Two Souls of a Person: Understanding the Battle Between Good and Evil Within Us
Have you ever struggled to do good deeds, even when you want to? Wonder why children cry over broken toys or adults chase material things that don’t bring happiness? Hasidic wisdom offers a compelling explanation for these everyday challenges.
Mirror Reflections: Two Souls Within Us
Inside you, two souls constantly compete for control. Think of them as opposite sides of a coin – completely different in their desires and goals.
Your Divine soul reaches upward toward spiritual connection with the Creator. It works through ten holy forces and expresses itself in three ways: through your pure thoughts, uplifting words, and good actions.
Your animal soul, however, comes from a different source – the “klipat nogah” (a shell hiding Divine light) – and lives in your blood. It also has ten forces, but these work as “crowns of impurity.” These include seven emotional drives from four negative elements and a three-part mind that creates these emotions.
Why Children Cry Over Toys
Watch how a child cries over a broken toy or celebrates tiny victories. This happens because their developing mind can’t yet grasp more meaningful things.
This shows a key principle: your emotions directly connect to your level of understanding. Someone with limited thinking will want and value limited things. They’ll get angry about small problems and brag about minor achievements.
Thoughts, Words, and Actions: The Three Expressions of Soul
When these ten negative forces drive your thinking, speaking, or acting, they turn your brain, mouth, and hands into vessels for impurity.
The book of Kohelet describes all worldly activities without spiritual purpose as “vanity and vexation of spirit.” The Zohar explains they “crush the spirit” – blocking Divine energy from reaching your soul.
Understanding Holiness and Its Opposite
Holiness (Kedusha) means the presence of the Divine within something. The Divine dwells only in what fully surrenders to it.
Angels live in this state constantly. Every Jew can reach this state, especially during moments of self-sacrifice. This explains why the sages teach that when one person studies Torah, Divine presence (Shechina) joins them, and when ten gather, the Shechina stays with them continuously.
How the “Dark Side” Gets Its Power
Everything that doesn’t surrender to the Creator but acts separately receives life energy indirectly – as if “from behind” – through many levels of filtering, reducing, and hiding.
This energy travels through countless stages of descent, growing weaker until it can enter something disconnected from God, giving it just enough life to exist.
This explains why we call our material world the world of “klipot” (shells) and “sitra achra” (reverse side of holiness). This also explains why this world contains so many hardships and evils, and why wrongdoers often thrive.
Two Types of Concealing Shells
These shells that hide Divine light fall into two categories:
- Klipat nogah — a shell mixing good and evil. Your animal soul comes from here. You can use things from this category for either good or evil purposes.
- Three completely impure klipot — containing no good whatsoever. The prophet Ezekiel saw these as “a stormy wind,” “a great cloud,” and “a consuming fire.” These create:
- Souls of idol-worshipping nations
- Souls of impure animals forbidden as food
- Life energy of forbidden plants
- Energy behind all actions, words, and thoughts that break the Torah’s 365 prohibitions
The Surprising Paradox of Our World
Though we call our world the world of “klipot,” it still contains ten holy sefirot. Even more amazingly, these ten sefirot of our world (Asiyah) contain the ten sefirot of the higher world (Yetzirah), which contain those of Beriah, which contain those of Atzilut, which contain the Infinite Light (Ein Sof).
This means Divine light fills our entire earth, but many layers hide it from our awareness. The world appears separate from its source, though it never truly is.
Your Key to Transformation
When you understand how your souls work and how your thoughts, speech, and actions express them, you unlock the key to spiritual growth. By directing your thoughts, words, and actions toward serving the Divine, you lift them from the realm of “klipot” into holiness.
Every moment offers you a choice – follow your animal soul’s pull or let your Divine soul shine through everything you think, say, and do.
This article is based on the sixth chapter of the book “Likutei Amarim — Tanya” by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, one of the greatest Hasidic thinkers and founder of the Chabad movement.
Afterword: This text has not been approved by any sage, Torah scholar, or rabbi and is merely a simplified adaptation of the sacred text for general understanding. For comprehension of true wisdom and a deeper understanding of the original text, you should refer to the sources.
