G-d, however, of Whom it is written: [4] "For My thoughts are not your thoughts,..." [so that it is utterly impossible for us to grasp His thought process], - His Thoughts and His Mind, which knows all created beings, encompasses each and every created thing, from its head [i.e., from its highest level] to its end [i.e., to its lowest level], and its inside and very core, all in actual reality, [and not as with the thought of mortal man.

The Alter Rebbe now gives an example of G-d's thought and knowledge encompassing a specific object.

For example, in the case of the orb of this earth, His knowledge encompasses the entire diameter of the globe of the earth, together with all that is in it and its deepest interior to its lowest depths, all in actual reality.

For this knowledge constitutes the vitality of the whole spherical thickness of the earth and its creation ex nihilo.

[The whole earth was originally created and continues to be created ex nihilo as a result of G-d's knowledge of it].

However, it would not have come into being as it is now, as a finite and limited thing, with an exceedingly minute degree of vitality sufficient for the categories of inorganic matter and vegetation, were it not for [the world being created through] the many powerful contractions which have condensed the light and vitality that is clothed in the orb of the earth, so as to animate it and sustain it in its finite and limited status and in the categories of inorganic and vegetable matter alone.

[Thus the minute degree of illumination which results from the tzimtzumim enables the earth to exist in a finite manner, and only in the finitude of inorganic and vegetable matter.

G-d's knowledge, however, as shall presently be explained, encircles the earth from above. For since His knowledge is infinite, while the world is finite, it is impossible for this knowledge to pervade the earth, even though this knowledge constitutes the earth's very creation and existence].

   

Notes:

4. (Back to text) Yeshayahu 55:8.