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

Daily Lesson (Morning) May 2, 2024.

Part 2: The Love of God and the Love of Man

Reader: We are reading in the writings of Baal HaSulam, the article, The Love of God and the Love of Man.

Reading: (00:19) “Love your friend as yourself,” Rabbi Akiva says this is a great rule in the Torah (Beresheet Rabbah 24).

Collective and Individual

The above statement—although it is one of the most famous and cited sayings—is still unexplained to everyone with all its vastness. This is because the word Klal [rule/or collective] indicates a sum of details that relates to the above collective, where each and every detail carries a part within it in a way that the gathering of all the details together creates that collective.

If we say, “a great Klal in the Torah,” it means that all the texts and the 612 Mitzvot [commandments] are the sum total of the details that relate to the verse, “Love your friend as yourself.” It is difficult to understand how such a statement can contain the sum-total of all the Mitzvot in the Torah. At most, it can be a Klal for the part of the Torah and sentences that relate to the Mitzvot between man and man. But how can you include the greater part of the Torah, which concerns work between man and the Creator, in the verse, “Love your friend as yourself”?

M. Laitman: Basically, it's an introduction, do we have any questions?

Reading: (02:48)) That which You Hate, Do Not Do to Your Friend.

If we can somehow reconcile the above words, there come the words of Old Hillel to that foreigner who came to him and asked him to convert him, as it says in the Gemara, “Convert me so that you will teach me the whole Torah while I am standing on one leg.” He told him, “That which you hate, do not do to your friend. This is the whole Torah, and the rest is its commentary, go study.” We see that he told him that the whole Torah is the interpretation of the verse, “Love your friend as yourself.”

Now, according to the words of Hillel—the teacher of all the Tannaim [sages during the early CE centuries], and by whom laws are interpreted—it is perfectly clear to us that the primary purpose of our holy Torah is to bring us to that sublime degree where we can observe this verse, “Love your friend as yourself,” for he says explicitly, “The rest is its commentary, go study.” That is, they interpret for us how to come to that rule.

It is surprising that such a statement can be correct in most issues of the Torah, which concern sentences between man and the Creator, when every beginner evidently knows that this is the heart of the Torah and not the interpretation explaining the verse, “Love your friend as yourself.”

M. Laitman: Yes, questions please.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:30) It's written that the main purpose of our Torah is to bring us to the height that we will be able to keep the verse, love your friend as yourself. What does that mean?

M. Laitman: In other words, it means we have to reach the degree of the Creator, to know the whole Torah, to know the Creator. To know the connection between a person and the Creator. We do in the connection between us, to which essence we are coming by ourselves to use the whole Torah. Whose whole purpose is to elevate man to the level of the Creator.

Student: To bring us to a height that we can keep this verse, love your friend as yourself?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Should we, first, uplift to some degree that then we'll be able to perform it? What does it mean to bring us to the height that we'll be able to implement this verse?

M. Laitman: That we will want it to be in us because it happens only according to a person's will.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (07:02) This starts about a story of some guy who came to him and said teach me. Not only teach me, but when I'm standing on one leg?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Why should he come and demand such a thing, and what is that proselyte?

M. Laitman: The proselyte, meaning a person who has nothing, just zero of zeros. But he realizes he has a need, and he wants, in order to fulfill it, he comes to Hillel.

Student: That proselyte understands that there is some place he has to rise to?

M. Laitman: Yes, and he says teach me the whole Torah but with how I am.

Student: When we start learning the wisdom of Kabbalah, we’re considered those proselytes who come?

M. Laitman: Of course, of course, it doesn't depend on what family or what kind a person this comes from. It just depends on whether he's ready for it. 

Student: Understand, is this connecting to what you answered the friend, it all depends on a person's desire?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: I'm trying to understand what brings a person to be in the state that suddenly he wants to uplift what he understands?

M. Laitman: That we're not we're not discussing. Man's desire is his point of origin, that's what he comes to study Torah with.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:03) This split in a person's perception between wanting to adhere to the Creator and wanting to reach love your friend as yourself. Where does that come from?

M. Laitman: From the person himself.

Student: When there's commandments, it's this thing in the system. There's commandments between man and man, and man and the Creator, right?

M. Laitman: I am studying what's written.

Student: He's asking why the verses in the Torah about man and man, and how can it be that love your friend as yourself, that are supposedly the commandments between man and man, also cover the commandments between man and the Creator?

M. Laitman: Yes, that's what he wants to say. That all the Mitzvot are covered by man's relation to his friend.

Student: Why are there commandments between man and the Creator?

M. Laitman: That's for now. later you see that they're all included in the Mitzvot between man and his friend.

Student: For now, this incorporation, how do you settle the split that, supposedly, there's commandments between man and the Creator. And he can imagine that he's sorry that he's not adhered to the Creator and there's also actually?

M. Laitman: This is a problem within man, that he doesn't understand that what he wants for the friend is also the same as what he does to the Creator.

Student: How can he reach a state that he feels sorry that he doesn't have love of friends, just as he's sorry that he's not adhered to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: That depends on how much a person wants to adhere to the Creator in each and every Mitzvah. And then he has to understand that out of being with the friends, he comes to the same degree of importance. If he relates to the Creator, as he relates to the friend, and to the friend as to the Creator, then he's already in adhesion.

Student: That's a desired state that he's relating to the Creator like a friend and a friend like the Creator?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Now let's say that some kind of sorrow awakens in a man that is not adhered to the Creator?

M. Laitman: Yes?

Student: Then how can you start connecting between feeling sorry that he's not adhered to the Creator, to needing to be sorry that he doesn't have love of friends?

M. Laitman: He probably is always in equivalence of form, equalizing his form to the friends and to the Creator. And he doesn't feel less importance in the friends with respect to the Creator.

Student: That's the state he wants to reach, but in practice, he sees that there's a difference between what seems to him that he's sorry that he's not adhered to the Creator, that he's distant from the Creator?

M. Laitman: He should divide it to 625 degrees and thus calculate that this is how he's going to have to rise in the importance of love thy neighbor towards love thy Lord. 

Student: Practically, what should he do inside? Now a desire awakens sorrow that he's not adhered to the Creator. So, should he tell himself, no?

M. Laitman: He should tell himself that as I now hear that it's important to me to be in adhesion with a friend. And from loving the friend, adhesion with the friend, I can come to adhesion with the Creator. So, I'm asking that I will now have the second degree of adhesion to the friend. 

Student: What to do with that gap because the feeling sorry that he's not adhered to the Creator, he can feel it, it's in his feelings. The thought that he's not adhered to the friends, he doesn't have love of friends, it's something that he heard it?

M. Laitman: He heard, so what does he need to do? He needs to relate to the friend as he relates to the Creator. As thyself, as written.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:31) About not to do to your friend what you hate. I see many times that I do to friends things that I hate but I only pay attention to it after the matter? 

M. Laitman: Still, it teaches you, that's how we learn.

Student: How to increase the sensitivity before?

M. Laitman: You can't, only by going through it you can then feel what you've done, as opposed to what you should do.

M. Laitman: That's why there's ups and downs, ascents and descents, that's the states we go through.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:32) Love your Friend as yourself. Why is there that addition, as yourself?

M. Laitman: So then, how do you compare then, with what?

Student: We always say yourself, as to love myself, but when? 

M. Laitman: That's exactly that, it's exactly as yourself, meaning as you love yourself.

Student: When we try to uplift into that rule, we want to erase ourselves. We can't even think of ourselves when we're going to do an action of love towards a friend. It doesn't work out that, as yourself?

M. Laitman: But you have to somewhat raise the love of the friends, the love of the friend, in advance. Otherwise, you don't even come to the beginning of the correction. 

Student: You answered that you can say to yourself, as the Creator loves, it's as the Creator loves that works out better?

M. Laitman: No, how do you know how the Creator loves? That's fantasies.

Student: How do I depict the action of love? I have to imagine how He loves, how He's bestowing?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: If I look at myself?

M. Laitman: According to the concern, okay, so you don't know, you're not ready yet, you're not doing it yet. But you need to know that this is how it happens.

Student: How it happens, that I imagine my love?

M. Laitman: On behalf of the Creator, that's the attitude.

Student: What?

M. Laitman: On behalf of the Creator, that's how he relates to man. 

Student: I resemble that?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (17:36) How does love of others force a person to rise above reason?

M. Laitman: I, for now, can't say, but I think that you can depict that. That, if you have to reach the love of a friend on the first degree, the first degree, right? So, you already have to activate actions above reason.

Student: We read yesterday with the Rabash that love of friends is better to find it in reason. That's why this question awakened?

M. Laitman: I don't know what you read over there, I'm telling you what I understand from what's written, here.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:46) This proselyte that has nothing comes to Hillel and says, make a change in me. Convert me so you can teach me. What is that change, that conversion, that the upper one can do to someone, so he'll be able to teach him? What's the change that should happen?

M. Laitman: He has to raise him to a degree where he understands what he tells him.

Student: That's the condition, otherwise he can't learn?

M. Laitman: Right, otherwise, how will he learn?

Student: Where does the proselyte know that he first has to go through that conversion and then study?

M. Laitman: The conversion here is not just any conversion. It's that the proselyte will understand what the Torah is about. What is love thy neighbor as opposed to self-love? It's all the things that the Torah describes as the ascent of man to the level of the Creator, bit by bit, at least the first degree.

Student: What's the connection between the answer to Hillell, that he said what you hate, don't do to others to the request of the proselyte to be converted? Because he got some advice, too?

M. Laitman: He gave him complete advice. That, if the proselyte comes to determine the condition, don't do to your friend what is hated upon you, that's where love thy neighbor as thyself begins.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:58) He wrote that everything the Torah gives us is to reach the highest degree, which is to perform the commandment of love your friend as yourself.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Why is that considered the highest degree? Why not love your Lord, which is the purpose, the thing we really want?

M. Laitman: Correcting man's nature, to correct man's nature, this is called love thy neighbor as thyself.

Student: That's what we understand, that is the correction. Why is that considered the highest thing?

M. Laitman: Because as a result of that, you can also fulfill the second part, love thy Lord.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:02) A person is used to justifying himself all the time, to see himself as okay and everything on the outside isn’t?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Not to do to your friend, isn't that to condemn the friend? Is it to justify him? To make sure that he is whole? Or what is that action?

M. Laitman: Just like yourself, what's to add here?

Student: I see that I'm always justifying myself, I don't see my own flaws.

M. Laitman: So that's how he should relate to the friend.

Student: The proselyte that wants to convert, is he supposed to somehow enter a conception and be sure not to fall from a degree?

M. Laitman: He has to correct all his desires that he came with, towards in order to bestow to others.

Student: That depends on the form of attitude he keeps towards the others?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:14) If I need to love the friends that want to be on the same path with me? Or also to love the ones that don't come to the morning lesson and don't really contribute from themselves. I'm supposed to love them too?

M. Laitman: Here, there is a kind of a condition, that if people come and they say we want to be connected with you, so we accept them, let's say, and we give them some time to become incorporated. And afterwards, we relate to them as we relate to the veteran ones.

Student: You said many times that the friend for me is someone that comes to connect with me?

M. Laitman: Ultimately, yes.

Student: He's not coming to connect with me, he's not making any efforts. I don't even feel him, he's not with me, how should I love him?

M. Laitman: So, he's still not a friend.

Student: True, and what you said to give him time. How much time should I give such a friend?

M. Laitman: I don't know, don't put me into these judgments now, I don't know. This already needs to be discussed outside the lesson. It’s like as if the person is a machine, and when he comes to me, I can already put a clock on him, and make it so that in a week and three days. At a certain point, I'll get an alarm clock that says that he finished the first correction, right? I can't tell you that, and he can't tell you that either, he's writing the guidelines, here.

Student: Right, I'm not speaking about actual time. The question is, how do you prepare your feeling? 

M. Laitman: That's already a different question: How do we judge the people who come to us, for what purpose? How do we come, how do we feel ourselves? From what degree do we judge them? And today or say, in a year, what will happen with us and them? I can't tell you, that already is unrelated to the study. It's related to the changing conditions, just understand me.

Reader: There's a world of Kli questions.

M. Laitman: All right, bring a few, but strong ones.

Question (Holland): (26:26) In this part, it says, that which you hate, do not do to your friends. It is as if Hillel is constantly referring to love your friend as yourself. What is the difference, or what is the addition, here? What is the addition of, what do you hate, do you not do to your friend if actually we're talking about Hillel? If he’s actually only talking about love your friend as yourself?

M. Laitman: Loving is much more than not just not hating. That's why he says love thy friend as yourself. It's a very severe condition, if it's even possible to realize. Whereas, I don't know.

Student: Do not do to your friends?

M. Laitman: What were you saying, say it again.

Student: That which you hate, do not do to your friends. What is the difference here that he really is trying to tell in this excerpt?

M. Laitman: It's an addition of vessels because moving from self-love to self-hate, and then to love of others, that is the entire difference that we need to feel. With regards to the vessel of the person, himself, with respect to the vessel of the others. 

Student: It's not really understood what the addition is of that which you hate, do not do to your friends. What is this addition to love your friend as yourself because Hillel is not really actually referring to this. He's only referring to love your friend as yourself, actually. The excerpt is going about telling about the other subject?

M. Laitman: He doesn't mention the means, here. The means by which you can move from hating others to loving others. That's something we'll have to discuss but that is what a person is likely to attain out of the means that he's got. Meaning what he has in his hands.

Question (Kyiv 1): (30:21) You said that we can divide the importance towards the friends into degrees, let's say 620 degrees. What is this graduality of the importance of love towards the friends?

M. Laitman: From zero to let's say complete love, we have 625 degrees. And from hate all the way to zero, probably also minus 625 degrees. So, we have to go through the entire ladder, through our correction.

Student: Sometimes it seems to you that you love a friend, or you don't think about him or not. How to increase the sensitivity?

M. Laitman: The Creator does that, this is what the Creator does. The Creator elevates us to a degree of connection, and love, and He will make the changes within us.

Question (Women Turkiye 10): (31:53) In the article, he mentions love your friend as yourself. Is the action of love towards the others something we do with our own forces? Or is it a gift from the Creator for our efforts? For our exertion to reach love your friends as yourself?

M. Laitman: No, no, no, we have to do it ourselves.

Question (Women Unity): (32:41) It seems that these two expressions are identical?

M. Laitman: I don't understand why your sound is cutting in and out. Fix it, otherwise I can't hear.

Question (Women Moscow 18): (33:01) What are the others? How is that connected to friends?

M. Laitman: The others, in principle, is any person with whom I have to connect based on the thought of creation.

Student: How is that connected to a friend?

M. Laitman: With the friends, I can practice, I can practice on them, they can practice on me. And we can express all the various relationships.

Question (Hadera 1): (33:44) Do we use the commandments between man and the Creator in order to strengthen ourselves in the commandments between man and man?

M. Laitman: That too.

Student: To reach the love of the Creator through the love of His creation?

M. Laitman: Yes?

Student: That's the track?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Women Unity): (34:19) Love your friend as yourself, is that work from above, that to love myself is from below? It's like from Rosh to the Toch, what are the others?

M. Laitman: I don't know such a thing, Rosh, Toch, this kind of work, that kind of work, I don't know. If you are reading the texts, then look for the answers there.

Question (Nikolaev-Sochi): (34:53) Help me understand: What am I considering as a point of no return? When I know who my friend is, that I go all the way with him until I implement all the love with him and don't look back? I try and I try, and I see that that's the purpose with him to reach love because I don't choose?

M. Laitman: The point of no return is your final goal.

Student: In the process, I keep scrutinizing if that's the friend I have to build love with or if it's not that friend?

M. Laitman: That, too.

Student: You can't decide in advance that now you're going all the way?

M. Laitman: You can agree on that, you can agree on that. What are we learning next?

Reader: A friend has a question about the Congress.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (35:52) We, in the last couple of days, started preparation to the Congress. We had preparation workshops, the Congress is in about two and a half weeks, 18-19 of May. The topic is rising above reason, and we've read an article, yesterday, an article Concerning Above Reason by the Rabash. Where he writes, that man must see the friends within reason. That, they are better at showing up on time, and they do everything that they hear in the lessons. They really do everything for the sake of the Heavens, and he has to see that within reason. If he can't do it in such a way, then he needs to do it above reason. He has to accept it above reason that that's how it is. I wanted to ask, what does it mean above reason for us, now, that we're preparing for the Congress, which is its topic. What does this work for us now to go above reason?

M. Laitman: Above reason is very difficult and only with the Creator's help a person reaches that. Above reason means that you accept each and every friend as though he is already in the final correction. And he can't stray from that state, that's it, what else do you want to know?

Student: How do you put a feeling into it, as if he's already in the end of correction? That it won't be shallow because I heard that, and the friend's at the end of correction?

M. Laitman: I always check myself, and how does the friend appear to me? How am I impressed by his actions above my intellect? And that's how I keep going.

Student: What does it mean to get an impression of the actions of the friends above my mind? 

M. Laitman: That he's right about everything.

Student: The question is, am I accepting it with my eyes shut? Or do I actually have to feel it, that he's right in everything?

M. Laitman: You have to accept this, emotionally, as well.

Student: I'm not in control of my feelings, how do I reach a state?

M. Laitman: By exercises, you pledge to get to that feeling, as well.

Student: Now, in preparation to the Congress, we really want to prepare ourselves with exercises. To feel it, that the friend is right in everything. What exercises can we do, let's say, for now, in the two weeks we have until the Congress?

M. Laitman: The two weeks we have until the Congress, I recommend doing exercises of love thy friend as yourself in your Tens. And once a week or twice a week, to do an exercise across the entire group. And then see how do you accept all the friends with an open heart? Or with doubts and all kinds of problems and other things.

Student: If we can focus a bit: What do you mean, exercises in the Tens and exercises in the whole group? What, for example?

M. Laitman: Exercises inside the groups, the Tens, that's clear to us. And the exercise across the group, like what all the Petah Tikva groups, say?

Student: Like a Yeshivat Haverim, where we do an exercise of love your friend as yourself? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Maybe the friends have impressions about this, or questions?

M. Laitman: We have to try and see ourselves as being in a single vessel. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (41:00) About this, if I had one friend, I could just follow him blindly. If I have a few friends and I can't see how they connect together. Each one has his view, and his path, and I take everyone as great. They don't merge for me to a single thing that goes forward, that I can follow blindly? 

M. Laitman: Let's say that they were living in a few continents, and then, you, can you depict them together?

Student: Why would a few continents matter, it seems like there's more than continents between us. There is a different character, a different perception, every friend is an entire world. How do you connect it to a single world, all of them, all of those worlds or continents?

M. Laitman: I don't know, we have to do exercises?

Student: With regards to above reason: We're working inside a Ten, not with a single friend. If, towards the Congress we want to do some work in the Ten in accepting all the friends. How do you take in all of them, I also feel like we have to include all the friends in this preparation action towards the Congress. How do I include all of them in a way that they become like one thing I can follow?

M. Laitman: So, search for such articles from Rabash, from Baal HaSulam, and from Psalms, and send it, that material. You can say to everybody, so you don't start scrutinizing now. Then you'll see, as much as they, at least through those materials you send them, that they come immersed in it, as one. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (43:52) In this exercise of seeing our mutual vessel, do I need to see myself in that vessel or only the friends?

M. Laitman: Yourself, too. 

Question Petah Tikva Center:(44:08) These exercises, they should be inner or also external?

M. Laitman: Internal. 

Reader: (44:22) No more questions here.

M. Laitman: Okay, so what are we doing? We're ending the lesson here, right?

Reader: Yes, we will end the lesson and then move to the next part, which is a social part.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Reader: Would you like to summarize the lesson?

M. Laitman: We had a few articles about loving the others, especially, but still, it's as a part of the articles that bring us to faith above reason. That's it, good luck to you all, with love, from all of us. All the best.

Reader: Thank you very much.

Song: (45:39)