In the previous section we learned that Torah and mitzvos performed as «mitzvas anashim melumadah», by rote, out of sheer habit, do not ascend on high. Two questions need clarifying: what does it mean that they do not ascend, and why don't they? Not because some ulterior motive was involved, there was no motive here at all, but because the learning was dry and static. Since there was no vitality in it whatsoever, there is simply nothing there to be lifted up.
The Alter Rebbe explains: «כי לשמה ממש אי אפשר בלא התעוררות דחילו ורחימו הטבעיים על כל פנים, להוציאן מהסתר הלב אל הגילוי במוח ותעלומות לבו על כל פנים», «for truly lishmah is impossible without at least arousing the natural fear and love, bringing them out of their concealment in the heart into revelation in the mind and in the hidden recesses of the heart.» For Torah study to be genuinely lishmah, for its own sake, as it ought to be, it is impossible without arousing the natural love and fear that exist in every Jew. These do exist, but as long as they have not been awakened they remain hidden and inactive.
The arousal comes through thought and hisbonenus, contemplation: the moment a person stops and reflects, something already begins to work in him. He has to draw the hidden love out of the heart's concealment into revelation, because as long as it stays inward and hidden it is not enough. True, reaching a revealed emotion, an actual stirring felt in the heart, is already a level in itself. But at the very least to bring the matter down into the awareness of the mind and into the hidden recesses of the heart, that is within every person's reach. And when even that is absent, the thing does not ascend on high.
The Alter Rebbe continues: «כמו שאין אדם עושה דבר בשביל חבירו למלאת רצונו אלא אם כן אוהבו או ירא ממנו», «just as a person does not do something for his friend to fulfill his will unless he loves him or fears him.» When a person is asked to do something for someone else, he will not keep at it if he does not love him; immediately the calculations start: why should I be the one doing this, and what do I really owe him? But when he loves his friend, and he reflects on the things that bring that love to the surface, he is ready to do it again and again without limit, without calculating what he gains and what he will get in return. That is a healthy bond between friends, and that is how it ought to be in a family too, between husband and wife and between parents and children. Where there is no love and no fear, the doing does not last.
And just as this is true regarding one's friend, «כך אי אפשר לעשות לשמו יתברך באמת למלאת רצונו לבד, בלי זכרון והתעוררות אהבתו ויראתו כלל במוחו ומחשבתו ותעלומות לבו על כל פנים», «so too it is impossible to act truly for His Name's sake, solely to fulfill His will, without at least some remembrance and arousal of love and fear of Him in his mind and thought and in the hidden recesses of his heart.» Note the precision of the word «truly»: it is not possible for a person to act out of a genuine desire to fulfill Hashem's will without thinking of Him at all, neither in his mind nor in the hidden recesses of his heart. If his doing is genuine, then he is thinking about the Almighty.
And if he gave it no thought and no contemplation at all, then he did it as «mitzvas anashim melumadah», and his Torah and mitzvos performed in this static state do not ascend on high; they remain in the world of separation.
The Alter Rebbe then adds two lines: for something to be called avodah, service, fear of Heaven alone is not enough, and neither is love alone. «וגם אהבה לבדה אינה נקראת בשם עבודה בלי יראה שהיא מסותרת בלב כל ישראל», «and love alone is also not called by the name avodah without the fear that lies hidden in the heart of every Jew.» He does not elaborate here, he simply notes «כמו שכתוב לקמן», «as will be explained further on.»
The conclusion so far: a minimum of caring is enough to inject vitality into the act and lift it up, even if only a little. But when it is done with no vitality at all, as dry «mitzvas anashim melumadah», it goes nowhere. This is exactly the point we learned in the earlier chapters about action without kavanah: a body without a soul, and without a soul there is no ascent.
At the close of the chapter the Alter Rebbe goes on to discuss a case where there was vitality and feeling in the learning, except that the vitality ran in the opposite direction: out of an ulterior motive, out of self-interest, where his thought was given not to the Almighty but to honor, to money, to profit. This situation is even more problematic, because here his Torah and mitzvos did grow wings, only that these are wings that do not lift him up but drag him down. For the ulterior motive comes from the ego, from the world of the kelipos and not from the world of holiness.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «וכשעוסק שלא לשמה ממש, לשום איזו פנייה לכבוד עצמו, כגון להיות תלמיד חכם וכהאי גוונא», «and when he occupies himself truly not lishmah, for the sake of some motive of personal honor, such as to be a talmid chacham and the like.» A person sees in his surroundings that Torah scholars receive honor and preferential treatment, and so he too wants to learn, to exert himself and to invest, in order to become a talmid chacham and receive that honor.
His learning is not done out of thought about the Almighty but out of thought about his own honor. There is no love of Hashem here, only love of self: vitality and feeling, yes, but negative feeling. And the same holds when the motive is money or any other goal. Indeed, were it not for that motive he would not be learning at all, since his entire learning comes on account of it. This does not mean he should stop learning, as will be explained in a moment, but this is the picture: he is learning because of an ulterior motive.
«אזי אותה פניה שמצד קליפת נוגה מתלבשת בתורתו, והתורה היא בבחינת גלות בתוך הקליפה לפי שעה», «then that motive, which stems from kelipas nogah, clothes itself in his Torah, and the Torah is in a state of exile within the kelipah for the time being.» This is not one of the three impure kelipos but kelipas nogah; still, it is a kelipah, and it takes hold of the Torah he learned out of honor, money or self-interest. The Torah remains holy Torah, for Torah cannot be defiled, but it is now in exile, bound up in the interests of the kelipah, and it certainly does not ascend on high.
A person who sat and learned for a long stretch of his life out of such motives, and only now has arrived at this chapter and discovered that for his Torah to be elevated what is needed is love and fear of Hashem and not personal honor, what is he to do with all those hours, days and years? After all, thanks to that very learning he today knows the entire Shas, and the Torah cannot be taken away from him. The answer: clean it up. In the Alter Rebbe's words, the Torah remains in the exile of the kelipah «עד אשר יעשה תשובה», «until he does teshuvah.» Teshuvah uproots the feeling of the kelipah that wraps his Torah and immediately raises it upward; teshuvah «שמביאה רפואה לעולם», «which brings healing to the world,» heals his Torah as well, «שבשובו אל ה' גם תורתו שבה עמו», «for when he returns to Hashem, his Torah returns along with him.»
«ולכן אמרו רז"ל לעולם יעסוק וכו'» [a person should always occupy himself with Torah, even not lishmah] «שמתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה בודאי», «for out of doing so not lishmah he will certainly come to do so lishmah.» This statement appears in that same place in the Gemara, right after the reconciliation of the two verses we mentioned («to the heavens» and «above the heavens»: one speaks of lishmah and the other of not lishmah). True, right now he is learning out of an ulterior motive and thinking about his own honor, but in the end there is no doubt that a day will come when he will recognize the flaw in his approach, «שבודאי סופו לעשות תשובה», «for in the end he will certainly do teshuvah,» and the teshuvah will retroactively elevate all of his Torah, so that it turns out to have been good that he learned.
«בגלגול זה או בגלגול אחר», «in this incarnation or in another.» This is usually understood to mean another coming into the world. The Rebbe brings in Likkutei Sichos (volume 2) that this is not a necessary reading: «another gilgul» does not have to mean after a hundred and twenty years in a new body. Rather, the moment a person makes a change in his life here in this world, shifts his outlook and moves to a better state, that itself is called «another gilgul», even in this very same body.
In summary: in this section we learned why learning and doing without kavanah do not ascend on high. It is because one cannot learn truly lishmah without arousing the natural fear and love, at the very least in the mind and in the hidden recesses of the heart, just as a person does not act on behalf of his friend unless he loves him or fears him. Dry learning remains a body without a soul in the world of separation. And learning driven by a motive of personal honor or money: that motive, stemming from kelipas nogah, clothes itself in his Torah, and the Torah is held in exile within the kelipah until he does teshuvah, and when he returns to Hashem his Torah returns along with him. Therefore a person should occupy himself with Torah even not lishmah, for out of not lishmah he comes to lishmah, since in the end he will certainly do teshuvah, in this gilgul or in another.
Further on, the Alter Rebbe will explain the matter of the hidden fear that lies in the heart of every Jew, without which love alone is not called by the name avodah.