We left off in the middle of chapter 29, on folio 36b (page 72), at the end of the first third of the page, just after the square brackets, at the words "ובפרט כשיזכור" ("and especially when he will recall"). Let's begin with a short review of what we have learned from the start of the chapter until this point, and from there we will continue.
A review of what we learned at the beginning of the chapter:
In this chapter we began learning about the beinoni whose problem is "טמטום הלב" (timtum halev, a dulled, blocked heart): his heart does not become aroused even on those occasions when, by the nature of a human being, it should have become aroused. When a person contemplates matters that are meant to awaken love of Hashem, it stands to reason that his heart should be stirred, that something inside him should move. Here, instead, there is a blockage in the heart: the heart does not budge and does not awaken.
Because of this, the Zohar's advice was brought: one must "crush" (bittush). It is like a log that the fire cannot catch hold of, where the remedy is to pound it and break it into small pieces, and then the fire takes hold. The same is true in the nimshal: when a person finds himself in a state where his heart does not awaken, apparently a bittush is called for here, and this chapter teaches how the bittush is done.
The point we learned up to the place where we stopped is that a Jew must contemplate the fact that his essence, his mahus, is the nefesh habahamis, the animal soul. Only by tzaddikim is the essence the nefesh ha'elokis, the G-dly soul; but by the beinoni under discussion, his essence is the nefesh habahamis. We showed this precisely from the words a Jew says every morning: "נשמה שנתת בי" ("the soul You placed within me"). The "within me" is not the neshamah. The neshamah is pure, and that pure neshamah was placed "within me", and that "me" is the nefesh habahamis. That is the person's essence, and there is no contradiction in this at all.
And in what does the lowliness of the nefesh habahamis express itself? In the fact that a person is capable, even if he has never sinned in his life, of having cravings for forbidden things arise in him theoretically, even when he has no desire for them whatsoever and would never dream of carrying them out. The very fact that such a thing could stir in him at all testifies to the lowliness of his soul. And this contemplation itself, that a person holds up a mirror to himself and gives himself this honest assessment, that he is not swept away by his own thoughts as though he were who knows who, but rather tells himself: this is my essence, an animal essence of this sort, this itself is a bittush. It scrapes at him a bit and helps further to open the heart and arouse it.
More serious cases:
Until now we were speaking even about a person who has never sinned, for whom the very capacity to sin already exposes his problem. As the Alter Rebbe mentioned, even creeping things and crawling creatures are incapable of transgressing the will of the Creator, whereas a human being is capable of it, and that is his deficiency. As it says in Tehillim regarding Adam HaRishon, "אחור וקדם צרתני" ("You formed me back and front"): he is "back", behind everyone, in that he is worse than they are in his ability to sin.
Here the Alter Rebbe adds: "ובפרט כשיזכור טומאת נפשו בחטאת נעורים" ("and especially when he will recall the impurity of his soul through the sins of his youth"). Especially when a person knows himself and is aware that he did in fact stumble in this sin or that one, for then his soul is certainly, certainly in a lowly state, and he must reflect on the fact that he is required to do teshuvah also for the sins he actually committed. This is an additional form of bittush, and it contains details, as we will see in his own words.
At first glance one could ask: even though the sins were committed in the past, he has already done teshuvah for them. After all, we are speaking about a beinoni, who is right now in a spiritual state in which those sins are utterly rejected and dismissed by him, to the point that the Tanya defines him as someone in a state of "he has never transgressed and never will transgress", as we discussed.
"And there it is above time":
About this the Alter Rebbe says: "זה הפגם שעשה בעליונים" ("this blemish that he caused in the upper worlds"). At the moment a person sinned, a blemish was immediately created in all the upper worlds, for it says "He placed the world in their heart": a Jew has an effect on the entire order of hishtalshelus, for better and for worse, and when he sins he causes a blemish in all the upper worlds.
"ושם הוא למעלה מהזמן" ("and there it is above time"): in the upper worlds there is no dimension of time, and one cannot say there that he sinned yesterday or the day before, twenty years ago or fifty years ago. Rather, "וכאילו פגם ונטמא היום ח"ו ממש" ("and it is as though he blemished and defiled himself, G-d forbid, literally today"): as if the blemish was not made fifty years ago, but this very day.
The Alter Rebbe himself raises the question: "ואף שכבר עשה תשובה נכונה" ("and even though he has already done proper teshuvah"). If he has already done proper teshuvah, what room is there to say that a blemish he caused so many years ago is as though it were caused today, and that he must relate to it as though the sin occurred at this very moment? And the answer: "הרי עיקר התשובה בלב, והלב יש בו בחינות ומדרגות רבות, והכל לפי מה שהוא אדם ולפי הזמן והמקום כידוע ליודעים" ("the essence of teshuvah is in the heart, and the heart contains many levels and gradations, and everything is according to the person's own standing and according to the time and the place, as is known to those who know").
An explanation of this:
When a person sins, the blemish is caused, as with every single sin, in the upper worlds and throughout the entire order of hishtalshelus, so that there is a blemish standing against him. But not in every person are all the worlds and all the levels, up to the very highest, revealed, in such a way that he would feel that particular blemish and therefore bear the obligation of repairing it. It may well be that at the moment he is in a simple, low and coarse state, and so what is revealed in him is only a low part of the soul and only low levels.
Therefore, when he does teshuvah, he has indeed repaired and cleansed the blemish completely, but on the level to which he belongs. On that plane, if he looks at the sin he committed, it has been forgiven and erased and is as though it never was. But what about the blemish on a higher level, a higher rung? That has still not been repaired, and for a simple reason: at that time the person had no connection to that level at all, and therefore there was no claim against him there.
But ten years later, when he rises, becomes more refined and more sanctified, and belongs now to things he had no connection to before, since he is in a better state, in this better state of his he must think again about that very thing he did back then. And since he has gone up a floor, on this new floor there are still debts weighing on him that he must pay, blemishes he has not yet repaired.
And how is a person to know that this is so? The beinoni himself sees that he has a problem; about that there is no argument. He sees that his soul is in a state of timtum halev, that something is not moving. To this we say to him: the reason something is not moving is that in today's situation something is blocked. And if two years ago, or ten years ago, he felt that everything was fine, that is because back then he was on a level where what he had was enough for him.
This, then, is the intent of the Tanya's words that the heart has "many levels and gradations": it does not mean that the person does teshuvah a second time for the very same sin, but rather that on this level he never did teshuvah at all. The teshuvah he did, and which was accepted, was on a lower level; on his present level there has not yet been any teshuvah. And as long as he did not belong to this level, nothing was being asked of him and the matter did not disturb him; now that he does belong to it, it does disturb him. And since he now sees the blockage, sees that a bittush is needed and sees that something is not moving, he knows that the issue belongs to this level. He should therefore go back and recall that sin and say to himself: I once did such and such and it was not right. From here it follows that on his present level he must do teshuvah anew for that sin, since for this level there has not yet been teshuvah.
"And according to the time and the place": olam, shanah, nefesh:
The Sefer Yetzirah teaches that creation divides into three, whose initials spell ashan:
Olam (world): place.
Shanah (year): time.
Nefesh (soul): the person.
And here we are dealing with the aspect of nefesh: as far as his soul is concerned, yesterday he was on one level and then the matter was fine, and now his soul stands on a higher level.
From this emerges what looks like an absurdity: because he has timtum halev, he assumes he is on a lower level. And we tell him the opposite: the reason he has timtum halev now is that he is already on a higher level than he was yesterday, and that is precisely why a fresh repair is now demanded of him. Since he has already reached a greater sensitivity and awareness, he must now repair anew what yesterday was perfectly in order. And if he does not do so, it is certainly not good, for he will be lacking what he is obligated to do in his present state.
To summarize: in this section we learned the continuation of the methods of bittush in chapter 29. After the contemplation of the lowliness of the nefesh habahamis, which the very capacity to sin testifies to, the Alter Rebbe adds "ובפרט כשיזכור טומאת נפשו בחטאת נעורים" ("and especially when he will recall the impurity of his soul through the sins of his youth"), for the blemish he caused is in the upper worlds, and there it is above time, and it is as though he blemished and defiled himself literally today. And even though he has already done proper teshuvah, the essence of teshuvah is in the heart, and the heart contains many levels and gradations: the teshuvah that was accepted was on his level back then, while on his present, higher level there has not yet been any teshuvah, and the timtum halev he feels now is itself the proof that a fresh repair is being asked of him.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's own words in chapter 29, and with the further methods of bittush that he offers for arousing the heart.