Morning Lesson December 11, 2023

Transcription is made from simultaneous translation, which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio.

Part 3:

Baal HaSulam. The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy

Reading: (00:14) The Origin of the Soul. “Everything spiritual…” Twice.

1. S. (02:01) It’s really a question, meaning. We pray for someone to be healthy, and he becomes healthy. Where is this internal thing?

R. That’s even more difficult, more questions?

2. S. (02:19) What is corporeal?

R. Corporeal is what is before us in this world.

S. And what depicts it? This reality?

R. A force that exists in nature that depicts in our senses all these things.

S. And it’s not the reality?

R. It is reality.

S. It’s the reality that we grasp because we’re only in this reality, we don’t have anything besides this. Here it’s talking about spirituality, and I feel all the time like it’s something I’m not touching, and I won’t touch.

R. We can’t discuss this yet, no. I’m not touching, I won’t touch, where do you have that proof from?

S. How do I relate to talking about spirituality, not as a philosophy I have no grasp in it whatsoever?

R. So you don’t. You don’t relate to it if you want to be true. You can’t relate to something that you don’t grasp.

S. How can we nevertheless, because I want, I read it and I want this.

R. What do you want?

S. Something above this world, something that’s more Godly, or I don’t know what we’re talking about.

R. So if you change your senses, your desires in according to that level that you want to attain, if you succeed you will feel it.

S. So, it depends on the desire? Only the desire?

R. Of course, except for the desire there’s nothing in this world that influences us or that we can influence back on the world.  

3. S. (04:31) Is feeling something spiritual or corporeal? 

R. A feeling is a feeling no matter what level a person is on.

S. Meaning is it something that there is a connection between, is it a transition between corporeal and spiritual? 

R. A feeling is an inspiration in the vessels and when a person gets that inspiration he can determine in his vessels. 

S. Can you pass an impression that is in corporeal vessels for it to be in the spiritual vessels? 

R. No, that's a completely different level of senses of fillings, that can't happen.

S. Meaning a spiritual thing needs to be something completely new?

R. Yes.

 

4. S. (05:35) I wanted to ask corporeal and spiritual, after all when a person starts to study and understand there is no corporeal actually and it’s all tricks. It surrounds the intentions, and we have to correct them. So, can I manage the corporeal or recruit all these specific situations that were given to me? How am I supposed to manage this, should I neglect it, move it aside, or look at it and say okay what are the messages that I'm receiving through this? 

R. That’s what the Wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about, I can’t answer it in one sentence.

5. S. (06:27) I heard you saying that the whole spiritual perception depends on our desire. Does a person have some sort of control over his desire, can he change in his desire?

R. That's exactly what we learn about in the Wisdom of Kabbalah how to change our desire in order to understand what we can grasp in that desire. 

 

S. How, well, in a great way yes, but there’s an environment and everything, but can a person see that he has a desire that’s bothering him on the path, and it’s like battling, I don’t know ghosts, it’s as he has no?

R. No, no, no, no, that's not true, everything was given to a person for him to relate correctly to all the types of desires that awakened in him. 

S. How do we correctly relate to a desire that bothers you on the way?

R. A desire that bothers you on the way, first, you need to remove it as quickly as you can through studying the Torah, and connecting with the friends, and the main thing is through prayer to the Creator. 

S. It’s truly so for him to take the bothersome desires?

R. That’s true.

6. S. (08:00) So how we’re also part of the work, part of our work is to depict and describe this whole picture above reason. How can we do this work if we have no understanding or feeling in spirituality?

R. If we feel how the Creator is bestowing upon us, in those same channels we can bestow back to him.

7. S. (08:38) Baal HaSulam in this article, and then others, a mixture that he describes the separation, this disconnect between spirituality and corporeality, that there are many. There's many much confusion in our world on this, why is there such confusion around spirituality and corporeality?

R. Confusion between spirituality and corporeality comes from the confusion in us. That we do not know what is in order to receive is, in order to bestow, corporeal, spiritual, what we need to do, it’s all the confusion that is in us. 

S. And when that’s not clear to us what to receive is, and what to bestow is, and we try to scrutinize spirituality and corporeality even before it’s clear to us. Is this the source for the whole confusion?  

R. Yes.

S. So what does the person need to pay attention to before he gets confused between these two? How to begin to make order in this whole mess? 

R. So that’s what we learn about from the articles of the society, first of all. The social writings first, you need to connect with the friends and annul the gaps between us. And in that one vessel that we’re trying to resurrect we want to feel one Creator in it. In this way, we can draw on the light that reforms and it brings us closer to perceiving the correct form of reality.

S. And how not to deviate from this direction from this side? 

R. Only by holding onto the friends. There’s nothing but that that you have in this world that can connect you to the spiritual world. Nothing. It’s either this or nothing. Either together or death.

S. Maybe however one more scrutiny about the reason for the attempt to scrutinize spirituality in our intellect in our tools in our vessels and before we even have such vessels. If we are all trying to understand spirituality and trying to understand. 

R. That’s our problem that we want to understand it in our mind, and it is entirely attaining the creator in our emotions and our feelings and it’s not the one we have from birth but by inverting it or we will invert it.

8. S. (11:58) I wanted to ask. Philosophy comes from the Greeks, right?

R. That’s what we say.

S. Why is it not a religion and why did Baal HaSulam actually confront them? The Wisdom of Kabbalah before philosophy? What’s in philosophy, why isn’t it in another religion, I don’t understand, what’s in it?

R. Philosophy is a method that teaches a person how to relate to nature in order, in order to get wiser and to organize the picture of nature in a certain way.

S. Religions, do religions have a different method than philosophy? Do they want to attain nature in a different way? 

R. Yes religions are based on faith and philosophy doesn’t include faith. Philosophers, each and every one can be one no matter who he belongs to.

S. Because we see that Baal HaSulam says other religions, I’m not confronting them it's like they’re like traditions, customs, that’s okay and he goes against the, he actually calls it the despicable or something like that, philosophy. It’s like against the true perception of reality that he wants to attain?

R. The thing is that philosophy disconnects you from reality and it builds a different reality, that’s the danger about philosophy.

9. S. (14:19) There are four desires, four degrees of desire and the fourth highest desire before spirituality is knowledge. Philosophy is actually on the level of knowledge or those who are expressing these things are from knowledge.

R. Where do they take that from?

S. They’re in the will to receive, serves the will to receive, it’s still the desire that operates there is knowledge. Can we understand it that way?

R. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. They take it from all kinds of forms of nature that are revealed before them, and they connect it with whichever way is convenient for them. Look at what you find in philosophy and what types of forms there are. I don’t think that it is possible to research from studying nature or researching on behalf of nature.

S. I’m not trying to say that it’s a replacement for faith, that’s clear, but it’s simply an expression of people that are in that desire they desire to understand reality through this tool called the intellect or to take advantage of reality from the intellect but that’s the vessel that’s the instrument their using. 

R. Well.

S. And you could say if we are asking what philosophy is, maybe, that’s the right way to look at philosophy. Simply an expression. 

R. Look at what they are talking about. As much as their imagination they’re developing imagination in order to depict some kind of form of nature.

S. Right and they use it throughout history to justify the exploitation of people.

R. Right.

S. Yes, it’s in the will to receive there’s no argument but it’s like they are giving it a form of understanding not from wanting money or honor but rather they want to understand things and these desires that they bring every generation brings some kind of new understandings. 

R. In philosophy, there are, there is a part that somehow is close to science and a part that is religion, and sometimes it's very hard to see the difference between the two. That's why all of the philosophers as much as they disconnect from religion, or could disconnect from religions so they were scientists, and part of them were even more religious, that's why eventually through all those forms they took upon themselves they acquired some place and some honor in human society but all in all today we see that they, almost all of them have got off the stage. 

S. But they left us the science, science stems from philosophy?

R. Stems, everything stems from something, but did it stem not from philosophy but by disconnecting themself from philosophy and started developing, or kept developing, only through the mind. Not to receive anything as if. That's why science and philosophy are already, what can you do, for a long time it doesn't go together.

10. S. (19:10) They're asking from Asia about the connection between corporeal and spiritual. How can you understand the sentence that we learn there's no blade below that moves without an Angel that's above that controls it and tells it to grow?

R. That on every object of this world, there is a force bestowing upon it and pushing it to develop.

11. S. (19:46) If I see the danger in philosophy that their initial intention their reason is not to include creation and the reason for creation, that's an immediate danger. It defines and ties us and closes us up and says that we're supposed to be open.

R. Well okay, that's what you think.

Reading: (20:27) The Acidic Element. “However, the truth is that the force itself...”

12. S. (25:41) Can we say that desire is a force?

R. Yes.

S. Make a desire which is a force into matter. He's explaining how you can make a force into matter that we don't feel.

R. You don't have the ability.

S. But here he's kind of trying to explain the elements that we do feel.

R. So you have a foundation, an element, that from it you want to reach a different element. 

S. Yes, but it's a force, this element is a force it begins as a force?

R. No.

S. No? Even if we don't feel it?

R. Whether you feel it or not, that's what he wants to prove to you that it doesn't have anything to do with determining what it is.

S. How can I define what a force is?

R. A force is defined according to what works in reality in front of your eyes and you see that there's some action, some motion, and according to that, you can determine. It's all towards the person attaining. 

13. S. (27:14) Can we say that also philosophy and Kabbalah make order in reality? Because there's a tangible reality of what we feel, what we see, and what we don't feel but the difference is that philosophy isn't based on something that they never saw or attained, and the Kabbalists are making the order according to that which they reveal in practice?

R. Meaning philosophy supposedly opens its wings upon all of reality, no matter who, or what including the Creator inside and so on, and the Wisdom of Kabbalah is only according to a person's attainment. 

S. So how does a person have the audacity or this daring feeling that they can attain something of value that he has not attained?

R. From the Creator.

S. Meaning philosophy also comes from the Creator?

R. Yes.

S. In order for what?

R. It's like all the evil inclinations that we want to know and understand and touch and feel.

S. That which we haven't attained yet?

R. Yes. 

Reading: (28:41) Equal Force in the Spiritual and the Physical. “In a word: All…”

14. R. (30:51) Yes, because it doesn't leave any forms in our imagination it brings us to revelation.

15. R. (31:58) What's your impression from yesterday, that we had such a connection?

16. S. (32:17) There's a very special feeling of connection through the whole Kli but I wanted to ask a question a friend in the Ten said that after the convention the big convention that we had here.

R. Which one?

S. In Sukkot, that he's afraid of the unity evening because there's a feeling like we drew lights in Sukkot that we couldn't manage to put into the vessels, and he was scared and there's a feeling there was a special evening yesterday could you relate to this?

R. I thought that it was a special evening. I also couldn't fall asleep after it, it was very strong very emotional and it's worth doing more of those.

S. How do we make sure to sustain that from such an evening the abundance of the light and the good that was drawn from the connection between us that it will enter the right place and not for us to fall from it?

R. Be closer to one another, we don't need anything. All of the actions are done by the Light and all we need to do is give it a place to work. So, let's hope that we will, as soon as we can, have more of those evenings.

17. S. (34:22) We talked yesterday already that we should do every month such an event. This kind of virtual event is convenient for everyone with such conditions. Well, we're very busy because we dealt with the content, we received many impressions from friends that it was a good connection and a lot of feelings. There were 3,600 friends connected, there were many gatherings that we saw, there were also many, many other friends that gathered, many tens gathered physically together, and we felt the connection, much more than that.

R. What do you think?

18. S. (35:01) First of all I wanted to say thank you to Rav for joining us at the beginning of the evening. There's no doubt that it catapults everything to a completely different level and it's like the Kli really needs and wants that connection with you.

R. I'm willing.

S. And altogether there was a very big quantity of people that gathered from the whole Kli also faces that you don't see and gatherings that you don't expect to see, all of a sudden we saw on the screens many groups, it's special it's like you can really see that there's in the society the desire for even more steps forward there's a seriousness in the Kli, a maturity, and we need you to help us guide us correctly on what we need to do always in that next step.

R. Everything, I am able to, you will receive. All right, have a good day.

19. S. (36:14) I wanted to continue the friends’ question because it's something that's been rising here, I've heard this question in several places already as if we have a very strong event of connection so as a result of that later something negative gets broken out in reality.

R. You mean with outside of us?

S. There was a powerful and connecting event, and then the next week the war broke open.

R. What, there wasn't known that there was going to be a war? It was obvious.

S. People are kind of concerned now we have a strong unity evening. Could it be that because of that something negative will happen in the corporeal reality?

R. I don't think that we have to make such connections, no. On the contrary, from all of our work in connection, there should be higher, stronger connections, more practical, and bring us closer to the goal.