Reader: We are reading select excerpts from the sources on the topic of “Obtaining Contact with the Creator”. We are continuing with Excerpt Number Four. Rabash writes:
4. RABASH, Article No. 40 (1990), ‘What Is, ‘For You Are the Least of All the Peoples,’ in the Work?”
Reading: (00:12) A person sees that there is no way that he will be able to work with the desire to bestow and not for his own sake. Such a thing can happen only through a miracle from above. And indeed, this is called “the exodus from Egypt,” meaning to emerge from the mind he has by nature, where it is possible to move unless he enjoys it. Conversely, here he is asking the Creator to give him the strength to work where he has no feeling or flavor, but to believe that the Creator enjoys this work, since it is all in order to bestow.
For this reason, this prayer is an honest prayer, since a person sees that he cannot hope to ever be able to do anything in order to bestow. It follows that a person feels that he is lost. At that time, he has close contact with the Creator, and this is something that a person should appreciate—that he is asking the Creator to help him and there is no one in the world who can save him.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:01) If the Creator fills a person with all the good there is, there could be a state where he gets blocked from that, there is nothing to do with that, even some despair. And if he is in a very tight connection with the Creator, it is not clear what the purpose is, what the goal is. What is the best point in my relation towards the Creator? Where do I need to place myself towards Him, what to expect?
M. Laitman: That's a question?
Student: Yes, that is the question.
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (03:44) As much as he advances towards this direction, the excerpt says, that he feels that he is lost, he can't do it with his own forces. On the other hand, what we learned in the previous part that is bestowed to the Creator is the independent action. How could there be an independent action if a person is incapable on his own? And he has to have the Creator to do it, meaning, it's not exactly independence.
M. Laitman: Okay, that's what you think.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (04:21) He writes: “In a place where there is no flavor or filling, but believe the Creator enjoys this work since it is all in order to bestow”.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: What gives a person that he doesn't feel that his work makes a change or gives him flavor, taste, or satisfaction? What does it give to a person to continue working, on one hand, and not knowing whether his work is considered? Meaning, why waste time, seemingly, that question? I'm sorry, the question is not why not to waste time. I want to work and for this work to have benefit to the Creator or to the friends, it would be preferred for both. But if he works and doesn't feel any response in return, where will he get the forces to continue working and be impressed?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:46) Maybe to expand on the last question: He needs to feel that the Creator is enjoying it; the Creator is bestowal, He's in an absolute rest. How can you believe that someone, the Giver, has some kind of deficiency for pleasure?
M. Laitman: That's what's written, that is what's written.
Student: But it's also written that the Creator has no deficiency. You can receive pleasure upon a deficiency. Without a deficiency, you can't receive pleasure. It's always one after the other, no?
M. Laitman: So, the Creator has a deficiency to give pleasure to the created beings.
Student: So, He has a deficiency?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: It still sounds like a clash but I'm trying to work with this clash.
M. Laitman: Try, think.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:50) We perform many actions, we do actions in the lessons, in the work, in the Tens, Zooms, dissemination, duties, Maaser. Every friend does many, many – a lot. It's not easy to hold on to this, whoever does this, is really investing a whole lot. With that, what is the action we need to do? How do we do this action in order to create the connection?
M. Laitman: To create the connection, okay.
Student: That's the question, really, there's very strong work in this society to cause the foundation to be strong.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: This is creating a foundation where each of us will be able to develop. What is the action that every friend, or what, how do we rise a degree here?
M. Laitman: Well, you have to say that, ask your friends.
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (08:30) We constantly receive from the Creator. What we're missing is our recognition that we're receiving from Him.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: So, the question is what will help us feel that we're receiving from Him?
M. Laitman: Well, how?
Student: What's holding us back? There's something that's always holding us back?
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: It's like, but you have to constantly receive, it’s like a dream. He's giving and giving and giving, and we don't feel.
M. Laitman: Right? So, what are you lacking?
Student: For you to tell me what's missing.
M. Laitman: Me?
Student: Something's detaining us all the time. There's something that's bothering; I feel that something's bothering me.
M. Laitman: And you can't point to it?
Student: That's the problem, I need some kind of awakening here. Because it's here, but we're simply sleeping. He's constantly giving but there's no consciousness that He's giving.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: We need to find something here. I don't know.
M. Laitman: You don't know? Well?
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (09:56) Equivalence of form.
M. Laitman: Actually, that's true; that's right.
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (10:15) It seems that there is a desire to bestow. We also see on the screens all the friends from the world preparing for the convention, they bought tickets, you can see the face of everyone burning in questions, really wanting to bestow. But the force to bestow, maybe that's what we need: The ability to bestow to the Creator in return all the desires of the friends that truly push upwards, and for Him to answer them. Something like that.
M. Laitman: Okay.
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (10:54) It seems like what detains us the most is the pride that doesn't enable us to see anything beyond this obstacle the Creator put upon His way.
M. Laitman: Well, you have another friend, there.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (11:23) When a person feels that he can't exit his pleasure and the prayer doesn't come out, what's that intermediate state? How do you work with that?
M. Laitman: Some intermediate state?
Student: And what should a person do?
M. Laitman: I don't know.
Student: So that the prayer will emerge, eventually?
M. Laitman: So, you think that when we start working to develop that form of bestowal, we reach a state that we become blocked, supposedly, right?
Student: The mind understands that you're in the pleasure and you can't exit this. There is such an understanding, already.
M. Laitman: And we already reach the pleasure and onward, we can advance.
Student: It's like you're stuck and there's no prayer. You don't come to the place of asking from the Creator.
M. Laitman: So, what can help us?
Student: He writes, that there are miracles that take place but what is that actually?
M. Laitman: We cannot ask for a miracle.
Student: So, what should a person do in this state?
M. Laitman: Anybody have an answer?
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (12:58) I also had a question, but I think it's somehow connected: We need the necessity for the help of the Creator. The necessity for the help of the Creator. Because all that we attain it's one thing and it's opposite – this against that. We've come to a state that, here I wrote, it's like an opposite form should be revealed so that we will truly turn to the Creator. But each feels the oppositeness in a personal, individual way and they all turn to Him. Because if it's not connected, we will all die. There has to be a true necessity for the help of the Creator. Like a complete deficiency, a complete prayer, not individuals.
M. Laitman: Okay.
Student: Not just that, also the force of separation. Even the fact that we're managing to do something in forms of bestowal, seemingly. But that also comes in the personal vessels. You measure success, you measure that, and it still separates us. But how to do it so that, really, that force, that oppositeness of form will be revealed in general so that we will truly appeal to Him.
M. Laitman: Okay.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:33) I want to ask: Only when a person is lost, does he come to contact with the Creator?
M. Laitman: That's a question, too. Yes, also, that's a question.
Student: Are there other ways to come into contact with the Creator that is not, where he doesn't feel lost, in other ways?
M. Laitman: No. He has to feel lost, if the Creator doesn't help him, he's lost.
Student: So, how is a person constantly be in such a state where he feels lost?
M. Laitman: But he doesn't feel that final loss.
Student: So, what contact does he have with the Creator?
M. Laitman: So, I guess his contact isn't complete, it's not whole.
Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (15:30) It seems like no matter the state; we always have to start with the relation in return with some kind of gratitude. Otherwise, a trouble, a problem, we cry, and it's already distancing.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: The question is how can you help a friend when you see that he seems or at least he seems to be lost. That he's in a problem that he can't come out of, and he can't hear what he's being told. And you simply see that he's sunk in this problem, and you want to help, but it's like in corporeality, there's nothing to do. And it seems like either he or we have to go through something to be rid of it, there has to be something that changes in our relation. How can you help in such a state?
M. Laitman: With the awakening from above.
Student: We need to ask for a solution to come from above?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Moscow 7): (16:47) Why can't we ask?
M. Laitman: To ask?
Student: Why can't we ask for a miracle?
M. Laitman: You can ask for a miracle; a miracle is above our degree.
Question (Latin 1): (17:11) A friend is asking, when a person has no forces to bestow with, can the friends give him that force? Or only the Creator can give him this strength, this force?
No answer. Left for Lesson Summary/Workshop