In the previous section we learned about a person who contemplates the greatness of Hashem and does not manage to arrive at a revealed emotion. In this section we will see what the Alter Rebbe adds about such a person: that even though he has not reached love in a revealed way, the inclination of the heart that he has reached is enough to give vitality to his deeds. We will also study the gloss in which the Alter Rebbe explains why there are people who are simply incapable of reaching a revealed emotion at all.
Picture a person who learns and contemplates the greatness of Hashem and His love, and does not manage to become emotionally stirred. His intellect tells him that there is substance here, that this is indeed how things ought to be and that it is right to keep Torah and mitzvos; but he does not feel the excitement the seforim describe, and he has not arrived at "ve'ahavta es Hashem Elokecha" (you shall love Hashem your G-d). Still, he is already drawn in a certain direction, and he says to himself: this is fitting and right to do. This inclination the Alter Rebbe calls a certain kind of emotion: it is not revealed and there is no active fanning of the flame in it, and nevertheless it suffices to give vitality to the deed. A person who performs the deed after arriving at the intellectual conclusion that this is fitting and right, his deed has vitality in it.
In the words of the Alter Rebbe: "דהיינו שהלב מבין ברוח חכמה ובינה שבמוחו גדולת אין סוף ברוך הוא" (that is, that the heart understands, with the spirit of chochmah and binah in his brain, the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof). Note the precise expression "the heart understands": since when does the heart understand? The heart feels! Rather, here the heart has become a partner in the world of the intellect. It already leans in a certain direction and says that this is how things ought to be, not with a strong emotion, but at the very least with an inclination.
And what does it understand? "דכולא קמיה כלא חשיב ממש" (that before Him all is literally considered as nothing), that the entire creation is as naught and nothingness in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He. This is an intellectual understanding that one can reach through an orderly process of hisbonenus (contemplation). And since that is so, "אשר על כן יאתה לו יתברך שתכלה אליו נפש כל חי לידבק ולהכלל באורו" (therefore it is fitting for Him, blessed be He, that the soul of every living thing should yearn to Him, to cleave to Him and be absorbed in His light), it is fitting and right that the whole of creation be nullified to Him, as in the words "every knee shall bend to You and every stature shall bow before You." And not only that, but "וגם נפשו ורוחו אשר בקרבו" (and also his nefesh and ruach which are within him). About himself, too, he says that this is fitting and right: to be in a state of yearning to Him with longing and desire. He understands that this is the approach and this is the direction, even though he has not succeeded in reaching the love itself. This conclusion, that it is fitting and right to conduct oneself this way, is the maximum threshold he reaches.
Why does he not reach beyond this? On that the Alter Rebbe explains in the gloss in parentheses that it does not stem from his not having contemplated enough, nor from his not having been given the right material to work with, but rather because his soul is of such a category that it is incapable of more than this: "והסיבה לזה היא מפני היות המוחין שלו ונפש רוח נשמה שלו" (and the reason for this is that his mochin and his nefesh, ruach and neshamah are), that is, of this Jew who does not manage to arouse a revealed emotion, "מבחינת עיבור והעלם תוך התבונה ולא מבחי' לידה והתגלות כידוע לי"ח" (of the category of gestation and concealment within tevunah, and not of the category of birth and revelation, as is known to those familiar with the esoteric wisdom).
As we learned in chapter 3, the ten soul powers in a person derive, through hishtalshelus (the chainlike descent), from the ten supernal sefiros, and every soul that descends to this world passes through them. Now, just as in physical terms there is an infant who has already emerged into the air of the world and there is a fetus still in its mother's womb, and just as in emotion there is a revealed feeling and there is a feeling that remains like a fetus in concealment, so too in the supernal sefiros: there are sefiros that have emerged into revelation, and there are those still in concealment, as it were within the mochin, within chochmah, binah and daas.
Souls whose source is revealed, drawn from the middos as they are in a state of revelation, when they contemplate the greatness of Hashem they will succeed in reaching a revealed emotion as well. But souls that were emanated and came from the middos as they still are in concealment and hiddenness will not reach a revealed emotion. They are not to be blamed for this: this is how they were created, and that is simply a fact. And in itself this is a very lofty G-dly level, since its source is in a level that is in concealment.
[And nevertheless, this is no exemption from avodah: the hidden love was given to every Jew so that he should serve his Maker with it, and it is present within him, in his innermost self, for a person always loves himself. If he does not labor with his intellect to reach the love that exists and is hidden within him and bring it to expression as love of Hashem, this is a form of theft. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not give everyone the same measure, but each person is required to extract the full potential he was given.]
There are several levels in yiras Shamayim (fear of Heaven):
The basic level, at the level of the nefesh: a decision to accept upon oneself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, whether he understands or does not understand, whether he feels or does not feel, but he does it because he is in awe. This level everyone can and must reach.
A higher level: not only a decision born of kabbolas ol (accepting the yoke), but that he also understands and feels to some degree that this is the right thing to do.
A still higher level: that he is actually in awe, like the real sense of fear that rises in a person during the days of teshuvah.
Everyone is obligated to reach yiras Shamayim, but which level he will be capable of reaching depends on the givens he was granted. A parable: a car whose maximum acceleration is such and such cannot compete with a car whose acceleration is greater. Even if he presses the gas pedal all the way down, he will not reach the speed his friend reaches, and he is not even asked to reach it, only to reach the maximum he himself is capable of. That is what the Alter Rebbe is saying here: a person's soul was created from the outset with a certain maximum. There is one who is capable of reaching an active, revealed emotion, and there is one who is not.
It is worth emphasizing: the Alter Rebbe is not coming here to reassure a person about his reward. That is not the point at all, and reward is not the problem. The question is a different one: since emotion is seemingly essential in order to make the deed blossom and to elevate it, if I do not manage to reach emotion, how will my deed be elevated, and is something missing in my avodas Hashem? To this the Alter Rebbe answers: even if the most you have reached is the level where you say "it is fitting and right," that is a minimal sort of emotion, but it is your emotion, and it is the one that will start the engine and elevate your deeds, and it is entirely kosher.
And this much everyone reaches: anyone who hears the right ideas arrives deep down at an intellectual decision, combined with a bit of emotion: it is worth doing this, it is right to do this, I am convinced this is the truth. This statement, or this feeling, which the Alter Rebbe is speaking about here, is an excellent feeling, since beyond it not everyone can go. Once in a while a person may reach something more, but not consistently.
At the end of chapter 5 of Shir HaShirim it says, "the voice of my Beloved knocks." The Holy One, blessed be He, comes and knocks on everyone's door, but He remains outside. He knocks and says to the person: wake up, get up in the morning, it is time for davening, and He pleads, "open for Me, My sister, My beloved, My dove, My perfect one." And what is the answer He gets? "I have removed my tunic, how shall I put it on; I have washed my feet, how shall I soil them": I am lying down, how can I get up now and go out? But then it says, "my Beloved sent forth His hand from the opening": once He comes inside and is no longer knocking from outside, immediately "my insides stirred for Him" and "I arose to open for my Beloved." When the King draws a person from His side, there is no problem at all, and the person runs to Him.
So it was at mattan Torah, about which it is said, "He held the mountain over them like a barrel." It is like someone thrown into a lions' den: strictly speaking he has free choice whether to be afraid or not to be afraid, but in practice he is as good as compelled, since it is hard to find anyone who would stand there and not be afraid. And the same in the opposite direction: a person placed into a world of love, as at the standing at Har Sinai, when the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Israel His great love, did they have any option to say "we do not want"? Free choice there was, but a choice in which a person is incapable of saying "no."
But there is no great accomplishment in that, because if one relies only on an arousal that comes from Above, one can make the calf immediately afterward, and that is exactly what happened: right after mattan Torah they made the calf, and they had no difficulty whatsoever moving from one extreme to the other, because it had come from Above without any personal investment.
Not so with the avodah the Alter Rebbe speaks about in Tanya. Here the person invests, and granted, what he attains will be small and will not reach any great maximum. Who will reach the love of mattan Torah? And even when he reaches a bit of it, it will not be even the faintest edge of the "na'aseh venishma" of Har Sinai. And nevertheless it is worth far more, because the person himself decided and determined that this is right. The next time he faces a test he will think twice before he falls; maybe he will withstand it and maybe not, and if he falls it will hurt him, because seeds have already been planted in him of the recognition that it is fitting to be nullified to Him, blessed be He, and that his nefesh and ruach too are fit for this. This emotion is worth a fortune, and this is the vitality that a person can and must put into himself.
Let us finish with the last two lines on the page: "וגם נפשו ורוחו אשר בקרבו כך יאתה להן להיות כלות אליו בחשיקה וחפיצה לצאת מנרתקן" (and also his nefesh and ruach which are within him, so is it fitting for them to yearn to Him with longing and desire, to leave their sheath), the sheath being the body, "לדבקה בו" (to cleave to Him). The person says: I understand that this is fitting and this is how one ought to act, "רק שבעל כרחן חיות וצרורות בו כאלמנות חיות" (except that against their will they live and are bound in it, like living widows). I feel that my soul dwells in the body against its will, for in truth it should right now be in a state of kelos hanefesh, pouring itself out to Hashem and seeking nothing but G-dliness, except that it is tied and bound up in the body.
And what is meant by "living widows"? A living widow is a woman whose husband has disappeared and no one knows where he is, what is called an agunah. She cannot marry another, because she is still bound to her husband, and even though in practice she no longer has a husband and every sign in the world indicates to her that he is not among the living, and she wishes to marry, she cannot. So the Jew says to himself: my soul is like a living widow. It wants to connect to the Holy One, blessed be He, and it understands that the body is like a corpse and that the desires of this world are worth nothing, and nevertheless it is bound up in it, and the body will not let it rise in any way. He understands that the body is nothing but an obstacle, but at the very least he understands that this is the right thing to do, and that understanding itself is the basic emotion, and if a person reaches it, he has at least the vitality.
In summary: in this section we learned that even one who does not reach a revealed emotion, but only an understanding of the heart that it is fitting and right to be nullified to Him, blessed be He, that alone suffices to give vitality to his deeds. We saw in the gloss that the reason some people are incapable of revealed emotion lies in the source of their soul, in the mochin that are in the category of gestation and concealment, just as there are sefiros in revelation and sefiros in concealment. We outlined the levels of yiras Shamayim and the point that each person is required to extract only his own maximum, while at the same time being obligated to labor to reveal the hidden love within him. We also learned that an arousal that comes from Above ("my Beloved sent forth His hand from the opening") does not endure on its own, whereas one's own avodah, though it is slight, is of great value; and we concluded with the expression "like living widows," describing the soul bound up in the body against its will.
We stopped almost in the middle of the discussion, and in the next section we will continue, with Hashem's help, from where we left off.