In the previous section we looked at the two judges who sit in session inside the soul of the beinoni. Now we arrive at the stage where the thought is on the verge of being accepted by him as a machashavah ratzonis, a thought he actually wants: he begins to take pleasure in the images rising up in him. And it is enough that he entertain them as a willing thought for even a single second for him to be called a rasha at that moment.
But a fall in one moment does not mean that the person must go on falling. In the very next second a fresh test stands before him, and it is in his hands to stop and not fall further. As we learned in the previous chapter, the definition of a beinoni is a definition of a given point in time: at this point he fell, and at the next point he can be a beinoni and not fall.
It is worth noticing that the Alter Rebbe alternates here between two expressions: sometimes "yetzer tov" and sometimes "nefesh Elokis." This is not a random switch; each term is precise:
"Yetzer tov" refers to the feelings and drives of the heart.
"Nefesh Elokis" refers to the contemplation that takes place in the mind.
With these definitions in hand, let us return to his words: "ומיד חולק עליו השופט השני שהוא הנפש האלקית שבמוח המתפשט בחלל הימני שבלב מקום משכן היצר טוב" - "immediately the second judge disputes him, namely the divine soul in the brain, which spreads into the right chamber of the heart, the dwelling place of the yetzer tov." The nefesh Elokis is located in the brain, and from there it spreads into the right chamber of the heart, which is the dwelling place of the yetzer tov, since "yetzer tov" is a name for the emotion of the heart.
He continues: "והלכה כדברי המכריע הוא הקב"ה העוזרו" - "and the halachah follows the one who decides the case, the Holy One, blessed be He, who helps him." Whom does Hashem help? "להיצר טוב" - the yetzer tov. And how does He help him? "והעזר היא ההארה שמאיר ה' על נפש האלקית" - "the help is the illumination that Hashem shines upon the divine soul." Hashem wants to help the yetzer tov, which is in the heart, yet the help is given specifically as an illumination upon the nefesh Elokis, which is in the brain.
The reason is this: the mind is the ruler of the heart, and there is no way around that order. If the heart is going to settle down and be freed of the craving, it has to begin in the mind: the person turns his attention away from those thoughts, opens a sefer, and starts thinking G-dly thoughts. Then a divine light enters his mind, spreads from there into his heart, and gives the heart the strength to push the craving away. There is no such thing as a person continuing to occupy his mind with whatever he pleases while help comes from Above by some clever trick that quiets the heart on its own.
This is the source of the Rebbe's advice in his letters to Jews who wrote to him about all sorts of struggles: take your mind off those things, and put words of Torah and tefillah into your head - a chapter of Tehillim, a few lines of Tanya, some G-dly matter - and that will be an extraordinary help in overcoming. When a person takes one small step, he discovers enormous assistance from Above.
At first glance, someone who stands up to this struggle moment after moment and never falls at all, but is always standing and fighting: why is he not called a tzaddik? On the basis of what we have already established the answer is clear. His heart is full of ra, the evil keeps rising up in him, and his entire achievement is that he does not let it spread. By a tzaddik, that whole situation simply does not exist.
The sefer opens in chapter one with the words of the Gemara, that they administer an oath to the soul before it descends into the world: "תהי צדיק ואל תהי רשע" - "be a tzaddik and do not be a rasha" - and immediately afterward they tell it: "ואפילו כל העולם כולו אומרים לך צדיק אתה - היה בעיניך כרשע" - "and even if the whole world tells you that you are a tzaddik, be in your own eyes like a rasha." On this the Alter Rebbe raised two questions:
A contradiction between the sources: an explicit Mishnah in Pirkei Avos says "ואל תהי רשע בפני עצמך" - "do not be a rasha in your own estimation." The person is left confused: the Gemara in Niddah instructs him to be like a rasha in his own eyes, and the Mishnah in Avos instructs him the opposite.
A question from the standpoint of his inner life: if a person keeps drilling into himself "I am a rasha, I am a rasha," one of two things will happen. Either he will live permanently in a low mood, a self-fulfilling prophecy; or he will say to himself, since they call me a rasha anyway, let me be a rasha, why should I play games?
And here comes the answer: "אך מאחר שהרע שבחלל השמאלי בבינוני הוא בתקפו כתולדתו" - "since the evil in the left chamber of the beinoni is in its full strength, as at birth." The evil he was born with stands in all its force and intensity exactly as on the day he was born. Hashem decreed that his soul would come down into the world with this makeup, and it does not budge a hairsbreadth.
"להתאות תאוה לכל תענוגי עוה"ז ולא נתבטל במיעוטו לגבי הטוב" - "to crave every pleasure of this world, and it has not been nullified by being outweighed by the good." The evil exists in full force; it is not diminished and it is not nullified relative to the good in him, because the good in him is not that great, and the evil in him outweighs the good. "ולא נדחק ממקומו כלל" - "nor has it been pushed out of its place at all." It has not been dislodged; it stands ready at any moment to fight and to send up cravings, and its love for all the pleasures of this world is fully intact.
[The question was raised whether there has ever been a person who was a beinoni and became a tzaddik, and various examples were offered, such as Rabbi Akiva, who began learning Torah at an advanced age. This is something exceedingly rare, since the powers a person is created with never change; an explicit treatment of this question will come, with Hashem's help, at the end of chapter fourteen.
A further question was raised: how is it "fair" that a person is created with bad character traits and is then required to wrestle with them? But the truth is the reverse: precisely this kind of avodah is the more beloved and precious one. Hashem did not set him up to fail; together with the raw material He also gave him help and support. It is like an optical illusion: it looks to the person as though a mountain is being dropped on him and he has no strength to get past it, but the moment he decides that it is nothing at all, he discovers that the whole obstacle was imaginary and that he passes it with ease. Everything depends on him, and the result is more precious than anything, because he invested and toiled for it.
The question was also asked where a person's "I" stands between the yetzer tov and the yetzer hara. As was discussed in one of the earlier lessons, the nefesh hasichlis is a kind of "I" that has to contend with these two forces, and this is not the place to elaborate.]
The beinoni's entire success amounts to this: "רק שאין לו שליטה וממשלה להתפשט באברי הגוף" - "only that it has no dominion or rule to spread into the limbs of the body." No claim is made against him for the mere existence of the bad traits, since that is how he was created and it is not his doing; his credit is that he does not let them spread into the limbs of the body. And even that he does not accomplish by his own strength, but "מפני שהקב"ה העומד לימין אביון ועוזר ומאיר לנפש האלוקית" - "because the Holy One, blessed be He, stands at the right hand of the needy, helping and illuminating the divine soul."
It emerges that in his deeds the beinoni is like a tzaddik, while in his essence he is close to a rasha. The name "beinoni" therefore does not indicate standing at the exact midpoint: in essence he is close to a rasha, and in practice he is like a tzaddik.
This explains the wording of the oath. "Even if the whole world tells you that you are a tzaddik" - for the world sees his deeds, and his deeds are the deeds of a tzaddik. And nevertheless, "be in your own eyes like a rasha": like a rasha, not a rasha. That is, a beinoni, whose essence is closer to a rasha than to a tzaddik, and this is what the word "like a rasha" means.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "וכמאמר רז"ל אפילו כל העולם כולו אומרים לך צדיק אתה היה בעיניך כרשע ולא רשע ממש" - "as our Sages said: even if the whole world tells you that you are a tzaddik, be in your own eyes like a rasha, yet not an actual rasha." G-d forbid that he should feel himself to be a rasha, "אלא שיחזיק עצמו לבינוני, ולא להאמין להעולם שאומרים שהרע שבו נתבטל לגבי הטוב שזו מדרגת צדיק" - "rather, he should consider himself a beinoni, and not believe the world when they say that the evil in him has been nullified relative to the good, for that is the level of a tzaddik."
With this the contradiction is resolved. What Pirkei Avos says, "do not be a rasha in your own estimation," remains true and fully in force: a person should not hold himself to be a rasha, and he should not be thinking all the time that he is no good. On the contrary, he should always see the good side and what he has succeeded in. But on the other hand, he should not indulge in fantasies that his essence has already become refined and excellent. He has to remember that in his essence he is, all along, like a rasha, and that if he "falls asleep on guard duty" for even a moment he is liable to fall.
It is like the warning given to someone driving on a road surrounded by wild drivers: he has to be careful, and if he does not drive properly he can, G-d forbid, be hurt immediately. That is the content of "be in your own eyes like a rasha."
There are many well-known stories about genuine tzaddikim, who were born and created as tzaddikim, who said about themselves that they were tzaddikim; they knew it and they felt it. Did they not fulfill the oath of "be in your own eyes like a rasha"? The answer is simple. The oath speaks about a situation in which the person's source of information is the world. When the world tells him that he is a tzaddik, he should not be impressed by it, because the honest truth is that he is like a rasha. But true tzaddikim have their own sources of information; they know their own essence and they know the truth, that they are in the state of a tzaddik. They are not "believing" the world, they know. The oath is only that one should not be swept along by what the world says.
To sum up: in this section we learned the precise meaning of the two terms, "yetzer tov," the emotion of the heart, and "nefesh Elokis," the contemplation of the mind, and we saw that Hashem's help to the yetzer tov comes specifically as an illumination upon the mind, which is the ruler of the heart. We saw that the evil in the beinoni stands in its full strength as at birth and is not pushed out of its place at all, and that his entire achievement is that it has no dominion to spread into the limbs of the body. Hence in his deeds he is like a tzaddik, and in his essence he is close to a rasha. With that, the two questions from the opening of the sefer are answered: "be in your own eyes like a rasha" means like a rasha and not an actual rasha, that is, that he should consider himself a beinoni, and there is no contradiction to the Mishnah's "do not be a rasha in your own estimation."
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words, and we will see that not only does the evil in the beinoni remain in its full strength as on the day he was born, but it even grows stronger and more powerful over the years.