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Baal HaSulam. Study of the Ten Sefirot. Vol. 1. Part 3. Chapter 5, item 1

Chapter Five

Explains how every emanated being and created being consists of the four above phases of coarseness called HB TM. The upper light spreads within them to a coupling by striking on the screen in Malchut, and their root is the Emanator, called Keter. Because every phase is different from the other, there must be a median phase between them that contains both phases. Contains seven issues:

1. Every created being contains four elements, fire, wind, water, and dust, corresponding to the four letters HaVaYaH, which are HB TM, namely tastes, points, tags, letters, and ABYA. 2. These are the four phases in the lower Adam: a) the spirituality (Ruach) in him; b) the body; c) the garments; d) the house one dwells in. Each of them consists of four. The spirituality in him contains Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya. The body in him contains bones, tendons, flesh, skin. In the clothes there are shirt, trousers, bonnet, belt. In the house there are house, yard, field, desert. 3. In the four phases of Adam, there is one that contains all of them. There is also an intermediate phase between each and every phase that contains both. 4. The phase that contains all of them is called light of Yechida, containing two phases: a) a spark of the Creator; b) a spark of the created being. 5. The median phase between the spiritual phases in a person, which are NRNHY, and the discernment of the body, is called a quarter blood, which clothes the Nefesh of Nefesh. It contains the spirituality and the body. 6. The median phase between the body and the clothes is the hair and nails of a human. 7. The median between the clothes and the house is tents, which are made of wool and flax.
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There is Emanator and emanated being. Each emanated being is divided by the four phases of coarseness, by which the light expands from the Emanator to become the vessels of the emanated being. Those are HB TM and they are the four letters HaVaYaH, and they are tastes, points, tags, letters, and they are the four phases in Adam: NRNH, body, garments, and the house one dwells in. It is so because there is no emanated being with less than four parts.

1. There are Emanator and emanated being ₍₁₎. The emanated being has four elements: fire, wind, water, dust ₍₂₎, which are the four letters HaVaYaH and are Hochma, Bina, Tifferet, and Malchut. They are also tastes, points, tags, letters, and they are Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya. These are also the four phases in Adam: A. The inner Adam, which is the spirituality, called Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida. B. The body. C. The clothes over the body. D. The house one dwells in, his body and his clothes.

Inner Light

1. Any upper Partzuf is regarded as an Emanator toward its lower Partzuf. That is because the Partzufim emerge from one another by way of cause and effect from the beginning of the line to the end of Assiya; every Partzuf is emanated by the one above it.

2. These are the four phases, mentioned above in the words of the ARI (Part 3, chapter 1, item 4). Ein Sof first expanded to make vessels over the four phases, until it encountered the screen in the vessel of Malchut. There are many names to these four phases, because there is not a single, tiny detail in reality that is not arranged by the above four phases, and reality in general is also arranged by them.

They are the four worlds: Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya, which contain the entire reality. You must understand that although the order of the four phases is imprinted in every element of reality, it does not mean that all elements are the same. In fact, each element has a distinct value according to the measure of its vessel of reception.
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Each phase of the four phases in Adam consists of four: Spirituality is Haya, Neshama, Ruach, Nefesh; The body is bones, tendons, flesh, skin; The garments are shirt, trousers, bonnet, and belt; The house is house, yard, field, desert.

2. All these phases consist of four phases ₍₃₎, as follows: Phase one of spirituality is: Neshama to Neshama, Neshama, Ruach, Nefesh ₍₄₎. Phase two, which is the body, is the bones, the marrow inside them, the tendons, the flesh and the skin, as it says, “you have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and tendons.” Phase three is the garments. It is known that these are the mandatory garments for a Laic Cohen (Priest): shirt, trousers, bonnet, and belt. These four of the Great Cohen are higher garments than these, as it is written in the Zohar, that these are the garments of the name ADNI, and these are the garments of the name HaVaYaH, but in principle they are only four phases. Phase four is the house. There are house, yard, field, and desert.

Inner Light

3. This incorporation is because of the refinement of the screen, which necessarily occurs in the emanation of each and every degree (see Inner Observation, Part 2, chapter 7, item 72).

4. It is the light of Hochma, also known as the light of Haya. The light of Yechida is opposite Keter, which is considered the Emanator. Also, the marrow in the bones corresponds to Keter.
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Between each two phases there is a median phase that contains both.

3. Indeed, in all these four inner phases there is one phase that contains all of them ₍₅₎. It is the median between each two phases and contains both of them ₍₆₎. For example, biologists write that between the still and the vegetative there is the coral; between the vegetative and the animate there is the ledges of the field, mentioned in Masechet Kilaim. It is like a dog that grows on the ground with its navel rooted in the soil, from which it sucks its sustenance. When you cut off its navel, it dies. Between the animate and the speaking there is the monkey [ape].

Inner Light

5. It means that it contains all four phases, namely the second phase of Keter (see chapter 6, item 2), being the root of the expansion of the four phases. The light of Keter is called Yechida.

6. It means that a second phase in Keter is regarded as the median between the upper degree and the lower degree, meaning between the Emanator and the emanated being. Any upper one is always regarded as the Emanator of the lower one (see chapter 5, item 1).
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Between Creator and created being, which is the spirituality in a person, there is a median phase. It is said about it, “You are the sons etc.,” “You are Gods.” The patriarchs are the chariot [structure].

4. In much the same way, there is a median phase between the Creator and the created being ₍₇₎, which is the general spiritual phase. It is said about it, “You are the sons of the Lord your God,” “I said: You are God,” and it is said “and God went up from Abraham,” and our sages said, “The patriarchs are indeed the chariot ₍₈₎.”

Inner Light

7. This relates to the two worlds—Atzilut and Beria. Atzilut is called Creator, and the four phases in the world of Beria are generally called created being. Also, every element in the world of Beria has the above four phases, and the souls of the righteous are imparted from Atzilut to Beria.

This is what the ARI means when he says, “there is a median phase between the Creator and the created being, which is the general spiritual phase.” It means that there is a median phase between the Creator and Keter, which is the general spiritual light of Yechida of Adam. In other words, it is the aforementioned (item 1) spirituality of Adam, called Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya. Yechida, which is their Keter, contains all of them.

8. It means that the Yechida of the patriarchs is the chariot to that median phase between the Creator and the Yechida in them. “Chariot” means placement, like a rider placed on his designated chariot. Likewise, Godliness is placed over the patriarchs.
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The median phase consists of two sparks: a spark of the Creator, which clothes the spark of the created being, in which there are the roots of NRNH in man.

5. It means that there is a very small spark ₍₉₎, which is Godliness that extends from the last phase in the Creator ₍₁₀₎. That spark clothes by the power of another spark, a created being, which is a very fine Neshama, called Yechida ₍₂₀₎. That spark contains the roots of the four phases of spirituality ₍₃₀₎, which are Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya ₍₄₀₎.

Inner Light

9. Know that this does not refer to an imaginary Gadlut [adulthood/greatness] or Katnut [infancy/smallness] whatsoever, but only to the absence of attainment, for the unattainable is called very small. You should also not be mistaken in the name spark, and interpret it literally, as an imaginary spark of fire. Rather, spark means reflected light (Table of Questions Part 2, item 2), as direct light is called lights, and reflected light is called sparks.

10. It is phase four, namely Malchut.

20. Meaning in Keter, which is Yechida. The spark of the Creator is called Ein Sof, and the spark of the created being is called the Keter of the degree. It is also called GAR, the Rosh of the degree, containing within it the four phases of direct light, in which Ein Sof expands for coupling by striking, raising reflected light and clothing the direct light from below upward.

That, in turn, created the roots of the vessels (see Inner Observation Part 2, item 202). All this is called a spark of a created being, or Yechida. It is called a spark after the reflected light that rises, where the spark of the Creator clothes this reflected light. That is why the ARI wrote: “That spark clothes by the power of another spark, a created being.”

30. Because the clothing of Ein Sof in reflected light that rises from below upward does not create complete vessels but only roots of vessels, hence the words of the ARI, “the roots of the four phases.”

40. You already know that Nefesh is clothed in Malchut, Ruach in ZA, Neshama in Bina, and Haya in Hochma. These vessels are the above four phases in the words of the ARI (Part 3, chapter 1, item 4).
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Between the spirituality of man and man’s body, there is the discernment of the quarter blood in the Nefesh, which consists of both. The Nefesh is spiritual, and the quarter blood, where the Nefesh clothes, is the body.

6. Between the phase of spirituality and the phase of the body there is also one phase that consists of both. It is the phase of a quarter blood of the Nefesh, for it has the last spark of the Nefesh, being the quarter of the Nefesh, meaning Nefesh of Nefesh, and hence the name quarter ₍₅₀₎.

That spark clothes the above-mentioned quarter blood and it is all one, as it says, “for the blood is the Nefseh,” said about this quarter blood. This quarter blood is the finest part of all the aforementioned four phases of the body, where each part is divided into four.

It is the first and the top quarter from the perspective of the self of the Mochin [the internality of the light of Hochma], which is the vitality inside it, being the blood that expands in them to revive them. All the roots of the above four phases are in that quarter in the upper blood because it is the median between spirituality and the body and consists of both.

Inner Light

50. Nefesh, too, has four phases HB TM of its own, which expand from Malchut herself, and Nefesh in Nefesh is clothed in Malchut of Malchut.
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Between the body and the garments there are the discernments of hairs and nails of man, which contain both. Between the garments and the discernment of a house there is a median, which is tents.

7. Also, there is a median between the second phase and the third, which are the hairs and nails of men, as it is known that this was the initial garment of Adam HaRishon. They are attached to the skin of Adam and are like the body of man [T1] itself, but when they depart from there, these hairs become a garment like the ones made from goat and sheep wool.

Moreover, even when they are attached to the body of man, they are like a garment, like animals and beasts whose hair is their garment. The example for that is Adam HaRishon, regarding the nails.

We also find in Nebuchadnezzar, whose garment was this, as it says, “Till his hair was grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws.” Also, between the garments and the house, there are tents, made of wool and flax, which are garments that are used in houses too. This phase of the tents requires further scrutiny, if it is so or there is something else there.