The Holographic Nature of the Soul • Daily Chassidus

We are said to be similar to the Supernal because our mind is an image of the Supernal mind—not God Himself, but how He reveals His will, particularly through the Torah’s 613 commandments. Because we possess this "holographic" piece of the Divine mind, we can perform these commandments and resemble the Divine will. This concept is captured in the phrase Adameh l’Elyon ("I will resemble the Supernal"), interestingly attributed by the Prophet Jeremiah to Nebuchadnezzar.

This reflects a major Jewish principle: mimenu nikach la’avod et Hashem ("from him we will take to serve God"). Just as Moses told Pharaoh that Egypt would provide the sacrifices for God, Judaism teaches we must learn even from those who oppose God. Nebuchadnezzar, despite his ego and status as a ruler from the klipa (shell), contained a germ of truth in his statement. His declaration, "I will resemble the Supernal," hints at the potential for humans to align their bodies with the Divine structure.

This alignment works because the mind is the "seed" of the body. Just as a physical drop of semen contains the blueprint for the entire human, our souls originate from a "drop" of the Divine mind. This gives us the structure of the 613 commandments—248 positive (organs) and 365 prohibitive (sinews)—allowing our bodies to mirror the Divine form. This correlation was first explicitly stated by the Amora Rabbi Simlai in the Talmud (Makkos). Although ancient science lacked concepts like DNA or holography, Chassidic thought used the metaphor of the "circular" nature of the drop of semen to explain how the part contains the whole.

The term "Israel" (or Ish Yisraeli*) refers not to a citizen of the state, but to a spiritual stature higher than "Jacob." An "Israel" is one who connects to the essence of the Divine mind (*pnimiyut hamochin*), unlike angels, who originate from the external aspect. While Maimonides notes that angels have perfect knowledge within their limits, their knowledge is static and external. A human, originating from the inner essence, is "general" and inclusive, whereas an angel is "particular"—representing only one facet, like *chesed (kindness) or gevurah (might).

This difference explains why angels cannot procreate or couple (*zivug*). Coupling requires two "wholes" coming together to create a new "whole." Angels, like individual letters of an alphabet, cannot combine to create a new letter, only a word (a recombination). Humans, like cells in a plant that are pluripotent (capable of regenerating the whole organism), possess this generative power because they are rooted in the Infinite.

The Zohar explains that the phrase "It is not good for man to be alone" applies specifically to beings capable of this generative connection. Paradoxically, the feeling of loneliness stems from our wholeness and our potential to give birth to something new, driving us toward connection. This drive is absent in angels. The transcript concludes with imagery of the cemetery as a place where the lowest part of the soul (*nefesh*) remains connected, with the deceased described as "sitting and talking" to one another, further illustrating the enduring human need for connection and communication.