Before we continue with the Alter Rebbe's own words, let us clarify a few points that have come up. The term «Shechinah», and likewise the matter of Moshe Rabbeinu seeing only the «back», belong already to stage two, a stage we have not yet discussed. That stage will begin to be explained in the next chapter, chapter 52, and here it is mentioned only in passing. The emphasis of the chapter before us is on stage one, and from there the Alter Rebbe moves on to stage three, to which belong the themes of revelation and concealment, hiddenness and expansion, as well as the concealment found in the holy worlds, which is not said with regard to Moshe Rabbeinu.
Why are the upper worlds called «almin stimin», closed or sealed worlds? Ordinarily «sealed» is a disparaging description, yet here it points precisely to an especially lofty level. To get a feel for this: the first blessing before Shema opens with the words of the verse, «Who forms light and creates darkness». Now, in the order of the worlds, the world of Beriah (creation) is higher than the world of Yetzirah (formation). Seemingly, then, it should have said «Who creates light and forms darkness», so that light, the higher of the two, would be attributed to the higher world of Beriah. In fact it is precisely the world of Yetzirah that is associated with «light» and the world of Beriah with «darkness».
The explanation is that «darkness» does not always mean a level lower than light. True, in the world of our own concepts light is the higher thing, and a dark place is a name for something low, because darkness is the absence of light. But sometimes it is the reverse: a place so luminous and so exalted that we have no capacity whatsoever to grasp it, is also called «darkness».
We see the same thing in physical terms. Someone who tries to stare at the body of the sun for a few seconds sees a black disc. The sun is the source of light, so why does it appear black? Because its light is so far beyond the grasping ability of our instruments that, as far as we are concerned, it turns into darkness.
So too here: the term «sealed» hints at a world higher than the revealed world. And this is what the Alter Rebbe stresses with the phrase «stima dechol stimin», that the Holy One, blessed be He, is as it were sealed, that is, hidden, even relative to those worlds that we call «almin stimin» (they are called that because relative to us they are hidden). Even they have no ability at all to comprehend or grasp that stage one, which we are calling Atzmus Ein Sof, the Essence of the Infinite.
From here the Alter Rebbe moves to stage three, mentioning stage two briefly along the way: «וההבדל שבין עולמות עליונים ותחתונים הוא מצד המשכת החיות אשר א"ס ב"ה ממשיך ומאיר בבחינת גילוי מההעלם» (the difference between the upper and lower worlds stems from the drawing down of the life force, which the blessed Infinite One draws down and illuminates in a manner of revelation out of concealment). In other words, the very existence of a difference between the worlds, worlds that contain distinct details, just as body and soul contain an eye, an ear, a mouth and legs, 248 limbs and 365 sinews, and in the analogue there are upper worlds and lower worlds, comes about through the drawing down of the life force from stage two into stage three.
Note the precision of the word «drawn down». Stage one is so lofty that one cannot even apply to it the expression that it is «a source for...», since it is above everything. Only regarding stage two, which in the analogy was the brain that draws down to all the limbs, can one say that from it something is drawn down and from it something is revealed. And this is «revelation out of concealment»: the «concealment» is the intermediate stage, stage two, and the revelation is stage three, and that is where the division into details takes place.
In parentheses the Alter Rebbe mentions the point we raised at the outset, that the transition from stage two to stage three is not called «flow» (shefa) but «light»: «שזהו אחד מהטעמים שההשפעה והמשכות החיות מכונה בשם אור על דרך משל» (this is one of the reasons that the influence and the drawing down of the life force is called by the name «light», by way of analogy). Two matters, connected to one another, are emphasized by the term «light»:
There is no diminishment in the source: when light descends to its destination, nothing whatsoever is lacking in its source.
There is no exertion in the drawing down: the manner of the drawing down is not one of toil and bother; it is drawn of itself from concealment into revelation.
And the drawing down is «לחיות העולמות והברואים שבהם» (to give life to the worlds and the creatures within them). Here we must ask the same question we asked in the analogy: the particular faculties, sight, hearing, speech, walking, where does their division begin? As we discussed and demonstrated at length in the previous lesson, the division does not begin at stage three but at stage two. So too here: all the details of all the worlds, with all their gradations, are already included and present in stage two, and stage two will be discussed at length in the next chapter.
It is just as it is with soul and body. The life force is present in the brain as well, only there it exists on a higher, more abstract level, with no division that one could point to and say «this is sight and this is hearing», and nevertheless everything is included there. And when the life force descends to the limbs, each limb receives what is suited to it.
The same holds in the analogue: when the life force descends «to give life to the worlds and the creatures within them», the upper worlds receive in a more revealed manner than the lower ones. But even the upper worlds receive by way of tzimtzum, contraction, for the revelation of stage two does not descend in its entirety into every stage. Just as in the body the refined and elevated limbs receive a higher level, while the coarse and lower limbs receive with far greater contraction, so it is in the worlds.
In the worlds there is an enormous multiplicity of levels, but of the upper worlds we have no conception, since we are not there. Let us speak, then, of the distinctions within this physical world itself, which we discussed at length in those earlier chapters of Tanya: inanimate, vegetative, animal and speaking (there a general division was made, inanimate and vegetative in one group, animal and speaking in another). Take even the difference between the inanimate and the vegetative: in the vegetative one already sees life, and in the animal all the more so.
In a living creature, in its touch, in its living flesh, in its very form, you see life even before it moves. The form is different and the feel is different, and you simply sense that it is alive. By contrast, when you look at something inanimate, it appears, as the Alter Rebbe will mention later in the chapter, as dead, silent as a stone.
Divine energy is of course present in the animal and in the inanimate alike, so what creates the difference between them? In the living creature it is present in greater revelation, with fewer screens and less concealment. And the further the thing descends, the more screens, the more garments and the more concealment there are, down to this physical world, and especially the inanimate within it, which is absolute darkness. The concealment is so great that one who looks at the world wonders whether there is anyone making it at all: it looks dead, it looks as though it exists on its own, as if it always was this way and always will be, and one sees nothing living in it.
With a living creature, by contrast, a person understands on his own that there is energy within it; he understands on his own that it has weakness and it has deficiency, that it once began and will one day die. From the very act of looking at the creature he understands that its existence is not from itself, and that there is an energy that makes it. And the lower the creature is, the more covering and garment it has, the less one is able to see the life force in it, until all one sees is the inanimate, and the life force becomes entirely hidden.
So too in the human body. There are higher parts of the body in which one sees energy and sees life, and there are hair and nails. Regarding hair, there are those in science and medicine who will say it is dead, and this is not accurate. A hair is not dead but alive, and the proof is that it keeps growing. But it has a state that one might call «dead»: it can be cut without any pain, which shows that the quantity of life force present in it is so minimal that it is not felt. And precisely with the development of science today one can see in every single hair the entire DNA, meaning that a hair is not some trivial thing; it contains the entire life force exactly as it is found in every other part and every other cell of the body.
In summary: in this section we learned why the upper worlds are called «almin stimin»: just as light that is utterly beyond the scope of our grasp is called «darkness», so «sealed» indicates a lofty level, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is «stima dechol stimin», sealed even relative to them. We saw that the difference between the upper and lower worlds comes about through the drawing down of the life force «in a manner of revelation out of concealment», from stage two to stage three, and the reason the influence is called «light»: there is no diminishment in the source and no exertion in the drawing down. We also saw that the division into details is already included in stage two, and that, as with soul and body, each limb receives according to its measure, the upper worlds in greater revelation and the lower ones with contraction, down to the absolute darkness of the inanimate in this world, and in the human body, down to the hair and the nails.
In the next section we will read the words in the Alter Rebbe's own language inside the text, and continue the explanation of the matter up to chapter 52, where stage two will be explained at length.