Chapter 29 of Likkutei Amarim begins on folio 35b (page 70). As we noted before we began chapter 26, up to that point the Alter Rebbe had laid out the path that is asked of the beinoni. From chapter 26 onward he turns to the obstacles and the forces that interfere with a person's progress in avodas Hashem, and to how one copes with them and answers them. Chapters 26, 27 and 28 were devoted mainly to atzvus (sadness): where it comes from and how one deals with it, and we dwelt on that at length. In chapter 29, and again in chapter 30, we take up a different concept: timtum halev, the dulling of the heart. What is it, and how does one deal with this problem?
In fact the Alter Rebbe already mentioned this concept at the opening of chapter 26, when he wrote that one cannot defeat the yetzer "בעצלות וכבדות הנמשכות מעצבות וטמטום הלב" ("with laziness and heaviness, which stem from sadness and from a heart dulled like stone"). But in the chapters that followed he addressed mainly the first point, sadness, so one central problem remains to be dealt with: timtum halev.
And with this the Alter Rebbe opens the chapter: "אך עוד אחת" ("but there is still one more thing") - one more matter remains to be discussed, "צריך לשית עצות בנפשות הבינונים אשר לפעמים ועתים רבים יש להם טמטום הלב" ("one must seek counsel for the souls of beinonim, who at times, and often, experience timtum halev"). We must look for advice on how the beinoni can rid himself of this condition, or at least cope with it. And this is not a one-time occurrence: "ועתים רבים" ("and often") - it is something that recurs regularly.
What is timtum halev?
In chapter 17 we learned that the beinoni's "מוחו ברשותו" ("his mind is in his control"): anyone who has a brain in his head has his mind under his control, meaning he is able to contemplate the greatness of Hashem, and this contemplation will produce in him at the very least a hidden love. Timtum halev is a state in which, even though his mind is in his control and he is indeed contemplating matters that ought to arouse him, the heart remains sealed and is not stirred to any feeling at all, not even on the level of a hidden love.
A complete blockage forms between the mind and the heart: the narrow passage of the throat that separates them, which is the aspect of Mitzrayim (narrowness), and the heart becomes like a stone, in the language of the verse, "And I will remove the heart of stone." A heart of flesh is soft, and when you touch it something changes in it; with a stone nothing happens at all. For this reason the beinoni cannot open his heart in any way whatsoever "לעבודה שבלב זו תפלה" ("to the service of the heart, which is prayer").
The two disruptions caused by timtum halev:
In the realm of "do good" - in prayer: Every single mitzvah calls for feeling, yet the feeling is an addition to the mitzvah, since the deed is the essence: even if a person had no feeling while performing it, nothing is missing in the substance of the mitzvah itself. Certainly its soul, its vitality and its inner dimension are missing, but the mitzvah exists. Prayer is different. Every day in Krias Shema we say "and to serve Him with all your heart," and the Sages expounded: which is the service of the heart? This is prayer. The whole point of prayer is the heart, and therefore one who merely lets the words out of his mouth with no feeling at all is lacking in the very substance of the prayer. With other mitzvos one can say "the heart is drawn after the deeds," and the main thing is that he do it and matters will work themselves out; but in prayer, if the heart is missing, everything is missing.
In the realm of "turn from evil" - holiness in what is permitted: In outright prohibitions the beinoni does not stumble, for were he to stumble he would not be a beinoni, and besides, his kabbolas ol malchus shomayim (his acceptance of the yoke of Heaven) is strong enough that he will not transgress even with no feeling whatsoever. But when we come to what is permitted, as we mentioned in chapter 27, there is the directive "sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you" - to be holy, that is, to be separate. For that a certain warmth is needed, a caring, an inner desire to rise higher, and an intellectual grasp that this is a good thing is not enough: when there is no feeling for the matter, the matter will not get done. In the Alter Rebbe's words, at times "לא יוכל להלחם עם היצר לקדש את עצמו במותר לו מפני כבדות שבלבו" ("he cannot do battle with the yetzer to sanctify himself in what is permitted to him, because of the heaviness in his heart").
This heaviness is a result of timtum halev, as the Alter Rebbe noted in chapter 26, that the heaviness stems from the dulling of the heart. So the interference operates on both fronts at once: in "do good," in that his prayer is not really prayer, and in "turn from evil," in that he fails to hold back from the things about which it is said, "sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you."
A point worth noting: by the natural order the heart is meant to be governed by the mind; here, though, an inner factor is at work that seals the heart and does not allow the contemplation to descend into it. And it is explained that this phenomenon is characteristic specifically of the beinoni. Someone who is not a beinoni, who slips from time to time in this or that, does not particularly suffer from this problem, because on various points his heart still awakens and he is still moved. But the beinoni, whose actual conduct is entirely in order and who looks from the outside like a tzaddik, can be undone by that very image: it breeds in him a certain ego that seals his heart. He tells himself: after all, I am fine, everyone can see that I am fine, so what am I missing if inside there is no warmth and no light? What goes on inside, nobody knows anyway, and it costs me nothing in my image. That is why counsel has to be given specifically "בנפשות הבינונים" ("for the souls of beinonim"), and in this chapter the Alter Rebbe teaches what a person must always keep in mind, so that his image will not inflate him and throw him off; and if he does not guard the boundaries that are set out here, it is precisely his standing as a beinoni that works against him.
[And one should not say that none of this concerns us. We have already learned in the previous chapters that the measure of the beinoni is the measure of every person, and that every person must be a beinoni, and it is on the basis of this assumption that the counsel below is given.]
The counsel of the holy Zohar:
The Alter Rebbe says: "וזאת היא עצה היעוצה בזהר הקדוש" ("and this is the counsel given in the holy Zohar"). He is about to quote a passage from the Zohar and explain it in a few lines. It is worth prefacing that the passage in the Zohar is not speaking specifically about beinonim, but even about wicked people, whereas the Alter Rebbe is speaking about beinonim. Once we have the quotation and its explanation before us, we will be able to notice the differences between the language of the Zohar and his own words.
The language of the Zohar: "דאמר רב מתיבתא בגן עדן" ("as the head of the academy in Gan Eden said") - the rosh yeshiva of Gan Eden, who sits with the souls and gives them guidance before their descent into this world, so that they should know what problems await them in the world and which path to take.
And before the quotation itself one more point must be prefaced. The verse says, "for man is the tree of the field," and therefore whoever wishes to know how to deal with the problems in a human being can learn it from a tree. This is all the more so according to what is explained (and this is not the place to elaborate), that "for man is the tree of the field" refers primarily to the emotional side of a person: it is the heart that resembles a tree, and that is an explanation in its own right.
To sum up: In this section we learned that after chapters 26 to 28 dealt with sadness, the Alter Rebbe opens chapter 29 with "עוד אחת" ("one more thing") - the remaining problem of timtum halev, which he had already mentioned in chapter 26. Timtum halev is the sealing of the heart even though the beinoni's mind is in his control: a blockage between mind and heart, the aspect of a "heart of stone." This sealing damages two areas: "do good," in prayer, whose entire essence is the service of the heart, and "turn from evil," in "sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you," which demands warmth and caring and which the heaviness of the heart prevents. We saw that the phenomenon is characteristic specifically of the beinoni, whose outward image is liable to seal his heart, and we began the counsel given in the holy Zohar in the name of the head of the academy in Gan Eden, built on the verse "for man is the tree of the field."
In the next section we will learn the language of the Zohar itself, the parable of the tree, together with the Alter Rebbe's explanation of it and its application in the avodah of the beinoni.