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Chapter 41
But the beginning of the service, and its core, and its root, needs to be a constant remembrance. And it is this. For even though fear is the root for turning from evil, and love for doing good, even so it is not enough to awaken the love alone for doing good. And at the least one must first awaken the natural fear hidden in the heart of every Israelite, not to rebel against the King of kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, as mentioned above, so that it be in a revelation of his heart, or of his mind at least. That is, to contemplate in his thought, at least, the greatness of Ein Sof (the Endless), blessed is He, and His kingship, which is the kingship of all worlds, upper and lower, and He fills all worlds and surrounds all worlds. And as it is written (Jeremiah 23:24): “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth”, and He sets aside the upper ones and the lower ones, and singles out His kingship upon His people Israel in general, and upon him in particular. For a person is obligated to say: For my sake the world was created (Sanhedrin 37a). And he himself also accepts His kingship upon himself, that He be King over him, and to serve Him and to do His will, in every kind of the service of a servant.
And behold, Hashem (God) stands over him, and the whole earth is full of His glory, and He looks upon him and examines kidneys and heart, if he serves Him as is fitting. Therefore one must serve before Him with dread and with fear, as one who stands before the king. And he shall go deep in this thought and lengthen it, according to the capacity of the grasp of his mind and of his thought, and according to the free time that he has, before occupation with the Torah or the mitzvah (a commanded deed), as before the putting on of the tallit and the tefillin.
And he shall also contemplate how the light of Ein Sof, blessed is He, which surrounds all worlds and fills all worlds, is the supernal will. It is clothed in the letters and the wisdom of the Torah, or in these tzitzit and tefillin. And by his reading, or by his putting them on, he draws down His light, blessed be He, upon himself, that is, upon the portion of Eloah from above that is within his body, to be included and to be nullified in His light, blessed be He.
And in particular, with the tefillin: to nullify and to include the aspect of his wisdom and his understanding in his nefesh (the lowest level of the soul), the nefesh elokit (the soul from God), in the aspect of the wisdom and the understanding of Ein Sof, blessed is He, which are clothed in a particular way in the passages “Sanctify” and “And it shall be, when He brings you”. That is, not to use his wisdom and his understanding that are in his soul, except for Hashem alone. And likewise, to nullify and to include the aspect of the knowledge in his soul, which includes kindness and severity, which are fear and love in his heart, in the aspect of the supernal knowledge, which includes kindness and severity, clothed in the passages “Hear” and “And it shall be, if you listen”. And this is as it is written in the Shulchan Arukh, to subdue the heart and the mind, and so on. And in the wrapping of the tzitzit, he shall intend, as it is written in the Zohar, to draw down upon himself His kingship, blessed be He, which is the kingship of all worlds, and so on, to single it out upon us by means of this mitzvah. And this is of the matter of “You shall surely set a king over you” (Deuteronomy 17:15).
And then, even if with all this dread and fright do not fall upon him in a revelation of his heart, nevertheless, since he accepts upon himself the kingdom of heaven, and draws down upon himself His fear, blessed be He, in a revelation of his thought and his will that are in his mind. And this acceptance is true, without any doubt, for it is the nature of the souls of all Israel not to rebel against the holy King, blessed be He. So the Torah that he studies, or the mitzvah that he does, because of this acceptance and because of the drawing down of the fear that is in his mind, are called by the name of a complete service, like all the service of a servant to his master and his king. Which is not so if he studies and fulfills the mitzvah with love alone, in order to cleave to Him by means of His Torah and His commandments. It is not called by the name of the service of a servant. And the Torah said: “And you shall serve Hashem your Elohim”, and the rest; “And Him you shall serve”, and the rest. And as it is written in the Zohar [the portion Behar]: like this ox, upon which they place a yoke at the first, in order to bring out from it good for the world, and so on, so too a person needs to accept upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven at the first, and so on. And if this is not found with him, holiness does not rest upon him, and so on. [And in the Ra’aya Mehemna there, folio 111b], that every person needs to be in two aspects and levels, and they are the aspect of a servant and the aspect of a son. And even though there is a son who is also a servant, it is impossible to come to this level without the upper fear coming first, as is known to those who know.
And behold, even one who, also in his mind and in his thought, feels no fear and no shame at all, because of the low value of his soul, from the source from which it was hewn, from the lower levels of the ten sefirot (divine channels) of Asiyah (making), even so, since he intends in his service to serve the King, this is a complete service. For fear and service are counted as two commandments in the numbering of the 613, and they do not hold one another back. And further, that in truth he also fulfills the commandment of fear, in that he draws the fear into his thought. For in this hour and moment, at least, the fear of heaven is upon him, at least like the fear of an ordinary man of flesh and blood who is not a king, looking at him, so that on his account he holds back from doing a thing that is not fitting in his eyes. And this is called fear, as Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said to his disciples (Berakhot 28b): “May it be the will that the fear of heaven be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood”, and so on, “Know that when a person commits a transgression, he says that no man should see me”, and so on. Only, this fear is called lower fear, and fear of sin that comes before his wisdom. And upper fear is fear of shame, and so on, for there is a fear and there is a fear, and so on.
But with no fear at all, it does not fly upward by love alone, as the bird is not able to fly with one wing, for fear and love are two wings [as is written in the Tikkunim]. And likewise fear alone is one wing, and it does not fly upward with it, even though it is called the service of a servant. And there needs also to be the aspect of a son, to awaken the natural love, at least, hidden in his heart, so that it be in a revelation of his mind, at least, to remember his love for Hashem, the One, in his thought and in his will, to cleave to Him, blessed be He. And this shall be his intention in the occupation with the Torah or with this mitzvah, that his nefesh elokit and his vital soul, and their garments, cleave to Him, as mentioned above.
But indeed, our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said (Berakhot 49b): A person should never take himself out of the whole. Therefore he shall intend to unite, and to cleave to Him, blessed be He, the source of his nefesh elokit and the source of the souls of all Israel, which is the breath of His mouth, blessed be He, called by the name Shekhinah (the divine presence), because it dwells and clothes itself within all worlds, to give them life and to sustain them. And it, it is what bestows on him this power of speech with which he speaks words of Torah, or this power of deed to do this mitzvah. And this union is by drawing down the light of Ein Sof, blessed is He, below, by occupation with the Torah and the commandments in which He is clothed. And he shall intend to draw His light, blessed be He, upon the source of his soul and the souls of all Israel, to unite them. And as the meaning of this union will be explained further on at length, see there. And this is the meaning of “For the sake of the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shekhinah, in the name of all Israel”.
[Gloss: And by this, the severities will also be sweetened in the kindnesses of themselves, through the inclusion of the attributes and their union, by the revelation of the supernal will, blessed is He, which is revealed above by an arousal from below. It is His revelation below, in occupation with the Torah and the mitzvah, which are His will, blessed be He. And as is explained in the Idra Rabba and in Mishnat Chasidim, tractate Arikh Anpin, chapter 4, that the 613 commandments of the Torah are drawn from the whiteness of Arikh Anpin, which is the supernal will, the source of the kindnesses.]
And even though, for this intention to be true in his heart, so that his heart truly desire this supernal union, there needs to be in his heart a great love for Hashem alone, to make satisfaction of spirit before Him alone, and not to quench his soul that thirsts for Hashem, but like a son who exerts himself after his father and his mother, who loves them more than his own body and his own soul, and so on [as was explained above in the name of the Ra’aya Mehemna]. Nevertheless, every person ought to accustom himself to this intention. For even though it is not, in its full truth, completely in his heart, that he desire this with all his heart, nevertheless a very little of his heart truly desires this, because of the natural love in the heart of every Israelite to do all that is the supernal will, blessed is He. And this union is His true will. And that is the supernal union in Atzilut (emanation), which comes about by an arousal from below, through the union of the nefesh elokit and its inclusion in the light of Hashem clothed in the Torah and the commandments with which it occupies itself, and they become actually one, as explained above. For by this, the source of the Torah and the commandments, which is the Holy One, blessed be He, is also united with the source of his nefesh elokit, which is called by the name Shekhinah. They are the aspect of filling all worlds and the aspect of surrounding all worlds, as is explained in another place at length.
But the union of his soul, and its inclusion in the light of Hashem so as to become one: this, every person of Israel desires in its full truth, completely, with all the heart and with all the soul, from the natural love hidden in the heart of every Israelite, to cleave to Hashem, and not to be separated, and not to be cut off and divided, God spare us, from His union and His oneness, blessed be He, in any way, even by an actual giving over of the soul. And occupation with the Torah and the commandments and with prayer is also a matter of an actual giving over of the soul, as when it goes out from the body at the completion of seventy years. For it does not muse on the needs of the body, but its thought is united and clothed in the letters of the Torah and the prayer, which are the word of Hashem and His thought, blessed be He, and they become actually one. For this is the whole occupation of the souls in the Garden of Eden, as is stated in the Gemara and in the Zohar, only that there they delight in their grasp and in their inclusion in the light of Hashem. And this is what they established at the beginning of the morning blessings, before the prayer: “My Elohim, the soul”, and so on, “and You breathed it”, and so on, “and You are destined to take it from me”, and so on. That is to say: since You breathed it into me, and You are destined to take it from me, therefore from now I hand it over and return it to You, to unite it in Your oneness. And as it is written (Psalms 25:1): “To You, Hashem, I lift up my soul”. And that is by the binding of my thought to Your thought, and of my speech to Your speech, in the letters of the Torah and the prayer, and in particular in speaking to Hashem as to one present, as “Blessed are You”, and the like.
And behold, with this preparation, of the giving over of his soul to Hashem, he shall begin the morning blessings: “Blessed are You”, and so on. And likewise, with this preparation, he shall begin to learn a fixed portion immediately after the prayer. And likewise in the middle of the day, before he begins to learn, this preparation is needed at least, as is known, that the main preparation of “for its own sake”, as an indispensable requirement, is at the beginning of the learning, for a beinoni (the in-between person). And as with a bill of divorce and a Torah scroll, which require “for its own sake” as an indispensable requirement, and it is enough that he say at the beginning of the writing: “Behold, I write for the sake of the holiness of a Torah scroll” (Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah, section 274, paragraph 1), or “for his name and for her name”, and so on (Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer, section 131, paragraph 7, and section 135, paragraph 1). And when he learns for many hours in succession, he ought to contemplate this preparation mentioned above, in every single hour at least. For in every single hour there is another drawing down from the upper worlds, to give life to the lower ones, and the drawing down of the vitality of the hour before it returns to its source [in the mystery of running and returning that is in the Book of Yetzirah (formation)], together with all the Torah and the good deeds of the lower ones. For in every hour, one combination rules, of the twelve combinations of the name Havayah, blessed is He, in the twelve hours of the day, and the combinations of the name Adonai in the night, as is known.
And behold, all his intention in the giving over of his soul to Hashem, by means of the Torah and the prayer, to raise the spark of divinity within it to its source, shall be only in order to make satisfaction of spirit before Him, blessed be He, like the parable of the joy of the king when his only son comes to him, on coming out of captivity and the prison, as mentioned above. And behold, this intention is true, in its full truth, completely, in every soul of Israel, at every time and every hour, from the natural love that is a heritage to us from our fathers. Only, one needs to set times to contemplate the greatness of Hashem, so as to attain an intellectual fear and love, and all this, and perhaps, and so on, as mentioned above:
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