The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning), October 27, 2024.
Part 2: Lesson on the topic of "On the Verge of Lishma
Reader: Now, we're learning on the topic of On the Verge of Lishma, excerpts from Kabbalists on the topic of On the Verge of Lishma, excerpt number one.
Reading: (00:19) Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 20, "Lishma [for Her sake]"
Concerning Lishma [for Her sake]. In order for a person to obtain Lishma, one needs an awakening from above, as it is an illumination from above and it is not for the human mind to understand. Rather, he who tastes, knows. It is said about this, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Because of this, upon assuming the burden of the kingdom of heaven, one needs it to be in utter completeness, meaning only to bestow and not at all to receive. If a person sees that the organs do not agree with this view, he has no other choice but prayer—to pour out his heart to the Creator to help him make his body consent to enslaving itself to the Creator.
M. Laitman: Questions?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:41) On the one hand, Baal HaSulam says it takes an awakening from above. On the other hand, he says there has to be the reception, the assuming of the burden of the kingdom of heaven. How do these two connect?
M. Laitman: Why not?
Student: What comes first?
M. Laitman: The Creator is always first.
Student: What should be a person's response for an awakening from above, if he feels any of it?
M. Laitman: His response is that he thanks the Creator for awakening him.
Student: Does he ask to be able to assume the burden of the kingdom of heaven, right?
M. Laitman: Yes
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (02:49) The topic, On the Verge of Lishma, we took it because we heard from you that in the near future – I don't know what near future means but in the near future, we, the world Kli and Bnei Baruch, we should enter Lishma. If in four months we have a Congress, let's take it as a point that we can work with. And we want to get ready for a Congress where we want to break into Lishma, enter Lishma, touch this thing, feel it. How do we plan, as a work plan from now onward the entry into Lishma? Or there's nothing to touch here, why are we playing with the plan of creation? Maybe we should receive it as a gift and you'll get it when you get it, and that's it. How should we, from our perspective, plan the entry into Lishma?
M. Laitman: Constantly think about it, long for it; join in to this process and more and more collect sources that will advance us to enter Lishma, that's it.
Student: What does it mean to think about Lishma, what am I thinking about?
M. Laitman: Lishma is considered that all my actions will be in order to bestow contentment to the Creator, all together. So, it should be clear, this should be the thing that makes it clear in me or not.
Student: How do I bring myself to constantly thinking about Lishma so every movement, everything I do, is in order to bring contentment to the Creator?
M. Laitman: This is through the Mitzvot, through the exercises, through efforts.
Student: What exercises can I do that will help me bring me closer to the friends to thinking about Lishma?
M. Laitman: First and foremost, it is, one will help his friend, we need to be in a group in which each cares, in which each is concerned with all his friends, caring about it, also, and bestowing to him the greatness of the goal in Lishma.
Student: Should I be thinking how I enter Lishma, how the friend enters Lishma, the Ten, Bnei Baruch?
M. Laitman: How the whole world enters Lishma but we start from the closest actions.
Student: How do I help the friend think more about Lishma?
M. Laitman: By depicting to myself how we are together in Lishma: One will help his friend.
Student: What is this depiction of us together in Lishma? I understand me directing all my actions to bring contentment?
M. Laitman: No, you cannot be in Lishma that way; we can be in Lishma only under the condition that I draw everyone to Lishma.
Student: By what do I draw them? How can I draw anyone to Lishma?
M. Laitman: By example, by personal awakening which becomes as much as possible the general awakening. These are the actions which each group, each Ten, needs to try and perform. And we, under the framework of our study, must be concerned with us wanting for it to happen that way.
Student: What will happen, emotionally? What is Lishma, what do we begin to feel?
M. Laitman: Emotionally, Lishma is called that I care, I care that all the vessels, for all human beings to be connected between them and bringing contentment to the Creator.
Student: To summarize: We have a Congress in four months. We heard from you, read more sources, think about it more, care about the friends more, give each other examples, wake each other up. This series of actions will direct us more and more toward entering Lishma?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: What can I add from day to day in order to come to the congress more and more worthy of Lishma?
M. Laitman: For it to be clearer and clearer to us every day where we are and to what extent we are coming closer to Lishma.
Reading: (10:17) Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 5, "Lishma Is an Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below?"
The need for man’s work in order to receive the Lishma from the Creator is only in the form of a lack and a Kli [vessel]. Yet, one can never obtain the filling by himself; it is rather a gift from the Creator.
However, the prayer must be a complete prayer, from the bottom of the heart. This means that one knows one hundred percent that there is no one in the world who can help him but the Creator Himself.
Yet, how does one know this, that no one will help him but the Creator Himself? One can acquire that awareness precisely if he has exerted all the powers at his disposal and it did not help him. Thus, one must do every possible thing in the world to attain “for the sake of the Creator.” Then one can pray from the bottom of the heart, and then the Creator hears his prayer.
M. Laitman: Clear, okay?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:15) What does it mean that the Creator hears the prayer?
M. Laitman: The sages who feel, or the wise people, who feel the relation of the Creator towards them, say that those are the relations which were in, I for My beloved and My beloved for me. They don't mean to those who have no feeling of the Creator. But, nevertheless, there are these and there are those.
Student: How is one's work, in the end, concentrated around prayer? And that prayer he summarizes. Okay, so the Creator hears, why is it like that? Why should he not expect the Creator to be appeased and respond to the prayer, why only hears?
M. Laitman: That, too, happens; there are all sorts of responses in a person.
Student: I have a general question: Today's topic, today's lesson, was on very sublime topics – man's connection with the Creator, the purpose of life, scrutinizing what the Creator wants from me, how to build the right approach. I'm just a little frightened by the idea that in two or three hours I'll be at work, and it feels like I'll have nothing left from this lesson. Like many times when we dealt with sublime topics and you see that you, automatically, go back to the same place. It leaves you nothing from these sublime talks. So, is there a way for anything to be entrenched, to be fixed? Can we do something so that something will remain?
M. Laitman: You should want to be impressed by the subject, want to change yourself as a result of what you're hearing from these verses. And try to learn from them what you want to remain for you after the lesson.
Question (Almaty 1): (15:66) Can we assume that the taste of Lishma is revealed only out of darkness?
M. Laitman: Yes, correct.
Student: What should I do if I'm afraid of the darkness?
M. Laitman: You should receive it as the gift of the Creator, that He's giving you the feeling of bad in darkness. And then, you want to run away or escape from the darkness because you feel the bad in it. However, gradually, as you get to know the darkness, the bad, the source of bad, then you'll see that it's not the darkness that you need to run away from. But rather from the remoteness from the Creator and then it'll work out.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:39) Exactly about that, when a person works and is rewarded with concealment, it's possible to want to run away to all kinds of things. How should one notice, or focus on, adhering to the Creator or not? And what do you do with the rest of the things, all the noises around? The things you want to run away from, what is revealed as painful or interfering? What should you do with them, ignore them, move them aside?
M. Laitman: What do you think?
Student: Well, this is what I think. I'm just not sure it's the right way. I'm afraid that I might be running away from the work itself in the end. I don't understand if I should push them aside, ignore them, and just focus on adhering to the Creator? Or it's just words?
M. Laitman: No, they're not just words.
Student: What does it mean to adhere to the Creator within the state of concealment?
M. Laitman: I want to adhere to the Creator in every possible state I'm in; and then I search for Him as the concealed God in every single state I'm in. Where is He, how can I be adhered to Him?
Student: Indeed, how, because right now, He is revealed through concealment.
M. Laitman: Wonderful. And He comes to you in concealment?
Student: Yes.
M. Laitman: So, you need to reveal Him in the concealment.
Student: What does that mean, what should I do? What do I do with the concealment?
M. Laitman: You need to try and open up the concealment and in it reveal the Creator.
Student: You said to the friend earlier that it's through some common action between us.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: What is this action that through concealment we reveal the Creator, and that it's common to all of us?
M. Laitman: That all of us, more or less, want to reveal the Creator in concealment.
Student: But that was how we worked to begin with?
M. Laitman: Well?
Student: What are we adding to it now? What layer can we add that will be regarded as adhesion, as Lishma?
M. Laitman: That we want to reveal the Creator in concealment; that between us there is a situation called concealment, and in that concealment we want to reveal the Creator.
Student: Should we take from the Creator the concealment that He does? And what should I bring from us, instead?
M. Laitman: The desire to be adhered to Him.
Student: Now with the concealment, it can be a new, different desire? We work between us, and we come to a state called concealment. And now, what new or additional do we do, which is another desire to be adhered to Him?
M. Laitman: We want to be adhered in concealment because behind it is the Creator.
Student: It's like dealing with this force that acts on us in concealment?
M. Laitman: Yes, yes.
Student: How do we hold on there? How do we add strength, there?
M. Laitman: The Creator is concealed and we pressure and demand of Him to be revealed.
Student: But He is revealed more in concealment, so I can't find?
M. Laitman: That's considered what we call the concealed God, this is where you're running after Him while He's in concealment. This is revealed towards you in the form of concealment. And that's called, the game of the Creator with the created being.
Student: Should we ask of Him for something, there?
M. Laitman: Ask Him to be revealed. Well, help him.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:32) When a person feels the concealment, it seems to him as either dryness or, the in order to receive shines for him that pulls him. He can't resist, he can't stand under the concealment. How to continue to the next moment under the concealment?
M. Laitman: I agree with the concealment, what I lack is just to know how I come nearer to the Creator from the concealment.
Student: How does a person fill up the time under the concealment? Another second, he wants to stretch time under the concealment, not disappear in it. Sometimes I run to the sources but not always does something happen with me, there.
M. Laitman: I don't know what to tell you. A person needs to deal with all that, in every way, that he's before the Creator. It's similar to, like who has more patience, the Creator or a person? And eventually, the Creator needs to say, “My sons have defeated Me”.
Reader: (24:42) If a person does not respond actively, like you just described, truly actively to this opportunity that opens up for him, he simply misses it?
M. Laitman: Well, there will be others. The Creator has patience.
Student: The Creator has patience, but we need to hasten the process.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Meaning we need to actively respond.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Something will happen, he receives an opportunity, he has to go and prepare himself for making it happen.
M. Laitman: Prayer.
Student: Prayer is part of it.
M. Laitman: Yes,
Student: Do we need to be afraid of missing opportunities, is it part of it?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:44) He writes about a person already having knowledge that only He can help him. What are the actions that he aims towards, that he has to seek, actions that he can, all the things that he can do in this world in order to reach that wholehearted prayer?
M. Laitman: Yes, so what's the question?
Student: It's already scrutinized for him that only He can help. He is already in some form of deficiency, even gratitude. What are those deeds, what are those actions?
M. Laitman: Actions by which he searches how he should turn to the Creator and how to draw the Creator to the solution.
Student: In order to reach an even deeper deficiency because he already has the address, he can already address Him. He knows that only He can help in this situation, that's how it's written at least.
M. Laitman: So?
Student: Nevertheless, he needs to add here.
M. Laitman: Only requests, only requests.
Student: So only to increase the prayer, the deficiency.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:19) In the beginning of the lesson, we talked about concealment. It was a little like, concealment is bad and revelation is good. And now, as we're developing, we're hearing that concealment is something much more complex. Meaning, it's not linear, black and white but, there is a great depth in it.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: What's the purpose of the concealment?
M. Laitman: To build us in spirituality.
Student: This is a means in the hands of the Creator to develop us?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: To develop what in us?
M. Laitman: Develop in us the right approach to the Creator, to our goal in creation.
Student: It's not a test, it's not an exam that the Creator is placing before a person, right, or is it?
M. Laitman: It's conditions for the creation of man, to build a man.
Student: Meaning, concealment is necessary.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: You can't grow without it.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Now we heard that it's like the Creator is checking who has more patience, a person or the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: But He is First and He is Last. It's with certainty that the Creator has more patience than the person.
M. Laitman: Well, what's the question?
Student: We heard, now, that the Creator checks who has more patience, a person or the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: Well, it seems, apparently, that it seems like the Creator has more patience.
M. Laitman: Yes, that's clear.
Student: What is there to check?
M. Laitman: There is to check how much the will of the created being, is arranged, is in line with, the will of the Creator.
Student: Meaning that with the help of the concealment, He helps us develop a desire towards Him?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, on one hand we're happy with the concealment because it grows us, on the other hand we don't give up the revelation of the Creator. So, there's something that's made up of the two parts.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And that's the work of a person with concealment?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (30:25) A very simple question: The triumph of the Creator, He is great with His concealments. We can't depict all the details He's concealing in, we can't feel nothing. And as we read, we just have to mention ourselves, the self-benefit, because by that we do something to resemble Him somewhat in the matter of concealment. How can you advance in that, in concealing my self-benefit? How can we help one another, I don't know. How can we make one additional step in that direction?
M. Laitman: This is what we attain through adhesion and we have no way to do it any other way.
Student: Adhesion between us?
M. Laitman: No, with the Creator.
Student: No, with the Creator but that's really beyond my self-benefit.
M. Laitman: Well, of course, of course; you want to come to a state where it is clear to you that you are doing this in order to bestow.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (32:15) Is there a matter of habit becoming second nature in the attempts to take on the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven or concealment as an opportunity for advancement? Or does the Creator always disconnect a person and give him a complete option for choosing?
M. Laitman: No, the Creator doesn't clean up the previous forms, no. There is one through the other, it's an addition.
Student: He adds, meaning, so when a person identifies that the Creator put a concealment upon him and distances him. Then he is supposed to automatically operate towards bestowal to the group. That's something that you can work on and it becomes habit as second nature?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (33:30) In the matter of concealment, a person needs to accept concealment and work with it.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: Do I open it by agreeing with the concealment, if I accept the concealment and being willing to remain in it. What does the person want to discover? What am I demanding actually if all of one's work is to accept the concealment? Then what's the demand for it to be revealed?
M. Laitman: The demand is to, through the concealment, reveal the Creator.
Student: What does he precisely want to discover, what is to reveal the Creator?
M. Laitman: Revealing the Creator means revealing the origin of life.
Student: What does a person need to be revealed to him if he's in a place, on a path, that leads him to the source of life? He believes in the righteousness of the path and the sages, he has all the means. And is in a stage where he's in that place, that if he follows all these means, he has to accept the concealment fully and to be willing to work in this matter of the posterior. Like he writes in Shamati, that if he doesn't look at the posterior as if it's the revelation of faith, he won't be able to reveal it. We have to work in concealment as if we're in revelation. Is that what I understood correctly?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: From this state, what does the person want to be revealed, why should something be revealed? Like I said, it needs to be in the matter of bestowal, and if the Creator wants me to work in the posterior to the last day of my life, I agree. I have the forces, thank you very much. Maybe the friends have revelation, whatever they want but for a person himself, what needs to open up for him? What needs to be revealed to him beyond that?
M. Laitman: What should be revealed to a person is the general system, where he and all his friends, and all of humanity are in a process where they have to reveal a leaning tendency toward the Creator.
Student: The issue, here, is how to create this seemingly contradicted movement because on one hand, we want to be in this flirt of concealment all the time. This is what builds the desire, develops us, this is a place for work and where everything happens. On the other hand, we have to reach revelation for everything to be clear, where a person feels the whole system in every way. How do you settle these two movements?
M. Laitman: Through adhesion, through attainment of adhesion.
Student: I assume it settles in adhesion but, before that, how does a person stabilize himself where on one hand I agree with all that you give me because that's concealment, etc. On the other hand, I must have revelation now. How do you settle these two internally? Can a person be in parallel in these things?
M. Laitman: Yes, a person can be in this connection, on condition that he wants to adhere to the Creator, unconditionally.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (37:46) I have a sign above my bed that says, “to be able to continue onwards again and again with a joyous heart”. I heard this from you many times, continue, continue. The idea is that the desire should reach adhesion and from that persistence comes, persistence on the path, comes devotion, power, faith, many things come. And even the understanding that you need to pay for each and everything, every good thing at least, and the beauty is that we have a Ten. So, this inclusion is not personal, it's general. So, to be able to continue and continue again and again with a joyous heart, that's my approach.
M. Laitman: Good luck.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:49) From what I understood, the key point in this whole lesson is what the friend just talked about, to be adhered to the concealment. It's a point that is very contradicted to who we are naturally. How do we now or how can we be adhered to; how to be persistently adhered to concealment? That's the point of longing, if I understand it correctly. It seems impossible, how do we do it?
M. Laitman: Through prayer.
Student: To be in prayer all the time, that's precisely that point of yearning, to be in prayer all the time?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Where do you get the strength, the forces to be in this constant direction, this trajectory?
M. Laitman: There aren't many options, here, except to constantly turn to the Creator and ask Him for the strength to be in the society.
Student: Is there any contribution to this by us doing this together? It's like a common exercise, then we'll have more forces to do it?
M. Laitman: Of course it's possible, of course it should yield some result, yes.
Reader: (41:06) The revelation of the concealment comes from the Creator but it actually reveals to us the disparity of form with Him. Is that correct?
M. Laitman: Let's say so.
Student: We can always see that the Creator is concealing Himself behind what? Behind the lack of equivalence of form between us with Him?
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: Meaning, concealment is actually the admission that He's revealing to us ourselves. It's not that He's concealing on purpose, He wants to be revealed.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: There's plenty to ask, here; there is what to ask for the concealment. We want only it to be corrected.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: From the conversation, it sounds like the concealment is something that we want. We want the Concealer not the concealment.
M. Laitman: Yes, yes, sure.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (42:13) If I understand the summary of everything we're talking about, a person needs to agree with the Creator remaining in the concealment even though He wants it above the state He's in, and to ask for it to be revealed in His desire to bestow. To build this correctly, the Creator is playing hide-and-seek with us, seemingly. When a child plays hide-and-seek with his father, he hides in one place, he looks in one place, looks in another place and this is how the game goes on. The father kind of makes it easier and then makes it harder and harder. How do we play this game with the Creator?
M. Laitman: I don't know, I asked, and you, I see that you have a habit of sending the question back to me.
Student: I'm trying to ask what are the places where you search for the Creator?
M. Laitman: Places where a person, to begin with, feels that he wants to scrutinize a new approach, a new relation to the Creator.
Student: I don't know, one place is at the Ten, to study, my whole life. All those places, or only in some of them?
M. Laitman: Yes, in these places, usually.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (44:02) There are nine friends before me right now. What is a whole prayer called now? Each appears to me, differently, I measure each differently.
M. Laitman: You have one topic, one subject, you have to be incorporated in the same subject.
Student: What does it mean that we need to incorporate in the same topic?
M. Laitman: That you want to connect on top of a single subject, on top of a single approach to the Creator.
Student: How do we do that?
M. Laitman: How do you do it, I don't know. We have our musicians, here; let's say, tell me, how do we perform in music a relation to something? So, the whole process, melodic process, we basically attribute it to the same goal. This is what we intend to do in our work. Yes?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (46:01) There are complete theories about how musicians, the classical musicians, all of classical music was created from doing these circles and circles. They never give you the final catharsis, the last ending chord. There's even these jokes about the best composition in the world was supposed to be ta-dum – meaning one final chord in the beginning, and that's it, the whole composition is over. But the whole longing, all those circling around and all kinds of scales that go around, they're even dissonant and they do all kinds of unpleasant. The more the composer is greater and more respectable, it's like he takes the listener to some adventure. And then, this final catharsis, the ending, becomes much more impressive. It's like our path, where, specifically, by us wanting to reveal and do respect concealment. That only upon it we can somehow, from these circles that the Creator does for us, to discover the beautiful, harmonious, major, final, joyous ending. So, it's really a beautiful point!
M. Laitman: Okay.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (47:26) We soon will go out into the day to our everyday life now. And I heard you say today in the lesson, to be able to stay connected to what we heard today, we shall be impressed by the study and the friends. What is this that allows us to be impressed?
M. Laitman: The Creator brought us into one group in which He gave room to each one; and in the connection between us, the correct one, He sees the summary of all His work in the group, His work. And therefore, we must try to accept the group in the right way, correctly – I have nothing more to say about this – in the right way, correctly.
Student: Sometimes it seems like we are so easily impressed by bad things, or by money, or by war. What helps us to be impressed by Torah, by the essence of life?
M. Laitman: It all depends on how much we are immersed in it, on how much we want to check what it means: What is life; connection to life? Okay, friends, it's already 5.05. What are we doing next?
Reader: (50:36) We're moving to the study between friends, so please we'll do a transition.