Ch. 3
“Nearly Everybody”: The Inner Life and Struggles of the Jewish Soul
(Based on “Tanya: Collected Discourses of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi”)
by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
__________________________________________
Ch. 3
1.
But there’s a lot more we’d need to learn about our G-dly spirit than the glorious but abstract fact that it's a veritable part of G-d if we’re ever going to apply it to spiritual growth as we’re expected to. So let’s see how RSZ lays out its make-up.
To now he'd been mostly philosophical, but RSZ will now draw upon his Kabbalistic background. As such, when he starts out to depict our G-dly spirit he harkens back to the three aspects of our soul he’d cited before: our nephesh, ruach, and neshama (see 2:4). And he makes the point that that soul is comprised of ten components in all: a cluster of three “mind” elements, and another cluster of seven “heart” elements, which correspond to, align themselves up with, and derive from the ten primordial sephirot [1, 2].
Now, we can’t help but notice that he hadn’t touched on any of that when he discussed our animalistic spirit. He didn’t refer back to the soul en toto with its nephesh, ruach, or neshama aspects, and he also didn’t break it down to its component parts. All he did was point out that it’s rooted in un-G-dliness. This will prove to be significant. But let’s first see what he says about the G-dly spirit’s mind and heart elements.
We’ll try not to get too technical here, so suffice it to say that the G-dly spirit's three mind elements encompass its capacities for “wisdom”, “understanding”, and “knowledge” [3]; and its seven heart elements are its capacities to “give”, “withhold”, “(experience or produce a sense of) beauty”, “endure”, “glory”, “(experience or produce a sense of) foundation”, and to “rule” [4]. And we learn that the mind and heart elements interact with each other in particular ways which we’ll touch on later.
We’ll delve into each of these elements now, then go back to our point about what sets this spirit apart from our animalistic one.
2.
Let’s begin by detailing the G-dly spirit’s mind elements, which is to say, its thinking process [5]. It’s important to know at this point that the mind elements will prove to be the source of and impetus behind the G-dly spirit’s heart elements. Know, however, that this depiction will be rather abstruse, but we’ll continue to do our best to draw all such ideas into our experience.
As we said above, the G-dly spirit’s mind starts off in its capacity for “wisdom”. But don’t misunderstand the term. “Wisdom” in this instance hasn’t anything to do with any knowledge we might have acquired which we’d then apply careful, experience-borne consideration to, as we might expect. It's a supernal phenomenon far beyond that. So in order not to confuse ourselves we’ll use the Hebrew term for it, Chochma, instead [6].
Chochma is the G-dly spirit’s experience of a spontaneous awareness of an abstract, unformed, amorphous notion somewhere in the mind’s background. We’d refer to it as “intuition” and would liken it to the first flash of insight the mind experiences when it hits upon an idea: the sort of loud and vivid albeit ethereal “Ah Ha!” we all know of.
It’s next mind-element, “understanding”, isn’t simply the G-dly spirit’s storehouse of any data, information, or perceptions it might have managed to stow away, as we might think. So we’ll use its Hebrew term in this instance too, Binah.
Binah entails the G-dly spirit's ability to step back and “observe” the aforementioned intuitive flash as a whole; break it down into its component parts; categorize those parts; and to delve into the matter in depth.
Its third element, Da’at (“Knowledge”), involves the G-dly spirit’s ability to take hold of all that, if you will; to subtly co-mingle itself with it all in a most intimate way, and to ultimately assimilate and incorporate all that into its being till it all becomes a veritable part of the G-dly spirit itself [7].
In fact, it’s the quality of Da’at that engenders and connects with all the G-dly spirit’s feelings, as we’ll see.
3.
Now, the G-dly spirit’s “heart elements” are chiefly comprised of Chesed (“giving”) and Gevurah (“withholding”). The other elements cited are said to be offshoots of these, their roots, so we won’t delve into them [8].
Chesed is tied in to the G-dly spirit’s ability to love G-d, while Gevurah refers to its ability to fear Him [9]. The G-dly spirit comes upon those two emotions thusly.
When its “mind” dwells upon G-d’s presence infusing and enveloping everything [10] and on the fact that everything else is of no consequence in the face of that [11], it comes to be agog and abashed in His great and lofty presence (see ch. 43); to be awestruck, startled, and frightened by His Being.
It then starts to fall deeply and intensely in love with G-d as a consequence of that, and to yearn, burn with “a most vehement flame” (Song of Songs 8:6) for Him with a “longing soul” (Psalms 107:9), and to want only to cling onto the Infinite. That’s to say that the G-dly spirit comes to pine away for G-d deeply and passionately, and to “ache to be in and to become undone in G-d’s courtyard” to “cry out to the living G-d“ (Psalms 84:3), to “thirst for ... the living G-d”, and to wonder when it will “ever appear before G-d“ (Psalms 42:3)
That’s quite an astounding and sublime reaction to G-d, needless to say. And it could be said to be the ultimate human longing.
In any event, the combination of these two core traits then foster the other traits by means of the Da’at, as we indicated. For the Da’at enables the G-dly spirit’s “mind” to mull over all we’d represented to the point where the G-dly spirit truly knows for certain of G-d’s reality within. That Da’at level of assurity then has G-dly spirit’s “heart” sense G-d’s reality too and respond to it. RSZ underscores the fact that Da’at is in fact the root of the G-dly spirit’s emotions of love and fear of G-d.
As we’ll see in the course of this work, that sure and fixed combination of mind and heart responding to G-d’s Being is a vitally important aspect of our G-dly spirit.
But know for a certainty that the G-dly soul’s “mind” would have to truly fix itself firmly, consistently (Likutei Biurim), and exclusively upon G-d’s infinite greatness to achieve such levels of fear and love. Otherwise it would have only imagined itself truly loving and fearing Him -- which will prove to be no avail when it comes to changing ourselves (Tanya Mevuar).
4.
Let’s go back now to the fact that RSZ hadn’t touched on any of the intricacies of our animalistic spirit when he introduced it. But in fact, he’ll do just that as well as compare and contrast the two spirits at some length in Ch. 6, below.
We contend first off that RSZ delved into on our animalistic spirit first (albeit minimally) because it manifests itself first in our being, at birth, while the G-dly Spirit doesn’t manifest itself until we’re halachically adult and culpable for our own deeds, at Bar and Bat Mitzvah age (Maskil L’Eitan, vol. 1, pp. 89-90).
But it seems that he granted us greater insight into the G-dly Spirit from the start for two other reasons: first, because he finds its effulgent light and promise far more stunning, lustrous, and exhilarating than anything the animalistic soul could ever hope to experience, as his depictions of it seem to indicate; and second because, as we’ll see, he contends that the animalistic spirit is ancillary to the G-dly Spirit at bottom, since we’re called upon to have the G-dly Spirit overtake it (Maskil L’Eitan, vol. 1, p. 90), and because the G-dly Spirit descended to this world in the first place to purify it (ibid., p. 104).
Let it also be said that another, significant difference between the two is that while the G-dly spirit yearns for G-d, the animalistic spirit yearns for everything but Him.
That having been said, the point to be made though is that we ourselves either access the G-dly spirit’s elements and thus avail ourselves of our natural bias toward G-dliness, or we access our natural bias toward rank animality. The choice is ours. For as we’ll see, both systems work alike-- though they draw from and our nourished by utterly opposite roots.
It would of course do us best to access our G-dly bias and tend toward G-dliness each and every moment, but we often don’t. And the competition between the two spirits is relentless and fierce.
Nonetheless even when we do access our G-dly bias at every turn we may still be less than righteous (though not wrongful, per se); and might yet be existentially “somewhere in between”, as we’ll see.
__________________________________________
Notes:
[1] See 2:3 above which refers to “the hidden depths of our being known Kabbalistically as our ‘nephesh’, ‘ruach’ and ‘neshama’...“, and note 5 there as well.
The truth be known, though, the soul is indivisible. It just *manifests* itself in various ways (Shiurim b’Sefer HaTanya), much the way the One indivisible G-d manifests Himself variously in this world.
[2] RSZ’s audience and readership obviously had a strong working knowledge of the Kabbalistic details touched on here, since he never fully explains them per se. In fact, though, RSZ really doesn’t touch upon many of the lesser-known, more complex, even revolutionary Kabbalistic themes that the Ari and his adherents expanded upon at great length but only upon certain more widely-known and discussed ones, though that’s certainly not meant to besmirch his obvious expertise in Kabbalah.
Be that as it may, the Sephirot cited here are depicted as “endless and limitless” emanations of G-d’s Light which itself “radiates and is engarbed in them” (Iggeret Hakodesh 15), and they act as intermediaries between G-d and this world. They’re termed Chochma, Binah, Da’at, Chesed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.
[3] I.e., Chochma, Binah, and Da’at.
[4] I.e., Chesed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.
[5] Understand that we’re discussing our G-dly spirit's thinking process here in contrast to our animalistic spirit’s. Our *own* thinking process -- our ability to choose between the thoughts of one spirit over another -- joggles between the two at any given moment, depending on our predilection. But we’ll delve into that later on.
[6] The word Chochma is often broken down to read *koach ma* or the “power” to perceive “the inchoate”.
[7] RSZ cites the verse “And Adam ‘knew’ Eve (conjugally)” (Genesis 4:1) as an indication of the kind of co-mingling being alluded to here (though the instance of it here in the text is a decidedly nonphysical one, of course).
[8] The heart’s seven qualities are actually laid out as two clusters of three qualities each (Cluster 1 being comprised of “giving”, “withholding”, and “beauty”; and Cluster 2 including “endurance”, “glory”, and “foundation”), along with a single quality (“rule”) that serves as the sum and substance, as well as a repository, of the other six.
It’s also pointed out that the clusters themselves are each comprised of two opposite though complimentary qualities (thesis and antithesis) with a third one that evenly blends and harmonizes the two (synthesis). As such, “giving” and “withholding” are harmonized by “beauty” (i.e., which is rooted in balance); and “endurance” and “glory” are harmonized by “foundation” (i.e., which is rooted in permanence).
[9] The vitally prominent notions of the love and fear of G-d will be discussed in detail in ch’s 9, 19, and 41-42 below. Suffice it to say for now that we ourselves experience fear (or “awe” as it’s also understood) followed by love when we’re thunderstruck by someone who’s more exalted than we whom we then want to draw close to (see Likut Perushim, Maareh Mekomot, p. 112).
[10] These often reiterated notions of "infusing" and "envloping" are portrayed as G-d “filling (and...) encompassing all worlds” (Zohar 3:225a) respectively. The former is usually taken to refer to G-d’s immanence and the latter to His transcendence. Both together refer to His All-Presence. See next note.
[11] The implication of this is that at bottom G-d is *everywhere*. There's also the notion that by extension, the point at which "inside" touches "outside" and "outside" touches "inside" comes to be so minute that the notions of inside and outside become irrelevant, and “everything comes to be considered naught in His presence” (Zohar 1:11b) and of no consequence-- null and void, for all intents and purposes (see Sha'ar HaYichud v’He’emunah, ch. 7).
(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
(Based on “Tanya: Collected Discourses of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi”)
by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
__________________________________________
Ch. 3
1.
But there’s a lot more we’d need to learn about our G-dly spirit than the glorious but abstract fact that it's a veritable part of G-d if we’re ever going to apply it to spiritual growth as we’re expected to. So let’s see how RSZ lays out its make-up.
To now he'd been mostly philosophical, but RSZ will now draw upon his Kabbalistic background. As such, when he starts out to depict our G-dly spirit he harkens back to the three aspects of our soul he’d cited before: our nephesh, ruach, and neshama (see 2:4). And he makes the point that that soul is comprised of ten components in all: a cluster of three “mind” elements, and another cluster of seven “heart” elements, which correspond to, align themselves up with, and derive from the ten primordial sephirot [1, 2].
Now, we can’t help but notice that he hadn’t touched on any of that when he discussed our animalistic spirit. He didn’t refer back to the soul en toto with its nephesh, ruach, or neshama aspects, and he also didn’t break it down to its component parts. All he did was point out that it’s rooted in un-G-dliness. This will prove to be significant. But let’s first see what he says about the G-dly spirit’s mind and heart elements.
We’ll try not to get too technical here, so suffice it to say that the G-dly spirit's three mind elements encompass its capacities for “wisdom”, “understanding”, and “knowledge” [3]; and its seven heart elements are its capacities to “give”, “withhold”, “(experience or produce a sense of) beauty”, “endure”, “glory”, “(experience or produce a sense of) foundation”, and to “rule” [4]. And we learn that the mind and heart elements interact with each other in particular ways which we’ll touch on later.
We’ll delve into each of these elements now, then go back to our point about what sets this spirit apart from our animalistic one.
2.
Let’s begin by detailing the G-dly spirit’s mind elements, which is to say, its thinking process [5]. It’s important to know at this point that the mind elements will prove to be the source of and impetus behind the G-dly spirit’s heart elements. Know, however, that this depiction will be rather abstruse, but we’ll continue to do our best to draw all such ideas into our experience.
As we said above, the G-dly spirit’s mind starts off in its capacity for “wisdom”. But don’t misunderstand the term. “Wisdom” in this instance hasn’t anything to do with any knowledge we might have acquired which we’d then apply careful, experience-borne consideration to, as we might expect. It's a supernal phenomenon far beyond that. So in order not to confuse ourselves we’ll use the Hebrew term for it, Chochma, instead [6].
Chochma is the G-dly spirit’s experience of a spontaneous awareness of an abstract, unformed, amorphous notion somewhere in the mind’s background. We’d refer to it as “intuition” and would liken it to the first flash of insight the mind experiences when it hits upon an idea: the sort of loud and vivid albeit ethereal “Ah Ha!” we all know of.
It’s next mind-element, “understanding”, isn’t simply the G-dly spirit’s storehouse of any data, information, or perceptions it might have managed to stow away, as we might think. So we’ll use its Hebrew term in this instance too, Binah.
Binah entails the G-dly spirit's ability to step back and “observe” the aforementioned intuitive flash as a whole; break it down into its component parts; categorize those parts; and to delve into the matter in depth.
Its third element, Da’at (“Knowledge”), involves the G-dly spirit’s ability to take hold of all that, if you will; to subtly co-mingle itself with it all in a most intimate way, and to ultimately assimilate and incorporate all that into its being till it all becomes a veritable part of the G-dly spirit itself [7].
In fact, it’s the quality of Da’at that engenders and connects with all the G-dly spirit’s feelings, as we’ll see.
3.
Now, the G-dly spirit’s “heart elements” are chiefly comprised of Chesed (“giving”) and Gevurah (“withholding”). The other elements cited are said to be offshoots of these, their roots, so we won’t delve into them [8].
Chesed is tied in to the G-dly spirit’s ability to love G-d, while Gevurah refers to its ability to fear Him [9]. The G-dly spirit comes upon those two emotions thusly.
When its “mind” dwells upon G-d’s presence infusing and enveloping everything [10] and on the fact that everything else is of no consequence in the face of that [11], it comes to be agog and abashed in His great and lofty presence (see ch. 43); to be awestruck, startled, and frightened by His Being.
It then starts to fall deeply and intensely in love with G-d as a consequence of that, and to yearn, burn with “a most vehement flame” (Song of Songs 8:6) for Him with a “longing soul” (Psalms 107:9), and to want only to cling onto the Infinite. That’s to say that the G-dly spirit comes to pine away for G-d deeply and passionately, and to “ache to be in and to become undone in G-d’s courtyard” to “cry out to the living G-d“ (Psalms 84:3), to “thirst for ... the living G-d”, and to wonder when it will “ever appear before G-d“ (Psalms 42:3)
That’s quite an astounding and sublime reaction to G-d, needless to say. And it could be said to be the ultimate human longing.
In any event, the combination of these two core traits then foster the other traits by means of the Da’at, as we indicated. For the Da’at enables the G-dly spirit’s “mind” to mull over all we’d represented to the point where the G-dly spirit truly knows for certain of G-d’s reality within. That Da’at level of assurity then has G-dly spirit’s “heart” sense G-d’s reality too and respond to it. RSZ underscores the fact that Da’at is in fact the root of the G-dly spirit’s emotions of love and fear of G-d.
As we’ll see in the course of this work, that sure and fixed combination of mind and heart responding to G-d’s Being is a vitally important aspect of our G-dly spirit.
But know for a certainty that the G-dly soul’s “mind” would have to truly fix itself firmly, consistently (Likutei Biurim), and exclusively upon G-d’s infinite greatness to achieve such levels of fear and love. Otherwise it would have only imagined itself truly loving and fearing Him -- which will prove to be no avail when it comes to changing ourselves (Tanya Mevuar).
4.
Let’s go back now to the fact that RSZ hadn’t touched on any of the intricacies of our animalistic spirit when he introduced it. But in fact, he’ll do just that as well as compare and contrast the two spirits at some length in Ch. 6, below.
We contend first off that RSZ delved into on our animalistic spirit first (albeit minimally) because it manifests itself first in our being, at birth, while the G-dly Spirit doesn’t manifest itself until we’re halachically adult and culpable for our own deeds, at Bar and Bat Mitzvah age (Maskil L’Eitan, vol. 1, pp. 89-90).
But it seems that he granted us greater insight into the G-dly Spirit from the start for two other reasons: first, because he finds its effulgent light and promise far more stunning, lustrous, and exhilarating than anything the animalistic soul could ever hope to experience, as his depictions of it seem to indicate; and second because, as we’ll see, he contends that the animalistic spirit is ancillary to the G-dly Spirit at bottom, since we’re called upon to have the G-dly Spirit overtake it (Maskil L’Eitan, vol. 1, p. 90), and because the G-dly Spirit descended to this world in the first place to purify it (ibid., p. 104).
Let it also be said that another, significant difference between the two is that while the G-dly spirit yearns for G-d, the animalistic spirit yearns for everything but Him.
That having been said, the point to be made though is that we ourselves either access the G-dly spirit’s elements and thus avail ourselves of our natural bias toward G-dliness, or we access our natural bias toward rank animality. The choice is ours. For as we’ll see, both systems work alike-- though they draw from and our nourished by utterly opposite roots.
It would of course do us best to access our G-dly bias and tend toward G-dliness each and every moment, but we often don’t. And the competition between the two spirits is relentless and fierce.
Nonetheless even when we do access our G-dly bias at every turn we may still be less than righteous (though not wrongful, per se); and might yet be existentially “somewhere in between”, as we’ll see.
__________________________________________
Notes:
[1] See 2:3 above which refers to “the hidden depths of our being known Kabbalistically as our ‘nephesh’, ‘ruach’ and ‘neshama’...“, and note 5 there as well.
The truth be known, though, the soul is indivisible. It just *manifests* itself in various ways (Shiurim b’Sefer HaTanya), much the way the One indivisible G-d manifests Himself variously in this world.
[2] RSZ’s audience and readership obviously had a strong working knowledge of the Kabbalistic details touched on here, since he never fully explains them per se. In fact, though, RSZ really doesn’t touch upon many of the lesser-known, more complex, even revolutionary Kabbalistic themes that the Ari and his adherents expanded upon at great length but only upon certain more widely-known and discussed ones, though that’s certainly not meant to besmirch his obvious expertise in Kabbalah.
Be that as it may, the Sephirot cited here are depicted as “endless and limitless” emanations of G-d’s Light which itself “radiates and is engarbed in them” (Iggeret Hakodesh 15), and they act as intermediaries between G-d and this world. They’re termed Chochma, Binah, Da’at, Chesed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.
[3] I.e., Chochma, Binah, and Da’at.
[4] I.e., Chesed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.
[5] Understand that we’re discussing our G-dly spirit's thinking process here in contrast to our animalistic spirit’s. Our *own* thinking process -- our ability to choose between the thoughts of one spirit over another -- joggles between the two at any given moment, depending on our predilection. But we’ll delve into that later on.
[6] The word Chochma is often broken down to read *koach ma* or the “power” to perceive “the inchoate”.
[7] RSZ cites the verse “And Adam ‘knew’ Eve (conjugally)” (Genesis 4:1) as an indication of the kind of co-mingling being alluded to here (though the instance of it here in the text is a decidedly nonphysical one, of course).
[8] The heart’s seven qualities are actually laid out as two clusters of three qualities each (Cluster 1 being comprised of “giving”, “withholding”, and “beauty”; and Cluster 2 including “endurance”, “glory”, and “foundation”), along with a single quality (“rule”) that serves as the sum and substance, as well as a repository, of the other six.
It’s also pointed out that the clusters themselves are each comprised of two opposite though complimentary qualities (thesis and antithesis) with a third one that evenly blends and harmonizes the two (synthesis). As such, “giving” and “withholding” are harmonized by “beauty” (i.e., which is rooted in balance); and “endurance” and “glory” are harmonized by “foundation” (i.e., which is rooted in permanence).
[9] The vitally prominent notions of the love and fear of G-d will be discussed in detail in ch’s 9, 19, and 41-42 below. Suffice it to say for now that we ourselves experience fear (or “awe” as it’s also understood) followed by love when we’re thunderstruck by someone who’s more exalted than we whom we then want to draw close to (see Likut Perushim, Maareh Mekomot, p. 112).
[10] These often reiterated notions of "infusing" and "envloping" are portrayed as G-d “filling (and...) encompassing all worlds” (Zohar 3:225a) respectively. The former is usually taken to refer to G-d’s immanence and the latter to His transcendence. Both together refer to His All-Presence. See next note.
[11] The implication of this is that at bottom G-d is *everywhere*. There's also the notion that by extension, the point at which "inside" touches "outside" and "outside" touches "inside" comes to be so minute that the notions of inside and outside become irrelevant, and “everything comes to be considered naught in His presence” (Zohar 1:11b) and of no consequence-- null and void, for all intents and purposes (see Sha'ar HaYichud v’He’emunah, ch. 7).
(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
posted by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman | 8:18 AM
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