In the previous section we studied how the root of the soul descends through the worlds, how the root of all the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of the Jewish people as a whole comes down level after level. In this section we will go deeper into the four worlds: what Atzilus is, what the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are, and we will see how precisely from here comes the need every Jew has for the heads of his generation, and his connection to them.
The Four Worlds:
It is well known in chassidus, and we will encounter it many more times in Tanya, that although in a number of places it is explained that the worlds are infinite in number, in a general way they are divided into four: Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Atzilus is the highest of them, and its name was given to it for two reasons:
Atzilus from the word etzlo, "next to Him": this is the world closest to Him, blessed be He.
Atzilus from the word meaning "to set aside": as in the verse about Moshe Rabbeinu, when the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded him to gather seventy men of the elders of Israel: "וַיָּאצֶל מִן הָרוּחַ אֲשֶׁר עָלָיו וַיִּתֵּן עַל שִׁבְעִים אִישׁ הַזְּקֵנִים" ("And He set aside of the spirit that was upon him and placed it upon the seventy elders"). Vayatzel means setting aside: he set aside from himself and gave it over to them, and it was the very same thing without any change, the identical point. Rashi there brings a mashal: to what was Moshe compared at that moment? To one who lights a candle from a candle, where that very same flame passes to the second candle without any change at all.
It emerges that the entire content of the world of Atzilus is literally Elokus, the loftiest, most spiritual, holy and pure of the worlds. There is no reality of yesh (independent existence) there, and there is no reality of evil there; from Atzilus and downward is where change begins. For this reason chassidus often does not count all four together under the acronym ABiYA, but divides them: Atzilus on its own, and the worlds of BiYA, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, as a somewhat separate grouping that descends from Atzilus. These are lower worlds, in which there begins a reality of yesh, a reality of evil, and a reality of distance from Elokus, all of it only in the imagination of the created beings, down to this physical world in which we find ourselves.
The Soul's Route Through the Worlds:
Every soul that is found in a human body passes through this entire order, and in fact we say so every morning in our prayers: "אֱלֹקי, נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַתָּ בִּי טְהוֹרָה הִיא" ("My God, the soul You placed within me is pure"). "Pure" refers to the world of Atzilus, a world of absolute purity. And then: "אַתָּה בְרָאתָהּ, אַתָּה יְצַרְתָּהּ... וְאַתָּה נָפַחְתָּהּ בִּי" ("You created it, You formed it... and You breathed it into me"), the order of Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Every soul travels the entire route, and it cannot descend into a human body until it has passed through all of it.
Let us return to our mashal. Every part of the human body passed through all nine months, even though certain parts are already formed at the earliest stages. The heart is beating at the very beginning of the process, and nevertheless it waits patiently and goes through the whole thing. So too every soul passes through the four worlds. But there are souls called "souls of Atzilus," and the intention is not that they remained in the world of Atzilus, for they are here below. Rather, even as they are here below they have remained souls of Atzilus: they passed through Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah and still remained on their level, exactly like the heart, which went through all nine months, yet the process did not coarsen it into hands, fingernails and hair. The other parts became coarse; it remained a heart. Such a soul received, by the will of the Creator, as it passed through the world of Atzilus, all of its power, holiness and loftiness, and from there it simply traveled the route and remained Atzilus.
And at the opposite extreme: a soul that passed through Atzilus, Beriah and Yetzirah, and only here in the world of Asiyah received its task and its mission. About it too we say "the soul You placed within me," and it too was once in Atzilus, but its status is like that of the fingernails: their source is that very same drop, and they received their form at the end of the road and became fingernails. This is the answer to the question of how such differences come about, from lofty souls to lowly souls: because a process of nine months in the mother's womb took place here, which means, in general terms, a seder hishtalshelus of four worlds. And of course, in each and every world there are ten sefiros, and each sefirah is itself composed of ten, and within each of them are endless levels. Therefore not all souls of Atzilus are equal to one another; among them too there are many levels. We are simply speaking in general terms.
In the Words of the Alter Rebbe:
Let us read the sentence again: "שורש כל הנפש רוח ונשמה של כללות ישראל למעלה" ("the root of all the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of the Jewish people as a whole, above"), that they all share one root in the same point, "אך בירידתו ממדרגה למדרגה על ידי השתלשלות העולמות אצילות בריאה יצירה עשייה" ("but in its descent from level to level through the hishtalshelus of the worlds of Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah"). And in each world there are ten sefiros, the first of which is chochmah, so that the highest level of all is chochmah of Atzilus: "מחכמתו יתברך" ("from His wisdom, blessed be He"), and all the way down, "כדכתיב כולם בחכמה עשית" ("as it is written: You made them all with wisdom"). In this one phrase are both extremes: "chochmah," the highest level in the world of Atzilus, and "You made," the world of Asiyah, the lowest of them all. All of them, from chochmah down to Asiyah, are bound to the same root, only that each one received according to his own level.
And what did this seder hishtalshelus produce? What did those nine months bring about? "נשתלשלו ונמשכו ממנו נפש רוח ונשמה של עמי הארץ ופחותי הערך" ("there devolved and were drawn from it the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of the simple folk and those of least worth"). Had the order of descent been short, one world only, everyone would have been on the level of Avraham Avinu and Moshe Rabbeinu; everyone would have been a "head." But because there is a seder hishtalshelus of four worlds, parallel to nine months in the mother's womb, there also came into being souls that arrived at the very end of the route and there received their character. And even so, they too are bound to that same first point, and nothing of their power was diminished.
Here it is important to understand: each person has a different role in the world, and each has his own mission. That is why his soul came down here, and accordingly he receives provisions for the journey in keeping with the way his soul was made. There is no element of choice in this whatsoever; it is a portion of God from above, and no person can interfere with it. Someone who stands on a lower spiritual level, that is what he was given, and no claim is brought against him for not having been Moshe Rabbeinu. As in the famous saying of Reb Zusha of Anipoli: when they come to me with a claim, they will ask me why I was not Zusha; they will not ask me why I was not somebody else. Each person is asked to be the maximum of his own level.
And what is the proof that even on the very lowest level the soul has not lost its power?
The proof is simple, and it is stated in Tanya a number of times: even those souls called "the lightest of the light" and "simple folk," when they come to a test of faith, or God forbid of denial, we have found throughout the generations that as a rule they literally give up their lives al kiddush Hashem. And the reason is that their soul is bound to that same point and is not prepared to give it up under any circumstances, and therefore it is ready to die al kiddush Hashem rather than, God forbid, be severed from the Creator. It emerges that even the lowest soul of them all belongs to that same lofty point, and its low level does not change its bond with the Father.
But in what way is this soul connected to Him, the soul that in the nimshal is called "the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of the simple folk and those of least worth," and in the mashal is the fingernails?
To this the Alter Rebbe says: "ועם כל זה עודנה קשורות ומיוחדות באחדות נפלאה ועצומה במהותן ועצמותן הראשון" ("and with all this they are still bound and united in a wondrous and mighty unity with their original essence and being"). The lowest soul of all is bound to the root, and not merely a historical bond from long ago, but right now: at the moment it is a soul in a physical body, on the level of the simple folk and those of least worth, sitting at the far end of the world and not even aware that it is a Jew, even then it is bound to the Father, to the Holy One, blessed be He, with a living bond at this very moment, just as the fingernail is bound at this very moment to the father, to the brain.
And what is the source of this? "שהיא המשכת חכמה עילאה" ("for it is a drawing down of the supernal chochmah"). Chochmah ila'ah is the highest level within chochmah of Atzilus, and to there every Jew is bound at every moment. Just as the great tzaddik is connected to the root, so is the simple person connected to it. But then the question arises: how does this connection actually take place? And here comes the third stage of the mashal. The fingernails cannot come to the father and say, "We are connected to you directly." The father knows the fingernails only through the brain of his son; the son's brain is bound to the father's brain, and through it the fingernails too are bound to him.
The Need for the Heads of the Generation:
And what is this in the nimshal? "כי יניקת וחיות נפש רוח ונשמה של עמי הארץ ופחותי הערך היא מנפש רוח ונשמה של הצדיקים והחכמים ראשי בני ישראל שבדורם" ("for the nurture and vitality of the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of the simple folk and those of least worth comes from the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of the tzaddikim and the sages, the heads of Israel in their generation"). All the levels, down to the lowest of them, even of the simplest people, and of course the levels above them as well, all of it must pass by way of the brain. In the mashal it is clear to us what the son's brain is; in the nimshal, who is the son? The Jewish people: "בנים אתם לה' אלוקיכם" ("You are children to the Lord your God"). And just as in the son there is a brain and there are lower limbs, so in the Jewish people there is a brain, the tzaddikim and the sages, the heads of Israel, and there are lower souls. And who is the father? The Holy One, blessed be He, the supernal root, chochmah ila'ah.
For a Jew to be connected to the Father, it must pass by way of the tzaddikim and the sages, the heads of Israel in their generation. There is no possibility at all of being connected to the Creator directly. So the Holy One, blessed be He, established, and this is stated in many places. Thus it says, "וַיַּאֲמִינוּ בַּה' וּבְמֹשֶׁה עַבְדּוֹ" ("and they believed in God and in Moshe His servant"), and our Sages said of this: whoever believes in Moshe Rabbeinu is as one who believes in the Creator. And what is the link between the two? Only this: there is no faith in the Creator without drawing nurture from Moshe Rabbeinu, from the sages and tzaddikim of the generation, and it cannot happen directly under any circumstances whatsoever.
And this nurture exists even if a person does not feel it, as we will see further on. If you were to ask the fingernail whether it feels its connection to the brain, it might not even know what you were talking about, and nevertheless the fact is that it is connected. So too every Jew draws his nurture from the tzaddik, even if he does not feel it, does not know of it, and does not even want it. It does not depend on him and there is no choice in the matter at all. The Holy One, blessed be He, determined that the Torah would be given by way of Moshe Rabbeinu, "תּוֹרָה צִוָּה לָנוּ מֹשֶׁה" ("the Torah that Moshe commanded us"), and that is the order He established. At Har Sinai the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah to the Jewish people through Moshe Rabbeinu, and when they tried to receive it directly they could not withstand it, and they themselves asked: "דַּבֵּר אַתָּה עִמָּנוּ וְנִשְׁמָעָה" ("you speak with us and we will hear"). The Jewish people themselves understood that this cannot exist directly, and that it must pass by way of the heads of Israel in their generation.
In summary: in this section we learned about the four general worlds, Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and about the distinction between Atzilus, a world of Elokus and complete purity, and the worlds of BiYA, in which a reality of yesh and of distance begins. We saw how this seder hishtalshelus, parallel to the nine months in the mother's womb, produced the whole range from lofty souls to lowly souls, and yet all of them remain bound to that same lofty point, chochmah ila'ah, as is proven by the mesirus nefesh al kiddush Hashem found even among the simplest of the people. And finally we arrived at the central principle: a Jew's connection to the Creator cannot be direct, but must pass by way of the heads of Israel in their generation, just as the fingernail is bound to the father only through the brain of the son.
In the next section we will take up the question of how this connection to the tzaddik actually works: is the nurture we receive from the heads of the generation internal or external, and what this distinction means for every single Jew.