QUESTION:
Hakarah, D’veykus, T’mimus
ANSWER:
ah, D’veykus, T’mimus
If a person has a soul root in “Asiyah” (action) does he also need to serve Hashem with this concept of hakarah/recognition?
A: You’re asking a very good question. The closer a person is to Asiyah/action, certainly he does more practical action and work. But even in the world of action that we live on, we can see that even people who are very action-oriented are able to act according to their unique strengths. Even goyim are able to figure out what they’re unique in and what’s appropriate for them to do personally. They find work and jobs based on understanding what their personal strengths are, from recognizing themselves properly. In contrast to this, others will run from one job to another, and they can’t stay put. So even in the world of practical action, there is a need to recognize oneself properly, in order to be successful. Understandably, the more spiritual a person is, the more he uses his power of recognition not only when it comes to practical action, but for higher purposes. But even in the world of total practical action, we can see how some people can manage a house better and be organized, while others don’t know the first thing about managing a house. The ability of recognition can be used on many different levels, whether in the spiritual or in the world of practical action. In either case, one can know clearly where he stands.
Q: The purpose of serving Hashem is d’veykus, “To cling to Him”, and this seems to be when one feels Hashem’s light, when he feels that bond. It seems to be an emotional thing. It doesn’t sound like a “recognition”…
A: Here is an example from the physical world to help us understand something about a spiritual concept. A person has a baby. He loves the baby, hugs him, etc. The baby though has nothing unique about him. He doesn’t even express anything towards the parents. Yet they still love him and show affection towards him. They are connected to him. The baby gets bigger and slowly he makes expressions, and we begin to see the child’s personality. When the parents now love him and hug him, it’s the same hug as before, but before when they hugged him, they didn’t recognize him, and now when they hug him, they recognize their child better. They loved him strongly right when he was born, even before they recognized his personality, but their love for their child grows stronger with the more the child develops. They recognize him better, and they feel a deeper connection to their child. The more we recognize, the more we connect.
Now here’s a more spiritual example. Two people are learning Torah. One of them learns 7 pages of Gemara a day and reviews it too. He’s connected to his learning. Another person learns Torah by clarifying each thing he learns, becoming clear about each matter, beginning from the psukim in the Torah about the matter all the way down to the halachah l’maaseh. These 2 people are both connected to their Torah learning, but whose connection is stronger? The one who’s clearer about his learning. The one who is learning 7 pages of Gemara has a desire to learn Torah, and that certainly connects him to his learning, but his connection isn’t yet subtle because he hasn’t yet become clear about what he learns. The one whose clearer about what he has learned will feel a subtler connection to his Torah learning.
Q: So what’s the purpose to reach – d’veykus in Hashem, or hakarah of Hashem?
A: Very good question! Now that we just explained that hakarah brings d’veykus, you are asking what the goal is, hakarah or d’veykus. Right now you are viewing hakarah as some external form of connecting to Hashem and you are viewing d’veykus as something else, and therefore you are asking right now if the main thing is d’veykus or hakarah.
Q: That’s because I understand d’veykus to be more of an emotional bond with Hashem, to feel Hashem as real, to feel that I’m walking with Hashem because I’m connected with Him, as the Baal HaTanya says, that d’veykus to Hashem is by davening where we can understand that d’veykus is an emotional bond with Hashem, the service of the heart.
A: You are viewing d’veykus as another step to hakarah, as if we can connect to Hashem either through hakarah or through emotion. They are both in the heart. The outer layer of the heart is emotion, and the inner layer of the heart is daas, not just emotion, but daas, and daas is rooted in the intellect. The intellect extends to the emotions. We have our intellectual abilities of chochmah and binah, and we also have daas. One of the big differences is that chochmah and binah are completely intellectual, they are called mochin (the brain) whereas daas is identified as hargashah, emotion (though we do find that daas is also sometimes called mochin). Daas begins from the mochin, the intellect, but it reaches the heart, where it becomes hargashah, emotion. Daas is rooted in mochin (the brainy abilities), which is its root, while its outer layer is hargashah, feeling. According to the teachings of Chabad, daas is to think constantly of Hashem, which means that daas is either a feeling or a focused thought. In the system of Chabad teachings, it’s clear that daas is not a feeling but a thought. Right now we are talking about connecting to Hashem. There is a connection to Him through feeling, “In the house of G-d we shall go with feeling”, but the d’veykus itself is either an emotion alone or a connection of daas, the mind, in combination with hargashah, feeling. These are three stages.
Compare it to a child’s stages of growth. First a child doesn’t know anything, then he develops his feelings, and finally, he develops his thinking. The first stage is tmimus (earnestness, not knowing anything), the second stage is hargashah (feeling) and the last stage is mochin (intellect). So too, in our connection to Hashem, there is a way to connect to Him through tmimus, which is actually a very deep connection to Him. There is also a way of connecting to Him through hargashah, feeling, and there is also a way of connecting to Him through mochin, intellect. But with feeling alone, there is just reactiveness, and the reactiveness soon diminishes, it doesn’t last. You can’t hold on to an emotional state constantly. The emotion goes away at some point. Sometimes you feel inspired, and later the inspiration wanes, like a fire that dies down. The fire leaps up and later the fire shrinks. Connecting to Hashem through tmimus is a deep, deep connection that comes from the root of the soul. Connecting to Hashem by way of the mochin is the second-to-strongest connection, while connecting to Hashem through feelings is the third-to-strongest connection. A small child when he begins to get older, he loses his tmimus. He gains emotion and he hasn’t yet developed his mind. He is found at an immature level.
Thus, feelings are merely a pathway, a bridge (regesh/emotion is from the word geresh/bridge), in order to get to a greater goal. If someone builds his life based on emotion and feeling alone, or mainly on emotion/feeling, his life is based on a shaky, unstable foundation, on reactive feelings that are temporary which lose their strength. Reactiveness is not an inner connection to something, only to the outer level of something. An emotional reaction of amazement to something does not absorb the matter, it only gets the outer layer of the matter. If a person sees a new thing, he is amazed at it, but once he gets used to it, it’s no longer new and he loses the amazement. But if a person clarifies what something is, he becomes connected to it intrinsically, and he doesn’t care if it’s old or new, he’s connected to it. Being in awe of something is an external connection to the thing. If the emotions serve as a pathway to connect the person to the inner layer of something, then it has served its purpose. But if we base our entire path on emotion, our path will be shaky and unstable.
The subtlest and deepest thing to feel is when one can feel the subtlety of the wisdom of something – when he can feel that which he knows.
So, to review and be clear: We can certainly use emotions to connect to Hashem, but this is not the purpose, it is only a means to a greater end. We can’t base our avodah on it. We can use emotions as a way to get to recognition, but we cannot base everything entirely on emotion. We can’t rely on our feelings.
Q: The Baal Shem Tov said that after all that he did, he is leaving it all behind and now he is serving Hashem with pashtus (simply). It sounds like hakarah (recognition) is only a means to a greater end, because after all that he recognized, he realized that he should act simply. What did he mean?
A: Recognition (hakarah) is only one step, as you said. The deeper place to get to in the soul is when a person becomes a tamim, earnest. The greatest quality is tmimus.
Q: So is that what the Baal Shem Tov meant (that tmimus is the greatest level to come to)?
A: Correct. There is a level beyond hakarah (recognition), and that is when the nature of our soul is revealed, the yearning of the soul to do the will of the Creator. That is the depth of the soul’s power of tmimus, earnest simplicity, beyond all calculative thinking and beyond even recognition (and certainly it’s beyond the emotions).
Q: So then why should we try to aim for hakarah?
A: Because you need to build the entire inner structure of the soul. A person has to build his deeds, his emotions, and his power of recognition, and he also needs to build his power of p’shitus (simplicity) which is also called emunah or tmimus. A person has to build all of these powers. If one builds only part of these, that is where he be found and limited to. If one builds all of these, then he will be found at whatever power his “soul root” is rooted in. But when a person has the complete inner structure, he develops also his tmimus which is above every quality: “Be simple with Hashem your G-d.”
Q: Why can’t we define hakarah as tmimus?
A: First of all, your question is very good. The final goal is to come to the level of tmimus. However, we cannot base our avodah on tmimus. We cannot start our avodah by aiming for tmimus. By most people, their tmimus is very blocked from them. By a very small percentage of people, that is not the case, but for most people, tmimus was only in their childhood (some were more earnest when they were children, and some were less, but all children have the childlike innocence of tmimus), and at a later stage when they got older and matured, their tmimus became covered over. If we want to build our entire approach based on tmimus, this would be most difficult.
We have abilities that are more revealed and activated, which we can use in order to get to that place. All of us have emotions that are activated, for example, and with some it is more and with some it is less, but all of us can clearly see our emotions. Our emotions are therefore revealed and activated (on varying levels). And our thinking abilities are also active. So we can use these activated abilities in order to reach a more hidden place in ourselves. That is why we explained here that the main thing is not avodah, rather the main thing is to go from one recognition to another – to use our revealed, activated abilities, such as our actions, feelings, and recognition, which we are conscious of. If you take a person at the middle of his life and ask him “Do you identify your tmimus and how you use it?”, some people will take a long time thinking if they can identify their tmimus at all. And even if they do identify how it still exists in them, they are using it very minimally, and therefore it is very hard for a person to base his entire approach on using his power of tmimus.
There is also another reason why we can’t develop everything based on tmimus. It takes many years for the ability of tmimus to affect our every aspect. We would just be trying to build up our tmimus, and the rest of our soul will remain unbalanced. It is the abilities of mochin and hakarah which keep us organized and functional, at any level we are on. But the ability of tmimus – which a person only has a small percentage of that he’s consciously using – is not going to build a person, if he doesn’t build up his power of recognition. He will become dysfunctional, because he can’t be guided by his tmimus. It is only when a person reaches tmimus at the end all of his avodah that he can find the innermost point of life. But it is impossible for a person to begin serving Hashem based on tmimus.
It is possible for him to set aside time to reveal forth his power of tmimus, but to base his entire avodah on his tmimus is very dangerous. Whereas if we base our avodah on mochin and hakarah, this is the ideal design that we can build upon. Is it the final goal to arrive at? No. Just as you figured out. The goal is tmimus! But our approach has to be that we are going from one hakarah to the next, because that is the fundamental structure which we can build everything upon.
If a person has a soul root in “Asiyah” (action) does he also need to serve Hashem with this concept of hakarah/recognition?
A: You’re asking a very good question. The closer a person is to Asiyah/action, certainly he does more practical action and work. But even in the world of action that we live on, we can see that even people who are very action-oriented are able to act according to their unique strengths. Even goyim are able to figure out what they’re unique in and what’s appropriate for them to do personally. They find work and jobs based on understanding what their personal strengths are, from recognizing themselves properly. In contrast to this, others will run from one job to another, and they can’t stay put. So even in the world of practical action, there is a need to recognize oneself properly, in order to be successful. Understandably, the more spiritual a person is, the more he uses his power of recognition not only when it comes to practical action, but for higher purposes. But even in the world of total practical action, we can see how some people can manage a house better and be organized, while others don’t know the first thing about managing a house. The ability of recognition can be used on many different levels, whether in the spiritual or in the world of practical action. In either case, one can know clearly where he stands.
Q: The purpose of serving Hashem is d’veykus, “To cling to Him”, and this seems to be when one feels Hashem’s light, when he feels that bond. It seems to be an emotional thing. It doesn’t sound like a “recognition”…
A: Here is an example from the physical world to help us understand something about a spiritual concept. A person has a baby. He loves the baby, hugs him, etc. The baby though has nothing unique about him. He doesn’t even express anything towards the parents. Yet they still love him and show affection towards him. They are connected to him. The baby gets bigger and slowly he makes expressions, and we begin to see the child’s personality. When the parents now love him and hug him, it’s the same hug as before, but before when they hugged him, they didn’t recognize him, and now when they hug him, they recognize their child better. They loved him strongly right when he was born, even before they recognized his personality, but their love for their child grows stronger with the more the child develops. They recognize him better, and they feel a deeper connection to their child. The more we recognize, the more we connect.
Now here’s a more spiritual example. Two people are learning Torah. One of them learns 7 pages of Gemara a day and reviews it too. He’s connected to his learning. Another person learns Torah by clarifying each thing he learns, becoming clear about each matter, beginning from the psukim in the Torah about the matter all the way down to the halachah l’maaseh. These 2 people are both connected to their Torah learning, but whose connection is stronger? The one who’s clearer about his learning. The one who is learning 7 pages of Gemara has a desire to learn Torah, and that certainly connects him to his learning, but his connection isn’t yet subtle because he hasn’t yet become clear about what he learns. The one whose clearer about what he has learned will feel a subtler connection to his Torah learning.
Q: So what’s the purpose to reach – d’veykus in Hashem, or hakarah of Hashem?
A: Very good question! Now that we just explained that hakarah brings d’veykus, you are asking what the goal is, hakarah or d’veykus. Right now you are viewing hakarah as some external form of connecting to Hashem and you are viewing d’veykus as something else, and therefore you are asking right now if the main thing is d’veykus or hakarah.
Q: That’s because I understand d’veykus to be more of an emotional bond with Hashem, to feel Hashem as real, to feel that I’m walking with Hashem because I’m connected with Him, as the Baal HaTanya says, that d’veykus to Hashem is by davening where we can understand that d’veykus is an emotional bond with Hashem, the service of the heart.
A: You are viewing d’veykus as another step to hakarah, as if we can connect to Hashem either through hakarah or through emotion. They are both in the heart. The outer layer of the heart is emotion, and the inner layer of the heart is daas, not just emotion, but daas, and daas is rooted in the intellect. The intellect extends to the emotions. We have our intellectual abilities of chochmah and binah, and we also have daas. One of the big differences is that chochmah and binah are completely intellectual, they are called mochin (the brain) whereas daas is identified as hargashah, emotion (though we do find that daas is also sometimes called mochin). Daas begins from the mochin, the intellect, but it reaches the heart, where it becomes hargashah, emotion. Daas is rooted in mochin (the brainy abilities), which is its root, while its outer layer is hargashah, feeling. According to the teachings of Chabad, daas is to think constantly of Hashem, which means that daas is either a feeling or a focused thought. In the system of Chabad teachings, it’s clear that daas is not a feeling but a thought. Right now we are talking about connecting to Hashem. There is a connection to Him through feeling, “In the house of G-d we shall go with feeling”, but the d’veykus itself is either an emotion alone or a connection of daas, the mind, in combination with hargashah, feeling. These are three stages.
Compare it to a child’s stages of growth. First a child doesn’t know anything, then he develops his feelings, and finally, he develops his thinking. The first stage is tmimus (earnestness, not knowing anything), the second stage is hargashah (feeling) and the last stage is mochin (intellect). So too, in our connection to Hashem, there is a way to connect to Him through tmimus, which is actually a very deep connection to Him. There is also a way of connecting to Him through hargashah, feeling, and there is also a way of connecting to Him through mochin, intellect. But with feeling alone, there is just reactiveness, and the reactiveness soon diminishes, it doesn’t last. You can’t hold on to an emotional state constantly. The emotion goes away at some point. Sometimes you feel inspired, and later the inspiration wanes, like a fire that dies down. The fire leaps up and later the fire shrinks. Connecting to Hashem through tmimus is a deep, deep connection that comes from the root of the soul. Connecting to Hashem by way of the mochin is the second-to-strongest connection, while connecting to Hashem through feelings is the third-to-strongest connection. A small child when he begins to get older, he loses his tmimus. He gains emotion and he hasn’t yet developed his mind. He is found at an immature level.
Thus, feelings are merely a pathway, a bridge (regesh/emotion is from the word geresh/bridge), in order to get to a greater goal. If someone builds his life based on emotion and feeling alone, or mainly on emotion/feeling, his life is based on a shaky, unstable foundation, on reactive feelings that are temporary which lose their strength. Reactiveness is not an inner connection to something, only to the outer level of something. An emotional reaction of amazement to something does not absorb the matter, it only gets the outer layer of the matter. If a person sees a new thing, he is amazed at it, but once he gets used to it, it’s no longer new and he loses the amazement. But if a person clarifies what something is, he becomes connected to it intrinsically, and he doesn’t care if it’s old or new, he’s connected to it. Being in awe of something is an external connection to the thing. If the emotions serve as a pathway to connect the person to the inner layer of something, then it has served its purpose. But if we base our entire path on emotion, our path will be shaky and unstable.
The subtlest and deepest thing to feel is when one can feel the subtlety of the wisdom of something – when he can feel that which he knows.
So, to review and be clear: We can certainly use emotions to connect to Hashem, but this is not the purpose, it is only a means to a greater end. We can’t base our avodah on it. We can use emotions as a way to get to recognition, but we cannot base everything entirely on emotion. We can’t rely on our feelings.
Q: The Baal Shem Tov said that after all that he did, he is leaving it all behind and now he is serving Hashem with pashtus (simply). It sounds like hakarah (recognition) is only a means to a greater end, because after all that he recognized, he realized that he should act simply. What did he mean?
A: Recognition (hakarah) is only one step, as you said. The deeper place to get to in the soul is when a person becomes a tamim, earnest. The greatest quality is tmimus.
Q: So is that what the Baal Shem Tov meant (that tmimus is the greatest level to come to)?
A: Correct. There is a level beyond hakarah (recognition), and that is when the nature of our soul is revealed, the yearning of the soul to do the will of the Creator. That is the depth of the soul’s power of tmimus, earnest simplicity, beyond all calculative thinking and beyond even recognition (and certainly it’s beyond the emotions).
Q: So then why should we try to aim for hakarah?
A: Because you need to build the entire inner structure of the soul. A person has to build his deeds, his emotions, and his power of recognition, and he also needs to build his power of p’shitus (simplicity) which is also called emunah or tmimus. A person has to build all of these powers. If one builds only part of these, that is where he be found and limited to. If one builds all of these, then he will be found at whatever power his “soul root” is rooted in. But when a person has the complete inner structure, he develops also his tmimus which is above every quality: “Be simple with Hashem your G-d.”
Q: Why can’t we define hakarah as tmimus?
A: First of all, your question is very good. The final goal is to come to the level of tmimus. However, we cannot base our avodah on tmimus. We cannot start our avodah by aiming for tmimus. By most people, their tmimus is very blocked from them. By a very small percentage of people, that is not the case, but for most people, tmimus was only in their childhood (some were more earnest when they were children, and some were less, but all children have the childlike innocence of tmimus), and at a later stage when they got older and matured, their tmimus became covered over. If we want to build our entire approach based on tmimus, this would be most difficult.
We have abilities that are more revealed and activated, which we can use in order to get to that place. All of us have emotions that are activated, for example, and with some it is more and with some it is less, but all of us can clearly see our emotions. Our emotions are therefore revealed and activated (on varying levels). And our thinking abilities are also active. So we can use these activated abilities in order to reach a more hidden place in ourselves. That is why we explained here that the main thing is not avodah, rather the main thing is to go from one recognition to another – to use our revealed, activated abilities, such as our actions, feelings, and recognition, which we are conscious of. If you take a person at the middle of his life and ask him “Do you identify your tmimus and how you use it?”, some people will take a long time thinking if they can identify their tmimus at all. And even if they do identify how it still exists in them, they are using it very minimally, and therefore it is very hard for a person to base his entire approach on using his power of tmimus.
There is also another reason why we can’t develop everything based on tmimus. It takes many years for the ability of tmimus to affect our every aspect. We would just be trying to build up our tmimus, and the rest of our soul will remain unbalanced. It is the abilities of mochin and hakarah which keep us organized and functional, at any level we are on. But the ability of tmimus – which a person only has a small percentage of that he’s consciously using – is not going to build a person, if he doesn’t build up his power of recognition. He will become dysfunctional, because he can’t be guided by his tmimus. It is only when a person reaches tmimus at the end all of his avodah that he can find the innermost point of life. But it is impossible for a person to begin serving Hashem based on tmimus.
It is possible for him to set aside time to reveal forth his power of tmimus, but to base his entire avodah on his tmimus is very dangerous. Whereas if we base our avodah on mochin and hakarah, this is the ideal design that we can build upon. Is it the final goal to arrive at? No. Just as you figured out. The goal is tmimus! But our approach has to be that we are going from one hakarah to the next, because that is the fundamental structure which we can build everything upon.
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