We have reached the closing section of Chapter 48 of the Tanya. We stopped on page 68b (page 136), near the top of the page, at the line beginning «בתכלית», up to the period after the words «אם לא על ידי צמצומים». Let us briefly review what we have learned so far, and then continue.
This lesson is dedicated to the refuah of Brocha Ayelet bat Chamami.
Review of what we have learned so far:
This chapter has one subject, and the subject itself is abstract and intricate, as we noted in earlier lessons: the Alter Rebbe explains here the concept of tzimtzum, the divine self-contraction: why tzimtzum is necessary at all, and how it bears on understanding this whole sequence of chapters.
We learned that the Holy One acts for, cares for, and loves each and every one of us: the Jewish people as a whole, and every individual as an individual. This contemplation is meant to awaken in a person the dynamic of «as water reflects a face back to a face»: just as the Holy One acts toward us and loves us, so there must be a corresponding revelation from our side toward Him, as in the long analogy we studied in Chapter 46.
One of the important points we are learning now (whose conclusion we will see, with G-d's help, in Chapter 49) is that a Jew must contract himself, make a tzimtzum of himself, before the will of the Holy One. That is: when on one side stand a person's own desires, cravings and occupations, and on the other side stands the will of the Creator, the Torah leads him, and so does the Alter Rebbe over the course of these chapters, to the conclusion that he must set himself aside for the sake of what the Creator asks of him, rather than living only by what is convenient and fits comfortably with him.
Where will a Jew come to such a conclusion from? That is the purpose of this entire lengthy discussion: in order for a person to exist here, and in fact in order for the entire world to exist at every single moment, the Holy One, as it were, contracts His divine light.
The essential points we learned about tzimtzum:
The divine light in and of itself is infinite and without limit, and this light is present in creation and in the world, in every single place, with no place devoid of it.
The manner of its presence is in the mode of sovev, encompassing. This does not mean, G-d forbid, that it is outside the thing, since it is in fact present within every last detail; rather it is said relative to the perception of the creature and of the world. The creature does not sense the infinite and the limitless; what it senses is a boundary, contracted and very small. The infinite it cannot grasp or sense, for it is infinite. And were the infinite revealed, creation would not exist as it does, but would itself be infinite. Therefore it is present in the mode of sovev, encompassing: relative to the creature's perception it is as though it surrounds from without, while in truth it is present in every single place.
What the creature does sense and grasp, and what resides within its inner being, is a contracted light and life force. It emerges that in order for there to be a creation at all, there had to be a tzimtzum. And this is the subject that explains to us the concept of tzimtzum.
We ended the previous lesson with the analogy the Alter Rebbe brings in order to bring the idea closer to the mind. What is he trying to bring closer? How is it possible that these two opposites coexist: the infinite divine power is present in every place, and nevertheless the creature, the small particular being, does not sense the matter at all. It is both present and yet unfelt within the reality of the creature.
The analogy: a person who sees an object, a house he has just seen or saw some time ago, pictures in his mind and imagination the entire house with all its details, all its rooms and all its floors, and all of it is literally present in his thought. And nevertheless, the house itself has no sensation whatsoever that it is at this moment inside so-and-so's head and thought; there is no connection between them at all. Here we have an example where, on the one hand, every detail, down to the last detail, is present within the person, and at the same time the thing residing within him has no awareness or grasp of this at all.
But this example is very far removed from the reality of the nimshal, and the difference is enormous. In the analogy, what is actually inside the person's head? Only the image of the house, an external picture alone, not the house itself. Whereas in the nimshal, in the Creator's knowledge the entire creation and all its details are present literally as they are, and not merely their image and picture. And since the Creator knows the thing, therefore the thing exists, for its existence came into being through His utterance, and the Creator's knowledge is what invests it with its life force. In any case, the analogy brings somewhat closer to our understanding the point that there can be a full and detailed knowledge of a thing while the thing itself has no acquaintance whatsoever with the fact that it is known in detail.
In the Alter Rebbe's words:
«אבל הקב"ה דכתיב ביה כי לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם כו', הרי מחשבתו ודעתו שיודע כל הנבראים מקפת כל נברא ונברא מראשו ועד תחתיתו ותוכו ותוך תוכו הכל בפועל ממש» (But of the Holy One it is written, «For My thoughts are not your thoughts», and so His thought and knowledge, by which He knows all created beings, encompasses each and every creature from its head to its very bottom, and its interior and the interior of its interior, all of it literally in actuality). The emphasis is on «literally in actuality»: in a human being the house is not present in his mind literally in actuality, but only its image and the externality of the picture, and even if the picture includes every last detail, it is not the thing itself but its likeness. With the Creator, however, every single detail is certainly present in His knowledge literally in actuality.
What does «My thoughts are not your thoughts» mean? That the thoughts are not alike. But a question needs to be raised: after all, it is written «in Our image, after Our likeness», and the soul is «a portion of G-d above», so there is a dimension of resemblance between us and the Creator. Why, then, does the verse single out thought, which is not alike, and not other things? The answer: it is precisely thought that is not alike.
In speech: divine speech certainly acts; it forms and creates. And a person's speech also acts and affects whoever hears his words (though the measure and manner of the effect vary). So one cannot say that there is no resemblance at all between our speech and the Creator's speech. That would not be accurate, since there is a general resemblance in the very fact that speech acts, even though there is no comparison whatsoever in the degree to which it acts: the Creator's speech forms and creates, while our speech acts upon another person.
In thought: even though a thought one has about his fellow affects him in a spiritual way, still, when a person thinks about someone at the other end of the world that he should do such and such, his thought does not act upon him and does not move him in any conscious way. True, there is a situation in which a person concentrates his thought on someone and gazes at him, and this may cause the other to look back at him; but ordinarily, when a person thinks about someone, he has had the thought and nothing has happened. In this there is no resemblance at all between our thought and the thought of the Creator, whose knowledge is the very existence of the creature. And of this it is said, «For My thoughts are not your thoughts».
In summary: in this portion we reviewed the matter of tzimtzum in Chapter 48. The divine light is infinite and without limit and is present in every place, except that relative to the creature's perception it is in the category of sovev, encompassing, while what is present within the creature's inner being is a contracted light, for without tzimtzum there could be no creation. We dwelled on the analogy of the house present in a person's thought without the house sensing it, and on the difference between the analogy and the nimshal, that in the Creator's knowledge every creature is present «from its head to its very bottom, and its interior and the interior of its interior, all of it literally in actuality». And we examined the precision of the verse «For My thoughts are not your thoughts»: that specifically in thought there is no resemblance, unlike speech, where there is a general resemblance in the very fact that it acts.
Going forward we will arrive at the conclusion that emerges from all this for a person's avodah: that he must contract himself and his own desires before the will of the Creator, as will be explained in Chapter 49.