The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning) August 1, 2024.
Part 1: Baal HaSulam. Letter No. 11
Reader: Hello, we are reading from The Writings of Baal HaSulam in Letter 11. You can find the study material in kabbalahgroup.info and in the Arvut system. You can also send your questions to these websites. Anyone asking a question in the study hall is asked to stand up, hold the mic close to his mouth and speak loudly and clearly. Letter 11 by Baal HaSulam.
Reading: (00:34) Letter No. 11
To the one who is tied to my heart, may his candle burn:
I received your words, and concerning the traveling of... I can inform you that, God willing, I will bring him with me to Jerusalem. I think I will issue a visa to Beirut for him, and from there to Jerusalem on my permit, for I have no other way at the moment. I have already informed this to my family in a letter.
... Concerning the words of Torah you ask of me, you should have written what it is you lack without them, for you should accept everything with love. Indeed, so is the path of truth, but you should feel the love, and it is felt only in a place of deficiency. This is the meaning of “He who shares the affliction of the public is rewarded with seeing the comfort of the public,” and “To the extent that a person allots, he is allotted.”
You have often heard that all the good of the awakening from below concerns only our learning how to feel the deficiency, as it is set before us by the Creator. This is the meaning of “A prayer makes half,” since as long as one does not feel the deficiency of the half—the part that was cut off from the whole, and the part does not feel as it should—one is incapable of complete Dvekut [adhesion] since this will not be considered advantageous for him, and one does not keep or sustain a needless thing.
Our sages told us that there is a remedy for this feeling by the power of the prayer. When one is persistent in praying and craving to adhere to Him perpetually, the prayer can do half, meaning that he will recognize that it is half. When the sparks multiply and become absorbed in the organs, he will certainly be rewarded with complete salvation and the part will be adhered to the whole forever.
This is the meaning of “There is only a hairsbreadth between the upper and lower water,” as our sages said, “A thread [or hair] was tied to him,” as in, “mountains that hang on a thread.” This thread needs a filling, and this is the reason for the division of the lower water from the upper.
This is the meaning of the words, “The head of its mouth was inside of it.” That is, as long as the blocked was not opened, meaning the mouth in the head [Peh de Rosh], it is fed through its navel [Tabur], and the blocked must be open. It turns out that “The head of its mouth was inside of it; it will be a lip around his mouth” means he will not settle for little because “If we permit our share, who will permit the share of the altar?” This is why he will feel the heaviness in the head.
That feeling will give him a language for the mouth, since he will pour out his heart to the Creator extensively, to purify the lower lip [also lower language]. This is the meaning of the verse, “It will be a lip around his mouth, a weaving,” meaning that the sparks of craving gather side by side and unite together “like the opening of a coat.”
In other words, the reasons that cause the sensation of pain and pouring out of the heart will not be canceled whatsoever, but will gather together and become a mouth, as our sages said, “His sins became to him as merits.” It follows that he has two mouths, for “around” [in Aramaic] means Sechor, Sechor [circling, as well as merchandise].
Thus, the Panim [anterior/face] is a complete Partzuf, and the Achoriam [back/posterior] is a complete Partzuf. If he is rewarded with it, he acquires “the opening of a coat,” and then “That man is guaranteed that he will not be torn because his name is Yinon for all eternity.” Observe carefully and find, for this is the meaning of “They shall inherit twofold in their land.”
There is great depth in my words, but I haven’t the strength to interpret them now. But if you understand my words, you will certainly be rewarded with coming and going without needing permission. As the portion ends, “And its sound is heard when he enters the holy place and when he goes out,” may it be so.
On the whole, you do not understand the attainment and the merit of the Torah. If you did, you would certainly devote yourself to it and you would be rewarded with it. You see the verse, “A candle is a commandment; the Torah is light.” If you have a house full of candles but no light, the candles will be taking up room in vain. The name “Torah” comes from the word Horaah [instruction], and from the words Mar’eh and Re’iah [“vision” and “sight” respectively], meaning complete recognition that leaves no thread behind it. May the Creator make you understand my words henceforth…
I will also ask that you make great efforts in love of friends, to devise tactics that can increase the love among the friends and revoke the lust for bodily matters from among you, as this is what casts hate, and between those who give contentment to their Maker there shall be no hatred. Rather, there are great compassion and love between them.
I ask that each will show his letter to his friends because the matters are said from one to another, and there is one law for you in enslaving the body and sanctifying the soul. But do not change, God forbid, as do those with bodies. You should henceforth heed my words, for it is your life and the length of your days.
It is not for my own favor that I demand, but what can a fine general do when soldiers change his instructions to them?
Yehuda
M. Laitman: What was your impression? No one has anything to say?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:43) First of all, it's a very moving letter. There are parts that it's always surprising how much, what he said, we live them. Like the last paragraph, we read it so many times, and so many moving moments. But there are a few things that are not so clear I wanted to ask about if I may.
M. Laitman: You're permitted to ask, yes?
Student: There's this line in the beginning, the extent he, a person allots, he's allotted.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: A formula in the work, what does that formula mean? How do you use it?
M. Laitman: That a person, to the extent that he doesn't understand, that he doesn't feel, but he, actually, determines the pace of his development.
Student: He measures it for himself, for the friends?
M. Laitman: Mostly for himself but to a certain extent, also to the friends, and to another extent, also to the whole of humanity.
Student: Another one, if I may? The one before that paragraph, to make great efforts in love of friends, devise tactics, we prepared this today around this paragraph and the friends asked what kind of inventions or tactics we have?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And common answers, we agreed that you should invest in the friends, and you should pray for them, and ask for them. Is there anything else important that we may have missed?
M. Laitman: Mainly, it's what you said, that we want that all the friends will reach revelation of the Creator to His creations and will grow stronger in that. And we'll be able to pull the whole of humanity behind them. This is what we expect, what we want, what we hope for.
Student: Can I ask another question? There's this concept of the weaving, weaving of a coat. Can I ask what is this action of weaving?
M. Laitman: Well, actually we know what weaving means.
Student: In corporeality, yes.
M. Laitman: In corporeality, and in spirituality, one who knows how to tie together goals and reasons from one state to another state has a great addition from the study, from the attainment, that's it.
Student: Another concept that wasn't clear is this the mouth following the action of the weaving. What is this mouth of the weaving, the mouth of the coat?
M. Laitman: I don't want to speak of myself, I don't attain it, I don't understand it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:01) He's talking about annulling the, revoke the lust for bodily matters because that is what casts hate. What does that mean, to revoke that?
M. Laitman: Because in our connection with the Creator, we need each and every one and we think about unity, we are concerned with unity. Whereas, in the bodily lusts, each one of us enters his own body and by that he becomes separated from everyone.
Student: It's truly opposite to love of friends?
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: It doesn't seem like there's a direct connection. I'm thinking of hate between friends, I don't connect it to bodily lusts. It distracts one, I don't see it as something that brings hate.
M. Laitman: It's enough that you think only about yourself, that already brings separation. And you don't even see in that you engage in it, what you want to attain, you discover or reveal a personal deficiency, to what extent you become disconnected from connecting.
Student: What do you do with it? What's the advice against bodily lusts?
M. Laitman: Prayer.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:50) He writes, you should accept everything with love, but you should feel the love between them and it's only felt in a place of deficiency. What does it mean that love is felt in a place of deficiency?
M. Laitman: Apparently, one who yearns for love, and he asks, and his heart is open for it. So, he begins to feel how much the Creator opens up His love to him.
Student: Love isn't felt instead of wholeness, specifically?
M. Laitman: Well, yes, but it opens up gradually, there are degrees in love.
Student: He also writes, the prayer makes half?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: How come the prayer creates a feeling of half?
M. Laitman: The right prayer, on the one hand it shows a person how much he's connected to the Creator; on the other hand, how much, he's disconnected from the Creator. And these two work on the person together.
Student: And from this state, when he feels connected to the Creator, but on the other hand, disconnected from the Creator.
M. Laitman: So, both of them complement each other.
Student: So, what's the next stage in the prayer? He raises a prayer, he feels close or disconnected?
M. Laitman: If he does it correctly, and he moves himself into the prayer to the Creator, then bit by bit, the prayer exists.
Student: What does it mean in the state that he passes himself to the Creator?
M. Laitman: That he wants to connect, he wants to bestow, he wants to overcome. And he asks for forces, since he wants to keep the connection.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:08) It’s not the first time that Baal HaSulam tells his students to make these inventions. He says to strive in love of friends and to come up with tactics that increase the love among the friends. He also in other articles he uses that.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: It's not so clear what it means to devise tactics because, I'll explain: Most people, they hate risk, any kind of risk, take something unfamiliar and embed everything on it, take a chance with it. When you devise a tactic, you have to try something new. So, you know, every gathering you do more or less the same and you leave the inner excitement, inside.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: So, what's the meaning of devising tactics in love of friends?
M. Laitman: By what else can we be even closer to each other? Or in other words, which is actually the same, to the extent that we can receive the Creator inside of us? So that by that, we will feel that the whole of humanity joins us?
Student: Here’s the question that we ask: But what does it mean to devise tactics on the matter?
M. Laitman: Well, how can you describe it?
Student: Yes, so typically it's the same, we're thinking along the same lines, the same standard of thinking. We sit, we study, we read an article, we read from Rav's words. A certain habit which is not, I don't think it's bad, there's a lot of power in it. But here he talks about devising tactics. When he's saying the word devising tactics, I'm thinking of someone having a problem and he's trying new ways of doing it. Someone who invented the light bulb, a better working engine, it didn't happen in a vacuum. He thought, he spent time thinking about this difficult problem. He considered everything that was done and was looking for something new that was not done. There's something about making an invention. Now, I wish we would do as he recommends in love of friends. So, what does it mean to invent something, to devise a tactic, here?
M. Laitman: Yes, I can't say anymore, how to get closer to the Creator, how to grow stronger. How to build together the spiritual vessel, which is actually built out of everyone together, and how to be concerned about expanding the vessel. Actually, that's what we have, that's it. Now, in that, there are certainly things that are like personal things, certain secrets, but this is it, actually, this is what we study together.
Student: So, it's between man and the Creator, or is it in the Ten? Let's invent something new that we haven't done thus far?
M. Laitman: It could be together, certainly, yes.
Student: So, it's which one? Both between man and the Creator, and also in the Ten?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:15) These tactics mean that each time we're building a deficiency for the Creator, for prayer? Because we all bring a prayer to the Creator but he emphasizes the importance of coming with a certain feeling to the prayer, with a certain deficiency. I feel that there's all kinds of prayers, you said in the beginning that we have to ask for the strength, for the power. I feel that if you ask for the power and you come with a deficiency for the power, it's very different compared to coming and just asking for this power as an aside, you know, by the way. So, what is the tactic that we need to use in our common effort, in our personal efforts, in the connection between us to bring this deficiency? Because sometimes you feel that there's no deficiency. If you come here, I don't want to use bad language but you just come here to sit. So, how do you come here to each time building a true deficiency?
M. Laitman: We have to start that a lot, earlier, but that too is good. If a person comes and he feels that he doesn't have a deficiency and he just comes. Or maybe he comes especially in order to receive a deficiency from the others and strengthen his small deficiency. And in such a way he wants to advance, what's wrong with that?
Student: No, no it's fine, I’m just saying how do I come to the lesson let's say without a deficiency? How can I take, get a deficiency from the friends?
M. Laitman: You need to become incorporated with them, you have to connect to their deficiency, to their prayer. And then you will enter them.
Student: On the other hand, if one of the friends has a deficiency, how do they give the deficiency? How did they bestow it to friends who lack the deficiency?
M. Laitman: Through connection, through incorporation, by each one wanting to hear the other. And he wants to take part with him, only in that way.
Student: Beginning of the lesson, you said in your answer that the more we care about our personal development, we influence the development of the entire system. So, I’m asking when we come and we give the strength to the friends. There are friends who have this power that I guess they get from the Creator. How with this power that they give, how does it influence the friends to the Creator. Does it come through a prayer that I have to give in the lesson?
M. Laitman: Because this is how we are connected we're connected between us through the Creator. And through our deficiencies that we feel burning inside of us, so by that, we become incorporated in everyone and they with us.
Student: How do we incorporate in the middle of the lesson? What does it mean?
M. Laitman: Only through the desire; there's nothing else that I can say.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:10) The friend spoke about as if a person has a problem like discovering electricity. Maybe our path also in the Ten is to see the permission, because the permission to discover electricity comes from the Creator, the same thing for tactics. We sit, we feel the situation, it's okay to do the same things but we should be open to what the Creator is trying to tell us. To be open to the permission we were given in that gathering.
M. Laitman: It's for the connection between us.
Student: Exactly, and then we're open because we're looking for the permission from the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes, this is true, that this is how we should feel ourselves, that we are connected and we expect the revelation of the Creator to us.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:14) It says, he who feels, he shares the affliction of the public, he is rewarded with seeing the comfort of the public. So, what is the prayer they have to come to, what should we pray for?
M. Laitman: We should pray that we want become incorporated with the public, to receive from them all their deficiencies. Connect them together and raise them to the Creator.
Student: Deficiencies to the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:57) Next to last he writes, love, but love is felt only in place of deficiency. Everything is felt only where there is a deficiency, if a person doesn't have a deficiency for something, he won't feel it. Then he proposes, he says, you have often heard that all the good of the awakening from below concerns only who are learning how to feel the deficiency. Meaning, we have to learn how to feel the deficiency, to investigate how to come to the right deficiency. This is what we should be educated about, to study of our deficiency?
M. Laitman: Actually, yes.
Student: It seems as if the problem is that a person comes with a will to receive because he feels bad and the Wisdom of Kabbalah offers him to, not to solve the problem of feeling bad. But it says that the good is found in a place where you annul yourself and think of the collective, or if you prefer the collective over yourself?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: We lack the courage to do this action. Even if you learn this for 20 years, you lack the courage to do this action, to annul myself and jump to feel the collective. Or live for the collective or ask for the collective. What evidence can we have that will strengthen our courage to make this leap from me to them, to we, to us? What is the change that will give a person the confidence to give up his I, his self?
M. Laitman: It's work, inner work, where he annuls himself before the Creator and wants to achieve a connection with his friends and live in that. But it has to be in actuality, meaning, all the time, to serve this deficiency.
Student: How can this be the essence of man? What he wants to get out of this life is his tendency outwardly, toward the outside. How do I get there, I got to meet, to know a few people, very good people who cared about the collective. And in my eyes, it seemed as if they did not care about themselves. It's a few select individuals who, they're not even alive anymore, one here, one there, someone's grandmother.
M. Laitman: It's enough for us.
Student: So, how can a person come to the feeling of being like such a person, this example, he doesn't live for himself. We also saw it here, Kabbalists come to a state where they don't live for themselves.
M. Laitman: It's not really so that you feel that they don't actually live, a true Kabbalist, you don't feel that they don't live for themselves. They behave completely normally, you know, completely in an ordinary manner. I don't know about Baal HaSulam but, at least with Rabash, I was truly next to him for most of the hours of the day, sometimes even for a few days when we would travel. It was difficult to say from the outside that there is something to that person, truly so. Just, an ordinary person, like a religious old man.
Student: Externally, it's clear, it doesn't matter what he eats, or sleeps, it's internally. How does he grasp his life, the purpose of his life? It's not the same.
M. Laitman: Well, that you can find in his articles.
Student: How do you live in that?
M. Laitman: How do you live in that? You need to ask the Creator that He will give you adhesion with Him, that's it. That He will give adhesion. Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (34:12) He writes in the article, that as long as he doesn't feel half of the deficiency, meaning a part of the whole, and a part is not felt properly, he's not capable of complete adhesion since this will not be considered advantageous for him, and one does not keep or sustain a needless thing. What does it mean a person does not keep or sustain a needless thing?
M. Laitman: The sentence, itself, is clear: If there's no need for it, then a person doesn't even pay attention to this thing, right? Which means that we need to equip ourselves with the right deficiency.
Student: Yes, but he writes that's what keeps a person from the complete adhesion. As if in the will to receive a person cannot distinguish the true need. So, how does a person scrutinize this need?
M. Laitman: Well, he's together with friends and as much as he's connected with them in giving and receiving, connecting, distancing. Then the more and more he becomes sensitive to the intensity of the connection, the character of the connection; and he begins to work with that.
Student: A person should only scrutinize what he needs for the sake of attainment, for the sake of the connection?
M. Laitman: For the sake of the connection, yes, certainly.
Student: And anything that removes him from attainment or connection with the friends is a needless thing.
M. Laitman: No, it's needless.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (36:11) Earlier you asked about our impression from this letter. What's different?
M. Laitman: Please speak loud and clear and in pace.
Student: What's different about this letter from the articles is that here there's the personal place. And you can feel from the words of Baal HaSulam that more than the calf wants to suckle, the cow wants to feed.
M. Laitman: Fine.
Student: He's trying to, I want to read just this one paragraph, it says, you don't understand the remedy of the Torah and its attainment. And if you'd understand it, you'd surely give your life to it and you'd be rewarded with it. And may the Creator make you understand.
M. Laitman: Yes, we can say that about every person, if you were to understand the essence of the Torah or the meaning of the Torah, then you would pursue it.
Student: How do you come to such a place?
M. Laitman: How do you come to such a place, prayer. There's nothing to ask about it, only through prayer.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (37:46) There are a few prayers, for example, to be incorporated in the public and to feel the deficiencies of the other, or adhesion in the Creator, or the others, even. What's the order, what should we ask for, first?
M. Laitman: Simply, I mean, you pray every day?
Student: I try.
M. Laitman: So, if you have time during the day, open a prayer book and try to go over it, word by word, over a certain excerpt from the morning prayer, let's say. Then it will be more clear to you what is it that you're asking for, what you should feel, what kind of deficiency you need to raise, okay? Reader?
Reader: Well, the next part is selected excerpts from the sources about the topic of Destruction As An Opportunity For Correction.
M. Laitman: Already? Okay.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:56) He writes in the article that like a general who points to the place of war, if you do not understand what I'll say, you won't understand it. He points to, towards love of friends, he also says in the other places. I wanted to ask about the tactics, what the friend was asking about it before. We see in humanity that they wanted to, when they wanted to achieve love, usually they also made a wedding, they got married, they created a family. So, it's not just general love but something more focused. It feels like we had a general scrutiny, and recently we came to the conclusion that your Ten today is eternal, and you have to believe that a friend will be there with you forever. And that kind of focused the fact that we have to solve things between us, that place where we want to bring containment to the Creator and all of the work.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: And I want to ask about the central point that he talks about in the article, which we do feel is close to us. Because the first part was about all kinds of screens, and the pain, the Tabur. I don't want to engage with that but more about our need for the deficiency that he speaks about, to pray each time anew. Because one can be today here, tomorrow there, loses the true deficiency. This need for a demand, for a prayer from the Creator, this is something that we should extract between us?
M. Laitman: Yes, certainly, each one needs to extract from himself and connect to the friend and look for it in the connection between them. There's also a person's internal deficiency. And a person's deficiency that appears in the connection with his friend.
Student: So, it's possible that all of these good things that he writes about that are in the Torah. It's like you let a child play for the prince, the king's son, you let them play with gold coins, and for them it's nothing. So, we were given a Ten, all the treasures are there in whatever we will build between us each time?
M. Laitman: Yes, it's not something we've done, it's not an invention of Kabbalists from the past century. But it was like that in the Israeli nation, if you remember from the desert how they carried themselves. They divided themselves into tens, and then hundreds, and thousands.
Student: So, we have a feeling in the Ten that once in a while we, seemingly, reach a dead-end, a dead-end street where we exert and exert. And we want love but we don't reach this love that is sufficient in order to, is this a good result out of our effort in love of friends?
M. Laitman: Of course it's not a good result but everyone, for some reason, they trust the others. I'm not certain that it depends on my effort, so what can I do?
Student: Many times you say to cry, but what if a person doesn't succeed?
M. Laitman: Crying is the last resort, before that you need to discuss and try to connect and raise our prayer to the heavens. And see what, how we're moving forward.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (43:30) One who is rewarded with the sorrow of the public, anyone who regrets with the public is rewarded with seeing the comfort of the public. This public, is that the Ten?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: The Ten is enough to fill the whole public?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Women PT 23): (43:59) It says that the word Torah comes from guidance, instruction, and also vision and seeing. Meaning complete awareness that doesn't leave any thread behind it. What does it mean, complete knowledge that doesn't leave any thread behind it?
M. Laitman: It's a complete awareness, complete awareness according to what a person can depict.
Student: When he has no doubts.
M. Laitman: No doubts, yes. okay, let’s go to the next part.
Reader: We will go to the next part but before that, a song!
Song: (44:38)