(ג) Chapter 3
However, there needs to be another type of revelation from Above, to enable us to awaken Hashem’s mercy from Above through our awakening of mercy from below. Since we are creations and are incomparably distant and removed from the ‘level’ of the Creator, the fact that we do something down here doesn’t necessarily mean that it will affect anything Above.
Even in the human realm, a human king (or president) is not that much different than one of his subjects. Yet, not necessarily because one of his subjects comes crying to the king help will the king actually care to help him or feel mercy for him, since the king can feel exalted and removed from the problems of this simple person. How much more so Hashem, the Creator, who is Infinitely Exalted above creation, doesn’t need to reciprocate to every feeling that a person has.
Yet, the fact that Hashem chooses to care about us and our feelings shows on Hashem’s ultimate greatness. Even though Hashem is Infinite and beyond all limitations of time and space and levels etc., He chooses to come down to our level and care about everything in our lives, including our thoughts and feelings, and He empowers us to awaken His Infinite mercy through our own limited efforts to awaken mercy on our Divine soul. This ability of Hashem to descend to our level and empower our finite service to reveal His Infinite Light comes from a very lofty level, higher than Atzilus, higher than the spiritual levels of Hishtalshelus.
This revelation (that empowers us to awaken His mercy) is from the source of the “Higher level of mercy” of Hashem (mentioned above), which is above and beyond the order of spiritual levels called Hishtalshelus, it is there (beyond Hishtalshelus) that exists the source and root of this type of mercy of Hashem, which is so exalted that it cannot be fathomed or grasped in any of the levels of Hishtalshelus at all.
Like we say (in the blessing of Yotzeir Or before the morning Shema): “G-d of the world, in Your abundant mercies have mercy on us,” we specifically request “Your mercies,” as is explained elsewhere. See above at the beginning of chapter two where this concept was explained.
This is the mystical meaning of “and Lavan woke up early in the morning”:
Pirush: The aspect of Lavan as it exists in holiness, which is the idea of the “Loven HaElyon-the Whiteness Above,” Lavan, which in Hebrew is ‘לָּבָּן-white,’ represents the ‘לובן העליון-The Whiteness of Above.’ The color white represents something simple and indivisible. Plain light that contains all colors is referred to as “white light.” The revelation of Hashem’s Infinite Light that transcends Atzilus is called “White” in the sense of being simple and indivisible, higher than the definitions and details of how this Light is expressed in the Sefiros of Atzilus.
This is a most essential expression of the Infinite Light of Hashem. The analogy for this is the color white, which is unlike all other colors and appearances, since these colors are created through a coloring agent, which is not the case with the appearance and color of white, which is the essential color of the thing, that was not changed through any coloring agent.
The Mittler Rebbe explains (see Ateres Rosh ch. 5, and Maamarei Admur HaEmtzai, Devarim II, p. 515): All colors except for white are created from some substance giving the object that color, however the matter of the substance does not have any specific color, instead it is “white.” This “colorless” color is called white, since it is the closest to the natural colorless state of matter. Therefore, the cleaning process in Hebrew is called “מלבן-to whiten,” since when all additional coloring agents are cleaned and removed from a substance then it returns to its original state of whiteness. This is the opposite of how other colors work, that the more they are cleaned the weaker their color becomes, unlike white which becomes stronger the more something is cleaned.
An example of this is hair, which is essentially colorless, and appears white, but there is a pigment in the hair giving it color, such as black or brown etc. However, when a person gets old this pigment fades out, leaving the hair white, its essential “colorless color.”
(The Mittler Rebbe asks: We see that some things have a natural color that is not white, like gold that is naturally gold colored, and the more it is cleaned it will only become more gold colored? He explains that even the “natural” color of a substance isn’t essential to its very being, rather this property of appearing as a certain color is a tangential property in comparison to the very being and matter of the substance. Whereas white represents the essential colorless state of the matter.)
This is also why plain light is referred to as “white light,” since white is the closest appearance to the essential and colorless of light itself that contains in potential all possible colors.
