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

Daily Lesson (Morning), March 18, 2024.

Part 3: Mishnah, Chapters of the Fathers, Chapter 4, Item 15.

Reader: We are reading from the Mishnah, Chapters Of The Fathers, Chapter 4, Item 15.

Reading Article: (00:17)

Rabbi Yannai said: it is not in our hands [to explain the reason] either of the security of the wicked, or even of the afflictions of the righteous. Rabbi Mathia ben Harash said: Upon meeting people, be the first to extend greetings; And be a tail unto lions, and not a head unto foxes.

M. Laitman: Well, these are known excerpts but no questions.

Reader: (00:59) What's tail to the lions and not head for the foxes?

M. Laitman: There are several explanations to it. And, well, a tail to the lions, that's clear, It's the later part of the lions; and the head to the foxes is also It's the first part. And then the main part of the foxes. So, both are less respectable.

Reader: What, who are the lions? What are the lions, what are the foxes?

M. Laitman: Lions are those strong ones who overcome. And the foxes are those who want to gain by disappearing. Go on.

Reader: (02:38) 16

Rabbi Jacob said: this world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banqueting-hall.

M. Laitman: (03:00) Yes, what does he mean? We don't know because we don't know what, exactly, is the corridor or the vestibule. And how we see, instead of the world, we see it as a corridor that depends on us, how it relates to what is before us.

Reader: What is this world?

M. Laitman: This world, where a person is. Well?

Reader: And that's like, that's the corridor towards the next world? How can a person see that?

M. Laitman: It depends how he relates to this world; that's how he relates to it and sees it. Okay?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:57) How should one organize himself in the vestibule, so he can enter the banquet hall?

M. Laitman: The vestibule is in order to enter the hall. A person has to prepare himself in this vestibule in order to enter the hall.

Student: How to prepare himself in the vestibule to promise the entrance to the banqueting hall?

M. Laitman: According to the conditions he is given, in the vestibule; like this, like that, and he adjusts himself to them, changes. As much as he has before him questions and problems, and conditions, he tries to adapt himself to them. And in this way gains equivalence of form with the hall.

Student: What is that vestibule?

M. Laitman: You don't know what a corridor is?

Student: I understand, it's like a hallway.

M. Laitman: Yes, it's the same, so you can say that about the next world, the spiritual world, about anything. We need to see our life is nothing but a corridor.

Student: And how do I enter there, I'm not in a vestibule. So how do I enter?

M. Laitman: When you accept the laws of creation on yourself, you assume them on yourself, as much as you can. And in this way, you adapt yourself to them more and more, gradually, until you are suitable for entering the main room. I see many who want to come in, to enter!

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:03) How is it possible that a person can see every moment in his life as an opportunity to correct his relation towards the Creator?

M. Laitman: He should try, try every moment he is alive to adjust himself, adapt himself to the Creator.

Student: And that's possible to do in every moment?

M. Laitman: Yes, through examples, external pressure. Through all kinds of things, all kinds of means.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:52) A person lives for a limited time, let's say 70 years.

M. Laitman: It's not enough for you?

Student: Well, it's not felt that way. Why, at least I don't feel that I'm going to die one day. I'm not under pressure about that.

M. Laitman: So?

Student: Why? It means a person doesn't contemplate his death day? If we would, so we would be under pressure.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: So, why is it concealed of us?

M. Laitman: I don't think it's concealed so much. They don't want to confuse a person by constantly thinking about the day of death.

Student: I don't have a feeling that life is limited, that it will ever end. Or. I don't know how others, I don't have that.

M. Laitman: It’s a problem, it's written, think about the day of your death.

Student: How to be under that pressure? That there's something that I have to be, to finish and I have a limited time?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: How do you reach that?

M. Laitman: I don't know but engage in it, deal with it, it's written.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (08:24) The Kabbalist writes that the whole world is a narrow bridge.

M. Laitman: Yes?

Student: Could we say that the vestibule is like a narrow bridge?

M. Laitman: Possibly, yes.

Student: So, why is the main thing not to be afraid?

M. Laitman: I don't know, there are many interpretations to it: Not be afraid of where you're going; not to be afraid of the sentence you're going to be facing.

Student: To go through the vestibule, I have to go through a sentence?

M. Laitman: Yes, perhaps.

Student: And we go through it as a Ten?

M. Laitman: No, each one on his own.

Student: So, where is the Ten here, it’s my efforts that I try to go through alone?

M. Laitman: The efforts, beforehand, and the sentences in the vestibule, which is each one toward the Ten, and that's it.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:01)What's the best way to prepare yourself in the vestibule that is narrow and long in a person? What's the best way to prepare oneself, what does it mean?

M. Laitman: To learn the laws of nature that he has to go through, both in the vestibule and afterwards in the main room, in all these things.

Student: Let's say in the main hall we don't know, we haven't entered yet. That we are in the corridor and whoever is there, feels that sorrow, the life of this world. How should we prepare ourselves in the best way?

M. Laitman: What we learn, to adapt ourselves to the laws of nature.

Student: What is that?

M. Laitman: It's love your friend as yourself, love the Lord your God, etc., others like it. Love of friends, connection.

Student: And that is what we read about, the fear of heavens?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: That's what we're arranging ourselves to have it in us. So, that's preparation to work above reason, so we can do it in the Ten?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: That's towards the Creator, already?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Can you add something about it, how to come closer to it?

M. Laitman: No.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (11:39) It's written, fix yourself in the corridor to enter the main room. What is special about this world that, precisely here, it is possible to make this correction of equivalence of form, in order to enter the main room? Why specifically?

M. Laitman: I don't understand, this world is opposite. In this world you need to adapt yourself to the banqueting hall.

Student: But, why are we specifically in this form?

M. Laitman: I guess it's in order to have possibilities to adapt ourselves.

Student: We learn that all our efforts should be toward connection.

M. Laitman: Right.

Student: To love your friend as yourself, this is the direction to reach the end of the hallway.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: So, when I try to work in connection toward the Ten, so am I moving forward in this corridor?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: So, every state in life is to move forward, toward connection with Ten. That's basically?

M. Laitman: Yes. But you measure your advancement in the connection, in the connection between us.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (13:18) What is in the main room that doesn't exist in the corridor?

M. Laitman: In the banqueting hall, that's where you, that's where a person is judged. The way he goes through?

Student: The image of a corridor, I think that's pretty clear, we go through state after state after state, it's like a long corridor. The banqueting hall sounds like something big and expansive, there's something more inclusive about it. Like a main room, living room, a big room, a hall room, if we follow this image. How is it that when we go through state after state, it prepares us to enter a banqueting hall? It sounds like something different.

M. Laitman: The banqueting hall is something general, the corridor is you going step after step. And the banqueting hall is like a place where you already have a result of what you went through. But the result is something different, it's not like all the components that bring you to it. And that's how you go through it.

Student: So, how does one prepare for the other? How does that, because in the corridor there seems to be less choices, you have to go through the states.

M. Laitman: The corridor is steps ahead that you have to go through. The banqueting hall is that they come to you all together, as a sum.

Student: So, how does one prepare for the other? They look like completely opposite states.

M. Laitman: We'll get there, and we'll see.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:38) The two states, the vestibule and when you get to the banqueting hall, in both of them it speaks about faith. Faith in the banqueting hall is permanent, as he says here. And here, the faith I don't know exactly what it is, in the vestibule. In both we need faith, what's the difference between the two faiths in their essence?

M. Laitman: We all feel it.

Student: It's a matter of feeling.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:18) Originally, the banqueting hall is where the men had meals. So, maybe, the banqueting hall is the place of the end of Correction, when the Creator prepares a meal for us?

M. Laitman: I don't know if it's the end of correction. But it's a place of gathering. But the corridors you go through one by one.

Reader: Item 17. (17:01)

He used to say: more precious is one hour in repentance and good deeds in this world, than all the life of the world to come; And more precious is one hour of the tranquility of the world to come, than all the life of this world.

M. Laitman: (17:26) It's supposedly a contradiction, but it's written together. Yes, next.

Reader: (17:40) 18.

Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said: Do not try to appease your friend during his hour of anger; Nor comfort him at the hour while his dead still lies before him; Nor question him at the hour of his vow; Nor strive to see him in the hour of his disgrace.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:20) Why does he recommend to do this, to go through these discernments?

M. Laitman: Who?

Student: The one he writes about, his friend.

M. Laitman: Well?

Student: Can you read it again?

M. Laitman: Well, read it.

Reader: (18:51) 18.

Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said: Do not try to appease your friend during his hour of anger; Nor comfort him at the hour while his dead still lies before him; Nor question him at the hour of his vow; Nor strive to see him in the hour of his disgrace.

M. Laitman: So.

Student: So, when a person is in that state you want to help him. He says don't touch him when he's in anger, when he's in like this, like that. So, why did they write this to us? What are they trying to teach us by that?

M. Laitman: Not to do it.

Student: Why?

M. Laitman: I'm just accepting this as the words of the sages. That they tell me that it's not suggested to do things like this.

Student: Because we say that you need to help a friend, if he's in this or that mood, you need to pull him out of it. And here it says, no, let him stay there and remain in that state.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (20:43) To continue the friend, I understand that when a friend is angry, I don't need to come to appease him. When someone is dead, I shouldn't come and comfort him. At that moment, I should act, I should leave him alone until the situation passes. But still, I'm shown a situation, where a person is, a friend is angry or in some state. So, I shouldn't approach him but what should I do?

M. Laitman: Whatever you can do to help him see the state and how to advance to the corrected state.

Student: How, without approaching a friend, can I influence him?

M. Laitman: That's a question, that's a question. That is a question.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (21:44) It doesn't say, don't approach; it says, don't appease. In other words, there are things that, at a certain time, we should probably feel the friend and think twice.

M. Laitman: Okay.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:06) Maybe, we can understand it as not trying to deal with a problem but to work on the connection. And all those things will work out through the connection.

M. Laitman: Yes, that's always, you're right.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:26) Maybe it's like, love your friend as yourself on one leg, that what you do, what you hate, don't do to your friend. If I operate and say that he hates, it increases the hatred.

M. Laitman: That's also right.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:44) I once heard that comforting a friend during a time of mourning is important, is a commandment. And here it says, don't do it.

M. Laitman: That's what he writes.

Student: So, we shouldn't focus on comforting, but on trying to lift into a corrected state? Is that it?

M. Laitman: Maybe.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:09) I understand it as a person always having to know the will to receive and hate it. And that's why if you see a friend when he's angry, when his will to receive irrupts, perhaps, don't calm him. Because he needs to know it, so we should leave him, and likewise with all four things, basically.

M. Laitman: Okay.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:42) It seems to me like the intention here is to come to a state where you can feel the friend in your heart and be with him without words. Because, but to be in the feeling a friend can feel him and that may be what will calm him down. It's not a simple craft to be with a person during his grief. How do we come to such a degree when we can be with a person in every state?

M. Laitman: Maybe we'll hear it soon.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (24:36) Similar to what the friend said, not to see him in his disgrace that causes everything. So, even if we see these things we complete within us, that it's a complete state.

Question (Novosibirsk) (25:08) It sounds like you shouldn't try to pull a friend out for yourself.

M. Laitman: You can say that.

Question (Beer Sheva) (25:22) The answers of the friends are very interesting. I would think about something a little different: I cannot help a friend, but I can ask the Creator to comfort him. I can share my sympathy with him but the help can come only from the Creator, from the degree above us, which connects us, no?

M. Laitman: You're right, you're right.

Question (USA Northeast) (26:00) To continue the friend: A friend has sorrow, and he needs to be helped, there's no desire to comfort him but to raise him to the Creator. How do we do this?

M. Laitman: How to do it? Well, how?

Student answering (Petah Tikva Center): (26:50) Maybe to add to it, perhaps, this way. A friend is now in a new state, he has been revealed in a new state. Anger, his death is before him, his will to receive died. So, if you comfort him now, you'll spoil it for him, and you'll also spoil it for yourself. So, don't have mercy on him, there's inner work that each one needs to do, he needs to go through it. Don't be indifferent to the friend, that's not the point, but out of love for the friend. And out of seeing his greatness, now, he's great because he's going through a new state. He's entering a state he wasn't in before, maybe you don't even know where he's going? So, you look at him as great because everything comes from the same source.

M. Laitman: Yes, nice.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:50) I, actually, think that we shouldn't judge a friend in these states. If he's angry, in these states when you see him, don't judge him. Afterwards when things calm down, think, and you'll see what is really. And the desire here is not to comfort him or something, It's not to judge him.

M. Laitman: Okay.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:23) The Torah is a connection between the Creator and the created being. The Masach, the screen, is a connection between the light and the vessel. The question is what is the difference between these two states?

M. Laitman: It depends on what degree we're speaking.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:46) I would like to add that in Chapters Of The Fathers, they relate to the relation to the friends. And maybe they're saying, in general, that the relation to the friend should change internally and not look for some external change, not to criticize a friend if I see his disgrace, his corruption. So, we should always, a person should judge himself in his relation to the friend. And try to improve and come to some sort of completeness or completion.

M. Laitman: Yes, okay.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (29:31) When a person sees some corruption and deals with it, he only strengthens it. He fixes it by giving it so much importance; it's as if he gives it a feeling that this state cannot be corrected. And we need to come out of it and give a feeling that it's a temporary thing, it changes. So, when a friend is angry, for example, if you share his anger, he only tries to justify it. It'll only worsen the situation and expand it. So, we need to give it a perspective, to put it into perspective.

M. Laitman: Okay. Where were we?

Reader: (30:38): 19.

Shmuel Hakatan said: “If your enemy falls, do not exult; if he trips, let your heart not rejoice, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and avert his wrath from him” (Proverbs 24:17).

M. Laitman: Can you say it in an easier way? Reader: I can read it again.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Reader: (31:09) 19.

Shmuel Hakatan said: “If your enemy falls, do not exult; if he trips, let your heart not rejoice, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and avert his wrath from him” (Proverbs 24:17).

M. Laitman: Okay.

Reader: (31:48) Item 20.

Elisha ben Abuyah said: He who learns when a child, to what is he compared? To ink written upon a new writing sheet. And he who learns when an old man, to what is he compared? To ink written on a rubbed writing sheet. Rabbi Yose ben Judah a man of Kfar Ha-babli said: He who learns from the young, to what is he compared? To one who eats unripe grapes, and drinks wine from his vat; And he who learns from the old, to what is he compared? To one who eats ripe grapes, and drinks old wine. Rabbi said: don’t look at the container but at that which is in it: there is a new container full of old wine, and an old [container] in which there is not even new [wine].

M. Laitman: No questions about that, everybody understands that?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (33:13) Elisha Ben Avuyah was among the greatest sages of that time. Afterwards, he left the faith in the Torah. How can such a state happen?

M. Laitman: Here in the Mishnah, it's not written. I don't know.

Reader: (33:52) 21.

Rabbi Elazar Ha-kappar said: envy, lust and [the desire for] honor put a man out of the world.

M. Laitman: Yes. well?

Reader: (34:18) 22.

He used to say: the ones who were born are to die, and the ones who have died are to be brought to life, and the ones brought to life are to be judged; So that one may know, make known and have the knowledge that He is God, He is the designer, He is the creator, He is the discerner, He is the judge, He the witness, He the complainant, and that He will summon to judgment. Blessed be He, before Whom there is no iniquity, nor forgetting, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes, for all is His. And know that all is according to the reckoning. And let not your impulse assure thee that the grave is a place of refuge for you; for against your will were you formed, against your will were you born, against your will you live, against your will you will die, and against your will you will give an account and reckoning before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

M. Laitman: Clear, questions? None.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (36:03) In letter 19, it says, when your enemy falls, don't rejoice. Why should we not rejoice when the enemy falls?

M. Laitman: I don't know. So, we're in chapter 5, right? Okay. Let's stop here.

Reader: (36:32) Announcements. This concludes the lesson. Have a good day and great night.

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Reward and punishment

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