TV Program, Israel
May 8, 2008
Bold: Questions/Comments
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Question: Exactly what are we celebrating this Independence Day? If we look at the country today, nothing is functioning properly. People in the government are corrupt; everyone is taking care of himself and no one cares about the others. You can’t even talk about a welfare state. The Israelis only want money and they want to leave Israel for the US, the land of money and pleasures. So, what do we have to celebrate? What is your message for celebration in this state?
Rav Laitman: I am looking at it differently; I am looking at the chance that we still have. It is in us, within us, not around us somewhere. It is within each and every one that is here.
Baal HaSulam wrote in his newspaper The Nation and in his writings of The Last Generation and, perhaps, in other sources, that when Israel as a country was established he was very happy about it. He was connected to Ben Gurion, to Shazzar, to all the heads of the settlement at that time and he met them. On his Shabbat traditional knife it was carved, “The state of Israel.”
It was very important for him because he wrote that for him, this is a sign of the giving from Above, meaning that we are given an opportunity to achieve our spiritual realization, as the people of Israel, from Above. Israel means Yashar El (Straight to the Creator). This means that we rise from the earthly level, which we fell to in the destruction of the Temple to the height as it says “the people of Israel will return to the Creator.”
It means reaching that same level of existence, the happiness and fulfillment like the Creator Himself and we are able to do it. Therefore, we are the chosen people.
Moderator: But the situation today here, is a bit far from that, to say the least.
Rav Laitman: Yes, but we’ve received this place and The Book of Zohar that was opened up for us by Baal HaSulam who wrote the Commentary on the Book of Zohar and by that, we see that we thereby have everything. The Book of Zohar was written two thousand years ago at the beginning of the Exile. And now, Baal HaSulam interpreted it and the Exile ended. And in the end of that exile, we have received the method of correction, which is the Book of Zohar with the Commentary of the Sulam and the state of Israel. It doesn’t matter in what shape it is, because we have to correct the rest. We have to correct ourselves internally by the Book of Zohar and by that, correct our state externally, by our correction, which is to be as “one man in one heart,” with brotherly love.
Moderator: What kind of a state will we have?
Rav Laitman: It’ll be a spiritual state that will be as an example for the entire world and, of course, the laws will be in accordance with the spiritual laws; this is how it will happen. He writes that we have limited time for this possibility and must hasten with all these corrections.
Moderator: Sixty years are already behind us.
Rav Laitman: Yes; in spirituality the time is not counted like in corporeality, in spirituality time flows differently. But still, we have this chance and like him, I am full of hope that we will realize this opportunity and we will not run away from here and we will not be expelled from here. But we will build the Third Temple here and rise to that spiritual level by the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah and by attaining “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” like we had before the destruction.
Moderator: What do you mean by building the Third Temple? Are you supporting the movement of returning to the Temple Mount and messianism?
Rav Laitman: No, this is not the concern. Kabbalists are talking about internality. Kabbalah is the internality of the Torah. It means that a person first has to build the Temple in his heart. This means that his heart will be in the love for the others. That means that the heart of each person is the house of holiness, a vessel in which there is holiness love and bestowal upon others. This is called holiness. And if we will reach that state within our heart, then of course, it’ll happen externally as well and we don’t have to worry about it.
External things are caused by forces that descend to our world and perform the actions here, so we shouldn’t worry about it. That's because we are talking about the correction of man that each person will be straight to the Creator. This is the meaning of Israel the Yashar El.
Moderator: Is it a state where its citizens’ hearts contain the inner Temple?
Rav Laitman: Yes, love of man. If we will reach that, all the rest will flourish more than all the lands of the world and we will really rise beyond everyone else.
Question: What is the meaning of independence in spirituality?
Rav Laitman: Independence in spirituality means that I am independent of my own egoistic nature with which I was born. And my whole life is intended only to transcend that beastly, corporeal, egoistic nature where I want to take advantage of the whole world, hate everyone and want to succeed on the account of everyone. Transcending unfounded hatred to brotherly love is the correction we should do.
Therefore we go through incarnations here and until we perform that correction, each and every one of us has to come back to this world and reincarnate. Reaching there is possible only by the wisdom of Kabbalah, because the Light in it Reforms. What does it mean? If we study the wisdom of Kabbalah, we study about our corrected selves.
Where we rise above our ego, where it doesn’t push us, confines or limits us, causing us troubles, I become free, independent. You become free of it and when I become free of it, then there, we are able to connect together.
So, the attainment of freedom, connection and the revelation of Godhood the reception of the Upper Light in our connected desires are one and the same—Israel, the Light and the Creator are One. This is how it’s called. It means that everything is one. And if you reach that state, this is called the complete Land of Israel. The desire is complete. Land (Eretz) in Hebrew means desire, so it means the complete desire, which like the Creator, is in order to bestow. This desire is composed of all the other desires and in it, we discover the real life and independence of this world and the entire ego that now controls us. This is independence.
Question: How is it proper to behave in a family, when a new sibling is born? I have a daughter two years old and a month ago I had a new daughter that was born. My two years old daughter was very calm, mature and communicative, but since the birth of my second child, she is a bit nervous and she is envious of the little sister. She hits her and says she wants it to hurt her. I am trying, as much as I can, to raise my daughters according to your explanations of the method of Kabbalah. And I want to ask, what is the most correct way to confront such a situation? And how should I behave with them together and with each of them separately and guide them properly?
Rav Laitman: You can tell them and explain to them a bit, but it is still impossible to demand the right reaction. I think that like it says, “Educate a boy according to his own path.” It means that you should compensate her with something so that she feels that by relating nicely to the younger one she benefits. Like her mother now understands that the new baby gives a nice addition to the family, the older daughter now should feel that that there is a good addition to the family. And how is that addition expressed towards her? Let’s say that they buy her a gift as though the young one gave it to her.
A person has to see what is in it for their ego, when something happens. Otherwise, she will hate her, because she feels that the attention and concern of the mother is going only to the new baby. She will wonder ‘where am I in this?’ And of course, she will hate the little one. This is the natural thing that we see with children. In previous generations maybe it wasn’t felt that strongly, when people lived in a more concentrated way in the villages, etc. Or perhaps, if the daughter had more friends that she could play with, then she wouldn’t pay so much attention to it. In short, you have to fill her will to receive, her ego and tell her that she receives a nice addition by having this new baby at home.
Question: I and my friend traveled to South America. We met there a community where they drink a potion made from natural sources. The potion is drunk in a modest ceremony. When we drank that potion we experienced various lofty experiences which brought us close to the point in the heart, to contemplating our ego, to a heart connection “Love thy friend as thyself.” I wanted to ask you, what do you think about it, have you heard about it?
Rav Laitman: We have many groups and people studying with us in South America, virtually in all the countries. Our Spanish speaking branch is very strong in Latin America, but I didn’t hear about such a phenomenon; we do not have such a phenomenon. I am sorry to hear that people need to use some potion to transcend spiritually. Spiritual ascent doesn’t happen by a potion, it happens only by the Upper Light that bestows on a person its strength, holiness and purity.
When a person studies the authentic Kabbalistic texts it is the only way that you can transcend spiritually and no potion can help you here with this. No potion contains the force of holiness that raises a person. They just enter some kind of trip as it’s called, some psychosomatic psychological, imaginary phenomena—getting drunk. Of course, it doesn’t belong to spiritual elevation and the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah. I am sorry to hear about it.
Moderator: Let’s examine the result without regard for the way. He talks about feelings of love and the connection with the others.
Rav Laitman: Yes, but if you get drunk, then you forget about your own problems, your own desires. You start being happy, you start being very generous towards everyone and you don’t mind sitting and talking to people, you are ready to forgive them or the opposite. You may become irritable or because of some nonsense, begin to quarrel with someone. There are all kinds of phenomena that happen. But in general, you lose your connection with reality and you enter some imaginary state.
So, do not think that this means that you detach yourself from egoism; that is confusion, it is just blurring. We are talking about working with ego. It is called rising above ego with faith above reason, meaning that I use the ego with the force of bestowal above the force of the ego. Without the Mountain of Sinai, which means the Mountain of Hatred (the great egoism), I have nothing on which to rise to the point of connection with Godhood.
Moderator: And that’s not blurring?
Rav Laitman: It is not blurring, it is the opposite. “He who is greater than his friend, his inclination is greater.” If I want to grow in the wisdom of Kabbalah, to adhesion with the Creator, I must have a great evil inclination as well. It says, “There is no righteous in the Land that did good without sinning.”
Moderator: Okay, so then I have a great ego and then what?
Rav Laitman: You rise above it each time. It grows and then you rise above it until you rise above your whole ego and there you meet the Creator, only there. Therefore, it is called the Mountain of Sinai on top of which you receive the Torah. And if you are blurring your ego by some potion, you just leave the game. It’s like any kind of drugs, or people who neutralize themselves, as in India, with meditations and think that this is spirituality. They simply leave the ego, so they don’t feel troubles and problems; that’s right, but it’s not spirituality.
Spirituality is built precisely in the opposite way, on top of our ego. Therefore, it’s called the wisdom of Kabbalah (reception in Hebrew), how to receive and use all these vessels, and not to eradicate creation. The whole of creation is a will to receive, a will to enjoy, it is forbidden to erase it and you have to transcend it through the use of all the desire.
Question: What is the meaning of the act of charity in spirituality? And what do you think about giving charity in practice?
Rav Laitman: In spirituality, the actions of charity, gifting and in general all actions, have a completely different meaning than their meaning in this world. Charity means that I give something to a poor person, someone who cannot sustain himself. And then I give him something of my own and I feel myself committed to give to him. It’s not that I am unable to give to him, but according to the natural laws in the existing human society, we have to help people who have absolutely no means at all, not people who brought this purposely on themselves. That's in corporeality.
Charity in spirituality means that I am in a spiritual state where I feel myself as a pauper. I feel powerless, without the ability to overcome my desire, without the ability to cope with my nature and then I ask for these powers from Above, then I get the support. This support is something I can receive through the group, through the environment. They can help me and support me and give me a shoulder to lean on. And then I am able to continue my life, my correction, my search towards reaching the goal, meaning adhesion with the Creator. And perhaps, I am asking it from the Creator. And then I receive such help where in my case, where I feel myself poor, which usually means poor in knowledge, then I receive the help from Above called charity.
Moderator: Is there a situation where I give charity in spirituality? You are talking about my asking for charity, when I am poor in spirituality and something outside of me gives me charity. Is there a situation when I give charity to someone?
Rav Laitman: Yes, just like in corporeality. We are able to help one another, support one another and do all these actions as charities and gifts and contributions, loans etc., and the same way in spirituality all these actions exist and we perform them. We are talking here about the exchange of forces—states, support and connection of souls with one another in order to achieve adhesion.
Moderator: Who gives charity in spirituality? What kind of souls?
Rav Laitman: Souls that are on the level where they have Ohr Hochma (Light of Wisdom), within them, meaning the spiritual force in practice. And there are souls that want to connect, they ask to connect to the spirituality, they pray for that, but they have no strength so they do it in a mutual way. Now, it can be a loan or it can be a charity, as it says, “Turn to Me and I will redeem the loan.”
It’s different kind of connections: these help those and so on.
Moderator: It’s like a bank for spiritual mortgages.
Rav Laitman: Yes, exactly. But who guards all of the wealth? The Creator!
Question: What makes a woman truly happy? Is there really such a thing, because every good feeling passes and feelings change? What is the change that will bring happiness and how will the woman feel it within herself?
Rav Laitman: Can’t a man ask the same question?
We are in a very special time. In a generation where children are escaping their homes at a young age; the connection between spouses is not like it was before, not so tight. The women are out of the home much more than they did before, they are in the same society and have the same strength as the man, even more in some cases. And it turns out that we can see that the woman’s emptiness and demand to fulfill herself and to find happiness in life doesn’t come just from something in the family; from having pleasure from a husband, children and grandchildren, even though it’s very important.
I get a lot of letters from women who turn to me and I see that it’s not enough for them. We have reached the ego that erupts beyond family and the nation, they want much more. Today a woman’s desire for spirituality is very strong and important.
Moderator: What is a woman’s desire for spirituality? Can you define that?
Rav Laitman: The woman starts feeling that she was once fulfilled completely with her husband and her children, her grandchildren, just having them healthy was right and good. Suddenly, in the last fifteen or twenty years [women want spiritual fulfillment]. Before I didn’t feel it this way, I had not run into such cases, except occasionally but not in masses of thousands of women who want spiritual fulfillment. And it happens because we are all today in the days of the Messiah, the era of the End of Correction. And therefore, just like what we see in our groups overseas and in Israel, the women are maybe half of all our students.
Moderator: When you are looking ahead to the future, can you describe an image, a model of the happy fulfilled woman in the twenty first century?
Rav Laitman: If we are talking about ancient times, let’s say, the time of Abraham—before and after—we can see that women were always next to the man and they had spiritual attainment. They were in spirituality at the same level with men.
There were the matriarchs and then the prophetesses. We see it. Until the decline of the generations started from the time of the destruction of the First Temple and even there we find Esther. With the destruction of the Second Temple there was a great decline in spirituality. And after that, we almost didn’t see any at all. Even though there were a few women who attained spirituality during the exile, from the destruction of the second temple, till our day but it was a very small number.
And today, we start to go back to that ancient state whether we want to or not. This means that we have to go back to being the people of Israel in the Land of Israel. The Land of Israel comes from the word Eretz (Ratzon, desire) people from the word Adam that we will come together as one man, one heart. When we will reach that state of being a people in the land of Israel, women have to have the spiritual level just like the men and they need to have spiritual attainment.
When the First Temple existed, men and women had the recognition of Godhood and little children were educated to know Godhood. The Divinity dwelt among the people of Israel. And this is the state we have to reach these days. Women are more than half of the world’s population and they determine in many ways the order of things much more than men.
Moderator: So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that the spiritual crash that happened through the destruction of the First Temple and then the Second Temple where we fell from levels of spirituality and levels of love and connection between us that created a devaluation of the status of women much more so than that of men ? She was more hurt during the exile from that crash.
Rav Laitman: Yes. Woman is called Kli (vessel), home. When there was a destruction of the Temple, that Kli, that home was destroyed. So, the sign of it in our world is that the woman fell from a spiritual level to a very earthly level. While a man, studied here and there, attained and engaged in Torah. While the woman during the exile was hemmed into four walls, her home. Today, we have to give an answer to the demand that comes from many women. And it doesn’t happen by chance, but it’s a real need.
Questions: The six year old little girl asks, “Why does God do bad things if He is so good?”
Rav Laitman: God is only doing good things but when these good things come to us, when we receive them, since we are bad, then we feel these gifts, the good things He gives us, as bad.
Let’s say I am a bad boy and my parents bring me some nice book because they want me to read and I want to play ball. Or they bring me chess and I want a bicycle. And then I am saying that my mother and father are bad because they don’t give me what I want. This is how we are like children with respect to the Creator, still bad boys. He waits for us to understand that we have to correct ourselves and to the extent that we correct ourselves, in the same things that He brings us, we will see that they are good.
Questions: Why do we need to get married? In other words, why is it acceptable to get married in this world and in the spiritual world?
Rav Laitman: The wisdom of Kabbalah, as opposed to all the mysticism or any other methods, which I am not going to discuss in detail now, requires a person to be very connected to earth to his country, his people, his world and to work to have a profession and to have a family. In short, to use this entire world completely because we have come to this world where the Creator has given us this framework where only out of it can we correct ourselves.
Therefore, Kabbalists demand this firmly of their student. They do not accept whoever is not married or working, does not maintain him, earns or makes a living, has a family and so on. They are not accepted as students as they have nothing with which to correct. Without a wife a man is called in Kabbalah Plug Gufa (half a body).
When you are married, you discover that you have many more deficiencies. If you’re not married, then get married and then you will see what a wife will say about you and you will see that you have many more deficiencies than you thought you had. We need this burdening and we also need children and we need a work place where we work and sweat to serve the people, the state and the world.
This situation in its entirety, teaches us how to connect to spirituality and then we connect to it correctly. We are arranged in such a way that the situation is as one against the other. But a person who does not work, does not study ,who doesn’t have a family, who lives like a hippie on the street, feels himself free as though spiritual. But he is not spiritual, not even close to it, because he doesn’t position himself correctly toward spirituality. Our world and the spiritual world are parallel and all their details are identical. Only one world is in a corporeal substance and the other worlds are in a spiritual substance. So I have to be a normal regular person in this world in order to ascend and start connecting to the spiritual world.
Moderator: If we are talking about spirituality what is it to be married in spirituality?
Rav Laitman: Well that is a great thing. To get married in spirituality means a person corrects within himself the will to receive, his ego, so as to work with it in order to bestow. This is called the bride and he is as the groom and when he connects these two parts together he is able to use his egoistic desire in order to bestow and then he connects to the Creator. The Creator is like the bridegroom (from the Hebrew word, descends) and the man is like the bride and then he receives from the Creator the revelation of the Upper Light that fills him and brings him upper, eternal, whole life.
Moderator: So we all get married with the Creator?
Rav Laitman: We, in our lives, have to create such a unity so that this unity with the wife, with the whole burden of children and everything will correct a person and have him rise corrected to the Creator like a bride with the groom.
Question: How does Kabbalah relate to pacifism and the principle of anti-violence?
Rav Laitman: Kabbalah doesn’t relate to anything negatively or positively, it gives us the laws of nature. If we don’t use them, then we don’t; if we do, then we do.
We can’t say anything about anything if it’s good or bad because it is the result of nature. It all depends how we use it. What does it mean that pacifism is good? If you kill someone, are you still a pacifist? If there are bad results to given actions, am I to remain indifferent?
These things are not useful and we see that all the movements, whether rightists or leftists, bring us toward one big crisis. No such movement and attitude to the world justifies itself.
We have to achieve the middle line. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to use everything, specifically our ego on the one hand and the force of the upper nature on the other hand and then corrects and adjusts them together in a way so that we will exist in peace with both of these forces together. Then pacifism will also be one of the components.
Question: Browsing the Website, I understood that through the wisdom of Kabbalah you can convert egoism to altruism, to love and giving. How can a person function normally only altruistically? Who will worry for an altruist “if I am not for myself, then who will be for me?” If you lose your egoistic sense, how can you exist? Also what kind of a woman can you attract as an altruist and can you be sure that your woman will be an altruist as well?
Rav Laitman: He is right; I feel these questions very well because I engaged in this wisdom for thirty five years. We have many students and we are all married and we went through a lot of changes. I came to Kabbalah when I was thirty years old and I went through a lot since then.
No one is telling you what to do and the wisdom of Kabbalah is against any kind of exaggeration. When we talked previously about getting married, then of course, you have to get married and have a family and be like everyone else. No one is telling you to disperse all your money, to minimize yourself to the bare necessities and sustain the whole world with the rest of it. You have to always do all only according to your inner correction. Now you are [an] egoist then study the wisdom of Kabbalah, and it will illuminate you and you will experience changes; and then according to the changes within you, you will begin to suddenly behave differently.
Moderator: So then I will start distributing money and give money to others?
Rav Laitman: Why must you think of dispersing your money or not?
Moderator: I feel stressed now.
Rav Laitman: You may see later that you have gained greatly.
Moderator: Am I going to start giving my money away? Two or three months ago there was a Rabbi from the US came here and gave money to people in the south of the country who were in distress. The media made much of it. Is this what the direction should be?
Rav Laitman: No, that’s just good PR. I am talking about something else. Let’s say I work for one month and then I buy a suit; this is an example from Rabash my teacher, and I go to a wedding. I am at that wedding for two hours and that suit cost me a thousand dollars. I did not need it for more than just for the wedding, I bought it for that. What does this mean?
It means that I am willing to go somewhere and have a small temporary pleasure and pay a lot for that, a full month’s salary, instead of lying on the couch and not doing anything for the full month.
This tells you that a person is willing to work hard in order to exchange the pleasure of health, and rest so as to get an abstract pleasure of the two hours at a wedding. Looking at it standing aside you might not think it is worthwhile. You can say if I had a thousand dollars I would go on vacation for a week; we all have our own preferences of rewards.
So if you study the wisdom of Kabbalah and you have your eyes opened and you see the spiritual world, you see far off you feel transcended and are fulfilled with pleasures that are not from this world. You don’t feel that you need to do the same actions as before.
You keep working and must sustain your family, but you lose your desire for earning more doing more and get in return many times more than working a full month and wasting it on two hours at a wedding.
Moderator: And in exchange for what?
Rav Laitman: The feeling of completeness, bliss and beauty that fulfils you. So isn’t it worthwhile? It’s worthwhile; okay, so you change and with your new sensation you look at the world differently and then your actions are different as well.
Moderator: I didn’t see you handing out money on the street.
Rav Laitman: But we do collect money and we print books to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah because we know that we can bring the correction to the world and do good to people.
In my eyes this is the only good action that you can do to the world. I don’t see how people who hand out money to others, bring good to the world.
Moderate: So this motivates you to give three hour lessons daily on TV and evening programs and lectures?
Rav Laitman: This is something that I feel that I have to do as my role because this is what I accepted from my teacher and I see that people want it and I am happy to be able to do it.
Moderator: So is this for you the definition of giving; doing good, bestowing on the world?
Rav Laitman: Doing good to the world can only happen by bringing the world closer to the Upper Force. Bringing the world closer to the Upper force is by this study and knowing how to implement this study. Because this is the method of coming closer to the force that can give you all that is good, to fulfillment, eternity, something that is grand. This is the method for it. Everything else is a failure, whether it fails today or tomorrow.
Moderator: So if I understood you, to give a person the means to bring himself to the good, to the bounty, is the tactic. It is not to give him the cup of water that he now lacks. If he is thirsty I will give it to him but it means that I did not teach him how to reach the well himself.
Rav Laitman: Right! This is why according to the advice of the Kabbalist, we collect our tithes. It is all used for dissemination of papers, internet, the TV shows and so on. We don’t get any contributions from anyone but we are happy to give our own contributions because this is our offer to all of humanity.
Question: How do you correct pride?
Rav Laitman: It’s hard, correcting the pride is not in the hands of man. By receiving blows and unpleasant sensation, sensations of shame that are caused by the Creator to us from all directions, by that we are able to look at ourselves from the side and see how the Creator works on us and detaches us from our pride. It is only through shame.
If I did something and all the others saw that I did something that is not nice and then I have a terrible feeling of shame. Then I suffer and I hate myself for doing what I did and I hate that quality that made me do what I did and then I get rid of it.
If I don’t hate that quality within me, the quality of pride, then I can’t get rid of it. There is either rejecting it from hatred or coming closer to the pleasantness of love. So it says, “There is no righteous in the land that did good without doing bad.”
No one can do a Mitzva (precept/commandment) without failing in it first. In each and every step we have to feel a blow and that blow has to be felt by us so as to hate what we are doing to such an extent that I will be willing to rise above it and not do it again.
Therefore, there is much more to uncover, perhaps unpleasant things. Yet when a person studies he does not feel it like the blows which ordinary people feel in their lives and even suicide when losing funds and other losses. In the wisdom of Kabbalah these things are gone through quickly, easily in a studied conscious way. He is corrected in a nice way with providence from Above.
Like a baby, it does not matter how much he falls, he does not break anything. This is just like us who, with the wisdom of Kabbalah, correct ourselves not through blows that this life brings, such as hurricanes, diseases, wars etc. It is a teaching that allows one to be saved from all that is bad and achieve the good. It lets me get rid of the evil but in the gentlest way possible.
Question: I am divorced with a child and in the last five years I had a boyfriend and half a year ago we separated. Due to my distress I started studying Kabbalah. Despite Kabbalah and the common sense that tells me to forget and go on, sometimes, I think that I have no desire to continue living without him. Can you give me some comfort?
Rav Laitman: This is a psychological problem. Psychologists, in these cases, advise that this thing is over and you need to look for a right, nice, suitable and steady partner. You should be complementing and suiting one another in some ways and thereby starting over in life.
To sit still and be sorry and be calmed by the wisdom of Kabbalah from the blows of the life is not what Kabbalah is meant for. It is meant to open up expanses for a person. However she is immersed in her past right now. I recommend that she complete her Kli (vessel) as it is called and find the right man and build a family with him and that will make you forget the past.
Question: This week there was a lot of buzz in the media about the topic of conversion. Beside what the Halacha says in the material realm, I wanted to know if in the spiritual dimension, there is a term called conversion.
Rav Laitman: In the spiritual dimension there are corrections; the egoistic desire to receive is called Goy (gentile). When we start to correct the egoistical desire to be in order to bestow, it is called convert (Ger). The desire to receive that becomes truly like the bestower and gains unity with the Creator is called Yehudi (Jewish). The desire to receive that yearns toward the Creator is called Israel, Yashar El (straight to the Creator). There are many levels of these desires. So everything that we have in this world, the correction of man or the field, trees, house, family, are all reflection of the spiritual corrections and therefore exists in our world.
So every phenomenon you will ask about in our world, both the phenomenon of correction called Mitzvah or any other regular phenomenon of nature, comes from the spiritual world. Because everything comes from the spiritual world to this world; there is nothing new in this world, under the sun.
Question: The point in the heart is in the physical heart or the spiritual heart? If you transplant a heart, does the point change or is it just in spirituality?
Rav Laitman: That’s a very good question. The point in the heart is called “the part of God Above,” a small spark of our soul that exists within our desires. All of mans 613 desires, we have 613 desires, are called altogether a heart, which doesn’t belong to this pump in our body. You can change it or use a mechanical pump instead, which is outside of your body. If you change the physical heart, the man stays the same, it’s just a pump and the mind is just a computer. The soul is not in the body and you can transplant all the organs but you won’t change the person as he exists.
Where is the soul? It’s not found to your left or right or within your body; we don’t have such dimensions in spirituality. Therefore, heart in spirituality means all our 613 desires. Within our corrupted 613 desires, meaning that they are all in order to receive when we are egoistic, there is yet a point in the heart that wants to be like the Creator, which is called the “part of God Above,” it draws us to go beyond this world.
So the Creator did this exercise, in all of our 613 egoistic desires, where we are given a bad sensation, emptiness; we have all of these desires but we are empty. And He gives us a bit of a spark in that point and then we begin to go after it. Eventually, it brings me to the books, or to our program, our courses, to some connection with its source, the Creator.
There is no connection here to physical heart transplants. It is all our 613 desires that are named ‘heart’ and they will be corrected by that point. All of our desires, 613 corrected desires, which means we performed the 613 Mitzvot, with all of them we will connect to the upper power and we will feel all these desires filled with the Light of Infinity and feel eternal life.
Moderator: What are you saying when you say we performed all the 613 Mitzvot corrections of our desires?
Rav Laitman: The desires that you correct from the egoistic form where you want to draw everything into yourself to the form of bestowal upon others, love of others.
Moderator: That is called doing a Mitzva according to Kabbalah?
Rav Laitman: Yes; it’s not according to Kabbalah, this is what the Torah says, “I created the evil inclination, I created for it the Torah as a spice, because the Light in it Reforms.” You use the Torah, which contains the Light that corrects the evil inclination. It’s says, “I created the evil inclination the egoistic desire.”
613 private egoistic desires invert to bestowal to love of others. And when I connect to the others, then we all become as one man in one heart, with brotherly love and there, in the connection between us, we feel the Creator, the Upper force, unending, eternal life.
Question: If I do not identify the Creator, how can I resemble Him or cleave to Him? In general, what does it mean to be “in Him” if I don’t know Him? What am I suppose to do to relate to Him as the cause of all causes? Or it could be the approach is different; I should imagine something so as to escape my corporeal suffering?
Rav Laitman: No, no, God forbid; it is forbidden to imagine. The Creator is the force and quality of bestowal and love—it’s a quality. So what is the quality, how do you perceive it? If you, according to your ability, begin to imagine what is that quality of bestowal and start reading books that talk about this quality and how to come closer to it, how to acquire it. Then you will start to understand why you were created among millions of people, so that in the connection with them, you will build that relation of bestowal of love. You will understand whether you can do it or not. This will bring you the recognition of evil that you can’t, that you don’t want to, but along with it, you will feel that this is an ideal and good thing but not realistic.
The books will give you the sensation that it comes from Above, from the Creator and you will turn to Him so that He will correct you and that is called “addressing the Light that Reforms.”
We are not able to do this correction by ourselves; only the Light reforms and we only have to ask for it to happen. Asking for it to happen is possible if I am among a group of people that give me the sensation that this is an important thing, reaching bestowal, on the one hand. And on the other hand, we are not able to do it on our own. Then within man’s heart it forms a prayer and then the Light that reform comes and opens up these egoistic qualities turning them into bestowal and you live in the Upper World.
Question: The sentence that says that “everything is in the hands of heaven but the authorization is given.” does it means that the authorization is given in this world or in the Upper world?
Rav Laitman: Only in this world. The Torah talks about what happens to us here in our body when we are alive in this world. The Torah is not in heaven; it speaks about what happens to us in this world. Therefore, we have to relate to our life this way and have to do all the corrections here, in this world. The person who did not go through the corrections in this life and in this world, has to reincarnate again until he finishes all that is incumbent on him from the root of his soul until his soul comes back to that source from which it descended to his body in this world.
Therefore, when we are here, we have to find where our free choice lies. It says “Everything is in the hands of heaven besides the fear of heaven and the authorization is given,” and all of those verses in the Mishna which describe the grocer. So we have to interpret these things.
They talk about our connection to this world and out of this world to the spiritual world. And how to stabilize ourselves correctly, in taking from this world what I need and stabilize myself , though I do not know exactly how, but that in a precise way I start ascending internally, spiritually to the root of my soul. I start to discover worlds that I add to this world, that I add to my present sensation and then I feel myself existing in all of reality not only in this shell of this world that is now narrow for me, but much beyond that.
Moderator: Then I will feel that the authorization is given to me?
Rav Laitman: Of course, “if I am not for myself then who is for me?” On the one hand, you have to say “there is none else but Him,” it comes from the side of the Creator. He is the cause of all causes, He brings into my heart and mind, feelings and desires and the thoughts, it comes from Him and I am not the boss here.
But after I got it, I have to say, “If I am not for myself who then is for me?” And I have to start as though there is no Creator and nothing in front of me. I alone have the authorization and I have to do it. After I did it, then I have to go back and say “there is none else besides Him,” and connect with Him as though we acted together. Then I achieve adhesion, and suddenly feel that I and He are one.