In the previous section we examined the ten impure faculties of the nefesh habahamis, the animal soul, and how intellect gives birth to emotion on the opposite side as well. We open this section with a question that emerged from that discussion: where in a person is the intellect situated, and how does it relate to thought?
Where intellect and thought are located in a person:
Thought is nothing more than a levush, a garment, and like any garment it goes only where the person directs it. Intellect, by contrast, is objective by its very nature: it wants to know a thing as it truly is, and it has no prior leaning in one direction or the other.
When personal feeling and self interest get mixed into the intellect, the intellect becomes distorted. In the words of the Torah: "כי השוחד יעוור עיני חכמים" ("for the bribe blinds the eyes of the wise") - a person who takes a bribe no longer weighs matters correctly. But when the intellect is taken in its purity, without bribery and without the pull of emotion, it rules the truth for what it is. A person may love a certain thing or hate it, and nonetheless understand with his mind that the thing is correct: he does not love it personally, and yet he recognizes that it is right.
It emerges that the intellect is a center unto itself within a person, and its seat is in the brain, while the seat of emotion is in the heart. The question is who rules over whom:
In the nefesh haElokis, the G-dly soul: the order is the order of "melech" (king) - moach, lev, koved: brain, heart, liver. The brain is on top, and it directs the heart.
In the nefesh habahamis: the order is inverted to "lemech" - lev, moach, koved: heart, brain, liver. The heart rules over the brain.
The parallel to chapter 4: the power of the levushim:
Until this point, what we have seen has been a kind of summary of chapter 3, only on the negative side: chapter 3 explained how intellect gives birth to emotion on the side of kedusha, and here, in a few brief lines, the same thing is explained on the side of the nefesh habahamis. From here on the Alter Rebbe moves to the parallel of chapter 4.
The great novelty of chapter 4 was not the mere existence of the levushim, but that their level is higher than the level of the soul itself: the garments lift the neshama to a rung higher than what it is on its own. On the side of the klipah it works exactly the same way, only in the opposite direction: once the levushim go into action, they bring the soul down to a rung lower than what it is on its own. The power of the levushim is an enormous power: on the side of kedusha it elevates a person, and on the side of klipah it drags him down and debases him.
These ten impure faculties, the ten levels explained above, "כשאדם מחשב בהן או מדבר או עושה" ("when a person thinks with them, or speaks, or acts") - meaning when he activates his garments and pours the middos of the animal soul into them - then the thought in his brain, the speech in his mouth and the power of action in his hands and other limbs are called "לבושי מסאבו", impure garments. Just as on the side of kedusha the garments are called holy garments, so here: the ten powers of the animal soul have clothed themselves in the three levushim and made them impure.
One set of garments:
Here it is worth noticing a point that is the foundation for understanding what a beinoni is: a person has two "sets" of intellect and emotions, one set of kedusha and one set of tumah, but he has only one set of levushim. He does not have two mouths, one for words of holiness and one for other things; he does not have two sets of hands, and he does not have two thoughts. Thought, speech and action are one, and the only question is who will rule over these garments.
Kedusha and klipah: definition and lack of definition:
The subject of chapters 6 and 7 is the concept of "klipah". There is kedusha, which we have dealt with until now, and there is the opposite of kedusha.
The fundamental difference between them is this: kedusha has a definition, and klipah has no definition. Kedusha is something that contains bittul to Elokus, self nullification before G-dliness: the Divine will, the purpose, Torah and mitzvos, six hundred and thirteen detailed mitzvos; everything is defined and enumerated under the heading "kedusha". The opposite of kedusha, by contrast, has no definition and no "Shulchan Aruch" of its own: whatever is not kedusha is automatically on the other side. There is no such thing as "parve".
From this an obvious question arises: what about ordinary, mundane matters? This is the way every person looks at things before he has learned Tanya, and in the very next lines a genuine revolution is about to take place in that view. Mundane matters too are "klipah".
Nevertheless, there is a certain bit of good news here, a "lesser of two evils", because within the side of klipah itself there are levels:
Klipas nogah: the very fact that it is klipah means that it is not kedusha, so it is a "minus"; but it is only "one minus", and there is also a plus side to it, which is why it is called "nogah", from the word for light (glow) - it has the capacity, when handled properly, to cross over into the realm of kedusha.
The three completely impure klipos: a lower level, which at present has no possibility of crossing over to the side of kedusha. Their rectification is reserved for the future era alone.
On the other side, within kedusha itself there are endless levels, since Elokus is infinite.
How the garments bring the soul down:
This introduction is needed in order to understand what the Alter Rebbe is saying. On the side of kedusha we learned that the garments have the power to raise the soul far above what it is on its own. And when a person does something that is not good, he drags the soul downward. Which soul are we speaking about? The nefesh habahamis, whose level in its essence is klipas nogah, as we learned in chapter 1. When a person thinks, speaks or acts improperly, he brings it down to a lower level, to the three impure klipos.
A practical example: eating
Eating that belongs to the realm of kedusha: a person eating at a seudas mitzvah, at a Shabbos meal, or eating from the meat of a korban in the Beis Hamikdash; and likewise someone eating an ordinary meal on a weekday, but eating l'shem Shamayim, for the sake of Heaven, so that he will have the strength to serve Hashem.
Eating that belongs to the three impure klipos: a person eating purely for the sake of his appetite, whose animality is running wild and who is settling his craving with food. Even if the food is entirely kosher and under the most meticulous hechsher, this eating belongs to the three impure klipos. Why? That is precisely the heart of the matter that the chapter is driving at, and we will deal with it below.
Eating that is klipas nogah: a person who eats not out of craving, but simply because he wants to live and does not want to die, and for that he has to eat. He is not eating for the sake of Heaven, not so that his body should be healthy and he should be able to get up in the morning to daven and concentrate properly, but simply in order to stay alive. This is not kedusha, but it is also not the three impure klipos: this is klipas nogah.
The general rule: every act a person does, if it is an act of kedusha it elevates the soul, and if it is not of kedusha it lowers it. A person whose animal soul stands on the level of klipas nogah, and who does an act that belongs to the three impure klipos, such as eating out of craving or transgressing one of the mitzvos lo saaseh, has by that act lowered his soul to a rung beneath it.
There is no need for any transitional stage: every single second the choice is in a person's hands to move in this direction or in that one.
And how does one cross over to the other side?
The way is to eat l'shem Shamayim. This does not mean making declarations and putting up large signs in the street; it means an inner awareness: to say the bracha first, and to feel and to think while doing it what this eating or drinking is for. In that way even a cup of water drunk in the middle of the shiur can belong to the realm of kedusha.
To summarize: in this section we learned that the intellect is objective by nature and its place is in the brain, while thought is only a garment that follows whoever directs it; we saw the order of "moach, lev, koved" in the G-dly soul as against the heart's rule over the brain in the animal soul. We looked at the parallel to chapter 4: just as the levushim raise the soul above its own level on the side of kedusha, so do they drag it down on the side of klipah, where they are called "impure garments", and that a person has two 'sets' of soul powers but only one 'set' of garments. We also learned the definition of kedusha, and that whatever is not that belongs to klipah; that within klipah itself there are levels, klipas nogah which has the potential to rise, and the three impure klipos which have no remedy in the present; and we illustrated all three levels through eating.
In the next section we will expand on the revolution contained in these words: why eating that is entirely kosher, when it is done out of craving, belongs to the three impure klipos, and how one can elevate mundane activities into the realm of kedusha.