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Chapter 21
Now, the manner of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the manner of flesh and blood. When a person speaks an utterance, the vapor of the utterance in his mouth is felt and appears as a thing in its own right, separated from its root, which is the ten aspects of the nefesh (the lowest level of the soul) itself. But the Holy One, blessed be He, His utterance is not separated from Him, blessed be He, God spare us, for there is nothing outside Him, and there is no place empty of Him. Therefore His utterance, blessed be He, is not like our utterance, God spare us [just as His thought is not like our thoughts, as it is written (Isaiah 55:8): “For thoughts of Mine are not thoughts of yours,” and it is written (Isaiah 55:9): “So are My ways lifted high above your ways,” and the rest], and His utterance, blessed be He, is not called by the name utterance except by way of a likeness. Just as the lower utterance in a person reveals to the hearers what was stored away and hidden in his thought, so above, in Ein Sof (the Endless), blessed be He, the emergence of the light and the life from Him, blessed be He, from concealment into disclosure, to create worlds and to give them life, is called by the name utterance. These are the very ten sayings by which the world was created (Mishnah Avot 5:1), and so too all the rest of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, which the prophets attained in the vision of their prophecy. Thus His utterance and His thought are, as it were, united with Him in the utmost union, by way of a likeness, like a person’s utterance and thought while they are still within his wisdom and his intellect, or in the craving and the desire in his heart, before it rose from the heart to the brain to reflect on it in the aspect of letters. At that time the letters of this thought and this utterance, drawn from this desire and this craving, were in potential in the heart, and united there in the utmost union with their root, which is the wisdom and the intellect in the brain, and the desire and the craving in the heart.
In just this way, truly, by way of a likeness, the utterance and the thought of the Holy One, blessed be He, are united in the utmost union with His essence and His being, blessed be He, even after His utterance, blessed be He, has come out into act in the creation of the worlds, as it was united with Him before the creation of the worlds. And there is no change at all before Him, blessed be He, except for the creatures, who receive their life from the aspect of His utterance, blessed be He, in the aspect of its having already come out into act in the creation of the worlds. It clothes itself in them to give them life by a chain from cause to effect, and a descent of the levels, through many and differing narrowings, until the creatures can receive their life and their coming into being from Him, and not be nullified in existence. All the narrowings are an aspect of hiding of the face, to hide and to conceal the light and the life drawn from His utterance, blessed be He, so that it will not be revealed in an aspect of a great disclosure that the lower ones would be unable to receive. Therefore it also seems to them that the light and the life of the utterance of the Place, blessed be He, clothed in them, is as if it were a thing separated from His essence and His being, blessed be He, only drawn from Him, blessed be He, like the utterance of a person from his nefesh.
But as regards the Holy One, blessed be He, no narrowing, hiding, or concealment hides or conceals before Him, and darkness is as light, as it is written (Psalms 139:12): “Even darkness does not grow dark before You,” and the rest, because the narrowings and the garments are not a thing apart from Him, blessed be He, God spare us, but like this locust, whose garment is from it and in it (Genesis Rabbah 21:5), as it is written (Deuteronomy 4:35): “For Hashem (God), He is Elohim,” and as has been explained in another place. Therefore, before Him, all counts as truly nothing.
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