In chapter 36 we have reached page 46a (page 91), the sixth line from the top: the line that begins «יבטלו במציאות», within the passage that opens «ולזה נתן הקב"ה». Let us first review briefly what we learned in the previous lesson, and continue from there.
In the previous lesson we dwelled on one of the great, foundational truths of a Jew's life and of his mission here on earth: why his neshamah came down into this world, what the Holy One asks of the entire creation, where the world is headed and what has to happen within it. All of this is folded into a single statement of the Midrash (cited in a number of places), which the Alter Rebbe explains in this chapter, for with it he also answers one of the central questions raised in the preceding chapters: «נתאווה הקב"ה להיות לו דירה בתחתונים» - the Holy One desired a dirah, a dwelling, in the lower realms.
What a «dirah» means:
We will not repeat the whole discussion, only the main points. A dirah, a dwelling place, means a place where the king is present in the fullness of his revelation: with no covering, and not in some particular form adapted to the place he is visiting, but in his own dwelling, where he is present entirely as he is. And where does the King wish to be present at the height of His revelation? Precisely «betachtonim», in the lower realms.
What «tachtonim» means:
Here the Alter Rebbe raises a question: how can one speak of «higher» and «lower» with regard to the Creator? Before the Holy One there is no above and no below; He fills all worlds equally. His answer is that these terms are not said with respect to Him, but with respect to created beings, according to the order of hishtalshelus, the chain-like unfolding of the worlds.
The Rambam opens his work: «יסוד היסודות ועמוד החכמות - לידע שיש שם מצוי ראשון, והוא ממציא כל נמצא» - the foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is a First Being, and He brings into being everything that exists. The Holy One's existence is from His own essence, and He creates the entire world.
The Holy One could have created this lowest world directly, with no process whatsoever; yet He chose to create it specifically after an order of hishtalshelus, every detail of which is described at length in the works of Kabbalah: the Ohr Ein Sof, the chalal (the void), Olam HaKadmon, and from there onward, stage after stage, down to the worlds of Atzilus and Beriah. Hishtalshelus (from the word shalsheles, a chain) proceeds level by level, and with every further descent there is less revelation, which is to say more garment and more concealment.
What all these levels share, from the highest down to the lowest, is that in each of them something is revealed, and at the same time the revelation is never absolute: there is always garment and concealment as well. That is the whole order of hishtalshelus: less revelation, and then less still.
But at the end of the order of hishtalshelus there is a leap, a sharp transition to an entirely new state that does not come about through any process: the creation of this physical world in which we live. The very nature of this world is that there is no revelation in it at all; it is a world of absolute darkness. In the words of the Tanya: «שיש השתלשלות העולמות וירידתם ממדרגה למדרגה עד שנברא העולם הזה הגשמי» - the worlds unfold and descend from level to level until this physical world was created.
And this must be stressed: the physical world does not become physical as a result of hishtalshelus. The intent is not that the light descended and descended until it turned into a physical world, for a descent and unfolding of spiritual light never produces something physical. The physical exists because the Holy One created it and wanted there to be a physical world; He only chose that its creation be preceded by the order of hishtalshelus.
To make this tangible, recall a parable we have already used: an architect sits and designs a building. The entire complex structure is present in his mind in a concentrated way, with a great wisdom that knows exactly where everything belongs. He conveys his ideas to the engineer or the foreman, not at his own depth but at the level of the one receiving; that one passes it on to the person below him, and he to the one below him, until it reaches the simple laborer laying one brick upon another. But do all these descents of the idea, from the first to the second to the third to the fourth, turn the idea itself into a stone? At the end of the process there is an intellectual idea existing on a low level; take it down another fifty levels and a stone will still not come out of his mouth. The descent constricts the intellect, makes it less abstract and less intricate, but intellect never becomes matter.
Such is the nimshal: as the spiritual descends from level to level it becomes less spiritual and less spiritual, but it does not turn into the physical. There is no common denominator between them. The order of hishtalshelus is not designed so that at its end we arrive at the physical world; the physical world exists because the Holy One created a physical world, a dark world, a world that feels itself to be a «yesh», an independent existence, and conceals completely.
If so, why was the order of hishtalshelus created at all?
Though this is not the subject being treated at length here, for the sake of completeness: had the Holy One created the physical world directly, with no order of hishtalshelus preceding it, there would be no connection whatsoever between creation and Creator within the awareness of the created being. It would be impossible for a creature to understand, to grasp or to feel anything, for there is G-dliness, which is the ultimate truth, and there is the physical, which is the ultimate darkness, and between them there is no channel of communication at all. The Holy One wanted there nevertheless to be a bond between creation and Creator, that a person should understand, should feel, should have content in his avodah; therefore He also brought into being a spiritual order of hishtalshelus, which is mirrored and reflected in this physical world, and through which a person can understand and sense things in spiritual terms. But for the creation of the physical as such, hishtalshelus was not needed.
This world: the purpose of everything
Let us return to our subject. This physical world is the purpose and the goal, and this is what the Holy One wanted. The first and simplest reason is that this is what He wanted and what He chose: «nisaveh», He desired. Nevertheless there is also an explanation here, which the Alter Rebbe sets out over several chapters.
Suppose we were to say that the purpose is some particular level within hishtalshelus, the world of Atzilus, for example. Why would Atzilus be considered the purpose? Because in it there is revelation of G-dliness and tremendous intensity. But if revelation is what we are after, there are levels above it where the revelation is greater still, and whatever level we point to, there is one higher than it. It turns out that if revelation is the goal, there is no way at all to single out one level in the order of hishtalshelus and call it the purpose.
What, then, is the purpose? Precisely this physical world, in which there is no revelation at all. This is what the Creator wanted: «tachtonim», a dark place that holds nothing. And for what? So that the Jew, through his avodah, should transform the darkness into light, through the avodah of «iskafya sitra achra», the subduing of the other side. And when a Jew accomplishes this powerful thing and turns darkness into light, there is revealed here below a light greater than anything in the whole order of hishtalshelus. What does not exist anywhere in hishtalshelus is revealed here below, because «יתרון האור מן החושך», the advantage of the light that comes out of the darkness. This is the point of the maamar.
In summary: we learned that the entire purpose of creation is folded into the statement «נתאווה הקב"ה להיות לו דירה בתחתונים». A dirah means a place where the king is present at the height of his revelation, and tachtonim means this physical world, in which there is no revelation whatsoever. We clarified that hishtalshelus is not the cause of our world's physicality, since a descent of the spiritual never yields the physical (as in the parable of the architect's idea, which never becomes a stone); rather, it was meant to make possible a bond and an understanding between creation and Creator. And we saw that no level within hishtalshelus can be designated as the purpose, since there is always a greater revelation above it; therefore the purpose is specifically the dark world, where the Jew, through his avodah, transforms darkness into light, and «the advantage of the light that comes from the darkness» is revealed.
In the next installment we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's own words as the chapter proceeds, and go deeper into the explanation.