Shamati 27: What is “The Lord is High and the Low Will See”

Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel

September 15, 2006

• Bold and indented: Original text of Baal HaSulam

• Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman

• lowercase italics: emphasized words

• Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew

We are reading in the book Shamati, Article #27: What is “The Lord is High & the Low Will See.”

“The Lord is high and the low will see.” How can there be equivalence with the Creator when man is the receiver and the Creator is the giver? The verse says to that, “The Lord is high and the low…”

If one annuls oneself, then one has no authority that separates him from the Creator. In that state one “will see,” meaning he is imparted Mochin de Hochma, “and the haughty He knoweth from afar.” However, a proud one, meaning one who has one’s own authority, is distanced, since one lacks the equivalence.

Lowness is not considered one’s lowering of oneself before others. This is humbleness, and one feels wholeness in this work. Rather, lowness means that the world despises one. Precisely when people despise, it is considered lowness. At that time one does not feel any wholeness, for it is a law that what people think affects a person.

Therefore, if people respect him, he feels whole; and those that people despise, they think of themselves as low.

Why is it so important to lower yourself? If we’re talking about equivalence of form, then does the Creator lower Himself? If He lowers Himself, then why do we say that He is high? If He’s high, then we should be in equivalence of form with the high. We should also be high, big, proud and elevated to some extent.

There are two forces in nature: the force of giving and the force of receiving. These two forces operate on us in order to evolve. There is the repelling force and the attracting force, that is all there is. On each level in nature, in the still, vegetative, animate and speaking, these two forces operate, absorbing and eliciting, bringing closer, rejecting, and drawing farther. There are only two forces, because they are the basic forces that stem from the Creator’s force and the creature’s force, which is opposite from the Creator. For if it’s not opposite, then how can it exist? In spirituality there cannot be two forces that are similar because if so then, they’ll be one.

So it turns out that the creature must, from the very beginning, have an opposite nature from the Creator. And if the Creator is the Giver then the creature must be the receiver. If the Creator is loving and giving, the creature, in order to exist—in order to be as “existence from absence”— has to be the opposite. If it’s opposite from the Creator, it means it’s opposite from wholeness, eternity, good and from giving. Then what kind of existence does the creature have being entirely opposite from the Creator?

Here we already see how much is this problem of creating a creature opposite Him, in which there isn’t something that is in the Creator; it’s impossible to create such a creature. And indeed there is no such creature. The Creator created a creature, which to begin with, even though its substance is opposite from the force that created it (its substance being reception) is not in a state that receives. It is in equivalence of form with the Creator and bestowal.

And then, if that’s the case, where is the creature? The solution is that the creature doesn’t feel it. It means, we exist in Ein Sof, in a state where we are completely similar to the Creator in our actions, our fulfillments, our level, but neither in the sensation, the understanding nor in our attainment. In that we are still non-existent. We don’t have the understanding, the attainment of where we are and who we are. So in what sense do we exist?

In order to give us a chance to attain our true state by ourselves. Out of the whole state of equivalence of form, adhesion, status of the Creator, we are permitted to feel a very, very small state. It’s called the tiny Light, the spark, whose tiniest part from the complete state in which we are, is called this world. We are allowed to feel, attain and be in that state.

The real state is unrevealed to us neither in our desires, our Kelim nor in our fulfillments. If our Kelim, our true desires were revealed to us, we would be in endless deficiencies, we would be suffering terribly. And then if we’d wanted that real state, it would be only out of suffering, out of the desire to escape the present state and so we wouldn’t have any free choice. On the other hand if we were in these endless fulfillments, then we would not move from our place, because everything would be in us.

So it turns out that our state must be that kind of a state, specifically from which we can reach completeness. From the perspective of the Creator we are in completeness. From our own perspective we are in unconsciousness. All we have to obtain is just to feel and sense that right, true state. For this we have free choice, because nothing presses us either from the side of good or from that of the bad. We constantly feel deficiencies, pains, but they only indicate our present state, our deficient situation in our egoistic Kelim in our vessels of reception.

I am constantly pushed forward. But this drive is not toward that Ein Sof. No, and I will never discover that I am missing the need of that Ein Sof. For that I have no need. For that, I have to find the right direction toward it by deliberate labor, so that I will have a specific desire for that from the group, from the environment by constantly choosing a society, which is as close as possible to that Ein Sof and, if I move myself, position myself with respect to the environment as if I am in Ein Sof, against my will, but only by merely agreeing, then the environment will affect me and give me the desire to reach the state that really exists in Ein Sof.

It turns out that to come out of unconsciousness depends entirely on the individual. He actually is his own physician. Of course, he gets the strength from Above, from the environment. But he determines with his free choice all the phases of the evolution of his consciousness, the phases of his curing. Then he slowly comes to a state where he brings himself back and his own sensation, to feel the initial state he was in from the very beginning--the one state.

There aren’t many states. When we talk about a person rising on the ladder of degrees, from this world to the world Ein Sof, we talk about perception. Nothing else happens besides us, solely gradually opening up our tools of sensation. Reality itself doesn’t change.

When a person seeks the ability, the strength to open his eyes, to open his emotions to the situation he is in, he thus begins to work against his desire. This is because he must attain desires to bestow, forces to bestow while he is in the opposite state, in the attribute of reception. So he has to adapt desires, powers and attraction toward the other nature and this is his work, in attaining the other nature.

This is called “working on the greatness of the Creator,” where to the extent that one feels low (which means that his present state, the attributes he is in are low and not that he himself is low), and to the extent that attributes of bestowal compared to attributes of reception are great, whole, eternal, according to this gap that he can imagine between the corrupted attributes of the creature and the eternal and complete attributes of the Creator and can picture the completeness and greatness of the Creator he has the strength to progress and is awarded progress not through pain, which pushes him from behind, but through the greatness that draws him forward. Then he switches from using the negative force of evolution to using the positive force of evolution, because as we said we only have two forces in nature.

Question: Why does the Creator need to lower me, to make me feel like nothing, so that I’ll see that He is great? Is this the way of great ones to behave?

We have no understanding of our real situation among us, because we are not at the same level of perception as the Creator. It’s like a little boy who can’t understand why his parents treat him the way they do. You might say the parents are in nature, in a world that’s built that way and they and the child are built in a certain way. They have no choice. They have to bring that boy to a state where it is equipped for life, where it is capable, understanding, controlling and getting on in life. So you have to teach him. Since human nature is egoistic and we are lazy and don’t want to move, the child must still have some knowledge about life, so they pressure him. It seems they are making his life miserable.

But the Creator, who is Almighty, who is not limited by anything, why did He create on the onset such conditions for us? We can’t talk about something higher than nature: if we are within a nature of reception and above it there can only be a nature of bestowal, we can’t picture whether there are any other possibilities, that the Creator has another attribute and we have another attribute, because our intellect and all of our emotions are built entirely according to reception and bestowal.

If that’s the case, then we have to speak about what we have. Because whatever you picture otherwise, it’ll still be from within your nature, from how you are built, from within your matter. So if the Creator is the giving force, which wants to show Itself this way toward us, we do not talk about the rest of His attributes since we don’t know them, but with love, with the benevolent One, that’s how He would like to present Himself to the creature, so with this relation, with this Light, as it is called, with the benevolent One, with the filling, that’s how He created our Kli as opposite from Him. And He can’t do it any differently in order for us to exist corresponding to Him, so that we will be able to receive from Him, because He is the Giver and we are the receivers. How will He do anything else?

So again we are talking about what there is. You might say, “but why?” You can’t say, “Yes but why?” You can only say maybe there are other possibilities, but you can’t say which possibility it is, because you are already built within that possibility only.

If you have a solution or a question you can express it. But to ask, why not otherwise? That question stems from the fact that once we attain the whole of that possibility that we were given in the relation of the Creator’s towards us as the One that is Good and does Good, as love and giving and after we become like Him, there is another degree that we rise above, above our nature, above our ability and above our birth. This is why we have this question, “but why,” a question which doesn’t exist at the animate level, only at the speaking level. But, in any case, if we are built as receivers and we have to come to equivalence of form, then of course, we have no choice. We have to experience our sensation, and learn to feel opposite discernments from our own.

If we don’t build a sensation that contains both forms, good and bad, bitter and sweet, light and dark, we won’t be able to discern anything. Look at a little boy. How small are his desires and how small are their fulfillments: his sorrow and his joys. When he cries it’s no big deal, but when a grown up cries, why then do you pay attention? Why? Because when a child cries what can it be?

So we have to come to a point where the gap between the good and bad, joy and grief will be infinite as if from this world to the world Ein Sof. According to the gap between them, between the filling and the lack of filling, this being good and bad, light and dark and bitter and sweet, the perception, attainment, understanding, according to how big is their size we exist, we feel, we live, we feel life. So of course, we have to experience all the descents and all the ascents, the pluses and minuses, the most extreme of them. That’s how we measure our ability to perceive, to understand the reality we are in. So we don’t feel within that reality some small discernment and that’s it.

Therefore we have no choice. We ought to go through all the situations: the negative and the positive, and when we are in those states, we have to understand the cause, the purpose of every single state and learn from it, where it is from and what for, and connect these states together, the connection between them, besides all that, we also have to acquire additional Kelim, another let’s say seven billion other Kelim, like mine. If the common desire for example, the common creature was divided into seven billion pieces all of which are outside of me, opposite from me and each of the seven billion has all kinds of discernments as mine at least and I have to absorb all of their Kelim with all their discernments and the connection between us.

It turns out, that each of us acquires a Kli in different dimensions, in infinite states in every dimension and then it really becomes infinite. I can’t quite picture it, but just try to guess it a little bit. Without that Kli how do we come to feel the eternity, perfection? How do we feel that state called “Ein Sof,” called “living like the Creator?” So it turns out because we are creatures, we must be like the Creator and the creature at the same time, meaning to be creatures at the Creator’s degree. It means, we have to acquire abilities, His attributes, His sensations, His status, everything that He has, from an opposite state than His. And this is why we have to go through the entire evolution.

You might say, why is this evolution that we are experiencing so difficult, so bitter? It’s not difficult and it’s not bitter. At the human level we feel a blow only when we look for a solution for our lives. All the other blows we feel at the animate level in what dissatisfies me in my five senses. When I am in my life in this world, like animals, like beasts, like people, I care about my own body, the will to receive in my body and I want to fill it. It’s the animate level. It’s not the human level, the speaking level.

The speaking level begins by having a point in the heart, having an additional desire to fill oneself with reception from the Creator. It’s a new Kli of that point, which evolved and will be called a soul. That is why all of the pain we experience, we do as animals, at the animate degree and don’t experience them as people, humans. . That’s why it says, “they are all like beasts.” And at the speaking degree the pains are only in those who feel the need to search, to connect to the Creator. The point in the heart is a Kli, a deficiency to connect to Him, to be in that state of Ein Sof

When a little of that desire appears in a person, it is called “the beginning of the human point in a person,” because the need to be in Ein Sof, to be similar to the Creator and bestowal is called “the point in the heart.” Of course, a person doesn’t feel that it’s a need to Ein Sof, that what he needs is to resemble the Creator. He just search and doesn’t know what for, but this is already a point that wants, that draws, that pulls him back to the Source.

This is why this whole evolution of the point, that tending to it is only through the Upper Light, through some change of relationship between him and the Creator. It’s a completely different story. It’s not at all according to the five senses in which we exist as animals.

Our problem is that we don’t distinguish clearly between people who have five senses and work to fulfill them and those who have that sixth sense, who want to fill themselves from the Creator, who want to feel infinity, to be in it. We still don’t quite see the difference between them. But it’s the difference between the levels in nature where the animate level is actually all of humanity, except just a few. Today this few are already thousands, perhaps even are becoming millions, but are still few compared to all of humanity.

So, other than these few, everything else is considered just like the animal level. That’s why you can’t connect to them, you can’t equalize with them. You can only make them accelerate the evolution of their points in the heart. But those who already have that point, who already feel some attitude toward Ein Sof even though they don’t understand where it’s from, what it is and why it’s in them. To them you need to provide a method to realize this desire, which is the method of Kabbalah: how to receive, how to fill that deficiency, which is a deficiency for Ein Sof, for a spiritual fulfillment.

Question: It's not quite clear how we bring ourselves to a state of lowness. According to what is mentioned here, others have to cause us to feel lowness? Do we for that have to go outside, say we are learning Kabbalah and have people make fools of us so we will feel lowness?

You reach lowness very easily. I don’t have to tell myself that I am low, neither throw myself on the ground, nor sit in some street corner with a torn shirt and tell everyone that I am despicable. Look at who I am, look at how low I am.” if you do that, that’s super pride,. But because all of nature is made of two forces: reception and bestowal, if I want to reach the Creator, the infinite state that I am in, which I don’t feel and I want to return to a state of awareness from the present state of unawareness I‘m in, then I have to acquire the attributes of bestowal, the attributes of the Creator. Through them I will feel my real state.

So, to crave the elation of that state of bestowal that I am in, to acquire these attributes, to be in them, that’s called wanting the greatness of the Creator. And then correspondingly, I’ll see my present state, my present attributes as low. It’s one against the other. I don’t know who the Creator is. I never know and never feel anything outside of me. But the way that I can picture the attribute of bestowal, the infinite state where I am in, within me, I picture these states in me. I crave them, meaning that I build this model of what I want within me. It’s not that there is something outside of me. There is never any such thing that something exists outside of me and that I yearn for it. A person lives in his own desires, he doesn’t feel outside of his desires.

Who is the Creator? It’s what I can picture in my desires, some attributes, some collection of qualities, which I accept as something higher than me. And that’s what I call Creator (Boreh) from the words “come (Bo) and see (Reh).” When I want to come and see and attain and feel that sublime state that I am picturing. Then I constantly picture more and more progressive states. The actual Creator is something outside of me? There is no such thing of ever feeling it. There is no such thing. That’s why the lowness and the greatness are measured within my Kelim, by the gap that I feel, the descents, the ascents, where I judge myself. Normally we get it through me and the group. If I build a model within the group of what it means to bestow where I give to them or I seemingly love them even though I see that this thing can be so high and then I see that I really don’t want it, that I am not in it, that I would ever want it? From that I begin to judge what lowness means and what greatness means.

We were given the ability to build models, patterns, to picture ourselves compared to a more progressive state: me with respect to the group, me with respect to a state that I can picture. And out of the gap between them, out of the recognition of the lowness and greatness between them, that’s how I am drawn. Here is my free choice. How I picture a progressive state, which is really more progressive and stronger and better. And from that have the powers to progress.

Question: What does it mean, “Those people that despise him, thus he thinks of himself as low?” Why do I need to have people despise me?

To acquire powers to progress, to want, to exit my present state, I have to have forces that propel you. Where do I get those forces? What are the forces that can help me change? So I again measure myself with respect to the group. In the group I see how much I do not belong to the concept of love and bonding and being active in the general system as an integral part, as one man and one heart with everyone. When I measure myself this way, it’s called that they despise me. I don’t have to steal and then the world will see and look at me and say, “He stole.” It’s not that revelation of this attribute that will help me progress toward the Creator.

I have to discover what exactly is missing in me, which attribute is missing in me with respect to attaining it, the bestowal? And the gap between me and Him, when it appears to some extent, will be like the fuel, like the attracting or the repelling force. And this is why the collective soul of Adam ha Rishon was split. And we can work among us and build among us the model of bestowal upon each other as parts of a single body. In so doing we obtain the attribute of bestowal of each and everyone toward the others.

Then when we arrive at this bestowal each of us is similar to the Creator. We discover Him within that common Kli. My resistance to bonding with all the other souls--that resistance is the measure of my Aviut, my ego. If I elevate myself above this ego then build a craving and my effort. So it turns out, that my ego is like a resister, where if I do some work on it, I feel the gap between me, the most despicable, and the degree of bestowal, the highest level. And then, I discover the whole of reality in my ego, in all these desires. That can only be realized in the group, where each of us is egoistic with respect to the others. When he discovers the attribute of bestowal above it, then atop this ego he has the expression of Ein Sof.

Question: Can we thus say that the primary goal of the group is to make each of its members feel that he is unconscious and that he has to awaken so as to feel Ein Sof?

The Creator has a problem in creating a creature in a direct and conscious way. On one hand, you can’t create someone who will be against you and your opposite. He has to be opposite otherwise he won’t feel you from the outside. It has to be the opposite, something that stands opposite you. On the other hand --this creature must be outside of the Creator’s attributes so that it understands them, feel them and acquire them itself, so that by itself it builds a Creator.

To give all these possibilities to the creature is very similar to how we develop our kids. A Child doesn’t understand he has to evolve. He doesn’t feel he is experiencing levels of development. He plays, agrees or disagree with what we give it. He doesn’t know that it’s positive for his evolvement, that without it he will just remain as a little animal.

Even on the physical level it is not possible to build man any differently. Because if you disclose to little kids that they will not be small, let him be born as a person like us. Why does he have to grow? It means let a person be born who understands what has to happen with him. If they understand what has to happen with them, they will not feel that they, themselves are growing, that they themselves are sensing, that they themselves are living and attaining life. They’ll feel like a machine that is undergoing some experience. And by that you eradicate the individual free choice, the independence we have.

You might say that this is an illusion, it’s simply the way it is; since there is some concealment, we don’t feel that we are in Ein Sof. There is some concealment and so it’s as if I am being fooled and I really think it’s me, by myself doing something with myself. Yes and no. Of course, it’s a must for you to have to experience all the degrees of the evolution. Of course, all of these degrees are predetermined, because your soul descended from Ein Sof to this world and it must go back up by the same route to the state of Ein Sof.

But there has to be effort and choice and desire before you rise from one degree to the other. You, by yourself have to discover that you want to be a day older again and again. By yourself you discover that you want to be a grown up and then you discover that degree that’s being prepared in advance. Yes, I want to be in it. But the deficiency for that degree has to come first. At first, we have to raise MAN. Thus that deficiency, that I am the one to look for, I am the one to want is called Adam, to want to be Domeh (similar to Him), that, I have to find by myself.

You might say, it exists already in nature, it’s just hidden from me. True, but it doesn’t matter that it exists. What matters is that you searched that deficiency within all the resources in nature and within you and you found it. It means that this search creates a new Kli in you, which did not exist by nature. And that new Kli is called “Adam.” Everything else is a beast. Everything else is given. Anything else, we don’t say that it belongs to you. We say that the Creator created the will to receive with all its attributes and the will to bestow is Him, with everything within Him. And where is a person?

A person is the one who in between these two attributes, these two forces finds himself, builds himself out of their unique combination. The elements have been prepared; all of these forces, the matter, the strength and the forms to build. But the search and the need which you obtain, that’s the special thing. That’s the only thing that we call “man.” In which way a person, even in our degree is different from animals. From the fact that he doesn’t know. Animals know everything, their instincts, forces operate them and they are not mistaken.

Man doesn’t know what will happen this way, that way, what other people think about him. All this unknown is what is so heavy on us and it is exactly the territory that we fill up with the right search and thus build ourselves. And from the perspective of the Creator it is impossible to build an Adam, if not through giving a person a chance to create itself.

Question: So we can say, there is a veil behind which something is hidden from me and the group comes and says to me behind this veil there is a whole world and what it does is create that need in me to reach it as quick as possible?

The group doesn’t create the need in you. It just awakens you to look or to find that deficiency in the right direction, because what’s behind the veil exists in you. All of the evolutionary degrees from Above downward, the chain of Reshimot, this spiral, exist in you. And you just have to discover it with the right approach by looking for the “yourself” at a more progressive degree, each time. The image of “you” at a higher degree is what you call Creator.

Question: You keep saying “yourself,” but the goal is not to be egoistic, not to look within ourselves. If we look within ourselves all the time and even if we are making progress in that, what about other people?

The common creature which the Creator created is called “Adam ha Rishon.” It is a deficiency, a want that’s at the level of Ein Sof, meaning, in a state of unity and filling like the Creator. But in that state, that want that the Creator created actually there is no deficiency. It’s some kind of a structure, that’s lacking nothing and is in the still degree. Everything is there. It’s like looking at some substance, say, a piece of metal. It exists. In order to shake it and bring it to the level of sensitivity, to the sensation of livelihood like the Creator, you have to put into that substance some deficiencies, to make it want. And the more it wants the more it’ll have to move, to get it, to live, to understand, to feel. It means in order to awaken that substance many more desires are needed.

How is that done? For that substance to feel the Creator, to be like the Creator from the level of being like a piece of metal, it has to obtain many more deficiencies like the Creator has. Just imagine having a piece of metal. That piece of metal feels only one thing, that it wants to be like that one body, in it’s structure of one piece, sustain all its electrons, all the pieces in there together, all the atoms and it’s structure, which is like crystal, these cubes. It just wants to sustain itself. It’s got powers to sustain itself and doesn’t want to move.

If you want to move it from the outside, to change it, you must heat it or apply pressure in order to break it. You have to provide greater forces than the ones that sustain it and then you break it. But we don’t want to break it. We want that desire that was created ‘existence from absence’ to want to be like the Creator. Just imagine that piece of metal wanting to be like a person, to give birth, to feel, to raise children, to feel life, livelihood, love, hate, fulfillments, despair, all kinds of emotions that belong to the human level. That piece of metal will suddenly begin to imagine that such a thing exists and even want it. This is what our situation is like.

We are in that situation of being like a piece of metal. And we are asked to reach the human level, to want to be in it. First of all, it seems very difficult. Why should I be a human? It’s good to be a piece of metal. Why not? Everything is fine for me. I don’t feel any lack in there. I don’t have any problems in life. Just imagine that even the animate degree, which is only one degree less than us are much better off. Who is suffering more than man? From how many problems in this world?

So it turns out that to bring a person to that degree, to force him to reach it, you have to apply troubles. How is that done? Not by the Creator. The Creator can’t do that, because He is complete and because of His love He can’t do harm. So what happens is, that this creature was split in its ego into thousands of pieces, billions of pieces, into separate people, separate souls. Each soul or each person begins to discover with respect to others hatred, the opposite of the Creator’s attribute. So, our whole problem, you might say it’s not a problem, but the reality is that we hate each other.

In the correction of this attribute, when we reconnect into a single body, to a single system “as one man and one heart,” as it is written, “Love of man,” we actually come back to that structure of the single creature. But then, the attribute that it’s acquired is the opposite attribute from before, whereby acquiring a different attitude to its pieces, that are seemingly opposite from it, it learned what love, what hate, what distance and proximity are, what wanting, looking and understanding mean,.

In the meantime, through this inner work that this creature, the seven billion souls do among themselves, they acquire the attributes of the Creator, even though they weren’t seemingly in touch with Him. But within itself, this huge creature was working out of this illusion of being divided into single pieces that are opposite from each other. That’s the whole reality that we are experiencing.

To the extent that we, within us, begin to acquire this attribute of bestowal and love and connection we begin to feel the Creator who is outside of this creature and to feel Him. Now, that too is an illusion. We don’t feel Him. We discover within us the same attribute of bestowal, of love that we build, that we make through the connection among us. This is what we call the Creator and that’s all there is. We don’t discover anything on the outside and that’s what we experience, that’s the process.