Chapter 9 - Part One

00:00 So, with that, we’ll study chapter 9 of Tanya. The Alter Rebbe says here: “Now, the dwelling place of the animal soul, which comes from kelipas nogah, in every Jew is in the heart, in its left chamber, which is filled with blood.” Let’s give a little introduction so we understand what we’re doing. What is the Alter Rebbe addressing here in chapter 9? What is the point of this chapter? Chapter 9 is a very, very fundamental chapter in Tanya as a whole. You could say that about every chapter of Tanya, but in a straightforward sense, chapter 9 really is fundamental to the book. Why? In the first eight chapters, the Alter Rebbe explained how a person is structured—how a Jew is made up. He explained that every Jew has two souls, not just one: a G-dly soul and an animal soul. And he explained what each one is made up of. The G-dly soul has the essence of the soul; then there are its ten sefiros, its intellect and emotions; and then its garments of thought, speech, and action. The matter of Torah and mitzvos is found in those garments. The Alter Rebbe explained that Torah and mitzvos are the main thing, the ultimate purpose. That is why the garments are higher than the soul itself: Torah and mitzvos are the ultimate purpose, connecting a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and so on. That is the side of holiness. On the other hand, in chapter 6 the Alter Rebbe began explaining the other side, the animal soul. The animal soul, too, has its essential nature: it is kelipah and the sitra achra, which is not nullified to G-dliness. It has a sense of self; it lacks that self-nullification—

01:47 it sees itself as an entity. Then there are the animal soul’s intellect and emotions, and its garments: thought, speech, and action involving forbidden things. There the Alter Rebbe went into the whole subject of kelipas nogah and the three impure kelipos. He explained all of this in the first eight chapters. So up to now, what we know is the structure, the makeup—the reality, the picture. We have the picture of how the G-dly soul is structured and how the animal soul is structured, what the G-dly soul has and what the animal soul has. After all that comes chapter 9. Now the Alter Rebbe comes to explain the battle. That is the point of chapter 9: the battle. This is where the battle begins. In fact, Tanya is a book about battle. The whole point of Tanya is that the Alter Rebbe comes to explain to us how to be a beinoni, and that involves a battle. To understand this battle, we need to understand who is fighting whom, the details of the battle, and what strengths we have to win it. All of that begins in chapter 9. That is why I said chapter 9 is so fundamental to Tanya. Tanya is primarily about the battle the Alter Rebbe comes to explain. So much so that the Frierdiker Rebbe writes that chassidim used to call Tanya “a book of battles.” That is what some chassidim called it. Tanya explains to a Jew, to a person, how we fight the battle and how to win it. So chapter 9 is the beginning of the battle between the two souls. Okay, now let’s read the words of Tanya inside. The Alter Rebbe says: “Now…” Sorry. “Now, the dwelling place of the animal soul, which comes from kelipas nogah, in every Jew is in the heart.” The Alter Rebbe now

03:49 begins by telling us where the animal soul is and where the G-dly soul is—where each one’s primary, central dwelling place is. Each of the two souls has a central place that serves as its center and from which it operates. So the animal soul’s center is in the heart, and specifically in its left chamber. Before we get into the details, I want to explain something. It’s very interesting. At first glance, the Alter Rebbe seems to be explaining a technical matter: where each thing is located. The animal soul is here; the G-dly soul is there. It sounds as though we’re learning biology. Why should I care where it is? Talk about the battle. Explain what we need to do. What do I gain from knowing that one is here and the other is there? But from what we’re about to learn, we’ll understand that when we know where the center, the primary dwelling place, of each soul is, we can understand the true nature of the battle. If you know the animal soul’s dwelling place, you know the nature of the animal soul. And if we know the G-dly soul’s dwelling place, we understand its nature. That itself will help us understand the difference between the G-dly soul and the animal soul, as well as give us the strength to overcome the animal soul. That is why the Alter Rebbe explains these details. So, regarding the animal soul, where does the Alter Rebbe say its center is? Where is it primarily found? In the heart—specifically, in the left chamber, which is filled with blood. “And it is written, ‘For the blood is the soul.’” That means… Well, to understand this, we need to know a little about what goes on in the human body. It’s not as though we’ve studied all that

05:50 much biology. What do you call it? How the human body is structured. But it’s known that the heart has two parts. One part of the heart is the source of the blood: the left side. There is always a certain amount of blood there, a revi’is of blood in the language of the Gemara. Blood is present there, and from there it sends blood everywhere, to all the organs. The right side of the heart has blood too. Although, as we’ll see in a moment, the Alter Rebbe says that it “has no blood.” The Rebbe explains in letters that, G-d forbid, this does not mean it literally has no blood. That is not the reality. The heart has blood on all sides. Rather, the meaning is that the left side is responsible for sending out the blood. It is the source of the blood; that is where the blood’s heat is. All the fervor, energy, fire, and warmth of the blood—even in the physical sense, the heating of the blood—comes from the left side. On the right side, what there is primarily is what they call in the local language oxygen. How do you say it in Hebrew? Chamtzan? I’ve already forgotten Hebrew. [unclear] So, that is more the air component, the life-breath, which, on the contrary, cools the blood. For a person to live, there constantly have to be two movements. There is warmth: the body needs to be warm. But the body also needs coolness. You cannot have just one side. If a person becomes completely cold, [unclear], they cannot live. But if the blood gets too hot, they cannot live either. Neither extreme works, physically, of course; and spiritually, too, there has to be a certain balance, as they say. There has to be a certain

07:57 Something in the middle, a blending that gives us life—and that is in the heart, its two sides. The difference between the left side and the right side: the left side is responsible for the boiling of the blood, so it is the main place of the blood, because blood is primarily about heat and intensity. The right side is responsible for bringing the life spirit, for quieting and calming things, for creating balance and moderation, so that the blood is not all caught up in that intensity. Those are the two sides, and the Alter Rebbe will soon explain why one side is associated with the animal soul and the other with the G-dly soul. So where is the animal soul? On the left side, the side of the boiling blood. He writes, “For the blood is the soul.” That refers to the animal soul. Therefore, all desires, boasting, anger, and the like are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the body. So we are talking about negative middos. In this chapter, the Alter Rebbe is referring back to what he said in chapter 1. In chapter 1, the Alter Rebbe said that there are the—how did the Alter Rebbe put it?—the elements. There are four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. And there are negative middos. Some negative middos come from the element of water: desires. Some come from the element of air: boasting. Boasting is a kind of pride without any reason. A person simply boasts, without having any reason to—that is air. And pride and anger come from the element of fire. So the Alter Rebbe gives three examples of middos, from the three elements of water, air, and fire. Why does the Alter Rebbe bring these three? One could say it is connected to the three lines. When we speak about middos, they are primarily arranged in three lines: the right line, the left line, and the middle line. Desire is connected with the right

10:11 line. That is chesed, desire, the element of water. Boasting is the middle line. Air is the middle line—tiferes, tiferes of kelipah, yes? Boasting that comes from kelipah. Then anger is gevurah; it belongs to the left side. So there is right, left, and middle. That would seem to be why the Alter Rebbe brings these three examples. Why does he not also bring an example from the element of earth? Because earth is not really a middah. Right, left, and middle—chesed, gevurah, and tiferes—are middos. There are middos that belong to the right line, middos that belong to the left line, and middos of the middle line. But earth is not a middah; earth is inanimate. What comes from the element of earth? Sadness and laziness. Sadness and laziness are not middos. Sadness and laziness are, in effect, a kind of death. A person is in a state where he is not alive. When a person is sad, he is not alive; he is sad, spiritually dead, so to speak. He has no vitality, nothing. The same is true of laziness, of heaviness. Earth is not a middah; it is not that kind of active quality. So the Alter Rebbe does not even bring it here. He brings only those things connected with middos. He wants to tell us that the heart, the left chamber, has this boiling intensity and these negative qualities associated with the animal soul, and that within them there are three lines: desire on the right line, boasting on the middle line, and anger on the left line. “And from the heart they spread throughout the body.” The heart is the center, but of course the animal soul affects the entire person. So the middos spread throughout the body, “and also rise to the brain in the head, to think and contemplate.” The animal soul

12:12 is not only in the heart; it also has the ability to act in the brain. In other words, where is the animal soul’s central place? In the middos of the heart. The animal soul is primarily middos; that is its nature. It is an animal, and the animal soul is essentially middos. But it also uses the intellect to strengthen those middos. That is what “and also rises to the brain in the head” means. What does it primarily do? Middos. What is the animal soul primarily? It is an animal. The essence of the animal soul is the boiling of the blood, desires, wants—that is its nature. But the soul also rises to the intellect to attain what those middos want. We see something like this even in an animal. An animal is an animal; it is driven by desire. It wants to eat, wants to sleep, wants to enjoy itself. Yet an animal also has knowledge: “An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s trough.” An animal has its own kind of knowledge. It knows where its food is and how to get it. Every living creature has the intelligence it has acquired to get what it needs, but that is not pure intellect. It is intellect serving its desire. The same is true of the animal soul. Its essential nature is selfhood, middos, desire, but it also rises to the brain to use the intellect to get what it wants. “Just as blood has its source in the heart, and from the heart spreads to all the limbs, and also rises to the brain in the head.” As we have said—and we will come to the blood—the animal soul is in the left chamber, the place of the blood. So the blood,

14:12 “the blood is the soul,” also serves as an analogy for this point. When we turn to the blood, we say the same thing. Where is the blood? Certainly, blood is throughout the body; it travels through all the limbs. But it has a center. The heart is its center. As we said, that is where the revi’is of blood upon which life depends is found, and where there is warmth and boiling intensity. The heart sends blood to all the limbs, and it spreads throughout the body, including the brain. The brain, too, needs blood to survive. Nevertheless, the center is in the heart. It is the same with the animal soul: its center is in the heart. Its primary concern is middos, yet it acts throughout all the limbs of the body and also rises to the brain in the head. That is as far as the animal soul is concerned. “But the dwelling place of the G-dly soul is in the brain in the head.” In contrast, the G-dly soul is the opposite. When we speak about the G-dly soul, where does the Alter Rebbe say its center is? The G-dly soul begins in the brain. Its primary place is the brain in the head, “and from there it spreads to all the limbs.” From the brain it acts throughout the body, “and also in the heart, in the right chamber, which contains no blood. As it is written, ‘The heart of a wise man is to his right.’” Okay, as we said earlier, “the right chamber, which contains no blood” does not mean that it has literally no blood. It has no blood of its own; it is not the place of the blood. Certainly blood reaches it—as we said, all the limbs need blood to live—but the right chamber of the heart is not a place of blood. It is the place of the life spirit. So what is the Alter Rebbe saying? The Alter Rebbe is giving us a fundamental point for understanding the difference between the G-dly soul

16:24 and the animal soul. The main difference is that the G-dly soul is essentially heart, and the animal soul—sorry, the animal soul is essentially heart, while the G-dly soul is essentially brain. That is one distinction. The second is that even within the heart, the animal soul is on the left side and the G-dly soul is on the right side. What does that mean? What does it mean for us in our avodah? It tells us something very fundamental about life. A Jew needs to know what exactly the difference is between the G-dly soul and the animal soul. There is an essential difference between them, and it is the difference between the brain and the heart. What is the essential difference between the brain and the heart? Simply put, the heart, by its nature, is centered on the self. The heart says: I love, I hate. This feels good to me; this feels bad to me. I feel. That is the heart’s defining quality. In other words, what is at the center of the heart? The “I.” It may be a better “I” or a worse “I,” but in practice the heart’s essential quality is selfhood: “I.” The brain is the opposite. Its nature is not founded on “I.” If it is about “I,” it is not intellect. We know that genuine intellect cannot be built on how I want things to be. If it is about what I want, then it is not intellect; it is arbitrary. A person wants to reach a particular conclusion—then how is that intellect? It is not intellect. Pure intellect is objective. It searches for the truth. Intellect searches for the truth. It is ready to set itself aside, to give up its own sense of self. It wants to know what the truth is. Tell me

18:36 How things should be. So it turns out that the difference between intellect and emotions, between the mind and the heart, is a fundamental difference. Intellect seeks the truth; emotions seek the self. And that is essentially the difference between the G-dly soul and the animal soul. The G-dly soul wants truth. It is prepared to set itself aside, to give up its egotism, to give up whatever it takes for the sake of truth. It seeks the truth, and that is why the G-dly soul’s primary place is in the mind. The animal soul, by its very nature, is a sense of self: “I.” What people say in Hebrew today is, “I feel like it.” Yes, “I feel like it.” This is what I want; I feel like it; I’m in the mood for it. Ah, is it good or not good? Is it true? That’s not what interests me. The sense of self is its reality. And to this he adds another point: even within the heart itself, there is a difference between the right chamber and the left chamber. The left chamber is all about fervor. Fervor means warmth, excitement, fire. There is nothing necessarily genuine about it. Excitement is like when you see a little child get excited about a game. Fine, he’s excited. You can see, though, that it isn’t lasting. A moment later he forgets about it. A little child gets angry, and a second later he’s friends again, because none of it is serious or deeply felt; it’s outward excitement. The right chamber, by contrast, is not about excitement. There you find a settled spirit, composure, and moderation. A person governed by intellect may not have outward excitement even in his emotions, but what he feels is genuine. What he loves, he loves; he truly loves it. Nothing will change that. These are genuine, inner matters, and that is why there is composure and moderation there. At any rate,

20:27 the fundamental point the Alter Rebbe is teaching us is the difference between the G-dly soul and the animal soul in where each one dwells. The G-dly soul is located in the mind and reaches all the limbs as well, but in the heart, it is in the right chamber. The animal soul, by contrast, dwells primarily in the heart, and from the heart it extends to the body. It is in the left chamber, and from there it acts throughout all the limbs, but its central place is the heart. And here we come to the famous story of Reb Kushil Lapler. Everyone knows it. I won’t go into it at length, but there is the famous story that Reb Kushil Lapler came to the Alter Rebbe. He was a simple man, and he came to the Alter Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe then spoke about what is written here in Tanya. This was before Tanya had been published; the Alter Rebbe taught its contents in maamarim. The Alter Rebbe said that the animal soul is in the left chamber and the G-dly soul is in the right chamber. Then came the story of Reb Kushil Lapler going in for yechidus. They wouldn’t let him in, so he went through the window and came in to the Alter Rebbe in the middle of davening. He cried out, “Rebbe, cut out my left side!”—as though the Rebbe could remove his animal soul. The Alter Rebbe then said, “And You give life to them all.” Reb Kushil Lapler then received the spiritual influence the Alter Rebbe gave him, and through that he became the great chossid Reb Kushil Lapler. As the Frierdiker Rebbe describes Reb Kushil Lapler in a sicha, those words the Alter Rebbe said about the heart having two sides were what made Reb Kushil Lapler who he became. He later became one of the great chassidim—so much so that the Mitteler Rebbe wrote Imrei Binah for him, and so on, as is well known.