In the previous section we studied two ways in which the mind rules over the heart, and we saw that this power is built into the very nature of how a person is created, as we learn from the verse, "There is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness." Now we will look closely at this verse that the Alter Rebbe brings from Koheles, and at the relationship between wisdom and folly, not in the simple sense of a wise man and a fool, but in the sense of kedushah as opposed to tumah.
A precision in the wording of the verse:
If we open Koheles itself and do not settle for the quotation as it appears in Tanya, we discover a beautiful precision. The original verse reads "וראיתי אני שיש יתרון לחכמה מן הסכלות כיתרון האור מן החושך" ("And I saw that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness"), while the Alter Rebbe writes "כדכתיב וראיתי" ("as it is written, and I saw") and leaves out the word "אני" ("I"). On the face of it, if he wanted to shorten the quote, why did he not drop the word "וראיתי" as well and simply write "that there is an advantage to wisdom"? Why is it specifically the word "אני" that is omitted, while "וראיתי" remains?
The Rebbe explains this on the basis of the holy Zohar. The word "אני" seems superfluous, for whoever says "and I saw" is obviously speaking about himself. Rather, Shlomo HaMelech is telling us that there are things that he sees and others do not: levels of wisdom and levels of folly that are not on the plane of ordinary human perception, and not every person is able to see them.
This is why the Alter Rebbe omits the word "אני." He is not quoting the deeper meaning of the verse, which belongs to the unique vision of Shlomo HaMelech, but the plain meaning: on the simple level, every person can see it with his own senses, that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly like the advantage of light over darkness.
"Like the advantage of light over darkness":
Here is how the Alter Rebbe explains it in his own words. Just as light has an advantage, a dominance and a rulership over darkness, so that a small amount of physical light pushes away a great deal of darkness, and not through any battle: the darkness is displaced by itself, automatically. The moment a little light appears, the darkness vanishes on its own.
In exactly the same way, a great deal of the folly of the kelipah and the sitra achra that resides in the left chamber of the heart is automatically pushed aside before the chochmah of the nefesh haElokis in the brain. The kelipah is entirely folly and nonsense, as our Sages said, "A person does not commit a sin unless a spirit of folly has entered into him." Every sin is foolishness, and all foolishness is folly.
This does not mean that all measures of light are equal. Obviously, the more light there is, the greater the displacement. And yet, even a person who finds himself at a very low point: if he learns a short two line mishnah or reads a single verse of Torah, he already receives from it the power to be aroused and to push away the kelipah in a way that bears no comparison to his state a moment earlier.
Does the mind generate negative thoughts on its own?
On its own, no. As we learned in chapter 9, the source of the desires is the left chamber of the heart, and from the heart the negative thoughts rise up to the mind; the thoughts are nothing more than a reflection of the heart. The same is true of positive thoughts, which come from the right chamber. The mind, for its part, processes and makes decisions, and in that lies a person's control.
But there is more. As we have learned, the mind is also a home base for the nefesh haElokis. The nefesh haElokis has two centers, the right chamber of the heart and the brain, and for that reason the mind rules over the heart, especially when it comes to the side of kedushah. Accordingly, a little chochmah and a little kedushah in the mind push away the desires of the heart.
This is what the nefesh haElokis wants, "למשול לבדה בעיר" ("to rule alone in the city"), meaning in the body, and to clothe itself in its three garments throughout the entire body: in thought, in speech and in action, in the fulfillment of the 613 mitzvos of the Torah.
The state of the beinoni:
During davening: the mind shines with great intensity, and the nefesh habahamis is as though asleep.
After davening: the animal awakens and sends up its desires, but they do not manage to cross the threshold into action, because the mind rules over the heart, and especially on the side of kedushah.
Why, then, is the beinoni not called a tzaddik?
At first glance, a person who has reached such a state, where the nefesh habahamis does not succeed in tripping him up at all in thought, speech or action, and during davening his whole heart is in kedushah, is surely a complete tzaddik.
To this the Alter Rebbe writes: "ואף על פי כן אינו נקרא צדיק כלל" ("and nevertheless he is not called a tzaddik at all"), not a tzaddik who has it good and not even a tzaddik who has it bad. The reason is that on the inner level of the heart the beinoni's animal is alive and well, kicking and trying to break loose at every moment, whereas by a tzaddik, as we learned in chapter 10, this does not exist at all.
In the language of Tanya: the advantage that the light of the nefesh haElokis has over the darkness and folly of the kelipah, which is pushed away by itself, "אינו אלא בשלושה לבושים הנ"ל ולא במהותה ועצמותה" ("is only in the three garments mentioned above, and not in its essence and being"). The beinoni prevails in thought, speech and action, and that is something great and it is the main thing, but he does not rule over the essence and being of the nefesh habahamis that comes from the kelipah in the left chamber, over the middos and the desires themselves, and these are not displaced from their place in the beinoni at all after davening.
During davening, caught up in the elevation and the emotion, it seems to the beinoni that he no longer has an animal and no longer has desires; immediately afterward he sees that the animal is exactly where it was. The love of Hashem that he had belonged to the time of davening alone, which is the opportune hour, a time of mochin Above and a time of mochin below, and when that hour of kindness passes he returns to his familiar animal reality. This is what the Alter Rebbe writes, "שאין רשפי אש אהבת ה' בהתגלות לבו בחלל הימני" ("that the flames of the fire of the love of Hashem are not revealed in his heart in the right chamber") after davening. Once the fire of davening has been extinguished, the animal fire reignites and the battle begins anew, and for this reason he is not a tzaddik.
This is the avodah of the beinoni: to live in the point of the present and to control himself so as not to fail at this very moment. That present continues into tomorrow as well, and the battle renews itself every single day, the very same struggles for a hundred and twenty years, sometimes changing and sometimes intensifying. As we will learn further on, the beinoni was created to be a fighter all his days, and when he falls he must pick himself up immediately and not despair of the ongoing war. As for the question of whether a person can recreate, after davening, the state he was in during davening, we will take that up at the end of chapter 13.
To summarize: in this section we studied the precision in the Alter Rebbe's omission of the word "אני" from the verse "And I saw that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly," since on the plain level, which every person perceives with his own senses, a little light pushes away a great deal of darkness by itself and without any battle, and so too a little chochmah of the nefesh haElokis pushes away a great deal of the folly of the kelipah. We saw that negative thoughts originate in the heart, and that the mind, being a center for the nefesh haElokis, rules over the heart. And nevertheless the beinoni is not called a tzaddik at all, because his mastery extends only to the three garments and not to the essence and being of the nefesh habahamis, which is not displaced from its place after davening.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 12, and go deeper into the beinoni's constant battle and how he is meant to conduct himself at a moment of falling.