Continuing with the hisbonenus (meditative reflection) we have been examining, let us open with one more point: even though a person cannot quite put it into words, he has a basic, instinctive relationship with his own starting point. It is so in matters of music, it is so in matters of wisdom, and here we are speaking of matters of G-dliness.
A Jew loves his life. First and foremost he loves simply to live, with no reason and no explanation at all, he loves life. From here the hisbonenus begins, step by step:
One who improves the conditions of his life: if there is a person who is constantly helping him and seeing to it that he has excellent living conditions, he will value him greatly and love him, for that person is improving the conditions of his life.
One who saved his life: and if someone comes along who not only gave him good conditions, but saved him from certain death, watched over him and rescued him, to such a person he will be grateful for the rest of his life.
One who gives life itself: and if he will reflect, not on the one who saved his life, but on the One who gives him life at every single moment, who brings him into being at every single moment and gives him everything he has, the Holy One blessed be He, he can be awakened with feelings of gratitude, love and attraction to the One who gives him all of this.
True, this hisbonenus takes place entirely within the boundaries of the person himself: he reflects on what is familiar to him in his own world of concepts, on his life and on the thing he loves, and he arrives at the understanding and recognition that the One who gives him all of this is the reality of the Creator.
And the level of his love matches the level of his understanding. For what is «life» anyway? That too is a question. For one person, life means eating well and sleeping well, and even for that he can be grateful to the One who gave it to him. And if «life» in his eyes means something loftier, his relationship to it will be loftier. And in this way he can rise higher and higher, without limit.
All of this falls within one framework, which carries the general title ahavas olam. Within ahavas olam there are many levels, but what they all share is that the starting point is the world, a starting point that leads to reflection on the G-dly power that brings creation into being and enlivens it at every single moment.
Let us look at the wording inside: «אך אהבת עולם היא הבאה מהתבונה ודעת בגדולת ה' אין סוף ברוך הוא, הממלא כל עלמין וסובב כל עלמין, וכולא קמיה כלא ממש חשיב» (But ahavas olam comes from understanding and knowledge of the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof, who fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and before whom all is reckoned as literally nothing). A person reflects on the greatness of the Creator, and in this brief formulation three wondrous levels of hisbonenus are included:
«Memale kol almin», filling all worlds: the Creator enlivens every single detail of creation from within, in the inanimate in one measure, in the vegetative more, in the animal still more, in the human still more, and likewise in each and every person, according to the measure of vitality, happiness and content that his life contains.
«Sovev kol almin», encompassing all worlds: here a person reflects on how the Creator surrounds and encompasses all the worlds equally. This is a loftier G-dly level, in which He is present in the inanimate and in the animal in exactly the same way, with no difference at all between them.
«Vekula kamei kelo mamash chashiv», all is reckoned before Him as literally nothing: the reflection that all the worlds have no significance whatsoever relative to the overwhelming reality of the Creator. This is the loftiest level of hisbonenus.
And each level has its effect on a person's yearning: once he has understood that the G-dly life force is the true good and he yearns for it, his yearning does not stop at the basic level, but he wants to climb higher. And when he grasps that «all is reckoned before Him as nothing», he is not satisfied with the lower level that he does understand, but wants to connect to what is above him: I still do not understand this, but I want to understand and to be connected.
Indeed, in order to truly connect to the G-dly life force one has to detach from the world and its affairs, for a person immersed in worldly matters cannot arrive there.
On this subject one of the chassidim once said: the world is full of people with cravings, they crave food, travel, sights and the like. If those people only knew the preciousness contained in Torah and mitzvos, they would abandon all their cravings and seize hold of this one.
So why, then, do they not do so?
Because in order to arrive at this craving one has to give up all the other cravings. You cannot have both: there is no «this and that», only this or that. It is impossible to live inside the cravings of the world and at the same time want to feel this craving, and as the chapter continues it will become clear that this is the highest craving of all.
The Alter Rebbe continues and explains what «all is reckoned before Him as literally nothing» means: «וכביטול דבור אחד בנפש המשכלת, בעודה במחשבתה או בחמדת הלב, כנ"ל» (like the bittul of a single word within the intellectual soul, while it is still in its thought or in the desire of the heart, as explained above), a matter we treated at length in an earlier lesson and need not repeat. A person reflects on one word that he speaks: what is it relative to the entire faculty of speech, what is it relative to the faculty of thought, and what is it relative to the middos of the soul? Its insignificance is enormous. And from here he will reflect on how the entire world is literally nothing and naught, for «by the word of G-d the heavens were made», and that very word is itself completely nullified.
«אשר על ידי התבוננות זו ממילא תתפשט מידת האהבה שבנפש מלבושיה» (through this hisbonenus the soul's attribute of love will automatically strip itself of its garments):
What does «strip itself of its garments» mean? Every person has love in his soul, and that love clothes itself in whatever he loves, each according to his own garments: one loves food, another loves travel. Someone immersed in physicality, his love is drawn to physicality; someone whose love is for music and song, even though music is physical, it is a more abstract and spiritual matter within this world; and someone who loves intellect and study is more abstract still. But the moment a person understands where the true good lies, the love in his soul strips itself of the garments it had been wearing until now.
«דהיינו שלא תתלבש בשום דבר הנאה ותענוג גשמי או רוחני, לאהבה אותו, ולא לחפוץ כלל שום דבר בעולם בלתי לה' לבדו» (that is, that it will not clothe itself in any pleasure or delight, physical or spiritual, so as to love it, and will not desire anything in the world at all other than G-d alone). This is ahavas olam: a person arrived at love of the Creator through reflecting on the world, and that love caused his love to strip off its garments. He will have no love and no delight in anything physical nor in anything spiritual, for love of music and love of intellect are spiritual loves, except that this spirituality belongs to the affairs of the world and not to the Creator. From all of these he strips himself, and he wants nothing other than things that express the will of the Creator.
This does not mean that a person should desire nothing in the world, take up fasts and self-affliction and run off to the wilderness. If the Creator's will is that he marry, build a home, go out to work and support his family, he does so with all the love and joy in the world, because that is what G-d wants. He can live within the world and within his daily routine, except that everything he does is done because this is what the Creator wants of him.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, it is true, conducted himself differently, but about that the Gemara says that many tried to do as he did and did not succeed. That was Rashbi's level. The Alter Rebbe's intention is that a person should desire nothing «other than G-d alone», that he should want each thing only because the Creator wants it, «מקור החיים של כל התענוגים, שכולם בטילים במציאות וכלא ממש קמיה חשיבי, ואין ערוך ודמיון כלל ביניהם, חס ושלום» (the source of life of all delights, which are all nullified in their very existence and reckoned before Him as literally nothing, and there is no comparison or resemblance between them at all, G-d forbid). There is no resemblance whatsoever between physical love and delight and the love and delight of truth.
And just how much do they resemble each other? The point is illustrated by a parable told half in jest, though sometimes we are exactly like it: a man put his hand out the window, and G-d forbid a car ran over it, and he immediately started shouting, «My watch! My watch!» He is so immersed in worldly matters that he does not even notice that he has lost his hand. So it is with us: the G-dly truth lies right in front of us, and a person runs after every sort of worldly pleasure and is sunk in them, and does not understand that there is really nothing there at all.
«כמו שאין ערוך לאין ואפס המוחלט לגבי חיים נצחיים» (just as there is no comparison between absolute nothingness and eternal life). What value does zero have next to the infinite? It is worth pausing here on a nice piece of arithmetic: which is farther apart, one from ten, or zero from one? Zero from one is far more distant, for in zero there is nothing at all, while in one there is something, only that the something is small, and in ten it is much. And likewise: which is farther apart, one from ten, or one from the infinite? Clearly one from the infinite. So zero from the infinite is a double distance: zero is immeasurably far from one, and one is immeasurably far from the infinite.
This is what the Alter Rebbe means by «there is no comparison between absolute nothingness and eternal life»: this world is nothing and naught next to eternal life, and has no value at all. If so, why should a person chase and burn after such physical stuff, which he has one moment and does not have the next? Better that he run after the G-dly truth, which is the real thing, while all the rest is literally nothing and naught.
«כמו שכתוב: מי לי בשמים ועמך לא חפצתי בארץ» (as it is written: whom have I in heaven, and besides You I desire nothing on earth). Chassidus sometimes connects this verse to ahava rabbah, and here the Alter Rebbe links it to ahavas olam. «Whom have I in heaven», even if You give me heaven, heavenly things, I do not need them. «And besides You I desire nothing on earth», even if You give me something that is «with You», I do not want it. Whom do I want? You alone. Do not tempt me with anything, heavenly or earthly, I want You.
«כלה שארי ולבבי, צור לבבי וגו'» (my flesh and my heart yearn and are consumed, the Rock of my heart). The flesh and the heart are consumed and spent. And why are they spent? Because «the Rock of my heart», the Creator is the strong Rock of his heart.
«וכמו שכתוב לקמן» (and as is written further on). As the Alter Rebbe notes, in chapter forty-eight he will expand on this matter at greater length, on the bittul that exists in the worlds and on the world's utter incomparability relative to the Creator.
To summarize: in this section we learned the definition of ahavas olam, a love that comes from understanding and knowledge of the greatness of the Creator, whose starting point is the world. We examined the three levels within this hisbonenus: «memale kol almin», «sovev kol almin», and «all is reckoned before Him as literally nothing», and we saw that the more abstract and elevated the understanding, the more the love is elevated, without end. We saw that this hisbonenus strips the attribute of love of its garments, until a person desires no pleasure at all, physical or spiritual, other than G-d alone, not by way of withdrawing from the world, but in that everything he does is done because this is the Creator's will. And finally we examined «there is no comparison between absolute nothingness and eternal life», and the verse «whom have I in heaven, and besides You I desire nothing on earth, my flesh and my heart are consumed, the Rock of my heart».
In the next section we will continue with the explanation of chapter forty-three and with the Alter Rebbe's words that follow.