Part 1 · Chapter 14

Understanding the קו קצר and סתימא דכל סתימין 0:03

Okay, go ahead. Okay. Hold on for a minute.

Hold on for a minute. Where are we? We're at the קו קצר. Right. Right, so this קו קצר that they're talking about, that's the עצם הקו. That's the קו itself.

And that's called סתימא דכל סתימין. In other places it says סתימא דכל סתימין, it says לית מחשבה תפיסא ביה כלל. That's what it means סתימא דכל סתימין. Right, in other words, even the מחשבה of אדם קדמון is, right, לא תפיסא ביה. Which means not not just the the the מחשבה of אדם קדמון, doesn't mean doesn't mean the חכמה and בינה of אדם קדמון, but even כתר, which means the מחשבה קדומה.

Right. Cannot cannot grasp it, and it's סתימא דכל סתימין. This קו קצר is still called סתימא דכל סתימין, and and it's still considered ביה. Right? Says לית מחשבה תפיסא ביה, this קו is still this קו קצר is still part of the ביה. Right.

In other places, you'll see that it says that א״ק is called the קו. Right. In various places in קבלה and חסידות, you'll see that when they refer to the קו, they're talking about א״ק. But that's the further extension. That's not this קו המדה, I don't think.

Okay, but sometimes that that's what it refers to. It's not the same thing. The קו המדה? What do you mean? I think when it says that the א״ק is קו, it's 'cause it's it's the the קו וחוט that goes into the into the, yeah Whatever, but the basic thing is that it's Not that קו המדה before א״ק. But still, nonetheless, it talks about Sometimes, when it says the קו, it talks about א״ק.

Then other places, it says that the קו goes to the end of אצילות. Right. Then other places, as a matter of fact, just recently, we said the whole השתלשלות of the קו וחוט.

Right. Means the קו וחוט goes all the way down to here. Right.

So, these are different ענינים in the קו. When it said the קו קצר means it's the actual עצם of the קו, means it says that it just comes out.

Right. And really it doesn't even it doesn't even reach to

to א״ק. It just comes out and immediately it's מתעגל into the היולי דטהירו, which is מחשבה קדומה. Right. And that's the קו. And that's the קו קצר. Right.

והנה מבואר במקום אחר שכשם שהנקודה בחינת היולי לגבי הקו, כך הקו בחינת היולי לגבי בחינת אורך ורוחב דשטח. A קו is like a היולי to a area, a plane. A plane. And in the same way that you make a line, basically,

by having a point travel between two other points,

in the same way, you make an area by having a line travel between two lines.

Right. והיות ידוע שהקו, אף גם שהוא בא בבחינת המשכה והתפשטות מלמעלה למטה,

אבל אין לו ענין פרטיות אופן ההמשכה כלל. That's why, in general, the actual ענין of the קו המדה is דווקא the קו קצר. And and Usually,

the קו המדה means the actual קו קצר, which measures everything else. Right. But in other places, I think you can see also that it would say I haven't seen it, but you could say that the מדידה it the מדידה is the is also the קו, the actual measurement.

And that's why it says that it goes down to the end of אצילות. That's its That's the measurement. Right. אינו ענין פרטיות אופן המשכה כלל, רק שמה שנמשך הוא ענין מעלה ומטה בלבד, שעל ידי זה נמצא בחינת מעלה ומטה, ממשפיע למקבל.

And over here, basically, he does he he he gives you a whole fantastic משל, but he only gives you the נקודה of it. The משל is like this: that in a teacher,

like we said before, in a teacher there's a whole origin- original אור אין סוף of of his whole knowledge. Then, Right. when he decides what he is going to teach, it all goes into a צמצום.

And he says, "What is he going to teach? Mathematics."

And to him, this one word, like for instance, if we would tell somebody the קו,

"I'm going to teach you the קו," so I know, when I say the קו, I already know the whole thing what I'm going to give over. Right. Right. But somebody who doesn't know the ענין yet, a student, a מקבל, it will mean nothing to him if you tell him צמצום or רשימו or something like that. Right. Or זעיר אנפין. Whereas the teacher has in this נקודה the whole entire thing.

Right. But then there's the thing of that in order to teach, he has to think who is he going to teach it to. Right. And if he's going to teach this thing to if he's going to teach mathematics to kindergarten kids, or if he's going to teach mathematics to high school kids, or he's going to teach mathematics to postgraduate mathematical students.

It's all mathematics, and it's all included in the נקודה, but then the קו will have to come out different. Right. Now, this is not the קו קצר. It's the קו between the משפיע and the מקבל, the actual measurement. That's also called the קו. Right. It's a קו. Right. It's a קו between two points: one point is the משפיע and the other point is the מקבל. Right.

But that's the length of the line. Means not only that that's what's called the length. Right. That's actually in chapter one. The אורך, that's what the אורך is. Right.

The אורך of בינה is the length of the explanation between the משפיע and the מקבל. Right. That's the קו. But that's not the קו קצר. The קו המדה means that there is no מקבל yet.

Right. It's just that they told him the that he's going to teach, like they hired him as a teacher. So, there is a היולי ability within himself to measure whoever it is. Right. And to measure all kinds of lines. Like later on he's going to explain that this is like a tape measure that when you when you go to, you know, when you're going to go A yardstick.

Like a yardstick, right. A tape measure that a a אומן uses. Right. So so, like, for instance, if I tell you, you know, "Let's measure your house."

Measuring Tape Analogy for קו המידה 8:45

So, you say, "Well, how am I going to measure it?" So, I said, "Well, here, I got a I got a measuring tape. It's 10 feet long, a 10-foot-long measuring tape." You say, "Wait a minute, my house is more than 10 feet long. How are you going to measure all the things, like the the length of the house?" I say, "Well, I want to measure everything. I want to measure the length of the house, and the length of the windows, and the height of the windows, and the the depth of the room, and the height of the room, and the yard.

We're going to measure everything, and then from this, we'll be able to make a blueprint of your house

and give a full description of your house." You say, "Wait a minute, you know, that 10 feet is not enough." You say, "Wait, no, it's enough. Even if I had one inch, it's enough." Right. "That's all you have to have. The minute you have As a matter of fact, the way that the scientists measure, you know, the the like the accurate measurements that they have now of a centimeter and stuff like that, Right.

is they measure it by the wavelength of of krypton. You know what krypton is? Krypton is a gas. Yeah, right. It's a gas that when you like it's like a neon. When you have a krypton lamp, it puts out a sort of a greenish type of light from it. Right. And it's called krypton gas. And it has a a specific wavelength. Krypton gas puts out a specific wave wavelength, but that wavelength is like a millionth of an inch or something like that.

Right. And yet, everything is measured by this thing that's a millionth of an inch. Right. Why? Because once you have any exact measurement,

so then you can measure all the measurements with it. Right. So that like, for instance, if you have a, like you said, a yardstick, with a yardstick you can measure the the distance from here to the moon.

Right. And the same thing, this is like the yardstick, the the קו המידה inside of the teacher to measure the distance between the משפיע and the מקבל. So he can measure Of any מקבל. Huh? Of any מקבל. Any מקבל. Yeah. It could be a מקבל that's just ממש the same like him, in which case all you need to give it over is a קו קצר,

or it can be like a little bit longer, like down to א"ק, or down to אצילות, or down to us to all the way to עשיה, or even all the way down to creatures that are almost like monkeys.

And you can measure any kind of line with it. Right. Not only that, the line, in other words, in in this קו of the teacher, it's a היולי for all the explanations. Right. Because the אורך of all the explanations comes from this קו. Right. Whatever explanation, in other words this can this is the קו that will measure the length, the אורך of בינה, from up to down.

Right. So therefore it contains all possible explanations within itself. Yeah, so since it it contains all the different possible explanations, not only all the different length of explanations, but all the different types of explanations, so it means that it also contains all the רוחב's.

Right. And with this line, you can measure also the רוחב. Right. Same thing like we said that with the with with the line, if I have a measuring stick, I can not only measure the length of your living room, I can measure the width of your living room, too. And the height. And tell you what the שטח is. You say, "Wait a minute, how can you get a שטח out of a line?

Deriving Area from a Line 12:46

The yardstick does not have square feet in it. It only has long feet in it." Right. And yet you can measure also the height, and you can get volumes out of it.

Right. So you can measure everything, including Yeah. Oh, yeah, no problem. You can measure, like, all the things that it said in chapter one, including the height.

Right. Meaning that since you can measure the height, and the height is included in this line, this line can go even higher than itself, Right. because the height is included in it. Right. So the line can go backwards.

You know, like you take a a measuring stick, you can measure not only, like, the the positive distance, you can measure the negative distance. Right. You know, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. You can measure, like, not like like from your one wall to the other wall, you can measure from the wall to the outside of the house. Right. What What's the What's the negative distance?

I mean, how far away are you from the house altogether? Right. So, and that's by just turning the line around to the other way.

Instead of measuring to the east, you can measure to the west. Right. So that means that this line can really measure all the way up to the עצמות. Right. And really it is a part of the עצמות. Not only that, in this line is included everything that's in the רשימו.

Right. That means that everything's included in the line, so he can explain anything. Means it's not just he can explain only from this thing down, but he can explain the original stuff, the whole אור אין סוף, Right. is included in this line. Not only that, he could really explain even higher than the אור אין סוף, like we said that there's even there's higher than the אור אין סוף.

And that's really what the explanation is about, the explanation

of בינה. Right. So This is through this thing that the line is only what is from up to down, that through this comes a מעלה מטה from משפיע to the מקבל, but in the original line, it's not that there's an actual מקבל, it's just that he knows that there is a מקבל.

Right. That means just that there is a up and a down. Right. Nothing more than that. You don't know which where the down is.

And therefore you also don't know where the up is.

The up doesn't start at the beginning of the line, the up starts before before the צמצום. Right. Because you don't know how far up you'd have to go into the into the actual original שכל in order to bring it down, because you don't know who you're who you're giving it to. Right.

So, it's just a matter that there is a up and there is a down, that's all it is. מה שאין כן בהיולי דנקודה, אין בו מעלה ומטה, ראש וסוף, like when you say mathematics.

Which mathematics? The calculus? No, it's just a point. There is no up and down, there's no beginning or end, there's no no no middle, כולו כאחד.

וזהו מה שמבואר בעץ חיים, דכל עיקר הארת הקו אינו רק להיות פעלת מעלה ומטה כמו שנתבאר. The whole thing of the קו is only to make up and down, there's the whole ענין of the קו. וכמשל אמת הבנין, like the measuring stick, שאינו בא בגדר שטח הבנין עצמו, לאורך ולרוחב, or even the even the length, you don't need a different length to measure two feet and a different length to measure 50 feet.

You use the same tape measure. רק שבו מודד כל מדידות האורך וכל מדידות הרוחב, והוא עצמו רק כמו קו הקצר, שכולל כל אופן המדידות שלאורך ולרוחב וכולי. And by the way, the reason that physical geometry is like that is because it comes out of this. Right. Included in the קו. These ענינים, that's why it came out that a physical קו is like that.

Physical Geometry Emerging from the קו 16:58

כך ציור הקו בבחינת היולי גם בבחינת שטח האותיות. Not only that, the קו is also a היולי for letters. Right. ועשייתן באורך ורוחב כמו בבחינת קו שבתוך אות ב'.

ב' is made of three lines. You have three lines, you have a ב'. If you can make a line, if somebody knows how to make a line, you can teach him how to make a ב'.

כמו שמבואר במקום אחר. So, this line includes all ideas in it, because it includes all the letters in it. And the letters can be put into all kinds of ideas. ולפי זה גם ראשית המשכת הקו מן הנקודה, הגם שהוא בבחינת התפשטות והמשכה, אבל הוא בבחינת המשכה היולית עדיין. It's not that it actually comes out at all.

Nothing happened. He just first he thought what he's going to teach: mathematics, and then he thought, "Well, I'm going to teach it to somebody." That's it. That's all it is, and that's the line.

לכלול כמה פרטי אופן המשכות, and this includes all kinds of different המשכות, because it's to any somebody. Right. לאורך ולרוחב. A big somebody, you'll you'll have a big רוחב that you can give him over.

A little somebody, you won't be able to give him such a big רוחב, but you'll have to give him you'll have to go through a much bigger אורך.

Right. במידה, ולזה נקרא קו המדה, and that's why it's called קו המדה. ועל זה מורה צורתו, שהוא קצר בעצם, means it just comes out, והולך ונמשך מן למעלה מן למעלה למטה בלבד. It just comes out and and that's it.

אבל הוא כולל המשכתו על כל פנים כל מה שיש בהעלם ההיולי דנקודה וכולי, but it includes in this that it's ממשיך everything that's that is hidden in the in the רשימו.

רק שבא באופן המשכה למטה, but it comes in a way of spreading downwards. והוא בא מכח אור העצמי הנעלם שבעצמות המשפיע שלפני הצמצום המועד בנקודה אחת, and really it comes from the same power that the light comes from the same power that the the צמצום comes. Right. רק שבא בדרך קו בלבד, except that it doesn't come in a way of of a full infinite light, but only in a way of a a קו קצר.

ולא כמו שהוא בעצמיות המשפיע שהוא בהרחבה בהרחבת הערך של העצמות, in other words it's going to come, the explanation is going to come according to the מקבל, Right. not according to how the משפיע understands it. אין המשפיע הרחבה, הרחבה כערך של עצמות ממש, it's according to himself. ובקו זה, הנה אור העצמות בא לפי ערך המקבלים בלבד, only according to the students.

But nonetheless, like for instance, this book that we're learning now, even though that book is according to us, but really it's coming from the original הרחבה של עצמות of the רבי. Right. Even when it's in a קו. אבל עם כל זה, הרי יש בו מעין ודוגמת אור העצמות הנעלם בהנקודה. It has ממש like the the actually the same thing like the אור העצמות which is in the רשימו, רק שבא בדרך המשכה למטה, only that it comes in a way of spreading downwards.

על כן בא בציור קו, כשבא בציור קו, that's why it comes, and we we call it like a line. והוא בחינת היולי לכל אור ושפע שמקבלים כו' וד''ל ומבין. And it's already in a way of a היולי for any kind of אור and שפע to any kind of מקבל, and this is enough to understand.

Right. So that was chapter 14. Very good. So what else is new? Nothing so big. We're on page 561,

the top line, which begins with the words ככה. ככה היא המדה ברוחניות, כל מה שהחטא הוא יותר קבוע ומושרש בטבע, כן יקשה יותר להשתחרר ממנו, אבל כשהוא משתחרר, אז הוא מתעלה בעילוי גדול מאד, וכל החשכות כולן מתהפכות לאור גדול, וזדונות נעשים כזכיות.

Spiritual Measure: Sin, Teshuva, and Merit 21:48

Such is the measure in spirituality, the more that the חטא is more קבוע, more fixed, and מושרש בטבע, rooted in nature, so it will be more difficult להשתחרר ממנו, to free oneself from it. But when he does free himself, אז הוא מתעלה בעילוי גדול מאד, then he is elevated with a very great elevation, וכל החשכות כולן מתהפכות לאור גדול, and all of the darknesses are transformed

into great light, וזדונות נעשים כזכיות, and intentional

sins become like merits. Now, this of course refers to the famous גמרא in מסכת יומא where the גמרא says גדולה תשובה, that תשובה is so great that זדונות נעשים לו כזכיות, intentional

sins are transformed into merits. And the question that everyone asks is, how is that possible? How can a bad deed become a good deed? If somebody stole, or somebody violated the שבת, or did any other עבירה, how does that action suddenly become a מצוה?

And what the author is explaining here is that it's not that the action itself retroactively

becomes good, but rather the energy, the force, the power that was in that חטא, when it is redirected through תשובה, that itself becomes the vehicle for great spiritual ascent.

Because a person who has struggled, a person who has fought against a sin that was מושרש בטבע, that was deeply rooted in his nature, that struggle required so much spiritual strength, so much spiritual force, that when he finally breaks free, כשהוא משתחרר, he has built up spiritual muscles that he never would have had otherwise.

And therefore, that very darkness, all of that חשכות, gets transformed

into אור גדול, into a great light.