The sephira Binah is the Mother of souls, the letter associated with Binah is He, and the number associated with He is five. The five souls are:
Yechidah - uniqueness
Chiah - vitality
Neshamah - breath soul proper
Ruach - wind-spirit intellectual spirit
Nephesh - soul vital spirit/soul
The attribution to the four worlds is
Briah - Neshamah
Ruach - Yetzirah
Nephesh - Assiah
The precise difference between Yechidah, Chiah and Neshamah is
unclear; Kaplan gives the following attribution:
Yechidah - Kether
Chiah - Chokhmah
Binah - Neshamah
For practical purposes only the Nephesh, Ruach and Neshamah need
be considered, and the bulk of the discussion will refer to this
trio.
The Nephesh is the animal soul, the "soul of the body". Animals
possess this soul, and as human beings are animals, we share this
inheritance. The Nephesh is concerned with the needs of the body
- hunger, pleasure, rest, sexual satisfaction, social status etc.
In many cultures, if a person is asked where their soul resides,
they will not point to their head: they point to their heart. The
Secret of the Golden Flower provides a description of the animal
soul:
"This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not
eat for one day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it
hears something terrifying, it throbs; if it hears something
enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it becomes sad; if
it sees something beautiful it is dazzled."
Note the close identification with the body and its feelings.
Kabbalists believe the Nephesh comes into being when we are born,
and it decays with the body when we die. According to widespread
belief, women are more attuned to the body soul than men, and the
Nephesh is sometimes depicted as being feminine; whether this is
simply sexual stereotyping must remain an open question. The
Nephesh is associated with Assiah, the world of making, and this
emphasises its close link with the material world, and the body
itself.
The Ruach is the rational soul, and is associated with air or
wind (the word literally means air), and with the world of
Yetzirah. Traditionally, the Ruach was not seen as something that
one was given automatically; in the words of Scholem, it was a
"post-natal increment". It is the case that some people live
almost exclusively according to physical needs, and others spend
a great deal of time finding a rational basis for their
behaviour, but I do not think there is any evidence for a
discontinuity, and I think we must assume that the Ruach is
everywhere present in some measure. What can be said is that a
level of consciousness represented by Ruach exists in varying
degrees from person to person. The Ruach is based on the ability
to create abstract models of the world in conciousness and
reflect on them, so that while a hungry Nephesh might grab a
whole pizza and consume it without a moments thought, the Ruach
might reflect on the activity of pizza-eating in the context of
"Do unto others..." and conclude that sharing it might be a Good
Thing. We see here the basis for morality, the ability to make a
conscious choice between good and evil, and it is here that the
Ruach is elevated above the Nephesh in the eyes of traditional
Kabbalah. This ignores the possibility that the Ruach might well
knock the Nephesh over the head (making an impeccable ethical
case, well argued) and not only grab the whole of the pizza, but
attempt to corner the market in Mozarella.
If we ignore the questionable value of being able to reflect on
the morality of our decisions, we are still left with the ability
to reflect; we have the ability to reflect on ourselves, perhaps
even to reflect ourselves, and create a "self-image". The Nephesh
lacks this ability to reflect upon itself - I have never seen an
adult cat study itself in a mirror. Because the Ruach can reflect
upon itself, and create a self image, it can become an entity in
its own right, perhaps even dissociating itself from the body and
its needs, perhaps even producing someone who feels guilt at
indulging in the "sins of the flesh". We find the "spiritual"
person who cannot accept their physicality and lives in hope of
achieving a mythical dreamland. We have millions of people
reflecting upon themselves and concluding that they are "wrong"
in some way - the wrong shape, the wrong size, the wrong colour,
the wrong age, and other people trying to manipulate our language
to fix a problem that is unlikely ever to go away in a culture
hedged around with so many taboos - sex, death, danger, natural
religious expression, pain. It is unlikely that someone who
thinks they are the wrong size is going to ever feel good about
themselves as long as they view the body as a means to an end, a
vehicle, a carriage which conveys them through life, a fashion
accessory. There are strong taboos connected anything which
points too directly towards our physical and animal nature.
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