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

Daily Lesson (Morning), August 16, 2024. 

Part 2: Lesson on the topic of “Loyal to the Path: Following the Footsteps of Our Teachers.”

Reader: We are going to be studying from a document of select excerpts from the sources called Loyal to the Path, we're continuing: Following Our Teachers. We have reached excerpt number 14. You can find it in the Sviva Tova and the Arvut system, and send live questions from there. So again, we're in “Loyal to the Path: Following in the Footsteps of Our Teachers,” in excerpt number 14 from a deed to unite written by friends from Thessaloniki in 1608.

Reading Excerpt 14: (00:40) From a deed “To Unite,” written by friends from Thessaloniki, 1608.‎

Seeing that it is not good for the man to be alone, and that unity is a testimony to Israel … ‎we have taken upon ourselves an oath that we will all be as one, etc., and to help, etc., … ‎Today we have renewed the unity between us … destined to help one another on the ‎judgment and on the truth, both in matters of corrections of the public, general and personal, ‎as well as to a quarrel or strife that may fall between a person of our association and his ‎fellow person … and for each to care for the respect of his friend as for his own name, with ‎our bodies and with our wealth … We have taken upon ourselves to guard and to uphold ‎from this day and for five straight years … with a solemn oath.‎

M. Laitman: What can I do?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (02:04) We can read again, or next, next script.

M. Laitman: Continue.

Reading Excerpt 15: (02:26) A Bush Burns in Kotzk

We serve the Creator as contractors: We finish one job properly, and when we feel like starting a second job, we are happy again to do it. At Kotzk, there is no clock. Instead of a clock, there is a soul.

M. Laitman: Yes. What?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:00) What does that mean? That in place of a clock, there is a soul? What does it mean that instead of a clock, there is a soul?

M. Laitman: That you feel through the soul that you speak with the Creator. 

Student: Does it have anything to do with time, that there is no time in spirituality?

M. Laitman: No.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:38) In Excerpt 14, he talks about sustaining the honor of his friend, and I'm always impacted by my friend, who always says, in a certain situation, oh, here, someone's harming one's honor, so something will happen here. What is there in honor, in a person's honor, that it’s so critical, and that we have to work with this correctly? 

M. Laitman: It's really the whole of man, each and every person, as much as he considers himself. Maybe we don't see that in externality, but in internality, that's how he responds to getting hit in his pride.

Student: So if we, in the Ten in relations between us, keep the respect of our friends, what are we, respecting his essence?

M. Laitman: Yes. That he has what to live for, because if you erase his pride, his honor, then he doesn't feel that he exists. 

Student: And our goal, of course, is not to do this to one another. We won't God forbid harm each other with honor, but our goal is to cancel each, ourself. So on one hand, we're saying keep one's honor, on the other hand, how do we truly help each other in this? 

M. Laitman: Each and every one needs to work independently with the Creator.

Student: On canceling oneself?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: And between us really, really be cautious not to harm one's honor?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Now, how can you help a person advance, a friend advance without harming his honor? 

M. Laitman: Example. You give an example, and that way you don't harm him, and on the other hand, you give an example. And he who understands, meaning that he has reached a point where he understands, so he goes through that. 

Student: And what about when we accidentally, not intentionally, harm someone's respect, his honor?

M. Laitman: So we need to be friends. We need to understand that each one who does such a thing doesn't do that on purpose, like we might relate it to him.

Student: So that's just from experience. When it happens time after time, you can... 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Where does this all come from? From the glory of the Creator that we have to respect? Or where does it come from? 

M. Laitman: From the will to receive that feels itself as existing. And other than itself, it doesn't feel anything.

Student: So why does he need strengthening from the outside?

M. Laitman: Because then it can open itself more and more. 

Student: There's people that are kind of like, more kind of rough. You can't hurt them. It's like they seem tough on the outside, yes? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: And there's people that are very sensitive. It's like you did one little round, and you somehow did a wrong look or something like that, and he's already hurt. Why those differences? 

M. Laitman: That's character. Each one has their will to receive, as big as it is, and as much as there is a Klipa, a shell, that preserves the will to receive, so that it will not be impressed from one kind of a person, or maybe another kind of person they are impressed by, etc..

Student: It's a topic that is really, really... It's like there's something to do with it all lifelong. 

M. Laitman: Right. There's nothing else we can do about it here.

Student: What does a Kabbalist with attainment do with his honor? How does he use it?

M. Laitman: He tried to bring his honor to the general sentence.

Student: What does that say? 

M. Laitman: He wants to erase it, to make of it a certain action against the desire of honor, as much as he is capable.

Student: He truly initiates this, or does something with it?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: In order to replace it with the glory of the Creator, or something like that?

M. Laitman: Yes, soon we'll get more into that.

Reader: We did 15, what, 16? Well... 16, yes. I guess we read 15 already. From Zohar for all.

Reading Excerpt 16: (09:11) Zohar for All, Aharei Mot [After the Death], "Behold, How Good and How Pleasant", Items 65-66

And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part until the Creator rejoices with you and summons peace upon you. And by your merit there will be peace in the world, as it is written, “For the sake of my brothers and my friends let me say, ‘Let peace be in you.’”

Reading Excerpt 17: (10:00) GRA, Vilna Gaon, Aderet Eliyahu.

It is a grave warning not to learn the wisdom of Kabbalah by yourself from the books, for it is impossible to attain the depth of the intention of the Godly matters, which highly prevail over the human intellect, but rather through much sanctity and purity through a giver, an honest, faithful Kabbalist who had received from a renown Kabbalist.

Reading Excerpt 18: (10:40) Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Desler, A Letter from Eliyahu.

Rabbi Shlomo Elkabetz asked in the book Brit HaLevi why the disciples of Rabbi Akiva died specifically in the days of the [Omer] count. He explained that any rav who learns with the disciples gives them of his soul, meaning of his very spiritual essence. This is why disciples were called “sons.” If the disciples unite properly, his bestowal achieves its goal, since only when all come together does all his bestowal illuminate in all of them. It is known that each disciple takes only one spark of the giving of his rav, the spark that pertains to the essence of the soul of the disciple. Naturally, only when they are all included together is his giving complete.

However, if the disciples part from one another in their conduct, they lose the bestowal of their rav and there remains a lone giving without achieving its goal. This is a dangerous situation. The disciples of Rabbi Akiva, for all their greatness, did not treat each other with respect, and by that they parted from each other. Naturally, they did not let the bestowal of Rabbi Akiva, their teacher, achieve its goal. When the days of the count arrived, in which the lights of the preparation for the giving of the Torah sparkle, they were put at risk and died, for one who sees the light of Kedusha [holiness] sparkles and does not exert to be rewarded with it and ascend by it, but rejects it and remains in his Katnut [smallness/infancy], it is certainly a great complaint that puts one in harm’s way.

M. Laitman: What?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (13:19) If the students separate from each other in their behavior, they lose the bestowal of their teacher, and they remain in a dangerous situation. Why specifically the connection between the students, the condition by which they get a connection with the Rav? Why can't the person have a connection with the Rav? He says, I'm following the Rav, and… 

M. Laitman: No, it's not enough. It's not enough. Wait. Because there's preparation here on the side of the students, if they want to be suitable for receiving something from their Rav. So they need to behave in a certain way with each other.

Student: Yes, reality shows that it's like that. It happened to them. It's probably a certain set of laws here. But the intellect doesn't grasp it. A person could say, I have a Rav. I'm adhered to him. Okay, the students are sometimes like this, or sometimes like that. I'm doing my own towards the Rav.

M. Laitman: No, it's insufficient. In every place in the wisdom of Kabbalah, where we study, we see the example that is needed, that one has with the friends. And then everyone annuls toward the Creator to become a vessel. 

Student: It seems, according to this example, that he has to put the connection with the friends, with the students, even before the connection with the Rav, so you won't think that he has a connection with the Rav if he doesn't have a connection with the students. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: You once brought us the conversation of the Rav Yosef Dorri that he said that exactly, if you don't love the friends, you don't love the Rav.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So it's a very sharp matter. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:25) He writes that one that sees the light of Kedusha sparkling and does not make an effort to be rewarded with it and ascend by it. What is the light of Kedusha? 

M. Laitman: The upper light that influences a person according to times, according to moments, according to all kinds of conditions. And the person needs to be ready to know what to do with himself in order to bring the upper light closer to him, to print it into his vessels and through it to rise himself. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:27) The light is in absolute rest and all the changes are only in relation to the receivers. So there constantly needs to be the intensifying of the glory of the Bestower that's in absolute rest upon the honor that each thinks inside himself and we have to exert in that. And to understand that that's what connects us and that's what unites us. The light operates on us all and we need to all in the end be one Kli for Him.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (17:20) To continue, whoever doesn't love the Rav doesn't love the Creator. And I wanted to say that not only honor like the friend spoke of, we know and we learned that envy, lust and honor take a person out of the world. It can be a developmental vessel. It can also bury a person who wants to shut the people, the friends and only wants the quiet for him to be able to have in place of raising them and then he rises with them. Now, why am I saying that? The Creator arranged for me an easy life. I was small. I was in Yom Kippur. The group closed. I cried. I came to Haifa. friends. What? What an organization and management veterans. It was easy. I worked, yes, to nullify.

Now, the friends from Petah Tikva, oh boy. For me, it was the top of the top. I had what's true envy. And thanks to this friend that's next to me, I'm here. And he brings me and it's all gifts from the Creator. And already in the previous Convention, I talked about the topic that's called pride. For me, the Creator arranged a relatively easy life to subjugate myself.  Great friends from Petah Tikva, yes. Who will they subjugate themselves? I was scared about that. We talked about the pride and how I mentioned this matter that Rabash also said I'm also feeling like a rag being between heaven and earth. No one has any nepotism and we have to subjugate ourselves. And I'm concerned with the great friends in Petah Tikva that I have that are in before my great Ten to be the smallest like Rabash expects of us. L'Chaim.

M. Laitman: L'Chaim.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:24) I must mention that the excerpt we just read is really inspiring me. It really touched me. Even the part where the students of Rabbi Akiva fell in that. Now as part of the preparation for the convention, we're doing a process of ten stages to build ourselves as a society, as a correct society. What do you feel of us as a society that we should emphasize so that we don't fall like the students of Rabbi Akiva?

M. Laitman: Look, the person of a group is given such things to carry out that they are capable of holding up to, and not those things that they will certainly fail in, because there is a limit to each and every one. And that's what we need to not forget, that other than that, we see a certain barrier, a certain disturbance. We who want to go through it, then we will invest more into doing so, as much as it is possible to do. We'll try.

Student: How are those disturbances that we receive throughout our life, and we all receive in all kinds of various ways, how do we as a society give every friend that force, that strength, that ability to make that decision each time anew and renew himself in the work? Is that even possible?

M. Laitman: Together it is possible. Individually, each one will not be able to stand up to that.

Student: As part of this process of building our society, we're working on the principles, each time an additional principle that we're actually renewing in us. Nothing is new, we're always renewing. So specifically, those principles, I feel it in myself, that it really arranges my life and my correct attitude towards the study. What's the benefit in again saying the same things, and again flooding up the same matters each time?

M. Laitman: Each time you write it in a new place inside, in the heart, in the mind. 

Student: How do you open the ear each time anew? Let's say there's the next subject, let's say it'll be whatever, it's not even relevant what it is, but the subject that we're going to start on Sunday, how do I come to it with a new ear and really agree to receive that reformatting on myself even more to come with the right attitude towards the group? 

M. Laitman: You need to speak with yourself, and in that, there will be the preparation. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:10) I wanted to ask you, he writes here that the students of Rabbi Akiva didn't manage because they didn't give respect or honor to one another. Why specifically honor? Why respect? I'm not talking about hatred here, I'm not talking specifically about honor. What is it?

M. Laitman: They didn't respect each other. Each and everyone has their place, each and everyone has a certain attitude to him from above, there needs to be a special attitude to him from the society, and he needs to incorporate in them and feel himself as a part of everyone. Everyone needs to respect him, and to give him a place to exist among everyone, that they influence him and he influences everyone. That is all. 

Student: And when we advance, this attitude is, to a certain extent, it goes down. What to do in such a situation where, how to renew the attitude and the honor anew towards one another? 

M. Laitman: Only through thought, meaning to read more correct books. And according to that, the thought will become new. It will become renewed. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:15) How can you work in the Ten in order to give benefit to other Tens? 

M. Laitman: To try to be an example toward other Tens, and to ask the Creator to succeed? 

Student: Only through example and prayer that we in the Ten will succeed? Or is there another action that we can carry out towards this effort?

M. Laitman: We can give an example. Giving an example means that we will do whatever we can, whatever is demanded of us, in a way that everyone will see, that everyone will understand. Everyone will even be able to envy that. And then that will influence them, and they will also do that.

Student: If we aim the prayer, our common prayer in the Ten towards... If we choose some other Ten and aim the prayer in that direction, will that connect inside the Ten?

M. Laitman: It will connect in the Ten, and it will also connect between Tens. Between your Ten and their Ten. 

Student: Is it worthwhile to organize such a connection between Tens? Before, or…

M. Laitman: I don't think so. It both connects, and also it separates. Therefore, I'm careful with that. 

Student: To organize it inside the Ten, not in the whole society. Is that good? Until we aim precisely with our desire?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So together, we say in us, we are aiming in this direction, in this Ten. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:21) May the Creator help me ask correctly. The flaws that are revealed in a person, between a person and his friend, in our daily work in the Ten, it's an asset, right? It's a gift? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: It's meant to do something with it.

M. Laitman: Certainly, we need to correct.

Student: How to correct? What do we need to do?

M. Laitman: First of all, to see what those flaws are, exactly. And then afterwards, ask the Creator.

Student: This work, as much as I understand, is divided into internal work, like Rav described, where we need to ask the Creator to correct. It probably will give me love in place of the feeling of distancing from a friend, and work with friends. Let's say a certain situation happens, how to process it correctly, and make this asset beneficial that uplifts the group, and not the other way.

M. Laitman: That's already work in the group. That we need to reach states where everyone will see that our goal comes expressed in the correction of relations between us, and that we need to correct our relations.

Student: How to define correctly, avoidance, like where you conceded to a friend or forgave them, it's like you rose above it and continue onwards for another week, another month, another year, or avoiding the situation as if nothing happened, it's okay, but it exists. And in the next round it meets you again. It's like, I feel like there was, we missed something, and we could have used it, and have done something with it.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Here there's a problem. I really want to solve this. 

M. Laitman: I have nothing by which I can help you.

Student: I need Rav's advice, because I really want to care for this. This is…

M. Laitman: I don't know, I don't know exactly what it's about, and how much it hurts you, your honor, or something else, but there is this, and there is that. There is a part that we need to relinquish, a part we need to agree with, and a part that we need to oppose. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (31:30) To continue that, a friend asked me to ask, when is a friend just sensitive when he gets hurt, or maybe he's sensitive and he's aware of the blemish that took place? Meaning, when is the friend hurt because he's hurt, and when does he differentiate between that and seeing a friend that needs to correct something, and he's trying to tell them we need to correct this, but you don't see, you think I'm just hurt because it's in my pride, or my honor. 

M. Laitman: Those are complex things. It's quite complicated to come to a Ten and tell them to their face what you think about them. Yes.

Student: That's exactly the difficulty of the friend. That's how I feel him, that on one hand he wants to help the Ten to advance, on the other hand it's not being enabled. There's not giving any room for this, because they feel like there's like an individual issue that he needs to work on himself with. 

M. Laitman: I don't know what to say. 

Student: Rav many times tells us that you can scrutinize everything in the Ten and don't sweep anything under the rug, but this is kind of like a delicate situation where a person wants to tell the Ten, let's work on this, don't sweep it under, and then we want to advance with the general Kli, so it doesn't enable this. 

M. Laitman: Now you can find a room for that, and for the other. The Ten can find time, it's not so much of a problem.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (33:43) I wanted to ask on behalf of the teacher, does he also need faith in the students?

M. Laitman: If he needs it, so he'll know. 

Student: Is that the question?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (34:14) In this excerpt he's talking about the students of Rabbi Akiva, who kind of identified sparks of holiness, but they didn't make the effort to use them in order to ascend furthermore. How in the Ten do I identify the sparks of Kedusha in my friends, and what is this effort that I need to do in order to rise from this Katnut that he's talking about in this excerpt?

M. Laitman: I don’t know, pray to the Creator, so that He will let you understand what is happening there in Rabbi Akiva's group. 

Student: Meaning to identify those sparks of holiness that come from above, or... 

M. Laitman: Seemingly, I don't know. Pray. I'm talking about what's in your hands and not sparks of holiness in the skies.

Student: Of course, that's why I'm asking how to identify? 

M. Laitman: I don't know, we're not in this problem.

Student: It sounds like a very critical part in the work?

M. Laitman: Sir, but you're not in this, you're a thousand miles far from that. When you come on foot to that place, so you will reveal it. 

Student: Okay, so we'll continue to pray. Thank you, Rav.

M. Laitman: Pray. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (35:44) There's personal honor, and there's honor of a member of the Ten.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: How do you work with the self-honor and the honor of the friends in the Ten? 

M. Laitman: Self-honor. We really just want to kick it with the foot, to give it a blow, and to shove it into the ground, and…

Student: Friends in the Ten? 

M. Laitman: The honor of the friends in the group, you need to hold as the honor of the Creator.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (36:30) Also in the matter of honor, to understand what honor to his friend is. I don't inflate the friend when I give him honor? 

M. Laitman: You need to be careful also with that.

Student: What form of honor do I give to the friends? What do I respect them with, and what do I not need to respect them with? Just to be direct with them according to nature.

M. Laitman: It's best to relate to it in a pinpointed fashion. To the point. As a result of that, you will feel what the friend lacks. 

Student: Do I need to give, I don't know, honor? It just feels like a little phony that I have to give him honor and respect him, and what does it mean to be pinpointed, in a matter of fact, towards him? And when do I give him honor when I don't even feel that way? 

M. Laitman: You, together, progress to the correction. And you want to help each other in that. So, all the things you can do together, you need to reveal to each other.

Student: Because we're coming closer to being together, then why do we need to be like that? To give honor, to wrap one another? Maybe we should be more direct towards each other, and help one another and see the failures, for example.

M. Laitman: That's a relevant question. But what's important here is that you want to reveal before the friend your conscientiousness, and to be as direct as possible with him. And then you do this scrutiny within yourself, how you organize that, with the qualities that the friends had, with the thoughts, with the intentions.

Student: Okay, so where does the honor enter into this friend here? If I want to be direct with him, and we want to put this, like, the conscious part of my heart into him, where do I do this? It seems phony. 

M. Laitman: But to the extent in which you connect to him, you also need to measure your attitude to the friend.

Student: Thank you.

M. Laitman: Okay, friends. What else do we have today? 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (39:41) We can finish these two short ones, they're short. People will be able to the next document tomorrow, or simply move to a summary.

M. Laitman: 19-20?

Reading Excerpt 19: (40:12) Rabbi Abraham Ben Rabbi Nachman of Toltshin, Stars of Light

“When I approached my Rav,” said Rabbi Natan, “I abandoned my whole intellect as though I had no intellect, and when I heard from him some words, I received a little bit of intellect, a few more words—a little more intellect.” It was said that this was the difference between our teacher Rabbi Natan and the rest of the disciples of Rabbi Nachman—that they knew that the rav was the most important, but they, too, had some merit, that they had some opinion. However, Rabbi Natan knew about himself that without the rav, he is nothing, nobody, truly null.

M. Laitman: I cannot say that we understand that. We are not in that. 20.

Reading Excerpt 20: (41:23) Ohr Torah, Isaac Eisik Wildmann (Haver)

The main merit of studying Torah is for a person to study in a group and not alone, as our sages said, “Wise disciples, when they sit together and engage in Torah… for due to the depth of the Torah, one cannot fully grasp it unless he studies in a group … for by conversing together, each one makes his friend keener … for so is the way of the Torah, that whenever two lights unite together, they multiply.”

M. Laitman: Yes. In the majority of the people is the greatness of the King.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (42:31) I wanted to ask about the honor, because sometimes we even care for a friend, we even reject them a little bit. It grows him. It gives him room for work to nullify before the Rav. There's a state where the Tens write, yes or no, when can the Ten know how to correctly not harm the honor of a friend, and sometimes hug him and sometimes put a limit and say, here, a friend needs to nullify.

M. Laitman: It seems that according to how each one depicts themselves in place of that friend, don't judge your friend until you come to his place. Then it'll become a little clearer where he is. That's in the meantime, and there are other conditions. 

Reader: (44:47) Announcements.