Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #32

all right so first of all happy fourth of july independence day um we are very happy and grateful to live in this free land and we're going to celebrate by exercising our freedom our constitutional rights to uh to assemble and to practice our religion and to say whatever we want as long as we're not hurting anybody okay how was that a good intro like segway okay thank you all right incorporated the holidays yes you okay hurt their feelings you can hurt their feelings okay so what is it my my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins we're saying that where your feelings begin okay by the way alpira who are a little bit more mahmur because uh there is such a thing called inus dvarim yeah a na which which means um to hurt somebody or to afflict them so which is quite separate from inflicting bodily damage chiefly describes uh monetary damage done to somebody not through destroying their property which is a different uh area of jewish law but by giving them a bad deal in business and then there's also something called anus devoting which means hurting them through speech hurtful speech so i'm glad you mentioned this because constitutionally probably as americans we are allowed to hurt people's feelings but as jews unfortunately that mean old torah is not going to let us be mean to each other what i mean to or won't let us be mean to each other okay okay anyways so yeah be nice to each other all right well can you take it yeah yeah go ahead sure all right all right just remember anything that you say out loud will eventually be heard on youtube because we are the videos wrote this with the laptop the laptop is the youtube okay so don't say anything incriminating or hurtful although as an american you have every right to hurt people's feelings but as a jew you're not okay you know we could have we should have a whole class about constitutional rights that we are forbidden from expressing as jews hurting people's feelings i was just saying that abortion yeah well uh that's a that's a very non-inflammatory uh controversial uh that's a very simple yeah that's not a complicated discussion does uh secular uh thinking or does american policy about abortion align with halacha it's not a constitutional right anymore would could there be a case just i'm just asking a question could there be a case where a jewish woman asks her orthodox rabbi for a halal decision about an abortion and he tells her that she may in fact receive an abortion or maybe even is obligated to do so and that in a particular state that act would be illegal so it's interesting that there could actually be something that according to american law you're not allowed to do and according to halacha you are allowed to do and conversely there are things that according to american law you're not you are allowed to do and according to you're not allowed to do so just remember that patriots we're very grateful to be here but do not assume that the constitution or federal or state or municipal law ordinances statutes and whatever are consistent le havdil we still use that word with with halacha sad that that even needs to be said but okay all right so remember we're in the middle of a long string of chapters that began with pedigrees and you remember the purpose of these chapters what's it come on ladies i'm not going to talk about country are you talking about the controversial stuff about constitution abortion and like say louder why it's always easier to ask your forgiveness than permission if there's something you know that you need to do oh they're saying just general wisdom in life [Laughter] [Music] okay well i'm glad i asked you what you're talking about because that's i would have missed out on that that's good stuff okay all right by the way if anyone on youtube just heard that that statement bitty avid everything's okay that's not true i'm not i don't want to express any tacit approval by not it's not true but you were saying that humorously okay 18 of tanya we started a discussion which was about how to get ourselves emotionally aligned with the with the behaviors that we're committed to now in chapters test 16 17 we spoke about how to achieve emotional alignment through generating new feelings of love and awe of god through a process called meditation but in chapter 18 we started a whole long discussion about how can you bring out some emotions love and all of hashem if you're if you're not able to do it through meditation right okay so we said well it's going to take a real long time to explain it but the basic idea is rather than generating new love and awe you're going to tap into you're going to access some emotions that are already there that are latent in your heart how did they get there we explained already that they're they're called a a yerusha an inheritance that we got from whom from the always from our patriarchs they gave us a spiritual dna in that spiritual dna is this there's something called an ava mesutetus a hidden love why is it called hidden because it's hidden it's not always active but when does it get activated the altitude tells us at a time of serious intense distress of a basically a life and death situation where we have unfortunately thousands maybe millions of examples through history where jews who were not observant that's the emphasis here who jews who were not observant all of a sudden give up their lives to remain uh true to judaism and we have to explain that phenomenon and the way we explain it is that there's this super jew trigger that in a case of real serious life and death uh where the stakes are very very clear that we're we're facing being cut off from god so there's this this force within us that will not allow us to be cut off from god now what good does that do me on a day-to-day basis under ordinary circumstances that's what takes eight chapters to explain because if there were a way to access that intensity under normal conditions then i would have a new method of getting some emotional alignment when it's needed you're following yeah okay because i've told you this summary how many times now when we started 18 when we did 19 last week when we when we did 20 okay now this is the fourth time i've given you this summary now where yeah okay that's a great question um it's part of it it's part of it it's there's there's much more to it there's there's definitely an aspect of that i believe i'm going to give myself 30 seconds to go off topic and then i'm going to make a hard stop i believe the way that the laboratory accessed what we call the pinta layered or the ava mesut in every single jew was by sending us out under the street corners to ask people excuse me sir are you jewish excuse me ma'am are you jewish i believe that the abruptness and the somewhat uh brashness of that question is triggering uh jonathan sachs said how could we live in a world post-hitler he said that ebba's answer was the only response is just like every single jew had been hunted down in hate to seek out every last jew in love so yeah i i do believe when you ask someone excuse me sir are you jewish that that is a an inversion of unfortunately a phenomenon that happened throughout history of jews being identified and targeted as jews i do believe it triggers some type of an epigenetic reaction i don't mean epigenetics in the physiological sense but in the spiritual sense and in the metaphysical sense and uh yes i do believe that's the avamisitis that's described in chapters 18 and 19 of of tanya okay that was 45 seconds so chapter 18 we said we have this this latent love that we inherited from the the from the patriarchs chapter 19 we spoke about the flame remember the metaphor of the flame the flame wants to go up even though it'll lose its identity but that's the nature of fire so too metaphorically as a metaphor the soul wants to lose itself it doesn't want to be a separate entity a distinct entity separate from god it wants to be subsumed within the oneness that is the underlying nature of the godly soul is that it wants to be it wants it to be one with god at all costs at all costs okay and that's what's being triggered in the intense moment where they say worship idols or we kill you in chapter 20 we introduced a a statement that all of toyota could be condensed into two big ideas which coincide with the two first the first two ten commandments you i am the lord your god which is the commandment to believe in god and there shall be no other gods which is the prohibition the negative commandment not to believe in any other gods so basically a doubt that i was saying is you can simplify or distill the entirety of all of toyota into a binary system of either you are affirming god's oneness or god forbid you're denying it one or the other in other words i'm foreshadowing here i'm giving it away but the altar said when are you going to achieve this intense emotional alignment when you feel like you're being threatened with being cut off from god and being told to worship idols but how can i have that intensity when it's not about worshiping idols it's about eating before abdullah i just threw that out as an example not true i'm not giving you suggestions of which evaders to take lightly but just giving giving you a an example how can i trigger that intensity under a so to speak ordinary uh under ordinary conditions so the answer is if you can realize that every mitzvah is really an all-or-nothing proposition either at this moment you are affirming god's everythingness or denying it god forbid remember that last week so the way we began to sort of ease into this concept as we spoke about speech remember speech divine speech that god is creating the world through speech god speaks the world into being and speech really has no substance speech has no substance so the reality of creation is really completely uh should we shall we call it subjective and the only objective reality and the only absolute reality is god so his reality is absolute and total and any other perceived reality as an entity distinct from god's absolute total reality would be god forbid a some type of a an infringement upon his absolute total reality that was last week you see where we're going you see where we're headed right we've got to get ourselves to a point where we can philosophically be comfortable with the idea philosophically and theologically be comfortable with the idea that any deviation from god's will as outlined in the torah both biblical commandments as well as rabbinic enactments any deviation is a disconnect from his totality and tantamount therefore to a rejection of his everythingness that we refer to as idol worship and you would never worship an idol you would rather die before you worship an idol and that's how we're getting ourselves pumped up is by by viewing everything in this very intense way okay all right so here's perf chapter 21 [Applause] now hashem's ways his attributes are not like the ways of man of flesh and blood why are we saying this because chapter 21 i mean because chapter 20 was an extended metaphor basically entire chapter 20 was dot was talking about creation metaphorically as god's speech and the purpose of the metaphor was that speech has no substance so creation really is insignificant relative to god's existence but now we take a turn and we say well you know really that metaphor that whole chapter 20 it wasn't very exact was it because how can you compare divine speech to human speech which is a completely different phenomenon when his breath of his speech in his mouth is perceived as something separate from him namely the ten soul powers the faculties of his soul in other words you can distinguish between the person himself or his spiritual makeup and the speech that he's producing which isn't him it's not me it's my speech i produced my speech but my speech and i are distinct and discreet from each other however [Applause] his speech is not removed from him whatsoever god forbid because nothing exists outside of him bless us our pony and there is no place devoid of him so we produce speech our speech comes out of us how does anything come out of hashem there's no outside because he is everything and everywhere no place is devoid of him so how can anything be described as being distinct from him human speech there's the speaker and there's the speech with hashem there's no such thing that's why his speech his blessed speech is not like our speech god forbid commission no just like our his thought is not like our thought receive like it says the prophet says my thought hashem says my thoughts are not like your thoughts my way so to my ways hashem says are removed from your ways all right great so basically you said that the whole chapter 20 wasn't really accurate so like why did we do it so the reason we refer to his speech as speech rak al der khmas al is only a metaphor kamehameha because speech reveals to the listener that which had been hidden in the recesses of the mind of the speaker in other words there are two aspects of speech human speech the objective and the subjective the objective aspect of or quality of human speech is that it is a product of the person not the person himself that's the objective the subjective quality oh thank you the subjective quality of human speech is that the listener is able to hear what was unheard what they didn't know before it was spoken in the case of hashem speech that objective quality of speech clearly is absent because there's no such thing as a separation of speaker and speech there's no such thing as the speech coming out of the speaker because there's nothing outside of him but the subjective quality is very much present and that is as we said that speech is the mechanism by which the listener becomes privy to that which the speaker only knew before it was spoken so let's just finish the sentence here cochlear mileage so too in in terms of hashem the angels of baruch speaking of the infinite blessed be when the light the creative light comes out of him mahalamela gili from concealed to reveal states to create worlds and to enliven worlds that's called speech if hollywood is saying in as much as human speech is distinct from a human there's the speaker in the speech that that comparison obviously will not apply to divine speech but the subjective aspect of speech meaning the way that speech is experienced by the listener that part of the metaphor holds up and that's why we use the metaphor and that's why we're comfortable calling god's creativity speech because just like when a speaker speaks the listener now knows what the speaker was thinking before they said it but they wouldn't have known until the speaker said it so too when hashem creates he reveals to us that which he already knew he already had but from our perspective it emerges and and and becomes revealed so that part of speech or that quality or that property of speech is what we are referring to when we refer to hashem's creativity as speech okay but the main point to understand is that there is no separation between hashem and his speech even though with human speech there is there's the speaker in the speech however from uh from a purely subjective standpoint we the created beings do experience his creative self-expression in a way that can be metaphorically described as speech yeah talk really loud nothing comes out of him because there's no out of him wherever you go it's you're never getting out of hashem it's just more him everywhere you go it's more and more him this concept that yeah we speak we also see the world and angels right there there's a concept that humans create something right it's not like it's just then air coming out of them a different point but yes but right now we're focused on the and the lack in the exact parallel between the the human example that we were using and the paradigm that we're trying to describe with that example yeah is that our ability to reveal a lot yes so i don't want to get hung up on human speech here because the whole point of this chapter is how hashem speech is unlike human speech but yes really this is going to distract everyone in a terrible way but i i and i held my belt i held myself back from saying because it is so confusing but i i was and i've just gone on for the past five minutes explaining why are we comfortable using the word speech to describe god's creativity when we know it's nothing like our speech i shouldn't say nothing like our speech but in in a significant way it it divine speech cannot be compared to human speech but yet there's this there's a significant way in which they are comparable and it's helpful to use that metaphor and i've been going on and on for the past five minutes and holding myself back from saying guys by the way you do know that the real speech is hashem speech and ours is the one which metaphorically resembles his paradigmatic speech real speech is hashem speech and when we speak we're emulating him but anyways i don't want i don't want to i don't want to go off into a discussion about the power of human speech yes before you walked in i said happy fourth of july you have a constitutional right to offend people but i'll pitot are you not right but let's let's not you know yesterday i went to crown heights and i was speaking to like 200 shlokan who uh who teach torah classes and one of the questions they asked me was how do you keep people from going off topic in class you want to know what i told them so oh for sure you can absolutely i told them i'll tell you what i told them i said when you're the teacher you must know extremely clearly before you start class where you need to get to and what the one main point don't have two points because if you have two main points you have zero main points you have to know what's the main point you're trying to express today and then you could know how much other stuff you can incorporate into getting there and also you can know what stuff's really interesting and cool but is not going to help us get there or even will take us away from there so yeah anyways i i know that the point of chapter 21 is to help us understand divine unity and it's not a discussion whatsoever of um respecting our own capacity as creators to to put out positive energy through speech even though that's a wonderfully fascinating topic but that that's not the point here so the point is remember remember remember we started in chapter 18. we need to trigger this latent love the latent love we know will be triggered if there's a life and death a spiritual life and death and and physical life and death proposition of either choose physical death or true spiritual death and then all of a sudden we'll get this intense emotional reaction we're trying to figure out how to tap into that well we said in in the previous chapter chapter 20 really all mitzvahs can be boiled down to a binary decision between worshiping god or god forbid rejecting god well how come on how you there are 613 commandments not two commandments how are you going to oversimplify it like that so this is a quest to defend that oversimplification and actually prove it's not an oversimplification so the way that he defends it is by saying look first you have to understand what does it mean idolatry idolatry means rejecting god's totality his oneness okay now you have to understand what is god's totality what is god's oneness so now he's explaining this whole deep cosmological explanation about the relative non-existence of created reality and that god is the only existence and even though this is really deep stuff and it's um it's it's really it's theology and on its own it doesn't belong in this book the first volume of tanya 53 chapters of of safer shall be in him are about personal development not about cosmology not about the nature of reality so this discussion only has place in as much as it's a building block to get ourselves to react in a new way to moral choices where we will view moral choices in an extremely black and white way and like we said last week remember what i said last week remember i'm going to warn everyone again do not say to me but rabbi i thought we're supposed to not look at it all or nothing i'm supposed to take baby steps and you do a little bit more and and and the answer is yes you're right but that's not this method we're learning a particular method right now this is a very specific method okay so we just said we refer to hashem speech as speech even though in a very significant way it transcends one of the major properties of human speech which is the idea of it coming out of the speaker and taking on an identity distinct from the speaker that that does not apply to divine speech however the subjective aspect that hashem reveals to us creation so that we can experience it uh yeah that that that's very much speech in fact that is the paradigm of speech so this creative expression are the ten utterances let there be the ten let there be from genesis as well as all the other divine speech which is written in the in the bible hashem's speech and his thought are united with him in the absolute most absolute sense of of oneness derek marshall for instance or by way of allegory when a person hasn't yet expressed himself not a speech and not even yet as thought but he has the proto thought he has the material or even the capacity for that thought in his in his mind but not yet articulated even as thought let alone speech that would be closer that would be more akin to the nature of oneness of hashem's speech to him even after he has quote unquote spoken it in fact we can go even deeper also remember we learned about last chapter there's a there's a i wouldn't even call it necessarily an emotion but there's a there's a a drive in the heart an attraction to something a visceral response that hasn't even entered the cerebral brain to even be processed in any type of intelligent way so we're talking about imagine a person speaks about something but before he spoke about it he thought about it but before he even thought about it he had the idea of it or even before that he had a visceral reaction to it so what we're saying is our speech goes through a process of being pushed outward level by level by level increasingly articulated the helpful way for us to understand how hashem speech is one with him is think about the potential the the the drive or the energy that you felt that ultimately after undergoing a series of processes yields speech but if you would trace it back to its original state before the any of those processes began that would be like the oneness of hashem speech with him even after he has quote unquote spoken so you think about something that you don't even have words for in your brain yet let alone words to speak to someone else it's just sort of like uh i don't know i wouldn't call it a a subconscious or unconscious thought it's not even a thought it's like a a feeling uh proclivity uh predilection i i'm not even sure what to call it but it's really it certainly doesn't have any type of real identifiable uh quality to it because it's just so embedded in who you are and then it undergoes different processes where you give it an increasing amount of articulation until finally you can put it out there that's what we call it putting it out there but imagine hashem's speech even after he's put it out there it remains completely embedded within who he is what do you want to say yeah so if you want to get micro then you're you're asking about khaki nadas yes the process when i keep referring to vaguely to these processes one phase would be yes the chakra das yes correct you're correct i don't want to go into it in in depth because it'll take us away from the focus but yeah you're correct yes the speech doesn't go through that process but the speech is the result the result of that process does that make sense yeah the speech is the end result of many processes including the dash process okay now is a yes latentness like it's latent in the brain yeah and it's before it actually comes out right correct correct yes okay okay so you're asking another philosophical question which is if we are you said if we're created through hashem speech which is one with him and he does not change then how can we change simple quick answer is that because he is above time then none of that is change for him okay because he is above change can only exist within time there is no concept of change without time for him whatever will be always was good enough because we're we're already trying to wrap our heads around a deep concept so i don't want to get but is it satisfying enough no okay will it be discussed later well it's not really a discussion in tanya because that's not the job of tanya it's discussed at length elsewhere in this but remember remember it's so easy tanya is such a rich book and there are so many points where you could get drawn into a side conversation remember what the point is right here we're trying to just to to we're trying to understand divine unity well enough to frame all moral choices as a binary decision of being connected absolutely connected or absolutely god for being disconnected okay so you're asking very good binary choice that means one or the other but god is one so where's the other okay okay there is not only it's a valid question now that you br now that you've brought it up i have to address it we're taught when what we're talking about here is our subjective experience okay will it you could connect i would use the word connection like the kotzkerov said as a child they asked him where is god he said wherever you let him in right concealed yes god is concealed even in yes yes concealed in everything which by the way is a whole discussion a whole deep discussion about the nature of tim tsum yarizal introduced the concept of tim tom that hashem is uh well literally tim tom's compression or condensation and then there was a whole big disagreement whether that means that god removed himself from the space where creation takes place or whether god is present but in a concealed way right is he really moved aside is it real sea look or is he behellum is he simply concealed or hidden okay but yes we're talking about our subjective experience because remember we said divine speech from the subjective standpoint does divine speech does resemble human speech in as much as there is an experience of a listener there's something whether whether it's absolute reality or not the listener is having an experience and that's what we're describing when we're describing creation we're really describing a subjective experience when we're talking about creation we're talking about a subjective experience that creation is having not of an absolute reality because that would imply that god has somehow undergone a between change and excellent i believe so yeah all right let's let's let's continue here yeah so we're we're we're describing the the speech before it was even speech before it was thought back when the the speech before it was ever articulated even as a thought and it was only emotional energy back then it was completely one with god namely the capacity of in his mind and the desire in his heart talking about with a person i love that expression by the way means literally and derek marshall means figuratively literally figuratively that's how everyone uses the word literally now anyways he literally dropped a bomb on my head really you mean figuratively i mean the kokamama static marshall that's what i mean maybe that's the source for it the world is becoming more acidic hashem's speech and thought are totally one with him even after his speech comes out and creates worlds just like his speech was one with him before he spoke it out the ancient machinery club of his park there's no change for him from his perspective there's no change the change is only from the subjective standpoint of the created beings which receive their existence from his speech they're the ones who are changed by the exiting the coming out the articulation of his speech to create worlds shmuslavishbam his speech is invested in the worlds to enliven them and that's through a process that's not even one speech it's like a carbon copy of a carbon copy he calls it he's touchless basically yeah it's not even one speech like the telephone game until the divine creative energy is muted enough diminished enough in grade that the created beings will be able to receive from it without being overwhelmed out of existence the these contractions are actually concealments we mentioned that earlier what do they accomplish they conceal the light and the vitality which comes from his speech so that it doesn't become so revealed that the lower realms cannot bear they cannot tolerate it and that's why the created beings perceive hashem's creative energy the create the very creative energy which is invested in them the creative beings perceive it as if it is something discreet from his essence even though we just got through this whole long explanation that his speech meaning his creative energy never becomes separate from him it never leaves him there's nowhere to go because he is everywhere and everything yet from our subjective standpoint it does feel that way yeah um i don't know they create i don't i don't want to use the word distort but it creates an alternate reality and wha i don't want to call it an illusion because then you're saying the world is just uh a dream and we know that the world is real but asia's bought early key messages why are you running to bad why i have to run the bad do i have to run to an extreme thing you're making this about good and bad why don't we start with something more basic why don't we start with something much more basic before you run to to moral terms like good and bad which which can be very muddy let let's start with something more basic our perception of any reality apart from divine unity is that an illusion or is it a particular subjective standpoint which the infinite one has purposefully generated it's not an illusion it's not a joke it's not a dream it's not a trick but it's a limited perspective and one of the reasons we learn these subjects is to continue to bear in mind that it's only a perspective okay but let's let's keep going here let's let's let's finish okay so i was in the middle of a sentence so the this this speech we see it as if divine speech has become separate and distinct from god we erroneously perceive his speech as coming from hidden meaning we perceive like a person speaks there's the speaker in the speech so we look at the world even if we're believers we say well there's god and there's god's world which is really not correct there's just god but from a subjective standpoint yes he successfully created an experience where it does seem you're not crazy for saying that it seems like the speaker and the speech are separate that god created creation and that they're two different entities yes he did create such an appearance he did we're affirming the fact he did create that appearance ah however you have to know the truth from hashem's perspective ancient symptoms no contractions can conceal before him for darkness is like light for him there's no difference between darkness and light he can see in the dark just as much as in the light like it says even darkness doesn't obscure for you why mushrooms because all these contractions and concealments or garments are not separate from him it's not that he's hiding behind something other than himself allah but rather here's the metaphor kahoden kamsa like the snail or some people translated as the turtle either way it works the lavushay meneu bay whose clothing come from it itself how can you distinguish between the turtle and the turtle shell it's not like a person who wears clothing or drives a car or lives in a house the turtle shell and the turtle are one thing the turtle shell is part of the turtle so hashem's hiding behind something but what's he hiding behind himself so from our perspective i don't see the turtle i only see the turtle shell but from the turtle's perspective the shell doesn't separate me from myself kamehameha yashem who elokim like it says hashem which is yud kevke the four letter name was is and will be the eternal one the transcendent one is elokim elokim is the divine name which corresponds to god's hidden power within the natural realm that's why elokim the divine name has the same numerical value as hatava the nature so havaya is elokim that the transcendent god hides behind this concealment which is just another aspect of himself so he's hiding behind himself the commission is like like it's explained elsewhere uh definitely the second volume of tanya sharif ramona explains all this stuff at length you guys are all pretending to be so interested in this topic now but if i would give a class in charity you'd see in two weeks i'd have nobody here remember when you get to the end of the 53 chapters okay let's just finish off the last few words therefore from his perspective everything is like nothing so therefore what's the point what's the point god speaks worlds into being but his speaking them into being doesn't actually make them an entity unto themselves like human speech where the speech and the speaker are distinct from each other but rather even after having spoken the world into being even after creation has emerged so to speak from god's essence it still remains one with him why is this important because remember where we're headed we're headed toward a very extreme view of hashem's totality and that we didn't say this yet but we're going to say it we're going to redefine idolatry and in fact we're going to redefine all sin not merely as rebelling against god's will but we're going to define it as a denial of god's everythingness which we've now defined we've now defined his everythingness his everythingness is just so you understand what last chapter chapter 20 and today's chapter chapter 21 have done they've defined god's everythingness as that which remains itself even after having created an appearance of of um separation the fact that it appears like there's god and god's creation is not god's reality that's a subjective created reality yeah it seems to me like this chapter is the first point of the first method of getting close close to uh hashem through law to meditate no because we're not meditating on this but when you you could met oh yeah you're right you're right and later on by the way we will meditate on this subject and it will bring us to love and all of god very interesting you're saying because you could take this same subject matter and meditate on it and create new love and awe of god based on the wow think about this concept but that's not what we're doing right now we're studying it to get us into a mode of thinking where it's very very extreme and all or nothing um it seems like in this chapter it describes the process of hashem's speech through like thought and speech and it it takes away the emotion and for us it you know the emotion is no he mentioned the emotion he mentioned it he said it but is because if it remains itself even after creating an appearance of separation that's not a subjective well let me let me simplify it if i were to ask you um does it appear that not only god and his world are two distinct entities but the world itself is made up of many distinct entities i think the honest answer would be that yes according to my five senses and according to the brain i'm using to interpret the data that i'm getting from those senses yes it does appear so okay all right happy fourth of july once again please stay safe i know you guys are very into your m80s and your cherry bombs bottle rockets but please please ladies a little stay safe it's better to just go to a municipal fireworks let the real pros handle it