With good fortune we have arrived at chapter 30 of Likkutei Amarim. The chapter begins on page 48a, toward the bottom of the page. It is a direct continuation of chapter 29, offering a further answer to that very same problem, approached from a different angle.
The problem we discussed in chapter 29 was given a name by the Alter Rebbe: timtum halev, a "dulling of the heart." This is the state in which a person's heart is like a stone and simply will not open to the service of Hashem. Even during davening, when he tries to arouse himself, everything stays sealed shut. The cause, as with the central cause of every spiritual problem, is that the person's sense of self is running too strong: he thinks more of himself than he should and gives his ego more room than it deserves, and in doing so he gives room to the animal side of himself. And once the animal side has left its mark, it will not let the spiritual emotions function. To be aroused means to feel moved, to be drawn to something and to sense vitality in it; and when everything is like a stone, well, a stone is a dry thing, with no movement in it, no alacrity and no life.
In chapter 29 we learned at length, on the basis of the Zohar, that a log of wood which the fire does not penetrate, "mevatshin leih" (one crushes it); and the same must be done with the soul: when the divine warmth does not penetrate, one has to give the soul a bittush, a crushing blow. In the course of the chapter the Alter Rebbe laid out a whole series of ways in which a Jew should reflect, in the privacy of his own mind, each of these meditations, on its own or one after the other, bringing him to recognize his true place, to crush his sense of self, and thereby to open his heart. We concluded the chapter with the example of the spies: although they expressed a lack of faith in the sharpest possible terms, the Jewish people who had been swept along after them reversed their position instantly, from one extreme to the other, and not through arguments and proofs, but through a few words of powerful bittush that Moshe Rabbeinu said to them. The same will work for every single person.
Following on from this, chapter 30 comes with a slightly different approach, but with the same underlying idea: to find a way in which a person can bring about this bittush in himself.
עוד זאת ישים אל לבו לקיים מאמר רז"ל והוי שפל רוח בפני כל האדם - "This too he should take to heart: to fulfill the teaching of our Sages, 'Be lowly of spirit before every man.'"
Here is one more thing the intermediate Jew, the one who suffers from timtum halev, should take to heart: to fulfill what the Sages advised and instructed us in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos, that a person be lowly of spirit before every man.
The Alter Rebbe reads the wording of the Mishnah precisely, and not the way others tend to explain it. Some explain that the Sages' intent is humility, and some go further and say that the intent is an external manner of conduct: behaving politely and modestly, not making a big deal of oneself. To this the Alter Rebbe says: no. Had the Tanna meant only outward conduct toward another person, that one should not act superior to him and the like, he should have said "conduct yourself with lowliness of spirit before every man," and we would have understood that when you encounter a person, behave toward him with lowliness. But the Tanna does not say "conduct yourself"; he says והוי שפל רוח, "be lowly of spirit," be such a person. This means it is something real: he must actually feel this way, genuinely, and not in the sense of "put on an act" in order to make the other person feel better. The Sages do not advise a Jew to do something that isn't true, and once they said "be," it means he must truly feel it.
And to whom is this addressed? Not to a complete tzaddik, but to an intermediate Jew, one who learns and davens and keeps mitzvos and fears Heaven, with all his virtues, and to him they say: with all your virtues, be lowly of spirit.
What is the difference between humility and lowliness?
Of Moshe Rabbeinu the verse says that he was "more humble than any man on the face of the earth." Now, did Moshe Rabbeinu not know his own stature? Did he forget that he was the one who took the Jewish people out of Mitzrayim, who split the sea, who gave the Torah from Har Sinai and brought down the mon? How, then, could he consider himself more humble than every person? And a verse in the Torah is truth. Even if he knew clearly that it was all by divine power and ascribed none of it to himself, how could he feel himself lower than a person who had not been chosen at all for the role to which he had been chosen?
It is explained in chassidus that Moshe Rabbeinu said to himself, and genuinely felt, the following: yes, I was chosen, that is a fact beyond dispute, and I was given powers from Heaven; but had another person been given the talents, abilities and powers that I was given, he would have done a better job with them than I do. And if so, what do I have to be proud of? That I was given powers and I am carrying out the task? That other person, had he been given what I was given, would have done it better. That is how Moshe Rabbeinu felt, and that is why he was "exceedingly humble." And indeed, anyone who conducts himself with righteousness has humility in him, as we find with Dovid HaMelech as well.
Humility: even after all the humility, the conclusion is that I do have virtues and talents and I am succeeding; it is just that I hold that had these assets been given to someone else, he would have done more with them.
Lowliness: the Alter Rebbe uses the Mishnah's word shafal, "lowly," meaning that I arrive at the conclusion that I am genuinely lower than that other person. Not that I happen to have been chosen now for a higher position and I simply don't take pride in it, but והוי שפל רוח, be truly lowly in relation to him.
And in relation to whom? בפני כל האדם, "before every man," literally, with no qualification whatsoever, even before the lowest of the low. What is the lowest of the low? A person who treats every matter of Torah and mitzvos with levity, to the point that even all his equally frivolous friends say of him that he is the lightest among them, that is, that he is in the most degraded state of all. And you, a person who learns and davens and is careful with a light mitzvah as with a severe one, a talmid chacham, learned, with every virtue, the Mishnah tells you that in relation to him you must feel lowly of spirit, lower than he is. Is such a thing possible? And indeed there is no greater bittush than this, to tell a person: that fellow whom you consider yourself to be above, you are worse than he is.
How can one possibly arrive at such a conclusion?
The Alter Rebbe says that it will be understood על פי מאמר רז"ל אל תדין את חברך עד שתגיע למקומו, "on the basis of the teaching of our Sages, 'Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place.'" The Mishnah "Be lowly of spirit before every man" appears in Pirkei Avos chapter 4, and in order to understand it we need the help of a Mishnah from chapter 2: "Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place." The very act of defining him as the lowest of the low, of saying "I am like this and you are like that," is already judgment and evaluation, and in that moment you are not lowly of spirit at all. To this the Mishnah says: you are in no position to judge him and determine his standing until you have reached his place, until you consider what physical place he finds himself in and what spiritual and emotional place he finds himself in.
The three stages of the chapter:
Before we continue with the words of the chapter, it is worth stepping back to see its overall flow. The entire chapter, from beginning to end, is one single progression, and only at its conclusion will we understand the concept of being "lowly of spirit before every man." One is not convinced of such a thing all at once, and so the Alter Rebbe leads the student step by step, over the course of an entire chapter, until he is convinced that he truly is lower than that lowest of the low:
Stage one: do not feel above him. First the Alter Rebbe sets out to convince you why you should not feel superior to him and why you should not judge him.
Stage two: once you have been convinced that you are not above him, we arrive at a further position: you are on exactly the same level as he is, and you face precisely the same struggles he faces.
Stage three, which is the goal: the truth is that you are worse than he is, until by the end of the chapter a person is convinced that he is lower than anyone else.
So in stage one: do not feel above him, for "do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place," כי מקומו גורם לו לחטוא, "for his place causes him to sin." Why did this fellow earn the title of lowest of the low? Because he sins and does foolish things. And why does he sin? His place causes him to sin.
In passing, the Alter Rebbe is introducing here a defense of the lowest of the low, since one must find merit in every person, and the true meaning of the matter is that this fellow has greater soul-powers than the tzaddik, or than a person who was never thrown into such a struggle. For "the Holy One, blessed be He, does not come with unreasonable demands to His creatures": the Almighty does not load a Jew with a situation he cannot withstand. And if He has placed him in a particular test, then it is divine guidance from Above that brought him to work in a certain place and to move in a certain environment, that is the livelihood he found, and "from Hashem are a man's footsteps": that is where he ended up. It is a sign, then, that he has also been given high soul-capacities with which to withstand it.
In summary: in this section we learned that chapter 30 continues the bittush approach of chapter 29 as a remedy for timtum halev, from a different angle: fulfilling the Sages' teaching "Be lowly of spirit before every man." We were precise about the word "be," that the intent is not outward conduct but a genuine feeling, and we clarified the difference between humility, where the conclusion is that a person does have virtues and it is only that someone else would have made better use of them, and lowliness, in which a person feels himself genuinely lower even than the lowest of the low. We saw the flow of the chapter in three stages, and began with the first: "Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place," for his place causes him to sin, and from here also the defense of him, that the Almighty does not come with unreasonable demands to His creatures, and therefore that person was granted great soul-powers with which to withstand his struggle.
In the next section we will continue with the words of the chapter and take up the stages that follow, until we understand the conclusion: that a person should feel lowly of spirit before every man, literally.