But in Chabad, Hitbonenut is a different matter, as we have discussed many times, and here we have a teaching from the Vitebsker that follows the same path. Reaching a state of being immersed for three days and three nights in the light of wisdom, not knowing if it is day or night, that is the meaning according to the Vitebsker of, “You shall be holy, for I, Havayah your God, am holy.”
Using Hitbonenut to Approach God
One of the most beautiful points the Vitebsker makes in his teaching on Kedoshim and on being “holy,” is that meditating—performing Hitbonenut—on reality can be likened to a physicist who is contemplating nature and considers elementary particles. His thought delves in depth, and he can almost reach a state of divesting his corporeality. The more deeply one thinks about a topic, the more one breaks it up into smaller and smaller pieces, just as a physicist would go deeper into the composition of matter and reach smaller and smaller particles. First there are atoms, then electrons and protons, then quarks, and finally, today, strings. Who knows what will come next. The deeper he reaches the greater the power to resolve tiny elements and yet, one needs to know that this is all like naught compared to the revelation of Godliness. Everything one has attained is completely null and void.
The exact word the Vitebsker uses to describe this power to resolve smaller and smaller elements is “finer and finer” (קַּדַּק דַע). He meditates on finer and finer elements, as far as the human mind can reach. One needs to realize that all that we can think about is Being—the created being that is like naught before God. All created being is completely nullified before God; it cannot be identified with God at all.
This is the leap that we are expecting science and scientists to eventually make. This will be the redemption of science and the beginning of the light of Mashiach. One needs to reach the finest elements, but realize that regardless of how deeply you reach, how fine the reality you are considering, a leap is still needed to arrive at the revelation of Godliness, which is not material at all. All this is alluded to in the incense prepared for the Temple service, which was ground finer and finer and represents a state of being bound and cleaving to God.
It would seem then that the formula the Vitebsker is giving us is that if one wants to reach true contemplative wisdom and a state of divestment from the corporeal, one needs to study nature on a finer and finer scale until one reaches the conclusion that God “is neither corporeal nor the image of corporeality,” to quote Maimonides.
