Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
We are reading in the book Shamati, Article #93, Concerning Fins and Scales.
To understand what our sages said, “whatsoever hath scales is known to have fins. And whatsoever hath fins, it is not known if it has scales.”
This means that there are two conditions in Kashrut: fins and scales. If we have scales, that’s complete Kosher and it is certain that there are fins. But if we have fins it is still not certain that it has scales and it has to be checked. It’s like the degree of Hassadim (mercy) and the degree of Hochma (wisdom), the degree of bestowal and the degree of receiving in order to bestow. If he receives in order to bestow, then he certainly bestows in order to bestow as well. But if he bestows in order to bestow, it’s still not certain that he can also receive in order to bestow.
In the work, we should interpret the matter of Kaskeset (scales) as Kushiot (questions) that he has in the work of God. The Kushiot are vessels in which to receive answers, since the answers are not filled in the external mind, but specifically in the internal mind, which is the Upper Light, clothed within a person. And then the questions are settled in him.
What does the term “scales” mean? It means that a person corrects his vessels of reception in order to bestow. And then, these Kelim (vessels) of reception are filled with Lights. In the filling of the deficiencies, with what the deficiencies yearn for, this is called an answer, solution, obtaining the goal. There is no other.
That’s what we say in studying and attaining the wisdom of Kabbalah. A person can hear all the wisdom of the ages and he can be proficient in what is written in the books, but his level, his achievements, are measured only in correcting his desires and filling the desires. This is where he understands inwardly, according to the rule, “a man’s soul shall teach him.”
The answers are then called the Lights that clothe within the deficiencies, within the Kelim, and are not what he hears, but according to what he actually receives within his soul, within his deficiencies. That is what Baal HaSulam says, that the real excuses are in that the desires are filled with filling which they yearned for. The yearning is like a question and the filling of the desire with Lights is what we call the answer.
Hence, to the extent that questions increase, to that extent does the Upper Light dress within man. This is why the scales are among the signs of purity, since through it one can come to purify oneself, by not wanting to have questions.
This means that the Aviut (coarseness) that’s equipped with the Masach (screen) is called scales. It indicates that a person, even though he has many questions, he also has answers to them. And then it’s considered that he is at a degree of purity, when he purified his will to receive in order to bestow.
Hence, one does whatsoever one can to purify oneself, so he can be awarded the Upper Light.
And a fin, too, is among the signs of purity. Snapir (fin) implies Soneh-Peh-Ohr Elyon (hating-mouth-Upper Light). And since he has questions, it is certainly because he has hatred towards the Upper Light.
This means that he doesn’t want to receive it in order to receive, he rejects it. That situation of standing opposite the Light in rejection, in restricting the desire is called fin, where he still doesn’t work with filling the Upper Light but only with rejection. Vessels of bestowal are to bestow in order to bestow.
But one who has fins does not have to have questions.
He doesn’t have the Aviut yet, where he works already with vessels of reception, but works only with the vessels of bestowal, exists only with rejection.
One may hate the Upper Light not because one has questions, but because one is simply greedy...
And he still feels that he is in vessels of reception and cannot work with those Kelim de facto, in order to bestow. And hence, he restricts them and this is called hating the Light. He doesn’t hate the Light; he hates the pleasures that can clothe in it with the wrong intention, with the intention to receive. And that’s why he rejects the Light.
So, it turns out that a person who has a fin can still be and yet not be in the degree of purity, purity with respect to his Kelim which he purified. Perhaps he didn’t purify them, but is only in rejection, and guarding them.
…and says, “I will not go in any case.”
This is the sign of purify. That is, when he has a fish. A fish implies meat that is clothed in fins and scales. This means that the Upper Light shines in these two signs.
But one who works without any questions in the work, this is not a sign of purity, that one has no questions. This is so because one has no place in which to place the Upper Light, as one has no reason that will compel one to draw the Upper Light...
This means that he is still not using his Aviut, not using his desires to draw the Upper Light. He is still working with his vessels of reception, and is only rejecting the Upper Light. These two kinds of work are opposite one another. As we always say, a person who is in spiritual work, in every state or degree, finds himself in contradicting states.
It is as we have learned from the four phases of the Direct Light. Keter bestows, Hochma receives, that's Behina Aleph (first phase). Behina Aleph receives, Behina Bet (second phase) rejects, and then it bestows. Then, Behina Gimel (third phase) bestows by being ZAT de Bina, as though realizing Bina, while it is Behina Dalet (fourth phase) that receives fully. This is to say that every previous form is the opposite from the aspect that it begets and which is then opposite from the lower Behina that it begets.
The reason for it is because there is the nature of the Creator and the nature of the creature, which are two opposite forms. In the creature, on top of its will to receive, we always have an intensification of either its will to receive, which it receives and works with or the qualities of the Creator integrated with the Creator and works with itself on resembling the Creator. And so we have that pendulum called Matei ve Lo Matei (present and not present): what is it that is received now in the creature, vessels of reception, vessels of bestowal, what works within it and accordingly the Upper Light and how it appears. The Light is abstract, but it appears in the creature either as Light of Hassadim or Light of Hochma.
That’s why here too, Baal HaSulam says about these two forms of work. In bestowal in order to bestow, it rejects everything and doesn’t take into account any of its Aviut. This is called having only fins. But when he begins to work with his Aviut, this is the sign of scales. He has already reached the work with vessels of reception. With vessels of reception he can only receive according to these Kelim. Those Kelim don’t change, unless his intention is to bestow.
So these two forms are opposite and they should be both fins and scales in a pure fish. Fish, we know, are concerns (Dag in Hebrew is fish, Deagot, concerns). It has no hands; it cleans himself from the vessels of reception. There are many interpretations to fish. Fish means that he is in the sea of wisdom. Baal HaSulam gives many descriptions of this concept of fish in spirituality.
…as one has no reason that will compel one to draw the Upper Light, as even without the Upper Light one thinks that one is just fine.
He still has not discovered that he has to work in receiving in order to bestow. These two forms of work are so opposite each other such that when a person is still in reward and punishment, let us say, working on building his Galgalta ve Eynaim, the vessel of bestowal, he doesn’t take into account his vessels of reception only so as by rejecting them and atop of them to build the vessels of bestowal.
This is why when Pharaoh, King of Egypt, wanted to keep the people of Israel in his domain, he issued an order to not give Kash (straw), as it is written, “So the people were scattered… to gather stubble for straw” [so as not to give them questions, so as not to awaken Aviut in them]. Then they would never need the Creator to deliver them from the domain of the impurity into the Kedusha (Sanctity).
This means that this sign that a person hates the Upper Light is still not enough. This is only rejection. This rejection can actually be for other excuses and reasons. A person has still to scrutinize it on top of his different mistakes and the sins that he accumulates before he enters the degree of reward and punishment. But in any case, before he reaches the state where all of his deficiencies are filled, namely are given excuses and answers, of course he is not considered having purified himself and received the complete full sign of Kashrut.
Questions: What’s the difference between a fish and an animal?
There is animate, like a whale at sea and there is a fish. The whale is not considered to be a fish; it’s an animal. And there are many other animals at sea that live in the water. And the difference being whether they receive the air through the water as it appears to us, or are they breathing like people, like animals on earth. That’s the difference.
There are big differences in all the physical activity of many kinds, such as the way offspring are begotten. It all stems from the difference between a fish and an animal. Animals are certainly at a different degree of the will to receive, a much more evolved, thicker one that asks for itself much harder corrections compared to the fish. We see this in all kinds of signs.
Among fish there are also Kosher and not Kosher. Yet even the Kosher fish, it’s enough for you to kill them irrespective of the way. You catch fish and it dies on the hook and its fine. You don’t need to slaughter it in the right way with an expert slaughterer. You get a fish no matter where from, if it’s got signs, fine. It doesn’t matter how it died, whereas with animals this constitutes a very big problem. How do you make fish Kosher compared to the making of the meat of an animal Kosher? What is the difference, with respect to dairy food, between fish and meat of an animal?
That means that there is a huge difference and those degrees are different. Although in fish too, we are talking about vessels of reception and vessels of bestowal, but the level of use in that degree as compared to the animate degree is completely different.
Question: In the order of evolution of the still, vegetative, animate, does fish come first and then the animate?
The fish comes before the animals. Look, we say that in the whole of creation there is nothing more than the will to receive. And all the measures of the will to receive build for themselves forms that we know in corporeality and more over the forms in spirituality. So, if you take only those who are at sea and begin to divide them, then you have a million kinds. If you take birds, you have a million kinds. If you take animals, you have a million kinds, etc. Then there are insects. There is no measure and end to these things. There are those we know and what we don’t know and how much more are to be revealed to us.
If we are saying that each spiritual root has to reach its corporeal branch and at least once determine a form in it, then it’s hard to even imagine, which and how many more kinds of inanimate, vegetative and animate exist in reality which we don’t know, if every spiritual root has to reach a corporeal branch. There must be millions of kinds that we don’t know yet. It may be that we don’t see the differences between them. But the degrees that are even close to each other are different from one another.
So, essentially, there must be so many kinds at every level, of every kind in nature. I am not proficient in that, but it seems to me that that is what is known to botanists, biologists, and zoologists. They can’t distinguish the many million of kinds that there are. I think that many of them we either don’t discern or don’t know, or they used to exist and now they don’t. But throughout history, every spiritual root has to somehow express itself in the final corporeal branch.
And these degrees of speaking, animate, vegetative and still, actually indicate a pyramid, where a person who is at the height of the pyramid as the speaking, has the least kinds compared to the animate and the vegetative and the inanimate. This is why, in the passing of the Upper Light through him, to all of creation, and by being integrated from below upward with the whole of creation, he is actually connected with all of them.
And when a person corrects himself, all of those signs of all of those desires of the still, vegetative and animate are integrated in him. And when he corrects himself, he corrects them, even though in them, those desires in and of themselves, don’t need correction. They don’t need correction meaning, a person who uses whatever he uses in the desires of the still, vegetative and animate within him, by that, he corrects the still, vegetative and animate outside of him.
There is a question: what does it mean that the fish is Kosher or not Kosher? Is the fish itself Kosher or not Kosher, or is with respect to how person uses it? So, it’s with respect to a person’s use. Where is the fish in me that I have to correct? But when I use it, I seemingly correct it in how I use it.
When we talk about desires we are talking about Hitkalelut (integration, inclusion) of desires. But we don’t have to talk about this animal being Kosher and that animal being not Kosher. In and of itself there is no such thing, because for itself whether it were Kosher or not Kosher, does it correct itself or not? It’s all examined with respect to a person’s use of these discernments, in the integration of these desires which are inside of the person.
Question: You said every spiritual thing has to have a branch in the corporeal world.
It’s either written that way or I heard it, it’s not from me. Every spiritual root has to appear in the corporeal branch and realize itself here. This means that it has to appear here at least once in some form, and in that creation is completed from Ein Sof (Infinity) to this world. It is imperative that this happens. And once it’s happening once there already is a connection between the spiritual roots and the corporeal branch, and through the integration in man, there are corrections in it. But what are the spiritual roots? You might say where is Atik in this world? Where is Arich Anpin in this world?
We have to examine what the level of roots actually means, which reaches and is realized here in our world, in corporeality. And what does it mean that it’s here, in this world? It exists here at the level of forces, physical desires in a person or all kinds of materialization in bodies of still, vegetative and animate, in which forms? And what does it mean this world?
This world is desires that to begin with, in and of themselves, are not aimed at the Creator. They are detached from Him. What does it mean that they are detached? Those desires in themselves, in their appearance do not feel their spiritual roots. This is called corporeality: detachment from the root. Man, by coming of a greater degree of evolution from them, is the connector between the detached corporeality and the root. This is when he develops his point in the heart, which is a point from the root, in that he exists in corporeality at the level of desires that are detached from the Creator.
So, by using the corporeality in its necessary form; by being in those necessary desires, out of this level, if he, entirely, with what he can, connects himself to spirituality, to roots, by that he also sanctifies corporeality, the desires that are detached from the root. And they all connect to the root.
Which desires in a person can connect to the root and which cannot? During the work he begins to feel it. How in the end we are all connected to the root, to a point where he begins to feel his body with all its fluids and electrolytes and everything that happens there in the biological body, and in all the forms of life that we know in our universe at our physical level and not in the form of desires but in corporeal forms, he sees how all those things are also connected to the root in and of themselves. It means they don’t need correction because only in man is there a breaking and the recognition of evil and everything.
But that degree is called the existence of reality, the corporeal reality, for there are only two forms: the reality which does not exist and that which does. Physical reality is actually a degree that is integrated in Ein Sof. That which doesn’t require correction is not because of the lowness of it. It doesn’t need correction because it’s already corrected. How should the tree correct itself? Don’t say that it does not need to correct itself because it’s at the lowest degree. It’s not low; it’s in Dvekut (adherence).
What a person discovers is that the forms that are less than him, seemingly, in their evolution in this world, are not less than him. They are in a corporeal branch because the spiritual root expresses itself this way and it is all so that a person will use them to correct himself. While in them, there is no flaw. There is nothing to correct there.
So that’s why the fins and the scales and all those signs of kashrut in all the forms of food that we can eat and by which conditions we qualify them for use, all of that is with respect to man. It’s certainly not with respect to them, in and of themselves.
Question: Is there an opposite state where something in the physical world doesn’t have a spiritual root?
there is no thing that does not have a spiritual root. There is no grass below that doesn’t have any angel above that strikes it and tells it to grow. How can there be anything in this world without having come down from the Upper World, without something creating it?
Everything comes from Ein Sof, from the four phases of the direct Light, which contains the whole reality. In the way this reality is spread before our eyes we can identify it. So we divide it according to our Kelim. But outside of that, what about animals, fish that were, the insects that will be, and are now? It is I that watch them and I identify them. So, according to the way they integrate in me, can say if they should or should not be corrected and in what way, or not?
All of these forms are only with respect to a person. They are discerned, existing, and incorporated, and man brings them into the corrected form because he is integrated with them, because they are part of him. But more correctly, these are the forms which he feels and identifies in that way. And then these forms that he identifies, he has to build a special attitude toward them, a special use of them. It’s a problem to connect perception of reality to everything I identify in this world and from which desire in me I identify things, and from which desire I do not identify things, etc. It can’t be explained. It’s simply a different world.
Question: What’s the spiritual meaning of eating fish? During memorial days we eat fish.
I am not that proficient in customs. So, I don’t know what to tell you. I can only tell you that from the root there are many customs. The form of the fish is very respectable as though for its signs. So, that’s why there is a respect to this kind of food, seemingly, because this form has many signs of purity and corrections. These are according to the custom now.
Besides, the food that humanity is used to eating, from the beginning and for generations, fish was much more prevalent and much more available than meat, as in the time of Abraham. In those days they ate bread, fish, onion, garlic, and water, and that’s it. There was nothing else. The fish was eaten after drying, even. That’s how they always had food in the heat of Babylon, in those conditions. So, essentially, fish is a much older food than meat, and is much more widely used.