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

World Kabbalah Convention: Rising Above Reason. Lesson 3, May 19, 2024.

Lesson 3: Praying to Go Above Reason.

Hello everyone, we are in the third lesson of our World Kabbalah Convention on the topic, Praying to Go Above Reason. We welcome all the new students that are here and around the world who are joining us for the first time in the congress. We want to take this opportunity, we would like to remind everyone that this is a very internal event so we want to be responsible and ask questions on the topic of the lesson, and questions that represent our deficiencies. Let's try to keep the questions precise and on the topic of the lessons. Any other questions on personal, state, family, political, let's try to not ask them. We'll dedicate a special time for those questions after the congress. Anyone sitting in the front of the hall and you wish to ask a question, raise your hand and leave it up until the ushers will find you. 

If you're sitting in the back of the hall, please make your way to the front to the questions, to the microphones. If you have questions in the Arvut system, please put up your question marks. Let's all make sure that our phones are turned off, take your phones out, make sure they're silent. There's no notifications and nothing that can distract us. Also, let's try to keep it quiet and avoid speaking. The acoustics in this hall, the bad acoustics, will contain only our dedication and concentration to the lesson. We're on the topic of, Praying to Go Above Reason. Before we start, the team that prepared us for the lesson, would like to ask a question, please.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (02:15) We have gathered here and we wish to be like one man, Adam. Each one of us wants to connect and attain the purpose of creation. We understand that for that we need to connect, we need to reach love of friends, we need to ask the Creator for help. What should happen so that all these things that we understand, intellectually, will be felt in our hearts? 

M. Laitman: We need to give them a place in our hearts. All of our requests, all of our feelings, we need to feel that our heart is empty. And it wants to be filled with such requests, and then we activate our heart. In this way, we reach a state where in the heart there is only one request. The Creator is missing there, and we very much want to feel that He is filling our heart. This is what I can say, I hope very much that we're getting closer to that. There are people from whom we can already feel in their heart that the Creator is starting to fill the heart of each one of them. We need to focus on that even more. The most important is that we should simply ask with any words of request and not to stop, not to become tired in that. The Creator is ready, willing to fill our heart, and this is how it is going to be. I am very happy that yesterday, we went through the first day of the congress, it wasn't simple. I'm grateful to you for truly being in an inclination to be together, hearing these excerpts, these special excerpts in the lessons. Let's hope that today, too, we will go through this day, truly all of us, in one heart, with an anticipation that the Creator is coming closer and filling our heart. And may today be as yesterday. So let's read. Let's continue. 

Reader: (06:20) RABASH, Article No. 638, "Man’s Inclination." 

A prayer pertains specifically to a deficiency. For this reason, a person must create within him a need and a deficiency for faith, for only when one sees and feels that he is lacking faith, and to the extent that he needs it, since he sees that for himself he cannot receive the above-mentioned, then he makes a true prayer that the Creator will help him, and then the Creator makes a miracle for him and gives him the light of faith.

M. Laitman: Again.

Reader: A prayer pertains specifically to a deficiency. For this reason, a person must create within him a need and a deficiency for faith, for only when one sees and feels that he is lacking faith, and to the extent that he needs it, since he sees that for himself he cannot receive the above-mentioned, then he makes a true prayer that the Creator will help him, and then the Creator makes a miracle for him and gives him the light of faith.

M. Laitman: (07:56) This is what we need, first of all, to receive from the Creator the light of faith. That it fills all of the places in man's heart and it gives him the possibility to feel the light of faith that comes to him from the Creator. That is, on our own, we have to provide a deficiency for the light of faith. And then from the Creator, to that same extent that we lack it, we will receive this light and it will fill our heart. This is actually the operation that we need to perform, first of all. And then in the light of faith that already fills our heart to a certain extent then we have to continue onward.

M. Laitman: Questions? 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:23) What does it mean by the same measure? 

M. Laitman: To the same extent that I lack it, I now receive a feeling that can also be a new deficiency but it is a feeling for my question.

Student: How to increase this measure? 

M. Laitman: All the things that we lack, we can increase them, enlarge them, only by enlarging the request, that we think about it, we want it, we talk about it, and we delve into it, then the desire becomes larger.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (10:37) What is this miracle that is happening? 

M. Laitman: A person starts, on his side, to receive his first connection with the Creator, and this is how he advances. 

Student: It's called a miracle?

M. Laitman: It is a miracle.

Student: How does it feel, the miracle? 

M. Laitman: That you feel that you now have a special spiritual state where you discover your contact with the Creator. 

Student: How does this happen accidentally?

M. Laitman: It doesn't happen by chance. 

Student: Following which actions that I do, a miracle will happen to me? 

M. Laitman: It's when a person doesn't know in advance but he is in a prolonged inclination towards the Creator. And he wants to discover his connection with Him.

Student: Why is it called a miracle, because it comes suddenly? 

M. Laitman: It comes suddenly, without clear preparations from the side of the person. And indeed, it is a miracle.

Student: I feel it's like a gift.

M. Laitman: It is a gift and a sudden gift.

Student: What is the exertion that I have to exert to receive this miracle? 

M. Laitman: You need to exert, that is correct, but seemingly there is no connection between whatever you ask for, you want, and what you receive in your feeling and understanding.

Student: This miracle lets me feel the truth? Of what? Of the request? 

M. Laitman: Yes, yes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (13:05) How can you create a place for prayer in the Ten? Truly demand a place from which we can ask together. 

M. Laitman: When you connect between you and you feel that you want a single goal. And you already talk about it, you study it, you connect not just once in the lessons, outside of the lessons. Then you already are worthy of receiving a common feeling. That place between you so it will be as a place for prayer. And from it, again you turn to the Creator and you don't leave that place until you feel that you are in a single place. This is something that is very important.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:31) What is each one's role in building this place and the responsibility he has to take in the Ten with this demand?

M. Laitman: To connect with all the other friends and build together with them a single desire. A single lack that is directed towards a single Creator. This is called, one receives one.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:03) There Is None Else besides Him, so how can a person do anything by himself? 

M. Laitman: A person operates by himself in that each time he feels more and more, he attains that There Is None Else Besides Him. That besides the Creator there is no other force that receives something, gives something, does something, but only the Creator.

Student: How do I bring a deficiency from my side to this power that I don't know? 

M. Laitman: So, we need to raise our deficiency that exists in each and every one, and we don't even know how to compare these deficiencies, how to sort them. What we need to do is only to try to connect in a single desire. And raise it, seemingly, to a single Creator. Why seemingly? Because we don't know how to check that but when we try to raise it in such a way, then more and more we will feel that indeed we're making a unified effort in that we have a single goal and this is how it will be revealed. 

Student: How can we understand that it's a true deficiency and not just a game or a lie? 

M. Laitman: Our deficiencies connect in a single deficiency. The fact that each one can't even check what exactly is his deficiency. But it turns out that, bit by bit, through the work of the Creator, we do feel that we have a greater and greater connection between us and from us to the Creator. This is how we reach a single deficiency. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (18:12) You said, as if we go to the Creator, meaning we need you to raise a prayer? 

M. Laitman: Me? No.

Student: So, why seemingly raise a prayer to the Creator? 

M. Laitman: Seemingly, because you don't know if you're raising the prayer or not, what exactly is the prayer, what exactly is the Creator? How do we raise it from what we call we to what we call the Creator? 

Student: Why not through you to Him? 

M. Laitman: You have to do it on your own, otherwise, you will have some kind of promise or confidence in me that I can do what you're not doing, that's not good.

Student: We try to do it, we're trying many years and we fail. With all of our qualities, each one with his own special quality. We need an upper one to raise it for us because we can't do it.

M. Laitman: It does take many years but it's not that I can do this work instead of you. The most important is that you will be connected as one.

Student: Then how will this connection as one, how will it rise to Him as a deficiency, if not through you? 

M. Laitman: The fact that I do my work and I'm there with my operation, this is clear. And I'm not running away from it but the fact that you have to understand that it depends on you. And it's not that you pray to me instead of to the Creator, this is something that you need to know.

Student: It's not the intention to pray to you in place of the Creator. We wish to pass our deficiency to you so you would raise it to Him because we can't do it. 

M. Laitman: So, we need to pray out of this deficiency that you are not successful. This is a very important deficiency. The Creator does not concede these things, the details that we have in His whole stature because without that, we will not exist in spirituality. 

Student: We came to the conclusion, truly, that we, all of us, the lower ones, we need a, we must have, a transformer, something that will pass on this request, this deficiency. We're stuck, we need someone to pass it forward.

M. Laitman: This is exactly your work: That you need to connect, to be as one man in one heart and if not, then ask the Creator to do it for you, to give you such a connection. And after that, when you will be connected in such a way, then you will also feel that this is what you need to do.

Student: We manage to pass it to one another but we can't pass it forward. We're like in a dead end. We can pass it between each other but it goes back, it's in a loop. We're stuck in a loop, we can't get it out of ourselves, what do we do? 

M. Laitman: You need to try to be connected in more internal points in our heart, and out of this point in the heart, we can connect with the Creator. 

Student: It's without your help?

M. Laitman: Even without me. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:43) How can we ask for the force of faith that we believe in. We feel it when we're here that There Is None Else Besides Him, and the prayer rises as a sum total of all the prayers in people's hearts. When we go out, like going back home, and we see the reality around us, it's very difficult for us to maintain this feeling. It's not simple, what's happening in the world, not simple at all, very tough. I feel that, from here, from the sum total of all precise prayers rising, that's why there's so much confidence here. It was even difficult for me to be here, because there was so much energy. How, when I'm coming back from, when I'm going back outside, I feel this difficulty? When I come back here, I have to hold myself connected to this energy here, and it's tough. How do we do it, both when we're outside, not with this entire holy vessel, how do we do it? 

M. Laitman: We need to receive this vessel that was born here, and it exists. And along with that, to overcome it, to connect with it. I just hear that you are getting good lessons from what you're going through, from the connection and also from the separation, at home and also here. So that, all together, you have very good states. What I recommend is not to forget about either, about any state, and try to connect all of them together into a single desire, into a united decision, into a single Kli, so that you will see how much this Kli becomes a Kli with a special form in which the Creator becomes revealed and the end of creation, the purpose of creation, in that we are all incorporated there, in this Kli. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:15) Following the friend, the deficiency is that we are not able to do it, we are lacking precision. Like aiming through a sight, like a thought or a feeling that we all yearn for all at once. Maybe that will advance us somehow from this point? Maybe that will give us, maybe you can give us some advice? 

M. Laitman: I constantly give you advice and you hear them a little bit. 

Student: I hope. 

M. Laitman: We have to continue coming closer to each other, more and more. And, in principle, I don't see any problem with that, it's just that it takes time. I can't remember where exactly it's written but you can read Baal HaSulam or Rabash. It says that this way can take 10 years or even 20 years. I remember that the first time that I heard that, I was willing to jump on Rabash and demand that it will happen quicker. But it was done like this on purpose in order for our efforts to be stretched over a long period of time, of our attempts. And in such a way, we will do our complete work on unity, on connection during the entire history of the world.

Student: I ask the Creator to help us, thank you. 

M. Laitman: Reader, yes? Maybe we should read, where are we? 

Reader: (29:12) RABASH, Article No. 25 (1987), "What Is Heaviness of the Head in the Work?"

A prayer should be with heaviness of the head, meaning when a person feels that he does not have faith above reason, meaning that the reason does not mandate him to work in order to bestow, yet the person understands the primary goal should be to be rewarded with Dvekut [adhesion] with the Creator. Since the reason objects to this, he must go against reason, and this is very hard work.

Since he is asking the Creator to give him something to which all of his organs object, it follows that each and every prayer he makes to the Creator has its special work. This is why a prayer is called “work in the heart,” meaning that he wants to go against the intellect and the mind, which tell him the complete opposite.

This is why it is not called “the work of the brain,” since the work of the brain means that a person exerts to understand something with his mind and reason. But here he does not want to understand with his reason that we should serve the Creator in a state of knowing. Rather, he wants to serve the Creator specifically with faith above reason. This is why a prayer is called “work in the heart.”

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (31:27) This excerpt is very much felt in the bones. That you are in a certain, in a prayer in the heart, in the mind, in the body. And the reality simply distorts your heart, clouds your heart. How can we focus the heart?

M. Laitman: Here, what's important is a matter of time, that a person has to try to be constantly connected to what is felt in the heart. And how much what is felt in the heart will accompany his goal which is connection above reason, against reason. And he has to go this way, then bit by bit, he begins to understand what is required of him. How he has to prepare himself in order to come to a state that is called spirituality. That is called above reason, and in this way, he will advance. 

Student: I really felt what you now said, and it feels that the heart is really battling, really at war. That it's crying internally, quietly.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: It feels that it's heart, that it's empty, that the mind is emptying it.

M. Laitman: Pray for the Creator to fill your heart. 

Student: In what? 

M. Laitman: He knows that.

Student: That is the war, that the heart wants to feel what you're talking about. It feels a little, there's something where the mind comes with demands. Or the body comes with demands and it's as if cheating on you, it's deceiving you.

M. Laitman: No, they're actually helping you. 

Student: How can we use it correctly, the prayer from the bottom of the heart?

M. Laitman: Direct what you're feeling to the Creator. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (34:50) The question is does anyone have their personal deficiency, or is it something mutual with the friends?

M. Laitman:  It doesn't matter, this doesn't matter whether it's his deficiency or he received it from the friends. Or there is some sort of connection between them, it doesn't matter. 

Student: What I'm trying to understand is whether it acts through a system or whether that's an illusion. That we are seemingly asking something from ourselves. 

M. Laitman: It's not an illusion, you're asking and it comes to the place to which it should. And the Creator relates to it according to what is needed. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (36:01) I wanted to continue the friend’s scrutiny, please. When you feel the heart is being emptied. We had a workshop in the morning, how you felt yesterday, how was it yesterday, and how do you want to feel today? I'm saying that with a full and complete heart, I got up this morning, I didn't remember anything from yesterday. 

M. Laitman: Excellent.

Student: I didn't remember anything and I got up this morning, and simply I begged that I want to come here and connect with the friends. I'm asking a question: This joy, I didn't feel joy in the same moment. I felt, how can I explain it, that something's dragging me down, that it's pressuring me and didn't let me get up. Then I thought I'm going to sleep a bit more, what's the problem, I'll wait a little bit more. No, I did all the effort, I demanded, I came. Then there's this question, this joy of that emptiness in the heart that the Creator fills. Does that joy need to come here in the connection between the friends? Or already in the thought on the way here where on the way here I asked, and I requested from the friends and then I already felt that joy.

M. Laitman: From yesterday, of course. 

Student: Is that a good state?

M. Laitman: Every situation we go through is a good situation. 

Student: How do I take that continuing today? I got this state this morning, it emptied me. Then I came back here to connect with the friends again, we did a workshop, we shared our deficiencies, we requested, we prayed. How can we, even after the convention, I'm thinking after the convention, each and every day. How can we take these things with two hands and really use them correctly? Because the convention, it's true, that there is a certain intensity here, there's a certain, there's a really great force here. Our daily work, how can we take that, how can we grip onto that and really raise it anew each time because that's our effort?

M. Laitman: Yes, basically, you only need to collect all your expectations, all your deficiencies and raise them to the Creator.

Student: Each day after the morning lesson, making a summary and seeing what we lack and requesting? 

M. Laitman: Yes, especially, on days like today, like now. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (39:07) At the beginning of the lesson, you opened it with the light of faith that needs to enter us. That's what we need to receive within us from the Creator, the light of faith.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: I cannot really depict that, what do you mean by that? 

M. Laitman: It's a force that expands through a person and lets a person feel the power of faith. 

Student: What does it mean, that lets him feel the power of faith?

M. Laitman: To feel faith; faith is a force from above that fills a person's heart. And the person, according to the power of this filling, is willing to work out of that filling out of that faith. Let's read on.

Reader: (49:11) Before we go to the next excerpt, maybe we'll read the excerpt that you asked about earlier, that it takes time. Baal HaSulam says this. 

Reading: (40:26) The wisdom of Kabbalah requires great sages who examine their hearts and study it for twenty or thirty years. Only then will they be able to testify to it. For the wisdom is deep and cannot be revealed by testimony or by experimentation, except to those believers who dedicate themselves to it with heart and soul.

M. Laitman:  I, already, heard this morning a few complaints: Why it's like this, why it's like that, we've been studying many years. So, on the basis of these excerpts I'm saying, we have to continue exactly what we need to do, and the good end will come. Go on. 

Reader: (41:42) How do you establish this yearning? On one hand, it needs to be like the three conditions for prayer, that the person's going to die now. Like he needs air, he needs it to happen now and not in another thirty years. 

M. Laitman: Let him die.

Student: Then twenty, thirty years, if it happens, he'll die. Then how do we do that until where a person for the seventy years of his life, he's ready to work for the Creator. I'll just say with whatever I get, I say, thank you. On the other hand, if I don't bring the adhesion now, then I'm dead. So, what do we do? 

M. Laitman: I was next to Rabash, so maybe I learned it from him. Because in the beginning, I would be bursting out and crying, help me. And I saw that he was suffering, but he didn't have anything to answer me, there's nothing. So, all in all, this is what we need to do. To continue to be with the friends again and again, patiently turn to the Creator again and ask again. There's not much we can do here, rushing time, hastening time depends only on the society. If we connect then we can hasten time. 

Reader: Again, what did you say from Rabash exactly? You said that you learned from him how to formulate that. 

M. Laitman: I learned to be calm, despite everything. 

Reader: (43:47) RABASH, Article No. 37 (1991), "What Is the 'Torah' and What Is 'The Statute of the Torah,' in the Work?"

A person sees that it is unrealistic that he will have the strength to go against nature. At that time, one has no choice but to turn to the Creator and say, “Now I have come to a state where I see that unless You help me, I am lost. I will never have the strength to overcome the will to receive, as this is my nature. Rather, only the Creator can give another nature.”

M. Laitman: In other words, if a person has already been broken in this shattering, and he already knows that with his own strength he can't attain it, only by receiving from the Creator. Then he needs to search where is the right means that Kabbalists talk about. That only through it he can reach the goal, and then he comes to the wisdom of Kabbalah and performs the actions required of Kabbalists or that Kabbalists require, and this way he bursts forward. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (45:43) This convention is above reason, and we are always within reason. I have this feeling that we don't need to go above reason, we need to go through the heart because engaging in it is very confusing. I try to be in reason, then I try to go above reason, then I stay in the same place really. It feels that the path needs to go through the heart which is the opening which we can truly go through and connect. At least I see in the Ten, that when we try to connect through the heart, we then encounter that barrier and then from that heart, we raise a true prayer. Only from the place where I'm in the lowest place, then the heart cries and the Creator answers. Let's not call it above reason, maybe, let's always aim through the heart to go through, as if you're going from one land and then you go to another land, a new land, through the heart, to hit that.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Reader: (47:12) RABASH, Article No. 24 (1991), “What Does It Mean that One Should Bear a Son and a Daughter, in the Work?”

When one sees that after all the exertions, he cannot emerge from the governance of the will to receive for himself, then he sees within reason that only the Creator can help him. It follows that what our sages said, “Man’s inclination overcomes him every day, and were it not for the help of the Creator, he would not be able to overcome it,” he does not need to believe in this above reason, the way ordinary workers of the Creator who observe Torah and Mitzvot believe “above reason” that this is so, that the Creator helps them. Rather, those people who want to work in order to bestow, for them, it is within reason, to the point that they must believe above reason that the Creator can help them emerge from the governance of the will to receive.

M. Laitman: Again. 

Reader: RABASH, Article No. 24 (1991), “What Does It Mean that One Should Bear a Son and a Daughter, in the Work?”

When one sees that after all the exertions, he cannot emerge from the governance of the will to receive for himself, then he sees within reason that only the Creator can help him. It follows that what our sages said, “Man’s inclination overcomes him every day, and were it not for the help of the Creator, he would not be able to overcome it,” he does not need to believe in this above reason, the way ordinary workers of the Creator who observe Torah and Mitzvot believe “above reason” that this is so, that the Creator helps them. Rather, those people who want to work in order to bestow, for them, it is within reason, to the point that they must believe above reason that the Creator can help them emerge from the governance of the will to receive.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (50:10)  I heard earlier that you said that we need to connect more internal points between us. My question is: Yesterday, I ended the day with a feeling that everything is very surface, everything is very much on the surface. The high mind, the heart, and there is this prayer, I don't know if I managed to get to any depth. How do I connect to a point which is the innermost point, a deeper point? How do we reach that? 

M. Laitman: In what did you understand from your prayer? 

Student: That I have no idea. 

M. Laitman: And then you're just leaving it as it is and that's it? 

Student: No, I just despaired a bit. I see that, okay, it's a convention, it gives an awakening and has a great inspiration. The convention will end, and then I'll end with these feelings. Where is the depth? 

M. Laitman: On what does it depend? 

Student: I don't know, maybe I'm made of such material. 

M. Laitman: There is no person who is not ready from the perspective of his creation, that's incorrect.

Student: What's the problem, what is blocking? 

M. Laitman: Only you, who else is there? The Creator, certainly not, He is giving you a free pass.

Student: Why am I blocking that? 

M. Laitman: By blocking, by not asking.

Student: All day long I'm asking, maybe I'm asking incorrectly,but I'm asking for Him to connect us. I cannot even listen to myself anymore. What am I not asking for, what is blocking us? Fear?

M. Laitman: Fear, there is something to it, but it's not like it doesn’t block, no. I think that very soon, very soon we will feel how all of us are rising. All of us are rising on the wings of eagles.

Reader: (53:40) Maybe it's a suitable moment, after this deficiency, to sing a song called Rak Levakesh, Only to pray, Only to request. Maybe that can help intensify our request. 

Song: (53:51) 

Reader: (57:49) Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 16, "What Is the Day of the Lord and the Night of the Lord, in the Work?"

Is written, “Woe unto you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you need the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light.” The thing is that those who await the day of the Lord, it means that they are waiting to be imparted faith above reason, that faith will be so strong, as if they see with their eyes, with certainty, that it is so, that the Creator watches over the world in a manner of good and doing good.

In other words, they do not want to see how the Creator leads the world as The Good Who Does Good, since seeing is contradictory to faith. In other words, faith is precisely where it is against reason. And when one does what is against one’s reason, this is called “faith above reason.”

This means that they believe that the guidance of the Creator over the creatures is in a manner of good and doing good. While they do not see it with absolute certainty, they do not say to the Creator, “We want to see the quality of good and doing good as seeing within reason.” Rather, they want it to remain in them as faith above reason, but they ask of the Creator to give them such strength that this faith will be so strong, as if they see it within reason, that there will be no difference between faith and knowledge in the mind. This is what they, those who want to adhere to the Creator, refer to as “the day of the Lord.”

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:00:42) From the previous excerpt, and in addition to this excerpt, can you say that exiting the control of the will to receive is already a transition to the control from the Creator, this inner freedom? 

M. Laitman: Yes, yes, you're right, and the more we want to come closer to it, the more we come closer to the Creator by this. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:01:31) One of the problems, it sounds as if above reason, there's no reason at all. At the same time, throughout the years, we hear upper reason, meaning above my reason there is a different reason. Moreover, I think about fifteen years ago I heard you say, it's carved in the memory and it's been going with me. That our reality is like an embroidery but the Kabbalist sees the threads in the back, he sees the connections. You use the word see, so seeing is actually within reason. Now, I have to say, that thanks to the Creator, I started seeing the pictures in a different way, I don't see the result. I see the reason of the Upper One, the laws of the Upper One, how they caused the result. At the same time, it serves me in dissemination, in the explanation. A minute later, I find myself letting go, it doesn't interest me. What interests me is that He is Good and does Good. On the day I received it, I came to Kabbalah, I received it as an axiom, there's nothing else, there's no point denying it. I can't deny what my eyes see, and the Creator shows me that He is Good and does Good. I see it in a thousand ways, I try to be above it, and it's not succeeding. I find myself looking with my eyes again, what do I do with it? 

M. Laitman: That is written, they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not. 

Student: Meaning? 

M. Laitman: The interpretation is simple: What we see and hear is incorrect. What we want to see and hear and not what is truly there, in the true nature.

Student: It seems like wherever we go, whatever spiritual level we come to, the bottom line is that we don't see with our eyes, we see with our minds. The brain is what translates what the eyes see. Even if my sight, my sense of sight was taken away and I wouldn't be able to see, my brain would remember what it saw. How can we emerge from it? It's built in, it's inherent, it's like, okay, so I'm letting go, you want my life, take my life, it doesn't, I'm not interested. I feel like I'm walking in a dark tunnel and I don't care if I don't see the light. Kabbalists told me there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm walking, as long as my eyes are open, I'm walking. At the same time, how do we let go of this thing called reason? In the end, it analyzes, also, what is above reason. 

M. Laitman: I understand you but there's nothing to do. Until we see the complete picture, a part won't help us.

Student: In short, wait patiently until, with complete faith, that it will happen? 

M. Laitman: Yes, yes, yes.  

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:06:02) What should we concentrate on in order to bring the Creator more into our hearts? 

M. Laitman: On the love of friends, the love of friends. That I will love them due to them going to the same goal, therefore, they are very precious. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:07:00) We're talking about the love of the Creator. What does it mean to love the Creator? 

M. Laitman: To love the Creator means not to love Him for anything other than His quality of love toward the created beings.

Student: What are we feeling in our hearts? 

M. Laitman: We don't feel it in our hearts, we need to reach a state where we will feel a little of the Creator's love toward us. And that is what will give us this explosion of our love to Him.  

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:09:18) For years, we have been coming to be guests and you have been our host. Maybe after this congress, we will have maybe a day or a lesson, a festival where we are hosting you and playing with above reason. Just for once, you will be our guest after all these years, can we do this?

M. Laitman: It seems as if we can, I'm ready. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:10:29) Not everything that is against reason is faith above reason. How do we distinguish whether a person is going above reason or he's simply wrong, and he's going against reason in a place where he should conduct himself within reason?

M. Laitman: It's quite a complex question, it’s pretty, pretty complicated. I'd put it this way: If the person can annul himself and receive a way above his reason so that he'll see from that height now how he always goes within reason.

Student: I didn't understand. 

M. Laitman: That's right, it’s okay, and then if he would want to construct himself above that, then he can already reach the expansion, I would say, of that in which there illuminates to him the light of Hochma. 

Student: If a person doesn't understand this explanation, what should he do in order not to make a mistake?

M. Laitman: What is written in the Rabash articles, there's not a lot there but it's worthwhile reading it, and to do exactly what he writes. 

Reader: (01:12:50) RABASH, Article No. 23 (1989), "What Is, If He Swallows the Bitter Herb, He Will Not Come Out, in the Work?" 

When he comes to know that the Creator can help him, and he understands that the real advice is only prayer, the body comes and makes him see that “You see how many prayers you have already prayed but you received no answer from above. Therefore, why bother praying that the Creator will help you? You see that you are not getting any help from above.” At that time, he cannot pray. Then we need to overcome once more through faith, and believe that the Creator does hear the prayer of every mouth, and it does not matter if the person is adept and has good qualities, or to the contrary. Rather, he must overcome and believe above reason, although his reason dictates that since he has prayed many times but still received no answer from above, how can he come and pray once more? This, too, requires overcoming, meaning to exert above reason and pray that the Creator will help him overcome his view and pray.

M. Laitman: (01:14:39) And pray again, and pray again and again. And that is how it is endlessly. Endlessly until the Creator finally has mercy and brings a person out of his state, what happened.

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:15:10) Tell me, please, faith above reason, will it always be against our reason or can we come to a state where the contradiction disappears? 

M. Laitman: Faith will always be opposed to reason. And we can rise upwardly such that faith will help us, and the reason will receive only what we attain.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:16:18) Rav, tell me please, what is a prayer? Because in my mind, in my knowledge, what changes does it cause in me vis-à-vis the Creator? How does it build my desire? What is a prayer for me? What should I feel in order to pray? What points do I need to activate? 

M. Laitman: Prayer is the revelation of the deficiency. What I lack, and I checked myself, and I have no strength to implement what I want, and then out of no choice I turn to the Creator and ask for forces from Him, for means, for conditions, so that I would be able to implement it.

Student: And how can I feel that only the Creator is the one who can help me, only Him I should ask, I should seek, I shouldn't look elsewhere, want something else, or block my desire with, I don't know. But specifically, the Creator is the line that I can build like a bridge. 

M. Laitman: If you look at the world, you'll see how much people would want to come to the Creator, to see, to recognize Him, to understand, to feel Him, what not? What wouldn't they want of the Creator? But it doesn't work for them. It doesn't work out for them. So you're asking, why do I get this opportunity? They don't get it, but why do I get it? Thousands of people around the world, millions are asking the Creator, and what happens to them? Why doesn't the Creator help them? What, I'm better than them, He'll help me? Then, on that point, if you stop, you fall. Meaning, you return to corporeality. If you, in any case, say I am capable, not that I'm better than all those who fell and who became despaired, but I, in any case, need to try. My death is better than my life. Then a person succeeds. Meaning, he reveals the Creator to the extent of the adhesion that he receives.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:19:41) There's a perceived limit in a person between reason and faith above reason? 

M. Laitman: Every person can determine the boundary.

Student: But he feels like he's crossing the boundary. He has that feeling. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:20:08) A few months ago, I asked you a question. There was a lot of noise from the women around me. And you said, open your heart some more. And for months I've been going with it and working with it. The day before the congress, I talked about it with friends, and I told them, I really feel like I hear, I don't hear so much the noise from the friends, and then the Creator placed me at the entry, and everyone coming through, I heard Him, and everyone moving the chair, I heard Him, and I was praying to the Creator, open my heart more, open my heart more and more, and more disturbances, and at some point I simply started crying. I closed my eyes, and I simply cried for the Creator to open my heart because my heart is probably not open enough. 

M. Laitman: On the contrary, it seems as if you cried out of the Creator's mercy on you, in order to bring you to the breaking of the heart, because look at what He did.

Student: And that's it. All of a sudden it became quiet. So I'm asking, is this another degree of opening my heart where the Creator is bringing me to an even deeper prayer? 

M. Laitman: Certainly, There Is None Else Besides Him, certainly He did you that entire exercise.

Student: Yes, I understood, He's very shrewd. I'm very grateful that every time He brings us more insights into what is the place I should pray for and where I should go. Thank you very much. 

M. Laitman: You'll succeed. 

Reader: (01:22:03) Excerpt Number 7. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 13, “A Pomegranate.”

These thoughts of emptiness come to a person in order for one to have a need to take upon himself faith above reason. And for this we need the help of the Creator. It follows that at that time, one must ask the Creator to give him the power to believe above reason. It turns out that it is precisely then that one needs the Creator to help him, since the exterior mind lets him understand the opposite. Hence, at that time, one has no other choice but to ask the Creator to help him. It is said about this, “One’s desire overcomes him every day; and were it not for the Creator, he would not overcome it.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:23:34) What are thoughts of emptiness? What does it mean?

M. Laitman: Emptiness means that they're not connected to the goal.

Student: One needs to ignore these thoughts in order to come to faith above reason?

M. Laitman: In order for the person to check himself. Yes. 

Student: It's like a reflection, an inner reflection.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:24:09) The thought says that the reason for the deficiency creates a possibility for a prayer. In the work, in the connection in the Ten, we use our thoughts, our intellect, to arrange the words so they become as a prayer, according to our learning and to the experience. Afterwards, the thought adds that only in helplessness, which we sometimes refer to as being despaired with our own strength, there's an eruption, a feeling, there's no words, it's just an outcry for help. And it is written that we need to really labor, to have many, many times go through it until we come to this helplessness. The emotions always criticized are these words in the prayer, are they correct and appropriate according to what we learned? But I've noticed there's this feeling that there was a sincere question to Rav. Is there a root to a prayer, like a radio station, where only when I calibrate exactly, which is like in chemistry, only when you have the right positioning of elements in the formula, you get the result. So, emotionally, there is this thing as if the roots of every prayer, and only when we are in exact synchrony with it does it come through?

M. Laitman: Yes. You're already talking about scrutiny from above that brings a person to a central point of the decision. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:27:30) A friend from Women French 1 wants to ask: Can we say that faith above reason is to make internal efforts, to look at the friends, and at the group, and at everything that happens in our life with the eyes of the Creator, through His heart, through His love for the created beings, and to constantly try to draw myself to this standard of the Creator? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:28:35) I have a question about the text. When Rabash writes about a person, does he mean an individual? 

M. Laitman: No, no, just a person. 

Student: Or the Ten as an individual, or the world as an individual? 

M. Laitman: No, only a person, a man, an individual, a single person.

Student: Thank you. When we raise a prayer, do we have to yearn for the revelation of the Creator through us, or should we pray that the whole world Kli to reveal Him, or maybe for the whole world to reveal the Creator? 

M. Laitman: It's hard to answer here. It depends on who we are turning to. In principle, it's important for a person who listens to us to feel how much we are concerned, really worried about the inner state of the world. Therefore, we want to give Him that inner disquiet that we have.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:30:05) Tomorrow you'll have a rest from me. Yesterday, to continue a question I asked you about how to lower my pride. Other than personal example, you said you can pray. So I did. And I remembered something you once said. I was even ashamed to be thinking about asking you. I asked a great friend from PT 36 and he said, you can ask Rav anything. So here's the question. We all remember that Rabash told you, why didn't you ask? We all remember that. But he also told you once, now you, too, are a rag. And this I don't forget. It's a feeling of hanging between Heaven and earth, a feeling that you have not to run to and you don't want to run away. On one hand, you're happy, on the other hand, you're helpless. I want you to share with me, what does it feel like? How did it feel when Rabash told you, now you, too, are a rag, please.

M. Laitman: In the process of inner work, a person feels himself, that he increasingly absorbs forces, all kinds of means that there are on the path. Then, all in all, he understands, feels, and is aware of the extent to which he is a creation, as a creation. Meaning, he has nothing to be proud of. He has nothing to do. All in all, the Creator. governs everything and wants to treat some of his created beings to be close to Him, belonging to Him. That's what's happening with us.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:34:20) I have this confusion now. We ask, we talk about prayer and demand, filling. But at the same time, we know that attaining the Creator is only through equivalence of form. So, how do we ask for the filling if we're completely opposite from the Creator? 

M. Laitman: We do not ask for filling. But if we ask, then only forces, understanding, and the strength for Him to help us adapt ourselves to the Creator. And then we can open our heart, mind and heart, and try to resemble Him.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:36:10) This is a question of the friends from Togo. They reached out. How can we achieve a heartfelt prayer if we feel no real lack, like the lack of that prisoner who would be executed in a few hours? 

M. Laitman: The Creator organizes it for us. You are right. We cannot feel a true deficiency like one who is sentenced to death. But the Creator organizes for us this deficiency, and through it, we in any case overcome and succeed.

Student: Just in this congress, we have a lot of new friends from all over the world. Our vessel gets bigger. How does it affect our Hisaron and our work, the new friends? 

M. Laitman: The new friends can use all the same forces that have accumulated within the veteran friends and accordingly to progress, to progress quickly. I see that on the friends who have come, let's say, from a few months ago, and even to this convention, how much they receive through the veterans.

Student: Beautiful, thank you. And we have a lot of new friends also in our congress in Germany. Would there be a way to ask them, please? 

M. Laitman: If they have a question, go ahead. 

Question (Germany): (01:38:55) My question is, in this congress, we have heard many of us say that faith, we are blocked. But the Creator wants us to come closer. What should be the prayer to bring us to this point where we make the will of our will, where we annul our reason, where we make the Creator great so that we can have confidence in the Creator and pray always to be above our own will? It's true, at this congress.

M. Laitman: The prayer at this convention is to connect to us, to connect between us, and accordingly we will all rise together. All of us. To the Creator. Yes. And I have nothing to add. I'm very happy with all the congresses that were born from our convention here around the world. It just gives us a push to do more and more such gatherings. All in all, I think that you received from the present connection, from the present convention, you have received many discernments. You will need at home quietly to go through it, to build from that an inner process for each and every one. But really, it has helped you make a few very serious steps forward. 

Reader: (01:41:35) That's maybe the right time to tell everyone that we have 3,400 connections in the Arvut system, 1,100 here in Petah Tikva, another 1,000 in Mirror congresses, in over 54 Mirror congresses the world over. 

M. Laitman: Yes, Japan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Canada, Colombia, Latvia, Los Angeles, Kyiv, Istanbul, Georgia. Bulgaria, Argentina, Latvia, Moldova. Nice. And many others, which we cannot insert them all onto the screen.

Reader: (01:42:46) So, Rav, until the next meeting, what should be the prayer that we should keep in our hearts? 

M. Laitman: To open the heart to the love of friends. To open the heart. From that, we can certainly receive a big push forward, and we will succeed.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:43:41) The question is this: We're told we have to pray each day, and each day we have to develop meaningful deficiencies, but how is it possible? With this example of a person being sentenced to death, and he truly, then he really raises the biggest possible deficiency. Then the prayer is certainly the most sincere that can be, but on the daily level, we don't have deficiencies, and we can't develop such desires, such deficiencies. So, what about this deep prayer? Thank you.

M. Laitman: I have nothing to say. I just hope that we will not reach such a state where we will need to connect such prayers. It will be better if we raise our prayer from good, soft states, and that the Creator will hear those.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (01:44:57) A question from a friend. You said that the most important is to open the heart to the love of friends. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: How can we come so close to each other that we'll be able to pass the force of wisdom to each other and become one vessel? 

M. Laitman: Try. Feel as much as you need that, as much as you depend on each other. That is what is most important. Our will to receive will then run before us, in front of us, in order to connect us together. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:46:00) Since yesterday, I've been going through a process where everything I thought about what is above reason has been erased. Even the effort to connect in some state, suddenly I hear it, okay, so that too can be within reason. The most shocking was when a friend asked about covering crimes with love, I heard that this too can be within reason. It's as if I don't have the slightest idea of feeling or understanding what is above reason. I'm just, everything I thought I knew about what is above reason has been erased. Now I have a question: Does everything, is everything that is my reaction to a situation, to something that comes to me, it's within reason? Because it's not, for me, it's not something that I brought out of some attainment or in my own time. Is every reaction, even an effort to connect against rejection, if it happened before I responded, it's within my reason? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: That means that in order to begin to act or to approach this thing called above reason, it has to be something that I begin before the situation happens?

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Does that mean that sentencing in our hearts in advance without doing any calculations, because otherwise, it's like any other corporeal calculation that no matter what, only if we decide in advance that we don't calculate, that we don't decide in advance what is our relation? 

M. Laitman: Something like that. 

Question (Women Petah Tikva Center): (01:48:40) This congress is the most internal, the most serious, as if we've been given, we've been operated on, and we've been on anesthesia and we don't know what's going on with us. In this congress, I discovered the great deficiency, the huge deficiency of the world Kli, and I heard from Rav that he said that prayer is a revelation of the deficiency. So if the revelation of the deficiency of the world Kli, if it can make us raise a prayer for our friends and for the whole world, is this the relationship that would need to be between us, the revelation of the deficiency of the other, and a desire to satisfy it, to fill it?

M. Laitman: Let it be that way. 

Student: And another question. If the relationships between Israel and the rest of the world, should they too be based on revealing the deficiency and the desire to fill that deficiency all over the world? 

M. Laitman: Yes. Well, Okay. That needs to be clear. Because Israel is the pipe through which the Creator fills the whole world. Therefore, if the pipe is okay, if it's ready for activation, for use, so then certainly we will succeed in our operation, in our mission, for a good life.

Reader: (01:50:50) We are approaching the end of the lesson. We have a nice dessert that we'd like to go to. First of all, we really want to thank you for this wonderful lesson. Until the next one.