In the previous section we studied the love that fills a person's inner being. In this section we will learn how that love spreads out into the left chamber of the heart, the difference between forcing evil into submission and actually transforming it, the level of "ahava betaanugim" (love with delight), and the mashal of the burning log, from which the concepts of chomer and tzurah (matter and form) are explained.
"Until it spreads even into the left chamber":
The Alter Rebbe writes: "בתחילה תוכו רצוף אהבה מלא וגדוש עד שתתפשט גם לחלל השמאלי" ("at first his inside is paved with love, full and overflowing, until it spreads even into the left chamber"). At this first stage, the spreading into the left chamber is a matter of iskafya, of being forced into submission. It is not that the nefesh habahamis is acting on its own initiative; rather, the nefesh ha'elokis sweeps it along and it is dragged behind, sometimes with a great deal of noise, like one who wants everybody to hear how unwillingly he is being pulled. No credit belongs to the animal soul here, because nothing of this comes from its own strength. It is simply "iskafya lesitra achra," the other side being subdued.
And what exactly is being subdued? The element of evil water in the nefesh habahamis. As we learned in chapter 1, the element of water is the element that gives birth to all the cravings. The very essence of the nefesh habahamis is the faculty of desire, and its desire is drawn to evil things: the craving that comes from kelipas nogah. The nefesh habahamis has an essence and it also has an extension of itself, and we will expand on that further on.
But the goal is not exhausted by subduing alone. There is a higher rung to climb to: "לשנותה ולהופכה" ("to change it and transform it"). Two distinct stages are included here, and they are the two that are hinted at in the words "בכל לבבך - בשני יצריך" ("with all your heart, with both your inclinations"):
Iskafya: forcing the yetzer hara into submission and establishing the rule of the nefesh ha'elokis over it. At this stage a person arrives at a love that burns like flames of fire (rishpei esh).
Is'hapcha: transforming the yetzer itself, "להפכה מתענוגי עולם הזה" ("to turn it away from the pleasures of this world"), so that in place of taking delight in worldly matters there is delight in the love of Hashem. At this stage a person arrives at a love like water.
"Ahava betaanugim":
This is what the Alter Rebbe goes on to say: "והיינו שיעלה ויבוא ויגיע למדרגת אהבה רבה וחביבה יתרה ממדרגת אהבה זו כרשפי אש" ("namely, that he should rise and come and reach the level of a great love, an affection dearer than this level of love that is like flames of fire"), "והיא הנקראת בכתוב אהבה בתענוגים" ("and this is what Scripture calls love with delights"). As long as a person is still at war with his nefesh habahamis, even if he has managed to influence it and sweep it along behind him, he is not sitting in tranquility and delight; the animal could pull him to the other side at any moment, and he has to keep watch over it constantly. But in ahava betaanugim even the nefesh habahamis wants G-dliness, and the person delights in Hashem, a taste of the World to Come, which is the highest goal attainable within the soul.
Already in chapter 2 the Alter Rebbe hinted in two words that the element of fire has its source in the heart while the element of water has its source in the brain, and here he returns to it briefly: "והעונג הוא במוח, חכמה ושכל המתענג בהשכלת ה' וידיעתו כפי השגת שכלו וחכמתו" ("and the delight is in the brain, in the chochmah and intellect that takes delight in comprehending Hashem and knowing Him according to the grasp of his mind and wisdom"). This does not mean that the heart has no enjoyment, for the whole discussion here is about "with all your heart." Rather, the higher level is the illumination of the element of water of holiness, whose source is in the brain, and that is what is called Gan Eden and the World to Come, the quality of water.
Love like water means that the nefesh habahamis has been entirely transformed, and therefore it is quiet and settled. Avraham Avinu, who reached the highest love, reached a love like water, as we say in the piyut for rain: "זכור אב נמשך אחריך כמים" ("Remember the father who was drawn after You like water"), that he was drawn after the Holy One with a love of the quality of water.
Further on the Alter Rebbe writes: "וזרע אור זרוע" ("and light is sown"). It is explained at length in chassidus that the source of water is light, and so too we find in the verse in Iyov about rain: "יפיץ ענן אורו" ("He scatters the light of His cloud"), that the cloud scatters its light, and the drops of rain are called the light of the cloud. The Alter Rebbe does not elaborate here; he reveals this entire concept in a single word.
And he continues: "שבקדושת נפש האלוקית המהפכת לטוב את בחינת המים שבנפש הבהמית שמהם באו תאוות תענוגי עולם הזה מתחילה" ("through the holiness of the nefesh ha'elokis, which transforms to good the element of water in the nefesh habahamis, from which the cravings for the pleasures of this world originally came"). When the nefesh habahamis itself loves Hashem, the verse in Shir Hashirim is fulfilled: "משכני אחריך נרוצה" ("Draw me after You, let us run"). The verse opens in the singular, "draw me," the nefesh ha'elokis being drawn, and it concludes in the plural, "let us run," both of them together, the nefesh ha'elokis and the nefesh habahamis. Yet the "let us run" itself can be in the manner of iskafya or in the manner of is'hapcha, and both stages are mentioned here.
The waters of the nefesh habahamis are the cravings of this world, and they come naturally, simply and with force. Turning them to good is not an uprooting of nature; it is redirecting that very simplicity and that very intensity toward the side of G-dliness: the identical cravings, only that now they are cravings for G-dly matters. As the Alter Rebbe writes, this is "כמו שכתוב בעץ חיים שער נ' פרק ג' בשם הזוהר" ("as is written in Etz Chaim, gate 50, chapter 3, in the name of the Zohar"), that the evil is transformed into absolute good, literally like a yetzer tov.
It is worth noting that in one of his letters the Rebbe was asked about this: our Sages said "כל הגדול מחברו יצרו גדול ממנו" ("whoever is greater than his fellow, his yetzer is greater than his"), yet here we are describing a situation in which the person rises higher while his yetzer hara is turned into good. The Rebbe answers there in several points, and the first of them is the simplest: before a person has worked on himself, his yetzer is certainly as great as the measure of his own level; but after he has worked and accomplished the transformation, that very same great yetzer has been turned over to the positive side. There is no difficulty here, only a matter of knowing which situation is being spoken about.
"By removing the soiled garments from it":
How is it possible to transform the nefesh habahamis into good? Uprooting it is not an option, since a person is born with it. To this the Alter Rebbe says his significant line: "בהסיר הבגדים הצואים ממנו, שהם תענוגי עולם הזה שהוא מלובש בהם" ("by removing from it the soiled garments, which are the pleasures of this world in which it is clothed"). The animal remains whole, but it is emptied of its former content. The matter is stated here in only two lines, and to understand it we will turn to another place where the Alter Rebbe himself expands on it.
The mashal of the burning wood: chomer and tzurah
In Likkutei Torah the Alter Rebbe explains the burning of the para adumah (the red heifer), which serves as a mashal for the animal within a person, and these are his words: "העניין דהנה על דרך משל, כששורפים עצים ועל ידי זה נעשים אפר, שהאפר הוא מהותו ועצמותו של העץ הנשרף" ("by way of a mashal: when wood is burned and thereby becomes ash, the ash is the very essence and substance of the burnt wood"). The essence is the ash, and the entire impressive structure that the eye sees is nothing more than an addition on top of it.
And further on he spells it out clearly: "כי הכל היה מן העפר" ("for everything came from the dust"), the element of earth being the base from which the entire world was created, "רק שנרכבו בו עוד ג' יסודות אש רוח מים, אלא עפר שהוא עצמותו" ("only that three more elements, fire, air and water, were compounded into it, but earth is its essence"). The Holy One created every single thing by way of compounding: in this one more water, in that one more air, in another more fire, and the proportion in which those three additional elements are compounded is what makes one object different from another.
"ועל ידי השריפה באש אזי ג' יסודות אש, מים, רוח, שהיו בעץ חלפו וכלו בעשן המתהווה מהרכבתן" ("and through the burning in fire, the three elements of fire, water and air that were in the wood pass away and are consumed in the smoke that comes into being from their combination"). The water in the wood evaporates, the air rises off with the smoke, and the fire is consumed in the fire. "ויסוד הד' שהיה בעץ, שהוא עצמותו, שהוא העפר שבו, הוא הנשאר קיים והוא האפר" ("and the fourth element that was in the wood, which is its essence, namely the earth within it, is what remains in existence, and that is the ash").
This is also the subject of chomer and tzurah, matter and form, which exist in every thing. One can take a block of wood and shape it into a beautiful, elegant chair, or one can leave it just as it is. The more refined the form, the less the matter is felt by the one looking at it: two chairs made of the same material, in the same quantity and the same weight, and still in one of them you see a plain piece of wood while in the other you see a work of art, so much so that the onlooker wonders what it was made from and may even imagine that there is no matter here at all, only form. Yet everything is composed of matter and form: the plain matter of the wood is the element of earth, and the three elements of fire, air and water are nothing but the form of the wood. Through burning the wood, only its plain, essential matter is left. So much for the physical mashal.
In summary: in this section we learned that the spreading of the love into the left chamber begins in the mode of iskafya, in which the element of evil water in the nefesh habahamis, the faculty of craving that stems from kelipas nogah, is forced into submission, and it reaches its completion in is'hapcha, in the transformation of the craving itself into love of Hashem. That level is "ahava betaanugim," a love like water whose source is in the brain, which is a taste of the World to Come, and in which even the nefesh habahamis runs together with the nefesh ha'elokis: "Draw me after You, let us run." The way this transformation happens is "by removing the soiled garments," and to understand this we brought the mashal of the burning wood from Likkutei Torah: the three elements of fire, air and water are the tzurah, while the element of earth that remains in the ash is the chomer, the essence.
In the next section we will take up the nimshal in spiritual terms, and see how chomer and tzurah are explained in a person's avodah and in the removal of the soiled garments from the nefesh habahamis.