In the previous part we learned that the level of the beinoni is a gift that lies within reach of every person. Now we need to look closely at the Alter Rebbe's wording. He writes that every person can hold this position "birtzono shebemocho" ("with the will in his mind"), and from this we will come to understand the relationship between the mind, the will and the heart.
Until now we have been saying that the mind rules the heart. The mind's business is study, comprehension and hisbonenus (contemplation), and it operates through the intellect: understanding rules over emotion. Here the Alter Rebbe introduces a new expression, that the ruling happens "with the will in his mind," that is, through the power of will. The question arises: what is it that actually does the ruling, the understanding or the will?
Two modes in which the mind rules the heart:
Rule through understanding: the mind governs the heart by way of persuasion and explanation, like a father teaching his son and explaining until the matter is accepted in the son's heart.
Rule through will: the will that emerges as a result of the mind's understanding operates by way of authority and command, like a master giving orders to his servant.
Why is the power of will needed at all? Because when the spirit of desire flares up in the heart, there is not always time to wait for the mind to work on the heart through explanation and contemplation; in the meantime a person could fall. So instead he uses the power of will in his mind, which rules over the spirit of desire in his heart.
We must be precise about what kind of rule is being spoken of here: "shelo lemalos mish'alos libo bema'aseh dibbur umachshavah" ("not to fulfill the desires of his heart in deed, speech or thought"). The heart, for its part, goes on craving and wanting, and what it asks for is that the desire find expression in action, in speech or in thought. The mind's rule blocks that expression alone, and beyond that, "ulehasiach da'ato legamrei mita'avas libo el hahefech legamrei" ("and to turn his attention away completely from the desire of his heart, to the very opposite"). We are not talking about changing the heart itself, only about stopping it.
It is worth noting that in chapter 17 the expression "the mind rules the heart" will appear again, in a much stronger sense. There the Alter Rebbe will explain that the mind has the power to rule over the heart itself and to change the desire itself. That is a more advanced stage; here we are dealing with a stage in which the heart is raging and the mind simply holds it back from being expressed.
A power built into the nature of creation:
This power is, in the Alter Rebbe's words, "betoldosav" ("by his very nature"), built into the way a human being is made. It is not specifically bound up with Torah and mitzvos or with matters of kedushah; it is a general human nature with which the Holy One, blessed be He, created man. For example, a person keeping to a diet whose heart is drawn after all sorts of foods trains his mind to rule over his heart and to refuse to fulfill its requests. There is no balance here, no evenly matched forces between mind and heart, but rather a permanent advantage of the mind over the heart.
And the Alter Rebbe adds: "uvifrat el tzad hakedushah" ("and especially toward the side of holiness"). Even when the struggle is not between kedushah and its opposite, the mind rules the heart; but when the war is between what the heart wants and the mind's understanding that one must hold fast to kedushah, the mind's advantage grows many times over, and control over the heart's desires is far more certain and secure, since kedushah has a real, genuine advantage.
"Like the advantage of light over darkness":
To describe this advantage the Alter Rebbe brings the words of Shlomo HaMelech in Koheles: "And I saw that wisdom has an advantage over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness."
Let us be precise in reading the verse. An analogy is brought when the subject being explained is abstract and deep and not immediately grasped, and in order to bring it closer to the mind one draws on something simpler and more tangible. But what is the analogy teaching us here? That wisdom has an advantage over folly is self-evident; no analogy is needed to prove it.
Rather, Shlomo HaMelech is not speaking about wise men and fools in the plain sense. "Wisdom" here is a synonym for kedushah, and "folly" for the opposite of kedushah. We find this in the titles "an old and foolish king" for the yetzer hara and "a poor and wise child" for the yetzer tov, and so too Chazal say in tractate Sotah: "A person does not commit a sin unless a spirit of foolishness has entered him" (and later in Tanya it will be explained what that foolishness is, since at first glance there are sinners who are great scholars).
Accordingly, what Shlomo HaMelech is saying is this: the way the struggle between kedushah and its opposite plays out is to be learned from what actually happens between light and darkness. We should note first that the darkness spoken of here is the absence of light. In the inner dimension of Torah there is a discussion whether darkness is a creation in its own right or nothing more than the absence of light, and here we are speaking of darkness that is only the absence of light.
Two points are learned from this analogy:
A little light pushes away a great deal of darkness: you do not drive out darkness with sticks. A large, pitch-dark room, and it is enough that one small match be lit in it for the state of darkness to be nullified.
The pushing away happens on its own: there is no wrestling match here between two entities grappling with each other; the moment a bit of light enters, the darkness leaves by itself, without a war.
This does not mean that a single match illuminates like the light of the sun, for there are degrees in the intensity of light, and the more light is added the greater the absence of darkness. But the state of darkness, in which a person sees nothing and cannot tell where the door is and where the window is, is nullified the instant that small light is kindled.
And so it is in the nimshal (the subject of the analogy): when a person's heart is full of impurity, of cravings and foolishness, a little light is enough, a bit of contemplation in the mind and study of Torah and kedushah, to make the darkness vanish quickly and by itself, with no need for battle. This is the point of the analogy and its application that Shlomo HaMelech brought.
To summarize: in this part we learned that ruling over the heart happens in two ways, by way of understanding, like a father explaining to his son, and by way of the will in the mind, like a master commanding his servant, which is what one resorts to when there is no time to wait for explanation to take effect. The rule at this stage means preventing the desire from being expressed in thought, speech and deed, while in chapter 17 the mind's power to change the heart itself will be explained. This power is planted in the very nature of how a person is made, and it grows especially strong on the side of kedushah, as learned from the verse "wisdom has an advantage over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness": wisdom is kedushah and folly is its opposite, and from the analogy we learned that a little light pushes away a great deal of darkness, and that the pushing away happens all by itself.
In the next part we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words and go deeper into explaining what this "spirit of foolishness" is, on account of which a person comes to sin.