“I Don't Have to React: Body and Soul” p: 159

AyinBase with R' Paltiel Sunday 7 Iyar 5772 

Page 159 – top of the page (line starts, 'se-lemaylah....') For text, see link top right of the blog. Or for text right click here.

A garment for the soul/neshamah comes down with it and enables it to reveal it's richness. 


How does the garment/levush enable the soul to unify with the body and reveal its qualities?

The reason for this ability is that the levush/garment is rooted above the concept of revelation and faculties. It is sourced in the essential presence itself, not related to accomplishment or function in any way. Due to its essential reality and root it is able to bring out all the revelaitons of the soul and unify it with the body.

To elaborate on this union of body and soul and to understand the meaning of this union, it should be understood that the body and soul they are opposites.  


They are complete opposites. 


They have no cognizance of each other. The soul is spiritual to the extreme. And the body is fully physical. 


The making of man was done in a unique way. All other creations have souls and bodies that have greater proximity to each other. The plants have plant level souls. There is greater commonality.

The human's body is from the inanimate matter – 'He made man from the dust of the earth'. But the soul is from the human level and there is no correlation at all between inanimate and the human (medaber-speaking ) soul.  

Take the extremes. The medaber/human is the exact opposite of the inanimate. Animals also move and eat etc, but there is a categorical difference. All of the animals activities are reactive. The animal thinks in terms of 'fight or flee'. He knows things by 'touch'. By personal affect.  it investigates by asking, 'what does it mean to me?'


"Will this be my lunch or will I be his lunch?" asks the animal. It has know sense of knowing the truth unto itself.

This is like the difference between sight and touch. (18 min into the video)

Touch is like stumbling into something, bumping against objects and sensing, 'something obstructed my movement. It is all reactive'. Sight is completely different. It truly senses things as they really exist. 'Not because it affects me'. Only the human being knows reality at this level.  

The medaber/human cares not for things on the physical level. He cares what it is about, the meaning. This is dibur/speech. Perception, thought and cognition are a process. 


 Speech by contrast is rooted in choice and not generated by reaction.  A human speaks by intention. "I don't have to react. I express the reality. Not the personal effect".

Inanimate objects are so into themselves that they make just make one statement, 'I am here.'  

So the human being is made from extremes. 


 Avraham/Abraham asked is there an owner/manager to this palace? Why is he asking? Can't he just bask in the sun and enjoy the rivers. No. 


The human soul knows only the true meaningful elements and thus he's searching the world and asking,  '"what's going on here? And if nothing's going on then what is it?!'

The scientist's so called, 'intellectual honesty', says "your perception is just personal preference and only physicality is real!"  Really this is 'animal honesty'. It is the animal that gives primacy to the physical world. The life in the person says, "that cannot be! There is reality and truth that is above the physical". 

Humans see His activities, and the wonder of how the world is created by G-d, but they get distracted, and wonder, 'what's for lunch today'. 


 Unless we lose focus and perspective,  we see in a house and its furnishings, the owner. And in the trees, sky, sun and movement of the clouds, the Owner - the One who makes and manages the world.  

The human looks at things from their truth perspective and that's where speech comes out. 


When you are in thought, you are using mind, but thinking occurs while in touch with the life element itself. The thought relates to the source and the levels of mind are drawing from that reality. 


Speech is different.  It is an export. It takes it out beyond the source.

We don't see Him making the world. 


'He said and it came to be!'  This is how the Torah/Bible explains the process.  He commands and it appears! This is the level of dibur/speech. This is a jump. Not process. He said and it was! 


The ultimate of mind/sechel is expressed in dibur/speech more than in thought.

So how can man be the extreme of spirit (medaber) and at the same time physical? How can there be a connection between the soul and the body. The light and life of the soul comes in a manner of 'flesh life, and natural life'. The soul is imbued in the body insuch a way that it can relate to natural life.

This is a trick of the faculty that connects the two. The life the body gets from the soul seems natural. Yet we see soul elements. In his brain (physical) he has true sechel/mind (neshamah elements) and in his hands true talent (neshamah/soul revelation). There is a true union between the soul and the body. The soul alone could not think of making a painting or singing a song – it doesn't know  physicality, but in union with the body can create a painting!