In the previous part we learned the foundation on which the rest of the chapter rests: the Holy One compressed His will and His wisdom into the 613 mitzvos of the Torah and their laws, and we also saw that Torah and mitzvos clothe all ten faculties of the soul. Now, in that light, we come to explain the second statement: "יפה שעה אחת בתשובה ומעשים טובים בעולם הזה מכל חיי העולם הבא" - "Better one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world than all the life of the World to Come."
First, a precise reading of the words "one hour." It does not necessarily mean sixty minutes; a "שעה" can be even a brief moment. "Sha'ah" also carries the sense of turning toward, as in the verse "וישע ה' אל הבל ואל מנחתו" - "And G-d turned to Hevel and to his offering." One turning of a person toward teshuvah and good deeds in this world, one single good deed, is already enough for it to be called better than all the life of the World to Come.
And more than that: "all the life of the World to Come" is not measured against that one person's own portion in the World to Come, as though he were weighing his World to Come against his one hour. The intention is all the life of the World to Come that one could possibly describe, from the time the tzaddikim have been dwelling there, thousands of years already. And against all of it together stands one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world. How are we to understand this?
The root of the difference between the worlds:
The Alter Rebbe answers this, and his answer is understood on the basis of the principle already explained. Let us say it briefly: the World to Come is an immense pleasure, a "korras ruach," a delight of the soul; but what is done here, Torah and mitzvos in this world, is a nachas ruach to the Creator Himself, an actual connection to G-dliness. The soul is limited, and so even the soul's pleasure is limited, according to the measure of its comprehension. And what value does a limited pleasure have next to connection with the truly Infinite? There is no comparison between them at all.
What is the World to Come?
In Maseches Berachos it is explained that in the World to Come there is "no eating and no drinking," and after the Gemara rules out all bodily pleasures, it reveals what there is there: the tzaddikim sit and derive pleasure from the radiance of the Shechinah. This pleasure is the delight of comprehension: the souls grasp G-dliness, and from that grasp they take pleasure.
But no created being, not even the loftiest of the lofty, not even the most wondrous tzaddik enjoying Gan Eden, is capable of grasping more than a mere "hearah," a ray, of G-d's light. The Creator's very Essence and Being no creature can take hold of - "לית מחשבה תפיסא ביה כלל," "no thought can grasp Him at all," in the words of Eliyahu HaNavi in the introduction to Tikkunei Zohar - not in this world and not in the World to Come. That is why our Sages chose the expression "the radiance of the Shechinah": radiance only, a mere ray, like the radiance of the sun.
The Gemara tells of a man who asked to see the Creator of the world. The Tanna said to him: look directly at the sun. He tried and could not. Said the Tanna: the sun is only one of His servants, and if you cannot look at it, how can you ask to see the Creator of the world? The sun is physical, measurable and visible, and even so one does not benefit from it directly but only from its radiance; how much more so with the Essence and Being of the Creator, from which one cannot "derive pleasure" except from a mere radiance.
The one place where the Essence is grasped:
And yet there is one place where one can take hold not of the radiance but of the Essence and Being of the Creator: the place where the Holy One decided to be. Where did the Creator choose to enter and say, as it were, "here I am"? In the 613 mitzvos of the Torah and their laws, as we learned at length in the analogy of water descending from a high place to a low place. And as was explained, "tzimtzem" here is not from the word tzimtzum, as though only a part were taken, but from the sense of concentration: the whole of it, concentrated in every single line of the Torah.
Therefore, when a person's grasp - his intellect, his thought, his speech and his deed - takes hold of the Torah and its mitzvos and becomes clothed in them, he is taking hold of and clothed in the Holy One Himself, for "אורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד," the Torah and the Holy One are entirely one; Torah and G-dliness are one and the same.
From here it is understood why one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world is better: here a person takes hold of the very Essence and Being of the Creator, whereas in the World to Come he grasps nothing more than a radiance.
And what about how it feels?
From the standpoint of his own feeling, a person does not sense the Essence of the Creator while performing a mitzvah, and he is right. Feeling and enjoyment, "korras ruach," belong to the World to Come, as the Mishnah continues: "ויפה שעה אחת של קורת רוח בעולם הבא מכל חיי העולם הזה" - "and better one hour of contentment in the World to Come than all the life of this world." But in terms of the truth of the matter, the one hour in this world is better, truer and more essential than all the life of the World to Come, even though in the World to Come the enjoyment may be exceedingly great.
The analogy of the palace:
By way of analogy: a king opened the gates of his palace and allowed those who came to enter his inner royal chamber, but in his wisdom he wanted only someone who knows how to value the thing to actually come inside. So along the way to the inner chamber he set up outer halls filled with beautiful music, fine paintings and all sorts of exquisite things. The announcement went out: the gate is open, come in. Some entered the palace, were overwhelmed by the extraordinary things along the way, and by the time the hour passed they were still outside. And there was one who said: none of this interests me, I want to go in to the king.
In terms of enjoyment, physical and even emotional, it may well be that precisely the one who lingered along the way enjoyed far more - only that he never saw the king. And the one who enjoyed nothing on the way, not the music and not anything else, merited to be with the king himself in his chamber, to speak with him, to touch him and to feel him; the king extended his hand to him and embraced him. Afterward the first will tell stories about beautiful and wondrous things, and the second will have no stories of outer splendor to tell - but he had the king himself.
This is the difference between this world and the World to Come. In the World to Come there is contentment, enjoyment, the radiance of the Shechinah and wondrous things. In this world a person feels neither the radiance nor the contentment, but he has the King Himself: in learning one line of Torah he is learning the King, and in putting on tefillin he is bonding with the King. The King is here below, not above.
And if a person does feel enjoyment in performing a mitzvah, there is nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, that is how it should be. For as was explained at the beginning of the lesson, Torah and mitzvos clothe all ten faculties of the soul, and a person is meant to connect through them all 248 limbs and 365 sinews and all his faculties. Someone who does not bring his faculty of emotion into the mitzvah has left one faculty unconnected; someone who brings in all his faculties has all of them connected.
The envy of the soul above:
One could ask: in the World to Come the soul is bound to the Creator constantly; it has no need of tefillin and tzitzis and all these instruments, and in any case it cannot fulfill them there. The question is correct in all its details, but the conclusion is the opposite: the soul above envies the soul below, who can still put on tefillin. It is not that it has no need of tefillin, but that it can no longer put them on. If it were given the opportunity to look in for one moment and put on tefillin one more time, it would give up all the delights above, the lower Gan Eden and the upper Gan Eden and all the many ascents, for one single donning of tefillin.
This resolves an apparent contradiction in the words of our Sages: "על כורחך אתה חי" - "against your will you live" - and "על כורחך אתה מת" - "against your will you die." If a person lives against his will, why should he die against his will and not seize the chance to get out of here? The answer is that the soul, before its descent, does not know what kind of power is to be found here, and therefore it thinks it is better off staying above, and it says: what is the point of descending and being cut off from holiness and from G-dliness? But once it has come down, and has learned chapter 4 of Tanya, and has discovered that here, in this world, a Jew who learns Torah and keeps mitzvos connects with the Essence of the Creator, and that above there is no possibility of this at all - now it no longer wants to leave this place. Where would it be going? To the enjoyment of the World to Come; and it wants G-dliness, not radiance and enjoyment.
On this theme, at the end of the sefer "HaYom Yom" a saying is brought in the name of the Alter Rebbe, the author of the Tanya, who said in a moment of devekus: I do not want Your World to Come and I do not want Your Gan Eden - I want You Yourself. True, this is a lofty level, to actually feel that power or even to know what such a level is, but every Jew must know how to treasure every single moment.
Ratzo and shov:
If the purpose is here below, what place is there for yearning and longing, for the soul's expiring in love? The answer is that yearning alone is not enough, for that is the way the world is built, and after the "ratzo," the running upward, there must come "shov," the return. To a person's own feeling it seems that the ratzo is the higher of the two, but chassidus explains that the shov is loftier, and the purpose lies in the shov and not in the ratzo.
This is the well known analogy of the king's son whom his father sent far away: both feelings must always be present in him. Had the king's son not known that there is a higher value in spirituality, in something exalted, in the honor of the king, he would slowly have forgotten everything, since here below one does not feel it, and so one must awaken the feeling from time to time. And at the same time he must know that the purpose is right here. These two movements must exist in him together, and if he goes to one of the two extremes he will lose the whole thing.
In summary: In this part we learned the statement "better one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world than all the life of the World to Come" - and even against all the life of the World to Come of all the tzaddikim from all time. The explanation: in the World to Come the souls enjoy only the "radiance of the Shechinah," the delight of comprehension, since even the loftiest creature grasps no more than a mere ray, for "לית מחשבה תפיסא ביה כלל," no thought can grasp Him at all; whereas in this world, in the Torah and mitzvos into which the Holy One compressed Himself, a person takes hold of His very Essence and Being, for "אורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד." Feeling and contentment belong to the World to Come, but in terms of the truth of the matter the one hour here is more essential, as in the analogy of the one who enters the king's chamber compared with the one who lingers in the outer halls. From here we see that the soul above envies the soul below, who can still put on tefillin, and from here too the emphasis that "shov" is loftier than "ratzo," while both movements are kept together.
In the next part we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 4 and go deeper into the greatness of Torah and mitzvos.