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

Daily Lesson (Morning), May 7, 2024.

Part 2: Baal HaSulam. The Love of God and the Love of Man

Reader: We are reading the article “The Love of God and the Love of Man.” We are continuing from the heading “And to Adhere to Him.”  

Reading: (00:16) “And to Adhere to Him.”

There still remains room to ask, “If the whole purpose of the Torah and all of creation is but to raise the base humanity to become worthy of that wonderful sublimity, and to adhere to Him, He should have created us with that sublimity to begin with instead of troubling us with the labor of creation, and the Torah and Mitzvot.

We could explain this with the words of our sages: “One who eats that which is not his is afraid to look at his face.” This means that anyone who feeds on the labor of others is afraid (ashamed) to look at his own form, for his form is inhuman.

Because no deficiency comes from His wholeness, He has prepared for us this work, so we may enjoy the labor of our own hands. This is why He created creation in this base form. The work in Torah and Mitzvot lifts us from the baseness of creation, and through it we achieve our sublimity by ourselves. Then we do not feel the delight and pleasure that comes to us from his generous hand as a gift, but as the owners of that pleasure.

However, we must still understand the source of the baseness that we feel upon receiving a gift. Nature scientists know that the nature of every branch is close to its root. The branch loves all the conducts in the root, wants them, covets them, and derives benefit from them. Conversely, the branch stays away from everything that is not in the root; it cannot tolerate them and is harmed by them.

Because our root is the Creator, Who does not receive but bestows, we feel sorrow and degradation upon every reception from another.

Now we understand the purpose of adhering to Him. The sublimity of Dvekut [adhesion] is only the equivalence of the branch with its root. On the other hand, the whole matter of baseness is only the remoteness from the root. In other words, each being whose ways are corrected to bestow upon others rises and becomes capable of adhering to Him, and every being whose way is reception and self-love is degraded and removed far from the Creator.

As a remedy, the Torah and Mitzvot have been prepared for us. In the beginning, we are to observe it Lo Lishma [not for Her sake], meaning to receive reward. This is the case during the period of Katnut [smallness], as education. When one grows, one is taught to observe Torah and Mitzvot Lishma [for Her sake], meaning to bring contentment to one’s Maker, and not for self-love.

Now we can understand the words of our sages who asked, “Why should the Creator mind whether one slaughters at the throat, or slaughters at the back of the neck? After all, the Mitzvot [commandments] were given only so as to cleanse people through them.”

But we still do not know what that cleansing means. With the aforesaid, we understand that “Man is born a wild ass’s colt,” completely immersed in the filth and baseness of self-reception and self-love, without any spark of love for one’s fellow person and bestowal. In that state, one is at the farthest point from the Root.

When one grows and is educated in Torah and Mitzvot defined only by the aim to bring contentment to one’s Maker and not at all for self-love, one comes to the degree of bestowal upon one’s fellow person through the natural remedy in the study of Torah and Mitzvot Lishma, that the Giver of the Torah knows, as our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created for it the Torah as a spice.”

By this the creature develops in the degrees of the above-said sublimity until one loses any form of self-love and self-reception, and one’s every attribute is to bestow or to receive in order to bestow. Our sages said about this, “The Mitzvot were given only in order to cleanse people by them,” and then one adheres to one’s Root to the extent of the words, “and to adhere to Him.”

M. Laitman: (07:52) Questions? Everything is clear. No questions. OK.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (08:20) He talks here about having to begin with Lo Lishma, not for Her sake, and then he reaches Lishma, for Her sake, until “he adheres to Him”. The more we advance toward Lishma, will it influence other people who engage in Torah? Will it pressure them, or will we be able to?

M. Laitman: They won't recognize it. 

Student: Should we provide the world with some sort of Lo Lishma in connection, so they will feel that they are entering Lo Lishma, not for Her sake for all kinds of acts of connection?

M. Laitman: If we're speaking about actions of connections, we teach them that it's good to be connected.

Student: They will receive the strength of Lo Lishma?

M. Laitman: They'll get the forces of Lo Lishma. Yes. That's good, too. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:40) He's talking about cleansing or purifying Israel, and I know that there are commandments. Let's say, for example, my firstborn is a girl, so I can't perform the Mitzvah of redeeming the son. So, if I don't connect with the friends, I won't be able to observe all the Mitzvot, commandments? 

M. Laitman: Of course. Only in the collective we can perform all the commandments. 

Student: That's a central principle here, that only through connection can we observe the commandments properly.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:22) He writes here that he comes to the degree of bestowal upon others through the natural remedy in the engagement in Torah and Mitzvot, Lishma. What is the natural remedy, Segula? What does that mean? 

M. Laitman: Segula, remedy, it's like hocus pocus. 

Student: Why is it natural? What is in the nature of this work?

M. Laitman: It's in the nature of the creation of the world; It’s in the nature of Nature. 

Student: What is he talking about? What is natural? What exists naturally in Nature?

M. Laitman: In Nature, everything exists in a natural form. If we perform all kinds of actions that are connected to some natural action, we can awaken that action and it will bestow upon us. 

Student: From what I understand, actions are bestowing upon others, the connection between us.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Are these actions the ones that awaken the most reforming light? 

M. Laitman: The most. If we could do it. 

Student: Why can't we? 

M. Laitman: Our ego. We always feel ourselves a bit more than the others.

Student: Okay, but that's exactly the indication we're working in the right place, on that important point, no?

M. Laitman: Yes, but that indication doesn't let you approach the others and help them, and that they will help you.

Student: What can help more?

M. Laitman: If we will perform a connection between us as it's written, through Torah and Mitzvot, Torah and commandments.

Student: What is it? What kind of connection? Because he writes at the beginning of the article that we deal with the details, but we don't get to the collective, to the general law. So, how do we connect all the details?

M. Laitman: We have to try and reach love. Love means connection without conditions, like from a mother to a child.

Student: Even though there are conditions and on top of it we want to connect without any conditions? 

M. Laitman: Yes. We have to reach a state where we annul all the conditions. 

Student: But they exist at the basis of the connection?

M. Laitman: Because we're made of the will to receive. All right?   

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (13:17) He describes how we ascend to the Creator from the lowliness of the will to receive, and he hangs it all on acts of observing Torah and commandments. Can you define in three words Torah and commandments? I wrote Torah and commandments, acts of equivalence of form.

M. Laitman: That's not everything. You just sliced everything off. Torah and commandments are the connection between all the parts of the Torah, between all parts of Nature and the Creator. 

Student: Okay.

M. Laitman: The connection between them in all ways, in all orders, in all levels.

Student: A person should make that connection?

M. Laitman: As much as he can, yes. 

Student: I'm asking if a person who reads this article for the first time and second time, wants to write something in Torah and Mitzvot that he will have something, something, what would you write? How would he define Torah and commandments that will show him that there is something here that he didn't think about?

M. Laitman: I'd say that Torah and Mitzvot, Torah, and commandments are the conditions of connection between man and the Creator. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:12) Torah and commandments on the inanimate level, is it the way a person keeps a connection with the Creator but without the ability to really have an intention? Is this the meaning of inanimate or still?

M. Laitman: He received it that way from his parents, and that's what he does. 

Student: In terms of his feelings, it's as if he's connected, in contact but he doesn't feel the answer and that's why it's still, inanimate? He doesn't hear the Creator's connection from the other side, the response?

M. Laitman: Yes. Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:06) To continue the friend, one who didn't receive it from birth, for him, any actions are regarded as faith above reason? 

M. Laitman: No, he still does it because he was told that this is what he has to do, just as we get from our parents. So, someone who supposedly doesn't have parents, gets it from somewhere else, from someone else.

Student: Where does faith above reason begin? 

M. Laitman: Faith above reason starts by, a person getting a personal connection with the Creator.

Student: What is the resistance upon?

M. Laitman: The resistance or the objection is that a person seemingly disconnects from something spiritual, internal, or personal. I don't know how to say it. But he is in a state where he's blurred.

Student: What does he go exactly above? What is that reason? 

M. Laitman: His reason now is what it was before, corporeal.

Student: And in faith above reason?

M. Laitman: Faith above reason is when he sees now that there is some sort of spirit in the world, not material but spiritual, and he wants to connect to it. 

Student: and when he connects upon that spirit, so where is his reason here, who is he now? 

M. Laitman: He himself doesn't know. He's kind of blurry, as we say. 

Student: What is this blurry state? What is it good for? Who is it good for? 

M. Laitman: That state of blurriness is for the person's benefit, so he will disconnect at least a little bit from his corporeal world and begin to build for himself his spiritual world.

Student: Is that a temporary state, or is that his reality now?

M. Laitman: It's his temporary reality, which allows him to disconnect from the corporeal state and to begin to enter a little bit into the spiritual state, the future spiritual state. 

Student: What is this new state he was born into?

M. Laitman: It is a state that he's already advancing toward connecting himself in a different way to spirituality, to the Creator. 

Student: What is a spiritual state that a person enters? 

M. Laitman: Spiritual is that which doesn't pass through matter.

Student: It's a new type of matter. It's a new form.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: What is spirituality?

M. Laitman: Spirituality is that which is not clothed in matter. This is spirituality. 

Student: That's the opposite of corporeality. But what is spirituality actually? 

M. Laitman: Spirituality itself is everything that exists without clothing in matter. 

Student: Can you depict it more? 

M. Laitman: No. 

Student: What can a person hold on to in such a state? 

M. Laitman: He doesn't hold on to anything. That's his problem. Because then he doesn't feel that he has any basis; he doesn't hang on to anything, he's simply between heaven and earth, that's what it's called. 

Student: Who is he? Who is a man at that point? Who is man at that point between heaven and earth? 

M. Laitman: I can't define this for you. What do you mean who is he? He is a created being.

Student: I know myself. I know my reason. I know my desires. Who am I in that new state between heaven and earth? 

M. Laitman: You help me find what to call it. When we seemingly fall from this world but haven't reached the next world.

Student: What is the benefit from this intermediate state? Why is there an intermediate state? 

M. Laitman: There cannot be a transition because there are two different forms of nature, completely different; with rules, forces, and conditions. Everything is different.

Student: What's the purpose of that transition between heaven and earth? 

M. Laitman: The purpose of the transition is to raise the person to the next level, the next degree. 

Student: Why does a person, there is a transition between corporeality and spirituality? And here there’s something else in the middle?

M. Laitman: No, no. There is a transition.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:23) I wanted to ask about the importance that Baal HaSulam gives “Love Your Friend as Yourself.” What does Baal HaSulam want to pass to us, the ones who study the wisdom, or to all people?

M. Laitman: It's the general law of reality; that all parts of reality are connected together in a way that you cannot cut between them.

Student: Love of others, how it’s expressed with Baal HaSulam. I don't know, in everything he writes, he always wants to write about the love of others. How should I observe Baal HaSulam through the love of others, that's everything he's telling us.

M. Laitman: That he holds on to it, and feels that, and this is the general law of reality to which we must reach. 

Student: Through people? Through contact with people? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: That's Baal HaSulam's message? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Can we explain it more? Because Baal HaSulam is worlds, Sefirot, where to look through “Love Your Friend as Yourself”?

M. Laitman: This is what he opened for us. 

Student: What did he open? 

M. Laitman: That law to make it closer to us.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (24:24) From everything I hear, what I understand is that there should be a state that all of a person's thoughts and deeds, there's a Creator in the background there. Just as a person works somewhere and he knows he has his landlord, there are demands, and he adapts himself to those demands, it's always in the background. So, the lowest state is that he doesn't have it in the background, just his self-feeling, there are the people around him that disturb him, and that's it. The more he feels the Creator stronger, so that's his uplifting towards spirituality, and then there's a state that not only does he feel, but there's already a presence. He feels a feedback that he's sure about, it's a feedback from the upper Force so that transition state isn’t until he feels that feedback. Until he has proof that his sensation because he could be in a state that he's not sure about himself. Maybe it's true, maybe not?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: So, what is this matter of, I wish they'd let me go and kept my Torah. You mean don't think about me, just do what I say.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: How does that work out together? 

M. Laitman: It works very well. That you shouldn't pray to some spirit, but you should do exactly the meeting with Him you have before you, clearly, one-to-one.

Student: How can it be without the feeling of the Creator?

M. Laitman: There will be the sensation of the Creator. There will be everything.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:33) The love of the Creator towards us causes shame, that we can't give back that love. How does the love of friends not cause that same result and even hatred?

M. Laitman: I would say it's more of a psychological phenomenon. Because in love of friends too, I have to feel that it's the love of the Creator that comes to me. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:10) I heard you said earlier to go a bit deeper into the future spiritual state. 

M. Laitman: So?

Student: The title is “To adhere to Him,” can we say that to adhere to Him is to search for the form of me plus one or me that is more bestowing? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: To search for this form? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: To ask the Creator to show me this form? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Also in the Ten, to try and see our form that we bestow to one another more? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:53) You told a friend that spirituality is what doesn't clothe in matter.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: But now you told another friend that bestowal is as much as he bestows to the friends. Isn't that clothing in matter?

M. Laitman: No.

Student: Why not?

M. Laitman: Because it's bestowal. 

Student: It's clothing in the friends, it's not considered my matter?

M. Laitman: No. We'll talk about it. We need to understand so it will be understood between us.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:34) Why is it better to enjoy self-work, to enjoy the work by me? 

M. Laitman: What is he trying to say? 

Student: He said that he who did not labor cannot enjoy, but if he did labor from his own work, then he can enjoy.

Student: I usually enjoy myself more without working.

M. Laitman: You enjoy it enough. So, why do you need to work?

Student: If I work and work for something and I receive it and enjoy it, then I feel as if I did it.

M. Laitman: So?

Student: Who can I enjoy except for myself? Who can I give gratitude for except for me? If I get a gift, with no reason I guess, then I feel wow, there is the Good That Does Good, there’s such a quality, and then it awakens gratitude inside. So, why is it better to work for pleasure?

M. Laitman: I don't know what you're saying.

Narrator: The friend is asking. If I'm laboring and I got a reward, I feel good, I did it. But if I didn't do anything and I got pleasure, it's clear it didn't come from me, and it came from the Creator. So, it sounds like that's the more correct form, so why is it written oppositely here, that only the pleasure I get by my work is better? That's what he's asking.

M. Laitman: Because then I feel that I own that pleasure; that I earned it, I did it, I'm the operator.

Student: I just received pleasure. That's the truth. The Creator, I don't have any assets, I don't own anything, so why is that a lie? Why do I need to build a lie that I did something? 

M. Laitman: I don't understand what he's saying. Friend, did you understand?

Student: Why do I need to lie to myself that I'm working to give something, and the pleasure comes from my work? There was a time in my life where I just hitchhiked around, I said to myself, I'm not going to spend any money, I'm not going to work, I'm just going to let the Creator give me, I want to know that the Creator cares for me. Wow, I couldn’t believe it, like Providence opened up before me. So, from this I discovered, wow, there's a great force caring for me, operating the whole system, there's something more than just individuals trying to take what they can or care for. If I had been such a good worker, not so lazy, I wouldn't have discovered it. So, why is it better to enjoy from your own work than it is from a gift, from the Creator? Because if I work for something, then I'm telling myself a lie that it comes from me, I work for the pleasure, I created the pleasure. If it just comes from me from the Creator, wow, even without, if I don't deserve it even, it's clear I don't deserve it, but the Creator gives such gifts anyway because He's so great. So, why is it better to work?

M. Laitman: I don't know what to answer him. I don't know. You answer him. 

Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (34:16) I think we're learning it in a very clear way. The pleasure a person is supposed to get from bestowal is much greater and better in quality than what he'll ever receive in the basic will to receive he has.

M. Laitman: Clear, next. 

Student: He's asking, why should I labor? Because then you will be the one bestowing in your work when you try to bestow contentment to the Creator? It is your bestowing and not reception, and from that you get spirituality, or a spiritual pleasure, not a corporeal pleasure. 

M. Laitman: I didn't understand you either.

Student: The friend explained that he can do nothing and get pleasure from the Creator. But that pleasure is in the vessels of reception.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Why is Baal HaSulam saying that this is a greater pleasure? Because a person ascribes the work for himself that he gave to the Creator, and that's an action of bestowal and from that he should get much more pleasure by bestowing. That's why the efforts of bestowal, we learn, are much greater than basic enjoyment in the will to receive.

M. Laitman: Okay. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (35:39) Maybe my work in faith, that the Creator will take care and then there's pleasure I get, some kind of pleasure, I work and work, so only to work in faith. But, in this world, it's as if the work also if I receive and I don't own anything, anything I have will come from the Creator, then it's like I don't hoard anything for myself, it's easy to give, you take what you need and give. So, where is the work? It's only in faith. All the Mitzvot, and commandments, I paid for years in such a way, and I got nothing. Then I didn't have anything to give to others either and if I work in faith above reason, the pleasure or the light will come not from my own work, but in reason, but from faith. So, then there were no assets, I gave everything I had.

M. Laitman: Clear. That's clear. What do you want?

Answer (Petah Tikva Center): (37:42) Maybe just to add that there's no light without a vessel. Without exertion, we'll never get any light, on one hand. On the other hand, in the beginning of the work, a person should say, if I’m not for me, who is for me? If I don't work nothing will happen. And at the end of the work, to say that the fact that he gave me an opportunity to work, the fact that he gave me an opportunity to perform deeds and actions that all came from None Else Besides Him, to begin with. To start the work, it has to be from “If it’s not for me, who is for me.” Maybe that's a dispute?

M. Laitman: Okay. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:30) Maybe to continue, we're in a process that the whole world Kli is preparing for a congress; for the convention of the 18th and 19th of May. And we work on the content and there's an amazing team leading this. And the question is, how can we leave a place for the Creator, that there really will be a demand for the Creator, that it's not us preparing it, but from now to start preparing like a sacred place there, like an area to reveal the Creator?

M. Laitman: Well, build that space.

Student: What should we expect, what should we build, what should we depict there?

M. Laitman: That between you there will be a big space, where the Creator will be revealed between you. 

Student: When we build something, plan something, so we actually fill it with our desires. But here, it's supposed to be something.

M. Laitman: There is nothing but desire. 

Student: What is the desire for the Creator that we have to establish there? 

M. Laitman: It is “I to my beloved, and my beloved to me.” It is a connection, it's a contact, it's a connection.

Student: What questions or which deficiencies should I come to the Congress with that we'll prepare from now?

M. Laitman: But you're preparing for the Congress. I don't know. 

Student: We're thinking of actions of the order of the content. It's not technical, it's not a technical action, It should lead to something.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: How to build that deficiency for this?

M. Laitman: What is the topic? 

Student: Above reason.

M. Laitman: You're saying as if you don't know what the topic of the Congress is?

Student: Rising Above Reason, that's the topic. Not that I don't know. Again, it's just words, Rising above reason. So, this should really be filled, that it will really be.

M. Laitman: So, we need to scrutinize what is reason, what is above reason, and what it means that we're rising to this degree? We need to do this. 

Student: We have to come to the convention that we don't know what it is, that that's a deficiency, that we don't know what the above reason is? What should we come with, and which demands should we come with? 

M. Laitman: Our wish is to know our King. To know, that's it. And then when it's clear to us what is our wish; we must demand of Him. Demand of Him, how to rise to such a level, such a degree.

Student: How will it be clear for us what this desire is? 

M. Laitman: When it's revealed. 

Student: As what? 

M. Laitman: As the Good That Does Good, as keeping the intention, love your friend as yourself; that all those demands, spiritual demands, are in Him.

Question (Petah Tikvah center): (43:17) More about events. In two days, we also have an event, a big event for our friends, and especially it's an opportunity to bring new people. It's an event for Independence Day in Israel, so everybody can bring someone he knows who will experience a bit of the Wisdom of Kabbalah and what it is. The question is, such a person who comes and doesn't have a connection, he came with a student who studies, but he himself doesn't study the wisdom of Kabbalah. What, with which inner charge does he get in such an event? 

M. Laitman: That by going through an evening with a group that is entirely occupied with revealing the Creator, so while I'm incorporated in them, at that same time I too can feel the Creator.

Student: Yes, people who come say that they really get inspired. How does that impression stay with them?

M. Laitman: If they don't tend to it afterward, it doesn't remain. 

Student: Does He give them a desire for more?

M. Laitman: It depends. I have nothing to add. It all depends on the person.

Reader: Announcements and we'll end with a song.

Song: (48:53)