In the previous section we spoke about the divine light that rests in the worlds in two ways: memale kol almin (filling all worlds) and sovev kol almin (encompassing all worlds). Now we turn to the precise definition of sovev kol almin, one of the foundational concepts in chassidus, and in this chapter the Alter Rebbe rules out one mistaken understanding of it after another.
The simplest possibility, that the light is somewhere up above, on some sort of «upper floor», and is simply not present where the creature is, is dismissed immediately. In fact it hardly needs to be dismissed at all: about something spiritual it makes no sense to say that it is located in one physical place above another physical place.
But that itself raises a question. What do we mean when we say that a spiritual thing is present everywhere? Is that in fact true of every spiritual thing?
Take an idea, a piece of reasoning, which is certainly something spiritual. Is it present everywhere? Intellect is not inside the table. «To be present in a place» means to be found within that place, and intellect is found only in the brain and in one's awareness. That is where it is grasped: not through the hands and feet, and not through any of the coarse physical senses, but through the vessel of the brain, since awareness is the mode of perception suited to grasping an idea. So even with regard to a limited spiritual thing one can say, «here it is present and here it is not present.» And when we say about the Holy One that He is present everywhere, that «the whole earth is filled with His glory,» it is certainly not in that manner.
To sharpen the point, consider the spiritual forces at work in our world: domem, tzomeach, chai and medaber (inanimate, vegetative, animal and human). The spiritual force that belongs to the inanimate is not the same as the spiritual force in a plant, and any child can see the difference: a stone sits there inert, while in a plant you see growth and movement; in an animal you see something else entirely, and in a human being all the more so. Would it be correct to say that the life force of a human being is actually present inside the animal, only the animal does not feel it? Or that the life force of a plant is present inside the stone, only the stone does not feel it? Certainly not. The life force of the plant is present in the plant alone, and in the inanimate it is not present at all, and this for two reasons:
From the side of the vessel: the inanimate is not a vessel fit to receive the life force of a plant.
From the side of the light: the life force of a plant is too elevated to descend and rest in the inanimate.
Since there is no fit between the two from either direction, there is no «match» between them, and the life force is simply not there.
Now back to our question. When we say about the unlimited divine life force that it encompasses created beings, do we mean that it is not inside them at all, the way the life force of a plant is not inside a stone? Chas veshalom to say such a thing about the Creator, whose infinity is present everywhere.
A second understanding to be ruled out: «sovev» in the sense of a higher level.
When we speak in familiar terms about something that is on a higher level, what it ultimately means is that it is not present on the lower level at all. If a second grade teacher comes and delivers his material to a child in kindergarten, the idea is not in the child's mind at all: he did not understand, it never reached him, and it is simply not there.
Shall we say the same here, that the infinite divine life force is so great and so lofty that it is not inside the created being at all, but only encircles it from the outside? Says the Alter Rebbe: chas veshalom. That is not what «sovev» means, for according to that understanding it turns out that He is not there.
It is worth knowing that before the revelation of chassidus there were those who understood the plain meaning exactly that way, among them great Torah authorities: those who held of tzimtzum kipshuto, that the divine contraction is to be taken literally. When they were asked, but it says «the whole earth is filled with His glory,» how can you say He is not present? they answered that we find situations in which something higher is not present in the lower place and nevertheless influences it.
An illustration of this, brought many times in chassidus, comes from the book of Daniel. Daniel was standing with a group of people, and suddenly he received a prophetic vision and the Creator of the world revealed Himself to him by means of an angel. The people standing beside him saw nothing, and nevertheless they all began to tremble, as it says: «ואנשים אשר היו עימו לא ראו וייחרדו חרדה גדולה» (and the men who were with him did not see, yet a great terror fell upon them). The Gemara asks: if they saw nothing, what did they see? And it answers: «אף על גב דאיהו לא חזי - מזליה חזי» (even though he himself does not see, his mazal sees). Their soul sensed that a revelation was taking place here, only it never entered their awareness, and so it merely had an effect on them.
So here we have something that was not in the awareness of those people, because they were too low and the vision was too high; Daniel was a vessel and absorbed it, they were not vessels and did not absorb it, and nevertheless it had an effect on them, in an encompassing, surrounding way.
From here they explained that this is the meaning of «the whole earth is filled with His glory»: the divine light is not literally inside every thing, for it is infinite, so how could it enter into a thing? But that does not mean it is absent and has no relationship to the thing at all. It influences everything, it shines upon it and can even change it, but as something higher, from the outside, affecting what is below. (And as for the influence that comes by way of an angel appointed over each thing, that belongs to the limited light, whereas here we are dealing with the unlimited light.)
Along comes the Alter Rebbe in Tanya and says that to say this is chas veshalom. And this is a tremendous chiddush: the unlimited light is literally present everywhere, in its full intensity, inside every last detail. The sovev and the memale are both present in the created being to exactly the same degree, and in themselves there is no difference between them.
If so, why is this light called sovev kol almin? Because relative to the created being, the created being does not feel it. With the limited light, called memale kol almin, the Creator arranged that the created being should sense it; with the light called sovev kol almin He arranged that the created being should not sense it. But it does not mean that it is not here. It is here, literally.
This is the concept known in chassidus as tzimtzum shelo kipshuto, that the contraction is not to be taken literally. The tzimtzum is relative to the created being, so that creatures should feel as if the light is not present in their awareness, and should say that only the contracted light is within them while the higher light remains above. That is how the created being feels; but from the standpoint of divine truth, chas veshalom to say so. In truth it is literally, literally inside every single detail at every moment. Calling it «sovev» is only because it is not revealed.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «ואין הפירוש סובב ומקיף מלמעלה בבחינת מקום, חס ושלום, כי לא שייך כלל בחינת מקום ברוחניות» (and the meaning is not that it surrounds and encompasses from above in a spatial sense, chas veshalom, for the dimension of space has no application whatsoever in spiritual matters). «Spiritual» here means Elokus, G-dliness. With the Creator space does not apply, meaning one cannot say: here He is present and here He is not, here He is above and here below.
About limited levels one really can say this, even though they are spiritual: the light of the vegetative is in the plant and is not in the stone; intellect is in the brain and is not in the hands. Since these things are limited, you can locate them and say «here and not here.» But the Creator cannot be located, and therefore the Etzem and the light that has no limit are present literally everywhere.
If so, why is it called «sovev»? «אלא רצונו לומר סובב ומקיף לעניין בחינת גילוי השפעה» (rather, it means surrounding and encompassing with regard to the revelation of the influence). It is only with respect to revelation, that it is not revealed to the created being. In itself it is present here and there always to the same degree, and «sovev» is only relative to the experience of the created being, who does not feel its revelation.
«כי ההשפעה שהיא בבחינת גילוי בעולמות נקראת בשם הלבשה» (for the influence that is revealed within the worlds is called a garbing). That is the light the created being feels in a revealed way, a light you can place and label: this is domem, this is tzomeach, this is chai, this is medaber; this is the world of Asiyah, this is Yetzirah, this is Beriah, this is Atzilus; these are angels and these are souls. All the levels whose differences the created being can feel, that is the light that has clothed itself. And just as a garment clothes a person and there is a fit from both sides, the garment suits the wearer and the wearer suits the garment, so too this is a limited light «שמתלבשת בעולמות, כי הם מלבישים ומשיגים ההשפעה שמקבלים» (that is garbed in the worlds, for they clothe and comprehend the influence they receive). Created beings receive the influence into their inner selves and grasp it.
«מה שאין כן ההשפעה שאינה בבחינת גילוי ואין העולמות משיגים אותה - אינה נקראת מתלבשת אלא מקפת וסובבת» (whereas the influence that is not revealed and that the worlds do not comprehend is not called garbed, but encompassing and surrounding). The worlds do not comprehend it, and not only intellectually: they do not grasp it, they do not internalize it, they have no relationship to it. And therefore it is not called «garbed» but «encompassing and surrounding», not because it is absent, but because it is not in revelation; it is hidden and concealed.
«הלכך מאחר שהעולמות הם בבחינת גבול ותכלית» (therefore, since the worlds are finite and bounded), all worlds are limited, «נמצא שאין השפעת אור אין סוף מתלבשת ומתגלית בהם בבחינת גילוי» (it follows that the influence of the Or Ein Sof is not garbed and revealed within them in a revealed manner). What the Creator gave and allowed to be revealed in the world is «רק מעט מזער - הארה מועטת מצומצמת מאד מאד» (only the barest trace, a slight glimmer, exceedingly contracted), which is called contracted not in itself but because created beings are able to receive it in a revealed way, «והיא רק כדי להחיותם בבחינת גבול ותכלית» (and it is only in order to give them life in a finite and bounded measure). Whereas «אבל עיקר האור בלי צמצום כל כך» (but the essential light, without such contraction), the hidden, unlimited light in which there is no tzimtzum, «נקרא מקיף וסובב, מאחר שאין השפעתו מתגלית בתוכם, מאחר שהם בבחינת גבול ותכלית» (is called encompassing and surrounding, since its influence is not revealed within them, because they are finite and bounded). It is present and it influences them; they simply are not vessels to reveal it and contain it.
From here it is clear that one must not make the mistake of thinking that «sovev» means a higher level. When you say about something that it is on a higher level, you are drawing a boundary: it is high, it is lofty. «Sovev», by contrast, is purely relative to the created being, who does not reveal the light, and that is the only reason the light is given this name.
To summarize: in this section we ruled out three mistaken explanations of the term sovev kol almin: that the light is up above in a spatial sense; that it is not present in the created being at all, the way the life force of a plant is not present in a stone; and that it is not present in it because of the loftiness of its level, which is the view of those who held of tzimtzum kipshuto and proved it from Daniel, «ואנשים אשר היו עימו לא ראו וייחרדו חרדה גדולה», «מזליה חזי», that something higher can influence even while not being present below. The Alter Rebbe's chiddush is that the unlimited light is literally present inside every single detail in its full intensity, and the sovev and the memale are present in the created being to the same degree. The difference lies in revelation alone: the limited light is «garbed» in the worlds because created beings clothe and comprehend it, while the essential light is called «encompassing and surrounding» because it is not revealed within them, since they are finite and bounded. This point is extremely important to understand, since one meets the term sovev kol almin countless times in chassidus, and someone who does not understand its definition correctly ends up with the very idea that the Alter Rebbe himself rejects with the words «chas veshalom».
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 48 and see how this principle unfolds in what follows.