In the previous section we looked at the first of the two points, 'memalei kol almin' - the divine life-force that contracts itself and clothes itself in every single detail, which we illustrated with the image of the soul giving life to the limbs of the body. Now we move on to the second point.
The second point - 'sovev kol almin':
It would be absurd to imagine that the moment the Creator contracts Himself to become, as it were, a limited life-force inside some small detail, He Himself has become limited. Obviously He is above everything and abstracted from everything, and at the very same time, while He is contracting Himself into every single detail, He is also present in a way in which there is no difference at all, from His perspective, between the highest part and the lowest part.
Let us return once more to the analogy of soul and body. Until now we used the example of a person who wants all his limbs to be healthy. Let us now take an example from the opposite extreme, which should befall neither us nor anyone else: a person who has reached a vegetative state. Nothing functions in him; he does not see, he does not hear, he does not speak. And nevertheless, one who kills him, G-d forbid, is considered a murderer. Why? Because the general life-force, the overall bond between soul and body, is still there. That is the part that did not descend and contract itself into all the particulars; it is the central, primary, most basic part that joins a soul to a body - and it is present, and it is forbidden to sever it.
By way of analogy, this is also how we can understand the bond between G-dliness and the world. There is the part that contracts itself into every single detail, and that we call 'memalei kol almin'; and there is a higher level, as it does not descend and does not contract itself into every particular - 'sovev kol almin', which Scripture expresses as "מלא כל הארץ כבודו", "the whole earth is full of His glory." On this level one does not enter into the differences between one detail and another, and there is no difference between the smallest of creatures, "a tiny worm in the sea," and the greatest of them, as the Gemara puts it, "from the eggs of lice to the horns of wild oxen." From the smallest to the greatest, there is one point shared by them all.
And then there is a third point, higher still. What do the two levels we have mentioned, 'memalei kol almin' and 'sovev kol almin', have in common? In both of them we are describing some relationship to the world: the world is a reality that has to be related to, whether in the mode of 'memalei' or on the higher level of 'sovev'. But is this the whole story of the Creator, to be occupied with the world? The Creator as He is in Himself is above this entire matter, and all the worlds, relative to Him, are "כולא קמיה כלא חשיב ממש", "all before Him is reckoned as literally nothing."
These are three stages of contemplation. Each and every stage, even the first of them, is a deep subject in its own right; a person can connect to it in a wonderful way and come to know the Creator through it. Beyond it stands the second stage, more abstract, and beyond that the third. All three stages have a single purpose: to connect the Jew to the reality of the Creator in a way that he will grasp His true oneness, yichudo yisborach ha'amiti.
His true oneness:
Let us go back to body and soul. When a person looks at a living body, what does he see? A piece of flesh, or a living being? Clearly he does not see a piece of flesh, because if all one sees is a piece of flesh, then it is no longer a body but something not joined to a soul, G-d forbid. And why does he not see flesh? Because the soul enlivens it and illuminates it to such a degree that the flesh loses its identity as flesh and becomes a living thing.
The same is true in the analogue. Since it is the reality of the Creator that gives the world life, pulses within it and brings it into being, someone who looks at things truthfully does not see the world as a reality unto itself. Certainly there is a world, but what does one see in it? An expression of the reality of the Creator. Just as one does not see flesh but a living body, because one sees in it the activity of the soul - which indeed cannot be seen with the eyes, yet its effect is seen tangibly - so too must one look at the world: not, G-d forbid, as an independent reality standing apart from the reality of the Creator.
When can a person come to see it this way? When he goes deep and contemplates that the entire world exists only because at every moment there is a divine life-force within it enlivening it. Without that contemplation he looks at the world as a separate reality, as though someone were to look at a body and say that this is a piece of flesh weighing so-and-so much. With a body it would never occur to anyone to look at it that way, and the whole problem is that with the world it does occur to us to look at it that way, because in our perception we try, G-d forbid, to separate.
Therefore a person has to contemplate that in truth there is no such reality as 'world'; there is the reality of the Creator, and the Creator expresses Himself by means of the world that our eyes see, "וכולא קמיה כלא חשיב ממש והוא לבדו הוא", "all before Him is reckoned as literally nothing, and He alone is." This does not mean that once He created the world He is no longer alone, since now He has a world; that way of seeing things exists only relative to us.
And as we have discussed at length before: the existence of the world added nothing to the Creator and changed nothing in Him. He is not more 'busy' because He created a world, since the world is not an independent reality about which one could say that it occupies Him. With us, a person who buys a car no longer sleeps at night and keeps checking whether it is still parked where he left it. His reality has changed, because he has acquired something outside of himself, and it now takes up a share of his attention and a share of his day. The less significant the thing is to him, the less it troubles him; and when a thing takes up no place with him at all, its presence and its absence are equal as far as he is concerned.
So it is with respect to the Creator. Every morning, in one of the passages before davening, every Jew says: "You are He before the world was created, You are He since the world was created." "You are He" - exactly the same, with nothing changed. For if, G-d forbid, some change had occurred, that would imply a certain limitation, as though with the addition of a world He had become busier - and this whole notion has no relevance to Him whatsoever.
And this is what the Alter Rebbe writes: "והוא לבדו הוא בעליונים ותחתונים ממש כמו שהיה לבדו קודם ששת ימי בראשית", "and He alone is, in the upper and lower worlds, exactly as He was alone before the six days of creation." Precisely as He was alone before the world was created, so after the world was created He remains alone, and no change took place. And if there is a world, then the world is an expression of Him: through His being memalei kol almin and through His being sovev kol almin, and not, G-d forbid, as a separate reality. And likewise in the very place where we find ourselves, "וגם במקום הזה שנברא בו שמים וארץ וכל צבאם היה הוא לבדו ממלא המקום הזה", "and even in this place in which heaven and earth and all their hosts were created, He alone filled this place."
Before the world was created there was no such thing as a world, and there was "He and His Name alone." And after the world was created, as we have already discussed, the Holy One created a seemingly absurd situation: He created creatures in such a way that the creature does not see the truth and imagines that there is here a reality unto itself.
An analogy for this:
During davening and learning one must cover one's head. Someone who has no yarmulke and puts his own hand on his head instead has not accomplished anything, whereas if another person places his hand on his head, that does work. On the face of it, in both cases the head is covered, and whoever was looking at the head beforehand no longer sees it. But the reason given in halachah is simple: a person's own hand does not constitute a covering for himself. True, when I place my hand on my head the other person does not see my head, and relative to him I have concealed it - but relative to myself it does not count as a covering at all.
This halachah serves as an analogy and illustration of the way the Holy One conceals Himself, as it were, so that we should not see Him. From the moment He concealed Himself, we creatures do not see; but relative to whom is this concealment a concealment? Only relative to the creatures. Relative to the Creator Himself there is certainly no concealment at all, and nothing has happened.
A further analogy, from a teacher and his student:
A teacher sits and teaches his students a certain concept, and he sees that the student is not managing to grasp it because the idea is too deep. So he opens with an analogy and tells him a whole story with all its details. The student hears an interesting story, but he still has not penetrated to his teacher's intent and does not realize that the entire story is nothing but a covering, out of which he is meant to arrive at the idea. At the stage where the teacher has given only the mashal and has not yet revealed the nimshal, the mashal actually conceals the idea from the student, for he has heard a story and does not understand what lies hidden behind it. Only once the teacher reveals the details of the nimshal will he understand that the story was not something incidental, but was precisely what led him and brought him close to the idea.
But how does the teacher himself see the matter? While he is telling the story, does the mashal conceal anything for him as well? Obviously not, since for him every detail of the story is an expression of the idea. For him things do not begin with the story but with the idea, and he is the one dressing it in a story. His own understanding of the matter is exactly the same before the mashal and after the mashal.
So too in the analogue: the Holy One gives a mashal - He conceals Himself and gives a beautiful world with all its details, and all of this is nothing but a covering. Relative to us, when we learn and contemplate, we will discover that all of this is a mashal, and we will uncover the nimshal, what lies hidden behind it, the Creator Himself. But the covering of the world is only relative to us; relative to Him there is no covering whatsoever, and there is no addition and no change, not before and not after.
In summary: in this section we learned the second point, 'sovev kol almin' - the level that does not descend and contract itself into every particular, and on which there is no difference between the smallest of creatures and the greatest of them; and the third level above it, on which the Creator as He is in Himself is above any relationship to the world at all, and "all before Him is reckoned as literally nothing." We saw that all three stages of contemplation aim at a single goal: to recognize His true oneness, that the world is not a separate reality but an expression of the reality of the Creator, just as a living body is not seen as a piece of flesh but as a living thing by virtue of the soul. And as was explained through the analogy of covering the head and the analogy of the teacher and his student, the concealment and the hiddenness exist only relative to the creatures, while relative to Him, "You are He before the world was created, You are He since the world was created," "והוא לבדו הוא", "and He alone is," without any change and without any addition.
In the next section we will continue learning the words of the Alter Rebbe in chapter 33.