The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.

Daily Morning Lesson: August 26, 2026

Part 2: Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Inner Observation. 

Reader: Hello friends. We continue to learn from the Study of the Ten Sefirot. But today we're going to watch lesson number 11 on a very special portion from TES, "Inner Observation." Look what's happening. Baal HaSulam left his interpretation. What is TES? It's an interpretation or commentary on the book Etz Chaim of the ARI. The ARI’s text is up on top in bold. Baal HaSulam gave us commentary on practically every word. Sometimes the explanation is not short, because if I would approach it without Baal HaSulam's explanation, I would see such words as "vacant air." What would I imagine when I read that? So, he gave us the explanations, he gave us the interpretation of the words. He gave us various questions that he asked himself, and he recommended we ask them as well. And in addition to that, after each and every part he wrote another portion called "Inner Observation," another perspective on the material. Not simply on the material, but about ourselves. Who am I, who are we, who is the "I" of the person, reality, how to perceive it correctly? And then beyond that, there's also the Rav's explanation on that, and we're going to watch that. For us, it's all direction, how to approach the study correctly.

Reader: Let's hear a few words, a few things that the Rav said throughout the years about how to approach the Inner Observation. He says: “We are studying the "Inner Observation," which is the most important thing for us in order to have the right approach to reality that the Study of the Ten Sefirot describes.” Again, we're studying "Inner Observation," which is the most important thing for us to have the right approach to reality that TES itself describes. 

With this "Inner Observation," Baal HaSulam scrutinizes the foundations of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the unity between us, our connection, our perception of reality. 

Rav says, therefore, his composition is so important to us, and it's called "Inner Observation." Aside from that, Rav clarifies the words of the ARI there, and he has adhered to them. He also gives us a general overview about the approach, how to open ourselves up in order to be able to perceive what the ARI writes correctly in the book. Therefore, we study "Inner Observation."

Again: Therefore, this composition is so important to us and is called "Inner Observation." And besides that, it clarifies the words of the ARI that he's adhered to there, he adds and gives us a general approach to the writings, how to perceive correctly what the ARI writes about in the book. Therefore, we study "Inner Observation."

So, let's move on to the "Inner Observation" with the Rav.

Reading: (04:12) Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Chapter Two. Inner Observation.

Reader: Inner Observation. First, we must know that when dealing with spiritual matters, which have no concern with time, ‎space, or motion, and moreover when dealing with Godliness, we do not have the words by ‎which to contemplate and express. Our entire vocabulary is taken from sensations of imaginary ‎senses. Thus, how can they assist us where sense and imagination do not reign?‎ 

M. Laitman: (04:53) Meaning, we have senses in our body. Through our senses, we feel ourselves, we feel our existence. That there's a machine where, through certain influences on it, they gave it the feeling that it exists through various electrical, chemical actions, whatever it is. They awaken, they evoke in it all kinds of pictures of existence. In truth, we are unconscious. We don't know where we are. We can't even imagine that we are somewhere. It's such a strange thing. It exists only in our perception. Just like the Creator doesn't have the question whether or not He exists. He is present. So, let's put it simply. Just like when we see a person who is unconscious, and we can connect all kinds of electrodes to his brain, and we can project a movie, and he's going to lie there, and laugh, and imagine whatever he wants, and it will feel good. We are also watching this movie projection, and there's nothing outside of us in our dimensions the way we can imagine it. Rather, everything is projected on the inside, and I feel myself in it, and everything outside of me is divided into all kinds of separate details. So, all of this is called imaginary, because we cannot check, cannot look from the side, as it were, and see who am I, how do I perceive reality, where am I, if I'm present or not. Those things we're not able to analyze critically. Rather, we're inside of something, and that's it. There's nothing aside from that, and that's why it's called imaginary. It's also called imaginary because not only are we imagining it, but we cannot critically analyze it. And those who do analyze it offer a critique about it from the side, as it were — the Kabbalists, who have exited into another dimension, and they look at us from the outside, they tell us that the fact that you feel the reality that you feel, you imagine, or almost like simulate this reality for yourselves. In truth, it does not exist. It's like that patient, that person who's unconscious and is imagining something for himself. So, a person who's unconscious at least has a body, and he lives in this body. He's somehow in it, in our world, whereas in spirituality also our ego, that transfers all those feelings to us, and also our brain, meaning both the feeling  and the mind  and the intellect — we cannot even say that they exist, these discernments. Everything is imaginary. Once these feelings and these thoughts disappear, our feeling apparatus and our intellect, our mind, also disappear. It's not that I exist. It's all imaginary. It's not that I exist and I imagine myself this imaginary world; rather even I, my own self, my very own self is not present in the current state, and I'm not imagining anything. From the current state, nothing remains. It's not like a person was unconscious, then he becomes conscious, and then there's something of him that's left, right? His body remains, it just acquires an additional reality. But nothing remains from us, from this current state. We're not even talking about our body — and this is really a false perception — but even our desires and our thoughts. That's why I want to be very precise when I say the word "imaginary." We don't know how deep that word can go.

Reading: (09:53) Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Chapter Two. Inner Observation.

For example, if you take the subtlest of words, namely “lights,” it nonetheless resembles and ‎borrows from the light of the sun or an emotional light of contentment. Thus, how can they be ‎used to express Godly matters? They would certainly fail to provide the reader with anything ‎true.‎

It is even truer in a place where these words should disclose the negotiations in the wisdom in ‎print, as is done in any research of wisdom. If we fail with even a single inadequate word, the ‎reader will be instantly disoriented and will not find his hands or legs in this whole matter.‎ 

M. Laitman: (10:47) In our world, we have all kinds of signs, although it's imaginary, it's false, and relative to the true, the correct reality, it doesn't even exist. But we are in this world, and we're in it on purpose, so that in our desire in our personal preparation will come and enter the true dimension as independent, as desiring by ourselves. We'll come there and it will be ours, that form of existence that we will acquire then. So, when we exist in this world for the time being, what kind of preparation we can have in order to enter spirituality, the true state — that's one thing. And the second thing is, how can I understand, if they write about this preparation, these huge, exalted people, how to understand from them what I need to do, how do I prepare myself for the state of… from the state of unconsciousness and absence of reality, lack of orientation, to something that is entirely out of my attainment. There's a fundamental difficulty here. Those huge Kabbalists who are in the world of truth relative to us, and they also have a problem. They themselves, they can be connected amongst themselves in the world of truth with one another, certainly there's no problem. And this has nothing to do with us, because we are not part of them. But it does have the need to maintain the connection between them, between one another through our world. And we'll talk about it, what's the benefit for some person who's in spirituality. Another person in spirituality, they will not connect directly in spirituality, rather they'll connect specifically through these concepts of this world. It's hard to express it in words. What are they lacking that makes them use the language of branches? What exists in spirituality, and what is missing in spirituality in the connection between the corrected souls that necessitates the language of branches? We'll continue, and I'll think how to express it.

Student: (14:16) We say that when a Kabbalist descends, when he has a fall, he falls to the degree of this world, because then he has free choice. So, what reality does he descend to if this reality is imaginary? What reality?

M. Laitman: No, his choice doesn't stem from the fact that he fell into your world. His choice is because he falls into the shells. Your world is the sweat of the shells, the tiny illumination that comes from the shells, a thin candle. But for him, these shells are these great lights that the broken vessels manage to capture. That's what he is falling into. Each and everyone has his own concept of this world. For him, it's BYA of impurity. For him, it's progress, it's advancement in free choice. It means that he has to balance himself as half righteous, half wicked relative to the previous degrees. And then he has free choice. A person who acquires the ability to work with the shells and acquires the ability to work with the light, when he moves in the maximum optimal way toward bestowal, then he is in that position of making a free choice. I'm not taking more from the corrupt desires; only according to how much support I can receive from the right. And I'm not taking any less; otherwise, it's not bestowal. So it turns out that this condition relies on being half righteous, half wicked. And also my basis is also organized this way toward the past, and also my state toward the present. And then I advance in this way toward the future, that I have nothing for myself. Everything is 50-50. I have nothing for myself. Rather, everything I have is toward the Creator. Meaning relative to the past, it's the half that I'm wicked and half that I'm righteous; meaning zero. It's not like I have neither this nor that. In other words, if I take this 50-50, it's not that half has to be, this 50-50 has to be, has to be maximum organization, maximum balance. The shells corresponding to the Reforming Light, and by that I'm building my future. Although I don't know it, but out of these forces, out of these circumstances that I have in my hands, by that I'm building my future in such a way that I'm delighted in mercy and in maximum bestowal.

Student: (17:32) So, what does he need a body for? What you just described is working in the desires. So, what does he need a body for, a physiological body?

M. Laitman: The physiological body is what we depict as existing. We talked about it five minutes ago.

Student: So, what does a Kabbalist need it for?

M. Laitman: So when he disconnects from it completely — he has states where he disconnects completely from spirituality. So, how can he feel himself? So, he exists in this body like a beast, like Shimon from the market. And when he begins to work and to awaken, then he has BYA of impurity. And for you, this world is in place of BYA of impurity. Or maybe I didn't understand your question.

Student: So before, he's in the state of BYA of impurity. 

M. Laitman: Then he's like you, even worse, a beast.

Student: But it's imaginary. It's a reality that doesn't exist. How could that be that he goes back to that?

M. Laitman: (18:43) But it's a state between the degrees. He must change the degrees in this way. In between the degrees, he goes back to a state of, to aim to nothing; then he has to fall to this nothing, and then renew himself again. And again fall into this nothing. Again, it's absence. And then again, it's existence out of absence. Otherwise, what is this cessation between the degrees? We learned about this also in the cascading from above down: every degree, every lower degree that is born from the upper degree, it is severed completely from the upper one. And that's where the spark breaks from the upper degree to the lower degree. And by that it gives birth to it. And this spark, why do we say it breaks through, through the absence? It's like the degree expands, and in order to go to the lower degree, it leaps to the absence from the place of the desire, and it comes back, and it clothes in a lower degree. This is the difference between Darwin and the spiritual development, spiritual evolution or corporeal evolution that we're talking about. There's no connection between a monkey and a man. There's a monkey, then there's cessation, and then there's the start of men. And before the monkey, you have cessation, and the vegetative degree, and so on and so forth. Between every degree, between each and every species, you have a complete cessation. And not that one is gradually giving birth to the other through evolution. That's how it's accepted, that it goes from degree to degree, or the degrees descend from degree to degree. Between one Partzuf and another Partzuf, you have to go back to Ein Sof. From there, all the records. You didn't hear that the records of AB come from Ein Sof? Galgalta only prepares the conditions for it. But the records themselves for AB, not the inner AB of Galgalta, but to the external AB, they come from Ein Sof. The Partzuf that precedes it is only the reason for it, the impetus for it to come out, to be elicited, but it’s not that it gives birth to it. The minute the monkey stopped developing, stopped evolving, let's put it this way, then came the new record, and man started. You can say, how different was it from a monkey? It was very similar to the monkey, perhaps externally, but there was something new in it, a point in the heart that would awaken over time. And that's already different, the next degree, totally different. That's a difference. Otherwise, we're all monkeys. And because of the point in the heart, then additional things evolve alongside it, these conditions. But this is the fundamental difference in a person. That's why he has the special force of imagination, power of imagination, and a different feeling of the past, present, and future compared to the monkey, and the feeling of society. And well, all of that lets us develop corporeally, materially, as humans. And it all stems from our role, our spiritual role. Otherwise, what would be the need for it? We're only inviting more troubles, more problems with this evolution. Otherwise, it would have been better to remain on the tree. It would have been, right, banana here, and everything is fine, right?

Student: (22:47) Can you give maybe an emotional explanation to the word "light"?

M. Laitman: Emotional. I would say it like that. The light that we can describe is the feeling of rising above the ego, where a person wants to leap out of himself toward the other. This is the closest definition to what we call light. But light is something that's felt in a person as inside of him, as a vessel, and specifically toward the other, because all the rest of the perceptions of the light are a more partial form of the light: the light of attainment, light of understanding, light of contentment, and all those feelings that exist in the ego. Whereas the light, when a person erupts with love to the other, a desire to connect with the other in our world, in us, let's say, this is the closest feeling to the true light. That is bestowal. What can you do? But there are all kinds of lights, really. In truth, we need to imagine it in this way. It certainly has no other appearance. All the rest is something that we would like to feel it this way, but the light doesn't come in the form of an intellectual impression or emotional impression as we think about it. This is the ego. This is not the spiritual light. Spiritual light, first of all, brings you the feeling of connecting to the other, a feeling of love to the other. And in this love, in this attitude, you suddenly begin to see also the system and the result of that; meaning the revelation of the quality of the Creator, of this bestowal in a more general way. You need to understand that what we reveal is the quality of bestowal, and the unification that we reveal from the connection of the broken pieces gives us the depth of the attainment of the quality of bestowal. And the different souls that we connect and we connect to in order to unify them, that gives us the beauty and the richness of attaining the tastes, flavors of attaining the quality of bestowal. And other than the quality of bestowal, you attain nothing. There's nothing to attain. This is called the upper force. So after all, when the vessel is combined from all the different souls, all billions of them into a single body, we attain the entire depth and also all the different forms and permutations, laterally, as it were, of the quality of bestowal, which is the Creator. Inside the quality of bestowal, we attain the Good Who Does Good, and our feeling of good, it's not simply the outcome from what we're attaining, the quality of bestowal. Rather, first you attain the quality, the vessel of bestowal, and in it you attain that it's the Good Who Does Good, which is the opposite, completely opposite of the good who does good that we can imagine today. That's why the Arvut, which will guarantee the work with the other, the Reforming Light that works, the records that awaken corresponding to it, and all the foreign forces, seemingly foreign, or opposite forces , everything only works toward that. It works toward that, there's no other, there's nothing else. As much as we want to go sideways, as it were. Only this exists.

M. Laitman: (28:06) Those are the language of branches that we're talking about. Why do we need to get confused about this language? Because we're not…

M. Laitman: …speaking any other language. This is called the mixing, or the confusion of tongues that happened in Babylon. And that's what we're trying, that's why we're trying to have one tongue, one language of bestowal. But in the language of Kabbalah, each one has his own tongue, his own language. Each one wants something for himself; he doesn't understand the other. This is the meaning of many tongues, many languages. And if everybody bestows, each one has the same language. That's why everybody understands what the other wants. Everybody has one thing. That's why, what do Kabbalists say? Why are they constantly trying to bring us closer? So it'll be clear to us how to go from our language to their language. And in spirituality, relative to us, there is no language in spirituality. How could I speak if there's only bestowal to the other? My language, my speech in spirituality is the intention. 

Reader: My language in spirituality is the intention. What a lesson, what a privilege. We're living in an imaginary world, even though the Kabbalists feel each other directly. Spiritually, they have a need to connect to each other physically. A person has free choice when he can decide how much to take from the Klipot in order to work with them, in order to bestow, and how much not to. Between two degrees, there is always a complete cessation, a complete fall into corporeality, like we heard, that it's not like Darwin. The difference between monkey and man is only the point in the heart, which is the cause for the development of all of humanity. Light means to rise above the ego to love of others. So, friends, let's raise our hands, turn on our question marks all over the world, and let's start clarifying these things together.

Student: I have a question about the perception of reality. Who is learning? Who is teaching? What are we doing here?

Reader: Yeah, you wanted to throw us in a loop from the beginning, right? Who's teaching? Who's learning? What can we say? I guess what is given to us to feel is what we have. Maybe there are a few figures sitting on the stage here, a few students sitting in the hall asking a question, expecting an answer.

Who's learning? Who's teaching? I would say, for the time being, why are we even here? Five in the morning, instead of being in bed or studying with ourselves? How did the Rav start this? Am I even present here? Because the Creator doesn't have such a concept of existing or not existing.

So, that's the interpretation I'm going to give this. Who are we? Who's the "I" who's asking? Who's the one with the question, why am I here? What did I get from the upper one? What kind of reality does He want me to reveal?

Let's continue the scrutiny. I'm not going to answer the question. That's the topic of our scrutiny. Friends will ask, and maybe by the end of the lesson, something nice will be revealed that you can say is in us.

Student: If between the degrees there is an endless gap, how can they coexist? And how does the transition from one degree to the next work? The Rav, in the lesson, said that there is a complete cessation between the degrees. If so, how could there be a transition between one degree and the next? In order for a new degree to appear…