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

Daily Lesson (Morning), August 23, 2024.

Part 3: Questions and Answers on the Spiritual Path.

 

Reader: We are reading source excerpts on Questions and Answers on the Spiritual Path. You can ask questions on Sviva Tova and the Arvut system. And we've got up to excerpt number three. Rabash writes on concerning the exodus from Egypt.

Reading: (00:22) Excerpt 3. RABASH, Article No. 933, "Concerning the Exodus from Egypt"

In order for one to rise to heaven, his work is in a manner of question and answer. This is the meaning of the sons asking, since Banim [sons] means Havanah [understanding] and reason and intellect, and they ask him.

One who has no sons—whose mind and reason have no questions because he is pure in his reason and qualities—must evoke the questions by himself, as Baal HaSulam interpreted the words of our sages, “I awaken the dawn, and the dawn does not awaken me.”

M. Laitman: Is it clear what's written? Read it again.

Reader: Excerpt 3. Again.

Reader: Again Question (Petah Tikva Center): (02:34) In relation to questions, a question is a deficiency that comes from within. Now, what is the difference between a deficiency that a person feels, which is burning and strong and he leaves it inside? And a deficiency that a person brings to the whole society?

M. Laitman: According to that, it's either he feels the deficiency, or the whole society feels the deficiency.

Student: If it's from within then he hears it, seemingly, but we are all connected. Does he need to bring it outside? And if he doesn't bring it outside, then the society doesn't incorporate in that same state that he goes through?

M. Laitman: No. 

Student: No? Even if he's connected to everyone? We're talking about a state where he's connected.

M. Laitman: Well, if they're already in such a degree that something like that can come to them only in thought, then go for it, but?

Student: If a person has a strong, true, good deficiency, does he have responsibility to bring that to others, to the friends? To disperse that among them, to share it with them? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: And then does that person, what are the stages that take place after that, after he brings it outside to the others? 

M. Laitman: It's a condition so one can be impressed by it. 

Student: Do they also receive and also enjoy?

M. Laitman: We need to perform actions in order to integrate in that upper.

Student: What responsibility does it have in addition? When you bring a deficiency to the society, what do you need to pay attention to, what do you need to focus on? 

M. Laitman: So, you need to make sure that this deficiency will be accepted correctly, and you have to make sure that they will get there in the right way. You're an actual partner in this because you caused it.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:05) He says that if you lack questions, you lack understanding and reason and intellect. That, if he has no questions, it's because he's pure in his reason and qualities. What are these reasons and qualities? 

M. Laitman: According to how refined they are, then he understands more.

Student: Let us focus on qualities, what is the most important quality of us now in the Ten? 

M. Laitman: We're not learning that now, so don't spin it that way. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:44) I want to connect to my friend’s question, who asked about the question that awakens from within. In the beginning of the lesson, a friend brought up the butterfly effect topic, that when I move a finger, the whole group moves according to me, that I can enter the group and I can move the whole vessel. How do I awaken this inner question that comes to me? How can I do as the friend said, how do I come to ask a question? That is a question, how can I come to ask a question? 

M. Laitman: I don't know, it's a really big question: How do you dare to ask questions that are completely not on the study? 

Student: Yes, a friend who wishes to raise a question to Rav and to the whole Kli, how do I check whether that question has benefit for the Kli?

M. Laitman: He checks according to what he learned, whether it belongs to the matter at all. The study, whether it's associated with the topic of the lesson, and he also needs to feel the friends that will have to care for this question, he has a responsibility.  

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (07:31) I had a lot of criticism on Q&A, so instead of criticizing, I decided I was going to open a chat of Q&A and I invited all the friends. Whoever wanted could go in there, they could ask a question and I'd look for that question on the website. And then I'd find your answer and then I'd copy-paste it and put it into the groups. And that way I'd take questions from everyone, and I'd find your answers, and I'd connect them. That group opened and on the first day, there's only, to my sorrow, 70 friends and only two questions. So why is it something I'm not doing okay? 

M. Laitman: Why, I don't know, that's your work. 

Student: Is that a good idea, though? 

M. Laitman: I don't know. It's your idea.

Student: Do you agree with it?

M. Laitman: I think you're just confusing people. 

Student: But I take your answers, not my answers. 

M. Laitman: Sir, in my eyes, it seems like you're confusing. We learn according to the lessons, according to what's written in Baal HaSulam. 

Student: There's questions on the lessons, there. I write the study material? 

M. Laitman: I told you, in my eyes, it's incorrect. You're confusing people instead of them studying from the source. 

Student: It's a source, it's not my answers. 

M. Laitman: I don't want to talk to you about this anymore. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (08:56) I just wanted to say that this is a personal initiative of the friend. It's not something on the behalf of the organization, we're not responsible for how he responds or anything.

M. Laitman: I know him well, don't worry. I know with what intellect he's working. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:22) He writes to us about the state of Banim, sons. That Banim, or sons, is a state that comes from above. How does a person accelerate this state in order to receive that state called sons? 

M. Laitman: We’ll learn, you're right. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:59) Most questions come from the will to receive. A person who identifies that when he's asking a question, it serves his will to receive and he is in a stage of restriction. Should he stop asking the question until he reaches the intention to bestow? 

M. Laitman: No, we need to learn also, during this period of time.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:30) What does it mean to progress through questions and answers? Because I know what it means to progress through light and darkness but what does it mean to progress through questions and answers? 

M. Laitman: All of our study is made of, is included of questions and answers. And as we learn what answers there are from all the Kabbalists to certain questions, accordingly we grow. 

Student: Many times when I ask, I already have an answer in my head.

M. Laitman: What? 

Student: When I ask a question, I already feel that there's an answer in my head. But how do I reach so questions and answers really organize something that already exists? The question is how do you reach an essential question that opens something new? 

M. Laitman: Through reading, through study.

Student: What does that mean? Does it come by itself or do you need some certain actions? 

M. Laitman: A person that studies from his studies, there are questions. 

Student: How do we progress through questions? We receive states from above, those are from light and darkness. Then we progress in a certain way that everyone understands. But what does it mean to progress through a question and answer? 

M. Laitman: That is exactly the advancement. We have a question along the way and you find through your efforts, an answer. 

Student: How do I find such a question? 

M. Laitman: The question? 

Student: That question that enters into a new place because usually they organize something that already exists. A question and answer, there's something that exists in me, so I organize what's existing, and then I enter that new field. So how do I find that question or how do I create those kinds of questions? 

M. Laitman: From the study, I have nothing else to say. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:46) Continuing the friend from Haifa who asked about the questions from the will to receive in continuation of the excerpt that we just read. So what I understand is that there are a few states: There's a person who has a strong deficiency from the will to receive. He explodes, he wants to ask, that's one state. Another state is that he's pure and he listens and incorporates with everything. It doesn't matter whether he understands or not, he's thankful for what he's in. And the third state is that he awakens at dawn, that he rises above the state of his pureness, and he wishes to awaken himself and ask questions. So how is that correct? What are the correct questions, and how should you awaken the dawn?

M. Laitman: You need to try to see these questions that awaken in you, to arrange them. And to think about them and then find answers in our sources. 

Student: And also to ask in such a way?

M. Laitman: And after that, ask. The fact that a person hears half of a word and then asks?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:17) In addition to what the friend from Tel Aviv Group asked, I think that, let's say that I have a little bit of an answer when I'm asking questions, so I think that disqualifies the question. Let's say that I'm thinking. 

M. Laitman: Well, that's a certain approach.

Student: And only if I'm completely clean, with nothing, so then I can come and ask.

M. Laitman: That's how you think. Okay. I don't think that it's suitable for everyone. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:04) “The sons are asking”, the sons, you could say, these are discernments of our incorporation between us in the Ten or new discernments from the study? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So what do we say about these new discernments now, to ask a question about them? 

M. Laitman: To ask questions about them? 

Student: It's unclear.

M. Laitman: So I have nothing to say. Wait and it will be stabilized. Onwards.

Reader: Excerpt Four, Rabash writes: 

Reading: (15:46) Excerpt 4. RABASH, Article No. 22 (1989), "Why Are Four Questions Asked Specifically on Passover Night?" Twice

As we see, when does one ask questions? When he is lacking. He is asking, “Why do I need to suffer from not having what I think I need?” He comes to the Creator with complaints and demands and asks, “Why do I need to suffer?” But when a person has abundance, what questions are there to ask when he feels that he is free, that he is not enslaved by anything, or feels that what he does not have pains him, giving him room to ask, “Why”?

M. Laitman: Again.

Reader: Again Excerpt Four

M. Laitman: (17:48) Meaning that only in a state in which a person has sorrow, according to the extent of the sorrow, he can reach the correct question. Correct for his state, according to his state, and that's how he will advance.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:17) What, so the person needs to be in constant pain? 

M. Laitman:  No, from the question. If he has sorrow, then certainly he has what to ask for the reason. 

Student: We learn that the Torah makes a person joyful?

M. Laitman: That's not Torah yet. That's the need for the Torah. 

Student: So, from the sorrow it needs to give birth to a question, and without a question there was no development, and the question is an expression of deficiency. And a person needs to be in joy and gratitude in the right line, all day long.

M. Laitman: If a person understands that the question leads him to correction, then he's happy, then he's happy. But if he doesn't understand that, yet, then he can't connect this with that. Then he still has difficulty and he's in a deficiency. He's in sadness, so he'll go around a little more and a little more until he understands that that's how it is. That deficiencies are actually more important than the answers. 

Student: At every state that the person is in, does he need to clarify that he has a question? 

M. Laitman: No, he doesn't have to but he has to learn how to go deeper until he feels that there are questions, lacks.

Student: What do we ask in a state of gratitude? 

M. Laitman: Whether I understand this, understand the source of this gratitude, of this gratitude. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (20:26) What turns the deficiency from that in which I want for myself to something that rises upward in an opposite tendency, as we read about MAN, that it will rise upward? 

M. Laitman: That you have a deficiency, and you need to arrange it to MAN, yes? 

Student: So it'll rise up as MAN. Above is the form of bestowal. 

M. Laitman: No, that's something you think.

Student: I'll ask again: The deficiency of ours is to build a form of bestowal, where its expression in the created being is that it will become similar to the Creator. 

M. Laitman: They bestow contentment to the Creator.

Student: Yes. So as the friend said.

M. Laitman: You raise this deficiency to the Creator with all the means you have and then you need to ask, to pray, to cause the Creator to answer you. 

Student: We look at the connections between the friends. From there we draw the correct form in order to raise that to the Creator. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: We check how much my heart is open to the friends and from that I need to elevate that to the Creator. But what is the correct form because in the end of it all, the instrument by which I measure and check is the corrected Kli. When I check on that point of scrutiny, I see that it is still corrupted.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: The Creator knows my conditions, that I raise to Him this desire for correction. So, it's as if this measurement, I know that it's corrupted, and also the deficiency is corrupted. It's as if my calculation is corrupted. 

M. Laitman: So, what are you asking? 

Student: That's exactly the question, how to raise the correct deficiency when I've done the maximum? 

M. Laitman: You can't, you cry out from what you have. 

Student: Is that enough? 

M. Laitman: For the time being. And then more and more until you reach the correct deficiency. 

Student: Meaning, if I measure my connections with my friends and I raise it to the Creator, is that enough? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: I don't need to make some kind of filter on this thing where I in any case want?

M. Laitman: How will you do it? 

Student: I don't know.

M. Laitman: So, I'm telling you, do it according to what you have.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:58) I think Rabash writes to us that the correct deficiency to pray on, is the sorrow of the Shechina. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: And we need to awaken that in the beginning, we also learned about that in the first part today. The question is, is it correct to make a precision that the form in which we awaken the Shechina is the connection between us and what reveals is a result of that effort? Is that what our prayer is, to awaken the correct prayer for the request? 

M. Laitman: Actually, yes.

Student: Or maybe that's not so precise? 

M. Laitman: Well, not exactly, we'll talk more about that. 

Student: Because there's a desire on our behalf to pray correctly, to raise the correct deficiency. And this is seemingly a deficiency that we already have. We want to do that correctly. So, maybe, we can learn more about how to raise a correct deficiency in order for it to be answered correctly.

M. Laitman: Only for the connection. Connection and completion. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:20) If a question awakens in a person out of sorrow, as Baal HaSulam, here depicts to us. Does a person need to ask the question and get the answer from Rav? Or that he just remains with his question, and like that, until the lesson ends?

M. Laitman: It's enough to remain with the question. You don't have to. You don't have to ask. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (25:53) On the scrutiny of the deficiency. We also learned about that during the Talmud Eser Sefirot, and the sorrow of the Shechina. What is common to all of us is that we lack Hassidim because if we had Hassidim, then we wouldn't have disputes in the Ten and we would live in wholeness. And the Creator would become revealed, that's the whole matter, only Hassidim, we need to draw that. Is that the correct deficiency? 

M. Laitman: So that means that you have to ask for Hassidim? 

Student: That's what's lacking.

M. Laitman Okay, ask, let's see what happens. 

Reader: (26:32) Okay, friends, we're ending the lesson. Thank you, and have a good day.