In the previous section we learned that the soul descends into this world in order to refine the lower realms and to purify the body, and that is exactly why intention alone, without the deed, is missing the main thing. There is no question that thought too has its share, alongside speech and action, and that share is very important indeed. From here until the end of the chapter, and on into the chapter that follows, the Alter Rebbe will be dealing with the place of kavanah, the inner intention. There is no belittling of kavanah here, heaven forbid, and one should not conclude that it is superfluous or that there is no need for it.
But when it comes to the practical halachah, when we come to determine where a mitzvah has been fulfilled and where it has not, the essential thing is the actual fulfillment in speech and in deed. Without that, the mitzvah has not been fulfilled at all. Kavanah is important, but it is in the category of an addition, and it is not for the sake of kavanah that the soul came down here.
The Standing of Kavanah:
From this the other side of the coin emerges. If the essential thing is the deed and the speech, and the soul came down in order to refine the body, then what is the standing of kavanah in this whole matter? At first glance its place is marginal: kavanah or no kavanah, the deed is what counts. Yet from the expression we are about to see, it turns out that the place of kavanah is extremely high, and we will have to find a way to reconcile the two.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «אך אף על פי כן אמרו: תפילה או שאר ברכה בלא כוונה - הן כגוף בלא נשמה», «And yet, nevertheless, they said: a prayer or any other blessing without kavanah is like a body without a soul.»
What does «without kavanah» mean?
It does not mean without any kavanah whatsoever. It must be made clear that according to halachah, when a person stands in prayer he must have a general kavanah: he must know that right now he is standing and pleading before the Holy One, blessed be He. Even if he is not concentrating on every single word and does not understand the meaning of the words, at the very least he knows the general intention, that he is standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, speaking to Him and praying to Him. That much certainly has to be there. The kavanah being spoken of here is the additional layers of kavanah: the meaning of the words, their inner significance, and the like.
And what is the worth of a prayer that has none of those additional kavanos, nothing beyond the general matter and the saying of the words? About this the Alter Rebbe uses the expression «הן כגוף בלא נשמה», «they are like a body without a soul.» The deed and the speech are in the category of a body, and the kavanah is in the category of a soul; a deed or a word without kavanah is therefore like a body without a soul.
This expression seems to point in exactly the opposite direction from everything we said before. It emerges just how important and how powerful kavanah is, to the point that its stature is that of an actual soul. So what is going on here?
From here until the end of the chapter, and on into the next one, comes a general explanation that will put the whole matter in order. Certainly none of this contradicts the principle we have learned until now, that the essential thing is the refinement of the lower realms. But together with that, a person has to know that into this physical world, which is the lowest of worlds, he must bring the soul as well, the kavanah, the inner dimension, for that truly is in the category of a soul.
An Introduction: Body and Soul in the Four Categories of Creation:
The Alter Rebbe explains this clearly, with analogies and illustrations. So that the matter be fully clear, we will first lay out some general background, and afterwards study the words themselves. The starting point is the general division he used: body and soul.
The world as a whole is made up of four categories: inanimate, vegetative, animal and speaking. Although we divide them into four, the truth is that they can be sorted into just two groups: the inanimate and the vegetative belong to the group of body, while the animal and the speaking belong to the group of soul.
Inanimate: One sees in it nothing beyond its sheer existence. It occupies volume and has weight, its body and its matter simply exist and stand there, and there is in it no change and no growth. (Certainly the Holy One, blessed be He, creates it at every single moment out of nothing into something, and there is a divine life force within it. As explained in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, it even has an inner soul that enlivens it at every moment. But to our physical eyes we see in it nothing but a body.)
Vegetative: One might mistakenly think that the vegetative is an entirely different world, since the inanimate is body alone, with no motion and no growth, while in the plant we see a whole world of growing and developing. But it is explained in chassidus that the vegetative still belongs to the group of body, because what develops in it is the body. It is not like the inanimate, whose body stands there with no development at all; yet it has no soul: there is no world of emotion in a plant, no intellect, no anger and no sadness.
Animal: Here we move into an entirely different phase. The change between the vegetative and the animal is far more drastic and far greater than the change between the inanimate and the vegetative, for the inanimate and the vegetative are in one and the same group, the group of body, and the only difference between them is that one is static and the other grows. In the animal the body is secondary, and what it chiefly expresses is soul: an animal has a soul of joy, of sadness, of feeling. These, however, are fixed instincts.
Speaking: Within the world of soul, the human being expresses intellect as well. He does not express instincts as the animal does, but a governed soul, with intellect and with intention.
The world of soul is a world in which the created being expresses, from within itself, emotion, intellect, anger or joy, and this exists neither in the inanimate nor in the vegetative. We are not speaking about the influence of the surroundings, since the inanimate and the vegetative are both affected by their environment; the point is that of themselves they have no expression of soul at all, only an expression of body.
One last point, and it is an introduction to what we will see further on: despite all the differences we have noted between the four categories, the difference between them in the language of the Tanya is the degree to which the divine life force within them is in tzimtzum, constricted, or in expansion. In the inanimate the life force is constricted to the utmost; in the vegetative it is somewhat more expanded and revealed; in the animal more than that; and in the speaking being it is in a still greater expansion.
In summary: In this section we learned that as a matter of practical halachah the essential fulfillment of a mitzvah is in speech and in deed, and kavanah is in the category of an addition. Together with this, the Alter Rebbe states that a prayer or a blessing without kavanah is «like a body without a soul,» an expression that points to the lofty standing of kavanah. We clarified that «without kavanah» does not mean the absence of the general kavanah, which halachah requires, but the absence of the additional kavanos, the meaning of the words and their inner significance. As an introduction to the explanation, we set out the division between body and soul in the four categories of creation: inanimate and vegetative in the group of body, animal and speaking in the group of soul, and we saw that the difference between them lies in the measure of tzimtzum or expansion of the divine life force within them.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words and see how this division explains the relationship between deed and speech on the one hand and kavanah on the other: between the body and the soul of the fulfillment of mitzvos.