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Chapter 1
To understand a very little of what is written in the Zohar: that “Hear, Israel,” and so on, is the higher union, and “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom for all time and forever” is the lower union.
“And you shall know today, and you shall set it back upon your heart, that Hashem (God) is Elohim, in the heaven from above and upon the earth from below. There is nothing else” (Deuteronomy 4:39). And this needs to be understood. Would it rise in your mind that there is an Elohim dwelling in the waters beneath the earth, so that one must warn so strongly, “and you shall set it back upon your heart”?
Now it is written (Psalms 119:89): “For all time, Hashem, Your word stands in the heavens.” And the Baal Shem Tov, of blessed memory, explained that “Your word,” which You said, “Let an expanse be within the waters,” and the rest (Genesis 1:6): these words and these letters stand and remain for all time within the expanse of the heavens, and are clothed within all the expanses for all time, to give them life. As it is written (Isaiah 40:8): “and the word of our Elohim shall be established for all time,” and His words are living and enduring forever, and so on. For if the letters were to withdraw for a moment, God spare us, and return to their source, all the heavens would be nothing and naught, actually, and they would be as if they had never been at all, and exactly as before the utterance “Let an expanse be,” and so on, actually. And so it is with all the creatures in all the worlds, upper and lower, and even this physical earth, and the aspect of the inanimate, actually. If the letters of the ten utterances, by which the earth was created in the six days of creation, were to withdraw from it for a moment, God spare us, it would return to nothing and naught, actually, exactly as before the six days of creation, actually.
And this is what the Ari, of blessed memory, wrote: that even in the inanimate, actually, such as stones and dust and water, there is an aspect of nefesh (the lowest level of the soul) and a spiritual life force. That is, an aspect of the clothing of the letters of speech from the ten utterances, which give life to the inanimate and bring it into being, so that it be something from the nothing and naught of before the six days of creation. And even though the name “stone” is not mentioned in the ten utterances in the Torah, even so, life force is drawn to the stone by combinations and exchanges of letters, which revolve in the 231 gates, front and back, as is written in the Book of Formation, until it chains down from the ten utterances, and the combination of the name “stone” is drawn from them, and that is the life force of the stone. And so it is with all the created things in the world. The names by which they are called in the holy tongue are themselves the letters of the speech, which chain down from degree to degree from the ten utterances in the Torah, by exchanges and substitutions of the letters in the 231 gates, until they arrive and clothe themselves in that created thing, to give it life. For the particular created things cannot receive their life force from the ten utterances in the Torah themselves, since the life force that is drawn from those utterances themselves is far greater than the aspect of the particular created things, and they have no power to receive the life force except by the life force coming down and chaining down from degree to degree, each lower than the one before it, by exchanges and substitutions of the letters and by gematriot, which are the numerical values of the letters, until it can contract, and clothe itself, and a particular creature come into being from it. And this name, by which it is called in the holy tongue, is a vessel for the contracted life force in the letters of this name, which has chained down from the ten utterances in the Torah, which have in them power and life force to create something from nothing and to give it life forever. For the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one.
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