Daily Lesson (Morning), July 11, 2024.
Part 3: Equal As One: There Is No Strong Friend, There Is A Strong Society, Selected Excerpts from the Sources. #6
Reader: We're reading selected excerpts from the sources in a topic of Equal As One, There's No Strong Friend, There's A Strong Society, excerpt number six by the Rabash. You can find the study materials on Sviva Tova and the Arvut system and ask questions there. Whoever asks a question here, stand up, hold the microphone close to your mouth and speak loud and clear.
Reading 6, RABASH, Article No. 6 (1984), "Love of Friends – 2"
If several individuals come together with the force that it is worthwhile to abandon self-love, but without the sufficient power and importance of bestowal to become independent, without outside help, if these individuals annul before one another and all have at least potential love of the Creator, though they cannot keep it in practice, then by each joining the society and annulling oneself before it, they become one body.
For example, if there are ten people in that body, it has ten times more power than a single person does.
However, there is a condition: When they gather, each of them should think that he has now come for the purpose of annulling self-love. It means that he will not consider how to satisfy his will to receive now but will think as much as possible only of the love of others. This is the only way to acquire the desire and the need to acquire a new quality, called “the will to bestow.”
And from love of friends one can reach love of the Creator, meaning wanting to give contentment to the Creator.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:08) We heard this excerpt from Rabash, many times, dozens if not more. And also, here he's writing that there are conditions to be in a Ten. Is that right or you don't need any condition you just come?
M. Laitman: No, you just come and sit around the benches, around the tables?
Student: Exactly, because this lesson opened in society, a lot of scrutinies on how you really manage a Ten. Annulment towards one another, so we don't talk or demand anything. Or we do need to demand and give conditions; and here that's the biggest dilemma. It's very hard to scrutinize this.
M. Laitman: Meaning?
Student: Meaning, what should we really do with friends that don't hold the conditions? Or how to relate to them, there's a big problem here.
M. Laitman: If you're all together, the whole Ten, you can discuss anything, each and everything.
Student: We discuss it and the friends' talk, and they raise importance, and.
M. Laitman: Just less words.
Student: Exactly, in words everything sounds great, but in the deeds a bit less.
M. Laitman: So, what is less in action compared to what's written? You need to scrutinize, even to write it down, so it doesn't disperse into the air.
Student: How do you really bring the friends that their words will become deeds if you don't demand of them? That's the question.
M. Laitman: The whole society needs to be connected and it needs to demand.
Student: How do you do that without distancing the friends?
M. Laitman: Why distance the friends?
Student: Because when you come with demands, let's say, a friend has commitments to come to a morning lesson.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: Which is the most important thing for us, and he doesn't do it. And he says it's important, it's important and everything, he's aware of it. It's not that he's not aware of it but he just doesn't come to the lesson. He doesn't wake up, he doesn't really have importance, I guess?
M. Laitman: So, in the evening he does get up but in the morning he doesn't.
Student: Exactly.
M. Laitman: Okay, so what's the difference between evening and morning for him?
Student: It's easier.
M. Laitman: So, in the morning, the evil inclination governs him, and he cannot get up.
Student: Yes.
M. Laitman: So, what do you all do? How to save the friend?
Student: So that's it, we have meetings, we need to awaken, we have Yeshivat Haverim, everything Rabash writes. We sit, we read the Rabash's conditions, and the world just keeps going. I think the descent started from the CORONA, that friends got stuck in that state.
M. Laitman: Yes, alright, so we have this one problem, getting up to the morning lesson.
Student: To commit, altogether.
M. Laitman: To commit. I tell the friends something, then my word is everything.
Student: You feel that there's not a real covenant.
M. Laitman: Right, right, more, more besides. Nothing else besides, that's the only problem?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (08:18) I don't want to take the severity away from this because it is severe. But on the other hand, when you talk to friends and you say, let's do this or that. So, you see the limit of every friend very quick, it's instant. And you understand that from here on, the work is different. The whole matter of above reason, when we entered that in a deep way. For me personally it solved all my problems in the Ten. Because I understand that we might go straight into a place that has no solution. The friend told you, I cannot wake up to the lesson, I can come twice a week, that's it. Beyond that, you can't put forces on him or anything, it’s a fact that is standing. Now you have one thing to do: Either you learn to love him in his state, and you need everything we're learning about from above reason to do that. Or you just bump into a wall; now, I understand that this is something that if we here are able to crack and really get into above reason. Everything we see around Bnei Baruch, all the wars, all the problems, ego, everything will be solved once we enter that with all our forces. Either we jump into above reason, or we're stuck on how much a friend comes, or he doesn't come, or.
M. Laitman: Yes, but the problem, nevertheless, exists.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:05) We're talking about friends that are strong or friends that are weak or. I want to say that a strong friend in the morning, there is no such thing, everyone who comes starts from nothing.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: That's why if the Ten isn't around him, which is the force we need to start the spiritual effort, it doesn't matter if you're great or small. You don't have that environment, and that's what's happening. And it doesn't matter whether you want to jump above reason, it can happen, but it can't happen every day with nothing. It has to be that you have, that at least you start from having a group, at least in the beginning of the day which is called the morning lesson. Otherwise, without that, it doesn't matter how strong the friends are, there's no ability to work. That's why you can't just ignore and love what doesn't exist. If the friends didn't come day after day, you can't work with them. If half the week he’s not here, you don't have his deficiency, you don't have his commitment. It's like, let's say, the Creator exists part of the week and the other part He doesn't, it doesn't work.
M. Laitman: That's how it is, so, how do you fight against that, you have a solution?
Student: No, we're helpless.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:01) As long as we don't connect everything to the Creator, we won't find a solution. We need to do what we can in the Tens, and if a friend has difficulties, connect to the Creator. If we think that just from our forces we'll try to force friends or count their attendance, or if things will change, we don't have those forces. We have to bring the Creator into the equation and from that start working.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:53) There's a state that people come every day and in the conditions of the Arvut, they can complete the friends who can't, like we learn under the conditions of the Arvut. If one has a newborn, so the other doesn't he can complete it for him. We can complete each other.
M. Laitman: In getting up in the morning for the lesson, we can't complete, compensate for each other. Here the body has to rise, to get up from zero. And so, connection between the friends, love of friends. Each one arriving for the others, that doesn't work here.
Student: That's the conditions of this world.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:03) What's the difference between a friend that I see that, I don't know. As long as I'm here, 13 years, he's here every day, no question about it. There are such friends here. To a friend that comes or doesn't come, what's the difference between them, really, essentially, what's the difference? There's people here that are like iron, there's no question about it.
M. Laitman: The importance.
Student: And this importance they have, where did that come from? Because it seems we always say that importance is acquired from the society, the environment.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: But from what I see in my eyes, it's either a person has it, or he doesn't have it. And it doesn't really depend on which Ten he’s in or what environment. Because throughout the years we went through 10 Tens, everyone. There's people that no matter what Ten they were in, whether everybody wakes up or two wake up, they were here and they didn't go anywhere. So where is that importance from? It seems that there's like an inner decision of a person.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And not something that he acquires from the environment.
M. Laitman: No, maybe he has strong nerves.
Student: What does that mean?
M. Laitman: Maybe, or maybe he's just annoyed. He knows that everyone else is getting up for the lesson and he doesn't so he gets nervous.
Student: We’re trying to solve a problem that there's friends who come and friends that don't come, and we're going around this question for a week, already, and throughout the whole path. But I'm asking, is there a solution to that problem or is it each one whatever the Creator gave him? Whatever He gave him, He gave him.
M. Laitman: We need to make sure to just go to sleep earlier, that's it; we need to do something.
Student: You said this many years ago when I just got here. You used to speak about the physical actions that we don't really think of the simple ones. To eat before, not to eat; actions that make a person's abilities to come to the lesson better. So, how do you convince a friend to go to sleep earlier? Let's say we'll go for that?
M. Laitman: We all fall asleep together, right, whether we want to or not. We all get in bed, cover ourselves with a blanket and let that be about 8, 9 PM. No later than nine pm. A quarter to nine, Rabash would go to sleep, yes.
Student: It seems that Rabash articles don't start at the point when you have to convince a person to come to the lesson. But all the articles start once there is a Ten, when everybody comes, then you can start the work, is that right?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Because that's a serious, it's an important point because we always fall there. We think these articles…also if we're half and half, half come, half don't. So, we didn't even reach the degree when we can start reading these articles or do anything with them because not everybody's here. I'm saying it to my Ten, I'm saying it all together, we have to see that the first stage is that you have to buy a ticket for the show, and the ticket is to be here. If you're not here, so the rest isn't relevant.
M. Laitman: Yes, that's right.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:26) Can there be a state of a group inside a group?
M. Laitman: Yes, you have all kinds of connections.
Student: I'm saying in the same Ten.
M. Laitman: In one Ten, I don't know, give me an example.
Student: Let's say, here we're sitting. 5 friends from 13.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: That's a group in a group?
M. Laitman: No, you didn't determine in advance that that's how it's going to be; I can't say, wee?
Student: So, I'm trying to think of a solution. I can testify on myself that what helped me advance was envy, lust and honor that I think doesn't exist today. In the past, there were serious criterions, I remember there was a Congress in the north, where whoever didn't pay Maaser, whoever didn't come every morning to the lesson, couldn't come in. And me, from a desire, me to think that I couldn't come in, so I paid in retrospect half a year of Maaser in order to go into the Congress. From the biggest will to receive, I'm aware of that, but that's what motivated me. And there were congresses that not everyone could come in. And on Shabbat not everybody could come to the lesson, and not everybody could come to the morning lesson in the past. So, I think we have to make circles of people that are willing to keep the criterions; and some that are willing to be in the external circles. Meaning, if you really want to advance and be here every day in the lesson, so you have to commit towards it. If you fall, they'll help you, we're always going to approach a friend in love because we all fall. Each one can fall. But, if it's something that's ongoing, after we had attempts to bring him closer and we tried to help. And the friend isn't even asking for help, anymore; meaning, he who comes to purify is aided, right? If there's no desire to purify, how can I aid?
M. Laitman: Right, correct, right. Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (21:09) I wanted to ask, on one hand we want to bring the wisdom of Kabbalah to everybody. On the other hand, we want strict laws on us. I'm trying to understand how can we bring this to everybody if we create all these laws on us, that if you really do what you need to do, we'll see that there are only few that can stand this. I'm saying it on myself, maybe I am not able to, so, what should be the approach? Should it be, let's take 5 people that will get into spirituality and the rest, I don't know, whatever happens with them, good luck. Or should we create as many people as we can to belong to this idea, to this approach, to the wisdom of Kabbalah? Even just feeling attached in some way, what's the right thing to do, how should we work?
M. Laitman: We need to act in such a way where each one has the opportunity to approach the upper force.
Student: I see from life, I can't coerce a desire on a person, a desire is a desire, if you have it, you have it, If you don't that's okay but he's not less. I see a lot of friends that it could be that they're not here but their contribution to society is a thousand times more than people that are here all the time. That's why I have an inner conflict on what has to be the attitude towards him. I can't say already he's more important, he's less because you reach a point that everybody's important. You can't judge a person whether he came so he's great, and if not, let's kick him out. So, how do you look at people when you look at the students that come? Or how do you see people that come? The main thing is that they come, or only a small group?
M. Laitman: I look at all of you including those who aren't here by chance today, as all being capable of coming close to the Creator. That requires only a desire, an open, revealed desire, which you need to elevate, and you need to demand. And that's what we need to accomplish, that's what we need to do. Alongside that, we have many friends all over the world who are with us. As I can now see, Romania, Unity 1, MAK, Latin, Turkey, and so on, yes, KabU, USA; all those individuals and groups are with us. I think that we're now in a very critical period of transition between just students learning, helping each other. We're coming to a very special connection, and that connection doesn't take place in us, rather on a degree above us. And there the Creator ties us together with a special kind of string, thread. And we will soon feel that connection, the commitment each one has towards the others and how all of us must be connected to the Creator. That will happen, that will happen!
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:38) I think we don't need to choose whether this way or that way. We have a place where we can all connect and participate and be with us, like in a family, where there's room for everybody, and we want everybody to develop. And at the same time also create places to connect, like we said now, for friends who do want a certain framework and do invest more and do fit that framework. And at the same time, to show that there are criterions, that look, we love you, everything's okay but you can also be part of society, you can also advance, and come to Congresses or meetings and be part. And to see that there's a door you can come in, you can give forces to a lot of people.
M. Laitman: I understand, yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:54) I feel a need to strengthen what you said about sleeping hours because I see once the alarm clock rings in the morning, there really is no choice. That's a question if a person really has control over anything but the choice is in the evening, from experience of years. Only in the last year and a half, I was able to truly limit myself to not go past nine, or almost. And then you see that the disturbances are only on the body, if you sleep, you wake up. So, first of all, I wanted to say that, that that's the critical point. And then ask, when the alarm clock rings in the morning, is there freedom of a choice?
M. Laitman: The choice is in the evening, right, as we said, to go to sleep no later than 9 pm., that’s it.
Question (Haifa 1): (29:00) My approach is that if a friend isn't in a lesson, he's losing. Now, I'm not saying that if I woke up, so he can wake up too, but from concern, he's losing out. And I don't know why all these questions because the way you taught us, except for example and prayer. You taught us that the friend's corporeality is our spirituality, you taught us that to pray for a friend, he's rewarded first.
M. Laitman: All true.
Student: Suddenly, a need awakens for criticism, but our concern has to be towards those who aren't rewarded.
Question (PT 13): (30:02) Can we be flexible in our choices in the Ten? Let's say, if there are five friends, can they choose to change a Ten or strengthen a Ten with other friends. Or what you got, that's it, you need to work with those friends and that's it.
M. Laitman: You need to work, you need to work with those friends and if you want to move away from there, there's a whole mechanism in place for that and you can't just act by your own decisions, alone.
Question (ITA 3) (30:49) In the past, we had weekly Yeshivat Haverim of the whole world Kli and Europe and friends raised the importance of the morning lesson. And it helped the friends from abroad come to the morning lessons. Such a Yeshivat Haverim can strengthen the presence in the morning lesson?
M. Laitman: Well, why not? I'm all for it.
Question (Kyiv 1): (32:02) You said that the degree before us is the connection. That isn't between us but a connection on a higher degree. What is that connection we have to discover or express in some way?
M. Laitman: When we discover it, then we'll understand, then we will also understand.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (32:39) So there are friends in the Ten that commit to a framework and stand them, and some don't in a constant way. So, it feels inside like something dirty that I can't get rid of. I'm not saying I want to change them now but what's my inner work to overcome that, how to work with that?
M. Laitman: Connect with them as much as possible with all of them and elevate all of them.
Student: How to do that?
M. Laitman: Talk about the importance.
Question (Turkiye 7): (33:31) There is a phenomenon in the world that sometimes people can only sleep a few hours a day and they work okay during the day. Is it worth praying to the Creator? That will have those forces that if we only sleep a few hours?
M. Laitman: I don’t understand?
Student: There's a phenomenon that a person can sleep 3-4 hours and during the day work regularly, he's fine. Is it worth praying to the Creator for such a state? That I'll only sleep for 3-4 hours and everything's going to be good?
M. Laitman: No, there are people who need 7 hours, 6, 8 and there are those who under 9 hours of sleep, they can't even move at all. So, you have all sorts, we need to understand that and to relate to everyone according to their nature.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (35:04) You depicted our next degree where the Creator connects between all of us in a special thread. And that we'll feel that soon as the commitment between one another and the Creator. Something in the corporeal conditions will change in our next degree the higher we rise?
M. Laitman: We need to think about how each one will have what he needs to subsist in corporeality; and in spirituality we need to supply him with spiritual support as is customary on a certain level in our world.
Student: So, each one of the friends has to find and we have to help them find, the convenient conditions for them to advance, spiritually?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: I see that everyone does find his circle to belong to, in the end, everyone does what's good for him; but the tension is between the friends. Each one finds his line, but the tension is that people start commenting about the friends. I see a friend like poking other friends, why aren't you coming? Why aren't you participating? Even in a disregarding manner, is there a place for that?
M. Laitman: No, not in that way. There needs to be someone in charge in the group who can approach each one and ask him, what's happening with you according to the matter.
Student: So that's according to presence.
M. Laitman: Yes, so let's take presence as an example.
Student: And meet one friend towards another in the Ten. That suddenly comes less, participates less. What, should I just shut up and give an example?
M. Laitman: Give an example. Give an example.
Student: To what limit do you justify the friend?
M. Laitman: It's hard to say, friend is a person to whom I can say that if you don't get up, I can't get up, if you don't show up, then I look at you and I don't show up also; that’s a friend.
Student: So, if I'm dependent on him, my spiritual life is dependent on the friend. Why can't I tell him like I tell myself. Like I demand from myself, I demand from him?
M. Laitman: You can try but you need to be careful that it doesn't reject him.
Student: And everything we're talking here is about the men, right? We're not speaking about the women?
M. Laitman: No, it doesn't apply to women.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:10) A person is his own landlord. He supposedly, if a part in him decides, the whole body follows it.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: But in the Ten it doesn't happen. It's like a completely different form of taking over. You can't conduct somebody else, he's not your own, and then, these desires are free from you; we have no way to really influence them and that each one will be ahead compared to the Ten, it doesn't depend on anyone. Individual in the Ten can't control the other's desires, like he controls his own. So, what is this form the Creator is giving us? How do you work with that?
M. Laitman: Why doesn't the Creator give us the ability to control others?
Student: Yes and the inner work of man, if he decides something, then he can take his whole body in there, in that matter.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: But the Ten is a body that, if it's a body, there has to be some head that decides for the whole body?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And here there is no head that can decide for this body?
M. Laitman: The head of everyone, the collective head, is the head of the group; everyone's body is the body of the group.
Student: What is the Rosh of the group?
M. Laitman: What we all decide together, not the majority, let's say.
Student: A person in himself can take those decisions and reach a certain decision. But in the Ten these minds are separate from one another. The desire that motivates the brain is different. Like we said, each one needs his own convenient conditions but this world, you can't give anybody his own conditions and all live in the same Ten, it doesn't work out. How should a Ten conduct itself that there'll be some kind of head, spiritual head, that can conduct that whole body?
M. Laitman: If we want to go according to spirituality, then the three friends who are the most prominent, they should act as the head of the society. And the rest be the body of the society.
Student: I think every friend, every Ten has at least three friends that always come and would want to do it. But they're not able to sustain that whole body, they're not able to. So, otherwise, we weren’t successful in it, it wouldn’t work. Like he says, if five sit, but they can't sustain because they don't determine for the whole friends. The body is in parts that don't listen to the head.
M. Laitman: That is a problem, when the body does not follow the head but rather follows the tail.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (41:58) We were speaking about envy, lust and honor; it's an area that we don't always understand how it's supposed to work. There can be a state that I'm envious and there couldn't be a state that I say, he has better qualities, he has better conditions and that's why he's more successful. It doesn't always work on that part of desire that I want, like him, to be more successful. How can we develop this to really work, this direction?
M. Laitman: It's all in your hands. The more we try to determine this or that, to make these rules, those rules, it won't work.
Student: When we say demands, let's demand or determine, it won't cause more envy.
M. Laitman: No.
Student: So, where is this wisdom of activating the envy, activating that desire towards one another, that a person will really want like the others? It seems like that's the true wisdom, how to affect one another? To influence one another.
M. Laitman: Slacking is trouble, trouble; then, everyone will feel that there's no alternative, there's no choice, in order to prevent those troubles from happening, we need to connect. We need to do this or that.
Student: That's another question that I feel that, let's say I'm in a state, I feel that there's a lot of things happening and it's like a pressure roller, like coming from every direction, it can take me this way or that way. Or really to see that it's all from the Creator, and He's really leading me and restricting me. To really only what's important in life, compared to all kinds of little things; that I have no forces, excuses. So how to truly take all the states in life, let's say trouble and interpret them in the right direction?
M. Laitman: Speak to yourself.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (44:51) Can I ask about those three friends that will be as the head of the Ten, what you suggested on how to do it, how you see it?
M. Laitman: I don't know, that's something you all need to decide upon and to establish.
Student: But is there a place to discuss that in the Ten and do it?
M. Laitman: Yes, the Ten can do anything, that's known.
Reader: Let's read Announcements. Good day, everybody!