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Chapter 42
And behold, from what we wrote above concerning the lower fear, what they wrote in the Gemara (Berakhot 33b) on the verse (Deuteronomy 10:12), “And now, Israel, what does Hashem (God) your Elohim ask of you, but to fear Hashem your Elohim”, will be well understood. Is fear then a small matter? Yes, for Moses it is a small matter, and so on. For at first glance the answer is not understood, since “asks of you” is what is written.
Rather, the matter is this. For in every single nefesh (the lowest level of the soul) of the house of Israel there is something of the aspect of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him. For he is one of the seven shepherds who draw down vitality and divinity to the whole of the souls of Israel, and therefore they are called by the name “shepherds”. And Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, is the totality of all of them, and he is called “the faithful shepherd”. That is, he draws down the aspect of knowledge to the whole of Israel, to know Hashem, each one according to the grasp of his soul and its root above, and its drawing of nourishment from the root of the soul of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, which is rooted in the supernal knowledge of the ten sefirot (divine channels) of Atzilut (emanation), which are united with their Emanator, blessed is He. For He and His knowledge are one, and He is the knowledge, and so on.
And this too, still more: in every generation, sparks come down from the soul of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, and clothe themselves in the body and the soul of the sages of the generation, the eyes of the congregation, to teach knowledge to the people, and to know the greatness of Hashem, and to serve Him with heart and soul. For the service that is in the heart is according to the knowledge, as it is written: “Know the Elohim of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing soul” (1 Chronicles 28:9). And of the time to come it says: “And they shall not teach, a man his fellow, saying, Know Hashem, for they shall all know Me”, and the rest (Jeremiah 31:33).
But the core of the knowledge is not the knowing alone, that they know the greatness of Hashem from the mouth of scribes and from the mouth of books. Rather, the core is to deepen his knowledge in the greatness of Hashem, and to fix his thought fast in Hashem, with strength and firmness of the heart and the mind, until his thought be bound to Hashem with a firm and strong bond, as it is bound to a physical thing that he sees with eyes of flesh, and he deepens his thought in it. As is known, that knowledge is an expression of binding, as: “And the man knew”, and the rest (Genesis 4:1).
And this power, and this trait, to bind his knowledge to Hashem, is in every soul of the house of Israel, by its nourishment from the soul of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him. Only, since the soul has been clothed in the body, it needs a great and mighty toil, double and redoubled. The first is the toil of the flesh, to beat the body and to subdue it, so that it not darken the light of the soul, as we wrote above in the name of the Zohar, that a body in which the light of the soul does not enter, they beat it. And that is by thoughts of return from the depth of the heart, as is written there. And the second is the toil of the soul, that the labor of wearying its thought, to go deep and to contemplate the greatness of Hashem for a long unbroken hour, not be heavy upon it.
For the measure of this hour is not the same in every soul. There is a soul pure in its nature, to which, immediately when it contemplates the greatness of Hashem, the fear and the dread of Hashem arrive, as is written in the Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chaim, section 1: When a person contemplates that the great King, the King of kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory fills the whole earth, stands over him and sees his deeds, immediately the fear will arrive to him, and so on. And there is a soul lowly in its nature and in its offspring, from the source from which it was hewn, from the lower levels of the ten sefirot of Asiyah (making), and it cannot find the divinity in its thought except with difficulty and with force. And especially if it has been defiled by the sin of youth, for the iniquities separate, and so on [as is written in Sefer Chasidim, section 35].
And nevertheless, with difficulty and with force, so that his thought strengthen itself very much, with firmness and much toil and great depth, to go deep into the greatness of Hashem for a long hour, certainly the lower fear mentioned above will arrive to him, at least. And as our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said (Megillah 6b): “I toiled and I found, believe”, and as it is written (Proverbs 2:4): “If you seek her like silver, and like hidden treasures you search for her, then you will understand the fear of Hashem”. The meaning is: in the way a person searches for a hidden treasure and a store hidden in the depths of the earth, digging after it with mighty toil, so one needs to dig with mighty toil, to uncover a treasure of the fear of heaven, stored away and hidden in the understanding of the heart of every person of Israel. And that fear is an aspect and a level above time, and it is the hidden natural fear mentioned above.
Only, in order that it come to actual deed, in the aspect of the fear of sin, so as to turn from evil in deed, speech, and thought, one needs to reveal it from the hidden places of the understanding of the heart, which is above time, and to bring it to the aspect of actual thought in the mind, and to deepen his thought in it for some actual length of time, until its effect goes out from potential into actual effect. That is, to turn from evil and do good, in thought, speech, and deed, because of Hashem, who watches and looks and listens and gives ear and understands every one of his deeds, and who searches his kidneys and his heart. And as the saying of our Rabbis, of blessed memory (Mishnah Avot 3:1): “Look at three things”, and so on, “an eye that sees and an ear that hears”, and so on. And also, for He has no likeness of a body. On the contrary, everything is revealed and known before Him, in a superiority without end over the seeing of the eye or the hearing of the ear, by way of parable. Only, it is by way of parable, like a person who knows and feels in himself all that is done and brought about in any one of all his 248 limbs, such as cold or heat, and even heat in the nails of his feet, by way of parable, if he is burned by fire. And likewise their being and their essence, and all that is affected by them, he knows and feels in his mind. And in the manner of this knowledge, by way of parable, the Holy One, blessed be He, knows all that is brought about in all created beings, upper and lower, since all of them receive their flow from Him, blessed be He, as it is written (1 Chronicles 29:14): “for all is from You”. And this is what we say (the blessing of Remembrances in the additional service of Rosh Hashanah): “and also, no formed being is hidden from You”. And as Maimonides wrote (Maimonides, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 2, law 9) [and the sages of the Kabbalah agreed to this, as Rabbi Moshe Cordovero wrote in the Pardes], that by the knowledge of Himself, as it were, He knows all the created beings that exist from the truth of His existence, and so on.
Only, this parable is only to settle the ear. But in truth the parable does not resemble what it pictures, at all. For the soul of a person, even the intellectual one and the nefesh elokit (the soul from God), is affected by the events of the body and its pain, because it is actually clothed in the vital soul, which is actually clothed in the body. But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not affected, God spare us, by the events of the world and its changes, and not by the world itself, for none of them works any change in Him, God spare us.
And behold, in order to grasp this well in our intellect, the sages of the truth have already spoken at length in their books. But all Israel are believers, children of believers, without any inquiry of a human intellect, and they say: “You are He, before the world was created”, and so on, as above, chapter 20.
And behold, every person of Israel, whoever he may be, when he contemplates this for a long hour every day, how the Holy One, blessed be He, actually fills the upper ones and the lower ones, and the heavens and the earth, actually, and the whole earth is actually full of His glory, and He watches and looks and searches his kidneys and his heart, and counts all his deeds and his words and all his steps, then the fear will be fixed in his heart for the whole of the day. When he returns and contemplates this, even with a light contemplation, at every time and every hour, he will turn from evil and do good, in thought, speech, and deed, so as not to rebel, God spare us, against the eyes of His glory, which fills the whole earth, and as the saying of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai to his disciples, as above. And this is what the verse said (Deuteronomy 10:12): “but to fear Hashem your Elohim, to walk in all His ways”, which is a fear that brings one to fulfill each mitzvah (a commanded deed) of His, blessed be He, in turning from evil and doing good, and it is the lower fear mentioned above.
And as regards Moses, that is, as regards the aspect of the knowledge in every divine soul of Israel, it is a small matter, as above, [for the knowledge is what binds the hidden places of the understanding of the heart to the aspect of revelation in actual thought, as is known to those who know the hidden wisdom].
And this too he shall remember. For as with a king of flesh and blood, the core of the fear is of his inwardness and his vitality, and not of his body, since when he sleeps there is no fear of him at all. And behold, his inwardness and his vitality are not seen by eyes of flesh, only by the eyes of the intellect, through eyes of flesh seeing his body and his garments, for one knows that his vitality is clothed within them. If so, exactly so, actually, one ought to fear Hashem, through eyes of flesh seeing the heavens and the earth and all their host, in which the light of Ein Sof (the Endless), blessed is He, is clothed, to give them life.
[Gloss: And it is also seen by the seeing of the eye that they are nullified to His light, blessed be He, by their bowing every day toward the west at their setting, as the saying of our Rabbis, of blessed memory (Sanhedrin 91b), on the verse (Nehemiah 9:6), “and the host of heaven bows to You”, that the Shekhinah (the divine presence) is in the west. And so their course all the day toward the west is a way of bowing and of nullification.
And behold, also one who has never seen the king, and does not recognize him at all, even so, when he enters the court of the king and sees many honored ministers bowing to one man, dread and fright will fall upon him.]
And even though this is by being clothed in many garments, there is no difference and no distinction at all in the fear of a king of flesh and blood, whether he is naked, or whether he is dressed in one garment, or whether he is dressed in many garments. Rather, the core is habituation: to accustom his mind and his thought always, so that it be fixed in his heart and his mind always, that all he sees with his eyes, the heavens and the earth and its fullness, are all the outer garments of the holy King, blessed be He. And by this he will always remember their inwardness and their vitality. And this is also included in the word emunah, which is an expression of habituation, that a person accustoms himself, like a craftsman who trains his hands, and so on.
And also, to keep always in remembrance the expression of our Sages, of blessed memory, the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, which is of the matter of “You shall surely set a king over you” (Deuteronomy 17:15), as is explained in another place, and so on. For the Holy One, blessed be He, sets aside the upper ones and the lower ones and singles out His kingship upon us, and so on, and we accept, and so on. And this is the matter of the bowings in the Prayer of the Eighteen, after the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven in speech, in the reading of the Shema, to return and to accept in actual deed, in action, and so on, as is explained in another place:
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