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

Daily Lesson (Morning), April 01, 2024    

Part 1: Rabash. Article 41. (1990) “What Are the Light Mitzvot that a Person Tramples with His Heels in the Work?”

Reader: Shalom, we're reading the writings of Rabash. The article, “What are the light Mitzvot the person tramples with his heels in the work?” You can find the study materials on our websites in the Arvut system. You can also send us questions live through our websites. Here in the study hall, anyone who wants to ask a question is asked to stand up, hold the microphone close to his mouth and speak loud and clear.

Reading Article: (00:35) What Are the Light Mitzvot that a Person Tramples with His Heels, in the Work?

About the verse “And it shall come to pass, because you listen, and keep and do them, and the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy that He swore to your forefathers,” RASHI interpreted as follows, “If the Mitzvot [commandments/good deeds] are light, which a person tramples with his feet, listen, and the Lord will keep, keep with you His promise.”

We should understand what it means to us that if a person observes the light Mitzvot then the Creator will keep with you the oath. We should understand this condition, which implies that otherwise, it is as though He cannot keep the oath he swore to your forefathers. We should also understand what the interpreters ask, why does he begin with plural form [in Hebrew], “keep and do,” and ends in singular form [in Hebrew], “will keep with you.”

To understand this, we first need to understand the meaning of the 613 Mitzvot that we were given. In the “Introduction of The Book of Zohar” (“General Explanation for All Fourteen Commandments and How They Divide into the Seven Days of Creation,” Item 1), “The Mitzvot in the Torah are called Pekudin [Aramaic: commands/deposits], as well as 613 Eitin [Aramaic: counsels/tips]. The difference between them is that in all things there is Panim [anterior/face] and Achor [posterior/back]. The preparation for something is called Achor, and the attainment of the matter is called Panim. Similarly, in Torah and Mitzvot there are ‘We shall do’ and ‘We shall hear.’ When observing Torah and Mitzvot as ‘doers of His word,’ prior to being rewarded with hearing, the Mitzvot are called ‘613 Eitin’ and are regarded as Achor. When rewarded with ‘hearing the voice of His word,’ the 613 Mitzvot become Pekudin, from the word Pikadon [deposit]. This is so because there are 613 Mitzvot, where in each Mitzva [singular of Mitzvot], the light of a unique degree is deposited, corresponding to a specific organ in the 613 organs and tendons of the soul, etc., and this is regarded as the Panim of the Mitzvot.”

“Doers of His word” is during the preparation, before a person is rewarded with “Hearing the voice of his word,” for “hearing” is when a person has been rewarded with vessels of bestowal, for only then is there a receptacle for the abundance to clothe in vessels of bestowal. At that time, he has “ears” to hear the voice of the Creator.

But while he is still immersed in vessels of reception, a person must work in “doing,” called “action,” although the body disagrees to work for the sake of the Creator. Rather, he must believe that although he is in a state of lowliness, meaning that the body disagrees with this work—to work for the sake of the Creator—still, the Creator enjoys this because in a state of lowliness, a person feels that he needs the Creator’s help. Hence, at that time he has close contact with the Creator, since he feels that he has no other way and only the Creator can save him and deliver him from this lowliness.

However, a person asks himself, “Where are the Creator’s justice and integrity?” He labors and observes Torah and Mitzvot, and he wants no reward for this. Rather, he wants to work for the sake of the Creator, as it is written in The Zohar, to work because he wants to serve a great King, meaning because He is great and ruling. When he asks the Creator to let him feel His greatness, and the person believes that the Creator hears the prayer of every mouth, each day he stands and waits to have more feeling of the greatness of the Creator, but in the end he sees that he has come to greater lowliness. In other words, he feels that people on the street are not as immersed in self-love.

So, the person asks, “How come people on the street, who have no prayer that the Creator will deliver them from self-love, are fine?” He sees that they feel the order of the work as utter completeness, meaning they know that each day they are advancing, meaning that their possessions are growing. It is as I said once, that each of them has a log where he sees how many Mitzvot were registered to his name each day, and how many pages of Gemara he can write in his log. He, on the contrary, sees the opposite, that each day he is worse than the day before.

When a person introspects, he sees that he has several ascents each day until he sometimes thinks, “Now I am certain that I have reached my goal, not as it was until now.” But suddenly, thoughts that confuse him come to him and he forgets everything, meaning he completely forgets even about the ascents and feels nothing but lowliness. Now, after all the work he has done, he has become worse than ever. He begins to look at himself and finds not one good deed, and he feels as though he never observed Torah and Mitzvot.

The question is, How can a person explain these feelings to himself? Are they true or false? That is, with respect to reality, and reality cannot be erased, he certainly exerted and observed Torah and Mitzvot. But according to his feeling, it all disappeared. The question is, Where did they go, meaning who took them, since he does not feel them? He cannot say that he is suffering from amnesia and this is why he has forgotten everything. After all, he sees that he does remember the bad things he did.

The answer is that we must believe in the sages, as it is said in The Zohar, which interprets what is written, “Or make it known to him that he has sinned.” He asks, “Who makes it known to him?” And he explains, “The Torah.” As we once explained, by learning Torah with the intention to achieve the truth, meaning to really be a servant of the Creator, meaning that by observing Torah and Mitzvot, he does not mean to work for himself, meaning that he will receive reward. Rather, he wants to observe Torah and Mitzvot as our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.” That is, he learns Torah as an advice by which to truly become a servant of the Creator, meaning that he wants to work for the sake of the Creator, so the Torah notifies him that he has sinned.

This means that the order of “the Torah as a spice” is that first, it lets him know that “he has sinned,” meaning how immersed he is in self-love. This is regarded as the Torah, which is the spice, gives him the Kli [vessel], meaning the lack, so he will need the Creator’s help. It follows that the Torah notifies him that his faith in the Creator is something foreign to him. Put differently, he feels how far he is from the Creator, that the Creator to him is like a stranger. As Baal HaSulam said about the verse “There shall be no strange God within you,” “God” means that the Creator should not be to you like something foreign with which you have no connection.

A person is immersed in self-love, which is disparity of form from the Creator, since the Creator wants only to bestow while a person by nature wants only to receive. For this reason, “He and I cannot dwell in the same abode.” It follows that where one should have felt close to the Creator, he feels remoteness from the Creator. This is what the Torah makes him know, meaning one who learns Torah, since he believes in the words of our sages, who said, “The Creator said, ‘I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.’” This spice is given to a person so he will feel how far he is from the Creator.

It follows that the Torah gives man the Kli, meaning the lack, for man to ask the Creator to deliver him from exile, called “exile in Egypt.” It is known that Metzar-Yam [Mitzraim (Egypt)] means Tzar-Ayin [lit. narrow-eyed, meaning “jealous”]. That is, a person has no power to bestow, but only to receive. Although he sees that it is impossible to approach the Creator before all his actions are in order to bestow, he nonetheless sees that there is no way he will be able to achieve this without His help.

We already said many times why the Creator did this, meaning that there will be no option for a person to emerge from Pharaoh’s control. The answer is as Baal HaSulam said about what Abraham asked the Creator when He promised him the inheritance of the land, “How will I know that I will inherit it? And He said to Abram, ‘Know that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs.’”

He said that Abraham’s question was that he saw what would be the inheritance of the land, which is Malchut that carries the upper abundance, which contains the five Behinot [qualities] NRNHY of Kedusha [holiness]. Also, it is known that there is no light without a Kli [vessel], meaning no filling without a need. Yet, Abraham saw that Israel have no need to obtain the completion of the degree. Rather, if they attain a little bit of illumination from above, they will be satisfied. Naturally, they would have no need to obtain the NRNHY of Neshama that is included in Malchut, which is called “the inheritance of the land.”

“So how,” said Abraham, “will they receive the light, when they have no Kelim [vessels], called ‘need’?” At that time, the Creator told him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs.” In other words, the people of Israel will be in an Eretz [land], meaning a Ratzon [desire] that does not belong to the people of Israel. They will be under the governance of the will to receive, which belongs to Pharaoh, King of Egypt.

“They will be tormented,” meaning that the people of Israel will suffer because they are unable to work in order to bestow, which would bring them Dvekut [adhesion] with the Creator. At that time they will need the Creator’s help, as it is written, “And their cry rose up to God from the work, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham.”

Our sages said, “He who comes to purify is aided.” The Zohar asks, “How is he aided?” and it replies, “with a holy soul.” In other words, first one is given Nefesh. If he is rewarded more, he is given Ruach. This means that to the extent that one comes to purify himself and demands help, the help he receives from above is considered part of the inheritance of the land.

According to the above, we should interpret what we asked, Why when a person begins to learn Torah for the reason that the Torah is called “a spice,” when one begins to walk on the path of truth, where the Torah is as Eitin, meaning counsels how to conquer the evil inclination, the person begins to see how each time, instead of feeling closer to the Creator, he feels that he has become farther?

We asked, “Is this the way of Torah, by which one becomes farther from the Creator?” The answer was that the Torah first gives him a Kli, meaning the lack, to see how far he is from the Creator. This is why The Zohar says that the Torah notifies him that he has sinned.

It follows that one should not say that he is learning Torah in truth, so why does the Torah not help him as a spice? The answer is that one should believe in the sages that the Torah does help him by revealing to him that he has sinned, meaning how far he is from the Creator, and because of it, he can pray from the bottom of the heart, since he feels that he is worse than other people.

Although if he asks himself, he will see that he makes more efforts to observe Torah and Mitzvot, so why does he feel that he is worse? A person cannot answer this, but he says that as far as feeling, he feels that now he is worse than when he engaged in Torah and Mitzvot before he began to walk on the path of truth. In other words, in everything he does, he sees that it is all halfheartedly, and not as before.

This is as Baal HaSulam said, that the Creator said to Abraham, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will be tormented.” By this they will have a need to inherit the land. That is, by the lack that they will have when they are bare and destitute, they will be in a state of “And the children of Israel sighed from the work, and their cry rose up to God from the work.”

In other words, the work itself, the fact that they are not progressing in the work, but on the contrary, will create their need, and then the Creator will help them each time they want to be purer. By this they will have Kelim [vessels] to receive the inheritance of the land.

According to the above, we should interpret what we asked, “And it came to pass, because you listen, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy that He swore to your forefathers.” RASHI interpreted, “If the light Mitzvot, which a person tramples with his feet, listen, and the Lord will keep, keep with you His promise.” We should understand this condition, that if you keep the light ones, the Creator will keep His promise; otherwise, He will not keep the oath.

The thing is that “light Mitzvot” means things that people belittle, referring to the mind and the heart. That is, all the Mitzvot, when observing them in order to receive reward, a person does not belittle these Mitzvot. Instead, all of these Mitzvot are called “serious,” since they might cause the loss of the reward. Therefore, the reward they expect to receive in return for them makes the Mitzvot important. In other words, the reward makes them valuable.

But when a person should work for the sake of the Creator, which is to him above reason, a person has no regard for this, since the body resists working for no reward. Therefore, when we say to the body that we must work only in order to bestow upon the Creator, the body says that this is far from the mind and it is not worth straining for such work. Then, the person sees that he cannot overcome the body. As Baal HaSulam explained, the fact that it is not within man’s power to emerge from the control of the will to receive for himself, the Creator did this on purpose, so that by this a person will acquire a need for the Creator’s help, for otherwise he is lost.

Hence, when a person asks the Creator to help him, by this he receives help from above. This is the light of the Torah, which “reforms him,” as said in The Zohar, that by this he receives Kelim and a need to attain the NRNHY of Neshama. This was the Creator’s answer to Abram’s question, “How will I know that I will inherit it?”

It follows that precisely when a person wants to observe the light Mitzvot, he needs the Creator’s help. Otherwise, if a person has no need to observe the light Mitzvot, which are contemptible Mitzvot, then he does not need the Creator’s help. And since he has no need for the Creator to help him by giving him NRNHY of Neshama, since he has no need for this, so Abram’s question, “How will I now that I will inherit it?” returns, since he has no need to obtain the inheritance of the land.

It therefore follows that the Creator cannot keep the oath concerning the inheritance of the land. For this reason, RASHI’s interpretation, where he says that if you keep the light Mitzvot, the Creator will be able to keep, “And the Lord will keep,” meaning that the Creator will keep His promise; otherwise, it is impossible to keep His promise.

Accordingly, we should interpret what we asked. Why does it begin in plural form, “do” and “keep,” and ends in singular form? The answer is that when a person begins to work, he has two authorities: his own authority, namely the will to receive, and he also wants to work for the Creator. When a person sees that he has two authorities, he asks the Creator to help him cancel his authority and leave only the singular authority, meaning the authority of the Creator. Then, the Creator helps him annul the authority and leaves man with only the singular authority. This is why it is written in singular form, “And the Lord your God will keep with you,” meaning that the Creator will keep him so he will have only the singular authority.

According to the above, we can understand what is written (Deuteronomy 9:5), “It is not for your righteousness or the integrity of your heart that you are going to inherit their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, and in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your forefathers, to Abraham.”

We should understand this. If the Creator wants to give the inheritance of the land to Israel because He swore to “your forefathers, to Abraham,” it means that the reason He gave the inheritance of the land to the people of Israel was that He promised to Abraham the inheritance of the land. But here the verse says that the reason He gave the inheritance to Israel was the wickedness of the nations. This implies that were it not for the wickedness of the nations, He would not be able to keep His promise to the forefathers. We should understand why it is that if there is the wickedness of the nations, the Creator can keep the oath, and because of “your righteousness or the integrity of your heart,” the Creator cannot keep the oath.

According to the above, in the work, the wickedness of the nations means the evil within man’s heart. A person cannot defeat it and must cry out to the Creator to help him and liberate him from the governance of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. How does He help him? It is as it is said in The Zohar, “with a holy soul.” This means that each time he asks for help, he receives a holy soul. By being in exile and wanting to emerge from exile, meaning when a person feels that he has the wickedness of the nations, who are not letting him work for the sake of the Creator, but only for himself, this is regarded as having to work for the sake of the nations of the world within his body.

This is as it is written (Exodus 1:11), “And they built for Pharaoh cities of affliction, Pithom and Rameses.” Baal HaSulam interpreted that when they wanted to work for the sake of the Creator and overcame the control of the Egyptians, this is the meaning of Rameses, meaning that they overcame the self-love, like Ra’am [thunder] Sus [horse], meaning with great power, like a horse. They thought they had already emerged from the governance of self-love, but then they came to Pi-Tehom [mouth of the abyss], meaning that all the buildings they had built sank and were swallowed in the abyss, and not a remnant was left of the work. This is called “Pithom.”

In other words, each time, they had work in the manner of “Pithom and Rameses,” meaning that each day they had to work anew. That is, each day they felt as though today they began the work of holiness, and felt as though until now, they had never engaged in the work. They ask themselves, where did the work and labor they had done thus far vanish? But they do not know what to answer. As was said, it all sank and was swallowed in the ground.

They could not tell their bodies, “Why do you not want to exert today? After all, yesterday, you saw that when you labored, you received the strength to work. You cannot receive something from yesterday,” since he does not feel that yesterday he did something, for it was all swallowed in the ground. Indeed, why is this so? This is a correction.

It follows that if a person looks at himself and he has good deeds, he has no need to ask the Creator to help him, since anyhow, he has no place in which to receive help from the Creator, as there is no filling without a lack. Thus, the Creator cannot keep the oath concerning the inheritance of the land, since they have no need that He will give to them the inheritance of the land as help.

This is why he says, “It is not for your righteousness or the integrity of your heart that you are going to inherit their land.” Why? Because if they are fine, they have no need. This is the meaning of the words “It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out,” since because of the evil in his body, there is a need for help.

M. Laitman: (38:20) Okay. If we will try to go like this through all the articles about Passover, it will be something. Questions?

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (38:45) What can a person do, or should do, in order to reach a feeling of such lowliness that he is the worst of everyone? 

M. Laitman: According to what we see from the article, we should simply flow along with whatever we get from the Creator, whatever guidance and this is enough, in order for us to feel all the flaws in us. What is it that we have to correct in order to reach the goal.

Student: He writes to be worse than all other people, he doesn't mean to flow, he said he needs to flow? 

M. Laitman: To flow along means that I need to do whatever is upon me to do each and every day and this is how I reach a state where the people of Israel side from the work. That’s it and for that I already get an answer, help from the Creator. 

Student: He also writes that the Torah is called spice, that gives one a deficiency to need the Creator. Meaning when a person asks to advance and asks for help from above, they give him a holy soul, a deficiency. On the other hand, a few paragraphs later, he says the Torah gives one advice on how to conquer the evil inclination. The Torah gives you both the deficiency and the feeling that he is in self-love and also the advice on how to conquer the evil inclination. But it doesn't write what are the advice, where is it written, where can you find it? 

M. Laitman: Apparently, we need to discover the deficiency and to walk forward in this way until the deficiency itself becomes a vessel for the revelation of the Creator. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (41:31) He writes that when you follow the path of Torah the Torah reveals to a person who he is, and he says that this is a sin, but the Creator does everything, so why is it considered a sin if the Creator does everything, the person only reveals it? 

M. Laitman: That's okay, it doesn't matter. The Creator did a man like that, that he was born in sin, and he lives in sin. 

Student: How should a person relate to it? When he's notified that he has sinned, he needs to turn to the Creator, no? 

M. Laitman: He needs to discover that the sin that exists in him, that he feels within him, is the desire to receive in order to receive and that he must rise out of it.

Student: But the Creator, does it? 

M. Laitman: Of course, so what? 

Student: Why is it considered a sin? Sin is something that I do, I shouldn't be doing, it's my responsibility?  

M. Laitman: A person never does anything.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (42:54) He talks about two authorities, a person who feels he has his own authority, the authority of the Creator is what needs to be, everything needs to be within the authority of the Creator. Regarding our perception of reality, I need to yearn to see the reality, all of it comes from the Creator and I want to see it all like this and I don't exist. What does it mean to be under one authority? 

M. Laitman: This is how one should direct himself. 

Student: That everything is from Him and for Him?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: What about man's personality?

M. Laitman: It doesn't exist. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (43:48) Everything from him and everything for him, and I, or the person seeking connection with him, is consistently flawed and unworthy, and that's the situation. But if he's content with himself, then he disconnects. Is that what he's saying? 

M. Laitman: I didn't understand.

Student: I'm asking, if a person feels himself, a person should always be in the feeling that he's flawed, and ask for correction?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: If a person is content with himself, he looks back, oh I went through a process, I've done this, and this happened, I'm okay. If he has such a feeling it means that he disconnected already? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (44:48) He writes, even though a person is in a state of lowliness, meaning the body doesn't agree, disagrees with this work, to work for the sake of the Creator, still the Creator enjoys this, because in a state of lowliness, a person feels that he needs the Creator's help. But what does the Creator enjoy, precisely? 

M. Laitman: The fact that the person makes all the efforts in order to be worthy of receiving help. 

Student: When a person suffers, the Creator suffers too? 

M. Laitman: Possibly, to a certain extent. 

Student: What is considered lowliness by a person?

M. Laitman: On the side of the person, lowliness means that he doesn't have what he wants.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (45:54) When a person comes to be purified, he is aided in what? In the Holy Soul. It also adds, if he is rewarded, he is given a Nefesh, if he is rewarded more, he receives a Ruach. How does a person feel it? First Nefesh, then Ruach, how does it feel? How does this work help? I don't understand it? 

M. Laitman: It's a force that he gets from above. 

Student: A force to overcome?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: A difference between Nefesh and Ruach, it's simply the piece of power?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (46:44) He says that a person has to come to a state where he is naked and has nothing the Creator gave him, then the Creator took from him. How does a person hold on to this state? He says that after such a state, there is a sigh. The question is, where does a person get the power to stand like this in front of the Creator? 

M. Laitman: From the Creator. 

Student: The Creator just took everything from him, everything he gave him, and the person is left naked and with no possessions whatsoever. What does it mean, after such a state, that he truly turns to the Creator, truly, how can he truly turn to the Creator after the Creator has led him to such a state?

M. Laitman: Well, one isn't related to the other. He feels that he had a force once, and now he doesn't have it anymore, and he ascribes it to the Creator, and he advances.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (48:13) He writes about, he demands awareness, he writes that a person cannot leave the authority of the will to receive, the Creator did it, so that by that a person will receive the need for the help of the Creator, otherwise he is lost. This awareness that everything, the Creator is the one who is taking a person through all these states. How does that influence a person with his attitude, with his perception of reality?

M. Laitman: It influences the person when he sees how much he's related to the Creator, dependent on Him, connected to Him, and it brings the person closer to the Creator, and the Creator becomes, for him, the source for everything, the deficiency, as well as the filling.

Student: In this view, there's life. A person lives. On the other hand, he writes later that he describes a state where a person forgets everything, even the ascent altogether. What's the purpose of forgetting? This seems like there's a disconnection here?

M. Laitman: That the person will be immersed in that feeling, that state that the Creator is taking him through. 

Student: He will be immersed. He doesn't know he's immersed. He's disconnected?

M. Laitman: Oh, he feels it. He feels his state. 

Student: When he forgets, he knows that he forgets? 

M. Laitman: No, he didn't forget.

Student: He describes a state of forgetfulness, complete. He says, you saw yesterday that when you exerted, later you received the power for work. Because he doesn't feel like he did something yesterday, because everything was swallowed in the ground. Why is it so? This is a correction. He forgot that he did everything yesterday. Everything is zero. The question is, what is the correction here with this lack of awareness?

M. Laitman: The correction is that a person can ask again, request again, like yesterday, and even more. 

Student: Meaning a person is given an opportunity each time to start anew? 

M. Laitman: Yes, a deficiency, a new deficiency. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (51:18) If I continue to scrutinize this, how today can we ask more than yesterday? Yesterday we read an article, also spoke about the inheritance of the land. You said that you lack passion, that we have a mountain of justifications. You gave an example of your attitude, where you say, what will I have today, 25 hours from now, I'll have the same desires, the same thoughts and it's pushing you toward the request, the demand. Now I'm looking at us today, relative to yesterday. We try to work with the article, and with your advice and awaken in ourselves a new passion, a new prayer, and we came to today. He writes also, every day you need to have this work anew. I'm looking at the day ahead, and once again I say, what will be 24 hours from now, I'll be in the same desire, the same. How today can we extract a prayer that will be greater than yesterday, a yearning greater than yesterday's?

M. Laitman: It depends on how you accept what you have today. Maybe you don't open up your vessels, and you don't feel that today you have a greater deficiency than yesterday.

Student: How to do it, how to open it? 

M. Laitman: You open it up by regretting more today's state, that it is worse than yesterday. 

Student: Something, that from day to day we need to have greater sorrow. Each day I feel there's more distance from the Creator, I'm more in exile. Still, there's a feeling that you're stuck in place?

M. Laitman: It's not the same place. 

Student: How do we increase this feeling of exile? Every day I have this work anew, everything that was yesterday was erased, all the efforts, all the passion, the despair, it's all erased and today we have an opportunity to ask anew?

M. Laitman: Yes. You feel it as more than yesterday because of what you had yesterday you also have it, but today you have a deficiency upon the deficiency you had yesterday. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (54:12) On the other hand, even though we should have more sorrow, more deficiency, and a person feels himself more flawed, he also needs to be full of gratitude and satisfied with his state and blessed, otherwise he's not adhered to the blessed, how do you do it?

M. Laitman: That I understand along with that, that I lack nothing besides the vessel, and the vessel means lack, a lack for the fact that I'm not in adhesion with the Creator. And then I must enter into this feeling and try to be in this feeling, until a true need is born within me for connection with the Creator. 

Student: Just when a person makes effort to bless and justify and agree and say everything that happens is perfect and everything, it blurs his true need? 

M. Laitman: No, I'm not saying everything is perfect. 

Student: What am I saying?

M. Laitman: I am saying that I am in a bad feeling.

Student: What is this wholeness of the right line that I have to adhere to every day, all day? 

M. Laitman: Well, as much as I try, I nevertheless see that I'm on the left. 

Student: Even if the work is constantly on the right, if I work correctly to try to give thanks? 

M. Laitman: Well, you can, there is no choice. I see that I, nevertheless, am lacking. I'm lacking. 

Student: (56:16) He writes that a person will receive the need for the help of the Creator, or otherwise he is lost. This line repeats itself in different styles throughout the article. In the end, the person should receive the need for the help of the Creator. The question is, we talk a lot between us about how great the Creator is. We read about it. Why is it so difficult for us to ask for help? Because it's not so difficult to ask for help from a great person. Why is it so difficult?

M. Laitman: A great person also has great deficiencies and great attainments. But here, not yet. I have never received anything from the Creator yet, according to my feeling. So, how will I turn to Him and ask? 

Student: So, there's a kind of, the question is we say how great the Creator is. We speak about it.

M. Laitman: We speak about it.

Student: We're going to speak less, meaning we speak much. But in practice, we can't succeed in seeing Him as great? 

M. Laitman: How can we see the Creator as great as the giver? It's all through faith. I read in some pages that this is what Kabbalists think about the Creator, that He's great and terrible and giving and includes everything. But I just read all of that. 

Student: Exactly, so maybe talking about it gives us an illusion and then a disappointment? 

M. Laitman: I have to become incorporated in that, so it will all pass through me. Then I'll have this impression when it passes through me, I will have a different relation. 

Student: This talk about seeing it as a means and taking it to work with it? 

M. Laitman: Well, we're not going to succeed that way. 

Student: We're not going to succeed in what? That He's great? We won't succeed. We have to actually work on it? 

M. Laitman: But it is written that envy, lust, and honor take a person out of this world. So maybe, yes, we will discover that I am not, and how come? And then through envy and lust and honor, we will be able to organize a true deficiency. 

Student: We should continue speaking about the greatness of the Creator. We shouldn't stop even though the gap between, as we said, the person wants to ask, he doesn't feel the Creator is great. He doesn't have anyone to turn to, so to continue speaking about His greatness between us?

M. Laitman: Do you have anything else? 

Student: What you said, maybe envy, lust, and honor. The question is how to act with it, not just talk about it, but to show the Creator is great, like through a personal example. Maybe that's the way to show that He's great, instead of just speaking about it?

M. Laitman: Ask the friends. Maybe they have some other solution. Well. 

Student: (1:00:09) He writes here that a person should ask to see the greatness of the Creator? To ask to see the greatness of the Creator in faith above reason, and the more he asks, he discovers his own lowliness even more. And then he truly needs the Creator. The moment he discovers all of his lowliness, he writes it on the first page. The question is, who wants to ask of the Creator in order to see his own lowliness? Who wants to see his own lowliness? How can we truly do it? To ask if you know that you're going to discover the worst within you?  

M. Laitman: This is something that we may not be able to do.

Student: (01:01:13) Every time we get into Passover I have the same problem. How do we read the sources about Passover correctly? Each time I read and I kind of check, oh I'm dealing with this state and that state.

M. Laitman: Okay, so?

Student:  I'm asking, how do you enter the states of Passover? Because it sounds like things that you've already gone through, even in the beginning of the path, sometimes you even think so?

M. Laitman: Put a V next to it, a check mark. 

Student: No, I mean, how do I, it feels like it's repeating itself?

M. Laitman: You're right, there's something to it.

Student: What can I do? How can I bring myself into a state of?

M. Laitman: You have to ask. Ask, what a person needs to do is only to ask.

Student: Ask for what? It all seems familiar. I'm familiar with these states?

M. Laitman: If everything is okay, then everything is okay. At least say thank you. The Creator provided you with everything you need. 

Student: Can I ask, let's say, how you read the sources about Passover? You've been through these states’ tens, dozens of years ago, so how do you read it? 

M. Laitman: I read it like any other person who reads it.

Student: What should I receive, get, from this holiday of Passover? What should I extract from it? 

M. Laitman: You accumulate everything. Connection, you bring everything into connection toward the goal. And only in this way, when you arrange them, you see that you have something in your hands, and you feel what you have new in your hand, compared to what you had before. And that's how you advance. 

Student: In all of the writings of the Kabbalists, a person can always extract something for his path?

M. Laitman: You're correct. 

Student: (01:03:49) It follows that if a person wants to keep the light Mitzvot then he needs the Creator to give him help? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: What does it mean to take something which is light, easy, and suddenly makes it important? What are the light Mitzvot, Commandments? 

M. Laitman: Light because it seems this way to a person. Everything is relative to the person who says these are light Commandments. Yes. And because they are light, he neglects them.

Student: What was light in my eyes yesterday is not important. He says that this is actually the recipe, it's some sort of an art. I mean, we want to reach the meaning of the Creator. Take something that is now light in your eyes and make it important, then you'll see that you can do it, then you will ask for help, it's like a procedure or recipe. But how do we take something that is light and make it important? Something I now belittle, suddenly I say, no, I want to make this important? 

M. Laitman: Well, try to do it. 

Student: How? What will make me do it? 

M. Laitman: Your attention. 

Student: Right now, it's not important for me. What will make me want it to become important?

M. Laitman: What do you do if you wish to pay attention to something that's not attractive to you? 

Student: I need to find a reason for it to attract me, to draw me?

M. Laitman: Exactly, that's what we need to do.

Student: Let's say, if we take it to the Ten, okay, because I'm not talking about the study materials that we're repeating it to me, but let's take it to the Ten. Something that now is not so important for me in the Ten, and I want it to be important for me? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: What do we do for that? 

M. Laitman: So, especially for all those things, you do your exercises, how to come close, or how to study something, how to do something, even without a desire, until it enters the desire.

Student: It's a personal matter? Each time, do a little bit of it, or is it something we should also talk about? Let's now make something more important for us? 

M. Laitman: That, too, adds to the desire. Even if you pay them to talk about it, right? There are such examples. If this increases a person's desire, he's willing to pay for it.

Student: How do we do it without coercion, or without applying pressure that may create an opposite response? 

M. Laitman: No, those are more questions already. 

Student: (01:06:59) It's all on the same scale. The entire article speaks about the need. This is the key. The Kabbalist says you should feel how much you are in the nature of in order to receive, work and work, to be in order to bestow out of that, the need will be born within you. Different scenarios and variations it gives. But I don't see in reality that it feels a need. I mean half of these things I say, like the friend said before, I just check it. I mean, this state, I'm familiar with it, this is my nature, I acknowledge it, but the need to bestow, like what the friend is also saying, it's not clear from the recognition of evil, the state where a person feels, and you also said that we’re not here to feel it. I understand it, I know it but the feeling, the need, what brings that? 

M. Laitman: We don't know that we don't know that. That's a root of the soul, or it’s out of man’s hands altogether.

Student: (01:08:15) These exercises that we do, we actually do them in order to awaken within us the importance of not thinking about the Creator and everything, right? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Then there are states, as he says, about the body that suddenly you get this power. You get this power and you do feel the importance of the Creator, and then it disappears. So, first of all I want to understand, you talked about it already, but what is the difference now between the state that I had before I made the effort, and I received the importance and the state when it disappeared once again?

M. Laitman: I didn't get it. What's the difference between? 

Student: Between the state that I had when I made some exercises, I made efforts in the Ten, I read articles, I wanted to get inspiration about the Creator and about bestowal and then I did receive this burst of importance of the goal, I worked with it and then it disappeared. If I understand correctly this is what we were talking about that state. In the part of Pithom and Rameses, where it says he makes some effort and it all goes to the mouth of the abyss it disappears, so the state, when it disappears, now there's a new deficiency. According to what I understand, what you said. What is the difference between the deficiency in that state and the deficiency I had in the beginning, when I just started this work? 

M. Laitman: There is a difference between the two of them. The depth of the deficiency, the form of the deficiency, it's closer to the goal. 

Student: What is the feeling of the distancing from the Creator that we feel? Is it from that state that we feel it because I had some impression that it disappeared, with all of these ups and downs?

M. Laitman:  Yes. 

Student: Okay, and last question. What is the difference between all of these states, the ascents and descents, and what they say is that you receive assistance and a Holy Soul. What is the difference between the force that you receive, the momentary importance of the goal and what they actually call a Holy Soul that you get? 

M. Laitman: Keep exploring. 

Question (Asia): (01:10:55) If we don’t feel resistance, is it a sign we didn’t do the work yesterday?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Question (PT 23): (01:11:08) It is written, the Lord shall give them help each time they want to be more refined or more pure. What does it mean to want to be more refined?  

M. Laitman: Closer to the Creator, greater in the desire to bestow. 

Student: It continues, it says, according to how he is going to purify himself and he demands help. What does it mean to purify himself? In the prayer for others, do I purify myself? 

M. Laitman: Using all kinds of prayers.

Question (USA 3 & MAC 6): (01:11:44) The light Mitzvot, are they actually contemptible because a person doesn't have the need for help from the Creator, because he thinks he can do them by himself?  

M. Laitman: That too.

Student: (01:12:16) In every Ten as much as I can feel already, states, hard, bad states are revealed, and we don't know how to cope with them?

M. Laitman: And you thought it's going to get easier? 

Student: No, I wanted to ask, should we relate to these states, or how can we relate to these states as necessary, so that without them we will not be able to inherit the land?

M. Laitman: Until you cry, and the children of Israel sighed from the work.

Student: These states, we need to learn to use them correctly, that without them we will not be able to reach the outcry?

M. Laitman: You can always turn them to the Creator and ask Him for help.

Student: It can't be any other way? It can't be without these states? 

M. Laitman: It can't be any other way. You won't ask for help and if it were any different, you wouldn't feel that you are even in any development.

Student: We need to feel together that with our common power we will be able to cope with it, because these are truly difficult states?

M. Laitman: We need to know what.

Student: It means that if we're not together, it's impossible for a single individual to cope with it?

M. Laitman:  If not together, then he doesn't even feel that he is in a difficult state. Either he feels himself facing a wall or he lacks any discernment, he lacks discernment. 

Student: (01:14:02) How on the one hand to be in a request, and on the other hand to stay deficient? 

M. Laitman: The two don't conflict. I can ask for something and be deficient for not having that something. 

Student: Then you're asking for a reward. You're already thinking about receiving something, some kind of reward, then it's not a light Mitzva anymore, it becomes strict or serious. How to ask without thinking about the reward? 

M. Laitman: Depends on what is the reward. 

Student: What is the reward that Rabash is talking about here? 

M. Laitman: The reward is adhesion, coming closer to the Creator.

Student: The very fact that now I need help from Him, I reach the feeling that I need help from Him, this isn't adhesion with the Creator already? 

M. Laitman: If that's what you refer to. 

Student: I want to work for the sake of the Creator, I want to do this work?

M. Laitman: This is just words.

Student: I want to do what Rabash writes, I know this is just words, but I want to reach this feeling. How do I ask for such a feeling without it being a reward? 

M. Laitman: What is the reward for you?

Student: Suddenly I have a feeling in my desires, work. I guess it's the will to receive?

M. Laitman: What kind of fulfillment, inside of which desires do you want it?

Student: I want not to receive in order to receive, I want to start working, like the Kabbalists say, to receive pleasure from bestowing. 

M. Laitman: Will that be fulfillment for you, a reward? 

Student: I don't know what it will be, this is why I'm trying to scrutinize, what is this reward? What is it that I should ask the Creator for? Because right now, I'm interpreting it as a reward, because it always comes in as a reward, and I want to finally work correctly?

M. Laitman: I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. You want to know what the reward is.

Student: I don't want to know what the reward is. I want to work without a reward. I want to work without a reward, and each time I discover in the work that ultimately the reward is what led me, so how do I cancel that? How do I work so that it's for the sake of the Creator, for the sake of the need, the deficiency, like Rabash writes, and not because I have some taste? 

M. Laitman: I don't know how you come out of this for now. Also, you don't have a solution. 

Student: (01:17:26) A man does one round in the work, and gets to the foot of the mountain, and then they cry, and their cries come up to God, and he receives the holy soul, finished a round, received an assistance, continues the work, gets to the point where he's naked and has nothing. Why the holy soul he received the first time doesn't help him in the second time?

M. Laitman: Again? 

Student: A person did one round of the work, and then he comes to the foot of the mountain, and they sigh, and their cry rises, and he receives assistance, the holy soul, continues the work, comes to the same place again after the labor. Why the holy soul he received the first time doesn't help him in the second time? 

M. Laitman: What does he need to receive it for? 

Student: To achieve adhesion with the Creator, to have an example?

M. Laitman: How will he use that? 

Student: By mimicking it, what it does, he does. He studies it.

M. Laitman: In what? 

Student: In imitating it, whatever it does he does the same thing in front of whatever problems he has?

M. Laitman: How? 

Student: By mimicking without intellect, just doing it?

M. Laitman: Where did you read such a thing? 

Student: Where did I read that I have to imitate the Upper One without my reason? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: (01:19:30) He describes a state here where a person is envious at people off the street, he sees that they advance and that he's going backwards. Then it gives birth to a deficiency in him and he asks, what does he ask? 

M. Laitman: To be somewhat like they are, I guess. If he's looking at them and he's envious. 

Student: That's not what we're supposed to do? 

M. Laitman: No.

Student: What's the next step? From feeling that he's lower than people off the street and then he asks?

M. Laitman: No, if he's less than people on the street, so he supposedly asks to be like them, with the same fulfillment. 

Student: What changes him? To not want the fulfillment, but want to be close to the Creator and be willing to feel distance? Maybe I'll ask differently. 

M. Laitman: Try. 

Student: Does a person need to ask for deficiency, or he needs to ask to be close to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: To be close to the Creator.

Student: Because in most of the article, at least the second part of it, he writes that in order to reach the inheritance of the land, we need a deficiency and that the whole work is to feel that deficiency?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: It's a bit like the previous question. If I ask to be close to the Creator, it's like I ask for fulfillment and I don't want to feel deficiency? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Okay, so this could give birth to a deficiency that I want to get closer, but he'll give me more distance? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Turkey 9): (01:21:42) Did all the creation, was it all created for us to ask for help? It sounds very egoistic. It's like the Creator presents the ego, and at the same time says, ask me for help? 

M. Laitman: That's what he really does. He wants man from within his own ego to get such a form of an ego that it will be, it will escort him towards more exalted deficiencies. 

Student: It's for the benefit of man or the Creator? 

M. Laitman: The Creator.

Question (Ravadim): (01:22:26) Why is it so difficult to ask? Is it correct to first ask to have a deficiency for the request?

M. Laitman: A person needs to wrap himself with a deficiency, to feel the deficiency and then from that deficiency to turn to the Creator. 

Question (PT 23): (01:22:51) The aspect of Pithom and Rameses is that man's overcoming by himself, that's why it disappears? Meaning that it's not assistance from above? 

M. Laitman: Pithom and Rameses are the sermons that are revealed from above.

Student: Why does it disappear each time or is it swallowed?

M. Laitman: It's swallowed because that's our work. 

Questions (Petah Tikva Center): (01:23:33) You said such a sentence in the lesson that a person should make all the efforts to be worthy of receiving help from above. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: I just have an impression from the discussion in the article that there's two kinds of assistance. There's assistance that a person feels that he's far and he's distant, and he's not on the right track and everything disappears. And there's assistance, like you said, also that he receives force, strength from above to actually make an action of bestowal?

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: How can we, what kind of efforts do we need to make to receive the right kind of assistance and agree with the assistance? Because maybe I receive darkness rather than strength?

M. Laitman: We need to try and come closer to that deficiency that the Creator, the Creator wants to feel in us and that by that we come closer to the goal. What else do we have? 

Questions (Petah Tikva Center): (01:25:08) I wanted to ask why the critical point of our work is to turn to the Creator. Everything relies on that? 

M. Laitman: Everything relies on turning to the Creator, because who would you turn to otherwise if not to the Creator, what to yourself? 

Student: Out of myself?

M. Laitman: Out of yourself. And who can you turn to? There's None Else Besides Him. 

Student: What can bring us closer to such faith that the Creator hears the prayer and waits for our plea? 

M. Laitman: That's something we have to take upon ourselves as an assumption and to keep going. To keep turning to Him. 

Student: Meaning, he needs our plea?

M. Laitman: He needs our plea, without us discovering a need for His help, for His work, so we won't be able to do anything, because He has no deficiency. We have to bring Him a deficiency. The fact that you raise your deficiencies to the Creator, by this you're giving Him an opportunity or an ability to grow, to grow. It's like a child, a baby, when he opens his mouth and wants to receive something from the mother, how happy does it make her? She says thank you to him, and not that he has to thank her. 

Question (Turkiye 2) (01:27:23) With what kind of preparation should we enter the Rabash articles about Passover? What kind of deficiency do we need to have? 

M. Laitman: We need to feel before and during Passover, the deficiency to reach redemption. At least the first one, that we are overcoming upon our will to receive, and we want to take all desires and passions and thoughts and intentions and prayers from in order to receive to in order to bestow. That is actually Passover, that we go from Egypt to the land of Israel.

Questions (Petah Tikva Center): (01:28:48) What kind of passion the Creator has, what kind of pleasure the Creator has if He helps us? What does He get from it? What does He get from it if He helps us? And if I have, if I ask, if I have a deficiency, and I ask Him to help me, so say He helps me, so my vessel is now fulfilled, so what happens next if my vessel is full?

M. Laitman: Afterwards, you have to awaken your vessel to have an even greater deficiency.

Questions (Petah Tikva Center): (01:29:38) How to shorten the stupor? Yes, yesterday you said that we're in that state of bluntness, bluntness of the senses. How to shorten that? Shorten?

M. Laitman: By coming closer to the friends, you can sharpen your senses more.

Student: From the bluntness of the senses, it's difficult to even move?

M. Laitman: Why? 

Student: It's like a zombie without a desire, without awakening?

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

Student: Do we need such a state?

M. Laitman: Of the bluntness of senses?

Student:. Yes. 

M. Laitman: Nobody wants that.

Student: How to come to that, how to come out of that? How did I get to it and how to come out of it? 

M. Laitman: Usually that's something a person wants to feel, the bluntness of senses. When he doesn't feel good or that he doesn't want to feel anything. He searches for a medication that can blunt his senses.

Student: Is that a choice? If I already came to that, not out of my choice, I just found myself in that state. How to come out of it?

M. Laitman: How to come out? I don't know. I don't know. All right, let's let it go. What else do we have? 

Reader: (01:32:39) We have the gate of intentions for Passover or Introduction to the Book of Zohar. 

M. Laitman: Well, let's see. 

Reader: Before we move to the next part of the lesson, we'll sing a song.

Song: (01:32:57)