Part 6 · Chapter 6

Bina’s Opposition and Its Closeness to the Divine 0:06

Okay, so let's go over a little bit, and the thing, the basic thing is that what he explained is that of all the ספירות, בינה is the one that has the most opposition, so therefore it's the one that can get closest. Right. That the thing of the of the בכיה, the biggest בכיה is not in חכמה, but really in בינה. So that even though the first בכיה of of בינה is not as big as the second בכיה of חכמה, but that wakes up the third בכיה of of of בינה, of the fact that not just he didn't understand it yet, meaning that he didn't have the explanation yet, but that even now that he did have the explanation, he sees that the explanation is not into the actual עצמות.

Right. And and this is basically the thing that as far as having the longing for the אייבערשטער, that is the strongest דווקא in בינה. Yeah.

Because in all the other things you do you do get a certain amount of satisfaction. You know, like that the Rolling Stones song, "I can't get no satisfaction"? Right. That's the strongest דווקא in בינה, because בינה can never get any satisfaction at all.

So like in in love or fear, you you do get a certain amount of love and fear, and the love and fear, and also in חכמה, the the הפלאה is דווקא from the עצמות. Right. Same thing, the love and fear is of the עצמות.

Even though you don't get an actual grasping of the עצמות, but that's in בינה that you don't get the grasping, but the love is for the עצמות, and same thing with the fear, and same thing with the הפלאה, and also also with דעת, and also the upper כתר, and the רצון and the תענוג is for the עצמות.

But in בינה, like you said, if you understand it, it means it's not the עצמות.

Not only that, basically בינה is like this perfect vacuum cleaner, that the more you put into it the emptier it gets. Right. You know, it's actually all the other ones, when they when they get a certain amount put into it, so in other words, like one of the things about the ספירות is there's ten kind of עבודות, you know? Yeah. In עבודה there's עבודה, there's an עבודה from each ספירה, so there's different so the same thing like there's ten kinds of people, you know?

Ten Types of Avodah Linked to Bina 2:39

Yeah. In other words, the ten general types, and really each person is a mixture, like different characters are a mixture, so that down here, for instance, there's no such thing as a person who's all חסד or all גבורה, but there's some people lean more to חסד, some people lean more to גבורה, some people lean more to emotions, some people lean more to brains, you know. Right.

But and the same thing in עבודה. It's not that there's like a special עבודה that's only love, because without התבוננות we say where there's no love. But so there's two things: first of all, all the עבודות depend on בינה, that's what he said in chapter one. Right. And that's the whole ענין of of קונטרס ההתפעלות, that that if there's no התבוננות there's no עבודה. So it means that first of all, all the all the other nine עבודות, like like for instance the עבודה of מלכות is קבלת עול מלכות שמים, right, you know, the the עבודה there's then there's an עבודה of love and fear, you know.

Right. And like נצח is the עבודה of overcoming I mean there's various ענינים in it, but like basically the the one that usually you think of is to overcome your bad habits

by a force of willpower, you know. Right. To overcome, you know, to overcome, and then הודאה means to be מודה, you know? Right, yeah. So so there's all of these עבודות like so for instance like הודאה for instance, without בינה there's no הודאה either.

You have to have a certain amount of בינה to get the הודאה. הודאה means that the הודאה goes that you're מודה more than you understand. That's right. That's what it means, הודאה. You know? Right, that's why הוד comes out of בינה, and that's what it says like in chapter thirty-three. I'm getting an echo now, I can hardly hear you.

Hello? Yeah. Okay, so so the thing is, besides the fact that the all the other עבודות actually depend on בינה, the other thing is in all the other עבודות there is a sense of satisfaction.

Ignorance Increases Connection to the Divine 5:22

And as you get a sense of satisfaction, it's like when you eat. The more you eat, the less hungry you get. Whereas in בינה it's not like that, it's opposite. In בינה is the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets, and the less you, you know, in בינה it's דווקא the opposite, it's not like eating that the more you eat you get a certain sense of satisfaction, and you get a certain sense of pleasure and stuff like that.

Right. Over here you get just the opposite, that even though you get שמחה, but you don't get the the תענוג gets actually

farther away. Right. Because even though you get a שמחה, not only that, see the thing is also that the הפלאה of חכמה comes דווקא from the בינה.

That's what he said in, in these last two chapters here. The the הפלאה of חכמה comes from the בינה. Love and fear also, that it comes like, like, like it says in many places, comes דווקא from the התבוננות.

As a matter of fact, that's a הלכה according to רמב"ם. רמב"ם explains that in order to get the love and fear, it comes דווקא like in, that's that's how he starts his whole יד החזקה. Right. You know, and, and also, even a thing of קיבול עול מלכות שמים, that that means that you're מקבל עול without intellect, but still there has to be a certain amount of בינה to even get that started.

Right. And, and that's the thing, you know, like, like what the song that we were talking about yesterday, the רבי's song, that this is one of the songs that yeah, ממש the רבי singing himself. Right. The words say, צמאה לך נפשי כמה לך בשרי, that the the thirst is both spiritual and physical. Right. And how is it? It's בארץ ציה ועיף בלי מים, means the the no water at all.

Right. No water at all is דווקא in בינה. Right. Everywhere else it's not pure it's not a pure vacuum. Right. There is some water. And then it continues, כן בקודש חזיתיך. כן in this particular instance means thus. Right. It doesn't it it doesn't mean yes, it means thus. Thusly, through this thing of having no water at all, therefore I have the the I see you in the קודש, and then it says לראות עוזך וכבודך.

And לראות is לראות is דווקא a thing of of חכמה.

But a חזיון, a חזיון doesn't mean actually to see. It's like חוזה בכוכבים, you know? Right. A חזיון is actually an approximation. Right. It's not a clear sight.

It means like a vision or something like that, you know? Right. And that's the basic thing actually. So, so like, like what's the explanation that, you know, okay, so you're telling me that בינה is the opposite from the עצמות,

and therefore that's why it can grasp the עצמות, but you just said that it can't grasp the עצמות? Right. That's the whole definition of בינה.

That's why it's so far away from the עצמות, because if you grasp it, it's not the עצמות. Right. So how can you say that it does grasp the עצמות? So the thing of בינה, what בינה actually is, is an approximation or a simulation.

Bina as Approximation and Simulation Explained 9:20

What does it mean, an approximation? Like a like a חזיון. A חזיון is like

the way you get a picture on a computer screen. Like you know, when I turn on on my computer I have the the background picture is a picture of the רבי, or any picture. Right. If you magnify that picture you'll see that it's made out of pixels. Right. It's a bunch of dots, it's a bunch of dots, and if you get it bigger and bigger, you'll finally see that it's not really a picture of the רבי at all.

Right. It's really just a bunch of details, which is that's the whole ענין of בינה, it supplies details. And there's a thing, I don't I don't remember how they call it in computer language, but it's the level of clarity.

Right. You know, there's like 320 by 400, right, 600, 800, 600 by, 600 by 800, 1200 by 1500, right, there's more and more levels of clarity, and then also like certain pages when they fill in, when you're downloading it, it doesn't fill like from the top down. It starts filling all over, and then you start getting something that looks like a bunch of squares, and you can't actually see what it is yet.

Right. I don't know if you ever saw it. You're not such a big computer freak like me and and שמעון, you know. But as as as it fills in, so like let's say you fill in some details, right, and you fill in some more details, you still can't see what it is, but you can see that it's a human face. Right.

But you can't really tell yet exactly who it is yet, because it's like all a bunch of squares or something like that. It's not filled in properly. Right. And as it fills in more and more, finally you can see it.

And then finally, you ממש see the רבי's face, right, just like the רבי is standing in front of you. Right. But really, it's still really just an approximation, same like before when you when you couldn't see. It's just that before it was like 20 by 40, and then it filled in more and more till it was about 200 by 300, and then when it reached a certain level, like for instance, my computer is a slightly older one, so I have it 640 by 800 or something like that.

Some of the newer ones are, I think, like 1200 by 1500. Right. So it looks really sharp. But really, I mean, I can see the רבי. Right. It doesn't look like, it doesn't look to me like it's a bunch of pixels at all. Right.

It looks to me just like when I stood in front of the רבי.

And really, actually, if you think about it a little bit, when when you're seeing, like right right now you're looking around, you're seeing the room, right, it's not true. Yeah. It's it's it's pixels. Right. Your eyes are made of pixels. You know that? Yeah. In the back of your eyes, I don't know what they call it, the retina or something like that, the back of the eye is the retina, right, yeah, it's made up of these pixels of different colors, which work exactly the same way like a TV, except they're receptors instead of, you know.

There's pixels of different color which it receives, and that's why like if you look at the sun or a bright light, then you look away, it looks like you still have an afterimage because they they they slightly get slightly burnt out from until they regenerate themselves, you know. So even when you are seeing anything, what you're really seeing is an approximation.

And what basically happens, and it's the same thing like in a movie. In a movie, you're not really seeing anybody moving. Nobody's moving at all in a movie. Right.

You know, it's a bunch of still pictures. Right. And what happens, so in other words, it's the details. Right, it's an optical illusion. Well, it's not just an optical illusion, it's a little bit more than that. Yeah, it's like I say, it's an optical illusion, same thing like when when you see the רבי's face on on the screen.

It looks like it's an optical illusion really, but it's not just an optical illusion. What happens is that the חכמה fills in the spaces, right, of the בינה.

So that like on a computer screen, when you see a circle, it's not really a circle. Right. That's really a multi-gon. Right. You know, there's a hexagon and a octagon and a decagon, you know. Yeah, there are thousands of little edges. Depends how many edges there are.

how many edges there are. Like octagon means there's eight edges. On a computer screen, if you have a 640 by 800, it's not a real circle, because a real circle has infinite edges.

Right. Whereas on 640 by 800, you can't get infinite edges. Right. But it's like what they say, close enough for folk music. Right. And it doesn't matter because by the time it gets translated by your חכמה, the חכמה fills in the extra edges,

How Chochma Completes Bina’s Picture 15:18

and you see a circle. Right. And this is what it says, the בינה and the חכמה work together. So, this is the same thing. Like if you notice what the what the רבי said, the way he started off, like a lot of times you wonder why he starts off a chapter a certain way, and then he he jumps and he says, "Oh, but first we have to do something else."

Right. You notice in chapter five, before he jumped into the into into the rest of chapter five and chapter six, he says, "You have to know all the פרטי חלוקת מדרגות בכל פרטי סדרי השתלשלות דאבי״ע, ואיך נבנים בהמשכם אינם מובנים לכל מכללי ההערות," and he says like this: "ויבוארו כולם בקונטרס מיוחד." He's going to explain everything, all the points. But but then he says, "Well, wait a minute, you can't explain all the points."

It says, "מן הצורך מכל פרט." I'm going to tell you what you need from every פרט, and then he says, "וממילא יובן למבין וידע כמה פרטים אחרים." Right. In other words, I will give you the approximation, and ממילא, automatically, you'll fill in the rest of the פרטים, you'll see a circle. Right. I'll give you enough points

to as what you need. Right. And that's the thing of בינה, to give you the points, to give you the פרטים. Right. And then the thing, if you if you notice later on in the book where he explains the ענינם of חכמה and בינה, he says that the חכמה is automatic. Right, that's the thing. ממילא. Right. The חכמה comes ממילא. In other words, you don't have to make an effort to fill in to make it a circle, or you don't you don't have to make an effort to see the movie as a moving picture.

Right. It's ממילא, and that's what he explains later also when you you know the the the מצטרף לחכמה, that the בינה cuts up cuts up the idea into It dissects. It dissects the idea into more and more and more until it finally has it into letters.

Right. Cuts it down into concepts, and the concepts into smaller concepts of words all the way into letters, and then it takes the letters

and transfer them one at a time over, the mother loans the clothing to the daughter of speech. Right. And then like what's happening now, I'm really talking one letter at a time. Right. If you see if you if you if you make a study, a time study, you'll see that I did I at at no point did I say an actual word. Right. At no point in time.

Right. A word takes several points of time. Right. Right? Exactly. And same thing, if you look at the book, you'll see that in the book there's not a single word here. Right. There's a bunch of letters. Right. There's letters, and there's spaces. Right. But when you listen to me or when you look at the book, your חכמה automatically, you don't have to make an effort. You know, you don't have to what make an effort to so, "Wait a minute, he said ah, and then he said ooh, and then he said bah, and then he said boo, so that means something."

Right, puts it together automatically. Right, you don't have to think like that. You don't have to think, "Oh, wait a minute, what word did he say?" Right. "If bah and boo, what does that mean? Bah-boo? Oh, okay."

But it happens automatically, and that's what he says here, ממילא.

So the basic thing, it says like כן בקודש חזיתיך, I have the חזיון actually of you, and from this I get the חכמה of the עוז וכבודך, which that's already not really you. That's already the the עוז of you Right. and the כבוד of you. Right. Which the חכמה is not into the you, not really.

The חכמה is into the actually into the שם, into the light.

And the בינה, so you say, "What do you mean? But the בינה never at any point the בינה never gets the actual self." He says, "Yeah, so what?"

It gives you better and better approximations. But you say, "Okay, but that's still not the actual self." I mean, like the the thing of the The thing of the approximation, like for instance for instance the picture of the רבי is not the actual רבי. Right. You know. Okay, but the thing, but like for instance right now, I mean what's happening is my voice is being turned into approximations in electric pulses and then it gets over and really what you're getting over there is you're not really getting exactly my voice.

Well, it's not even your voice at all, really. Yeah, but even the thing that you're getting there is not really exactly how I talked over here.

Right. It's an approximation. Of course. Okay, but it makes no difference. You're talking to me, and I'm talking to you. Right. Right. The תפיסה that you get is actually it makes no difference it's an approximation. Right. You know, so that that's the whole thing. I mean, and and and בינה, so that it's The thing is that it's דוקא בינה that catches in the עצם. And that's why also like you know, it's like you say what in various places it says that בינה is תשובה עילאה.

Bina as the Highest Form of Teshuvah 21:03

Right. Why would בינה be תשובה עילאה? You'd think תשובה עילאה is a guy would be crying and some kind of an emotion, you know? Right. Why בינה? He says, why? Because it says, תשוב הנפש אל הוי׳ or was it, no, אל אלוקים אשר whatever, I can't remember what it says, that the ענין of תשובה that that you have to return all the way to God.

Right. Not part of the way. All the way. Right. And this is only possible with בינה.

Because all the other ones are not 100%. Right. It's only by בינה because and also the thing of תשובה, that there's two ענינים of תשובה: one is to return all the way to the אייבערשטער, the other one, which is the main thing in תשובה, is to realize how far away you are from the אייבערשטער. Right. And this is דוקא by בינה. Only in בינה does he realize really that he has absolutely nothing to do at all with the אייבערשטער.

Nothing. Right. Totally nothing. That all the understandings and all the emotions and everything, it's all totally nothing, has nothing to do with it. Right. Okay, so where, do you know where we are now?

We're on ובכל זה מטורץ ענין הנ״ל בשמחה שבבינה. Where? You know, there's Oh, you don't have that copy. Okay, one, two, it's like in the about the middle right a little bit less than a little bit more than the middle of the of the page on 226. Oh, ובכל זה, yeah. So, so he says the the סדר המדריגות is בינה.

Seder HaMadrigoth Centered on Bina 23:06

The בכיה of בינה means that because he doesn't understand the explanation yet. Then the בכיה of חכמה because of the sense of הפלאה of how far it is, and then finally the the בכיה of בינה because he sees that it's totally not understandable.

Right. ובכל זה מטורץ ענין הנ״ל בשמחה שבבינה ואינה שבחכמה, דגם שהשגה עצמה היא בבחינת צמצום אור אלוקי, not in the actual אלוקות and not even in the actual אור, but in the צמצום the אור, שמשיגי, אבל השמחה שרשה מגיעה בעצמות אלוקות דוקא. כמו הנשמות נהנים מזיו השכינה ממש בגן עדן, וגם השגתם בא על ידי צמצום כידוע, וזהו וישמחו בך דוקא. That's what it means, וישמחו בך דוקא,

actually in the עצמות, והיינו חדוה בסטרא דא, ובחינה איפכא יוצא מתוכה בג׳ מן המדריגות הנ״ל. וב' כובין שקולין הם, these are exactly the the exact two sides of the same thing. בשווה ממש, exactly equal.

וזהו בשמחה ובטוב לבב מרוב כל, that you will worship the אייבערשטער בשמחה ובטוב לבב מרוב כל from having so much of everything, וההשגות המהווה, means actual השגה not of the מתהווה, but of the מהווה. Is that what it says by you, המהווה, right? Yeah. Means that that that the real thing finally The השגה is not going even though the השגה starts off to be into only the מתהוה, but finally you'll have a שמחה ובטוב לבב מרוב כל, you'll have everything.

You'll have the whole thing. You'll have the השגות המהוה, actually. וכמו לעתיד לבוא, וכמו לעתיד, כתיב עין בעין יראו, you'll ממש see the אייבערשטער eye to eye. ואמר ביום ההוא הנה אלוקינו זה, right in front of us, this is this. Not כה, you know, like there's כה is like this, and this is this is the אייבערשטער. We'll be able to say ממש the exact thing לנוכח, right right in front right in front of us.

And then ואז נגילה ונשמחה בו דוקא כי הדבר, די למבין. Right. אבל עכשיו כל זה בכאב יוצא דהיינו מנגד היפוכי, right now it's דוקא to the opposite, דוקא, שהוא הבכיה מסטרא דא אדרבה מעלות, כמו שמבואר בבכי יבואו, דוקא.

The the the basic thing, you know, this is also like the the whole the whole ענין of

of the the גלות and the the גאולה, all Just one minute. What what what he's saying here is even that even though the השגה itself is בבחינת צמצום אור אלוקי, in other words you don't really understand it, but what you're what you're שמח in is the עצמות. Yeah, but it's it's more than that. It says finally the השגה will be in the עצמות. Finally the השגה will be in the עצמות, but Because it's it's a it's a משל on a משל, ולהבין דבר מתוך דבר.

Joy in Bina, Not Psychology 26:49

He will understand from the externality of the מהוה he will understand actually the השגה into the into into the מהוה, not the מתהוה. Right.

In other words, he'll climb up the levels in בינה. That that that's first of all. First of all, the שמחה of בינה, like what the שמחה that we're getting in is we're not getting the שמחה from understanding psychological concepts. Right. The שמחה is in the is in God Himself. The שמחה, even even right now, according to the the those those השגות מצומצמות, right, the שמחה is still in the בו.

Right. Makes no difference. That's that's the whole שמחה that we're getting. We're not getting a שמחה because like right now we're talking about the the the psychology of understanding, right, how the human mind works. That's not where we're getting the שמחה. We're not interested in that at all, actually. Right. The שמחה that we're getting is because we are getting slowly filled in the חזיון of אלוקות. Right.

Joy Comes from Vision of the Divine 27:51

That's what we're getting the שמחה from, and we're filling in one one little detail, another little detail, and slowly we're starting to actually see a picture. Right.

You know? And but the שמחה that we're getting, even when we're talking about a detail, is because of the אלוקות in this, not because of the In other words, we're getting the שמחה from the נמשל, not from the משל.

Right. Like, for instance, like you say, "Oh, the light of the sun, you know, how the sun there's like this fantastic explosion." So who cares? Right. That's not what we're getting the שמחה from. Right? Right. Yeah, so the the basic thing, like in other words, like the thing with the with the with the גאולה and the גלות and the גאולה, right, and and the thing is that that like also, what what did the אייבערשטער see to pick דוקא idiots like us, especially this is a thing that בינה is like from the highest things?

Why God Chose the 'Idiots' for Bina 28:51

And He picked up guys who really, you know, according to the levels of how they used to be, we don't really have no מדות and we don't have much of a שכל either. Right. The thing is why? Because, first of all, we don't have no מדות to interfere with the בינה, so we can't get any sense of accomplishment or enjoyment from anywhere else, only from the בינה.

And in the בינה, like the thing of the בינה is that the more that he doesn't understand, the more that he's connected to אלוקות. Right. We don't understand better than any of the previous generations.

Yeah, we're pretty good at not understanding. We're total idiots. Right. You know, I mean we hardly, you know, you know, so in a way, I mean, and not just us, the whole generation. You think why didn't he pick the older generations, the the generation they could have understood this better? It's דווקא because of that.

דווקא because of that, because the sense of not understanding is the strongest by us, and we're the farthest away. Right. You know. Right. So,

this is basically, you know, the the ענין, the ענין that that, you know, of of of like תשובה עילאה, and the whole thing of the ייחודים, and the whole thing, everything is דווקא from בינה, that בינה is the central this