By G-d’s grace, weird politics have given me a little insight into some difficult passages:
A learn-through of the discourse “Ani L’Dodi” from the Alter Rebbe’s Likkutei Torah and the Rebbe’s “Ani L’Dodi” of 5732 reveal strange contradictions, mysteries within mysteries, all bound up with the relational modes of love and fear.
Love and fear at their most basic are simply two ways one connects to another. Understood simply, the difference between them lies in how they are implemented: Fear is the connection that disregards the inner life of the person as themselves; it is an objective connection separate from feeling or perception. Love, on the other hand, is a connection that acknowledges the inner form of both parties; it is a “subjective” connection wherein one’s inner makeup is directed toward another, and vice versa. It is this distinction which gives rise to the common understandings of love and fear and attraction toward or repulsion from something. These common understandings are less nuanced and therefore fraught with contradiction; to love someone is to be connected to them in an inner fashion but to simultaneously be separated from them by the very insistence of one’s own feelings into the picture, whereas fear/repulsion/hatred often manifests not in escaping from the object of fear but being permanently bound to it as if by fate. On the whole, however, in terms of our conscious/active perception, love represents a connection and fear the negation or fleeing from such a connection, and thus the common definitions.
These notions of love and fear give rise to the famous formula, D’chilu-R’chimu-R’chimu-U’d’chilu, or, Fear-Love-Love-Fear — basically a path to unity, the process of connection to the creator that terminates in utter nullity within the deity. The first step is the Lower Fear, also known as accepting the yoke. In this case, the connection disregarding the inner life is the first vitally important step because one’s inner life is not yet ready to love. This is the responsibility that precedes appreciation. It is the idea that there is G-d, a King over the world and over oneself, to whom one must pledge devotion. Whatever the King demands is what one will do, and one’s appreciation or understanding of those demands is utterly irrelevant. The relationship is (apparently, see below) based entirely on the manifest truth of His existence and dominion and not on one’s feelings or understanding at all.
Next are the small and great love, wherein one works on an understanding and appreciation of the creator, bringing one’s intellect and emotions around to a grasp (and therefore an appreciation) of G-d and His commandments. The great love at its highest reaches is an ecstatic communion with G-d in which one’s entire personality is perfectly congruent and transparent to the creator. However, (again, in the basic understanding) there “remains one who loves,” a separate creation, bound to G-d only through the intermediary of love, feeling, “the relationship” in all its declarative existence. This is why there is a final step.
The final step is the higher fear, which (like the aforementioned lower fear) disregards the inner life and experience of the person for a relationship based in external objective reality. Unlike the lower fear, however, the higher fear is reached after the achievements of the small and great love have been attained. In other words, while the lower fear circumvents one’s understanding and appreciation by necessity (because these faculties are not yet refined enough to grasp the creator or his commandments) the higher fear circumvents these things by choice, that is, in order to escape the state of being “one who loves” and simply ceasing to be, in complete and utter transparent unity with G-d.
All of this is relatively simple, the order of G-d’s service in chassidus as known to first-time learners etc.
Then we try to understand these Elul discourses…
First we read that both love and fear, if they are to be established permanently in one’s personality, demand objects. That is, it is impossible to truly fear on one’s own, in one’s head as it were, and that is one of the reasons why the fear one feels on the high holy days can only be born from a revelation of G-dliness, some perceptible expression of G-d to give anchor to our fear. After all, it is only the knowledge of something which allows an emotional reaction to its form — it is only by either seeing a good meal before our eyes, or at least knowing the form of it in our minds, that we can desire it.
So, even love demands an object and cannot be generated by one party alone. This is not earth-shattering. Though fear is indeed more rooted in external objectivity whereas love is a function of the internal faculties of one’s being, for anything to be consciously detected to a human being it must pass through the intermediary of intellectual recognition/contemplation. Nevertheless, in the case of fear, we can say that the object of the apprehension is actually the external reality (I am aware of something beyond me that renders me nullified in some way) whereas in the case of love, the object of the apprehension is more the act of detecting the divine (I am aware of being in alignment with or grasping something beyond myself).
The Rebbe explains further that, though (as we have just noted) all forms of love and fear require objects and those objects are all accessed by man through intellectual contemplation/recognition, sometimes that recognition is implanted (it seems, automatically) through an external revelation, whereas sometimes it must be attained through the efforts of man. Specifically, the lower fear’s contemplation/recognition of G-d is accomplished by man’s efforts, whereas the higher fear’s is implanted by G-d.
To summarize so far: Fear is a connection with another rooted in an objective fact rather than the inner life of each party. The experience of fear is a function of one’s intellectual apprehension of this external, objective fact. This apprehension, in the case of the lower fear, is accomplished through the effort of the individual. In the case of the higher fear, it is accomplished through some process by G-d, and the person is, it would seem, a mere passive recipient.
The difference between the activity of the lower fear and the passivity of the higher fear are made clearer by their specific divine objects. The objective fact that one must apprehend to achieve the lower fear is G-d’s utter dominion over the universe He creates, ultimately: “The one thinking this very thought could not exist were it not for G-d.” And the logical conclusion — the one thinking this very thought will subjugate himself to the will of his creator. The fact that causes the higher fear is the perception that G-d in His infinitude transcends all creation and all limitation. Aside from impossibility of attaining such an impression on one’s own steam (being that all comprehension begins within the framework of logic and the very worlds one is utterly negating in comparison to G-d), the inherent passivity of the higher fear is reflected in one’s logical conclusion — not that one must subjugate himself to G-d, but that one indeed is already subjugated to the point of having no definition outside of G-dliness itself. In other words, and in accordance with our understanding of the higher fear mentioned above, there is technically no person left as such to actively do anything, but rather only an expression of the creator. We thus see how the higher fear is surely utterly passive, a recognition of the reality of the infinite creator given to one by the Creator, whereas the lower fear can be accomplished through the efforts of man.
It is at this point, however, that things take a turn, and in order to understand it, we must re-examine, from first principles, our entire understanding of love and fear.
(to be continued)