M 012 011 Tanya Chitas kislev 29 – Teves 2
Questions for today:
How is it that when my soul wants a lift, it hitches a ride on a finite body?
Study today’s tanya in full:
https://www.chabadmed.com/dailystudy/tanya.asp?tdate=12/6/2021
See today’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTz8FzcEZ7w&list=PLFZQPK6u-zSBls9Hwx3P5vKI_BRnjBvHe&index=10
how do you find the owner of a company?
When you walk into a conference room and you see a person wearing jeans, that's probably the person with the highest authority. Or, the one that can call you over and say “I know it's against all the rules, but for you I'm taking out the nice China”.
We were speaking about the soul; the ‘components’ of the soul and the ‘clothing’ of the soul. It would seem like the components are more spiritual, more identifiable parts of the soul itself, and higher than the clothing; the thought, speech, and action, which are dealing with finite physical things.
The truth is when we think of the Divine we think of G-d at great, infinite, and that's how we describe Divine - those are the ‘rules’ of Divinity. But where do we find the actual ‘owner’, the Creator Himself?
When all those rules are broken and we have a physical world.
With that in mind, it would be the clothing of the soul; the thought, the speech, the ability to act in a tiny, finite, way is the part of the soul that has the greatest relationship to the creator’s very self.
Additional thoughts:
Today’s Tanya explains why our sages compare the Torah to water, based on what we just learned:
Sunlight also ‘descends’ into the world, and there is also a “chain of ‘evolutionary’ creation” forming physical reality. Neither match the Torah’s ‘descent’ to us.
The sunlight that reaches us is a ray, not the sun. With the “evolutionary chain”; similar to a teacher imparting wisdom to a student, each stage is reduced in volume and depth.
The water that reaches the lowest level is the actual water that was at the top of the mountain, unchanged.
In ordinary creation and formulation of the physical world, there is a “chain of evolution”.
Each stage of additional definition, physicality, each ‘world’ so to speak, is a ring that is lower than the one above it, and above the link below.
Think of a series of teachers each explaining a complex idea to someone on a lower education level; Einstein to a conference of scientists, the scientists to a presentation of university professors, a university professor to their lab, a lab scientist to a high school class, a high school student tutoring an elementary school student, the elementary student explaining it to their younger sibling.
Eventually the lesson becomes so defined and visible, it is done with play dough, or a crayon drawing.
However, each level is lower than the one above.
Regarding the Torah, today’s Tanya uses the term: “misham yordah”, it descended “from there”.
The Torah we learn is direct from G-d, unchanged, even as it is compressed to fit us.
[not to be confused with the scientific concept of evolution, the description above is a constant. It is perpetually present in any instance of a physical expression from a spiritual source]