We have learned in a general way about the three worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and how each one descends and is more constricted than the one before it. At this point it is worth pausing on a question that naturally arises: when we say that something descends lower, we do not mean that it is a lower level.
In Torah, when something comes down further, it means that it carries such tremendous power that it descended in a way that even the very lowest can absorb it. Let us illustrate this from the order of Torah study: «ben chamesh lemikra, ben eser lemishnah, ben chamesh esreh ligemara», five years old for Scripture, ten for Mishnah, fifteen for Gemara.
Mikra, Scripture, is the beginning, and in it the Holy One descended with His infinity in such a way that even the world of Asiyah could receive and study the infinite Divine wisdom. Even a five year old reads a verse in Chumash and connects to that very same infinite Divine wisdom. That is a descent all the way down to the world of Asiyah.
Mishnah, by contrast, already requires «ben eser», a ten year old. In other words, it did not come down quite so far, and it demands broader vessels and a more developed intellectual structure. The student has to lift himself up somewhat in order to reach it.
And this does not mean that Mikra is lower. On the contrary: according to halachah one may place a Chumash on top of a volume of Mishnayos, but to place Mishnayos on top of a Chumash is forbidden, because the holiness of the Chumash is the greatest of all. Descending lower is no indication of a lesser holiness.
This resembles the well known analogy of Shlomo HaMelech: his wisdom was so great that he could speak even with the smallest and the lowliest. So too, specifically in the world of Asiyah, on the one hand the greatest Divine power was revealed, yet it came down through the greatest tzimtzum, the greatest constriction. Two opposites are joined here: the matter descended all the way down, so that even a small child understands what he is reading, and at the very same time the loftiest essence is lying right there. For this reason it is also known that in the order of the worlds, the world of Asiyah, though it is the lowest, is the purpose of the entire creation.
At first glance there is a difficulty. When a person learns Gemara, the Gemara itself contains the Chumash, all of Tanach and all of the Mishnayos. A page of Gemara is full of beraisos, Mishnayos and verses of Tanach. How then can the Talmud belong to the higher world and Mikra to the lower world?
The explanation is this: the Torah in its entirety is above all the worlds, even above the world of Atzilus, and everything that a veteran student will one day innovate is already contained within it. As it descends into the worlds, all of it descends into every single world. The difference is that in each world a different facet, a different principal element, stands out:
In the world of Beriah all of it descended, and out of that whole, the central matter that stands out is Talmud. One cannot understand Talmud without Mishnah and without Chumash, and it is clear that whoever has Talmud already has Chumash and Mishnah.
In the world of Yetzirah, the Mishnah too contains verses and the like, but what stands out in it primarily is the matter of chesed, din and rachamim, kindness, judgment and mercy.
In the world of Asiyah, in Mikra as well everything descended, for in order to truly understand the verse «Bereishis bara Elokim» one needs the entire Talmud and all the Midrashim. Here, though, it came down in a way that everything is hidden: one sees nothing but the plain verse, even though everything is contained within it, only in a concealed form.
It emerges, then, that it is not that the Chumash comes first and everything else is built on top of it. Rather, in each and every world all of it descended, and only the emphasis differs from world to world. With this the question from the order of hishtalshelus, the chain of descent, is resolved.
To conclude the chapter the Alter Rebbe adds that although we have spoken of three worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, known by the acronym BiYA, the truth is that «וכל עולם מג' עולמות אלו מתחלק לרבבות מדרגות הנקראות ג"כ עולמות פרטים», each of these three worlds divides into myriads of levels, which are likewise called particular worlds. In a general sense there are three worlds; in a particular sense there are myriads of levels, and therefore myriads of worlds. There are general worlds and there are particular worlds.
«ומלכות דאצילות מלובשת במלכות של כל עולם פרטי», and the malchus of Atzilus is clothed within the malchus of every particular world. That very same Shechinah shines in every particular world. And although he does not spell out what these worlds are, and we do not even know their names, in each particular world the same process of tzimtzum takes place: «יורדת ומתלבשת בהיכל קדשי הקדשים, שהוא חכמה בינה ודעת שבעולם שלמטה ממנו במדרגה», it descends and clothes itself in the chamber of the Holy of Holies, which is the chochmah, binah and daas of the world one level below it. In other words, in every single world there is a process of descent, of enclothement, and of entering into the chochmah, binah and daas of that world.
To grasp this simply: picture a rav who understands a sugya on a level the student cannot even begin to approach, and he wants to teach the idea to a simple student. The process breaks down into three stages:
The first stage: before the rav even opens his mouth, he has to sit with himself and decide, out of everything he knows, what he will convey and what he will leave out. This is already a tzimtzum, except that it takes place entirely within the rav's own world, and the student has no part in it at all.
The second stage: once he has decided what he will speak about, he actually speaks, clothing the ideas in analogies and examples. This is a further tzimtzum, for until now the matter remained in the rav's mind, and now he brings it outward.
The third stage: once the student has heard the words, he grasps them according to his own frame of reference. His very understanding is a third tzimtzum. If three students sit in the classroom, and for all of them the first and second stages happened identically, each one will nevertheless understand according to his own talents, capacities and prior knowledge.
So too in our subject. The sefiros as they are in the world of Atzilus are like the rav who is far, far above. Malchus of Atzilus is the first tzimtzum, and that is the meaning of «יורדת», it descends. After that, malchus of Atzilus has to clothe itself in the lower world, and that is «ומתלבשת», the second stage. And finally, its actual arrival in the «היכל קדשי הקדשים», the chamber of the Holy of Holies, of the world beneath it, that is the third tzimtzum.
(In a gloss the Alter Rebbe uses this to explain the phrase we say every day in Ashrei: «ובזה יובן לשון הכתוב מלכותך מלכות כל עולמים», with this one can understand the wording of the verse, Your kingship is a kingship of all worlds. The wording of the verse indicates that there are two levels in malchus, «malchuscha» and «malchus kol olamim». «Malchuscha», Your kingship, is malchus of Atzilus, the source that is ultimately revealed in each and every world; and «kol olamim», all worlds, three in general and countless in particular, are the worlds in each of which that same «malchuscha» is found.)
The Alter Rebbe then sums up everything said until now: «והנה מהשכינה המלובשת בהיכל קדשי הקדשים של כל עולם כללי או פרטי נמשך ומתפשט ממנה אור וחיות לכל העולם והברואים שבו, נשמות ומלאכים וכו'», from the Shechinah clothed in the chamber of the Holy of Holies of every world, whether general or particular, light and life flow forth and spread out to that entire world and to all the creatures in it, souls and angels and so on. All the creations in every world, the nivra'im of Beriah, the yetzurim of Yetzirah and the na'asim of Asiyah, receive their vitality from there. There is a general vitality, which is malchus of Atzilus enlivening the whole of creation; from it comes the general vitality of the world of Beriah, from which all the particulars of Beriah are drawn; and after that the general vitality of the world of Yetzirah, from which come all the particulars of Yetzirah; and likewise the general vitality of the world of Asiyah.
And the reason for this is «כי כולם נבראו בעשרה מאמרות שבמעשה בראשית, שהם דבר השם הנקרא בשם שכינה», for they were all created by the ten utterances of the account of creation, which are the word of Hashem that is called by the name Shechinah. And as we have learned, the word of Hashem is called Shechinah, and it is what clothes itself in each and every world and gives life to all the created beings in all the worlds.
In summary: in this section we learned that descending lower is no indication of a lower level, but rather of a power so great that it came down in a way that even the very lowest can absorb it, «five years old for Scripture, ten for Mishnah, fifteen for Gemara». On the contrary, one may place a Chumash on top of Mishnayos and not the reverse, as in the analogy of the wisdom of Shlomo HaMelech, who could speak even with the smallest. We resolved the difficulty from the order of hishtalshelus: the Torah in its entirety is above the worlds, and in every world all of it descends, except that in Beriah the Talmud stands out, in Yetzirah the matter of chesed, din and rachamim, and in Asiyah Mikra, in which everything is contained in a concealed way. From there we moved on to general and particular worlds, that each of the three worlds divides into myriads of levels, and that malchus of Atzilus clothes itself in the malchus of every particular world and descends into the chamber of the Holy of Holies, which is the chochmah, binah and daas of the world below it. We explained this with the analogy of the rav and the student and the three stages of tzimtzum, corresponding to «it descends», «and clothes itself», and its arrival in the chamber of the Holy of Holies, and on this basis the wording «Your kingship is a kingship of all worlds» in the gloss. Finally the Alter Rebbe summed up that from the Shechinah clothed in the chamber of the Holy of Holies of every world, general or particular, light and vitality are drawn to that entire world and to all the creatures in it, for they were all created by the ten utterances, which are the word of Hashem that is called Shechinah.