"Companion describes the closeness between marriage partners which follows the sister. brother relationship. This state of love is born anew in the heart through experiencing Light in meditation. With the mature service of meditation, the Jew fulfills the mitzvah of knowing his Creator, as the Torah says, "And you shall know this day and you shall return (draw down) to your heart that G-d is the Al-mighty in the heavens above and on the earth below, there is no other" (Deuteronomy 4:39.) Newborn love expresses the element of fire in the soul, while the natural and calm flow of instinctive love expresses the spiritual element of water.
In Hebrew the word "companion"–raiya–also means provider and sustainer. In the Zohar we find, "Israel sustains her Father in heaven" (Zohar 111:7). The effect of the Jew's loving performance of Torah and mitzvot on G-d is compared to the effect of food on the body. Food provides energy that binds the soul to the body in an integral unity. Without sustenance, there is spiritual and material disharmony leading to eventual separation of soul from the body.
Through Torah and mitzvot, Israel provides the "food" which binds together two G-dly lights which fill and surround the universe. Two forms of light radiate from G-d into the Creation. The first is that light which is immanent and perceptible in every level ("world") of Creation, and so in every Soul. This light radiates according to the capacity of each "vessel", each "world" or Soul, to hold it. The second is the light that is uniformly present in all worlds. This light is hidden because it is too great for finite vessels to contain. It therefore remains transcendent.
These two forms of light are called, respectively, "m'malei kol almin" and "sovev kol almin", literally "filling all worlds" and "surrounding all worlds". Both are infinitely removed from the Being of G-d. They are merely external revelations of G-d's existence for the sake of Creation.
Just as below the soul shines into the body, so above, in all created worlds, "sovev kol almin shines into m'malei kol almin–transcendence permeates immanence. The soul experiences this as the ultimate unity of Infinite and finite–"G-d is the Al-mighty".
The Jew's performance of Torah and mitzvot releases sparks of good from their state of imprisonment in lower material reality which then rise to their ultimate source at the level of sovev kol almin to arouse the transcendent light to descend and permeate the immanent light–m'malei kol almin. This is the "sustenance" that Israel provides to her Father in heaven. Just as the physical digestive process requires heat to function properly, so the heat of the Jew's newborn love for G-d effects the "digestion"–uniform integration–of G-d's transcendent light into His immanent light.
