In the last few lessons we have been dealing with the hidden love that lies in the heart of every Jew, and how to bring it out into revelation. Let us open with a brief review, returning to the last three lines of the previous page, daf 63a.
«ולהוציא אהבה זו המסותרת מההעלם וההסתר אל הגילוי, להיות בהתגלות לבו ומוחו - לא נפלאת ולא רחוקה היא, אלא קרוב הדבר מאד בפיך ובלבבך» - «And to bring this hidden love out of concealment into revelation, so that it be revealed in his heart and mind, is neither beyond reach nor far away; rather, the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart.» The love spoken of here is the second type of love that was explained: the love of a son for his father and mother, in which the son is ready to do anything for them.
The entire sefer Tanya is built on the verse «כי קרוב אליך הדבר מאוד», «for the matter is very near to you,» and so it is here as well: it is within reach of every single person to arrive at this awakening toward the Almighty, a feeling in which a person is ready to give over his very soul with no self-interest and no calculation of gain, to fulfill the will of the Creator, to learn Torah and keep mitzvos out of total devotion.
How does a person arrive at this?
«דהיינו להיות רגיל על לשונו וקולו לעורר כוונת לבו ומוחו» - «namely, to accustom his tongue and his voice to arousing the intent of his heart and mind.» Simply to speak about it, and to make it a constant habit on his tongue: that the Almighty is our Father, and that we give ourselves over to Him as a son to his father. As Chazal put it, the voice awakens the intent: speech arouses the kavanah of the heart and mind, and from there his thoughts too begin to turn to the subject, and this draws him closer to genuine hisbonenus, contemplation.
From here the Alter Rebbe continues: «להעמיק מחשבתו בחיי החיים אין סוף ברוך הוא, כי הוא אבינו ממש האמיתי ומקור חיינו, ולעורר אליו האהבה כאהבת הבן אל האב» - «to immerse his thought in the Life of life, the blessed Ein Sof, for He is literally our true Father and the Source of our life, and to arouse toward Him a love like the love of a son for a father.» This is the path to arriving at the matter.
There is, of course, a higher level, which is not what is being discussed here: a person who has already contemplated deeply and in whom the inner feeling is actually revealed, like a son toward his father, with real yearning. But even one who has not reached that, and for whom it is not revealed at all, should speak about it and accustom himself to speaking, and when his own ears hear the words coming out of his mouth, this will bring him closer to it. «וכשירגיל עצמו כן תמיד, הרי ההרגל נעשה טבע» - «and when he accustoms himself to this constantly, the habit becomes second nature.»
In the Tanya, and in Chassidus generally, there is a strong insistence that everything be true and internal: that what a person feels or thinks should genuinely be so, and not imagination or «as if.» And here a person is being told that even if right now he has no connection whatsoever to the level of feeling the Almighty as his Father, he should speak about it and say it, and that alone will already do its work.
The Alter Rebbe immediately raises the question: «ואף אם נדמה לו לכאורה שהוא כח דמיוני» - «and even if it seems to him that this is merely the power of imagination.» For a person will say: I begin to say and to feel that He is our Father, but in truth this is nothing but imagination. It seems to me that I feel this way only because I keep repeating it, and on the other hand I sense that it is not real, since toward his physical father a person feels an immediate inner feeling, quite different from what he feels in matters of Torah and mitzvos.
And the answer: «לא יחוש» - «let him not be concerned.» He should not worry and should not fall in spirit. Why not?
From the side of the love itself: «מאחר שהוא אמת לאמיתו מצד עצמו בבחינת האהבה המסותרת» - «since in itself it is absolutely true, in the aspect of the hidden love.» From the standpoint of the inner truth within him, even though he does not feel it at this moment, the thing is entirely true, for in the innermost part of the soul of every Jew this love for the Creator exists. The difficulty is only in the revealed layers, where the nefesh habahamis, the yetzer hara and all the other matters a person is immersed in are also partners in the system, and they do not let him feel the true feeling.
From the side of its purpose: «רק שתועלת יציאתה אל הגילוי כדי להביאה לידי מעשה, שהוא עסק התורה והמצות שלומד ומקיים על ידי זה» - «only that the benefit of bringing it out into revelation is in order to bring it to actual deed, namely the Torah and mitzvos that he learns and fulfills through it.» The benefit of habituating oneself in speech, thought and depth is that it should come down into actual deed: to set a fixed shiur in Torah and to keep mitzvos, and to say: I keep mitzvos because He is my Father, and I do everything for His sake more than for my own, with no personal stake in it. It turns out that the deed itself is utterly true, «כדי לעשות נחת רוח לפניו יתברך כבן העובד את אביו» - «in order to give nachas ruach before Him, blessed be He, like a son who serves his father.»
So from the side of the inner reality the thing is true, and from the side of its purpose, the actual fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos, it is true as well. The difficulty is only in the middle of the road, in the sense that the matter has not yet conquered all of a person's outer layers, and that is no reason to hold back.
In summary: in this section we learned that bringing the hidden love out of concealment into revelation is neither beyond reach nor far away; rather, «the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart.» This is accomplished by accustoming one's tongue and voice to express that the Almighty is literally our Father and the Source of our life, and by immersing one's thought in this, until the habit becomes second nature. And even if it seems to him that the whole thing is imaginary, let him not be concerned: from the side of the hidden love it is absolutely true, and the benefit of the revelation is that it brings the matter down into actual deed in Torah and mitzvos, to give nachas ruach before Him, blessed be He, like a son who serves his father.
In the next section we will add several further points explained in this chapter.