We stopped in the middle of chapter 13, which appears on folio 18b (page 36). We are at the fourth line from the top, at its end: "ואף מי שבתורת ה' חפצו" ("and even one whose desire is in the Torah of G-d"). In this chapter we began to explain the different levels that exist within the beinoni, the "intermediate" person: three general levels. In the previous lesson we dealt at length with the first level, and now we move up to the others.
First, a reminder. The beinoni, as we have stressed again and again in earlier lessons, is a person whose inner essence contains both a nefesh elokis (a divine soul) and a nefesh habahamis (an animal soul), like every Jew, who is born with these two souls; and in his inner essence he has changed nothing and uprooted nothing. The animal within him and his evil character traits exist in full force, exactly as on the day he was born, and in fact they have grown and expanded over the years in which he ate and drank and enjoyed this world. What makes the beinoni unique is only on the operational level: in thought, speech and deed, where he never fails in anything. But in his inner essence the evil traits stand at full strength, and he does not manage to budge them.
The first level was a beinoni who has no divine feeling at all, or almost never. Most of the day he is a businessman, moving about in the marketplace and in worldly matters, and nevertheless he is a beinoni who does not fail in a single thing. Inside him a fierce inner war is raging, because the animal within him exists in full strength and tries with all its might to trip him up. The evil traits even manage to rise up to the brain, and he begins to entertain a first flicker of thought about that very desire which was fired up to him directly from the heart. But since he is a beinoni, he is not willing to think a forbidden thought by his own choice; and when such a thought falls into his mind against his will, the moment he becomes aware of it he immediately removes it from his head.
And who gives him the strength to remove a thought that has already risen to his brain? Here we are no longer speaking of the mind's natural rule over the heart, since the matter has already ascended to the mind and is sitting in his head. For that a special siyata dishmaya, assistance from Above, is needed: the Holy One helps him, because on his own part he wants and asks to overcome.
The Alter Rebbe goes on to speak of a beinoni on a higher level: "ואף מי שבתורת ה' חפצו ויהגה בה יומם ולילה לשמה" - "and even one whose desire is in the Torah of G-d, and who meditates in it day and night lishmah." This is a Jew who is not a businessman but a yoshev ohalim, one who dwells in the tents of Torah, who sits and learns Torah day and night, and his learning is lishmah, for its own sake.
Learning lishmah means that he does not learn because it is pleasant and interesting for him to be occupied with the wondrous things in Torah (and certainly the Torah is something wondrous and beautiful, as the verse says that it is "your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations"), but rather because he seeks to connect with the Holy One, and he knows that this is the Torah of G-d, and that the only way to bond with the Holy One is through the study of Torah. [One who learns Torah because he enjoys it is not doing anything bad; on the contrary, in our times that is a very high level, since he is taking his pleasure in Torah and not in the vanities of the world. But it is a lower level, because in his learning he is looking for his own enjoyment; whereas "lishmah" means for the sake of the Torah and for the sake of connecting with the Holy One.]
With this beinoni the mind is constantly occupied in learning, and as is well known, when the mind is occupied with one thing, a thought about something else does not enter it. Consequently no challenge of desire rises up to him from the heart, and on the face of it such a person might well imagine that he is not a beinoni at all but a tzaddik, since he is not fighting the war of the desires whatsoever.
And in truth, a person's awareness of his desires comes by way of thought: the desire operates in the heart, and it is thought that reveals to him what is going on in his heart. When the mind is occupied with something else, he simply does not know what is happening in the heart, and therefore he is not contending with the desire at all, since it never enters his awareness. From this he is liable to conclude that he is a tzaddik.
About this the Alter Rebbe says: "אין זו הוכחה כלל שנדחה הרע ממקומו" - "this is no proof at all that the evil has been pushed out of its place." It is no evidence that he has cleaned out his inner self and that there are no desires in him. The absence of war and struggle stems from one thing only: that his mind is occupied with the study of Torah.
"אלא יכול להיות שמהותו ועצמותו הוא בתקפו וגבורתו במקומו בחלל השמאלי" - "rather it may well be that its essence and being remain in full force and strength in their place in the left chamber." The essence of the animal within him, the evil traits that exist in him, stands in full power in its place in the left chamber of the heart, which is the seat of the evil traits. It has not moved a hair's breadth since the day he was born, and all the evil desires in the world exist in him in potential.
And why, in practice, is he unaware of it? "רק שלבושיו, שהם מחשבה דיבור ומעשה של נפש הבהמית, אינן מתלבשים במוח והפה והידים ושאר אברי הגוף" - "only that its garments, which are the thought, speech and action of the animal soul, are not clothed in the brain, the mouth, the hands and the other limbs of the body." The animal does not succeed in expressing itself, and therefore it never comes to expression. It is like a person who is not allowed to speak: he is silent, and one might think he is not here at all, yet he is certainly here. So too the nefesh habahamis exists; it is only that this person has managed to block it from coming to expression, even in thought.
And what is the blocking force? "מפני ה' שנתן שליטה וממשלה למוח על הלב" - "because of G-d, who gave the brain rule and dominion over the heart." The Holy One created man with a nature in which the mind rules the heart, and therefore the mind grants the heart no ability to break out, even though the heart is pounding with its desires. And since with this beinoni "his desire is in the Torah of G-d and he meditates in it day and night," his mind is occupied with learning, and so: "ולכן נפש האלקית שבמוח מושלת בעיר קטנה, אברי הגוף כולם, שיהיו לבוש ומרכבה לשלושה לבושיה שיתלבשו בהם, שהם מחשבה דיבור ומעשה של תרי"ג מצות התורה" - "and therefore the divine soul in the brain rules over the small city, all the limbs of the body, that they should be a garment and a chariot for its three garments which are clothed in them, namely the thought, speech and action of the 613 mitzvos of the Torah."
It emerges that the rule of the nefesh elokis is limited to thought, speech and action alone. It does not succeed in banishing and uprooting the emotions from the heart; the potential remains fully intact, it simply does not manage to break out. "אבל מהותה ועצמותה של נפש האלוקית אין לה שליטה וממשלה על מהותה ועצמותה של נפש הבהמית בבינוני" - "but the essence and being of the divine soul has no rule or dominion over the essence and being of the animal soul in the beinoni." The essence has not changed in the slightest.
The difference between the two levels explained so far:
The first level: a beinoni to whom involuntary thoughts keep rising up in the mind, and who must fight to drive them out of there. And still he is a beinoni, because he succeeds in that battle.
The second level: a beinoni whose mind is occupied with Torah, and therefore nothing rises to his mind at all. He is liable to think that he is already clean of any animal capacity, and about this the Alter Rebbe says that he is not clean in the least: the animal exists in full force, it has simply been given no means of expression.
To summarize: in this section we reviewed the first level of the beinoni, the businessman whose desires rise even to his mind, and who removes them with special assistance from Above because his own will is to overcome. And we learned the second level: one "whose desire is in the Torah of G-d and who meditates in it day and night lishmah," whose mind is occupied with learning so that no stray thought rises to him from the heart. This is no proof that the evil has been pushed out of its place. Rather, the essence and being of the nefesh habahamis stands in full force in the left chamber, and only its garments, thought, speech and deed, are blocked from clothing themselves in the limbs of the body, because of G-d, who gave the brain rule and dominion over the heart. The rule of the nefesh elokis extends to the garments alone, and not to the essence and being of the animal soul.
In the next section we will upgrade the discussion and move up to the third level of the beinoni: a level at which it looks as though the person is entirely clean, and where it is far harder for a person to convince himself that the animal still exists within him. There we will also deal with his state at the time of prayer.