"For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so you can fulfill it" (Deuteronomy 30:14). The Tanya's seventeenth chapter takes this verse, which seems to promise that serving God is easy. And asks the obvious question: is it actually easy? Because it does not feel easy at all.
Changing your heart is not easy. The Talmud itself asks: "Is fear of Heaven a small thing?" (Berachot 33b). If even fear of God is hard, how much harder is love? And the rabbis explicitly say that "only tzaddikim (a righteous person) (the righteous) have control over their hearts." For everyone else, the heart does what it wants.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman resolves the contradiction. The verse is not talking about the kind of love that "glows like burning coals", the ecstatic, overwhelming passion of the tzaddik. It is talking about a more modest but equally valid love: the love that leads to action. The re'uta d'liba (רעותא דלבא), the "hidden desire of the heart", the quiet, almost imperceptible yearning for God that exists in every Jewish soul, is sufficient to drive a person to fulfill the commandments.
This love is indeed "very near." Why? Because the mind controls the body. The Tanya makes a physiological claim: the brain has inherent authority over the heart, the mouth, and all the limbs. A person can always choose to speak words of Torah, to perform a mitzvah, to redirect thought toward God. The heart may resist, but the mind can override it.
The one exception: the person who is truly, completely wicked, the rasha gamur, whose repeated sins have so thickened the barrier between his soul and God that the mind has lost its authority over the heart entirely. The Torah "does not speak of the dead" (Berachot 18b), the Tanya says, meaning that the completely wicked are spiritually dead in the sense that normal spiritual mechanics no longer apply to them. But for everyone else, for the vast majority of humanity, the mind can always command the body. And that is enough.
With the above in mind, one can understand the Scriptural text, “For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so you can fulfill it.”1 Deuteronomy 30:14. At first glance, [the statement, “For this thing is very near to you…] in your heart” seems to be contrary to our experience [yet the Torah is eternal2 Maimonides, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah, ch. 9; Hilchot Teshuvah 3:8; Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin, ch. 10.].3 Hence it could not refer to the time of Moses only, but must hold good for our time as well. For it is not a “very near thing” to change one’s heart from mundane desires to a sincere love of G–d. Indeed, it is stated in the Gemara, “Is fear [of Heaven] a small thing?”4 Berachot 33b; Megillah 25a. How much more so—love. Moreover, the Rabbis also said, that only tzaddikim have control over their hearts.5 Bereishit Rabbah 34:11; 67:7. But the words “so you can fulfill it” refer to a love which merely leads to the performance of the commandments, this being the hidden desire of the heart (רעותא דלבא), even if it does not glow openly like flaming coals. This thing is very near, and it is easy for any person who has brains in his head, for his brain is under his control, and he is able to concentrate it on anything he wishes. If, then, he will contemplate with it on the greatness of the En Sof, blessed is He, he will inevitably generate in his mind, at least, the love of G–d to cleave to Him through the performance of His commandments and Torah. And this constitutes the whole [purpose of] man, for it is written, “This day to do them”6 Deuteronomy 7:11.—“this day” referring specifically to the world of [physical] action,7 Eruvin 22a. while “tomorrow” [i.e., in afterlife] is the time of reward, as is explained elsewhere. The mind, in turn, by virtue of its inherent nature, is master over the left part of the heart and over the mouth and all the limbs which are the instruments of action, except in him who is completely wicked, as the Rabbis said, that the wicked are under the control of their heart, but their heart is not at all controlled by them.8 See above, note 5. This is a punishment for the enormity and potency of their sin. But the Torah does not speak of these “dead” who in their life are called “dead.”9 Berachot 18b. Indeed, it is impossible for the wicked to begin to serve G–d without their first repenting for their past—in order to shatter the kelipot, which form a sundering curtain and an iron partition that interpose between them and their Father in Heaven—by means of contriteness of heart and bitterness of soul over their sins, as is explained in the Zohar on the verse, “The sacrifices of G–d are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart….”10 Psalms 51:18. For through breaking one’s heart the spirit of uncleanliness of the sitra achara is broken [see ibid. on Parashat Pinchas, p. 240, and on Parashat Vayikra, p. 8 and p. 5, and the commentary of the Ramaz11 Rabbi Moses Zacuto (1625-1697). thereon]. This is the category of “lower repentance,” whereby the lower [letter] hey12 Referring to the second letter hey of the Name of Havaya. Teshuvah (spelled תשוב-ה) implies the return of the hey. Cf. Iggeret Hateshuvah, chs. 4, 7, 8. is raised up from its fall into the forces of evil, which is the mystery of the Shechinah in exile, as our Rabbis, of blessed memory, state, “When they [the Israelites] were exiled into Edom, the Shechinah went with them.”13 Megillah 29a. That is to say, when a person practices the acts of “Edom,”14 Edom is here understood allegorically as the embodiment of evil. he degrades and brings down there the Divine spark which vitalizes his nefesh, ruach, and neshamah that are clothed within him in the animal soul of the kelipah, which is in the left part of his heart, which reigns over him as long as he remains wicked, dominating his “small city,” while the nefesh, ruach, and neshamah are forced into exile under it. But when his heart breaks within him, and the spirit of uncleanliness and of the sitra achara is broken, and [the forces of evil are] dispersed, then [the Shechinah] rises from its fall and remains upright, as is explained elsewhere.
