Before we continue with the Alter Rebbe's own words in chapter 51, let us first lay out two distinct ways in which something is drawn down and transmitted from a higher level to a lower one. Only once we have these two clearly in hand will we be able to appreciate the precision of the Alter Rebbe's language.
The two modes of transmission:
The emphasis is on the giver: the sun, which «shines upon the earth and upon those who dwell on it», illuminates the entire world, and it does not calibrate its light to suit each particular place. A garbage dump and a king's palace stand side by side, and the sun shines on both equally. Something is certainly being drawn from above to below here, but the whole emphasis rests on the one above: because the sun shines, every recipient automatically receives, with no distinction whatsoever between one recipient and another. Set up a device there that absorbs solar energy and knows how to convert it into different forces, and that energy will be harnessed for wondrous things; set up a plain sheet of tin, and the tin will get hot, nothing more. The sun gives from its own side, with no regard for where its light lands.
The emphasis is on the recipient: a teacher transmitting to his students. Ten students sit in the classroom, some more gifted and some less, and the teacher has to teach all of them and bring all of them to understand. He does not deliver a lecture and go home without caring what happened; he goes over to the one who understands less and piles on parables and examples for him, while for the one who grasps things quickly a little suffices, and with him he even goes deeper into deeper matters. Here the emphasis is not on the giver at all but on the receiver: there are recipients, and the one giving tailors himself to them, so that each receives exactly in accordance with who he is.
The first kind is called 'or' (light), and the second is called 'shefa' (flow, or influence). 'Or' is an illumination that descends from above with no consideration of the one below, and the essential point in it is the giver. 'Shefa' is the reverse: a descent from above to below that is shaped by consideration of the one below.
Now, in which of these ways does the soul enliven the body? In both channels at once, with a general vitality and with a particular vitality:
General vitality: the soul enlivens all the limbs of the body equally. By the very fact that the soul shines within the limbs, every limb is alive: the finger is alive, the head is alive, the heart is alive, the leg is alive, all of them are alive, with no entering into distinctions. What they all share in common is the dimension of 'or' that the soul radiates.
Particular vitality: the eyes receive the power of sight, and only they; no other limb receives it. The ear receives specifically hearing, the legs the power of walking, the mouth the ability to speak. The soul gives each limb precisely what suits it, and this is the dimension of 'shefa'.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «אך הענין כי כתיב מבשרי אחזה אלוק, שכמו שנשמת האדם היא ממלאה כל רמ"ח אברי הגוף מראשו ועד רגלו, ואעפ"כ עיקר משכנה והשראתה היא במוחו» (But the matter is as follows: it is written, «From my flesh I behold G-d.» Just as a person's soul fills all 248 limbs of the body, from head to foot, and nevertheless the main seat of its dwelling and its indwelling is in the brain). From here on the Alter Rebbe sums up the two modes we have learned, the general and the particular, and the precision of his wording deserves attention:
«ומהמוח מתפשטת לכל האברים» (and from the brain it spreads to all the limbs): this is the general vitality. The emphasis here is on the brain, which is where «the main seat of its dwelling and its indwelling» is, the station from which everything radiates, like the sun whose light spreads out to all places alike.
«וכל אבר מקבל ממנה חיות וכח הראוי לו לפי מזגו ותכונתו» (and each limb receives from it the vitality and the power appropriate to it, according to its makeup and character): this is the particular vitality. Here the emphasis is on the recipient. Just as in our parable the student himself matters and receives what belongs to his level, so too each limb receives according to its makeup and its character, this one in this way and that one in that way, this one more and that one less.
The Alter Rebbe then spells it out: «the eye to see, the ear to hear, the mouth to speak, and the feet to walk.» Now, in Tanya everything is exact, so we must ask why he chose precisely these examples. Two observations have been made here, one from the Rebbe's father, the mekubal Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, and one from the Rebbe, and each of them points to something different:
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak's observation: why did he not add a fifth example, «and the nose to smell»? The explanation: here the Alter Rebbe is describing the particular vitality, whereas the nose and the sense of smell belong specifically to the general vitality. From the side of the nose, Scripture states explicitly, «and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life,» attributing the general vitality to the nose. And from the side of smell, the Gemara explains that the reason we smell spices at the conclusion of Shabbos is that smell is something from which the soul derives pleasure and the body does not. It emerges that smell is bound up with the soul as a whole and with something more abstract, not with particulars, and so there is no place to bring it here.
The Rebbe's observation: if he wanted an example of doing, why specifically the feet and not the hands? The explanation: the examples allude to the verse upon which the entire sefer is built, «For the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.» «In your mouth»: the mouth to speak. «And in your heart»: feeling, which a person arrives at through seeing and hearing, for he sees and hears, and from that he knows what to think and what to feel. «To do it»: and the essence of doing is making a dirah betachtonim, a dwelling for G-d in the lowest place, and the lowest form of doing in the human body is with the feet. That is why he was precise to choose exactly these examples, which correspond most closely to the process described in the verse. One sees from this how exact even the examples in Tanya are.
Let us return to our subject. The soul sends the body a general vitality, which enlivens all the limbs as one, and it also sends the body a particular vitality. But a question lies hidden here, one the Alter Rebbe does not ask outright yet immediately answers: how do we know that the particular vitality originates in the soul? Perhaps it originates in the body?
Consider a barrel of water, the water inside being colorless, and on the table a row of glasses is set out, red, green, blue and so on, and water is poured from the barrel into each glass. Someone looking on sees blue water, red water, and so forth. What produced the change of color? The glasses. And the moment he pours the water from the glasses back into the barrel, the water reverts to being clear as it was. Here too one might have said that the soul is abstract, like the water in the barrel, and that it is the limbs, each with its own particular character, this one an eye and that one an ear, that generate the different kinds of vitality.
From the Alter Rebbe's wording it is proven otherwise: «and each limb receives from it the vitality and the power appropriate to it.» The particular power of each limb comes from it, from the soul, which means that the differentiation of the powers already begins within the soul itself. But what is the proof of this?
The Alter Rebbe brings a tangible proof: «כנראה בחוש שבמוח מרגיש כל הנפעל ברמ"ח אברים וכל הקורות אותם» (as is evident to the senses, that the brain feels everything that happens in the 248 limbs and everything that befalls them). When a person's finger hurts, or his eye or his ear hurts, it is the brain that feels the pain, and it identifies the difference between the kinds of pain: here it senses that the pain comes from the vitality of sight, and here that the pain is connected to a different vitality, and so too with everything that befalls the limbs, even when they are merely touched.
Now, if the differentiation only began in the limbs, then when the sensation travels back to the brain it would be like pouring the water from the glasses back into the barrel: everything would revert to being undifferentiated, the sensation would be uniform with no distinction at all, and the brain would have no way of discerning where the pain came from, no way to tell the pain of an eye from the pain of an ear from the pain of a foot. From the fact that it does discern, it is a sign that the vitality within the limb sends up to the brain the sensation of a specific power that resides in that particular place. It follows that the vitality itself, apart from the limb altogether, is already divided: a vitality of eye, a vitality of ear, a vitality of mouth, a vitality of foot, and so on.
We find the same thing in a person whose hand has been amputated and who feels an itch in that hand. He has no hand, so the sensation must be coming from the brain. This implies that the «hand» already exists within the brain, and this is a further proof of the point.
One qualification must be stressed, however: this division does not exist in the essence of the soul itself, but only in that contracted portion of it which shines in the brain. In the Alter Rebbe's words: «והנה אין שינוי קבלת הכחות והחיות שבאברי הגוף מן הנשמה מצד עצמה ומהותה» (Now, the differences in how the limbs of the body receive the powers and vitality do not come from the soul in terms of its own self and essence), for it is impossible to say «שיהיה מהותה ועצמותה מתחלק לרמ"ח חלקים שונים מתלבשים ברמ"ח מקומות כפי ציור חלקי מקומות אברי הגוף» (that its essence and being should be divided into 248 different parts, clothed in 248 locations corresponding to the layout of the places of the body's limbs). The soul in itself is abstracted from this entire matter and is not divided into 248 parts. It is only as it has been contracted, descended and clothed itself in the body, in that portion which shines in the brain, that the division into a general vitality and a particular vitality begins. For if we were to say that all these parts exist within its very essence, we would be imposing limitation on it, and it is unlimited.
It is worth sharpening this point. In the analogy of electricity, the energy coming out of the socket is one and the same, and the energy in this appliance and the energy in that appliance are the identical energy; the entire difference in what gets activated comes from the appliance, this one being a wider vessel and that one more constricted, so that this one receives much and that one little. Here, however, we are saying something more than that: the vitality, as it stands at the relay point from which it is dispatched, has already been determined, that to here one type will be sent and to there another type. The types are fixed already in the soul, though not in its essence, only as it has contracted itself. It is not the limbs that create the division; it is the illumination that shines in the brain.
We are not occupied here with the psychology of the matter, nor with studying how the body functions for its own sake. These details will be very much needed further on, in order to understand what hashraas haShechinah (the indwelling of the Divine Presence) is and to grasp something of G-dliness: «From my flesh I behold G-d.» The very fact that the Holy One gave us the ability to speak about, study and understand this division is meant to serve us as a parable through which we can climb up and understand how things are in G-dliness. The Holy One revealed to us how He chose to enliven created beings, and said «Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,» so that we would have the capacity to understand how it happens.
That is why it is important to dwell first on the parable and understand it thoroughly, at length and in depth. The more clearly and completely the parable is settled in our minds, in all its details, the better we will be able to understand the nimshal, the reality it points to.
To summarize: In this section we learned two modes of transmission from above to below: 'or', like the sun that shines on everything equally, where the emphasis is on the giver; and 'shefa', like a teacher who transmits to each student according to his level, where the emphasis is on the recipient. Corresponding to these, the soul enlivens the body with a general vitality («and from the brain it spreads to all the limbs») and with a particular vitality («and each limb receives from it the vitality and the power appropriate to it, according to its makeup and character»). We examined the precision of the examples the Alter Rebbe brings, why he did not mention the nose to smell and why he chose the feet, and we proved from plain experience, from the brain's sensing of everything that befalls the limbs, that the division already begins in the soul and not in the limbs, with the proviso that it is not in the soul's essence and being but in the contracted illumination that shines in the brain.
In the next section we will review the idea and sharpen it once more, and we will even try to set out a table and a flow chart of the division and the process, until everything is clear and firmly in place; and from there, with G-d's help, we will be able to move on to the nimshal.