Nefesh HaChayim, Reb Itzele's Long Annotation

So now we understand the general aspects of tzellem and d’moot in relation to spirituality. For when the Creator (blessed be His name) desired with His simple will to create the world that would reveal the likeness of all the details of the world as they are, He emanated one power that the philosophers call hyuli463Primordial, and we call it either “power” or “light” or “will”. That is, that in that way He desired that His Will should be revealed via two powers: one that is drawn upwards (for example), and the second that would be drawn downwards (for example). And so that they shouldn’t be separated, He brought into existence intermediaries between them, like the example of “fire” that ascends upwards, and “dust” that descends downwards. But here “air” is close to the nature of fire, to ascend upwards, and it can also descend downwards; and “water” that even though it is drawn to the “air”—as our rabbis stated (Bava Batra 75b): “the altitude of a cloud is three parsa”—even so, they leave their high place in the “air” and descend to a lower place, to the “dust”.