Continuing the theme of immaturity and maturity with regard to the Kabbalistic intentions (kavanot) of Sefirat HaOmer begun in our previous issue, this article explores how the four stages of maturity correspond to past, present, future, and eternity.
This and the previous article are excerpts from the Seu’dah of Mashiach from 5785. The original Hebrew appeared in the Nifla’ot issue of Acharei-Kedoshim 5785.
The main intentions (kavanot) of the Counting of the Omer according to the writings of the Arizal relate to the development of consciousness in four stages first-immaturity, first-maturity, second-immaturity, and second-maturity. In Hebrew these are referred to by the Kabbalists as katnut alef (first-immaturity), gadlut alef (first-maturity), katnut bet (second-immaturity), and gadlut bet (second-maturity).
Among the Kabbalists, no other intentions are made during the Counting of the Omer. The entire focus during this time of the year is on the counting itself and building the the expanded mental-spiritual states (mochin) through these four stages. All the spiritual work done during the Counting of the Omer is aimed at integrating what was revealed on the Seder night; we start counting the evening after the Seder. During the Seder night, “the King of kings revealed Himself to them and redeemed them,”[1] which means that all the mochin were revealed at once, but could not be integrated. They flee (just as “the people fled”[2]) and we must reconstruct them stage by stage during the days of the Counting, until we merit to internalize them all with the Giving of the Torah on Shavu’ot, with joy and inwardness.
During the Counting of the Omer we take into account our base animalistic soul, we relate to the animal nature within us and give it its proper place. The animal soul is considered the lowest rung in the order of Creation, yet it is precisely this place where God desires to have a dwelling among the lower realms so that even the material dimension can recognize His sovereignty and truly nullify itself before Him. That is why the intentions of Counting the Omer focus on the four-stage process from immaturity to maturity—including the first stage of immaturity and maturity which specifically relate to the animal soul.
First Immaturity: Faith
We have learned that there is one power in the soul that was not damaged in the Shattering of the Vessels: Faith. This is also true in every individual’s life. Even after experiencing a spiritual or psychological fall and shattering, when one is cast down to the lowest level, faith still exists in the soul, and it has the power to resurrect everything that was broken and died. That is why we associate the lowest stage of maturity, the first-immaturity with faith.
One of the reasons for holding a special meal on the seventh (or outside the Land of Israel, on the eighth) day of Passover is to commemorate the miracle of the rescue of our teacher the Ba’al Shem Tov on his way to the Land of Israel. He found himself on a deserted island, together with his student Reb Tzvi, held captive while their captors planned to kill them. Reb Tzvi asked the Ba’al Shem Tov, “Why is the Rebbe doing nothing? Let the Rebbe make some yichud (mystical unification) and we will be saved from here!” The Ba’al Shem Tov replied that he had forgotten everything he knew, and asked Rabbi Tzvi whether he remembered anything. He had reached the lowest level of immaturity, of small-mindedness. Reb Tzvi said that he too remembered nothing except the letters of the aleph-bet. The Ba’al Shem Tov said to him: “You remember the aleph-bet?! Then remind me….” Reb Tzvi began reciting the aleph-bet together with the Ba’al Shem Tov, and then the Ba’al Shem Tov’s mind returned to him and they were saved.
In Chabad, at this time we hold the Feast of Mashiach, not merely giving thanks for the miracle of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s rescue that occurred in the past, but directing our gaze forward, to think about the future, about Mashiach and the Resurrection of the Dead. Thinking about the future is already a more advanced stage. It is second-immaturity, as we will explain.
First-Maturity: Reading the Signs
In first-immaturity, the lowest and most basic state, I do not understand what is happening with me in the present moment, I do not understand what God wants to communicate to me through my circumstances; I can only believe in God and believe that everything He does is for the good. The transition from first-immaturity to first-maturity occurs when we gain a certain ability to understand the messages that God is communicating to us through our circumstances, through our surroundings and through the events that are happening in our lives. At this stage, the understanding of the Divine message hidden in these circumstances usually depends only on logical inference. There is still no clear vision, which comes only with second-maturity, as will be explained below.
When the Baal Shem Tov fell into the ultimate state of immaturity, of small-mindedness, he could remember nothing. As a result, there is also no meaning to what is happening to me at this moment. But when a person possesses even a little awareness (mochin), what happens to him reminds him of things he already knows and has encountered before. Thus, the present is understood through our past experiences. One extreme form of this is when I see or experience something and have the sense that I have already seen or experienced it. This is known as déjà vu—when the memory of the past and the nature of the present experience are interconnected. Since memory is heavy with meaning, I project that meaning onto the present moment, giving an event in the present a meaning based on the past. What this all demonstrates is how memory of the past brings me closer to the first-maturity stage, where I begin to acquire an understanding of Divine Providence. Even animals presumably learn from the past, possessing acquired memory that helps them understand situations, but clearly in human beings memory, experience, and understanding are far more developed and therefore produce a higher level of comprehension. The entire matter of memory begins from Passover, since all the sacred times in Torah—Shabbat and the festivals—as well as many of the Torah’s commandments are deemed “a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt” (זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם).
Let us give an example of how remembering the past translates into a mature form of understanding personal Divine Providence from a well-known story about the Tzemach Tzedek.
It came to pass that he was approached by a Jew whose landlord suspected him wrongly of theft and was treating him harshly. The Rebbe sent him to a non-Chassidic Jew in a distant location to testify before the landlord on his behalf that he was not a swindler and to ask for his pardon. The non-Chasidic Jew to whom the Rebbe sent him had no idea why he was being asked to intercede, but in the end was persuaded to make the long trip to the landlord.
When he arrived at the landlord’s estate, he realized that he had come exactly in the middle of the landlord’s birthday celebration. To his surprise, the landlord was very impressed that he had arrived from far away and asked whether he had come especially in his honor. The Jew did not know what this was about, and the landlord reminded him: “Don’t you remember me? You saved my life!” On one of the landlord’s journeys he had gotten lost in the snow, and the Jew had taken him into his home, warmed him, fed him, and so on. The Jew remembered, seized the opportunity to act on behalf of the tenant farmer and saved him.
When they came to the Tzemach Tzedek to report the good news, and marveled at the open miracle, he said that this was no miracle. The Tzemach Tzedek explained that from childhood he had been recording in his mind everything he heard and saw, knowing that everything came to his attention through Divine Providence and had value. So many years ago, he had heard that this particular landlord had gotten lost in the snow and had been saved by a Jew from that distant town. Now, when the trouble that landlord was causing was brought to his attention, the memory of that story he had heard came to him and he understood that he had heard it and remembered it precisely in order to save this Jew now.
This is a quintessential story of experience combined with memory. Of course, it involves a tzaddik, and there is something here far more precise and profound than ordinary first-maturity, but the same principle is at play: memory of the past helps us correctly understand the message in the present.
Awareness of Synchronicity
We can deepen this a bit further. There is a non-Jewish psychologist whose name we will not mention here, who coined the term “synchronicity.” In coining the term he meant to say that when two things happen simultaneously without any apparent causal connection, the synchronicity carries a certain message. Indeed, he grasped correctly, in the manner that a non-Jew can express this idea, that there are no coincidences, but rather that everything is coordinated by Divine Providence.
That psychologist also added that the understanding of synchronicity is connected not only to my conscious memories, but also to what resides in my unconscious, and that the unconscious itself is divided into two levels: the personal unconscious and the collective (universal) unconscious. The latter includes things that belong to an entire people (or to all humanity, or even to all of creation), and which express themselves primarily in dreams. This sounds entirely reasonable. The clearest example of collective memory among the Jewish people—the people chosen by God to proclaim His sovereignty to all nations, the people for whom the world was created—is “a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt,” the foundational memory for all who carry the name “Israel.” As the sages state, “In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as though he personally left Egypt [today, and at every moment always].” How can this be achieved? When we access our collective unconscious and find that in its depths is this memory, which has the power to affect us as individuals.
To state the first and second stages of maturity again: first-immaturity presents as faith in Divine Providence. For example, when I see a leaf rolling along, moved by the wind, I believe that its every movement and where it eventually comes to rest are all by Divine Providence from the Creator. For a Jew this faith is simple and natural—a kind of natural consciousness, as our teacher the Baal Shem Tov revealed.
But the second stage, first-maturity is when I understand that many things are happening simultaneously and everything is connected—the piece of straw rolling by also fell from the roof and left a hole in it, and that too is part of the Divine plan; there are countless variables connected to what is happening now and everything is planned and synchronized together by Divine Providence.
In the first-maturity stage of perception of Providence there are far more mochin, far more awareness, and far greater likelihood of understanding the message. For example, if I believe in Divine Providence and a cup falls off my table, I understand that this is how it needed to happen, and therefore I do not get angry at the child who knocked it over. But if a piece of bread falls off my table and a mouse comes and eats it—I understand that God wanted the mouse to eat the bread; there is a message here about compassion for living creatures. In general, I do not hate mice. They too, like me, were created by God for His glory.[3] Someone who experiences only the present moment—only the transient events—even if deep in their heart they believe in Divine Providence, can come to anger. But one who lives with an awareness of the past and of the synchronicity of many things together understands that everything has a background and there is a reckoning from Above governing all events, and therefore, there is no room within for any anger. This is an important principle: anger is only possible in one who only has an immature mindset (katnut mochin). But someone who has a mature mindset (gadlut mochin), will not easily come to anger, if at all. This is close to the very definition of immaturity and maturity, of youth versus coming of age: a young child gets angry, a truly mature adult does not. In any case, attentiveness to the synchronicity between two events belongs to first-maturity (gadlut alef), in which there is far greater understanding of what is happening here.
Second-Immaturity: A Glance Toward the Future
In effect, what we have just said is that in first-immaturity there is only an experience of the present moment, without any background or context, without prior memory, but with faith in God and His goodness, and in the fact that everything is by Divine Providence. In first-maturity there is an added awareness of the past, memories that enable one to connect things together and understand something of the message embedded in Divine Providence. This sequence with the present preceding the past corresponds to the order we mention every day in prayer in the “verse” constructed by the sages, “God is King [HaShem melech, in the present tense], God was King [HaShem malach, in the past tense].” What comes next? The future: “God will be king” (HaShem yimloch).
In the past, we have explained that first and second immaturity correspond to the larger topic known as “faith and confidence” (אֱמוּנָה וּבִטָּחוֹן), a wide and deep subject that is treated in length elsewhere.[4] More specifically, first-immaturity is the counterpart of the dynamic of faith in the psyche while second-immaturity corresponds to confidence. This correspondence holds up well in our present context. Confidence is how the psyche should relate to the future. One should develop a sense of confidence that future will be good in a way that is visibly and openly positive in our eyes (referring to the good according to our own mundane perspective known as “lower knowledge” [דַּעַת תַּחְתּוֹן], not only according to God’s Divine perspective, known as “higher knowledge” [דַּעַת עֶלְיוֹן], for “Havayah is a God of knowledges…”[5] encompasses both forms of knowledge; from God's perspective, as the bearer of opposites, and thus even lower knowledge is fully true knowledge). Nevertheless, even though it would seem that confidence represents a state of maturity, there is an element of immaturity in it relative to the maturity of memory of the past and understanding of reality through it. The past carries certainty because it has already occurred, it exists in my memory and is surveyed as a known and ordered fact. The future, by contrast, carries uncertainty. I do not even know whether there will be a future at all (whether the Creator will bring about another moment of existence for the universe), and certainly not what it will contain. How do I know that the sun will rise tomorrow? Only in light of past experience. In first-maturity one feels that the past teaches and explains the present. When one thinks about the future there is uncertainty—an experience of immaturity (“I do not know”), but this immaturity is the second state of immaturity, a smallness that comes against the backdrop of a past that teaches the present, permeated with optimism regarding the future (and this is a great virtue).
Second-Maturity: A Vision of Eternity
Having explained that first-immaturity (katnut alef) is the experience of the present alone, that first-maturity (gadlut alef) adds a background to the present experience composed of memories from the past, and that second-immaturity (katnut bet) is the gaze toward the future, we come to inquire about the nature of second-maturity (gadlut bet), which is the final goal of the entire process. Above the three temporal states—past, present, and future—there is a perspective of eternity, a state in which there is no time at all. Regarding the phrase we quoted above, after “God is King, God was King, and God will be King,” comes “forever and ever” (לְעֹלָם וָעֶד). This is not meant to imply only the sense of time without end, without duration, but the sense of absolute eternity, a reality of no time altogether.
In everyday speech, when we say there is “no time,” we mean that there is not enough time to accomplish everything one wanted. But if that is the case, then the advice is to connect to the true “no time,” to God’s true eternity. This is akin to leaping directly from first-immaturity (katnut alef) directly to second-maturity (gadlut bet). This is exactly what we experience (at least internally) on the Seder night. If one can successfully leap in this way, there will be time for everything.
Continuing with the correspondence with faith and confidence—whereby katnut alef is faith, gadlut alef is apprehension of reality, and katnut bet is confidence—second-maturity (gadlut bet) is the very vision of the essence. In our present reality, the pinnacle of maturity is only an intellectual apprehension of Godliness, but in the future, we will see the Divine essence itself. This is the meaning of the verse, “For they will see eye to eye when God returns to Zion,”[6] and the verse, “and all flesh shall see together that the mouth of God has spoken.”[7] Then it will also be felt how impoverished and lacking the level of first-maturity—knowing (only) the existence, but not the essence—really was compared to the second-maturity.
Click here for Part 1 of this article
[1]. Mishnah Pesachim 10:5.
[2]. Exodus 14:5.
[3]. In tractate Pesachim there is a discussion regarding the relationship between infants and mice.
[4]. Beginning with our article by this name in the book Lev LaDa’at and continuing with many classes over the years, especially the series of 38 monthly classes given in recent years and available at www.galeinai.org.il/t/lessons/toc_44_3_5.
[5]. 1 Samuel 2:3.
[6]. Isaiah 52:8.
[7]. Ibid. 40:5.
