him."
To appreciate the emphasis and the novelty in the Alter Rebbe's words, let us first review how this teaching is explained elsewhere in chassidus.
The first sin in the world was the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, and there the Torah tells us what brought about the failure: they saw that the tree was "good" and "desirable," in the words of the verse, and therefore they stumbled. Now, "good and desirable" is genuinely something good, and a person does seek what is good and desirable; it is only that there are different levels in this. For one person, the maximum of good and desirable that he knows in his world is a tasty food, and beyond that he knows nothing: this is generally the case with animals. For another, his good and desirable is a painting, or a beautiful song, or a beautiful idea. They all seem to be speaking the same language, "good and desirable," but for each one it is measured according to the level on which he stands. For some, the ceiling stops at a physical, material good and desirable; for others, their good and desirable is not merely something intellectually beautiful but something G-dly, which is the highest good and desirable there can be.
Accordingly, a "ruach shtus," a spirit of folly, means that a person lowers himself to the basement. Instead of his good and desirable being G-dly, instead of taking his pleasure in studying and fulfilling the will of Hashem, he sets his bar at the very bottom. An animal in a cage that rejoices and dances around the good food it is given: that is its bar, and it is incapable of anything more. But for a human being to descend to that level, that is a ruach shtus, for it is unbefitting a decent person that the thing he takes pleasure in should be on so low a level.
Here the Alter Rebbe adds another layer of depth. Even if we begin from the assumption that we are dealing with a fool, whose bar of pleasure and delight is lying on the floor, even such a person, if he goes on to sin, is acting with a ruach shtus by his own standards. Even though he does not grasp that there is a higher good, and even though the full extent of his understanding is lying on the floor, it will still be considered folly on his part if he transgresses the will of the Creator.
For the Sages said this about the verse "any man whose wife goes astray": we are speaking of someone standing on the lowest spiritual rung, for whom the very fact that his bar of pleasure is animalistic is itself folly. Even to a person in such a state we say that if he will not act with folly he will manage to guard Hashem's will and not transgress it. No sudden depth of comprehension is being demanded of him. Even one who understands only on the lowest level must understand that transgressing Hashem's will is avodah zarah.
And if he grasps this, then even the lightest of the light, the moment he registers that he is about to cut himself off from the Creator, is ready to give up his life for kiddush Hashem. And who is "the lightest of the light"? A person whom nothing interests, who is at the very lowest bar, to the point that even the frivolous say of him how frivolous he is: among the frivolous he is called frivolous. Even such a person, once he is aware that what he is doing means being cut off from the Creator, sets himself a red light and says: this I will not do.
Let us look at the words inside:
"דאפילו אשה מנאפת שדעתה קלה" - "for even an adulterous woman, whose mind is frivolous." She stands from the outset at so low a bar that her mind is frivolous and she is sunk in matters of adultery, and nevertheless "היתה מושלת ברוח תאותה" - "she would have ruled over the spirit of her desire" and would not have stumbled. So why does she stumble? Not because of her low level, but "לולי רוח שטות שבה המכסה ומסתיר ומעלים את האהבה המסותרת שבנפשה האלקית" - "were it not for the spirit of folly within her, which covers, conceals and hides the hidden love in her G-dly soul." It is the ruach shtus that does not allow her to register that at this very moment she is transgressing the will of the Creator and cutting herself off from Him.
For even in this woman, standing on a low rung, there exists a hidden love for the Creator: she wants to be bound to the Holy One without limit and loves Him without limit, only that this love is buried deep. And when does it break through? When the awareness is aroused that this is a question of life or death, of connection to the Creator or being cut off from Him.
In summary: in this section we learned from the words of Eitz Chaim that the evil of this material world is "the dregs of the coarse kelipos" and "the end point of the refining," which is why "all the affairs of this world are harsh and evil, and the wicked prevail in it." We dwelt on the analogy of the refining of gold and on the order of the descent of the worlds from Atzilus down to physical Asiyah, and on the teaching of the Sages that "a person does not commit a sin unless a spirit of folly has entered into him," derived from the wording "ki tisteh ishto." We saw the explanation brought elsewhere in chassidus, that a ruach shtus means setting one's bar of "good and desirable" at the lowest level, and we saw the Alter Rebbe's novel point: that even one whose level of understanding is the lowest of the low, even "an adulterous woman whose mind is frivolous," would have ruled over the spirit of her desire were it not for the spirit of folly that covers and conceals the hidden love of the G-dly soul.
In the next section we will continue with the explanation of the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 24.