The sixteenth chapter of the Tanya reveals the benoni's secret weapon—and admits that for most people, it will be hidden.
The Tanya has established that the benoni must govern the heart through the mind. Meditation on God's infinite greatness generates love and fear, which in turn control behavior. But what if the meditation does not work? What if a person contemplates God's greatness with genuine effort and still feels nothing in the heart—no burning love, no trembling awe?
Rabbi Schneur Zalman answers: that is fine. There is a deeper love, and it is already inside you. It is the ahavah mesuteret (אהבה מסותרת)—the "hidden love"—and it is inherited from the Patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were "chariots" of God—so perfectly nullified before the divine will that they transmitted their love of God genetically to every future Jewish soul.
This hidden love does not feel like love. It does not burn or glow. It sits in the brain and in the "recesses of the heart," invisible even to the person who carries it. But it is real, and it is powerful. The Tanya says this love is sufficient to motivate the fulfillment of all 613 commandments—not with ecstatic passion, but with quiet, steady determination.
The key verse is (Deuteronomy 30:14): "For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so you can fulfill it." The Tanya reinterprets "in your heart" as referring to this hidden love. It is "very near" because you already have it. You do not need to generate it. You do not need a mystical experience. You only need to remember that it is there.
The practical implication is enormous. Every person who has ever felt spiritually dry—unable to feel love for God despite trying—is not broken. They are normal. The hidden love is operating beneath the surface, driving them toward Torah and mitzvot (commandments) even when the heart feels like stone. Feeling is not the goal. Faithfulness is.
This, then, is the important principle regarding the Divine service for the benoni: The essential thing is to govern and rule the nature that is in the left ventricle [of the heart] by means of the Divine light that irradiates the divine soul in the mind.1 Cf. above, ch. 13. That is to say, to rule the heart by means of meditation in the mind on the greatness of the En Sof, blessed is He, whereby his understanding will create a spirit of knowledge and fear of the L–rd in his mind to make him turn away from the evil condemned by the Torah, or by the Rabbis, even from a minor Rabbinic prohibition, Heaven forbid; and [at the same time arousing] the love of G–d in his heart, in the right part, with a fervor and desire to cleave to Him through the fulfillment of the precepts of the Torah and of the Rabbis and through the study of the Torah, which is equivalent to them all. Furthermore, one must know an additional important principle in the service of the benonim (intermediates). This is that even if the capacity of one’s intellect and the spirit of one’s understanding do not attain to the level of producing a revealed love of G–d in one’s heart, to make it glow like burning coals with a great desire and yearning and heartfelt passion to cleave to Him, but the love is hidden in one’s brain and in the recesses of one’s heart, NOTE: The reason for this is that the vitality of this person’s intellect and nefesh, ruach, and neshamah is derived from the so-called ibbur (“gestation”) and concealment within the [supernal] understanding, and not from the quality of birth and revelation—as it is known to the students of Kabbalah. that is to say, the heart comprehends, with the spirit of wisdom and understanding in the brain, the greatness of the En Sof, blessed is He, in relation to Whom all else has absolutely no reality, for which reason it is due unto Him, blessed be He, that the soul of every living creature should yearn for Him, to cleave and be absorbed in His light; likewise is it fitting for the nefesh and ruach2 Neshamah is omitted here, for it is already alluded to in the “hidden love in the brain and the recesses of the heart,” just mentioned. within him to languish for Him, with a fervent desire to emerge from their sheath, which is the body, in order to cleave to Him; except that they dwell perforce in the body and are bound up in it, like deserted wives;3 Cf. below, end of ch. 50. and no thought of theirs can grasp Him at all, except when it grasps, and is vested in, the Torah and its commandments, as in the example of embracing the king, mentioned above;4 Ch. 4. therefore, it is proper for them to embrace Him with their whole heart, soul, and might, which means the fulfillment of the 613 commandments in act, speech, and thought, the last being the comprehension and knowledge of the Torah, as explained above.5 Ibid., and ch. 5. Consequently, when [the benoni] ponders this subject in the recesses of his heart’s and mind’s understanding, with a unanimity of mouth and heart, in that he upholds by word of mouth, that which has been resolved in the understanding of his heart and mind, namely to direct his desire toward the Divine Torah, meditating on it day and night in oral study, while his hands and other bodily organs carry out the commandments in accordance with the resolution of his heart’s and mind’s understanding, then this understanding is clothed in the act, speech, and thought of the Torah and its commandments, providing for them, as it were, intelligence, vitality, and “wings” wherewith to soar on high. It is the same as if he practiced them with real fear and love as revealed in his heart [with a desire, fervor and passion that are felt in the heart and soul thirsting for G–d, by reason of the glowing embers of love in his heart, as mentioned above], inasmuch as it is this understanding in his brain and heart’s recesses that is instrumental in leading him to engage in them, and had he not so delved in it, he would not have occupied himself with them at all, but with his physical needs alone. [And even if he is naturally disposed to be an assiduous student, nevertheless he would naturally love his body more.] Our Sages, of blessed memory, hinted at this when they said, “The Holy One, blessed is He, unites a good thought to the deed.”6 Cf. Kiddushin 40a. One would have expected them to say that the Torah regards the good thought as if it had been put into practice.7 As the Talmud continues, “Even if a man intended to fulfill a commandment, but was forcibly prevented, Scripture ascribes it to him as if he had performed it.” The question is, why the difference in expression? The answer is that each statement conveys a different meaning. The explanation, however, is that it is the revealed fear and love in the heart that are clothed in the act of the commandments, giving them vitality to soar on high, inasmuch as the heart is also corporeal, as the other parts of the body which are the instruments of the action, except that it is internal and their source of vitality; therefore it can clothe itself in their act, to be their “wings,” elevating them. However, the abovementioned fear and love that are in the intelligence of the brain and the recesses of the heart are of an infinitely higher order than that of “action” and they cannot clothe themselves in the performance of the commandments to become their intelligence and vitality, as it were, to uplift them to soar upward, were it not for the fact that the Holy One, blessed is He, fuses and unites them together with the action; hence they are called “good thought,” for they are not actual awe and love in a revealed state in the heart, but only in the intelligence of the brain and in the recesses of the heart, as mentioned above. NOTE: Thus it is also written in the Zohar and Etz Chaim that תבונה (intelligence) contains the letters בן ובת (“son and daughter”), referring to awe and love;8 The affections (fear and love) are “born” of the intellect (chochmah and binah). Cf. above, ch. 3. and sometimes it descends to become the intelligence in the feminine principle of z’eyr anpin,9 “Small image”—a Kabbalistic term, corresponding to the seven Divine middot (chesed, gevurah, etc.). The “feminine” principle is to be understood (as in all Kabbalistic terminology) in the sense of recipient of the flow of Divine influence. represented in the letters of the Torah and the commandments, as the initiated will understand. But the Holy One, blessed is He, produces this coalescence in order to elevate the performance of the commandments and study of the Torah—which are carried out under the influence of the said good thought—into the world of Beriah, the abode to which ascend the Torah and commandments that are performed through intelligent awe and love which are truly revealed in the heart. But even without this they still rise to the World of Yetzirah, by means of the natural fear and love which are latent in the heart of all Jews from birth, as will be later explained at length.10 Chs. 38, 39, 44.
