One’s Where One’s Mind Is At

When I was 17-18 years old, I spent about eight months attending lectures at what was then called, “The Research Centre of Kabbalah”. When it was time to leave and my journey took me to spend some of spring/summer of 1986 studying at Lubavitch Yeshiva at Morristown, NJ. 

On by first night in Morristown Yeshiva, I schmoozed with one of the Rabbis about my interest in meditation and using it as a technique for spiritual connection. He attempted to relate to my interest by responding with a story about a Rabbi who spent six hours lost in deep contemplation. Needless to say, I felt a disconnect. I was talking about meditation and it seemed to me that he was talking about academics. As a college student, I too had long periods of study where my mind was engaged in a topic for hours at a time. However, that is not what I meant by meditation. That was an academic effort, not a spiritual exercise. This left me with the impression that Lubavitchers do an academic exercise, which they confuse with meditation. However, I kept an open mind and over time encountered other Lubavitch spiritual teachings and which truly impressed me. As a result, I viewed Lubavitch as a very useful resource for mystical philosophy, but not for meditation. 

Instead, I turned for meditative instruction to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s “Jewish Meditation - A Practical Guide”, a book which lays out a variety of traditional Jewish meditative practices. The one which spoke most to me was Rebbe Nachman’s technique, which is to have a daily conversation with God. What I loved about this particular technique was that it afforded me an opportunity to be intimate with God no matter what I was thinking and feeling at the moment, as any psychological state can become subject matter for conversation. Over time, I noticed that sometimes I was so deep into the meditation that it was difficult for me to move my lips. Continuing the conversation in my mind alone flowed smoother. 

In the summer of 1998, I met with Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, a well known Lubavitch Kabbalist. He shared with me that the students of the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe, were regulars at engaging in long conversations with God, just as Rebbe Nachman taught. The only difference was that they carried on the conversations in their minds alone and avoided oral expression. I was literally floored, wowed, that the Alter Rebbe’s followers practiced a meditative style which mirrored the style my meditations were growing into their own.

Shortly, afterwards it dawned on me that in instances where the conversation occurs mentally, there actually might be a very fine line between being in conversation with God and being in contemplation with God. If deep enough, it seemed to me that there’s actually no line at all and they’re the same. This was my eureka moment! I came full circle to appreciate the Lubavitch style of meditation. I realized that what the Rabbi that first night in Morristown Yeshiva was referring to was not simply a contemplation which can occur through any academic effort. Rather, it was a contemplation with God, the kind which was likely becoming my meditative norm. 

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While still at “The Research Centre of Kabbalah”, I learned that the Baal Shem Tov taught that “one is where one’s mind is at”. Based on this, it was explained that if one concentrates strongly on a location, one can mind travel there and possibly even see what’s occurring there. Of course, we encouraged to be careful not to abuse this technique to enjoy touring around; but rather, to reserve it for visiting holy sites to enhance our prayers and/or meditations. 

“One is where one’s mind is at” fits in beautifully with Rabbi Ashlag’s teachings about how space, closeness and distance, works between two spiritual entities. Entities which have a lot in common are close and those with less in common are more distance. Not surprising it’s a lot like psychological closeness and distance between people. Since the mind is a spiritual entity, it can move about, becoming close or distant, based on this very principle. By strongly focusing on a place the mind can form a “similarity bond” and be there. 

When I was at The Research Centre I knew of this closeness/distance principle, but I had not connected the dots. Only recently it dawned on me that mind travel could be logically traced to Ashlagian principles of closeness and distance. At the time, I just accepted the technique intuitively because it followed the pattern of many other spiritual techniques which require deep states of concentration to form spiritual connections.

In the past month, a few decades later, something just clicked. Maybe, recent study of Rabbi Ashlag’s work with an authentic teacher helped bring me to this awareness. If “one’s where one’s mind is at” then what is the difference if one deeply concentrates on a place or on an idea? If one contemplates philosophical notions of God’s Oneness hasn’t one brought his or her mind there and created a “similarity bond” with what’s deeply spiritual? Besides, the realm of ideas exists in a more spiritual state than physical locations do. This very recent realization has helped me appreciate the beauty of Lubavitch contemplative meditation on a whole new level.  

Of course, this leaves open the question of then what spiritually occurs when one studies academics? The answer is in Tanya. Since the mind is a spiritual entity, there is no such a thing as mental activity which is non-spiritual. The deeper one concentrates the mind on a topic the more one spiritually bonds with the realm it exists on. This is why Torah Law directs one to focus one’s secular studies towards one of the three goals: either to more deeply understand Torah concepts, to understand how to perform good deeds or to earn a livelihood. The idea is that in secular studies the mind will travel to less than holy spiritual realms. There’s no way around that. However, through Torah study, performing good deeds or earning a livelihood, one can re-attach the knowledge or at least its fruits to the realms of holiness, when whence it primordially originated, many [st]ages ago. 

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