The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning) January 22, 2025.
Part 2: The Creator is the Place - Selected excerpts from the sources.
Reader: The topic of our lesson in this part is “The Creator Is the Place of the World”. We will read selected excerpts. You can find them in the links in the Arvut system, in the study materials.
Reading: (00:28) 1. Beresheet Rabbah Twice
Why is the Creator called Place? Since He is the place of the world, and His world is not His place.
M. Laitman: This is a definition; do we have anything to add?
Reader: (01:21) What does it mean that the Creator is the place of the world?
M. Laitman: That the Creator is that place that can receive inside of it, to ascribe a tribute to the whole world?
Reader: The whole world is inside the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Reader: We, too, are inside the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Reader: We need to relate to the Creator as our place?
M. Laitman: Actually, yes.
Reader: So, basically, a person feels good when he's in His place. So, what does it mean that the Creator is my place?
M. Laitman: That you exist; when you exist inside the Creator, you feel that now we are in your place.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:35) The term, place, in the corporeal world is clear, it's some space in our three-dimensional reality. What's a spiritual place?
M. Laitman: Qualities. In spirituality, there are such qualities that, through them, you can define that this is the place of the Creator.
Student: Can a person define whether I'm now in the place or not inside the place?
M. Laitman: The person, if he has the possibility to measure his qualities.
Student: So, if he's in the quality of bestowal, that means he's in the place?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And if not, then he says, I'm now not in the place?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, this place only exists for those who are in bestowal?
M. Laitman: No, no, it depends on how a person defines the place.
Student: So, I heard before, that he defines it according to qualities.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Qualities that he acquires?
M. Laitman: Qualities that he feels that they exist in the world.
Student: If he feels them, then he has some equivalence with these qualities?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Then this place is what?
M. Laitman: A place in which these qualities in their expansion, can show us what place we have for it.
Student: This place invites the person to him?
M. Laitman: This place, no. It awakens us according to – what was the question?
Student: Does the place invite the person to it?
M. Laitman: The place draws the person to it, yes. When a person feels himself that he is in the right place, he develops and resides in that place.
Student: Let's say, when two people are in the same place, they'll describe it the same way?
M. Laitman: We didn't talk about that, yet. It's not for us yet to discuss that.
Student: Why is one of the Creator's names is, The Place?
M. Laitman: The place is that quality that I cannot define by any other quality. This is why I say about it, The Place.
Student: For instance, there are different names for the Creator: Elokim, Havayah, Ekel, Shadi, The Ten Unerasable Names. And one of them is called, The Place, what is unique about it, special about it?
M. Laitman: It means that every detail of the world can be in the same place.
Reader: What enables persons to be in the same place?
M. Laitman: Qualities.
Student: What qualities are in them?
M. Laitman: The will to receive and the will to bestow, we don't have any other qualities.
Student: So, the qualities that are the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, create a place for all the details of reality to be in?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, when we say that the Creator is The Place, what do we mean as far as qualities?
M. Laitman: We mean, that the Creator's qualities are, also, inventing that same place and defining it in an order that nothing else could be in that place.
Student: If I want to feel the place?
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: What does it depend upon?
M. Laitman: It depends on your qualities. Just like now, you feel that you're here. So, your qualities are in some kind of contact with the qualities of that place. And why don't you feel that you're in Australia? Because you don't have such qualities that you can say that; they're not even in you.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (11:26) Is there a difference between the place and Shechina? There's an article about the Shechina of Rabash where he says that this is the place, where such qualities as we talked about, meet.
M. Laitman: Yes. That needs an explanation.
Student: Maybe, we can read that article, the matter of the Shechina of Rabash?
M. Laitman: Maybe.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:05) We learn that His glory fills all the land but when we talk about the place in our intellect, a place is a limited place.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: What we're learning here now is that this place that we're drawing the force of the Creator to, is not limited, it can be in any place.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: So, we the created beings who don't have the quality of bestowal, don't have the natural ability to create a connection with Him or feeling towards that place. In order to build this place, this field, in actions, in disclosure of love, in building the right connection between us that's purposeful. That's how we're building this place? Are we making this place between us?
M. Laitman: The place is the Creator, Makom. When we define it in names or qualities, so we are supposedly revealing a part of the Creator. And in that part, we can build ourselves.
Student: That's exactly what I'm trying to understand. We have a building here, and towards this building, for instance, we have certain agreements: How we behave here, how we do, what we think. And that's why we create in this place, in this field, we create this place of the force of the Creator, the upper force?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Meaning, if we take this way of thought and operate this way in every place externally, besides this limited space, then we will invite that same force, that same feeling also in other places?
M. Laitman: Who invites it and who brings it?
Student: We, our decision, that we want. This is our desire, to perform these actions.
M. Laitman: Take some place and do it.
Student: No, I understand it's not a matter of take some place. We, Bnei Baruch, out of the fact that we have one common goal, and this is what we're learning, and it's correct that…
M. Laitman: it doesn't mean anything, yet.
Student: Yes, but that potential is there. If we're building it here, in this building, meaning we can build it anywhere else in the world. The force, this potential, this force of the Creator?
M. Laitman: Yes. So, what's your question?
Student: So, there's no question, that's the answer.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:30) Is there a place, are we making the place?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Meaning, as we gather here, let's say, in a Convention, and friends from the whole world come from everywhere, points in the heart, does something change in the place?
M. Laitman: What changes are your definitions, your relations, to the place.
Student: Is there a holy place?
M. Laitman: There is a holy place, there is half holy, quarter holy.
Student: Meaning, it's in our world, in our corporeal reality, if the place is everything, there's nothing, and the glory fills the whole land, as we read about it. So, the question i, whether in this world, there's a place, a physical place, that is holy? That the very gathering between us sanctify this place and create something else?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: For example, a Convention, where friends will gather here, what is special?
M. Laitman: What's special is that in that same place, we determine what can dwell there.
Student: What is this place that we're talking about, right now? Is it the physical place that we're gathering? Where is this point of place?
M. Laitman: Our common desire.
Student: And our physical connection in that place, physically, what does it change, as far as the spiritual place, the feeling of the spiritual place?
M. Laitman: It either draws or rejects, spirituality.
Student: The place, itself, doesn't change. It's our, the way we relate to the place and the reality. Another question, is there one place or many places?
M. Laitman: Infinite.
Student: And is there a special place for the Ten?
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: So, what differentiates within the place, what are the differentiations? Is there one center, focal point or is it just filled and everything is just, a place?
M. Laitman: The place for us is the place for the upper force to dwell, meaning, the quality of bestowal. And what resembles that place, as much as it resembles that, that's the way we measure it and that's how we call that place.
Student: So, the place is the feeling of the Creator, the filling?
M. Laitman: The place is the feeling of the Creator.
Student: What does it sit upon? What deficiency does it sit upon, if it's the place that's filling?
M. Laitman: The original place?
Student: Yes.
M. Laitman: The original place is a desire to be filled with the light.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:16) Can we say that the place is the deficiency that the Creator creates that we need to fill with our intention to bestow to Him?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: That's why, even two is the smallest group. That the moment we're in the intention to bestow, that we're actually connecting that place to the deficiency that He created?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:53) A person feels the place according to his qualities that he's in?
M. Laitman: According to the qualities.
Student: How does he choose what qualities to be in?
M. Laitman: He doesn't choose, that already depends on his relation to different desires that he goes through.
Student: How can we open ourselves, as example, to qualities like the greatness of the Creator – joy, exaltedness? How do we put ourselves in those qualities to feel that place?
M. Laitman: By prayer. By prayer that all these qualities are in the Creator and through prayer, that we want to feel, to work with them, to be filled by them. In this way, we come closer to them.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (21:20) In every text that we read, we could look at it in the internality and externality. And if in externality, then we also look to get some kind of wisdom, some kind of understanding from the text. In the internality, to understand a little bit, that it's happening in you and written about you. So, a situation turns out where a person is always standing before very high values of the Creator, of bestowal. And then he's kind of judging himself and seeing how lowly he is. That's like what is born from it, it's kind of a very unpleasant feeling. Each time you're trying to understand what Baal HaSulam writes, to understand that he's writing about us, our state, and what we need to be. It's kind of putting us in a not good place in relation to what we need to be. How do we live with such a feeling constantly, that you're not okay?
M. Laitman: I don't know, I'm not living in that feeling all the time.
Student: It's kind of, like, the possibility to look at the cup half-full. Well, I'm okay, we're trying, we're doing work in the group, in the Ten, world Kli, Conventions. We're kind of making efforts. But if we look at the empty half of the glass, it's kind of like this feeling, like, something else needs to happen and something else needs to move inside, so that we will truly be in the reality of adhesion and bestowal.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: What do we need to do, so that something will move for us, inside?
M. Laitman: We need to take into consideration the same force that is teaching us, moving us. And every time, to try and locate, more and more, through which discernments, we come closer to Him, understand Him, and in which discernments, the opposite, what opposite discernments. And then, it will become more clear to us, what we are supposed to do. That’s what I’d say.
Student: There's this sentence that even a thief in the basement is calling on the Creator; the dollar, “In God we trust”. There's this desire to be connected to the Creator but there's two kinds: Either we want to be filled, or the few virtuous few, that are maybe called Israel here in the world - there in Moscow or China, I don't know where, who feel, that for them, it's the example that needs to make a change in them. So, it's kind of like, what do you want from the Creator? That's the question that stands to be tested each time in a person. And each time such a desire to make a change in him awakens, the picture he receives is not a good picture. It's like a bad diagnosis, it's like, you prefer not to go to have tests at the doctor because you know that the results will be bad. I constantly feel with this question, where do you get more strength, more courage to go in that direction, which is against reason, against the world? Where do you collect more forces to go to this dark place that you don't know what it looks like and truly yearn for a state that you don't know? Where do you collect these forces from?
M. Laitman: How to walk through the dark areas? I'd say take the book of Psalms and go; that's it. I don't know.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:02) You said a few weeks ago that Adam HaRishon harmed the place. And we know, he was expelled according to the story. And we have a place that's called, the Ten. What's the central thing that we're supposed to correct in this place called, the Ten?
M. Laitman: To connect in the center of the Ten with all your hearts. And from there and onward, try to define all the qualities of connection in a way, in a more external manner. That's it.
Student: The place a person fell from, it's like he fell from the place of connection with the Creator to a place where the whole world is in right now. Wars, disasters.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: We have a common goal, how do we, above all those things that even inside the Ten can be revealed? Also, the difficulty to even see good things in a friend.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: How does this actually help us build the place and not distance us?
M. Laitman: So, like you started saying, that we, if we, dwell in a Ten, in the center of the Ten, then we are in the place. Or if we're outside of the Ten, so we're outside of the place.
Student: Every moment we need to check if I, and every moment the Creator is adding something that's kind of like expelling me outward, then I need to join?
M. Laitman: Yes, yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:34) The center of the Ten, can we say that the center of the Ten is the center of all the Tens, is in the same place or not?
M. Laitman: No.
Student: Meaning each Ten has something special where everyone connects?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: You said that if you're in the center of the Ten, then it's revealed, if not, not. But every moment it can change. A person from a Ten, can he be in the center of the Ten without his friends? What's the center of the Ten?
M. Laitman: The center of the Ten is the connection of the Ten that in it a person exists, and we are all connected there in this Ten. And he feels that he's in the center of the Ten; that he's the one connecting between the Ten to that center.
Student: And it's there, that we say the Creator is revealed? That place that we're talking about, the name of the Creator?
M. Laitman: Let's say.
Student: Now, according to what you explained now, I can imagine to myself that I'm there? How do I know if I'm there or not?
M. Laitman: That depends on your vessels.
Student: The work at toiling, at trying to even imagine and trying to being in this. Does that already bring a person in the right direction, towards the center of the Ten?
M. Laitman: It brings you closer.
Student: If I can ask more about the commandments, the Mitzvot. We see that there are commandments of the person to the place and there's the commandments between man and man, his friend. How are these commandments connected? If we take a Ten, for example, we said the center of the Ten is a place, but on the other hand, I have a collection of different friends that each is different one from another. So, I need to also do commandments towards the place and also towards each friend, actually.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: So, how to connect them, what's the difference between them?
M. Laitman: Connect to your friends and ask them and try to build a common effort together for it.
Question (Women Turkiye 8): (31:28) How can I come to a degree in which the Creator is present, in every place I see Him?
M. Laitman: Again?
Student: How will I come to a degree in which the Creator is present, in every place I see Him?
M. Laitman: I don't know. We're putting conditions for the Creator, to revealing the Creator, to attaining the Creator, that's what I'm hearing.
Reader: She's asking, how will she be able to see the Creator in every place? How will she be able to feel the presence of the Creator in every place? How could she come to such a level?
M. Laitman: That is under the condition. I can't have a few thoughts in my mind right now that I can’t clothe in that right now.
Question (PT 22): (32:49) What does the ability to receive discernments to come closer to the upper force depend upon?
M. Laitman: It depends on my relation to clothe in those qualities.
Question (PT 38): (33:19) What's the difference between place and field?
M. Laitman: In spirituality, a field has no limits, like an ocean, let's say; and a place is something limited.
Question (Women Rehovot 1): (33:45) How do we reveal the Creator through names and qualities?
M. Laitman: When we discover the Creator by revealing the contact with the Creator. At that point we discover the names, and according to that, we name things.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (34:18) Place, which is limited, can you see it as an opportunity for collaboration? This limited place, it has limitations and in order to enable it, can we see it as an opportunity for collaboration? And then, it obligates a person to what it comes with, with what intention, with what openness, etc.? So, to see it as an opportunity?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: That's why the place is limited, to enable a person to grow from there?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (35:33) I heard that you said that yearning helps you keep all the conditions. How, by feeling a place, can my yearning keep the conditions? How can we spread it between us?
M. Laitman: Again?
Student: Yearning helps you keep all the conditions, that's what I heard from you. So, I'm asking, on our path to feel that place, how do we create such a yearning between us?
M. Laitman: By you feeling that the place is a response, an answer to what you're longing for.
Student: A response? A common response?
M. Laitman: Not common. Let's say, your response.
Student: Can I pass it to the friends?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (37:15) I'm inspired there're so many discernments. I just want to add that it all depends on preparation. When we do something together for the sake of the connection. We were in one tendency to prepare the place. We, as a Ten, went for a weekend, so you feel how the Creator, you enjoy to bestow to the friends to such an extent that you get a fulfillment. But the efforts you did to connect, you're in unlimited pleasure. Once we start scrutinizing what you gain from this, so the limitation starts coming up and strong scrutinies. So, like we learned it's all about the preparation, how we can concentrate on that same point. So, that's what I'm expecting from the Congress that we want to reach.
M. Laitman: Very well.
Question (Almaty): (38:43) Wonderful lesson, all these scrutinies. You said the place depends on how a person defines the place. And you answered a friend that the place depends on my qualities. Once I thought that if I couldn't come to the morning lesson, so it was unapproachable for me because I didn't do enough effort to be present, so the lesson escaped me. On the other hand, you said that this place awakens and draws, so there's a confusion. Should we invest forces for that place?
M. Laitman: Yes, the place will be found according to our efforts.
Question (Hadera 1): (39:54) I want to ask about terminology. We learned that a place is a deficiency.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: And now, it's only a deficiency to bestow. So, the will to receive isn't a place.
M. Laitman: The desire to receive is a place for reception, and we learn how to bestow. Therefore, the desire to receive for us is not called the place that we seek. We are seeking the place of bestowal.
Student: Our awareness works on two foundations: Time and space. It seems that there's a connection between time and space. Could we say that the will to receive is an empty space?
M. Laitman: The desire to receive is an empty space, yes.
Student: So, all of the desires, that are not spiritual are empty space. Or there is a difference between an empty space and the desires that haven't been corrected yet?
M. Laitman: Yes, of course, there's a difference.
Student: How can I say that a place is limited? There's a place and the place is in a place, and all places are also in a place. So, a place is infinite.
M. Laitman: You're not going according to that? You're going according to clear definitions.
Student: Yes, but when I talk about the Creator, that He's the Place, so all places I can define are also in a place?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, it's infinite?
M. Laitman: It's infinite, yes. There's such a concept called, Ein Sof, infinite, yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (42:31) Can we say that the point in the heart is a piece of the puzzle of the place?
M. Laitman: Beginning of it.
Student: And if I recognize one friend’s yearning or another’s, if I connect with them, I'm creating a broader place? And coming closer, further away, right?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (42:59) You said that the field is like an ocean, not like a place. But we know that there're commandments of working in the field. So, the Ten is like the field and the more I work towards the friends, by this, we create the place.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: When we plow, and we seed.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (43:27) Is it right to define the place according to the intention, where there's an intention to bestow, that's the place? And then, there's a limit - if the intention is to receive, it is just not there, it's not in the place?
M. Laitman: You could say it. Not in every place but you could say that.
Question (Women Turkiye): (44:01) If the whole world is in the Creator, so what about all the evil we see in the world? Where is that?
M. Laitman: Again?
Student: If the whole world is in the Creator, so what about all the evil that we see? Where is that? Also, there?
M. Laitman: Yes, we just need to come to a state in which we define the bad and good as towards a person; whereas it's all in relation to a person.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (45:12) A place, is there depth and width?
M. Laitman: We usually define it according to the degree of coarseness that's in that place.
Student: The degree of the coarseness in quality. The quality of the intentions and desires?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: So, that means that I can want to bestow but I, also, need to scrutinize how real it is. In what direction I am?
M. Laitman: Correct.
Student: So, in the gathering of Ten in the world Kli, there's a distance only according to the quality of the intentions?
M. Laitman: Let's say, yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (46:14) How can a person adapt himself to the qualities of the place in order to remain in it? To be drawn more inward and not to be ejected outward?
M. Laitman: That's like in our world, where you know the society and you want to incorporate in it, to come closer to it. So, you take upon yourself more and more qualities that are similar to what is happening inside the society. And then, gradually, you feel also from what you are observing in your qualities what you're lacking in order to incorporate in the society. What else do you have to take upon yourself in order to come closer to them? That's how it is.
Student: And if he sees that what he has in order to come closer, meaning the gap between the qualities of the place and him. So, it seems like a high mountain that he's trying to overcome but he sees that one time after the next he fails and even moves further away, and he's ejected from the place.
M. Laitman: So, he has who to ask for the change. For him to try to be amongst the friends who have the same inclination. And, he also has who to turn to above to be helped, to be incorporated. To be dissolved amongst those people who want to be not each in his ego, to stand out. Rather that everyone needs to be connected together.
Student: Could there be a state that the Creator takes a person out of place?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: Why should He do such a thing?
M. Laitman: It could be, I don't know, it's just that the Creator can do anything.
Student: But if a person wants to come closer to the qualities of the Creator and he feels that the Creator is pushing him out of the place where his qualities are?
M. Laitman: So, he prays.
Student: Okay. The question is if after he prays, the Creator can still take a person out from all kinds of reasons and cause him?
M. Laitman: So, a person, nevertheless, scrutinizes in what is he so distant and opposite from the Creator, and he tries to change himself.
Student: And after he did all this, and tried, and came closer to the friends who have those qualities of the place, and he prayed to the Creator to change his qualities.
M. Laitman: Yes?
Student: Could there still be a state of the Creator ejects him?
M. Laitman: Could be, anything could be; we're just talking about what we're capable of doing.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (50:05) From what I understand from friends, there's a place. There's the One managing the place, He invited me there. But throughout years and work in that place, He shows me that I'm like an uninvited guest. So, what should I do in such a state?
M. Laitman: Try to pressure, to cry, to do all kinds of actions – alone or in the society, and this is how you'll overcome.
Student: But it's that same point that we're always bumping into, and we can't overcome, even though the time goes by?
M. Laitman: If you have a clear direction to pressure that point, and you get the answer to it. Then you have the possibility to come to there with a claim, with a just claim. Try.
Student: So, only to try, not to pay attention to anything else, just trying? Just trying and overcoming in that point.
M. Laitman: Yes, what else to do? Nothing else to do.
Student: There's two possibilities or to cry, or to say, okay, the day's gone by, I'm going to overcome and keep going. So, what should I choose from?
M. Laitman: I don't know what you're choosing. It could be that you will choose to cry, to sit and cry. I don't think, that's the correct action. The correct action is, nevertheless, to do that which the Creator has created in order to do.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (52:21) I always have the same question, how, let's say, we determined, let's say in a month, there's a Congress. Many friends are going to come here to Petah Tikva. Some are going to gather all over the world and it's something we decided in a timeline. How does that bring this place to the spiritual place?
M. Laitman: We decide.
Student: This place always exists but we're on a timeline, putting a mark and saying, that'll be our holiday. That's when we're going to gather.
M. Laitman: Because we exist with the feeling of this timeline.
Student: It really brings us closer to the place that we're taking that decision?
M. Laitman: No, no but it gives us, to our feelings some value, some number, that I'm in this place.
Student: So, let's say now we're already getting ready for the Congress. All the friends registered, ordered tickets, did many actions. You already see it in front of your eyes. So, that already brings us closer to that place, that action?
M. Laitman: Yes, of course. There are also many examples to this.