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

Daily Morning Lesson: August 22, 2025 

Part 1: Recorded lesson – Nov 5, 2021. Baal HaSulam. Shamati 50. Two States.

Reader: For the first part of the lesson, we will watch a recorded lesson from the 5th of November 2021 about Shamati 50, Two States – Shamati 50, Two States. 

Reader: Hello, we are going to be reading from the Baal HaSulam articles of Shamati, Shamati Number 50, with the heading, Two States. You can find the study material on our site, on the Arvut system. Go up on top. You'll see the study materials button. You can send questions. Pertinent questions to the study material will be aired during the lesson.

M. Laitman: This is a very interesting article, it's relatively simple; it explains to us that all in all we have two states. For people who are on the path, it's either the Holy Shechina, which we discover or before that when we try to discover, and that is the state of suffering. From those two states, from those two steps, or with these two steps, we always reach the correction, the end of correction—Two States. Let's see, there isn't so much of an introduction that I can give here to this article, it explains everything on its own.

Reader: We will start. Two states, article Shamati Number 50. 

Reading: (01:26) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 50. Two States

I heard on Sivan 20

There are two states to the world: 1) In the first state the world is called “pain.” 2) In the second state, it is called “Shechina [Divinity].” It is so because before one is endowed with correcting his deeds to be in order to bestow, he feels the world only in the form of pains and torments.

However, afterward, he is rewarded with seeing that the Shechina is clothed in the whole world, and then the Creator is considered to be filling the world. Then the world is called “Shechina,” who receives from the Creator. This is called “the unification of the Creator and His Shechina,” for as the Creator gives, so the world is now occupied solely in bestowal.

It is like a sad tune. Some players know how to perform the suffering about which the tune was composed, because all melodies are like a spoken language where the tune interprets the words that the person wants to say out loud. If the tune evokes crying in the listeners to the extent that each and every one cries because of the suffering that the melody expresses, then it is called “a tune,” and everyone loves to listen to it.

However, how can people enjoy suffering? Since the tune does not point to present suffering, but to the past, meaning torments that have already passed, were sweetened, and received their fill, for this reason, people like to listen to them, for it indicates the sweetening of the judgments, that the sufferings one had were sweetened. This is why these sufferings are sweet to hear, and then the world is called “Shechina.”

The important thing that one should know and feel is that there is a leader to the capital, as our sages said, “Abraham the Patriarch said, ‘There is no capital without a leader.’” One must not think that everything that happens in the world is incidental and that the Sitra Achra [other side] causes one to sin and say that everything is incidental.

This is the meaning of Hammat [vessel of] Keri [semen]. There is a Hammat filled with Keri. The Keri brings one to think that everything is Bemikreh [incidental]. (Even when the Sitra Achra brings one such thoughts—to say that everything is incidental, without guidance, this is also not incidental, but the Creator wanted it this way.)

However, one must believe in reward and punishment, and that there is a judgment and there is a judge, and everything is conducted by guidance of reward and punishment. This is because sometimes when some desire and awakening for the work of the Creator comes to a person, and he thinks that it comes to him by chance, he should know that here, too, he made an effort that preceded the hearing. He prayed to be helped from above to be able to perform an act with intent, and this is called raising MAN.

Yet, he has already forgotten about it and did not regard it as doing, since he did not receive an immediate answer to the prayer, so as to say, “You hear the prayer of every mouth.” Still, one should believe that the order from above is that the response for the prayer may come several days and months after he prayed.

One should not think that it is by chance that he received this awakening now. Sometimes a person says, “Now that I feel that I do not need anything and I have no concerns, my mind is clear and sound, for this reason, now I can focus my mind and desire on the work of the Creator.”

It follows that he can say that all his engagement in the work of the Creator is “My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.” Thus, when he can engage and attain spiritual needs, he should believe that this is the answer to the prayer. What he prayed for before, that prayer has now been answered.

Also, sometimes when reading some book, and the Creator opens his eyes and he feels some awakening, then, too, his regular conduct is to attribute it to chance. However, it is all guided.

Although one knows that the whole Torah is the names of the Creator, how can he say that through the book he is reading came some sublime sensation? One must know that he often reads the book and knows that the whole Torah is the names of the Creator, yet receives no illumination or sensation. Instead, everything is dry and the knowledge that he knows does not help him at all.

Hence, when one studies in a certain book and hangs his hope on Him, one’s study should be on the basis of faith, that he believes in Providence, that the Creator will open his eyes. At that time, he becomes needy of the Creator and thus has contact with the Creator. By this he can be rewarded with Dvekut [adhesion] with Him.

There are two forces that contradict one another, an upper force and a lower force. The upper force is, as it is written, “Every one who is called by My Name, I have created him for My glory.” This means that the whole world was created only for the glory of the Creator. The lower force is the will to receive, which claims that everything was created for it—both corporeal things and spiritual things—all is for self-love.

The will to receive claims that it deserves this world and the next world. Of course, the Creator is the winner, but this is called “the path of suffering,” and it is called “a long way.” But there is a short way called “the path of Torah,” and this should be everyone’s intention—to shorten time.

This is called “I will hasten it.” Otherwise, it will be “in its time,” as our sages said, “rewarded—I will hasten it; not rewarded—in its time,” “when I place upon them a king such as Haman, and he will force you to reform.”

The Torah begins from Beresheet [in the beginning], etc. “And the earth was unformed and void, and darkness,” etc., and ends, “before the eyes of all of Israel.”

In the beginning, we see that the land is “unformed and void, and darkness,” but then, when they correct themselves to bestow, they are rewarded with “and God said, let there be light,” until the light appears “before the eyes of all of Israel.”

M. Laitman: All of those who are yearning to discover the Creator which are called, Yashar El.

Question (USA SF): (11:44) What can help a person to be able to say that this awakening that one received came from the Creator; and, to not fall into false beliefs that it came from one's own strength? 

M. Laitman: After he wants to awaken many times, he wants to do something and he discovers that he's powerless – the heart doesn't allow it, the hands—he cannot lift them, he cannot move himself. Then, he realizes that he exists in a state where only the inner force which is in the hands of the upper force, the Creator, it actually manages him, controls him. That state where he cannot lift himself by himself and that is a fact, indeed, this is how it is. However, here, he can start to distinguish in which forces he is –  good forces, bad forces – and how they are coming closer to him and how they control him. All in all, there is only one force: There Is None Else Besides Him. It works on us through either the path of suffering. If we're not able to move on our own then it starts to work on us in such a way. Or that we try to annul our ego and, to that extent, we connect to the good force until we reach a feeling that it truly controls the world, both in the bad things and also in the good things; all in all, it was all the upper force.

Question (Kyiv 1): (14:17) In the beginning, he describes how there are two states – sufferings, and then he puts the Divinity, the Shechina, as those people who are playing a sad melody. Why is there such a comparison between these two? 

M. Laitman: We cannot reach any good state unless, beforehand, we go through it as a bad state. Because we need to feel who we are, what is our nature, and the extent to which we are not capable of anything. We cannot elevate ourselves as much as we want to, seemingly; still, we cannot elevate ourselves by ourselves. Our whole effort is in order to show us our weakness. And therefore, those states are considered the path of suffering. When we put enough exertion into it to advance into actions of in order to bestow. Then, when we put in sufficient effort in quantity and quality which is called the quota of exertion—a special measure. Then, we are rewarded with the Creator beginning to be revealed to us and to show Himself to us, to teach us how to do everything. Then, we are in a state of the revelation of the Holy Shechina, meaning the presence of the Creator in the whole of reality. In the whole of reality means in our mind and in our heart and this is how we advance. 

We always have a certain path of suffering and then the path of light, the path of the Torah, the path of the Holy Shechina, always. It cannot be that there will be a revelation of good without the preceding revelation of bad. It cannot be that we discover states of bestowal before they feel themselves as being in order to receive and that we get to hate that state; we have to prepare everything by ourselves. From those bad things, from those bad states, we actually build the vessels for the revelation of the good states. It all comes from the darkness to the light – and it was evening and it was morning, one day. 

Question (Brasil 2): (17:32) Why does it come in an abstract form for us to ask? Even though we want so bad in the right state, why does it come in an abstract state? 

M. Laitman: The state comes to us as to all the people in the world and it's not different in any way. It all depends on how we accept it, if we accept it as all people do, then we don't even belong to the degree of Adam that wants to resemble the Creator. But rather, we belong to the degree of the beast; about that, it says, they all seemed as beasts, this is where we start from. And if, in our world, there is a difference between the still, vegetative, and animate—the difference between the animate and the speaking—well, there is no difference externally—hands, legs, the body, the head—there is no difference. The entire difference is in the fulfillment, in the filling of that animal that becomes Adam, human, as we learn from The Study of the Ten Sefirot, the third part, that the monkey is the intermediate between the animate and the human, Adam. This is already biologically speaking whereas spiritually speaking we have to go through this entire process of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking in our development. We have reached in our development, a state of the speaking where we have a desire, a yearning, a passion to be those who speak. Those who speak, meaning not to remain on the degree of the beast but to reach the degree of Adam. Here, we need to understand what does it mean, the degree of man, Adam? The degree of Adam is that he yearns to resemble the Creator, that he learns how to change each time, not in his body or in his external behavior in this world. Here, he needs to do everything that there is in this world: to eat, to drink, to sleep, to build a home, a family, children—like everyone, like all people that they all seemed as beasts. That degree which they keep is their kind of beastliness. There is nothing special to it. 

Also, among animals there are many species, many kinds where each one follows its nature and this is how they build their lives. The entire difference, however, between the animate degree and the speaking degree is that the speaking degree yearns for its root. There is an upper force that is managing me and I want to discover it, that's it. This is the difference between the degree of Adam and the animate degree; the animate doesn't yearn for that. To that degree, it starts with the person wanting, egoistically, to get to know the upper force, to discover it. But, bit by bit, through the engagement in that, if one truly wants it, then he is brought, as Baal HaSulam writes in the Arvut – especially in the Arvut, he says that a person is brought to the good place and he is told, take that. Meaning, that now you are with people who are like you. And if you connect with them correctly, then you begin to build, between you, a spiritual structure. That is, you don't need to build something out of matter, matter is done, finished – there is no matter. Rather, what you build is the relations between you and those relations, they will give you a feeling of reality which is already in the spiritual world, in the spiritual structure, in the spiritual air. This is what you need to build and this is how we advance.

Question (Bishkek): (23:17) In the article, it's talking about believing in reward and punishment—that the Creator governs us. And if I prayed in the past, then the Creator answers now, thanks to my prayers in the past. Why do we need this gap in time? After all, we want to hasten times. What does He want to teach us here, the Creator, that there is such a gap between the prayer and its answer? 

M. Laitman: It is all in order to build in us the correct deficiencies for spirituality. There is nothing here, not a place or time or any reason for any other purpose. But only in order to teach us. Just like you play with a child and you let it do something and then you—let's say—give it building blocks and you wait and wait until it will do this and that and this and that. Later on, you begin to help it in a way that he doesn't know that you're helping him. But rather, you move something like this—some building block or something. This is how he sees it on his own and, sometimes, he has to turn to you already and ask. And sometimes you just tell him that, in a way that you reveal yourself and you say, this is how it needs to be done. There are a few kinds of relations between the great one and the small one in order to accompany the small one, the infant, in order to help the little one advance. This is the matter of building the mind, the understanding; it's similar to how we build a spiritual mind, it's not built just like that. We cannot discover it, that it already exists inside of us. We truly need to make it grow within us and to connect all the different states, questions, and answers, and discernments. So that these connections will be built between all the parts of the brain, the parts of the emotion. We need to put an effort into it so that it will be ours, meaning that, each time when we build something it turns out that we build something which is external. But eventually, we discover something that is more internal. This is why it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time but this is work that the Creator cannot give up on; because by that, we become similar to Him.

Student: If I understand correctly, if I don't receive an answer to the prayer, that's the call for the Creator for me to search for something else until I find the right answer for the prayer?

M. Laitman: That's true, that is true but don't you think that you are not getting an answer for your prayer! You always get an answer, however, it's either that you don't understand it or that you don't feel that you received it because you are still not awakening yourself sufficiently so as to receive an answer from the Creator. So search and you will see that you always get an answer. 

Question (Tel Aviv 4): (27:13) How do I know if the state I'm going through is the revelation of the Creator or my ego, if I came to the same doing? 

M. Laitman: Just to continue, just continue. Here we have no—how shall I put it—we have no possibility to know it because you want to receive an answer in your corporeal mind, on the corporeal level, as usual in our life. Here specifically, the answer has to be on a slightly higher level, slightly higher level, slightly higher level, each and every time. Therefore, we need to exert a little bit more.

Question (Tel Aviv 1): (28:20) I really feel here, from all this description of yours and of the excerpt, how it really is a thin line. How do we polish our vessel to truly be in the right frequency all the time? 

M. Laitman: Well, we will read the article a few more times and it will become more clear to you. It is truly about relating more and more to what he writes, everything is in the article. 

Reader: Many friends are saying that they are so rich with discernments that they are yearning for you to open each excerpt here, each paragraph.

M. Laitman (Source Text/Commentary): (28:59) Okay, so I am ready. Shamati 50, Two States, Two States. 

There are two states to the world. One, in the first state, the world is called suffering. In the second state, it is called the Holy Shechina 

Meaning, we have—and he is intending for a person who is walking the path towards identifying with the Creator. Then, he needs to connect with others so that eventually he will reach the vessel of Adam HaRishon. This is where he has full adhesion with the Creator, that is the goal. This world of that person—the state of that person – meaning his inner state, what he feels is divided into two states: suffering or the Shechina. 

It is so because before one is rewarded with correcting his deeds so as to be “in order to bestow,” he feels the world only in the form of suffering and pain. However, afterwards, he is rewarded with seeing that the Shechina is clothed in the whole world. Then, the Creator is considered to be filling the world. The world is then called the Shechina. Then, the Creator is considered to be filling the world and the world is called the Shechina who receives from the Creator. This is called the unification of the Creator and his Shechina. This is done by the person who has reached that state where he has connected the Shechina—the whole of reality—with the upper force, with the Creator or, as the Creator gives, so the world is now engaging solely in bestowal. 

This is what the person discovers, it is with respect to him, it's not the general end of correction but, rather, this is how he feels. This is considered that he has completed a degree in the same vessel, in the same will to receive that has been opened up to him—for him. He has discovered that the upper force is bestowing to his whole vessel in which he now unites the whole of reality. This is what he feels, that it is all only the Holy Shechina. We feel that also in the beginning of the path when it seems to us that everything becomes filled with certain waves, with a certain rosy color or something, and everything is filled with a certain warm upper force. 

Then, it is considered the unification of the Creator and His Shechina or, as the Creator bestows, so the whole world is now engaging solely in bestowal. 

This is what the person feels, this is his vessel and in it, he feels. It's not that he says this about everyone; there is nothing to talk about with them. Each one feels according to his vessels. 

It is like a sad tune. When you have players who know how to perform the suffering about which the tune was composed because all the melodies, the tunes, are like a spoken language where the tune interprets the words that the person wants to say orally, out loud. If the tune evokes crying, the listeners, to the extent that each and everyone cries, because of the suffering that the melody expresses, then it is called a tune, a correct, true tune, and everyone loves to listen to it. 

We see even in our world, other than children, the grown-ups, if they are developed according to their mind and emotion, they prefer to hear serious melodies. Well, nowadays, it's not quite there because everyone is not grown-ups – to say the least.

Question (PT 24): (35:20) When a person corrects his correction, he comes to his personal correction. You said that it's not a general correction, it's a personal correction. The question is, he doesn’t see what the Creator sees, because everything is corrected, and everyone's corrected, actually? Why is it called an individual correction and not the general correction, what else remains for the general correction? 

M. Laitman: Well, first of all, we are talking about the two states that can exist. It's not about the end of the path, it's not at the end of the path. But rather there are two states. If a person, for the time being, he annuls himself so that instead of the vessels of reception, he enters the vessels of bestowal. They shine on him from above, or he himself attains it through an awakening from below. So, then it turns out that, that person exists in a state where they are revealing to him his state. And it's not the state of the end of correction, but rather, for the time being, that he is in whatever was revealed to him in his vessels, he is in such a particular illumination from above. This is called, the Holy Shechina.

Question (Focus Group): (36:44) How does it happen that a person who only works in a Ten succeeds in uniting the whole of reality, attributing it to the Creator?

M. Laitman: Altogether, it's in him, all in all, what is revealed is revealed relative to a person. It could be a small vessel or a greater one or even greater; it all depends on the extent of nullification that a person does towards reality. Towards the Ten, or to the Creator or to the wisdom of Kabbalah, to something. If we're talking about beginners, it doesn't have to yet be a true vessel, a true Kli. And if he nullifies in such a way, it grabs him. It's like with beginners who enter studies and then truly kind of gives himself. It's like every beginner that this wisdom kind of swallows him so he can feel that it fills all of reality. 

Student: Yes, this is clear when such an awakening comes from above. But when a person is already working in the Ten, he annuls before the Ten, he never leaves it, and he only works there. How does it happen that now he attributes the whole of reality to the Creator? He sees the Holy Shechina in the whole of reality. 

M. Laitman: Try to nullify in this way towards the Ten within which the Creator exists, and that's actually our entire reality. Try and you will see everything is inside the Ten – Ten and no more. And you will see that then you already begin to discover things that are more real, more tangible, that you start to work with.

Student: It's a little bit of a theoretical question, but it's such a state as he continues to work only through the Ten? He doesn't come out of the work in the Ten.

M. Laitman: No, even tighter to the Ten, even at that point – through the Ten towards humanity because by this he discovers the vessel, the kli and in this he reveals his vessel, it should be clear. We don't run off to some monastery and sit in some hole in the ground or in some forest somewhere, no. On the contrary, we sit, we dwell amongst our people.

M. Laitman (Source Text/Commentary): (39:42) However, how can people enjoy suffering? Since the tune does not point to the present suffering, but to the past, meaning that the torments that have already passed were sweetened and received their filling, for this reason people like to hear them, because it indicates the sweetening of the judgments. The fact that he had the suffering, it was sweetened. This is why these suffering are sweet to hear. And then the world is called the Holy Shechina, 

Meaning the Holy Shechina is our desires that we suffered in, that we couldn't sort. That they were truly – I don't know – stabbing us, bothering us greatly, we couldn't get along with them. Those things, if we arrange them correctly now, we go over them, then what we've passed, what we've arranged, become from suffering, they become the vessels of the Holy Shechina, it's in them that the Creator is revealed. That's why it's written, there is no righteous in the land that has done good but hasn't sinned prior to that. Because specifically only in the sins and the disturbances and the descents, the falls, in all kinds of problems. Specifically then when we go over those, we acquire the correct attitude towards them; and thus we start to discover in them the revelation of the Creator –n place of concealment, we feel revelation.

And the main thing a person should know and feel is that there is a leader to the capital. As our sages said, that Abraham, the patriarch said, there is no capital without a leader. And one must not think that everything that happens in the world is incidental. Because when there's a leader, how could there be an incident? And the Sitra Achra causes one to sin and says that everything is incidental. This is the meaning of Chamat keri, the vessel of semen, where there is a vessel filled with semen, a Chamat filled with keri, and the keri comes from the word Be'mikre, incidental. When a person is brought thoughts to say that everything is incidental. And even this, when the Sitra Achra brings him such thoughts, to say that the world is operating incidentally without Providence, that's too not incidental, but rather the Creator wants it this way, 

Meaning that in that which we are before the disturbances and can overcome them and can't. And somehow these disturbances confuse us, this all comes from the Creator, from the upper force. There is no incident here, it's all planned, arranged, and we only need to know how methodically, together, we work on all these things. Because if it's not together, we're not relating correctly whatsoever to that which is happening to us. From the Creator, a certain attitude comes towards the whole Ten with the purpose for us to connect between us and to Him. And if we don't do it in such a way, then altogether we are not in the same invitation of his to come to Him, to connect to Him.