In the previous section we worked through the avodah of bittush, the "pounding" a person has to do within his own soul. The foundation of it all is this: connection to the Creator is not something standing off somewhere at a distance, it is literally a part of him. The same idea is reflected in the words we say every day in the Song at the Sea: "זה קלי ואנוהו אלוקי אבי וארוממנהו" ("This is my G-d and I will glorify Him, the G-d of my father and I will exalt Him"):
"זה קלי ואנוהו" - when a Jew connects to the Creator in such a way that he can say "זה קלי," this is my G-d, He is mine, then "ואנוהו" - a word made up of two words, "אני והוא," "I and He." He feels himself one with Him.
"אלוקי אבי וארוממנהו" - but when he does not feel that it is his own, only "the G-d of my father," a tradition handed down to him from his father and grandfather without his being personally connected to it, then "וארוממנהו" - the Creator stays "exalted" for him, lofty and distant, and he feels no connection to Him.
Chassidus comes to connect a person to the Creator in an inner way. And when he finds it hard to get there because of timtum halev, the dulling of the heart, the path to it is the avodah of bittush that we have been discussing.
Why bittush works without fail:
Why is a person guaranteed to succeed in breaking through and pounding away at the animal within him simply by illuminating his G-dly soul within himself? The Alter Rebbe answers: "והטעם - לפי שבאמת אין שום ממשות כלל בסטרא אחרא" ("the reason is that in truth there is no substance whatsoever to the sitra achra"). Although on the face of it we speak of two evenly matched forces, a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara, a nefesh ha'Elokis and a nefesh habahamis, as the verse puts it, "See, I have placed before you today life and good" and the opposite of them, the truth is that there are no evenly matched forces here at all. G-dliness is the only true reality, for the Holy One creates the world every single moment out of nothing, and it is simply impossible that something should stand in His way.
Rather, the Holy One fashioned a reality in the world in which those forces of impurity were given the ability to raise themselves up and to appear as though they possess great power. But that power is not real, and the moment a person awakens the G-dly truth within himself, it vanishes.
That is why "נמשלה לחושך שאין בו שום ממשות כלל, וממילא נדחה מפני האור" ("it is compared to darkness, which has no substance at all, and therefore is automatically dispelled before the light"). You do not drive out darkness with sticks, you drive it out with light: darkness has no substance of its own, and the instant you shine a light it is pushed aside on its own.
[We will not enter here into a discussion that is treated at length in various midrashim and in many maamarim of chassidus: how to relate to the concept of darkness. For we say "יוצר אור ובורא חושך" ("who forms light and creates darkness"), and that wording implies that darkness is a creation with a reality of its own; and if it has a reality of its own, it should not be nullified before light, since just as light is a reality, so too is darkness. Here, though, the wording is that the moment light arrives the darkness disappears and is nullified, which indicates that darkness is nothing but the absence of light. And even if we adopt the view that darkness is a reality and not merely an absence of light, it is clear that a state of absence of light is also called darkness, and it is that darkness we are dealing with here.]
The nefesh habahamis is nothing more than a problem of absence of light, not a true reality, for there is no true reality to anything that obstructs G-dliness.
"וככה הסטרא אחרא" ("and so it is with the sitra achra"):
"אף שיש בה חיות הרבה להחיות כל בעלי חיים הטמאים ונפשות אומות עכו"ם, וגם נפש הבהמית שבישראל, כנזכר לעיל" ("even though it contains a great deal of vitality, enough to enliven all the impure animals and the souls of the nations of the world, and also the animal soul of a Jew, as mentioned above") - the sitra achra possesses enormous energy. The impure animals number in the millions; the souls of the nations of the world number in the billions; and one need not even look that far, for in every single Jew there is a nefesh habahamis, as was explained already at the beginning of Tanya, and it draws its vitality from the forces of the sitra achra. How, then, can one say that this whole massive reality is nothing?
To this the Alter Rebbe responds: "מכל מקום הרי כל חיותה אינה מצד עצמה חס ושלום, אלא מצד הקדושה" ("nevertheless, all its vitality is not from itself, G-d forbid, but from holiness"). The sitra achra has no independent source. Holiness is the only source; the Holy One is one and His name is one, and He is the One giving life to all of creation, as the verse says, "for everything is from You, and from Your own hand we have given to You" - everything comes from Him, and there is no reality that does not come from Him.
It is only that the Holy One, as part of His order and His plan in creation, as was explained at length in the earlier chapters, in chapter 3 and in chapter 22, gave the forces of evil and impurity the ability to make themselves prominent. At their source everything is light, and they have no real existence as an obstruction. The whole obstruction exists only so that a person should be more careful and should draw out of himself a greater strength: like placing a dam in the flow of water, not in order to stop the flow but so that it should be stronger and so that greater benefit should be drawn from the energy.
And since the true reality of the kelipah and the sitra achra is holiness, except that it descended through hishtalshelus (the chain of worlds) and became an obstructing factor, therefore "ולכן היא בטלה לגמרי מפני הקדושה, כביטול החושך מפני האור הגשמי" ("therefore it is utterly nullified before holiness, like the nullification of darkness before physical light"). And we are not speaking of some world far removed from us: the animal within us, the tests we face, the temptations we wrestle with and the timtum halev that gets in our way, all of these look difficult and impossible to get past, and they are nothing. It is enough for a person to awaken the G-dly soul within himself in a genuine way, and he will see how all the obstructions vanish.
The permission granted to the sitra achra, and its purpose:
"רק שלגבי קדושת נפש האלוקית שבאדם נתן לה הקב"ה רשות ויכולת להגביה עצמה כנגדה" ("only that, in relation to the holiness of the G-dly soul in a person, the Holy One gave it permission and ability to raise itself up against it") - the Holy One gave the forces of evil the ability to rise up, but it is not a genuine rising of their own, nor is it a power that evil possesses in itself; it is an expression of the Creator's will. And it has one single purpose: "כדי שהאדם יתעורר להתגבר עליה" ("so that a person should be aroused to overcome it") - everything given to a person in the form of a yetzer hara is only so that deeper powers of the soul should be drawn out of him. And once he has succeeded in drawing out those powers, the obstruction has filled its role, and at that very moment it is nullified.
How do you identify the yetzer hara?
Sometimes the yetzer hara comes disguised as something good, and this has already been written about. But identifying it is very simple: if the thing is an obstruction to carrying out a practical mitzvah that is being asked of a person, then every argument and excuse that seems as though it is for his benefit is being planted there by the yetzer hara. The yetzer hara's entire purpose is to stop a person from actually doing what is being asked of him, and to that end it has no problem coming with all sorts of claims: "Sleep a little longer and you will have more strength," and the like. Anything that functions as an obstruction, that is the yetzer hara. And when a person awakens his G-dly soul he will see that it all disappears, for it came only in order to draw out of him deeper and stronger powers of the soul.
And how do you bring those forces low? "להשפילה על ידי שפלות ונמיכת רוחו, ונבזה בעיניו נמאס" ("to humble it through lowliness and a humbled spirit, and 'the despicable is contemptible in his eyes'") - this is the whole lengthy discussion we have learned in the chapter until now. A person has to bring bittush into himself on its various levels, and when he arouses this he will succeed in nullifying the obstruction.
"ובאתערותא דלתתא אתערותא דלעילא" ("and through an arousal from below comes an arousal from above") - who brought a person his yetzer hara and his obstruction? The Holy One. Therefore their removal depends on Him too: if a person generates an arousal from below, they will help him from above and remove all the obstructing factors. And this is "לקיים מה שכתוב 'משם אורידך נאום ה''" ("to fulfill what is written, 'from there I shall bring you down, says the L-rd'"). The verse (which appears in Yirmiyahu and also in Ovadiah, and has already been cited in Tanya several times) reads in full: "If you soar like an eagle... from there I shall bring you down, says the L-rd." If the forces of evil raise themselves up as though they have some ability of their own, "from there I shall bring you down, says the L-rd," "דהיינו שמסירה מממשלתה ויכולתה, ומסלק ממנה הכוח והרשות שניתן לה להגביה עצמה נגד אור קדושת נפש האלוקית" ("meaning that He removes it from its dominion and its power, and withdraws from it the strength and permission that were given to it to raise itself up against the light of the holiness of the G-dly soul"). All the yetzer hara's capacity to obstruct and to cause timtum halev was given to it by the Holy One, and once it has finished its job that capacity is taken away from it, "וממילא בטלה ונדחית כביטול החושך מפני אור הגשמי" ("and consequently it is nullified and dispelled like the nullification of darkness before physical light").
At this point it would seem that the Alter Rebbe has finished what he set out to say in the chapter: a person has timtum halev, and its remedy is the avodah of bittush in its various stages; and the reason bittush works is that the person is contending with something that is nothing at all, whose entire existence is only so that he should be aroused. And once he has been aroused and has done the bittush, there is no doubt whatsoever that he will succeed.
Now the Alter Rebbe concludes the chapter, and he begins by bringing a proof for all this from a story in the Torah. And it is not only a proof, it is something stronger: an example showing that in any situation a person may be in, and for any person whatsoever, bittush will work.
For one might have thought that the bittush we have been discussing only works for someone who still has a certain amount of caring in him. After all, one of the stages of bittush is a person saying to himself: "Why are you getting in the way of my connecting to the Creator? How evil and wicked and repulsive you are!" Words like these can help someone who has an inner caring about his situation, a person who says to himself, "Enough, I have had enough, I do not want to be this far from the truth." But what about a person who has no caring at all, who is so far gone that nothing interests him?
In summary: in this section we learned why bittush works without fail: "אין שום ממשות כלל בסטרא אחרא" ("there is no substance whatsoever to the sitra achra"), and therefore it is compared to darkness, which is dispelled on its own before light. Although the sitra achra contains a great deal of vitality, enough to enliven the impure animals, the souls of the nations of the world and the nefesh habahamis of a Jew, that vitality is not from itself but from holiness, and therefore it is utterly nullified before holiness. The Holy One gave it permission and ability to raise itself up for one reason alone: so that a person should be aroused to overcome it and to humble it through lowliness and a humbled spirit. And through an arousal from below comes an arousal from above: "from there I shall bring you down, says the L-rd," as He withdraws from it the strength and the permission, and consequently it is nullified and dispelled like the nullification of darkness before light.
In the next section we will take up the proof the Alter Rebbe brings from a story in the Torah, and the question of how the avodah of bittush can help even a person who has no caring in him at all.