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

Daily Morning Lesson: August 25, 2025

Part 3: Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Part 1.Inner Observation. Chapter Two. #15

Reader: Hello, we are reading from the Study of the Ten Sefirot. We are in Volume 1, Part 1, Inner Observation, Item 15. 

Reading: (00:30) Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Part 1. Inner Observation. Chapter 3. #15

Explanation of the origin of the soul.

15) Now we shall explain the matter of the origin of the soul. It has been said that it is a part of God above. We asked, “How and in what does the form of the soul differ from His simple light until it is separated from the Whole?” Now we can understand that there really is a great disparity of form in it. Although He contains all the conceivable and imaginable forms, still, after the above said, you find one form that is not contained in Him, namely the form of the will to receive, as from whom would He receive?

However, the souls, whose creation came about only because He wanted to delight them, which is the thought of creation, were necessarily imprinted with this law of wanting and yearning to receive His abundance. This is where they differ from Him, since their form has changed from His. It has already been explained that a corporeal essence is separated and divided by the force of motion and remoteness of location, and a spiritual essence is separated and divided by disparity of form. According to the measure of disparity of form from one another, so is the measure of the distance between them. If the disparity of form comes to complete oppositeness, from one extreme to the other, they become completely severed and distinct, to the point where they can no longer suckle from one another, for they are regarded as alien to each other.

M. Laitman: That's how he writes to us, Baal HaSulam. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (03:06) What is the meaning that there is no such form of will to receive in the Creator? How can there be that there is no such quality in the Progenitor? 

M. Laitman: In the form where the will to receive will be revealed and will work, like after this action from the side of the lower one, we cannot imagine to ourselves that it actually includes the will to receive. But later, yes.

Student: When we say to bestow contentment to the Creator, where does the Creator receive the fulfillment or the response from us? 

M. Laitman: I don't think there's a place for it. There's no room for it yet. The created being did not emerge from under the control of the Creator. He doesn't feel himself separate, divided from Him. He does not exist, really. 

Student: But in the future, when we bestow contentment to the Creator, where does He receive it if He has no will to receive? 

M. Laitman: Of course, He has the will to receive, but it's not revealed in such a way that it is before the Creator. Opposite. That's the beginning of creation.

Student: What does the Creator receive from the created being ultimately and where? 

M. Laitman: What does the Creator get? Other than the attitude of the created being, we can't say anything. 

Student: Where is the attitude of the created being received? 

M. Laitman: I guess, in the Creator. 

Student: So, what is that will to receive or some vessel to receive the relation from the created being? Where is that? 

M. Laitman: But it's not called the will to receive according to our definition.

Student: So how do we define that? 

M. Laitman: The created being comes to a state where it doesn't want to adhere to the Creator, be cleaved to the Creator, and he's drawn to that. 

Student: That's on part of the created being. What about the Creator? What's felt in the Creator and where? 

M. Laitman: From the side of the Creator. Anything the creature wants to receive in order to develop, the Creator provides that. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:49) The Creator creates a desire to receive all the abundance He wants to give. So there's the Creator who is the giver, and there's the desire that wants to enjoy it all. So why is there a cut between them until they can't suckle from each other? 

M. Laitman: Because they're opposite. 

Student: So the will to receive, to begin with, is destined to receive all the abundance. So why can't it suckle from what the Creator wants to give? 

M. Laitman: Because it takes it out of adhesion to the Creator.

Student: He writes in the excerpt that they're discerned as opposite to each other. But there's no feeling yet on part of the desire. It's included in the Creator, if I understand correctly. So how is this considered that they are opposite at this stage already? 

M. Laitman: They are opposite because the will to receive in the created being is opposite from the will to bestow of the Creator. And that is why there's no connection between them for the time being. 

Question (Kyiv 1): (08:28) Baal HaSulam writes about the soul that is carved from the Creator and to the point that there's no connection between it and the Creator. What is that part of the Creator that we call a soul that was carved from the Creator? 

M. Laitman: It's the light of the Creator that the created being receives inside his will to receive. And by that, the created being is completely severed from the Creator and he feels it. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:23) He says here that the will to receive essentially separates the soul from the Creator. But there're two parts in the desire. There's a part of receiving pleasure and there's a part of resembling the Creator. What is farther from the Creator? Just the desire to receive pleasure or the desire to resemble?

M. Laitman: The will to receive, according to its definition, is the one that is distant from the Creator. That's it, I don't want to go any further than that. 

Student: Why is the desire to resemble the Creator considered opposite and not close? 

M. Laitman: Because the desire to resemble the Creator ranges from similar all the way to opposite of the desire of the Creator. So, it turns out that both of them are opposite to one another. 

Student: But we say that in our development, we need to reach that, that's the desire we want to have is to resemble the Creator. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: It's actually what, we want to be opposite? 

M. Laitman: No, the desire to resemble the Creator is not to be opposite to the created being, but to be connected to the Creator, dependent on the Creator, and by that, the created being actually rises toward adhesion with the Creator. 

Student: So that's why I asked, the developing desire to resemble the Creator, is it considered closer to Him or further away? 

M. Laitman: According to the action, it's considered more distant, but according to the result, it actually comes much closer.

Student: So what should we do to hold on to Him and not lose Him? 

M. Laitman: I think that what we need to do is divide it so that in the will to receive of the created being, there's also the will to bestow of the Creator, and from this one action of the created being, you begin the order of connection between created being and Creator.

Student: When he talks about the quarry of the soul, so he's talking about the first time the soul is separated, or we that have to discover it? 

M. Laitman: No, no, no, that's the first time that he revealed the soul is entirely opposite from the Emanator. 

Question (Turkiye 1): (13:19) He mentions that law to want to have His abundance. So he's asking, what is this law to yearn for His abundance? 

M. Laitman: That's the desire to receive in the created being in such a way, in such a way it's revealed in a person, as he wants to feel the Creator being in adhesion with him. 

Question (Moscow): (14:06) It's written about a state that because they are separated from one another, they stop receiving fulfilment, but I observe such a state, and even in this state, there's a great illumination and a great pleasure. For instance, a person can reach a state that in the Ten, he can say, my opinion is this. It could be a friend with a lot of experience, but it could also go against the whole Ten, and relinquish everything and say, “This is my opinion, and I'm not giving up on it.” How can he get such an illumination? How could he work with it if he just separated himself?

M. Laitman: From the human ego. It takes place in the person. 

Student: The system works in a way that the fulfilling comes from the upper one to the lower one, and the ego is the lowest point. How could there be pleasure for himself there? 

M. Laitman: It's not exactly like that. The thing is that the desire to be filled, of course, belongs to the ego, meaning to the lower one. The desire to fill is the desire of the upper one, and by that, they are differentiated or distinguished from one another. But the lower one, meaning the created being, cannot attain the upper one, the Creator, with his forces. He doesn't have a possibility to do so. The only thing that he can do, that he succeeds at is if he is rejected from the Creator, and he works only with his desire to bestow, meaning to be like, resemble. We will read about this. It's still ahead of us. 

Reader: Let's keep reading in Chapter 4. Number 16, the headline.

Reading: (17:04) Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Part 1. Inner Observation. Chapter Four #16

After the restriction and the screen that were made on the will to receive, it became unfit to be a vessel of reception and departed from the system of Kedusha [holiness]. In its stead, the reflected light serves as a vessel of reception, and the vessel of the will to receive was given to the system of Tuma’a [impurity].

16) After the restriction and the screen that were placed on that vessel called “will to receive,” it was canceled and departed from the system of Kedusha. In its stead, the reflected light became the vessel of reception, (as it is written in Part 3).

Know that this is the whole difference between ABYA of Kedusha and ABYA of Tuma’a. The vessels of reception of ABYA of Kedusha are from the reflected light that is established in equivalence of form with Ein Sof, while ABYA of Tuma’a use the will to receive that was restricted, being the opposite form from Ein Sof. That makes them separated and cut off from the “Life of Lives,” namely Ein Sof.

Question (Latin 4): (18:50) If the vessel is entirely in the will to receive, how can the vessel discover that it is in a lack of equivalence of form, not in equivalence of form? 

M. Laitman: But that's the state he's in, in disparity of form. He's in oppositeness from the Creator. 

Question (Florida): (20:04) This disparity of form, it seems to go against the thought of creation. Was the disparity of form included in the thought of creation? How could it be that He created a created being, but he can no longer receive the delight and pleasure that was intended in the thought of creation? Seems to go against one another. 

M. Laitman: Oppositeness of form, we need to understand, must be in the created being. Because without the feeling of that form, he won't feel himself or the Creator. Oppositeness is a necessary thing. The question is how much he agrees with it. Here we learn what depends on the feeling of the created being, why he wants to come close to the Creator. And here we are in a thing and its opposite, like a coupling of striking, and all kinds of such things. 

Student: So, the Creator did intend for this to happen? 

M. Laitman: Yes, of course. That's what the Creator created to begin with. Where the created being is opposite Him, and the created being will feel that, and the created being wants to rise above this oppositeness and to resemble the Creator. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:33) He's speaking about the spiritual essence is divided and separated by disparity of form. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So, when is it called that a person is coming closer to equivalent form with the Creator? 

M. Laitman: According to his will to receive becoming more similar to the desire to bestow. Then the created being comes closer to the Creator. 

Student: When he speaks about a spiritual essence being divided, what is spiritual essence in my daily life? 

M. Laitman: Spiritual essence is a desire in the created being that belongs to be like the Creator. That's the spiritual. And gradually, we… throughout the restrictions, we reach it. 

Student: How do you strengthen that desire even more? That all day, or more and more, a person will want that spiritual essence. 

M. Laitman: That we're simply in it. We're there. And then we determine what state the Creator is in, what state the created being is in, what there is between them, the connection or distancing, and accordingly, we operate, we act. 

Student: We're in this in different types of intensity. How to increase the intensity to be in the spiritual essence? 

M. Laitman: It's not just intensity; it's the essence of the created being and the essence of the Creator. And how we, by the restriction that we have to begin with upon us can invert ourselves and, in this inverted state, come close to the Creator. 

Student: That's a relation between the Creator and the created being. He also wrote that they can't feed off each other.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: I assume that the created being has something to feed from the Creator, but what does the opposite mean? Those relationships to feed off each other. 

M. Laitman: They can't be in a connection between them. Rather, there needs to be a correction here where each will feel the other, and then they will be able to come close. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:24) If the vessel reception never felt bestowal, how can it feel the disparity of form? 

M. Laitman: To begin with, the Kli, the vessel, is the will to receive, and from the beginning of its creation, it is already in a desire to bestow of the Creator, and in a desire to receive from himself.  And what he feels is that they're opposite to one another, on one hand. But on the other hand, he feels that they can resemble one another. And here, the created being has the possibility to develop, the possibility to be like the Creator and come close to him, according to the equivalence of form. 

Student: He's describing reflected light as a vessel of reception. What is that? The vessel of reception being reflected light. What is that new vessel? 

M. Laitman: There was always, to begin with, the will to receive, the vessel of reception. And now, the reflected light that was created, or that the created being creates from himself, then it is as reception within the created being. 

Student: What do you receive in a vessel of reflected light? 

M. Laitman: In the vessel of the reflected light, we receive the upper light.

Student: And what do you get in the original vessel of reception? 

M. Laitman: In the original vessel of reception, we receive the desire, the desire to receive, that receives a desire to bestow. 

Student: In the original vessel of reception, we get light, not reflected light? 

M. Laitman: You're talking prior to the corrections? 

Student: No, before. What fulfillment? 

M. Laitman: Before the corrections, we receive in our will to receive, the upper light. 

Student: And after the corrections?

M. Laitman: And after the corrections, we receive already, how to say, also the upper light but that operates oppositely. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (30:31) I wanted to continue the friend’s question about the reflected light. I heard the created being has to agree. Is that agreement the work between us and the Creator? 

M. Laitman: Again? 

Student: Is the reflected light from the created being… is that our agreement between us and the Creator, that's the agreement, the reflected light? 

M. Laitman: Reflected light is our agreement to be as the Creator, like the Creator, similar to the Creator. 

Student: I heard the light depends on the desire. So, when we raise reflective light to the Creator, what does it depend on in our daily work? How does that agreement bring us closer to the Creator, I'm speaking practically. 

M. Laitman: Because we begin to be more and more similar to the Creator. 

Student: So, this yearning grows and grows in the desire, in the will to receive through the reflected light?

M. Laitman: I don't understand you.

Student: I heard you saying that reflected light is another type of desire to bestow. In the vessel, it grows a new desire. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So, I'm asking if the reflected light grows above my personal desires and reflects back to the Creator, by this, do I increase my yearning to the Creator, to resemble Him more even though He shows me oppositeness? 

M. Laitman: I think so. 

Question (H 10): (33:12) What is the difference between the will to receive and corporeality, and why should this desire become corporeal? What's the benefit of that? 

Student: What's the difference between the will to receive and corporeality? Why does it have to become corporeal? What's the benefit? Why does the will to receive need to become corporeal? What's the benefit of it becoming corporeal? 

M. Laitman: He says that the cascading has to come to a state that the will to receive is in its final form. And in that way, the created being feels that it really needs the upper fulfillment, on one hand. On the other hand, he's not able to attain it himself. 

Question (PT 19): (35:11) We talked a lot about this reflected light. How do I create the reflected light? What's the root? Where does it come from? How do I create it? Can I create it? What are the conditions? 

M. Laitman: We'll learn about it soon. I think in the next chapter. 

Question (Latin 1): (36:09) To what extent does the Creator feel us? Is it only when we have equivalence of form with Him? What is the measure He feels us? 

M. Laitman: The Creator feels us in His desire to bestow, and our desire to receive is opposite the desire to bestow of the Creator. Hence, the Creator feels us in a whole manner. Meaning, to the extent in which we are opposite Him, He attains us. He feels us.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (37:12) About the disparity of form. I understand that it allows the created being to choose the Creator, to choose adhesion. But what can we learn from that on the Creator's relation to the created being, for giving us a point of choice? 

M. Laitman: We learn all that we can scrutinize in our desire to receive, and restriction, screen, and reflected light, and the extent in which we are similar or opposite the Creator. And from that, we gradually come to a state in which we want the opposite form from that which is revealed, meaning, the desire to bestow and not our desire to receive, to receive a filling in it. That's what I can say. 

Question (Darom 1): (38:55) We, in the Ten, are working in connection. That's after the shattering and the second restriction. Now we're learning about the first restriction.

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: To what extent can we in the Ten, and on the path, let's say beginners, or everyone, to what extent should we implement the first restriction? What does it actually mean to implement the first restriction in our work along with a connection? And let's say, someone who doesn't have a screen yet. 

M. Laitman: Us wanting not to receive for ourselves is the first condition towards the first restriction, and besides that, we learn here. Even here, in item 16 in Inner Observation, what does he tell us? That after the restriction and the screen that were made on the will to receive, it became unfit to be a vessel of reception, and departed from the system of Kedusha. In its stead, the reflected light serves as the vessel of reception, and the vessel of the will to receive was given to the system of Tuma’a, of impurity. Meaning, there are major, big changes here already in these few lines, that restriction and screen that were made on the will to receive was disqualified from being a vessel of reception, and emerges outwards completely from the system of holiness, of Kedusha, and in its place comes the reflected light as a vessel of reception, which is the reflected light within the will to receive, changes the essence of the desire to receive. And the vessel of the will to receive, from this moment onwards, belongs to the system of Tuma’a, of impurity. 

Student: That's the continuation of the question. We're talking connection, connection, connection, that correcting the shattering is most important. So, that's why we don't exactly understand, as much as we also have to work in parallel, in the first restriction, because we're speaking about what is necessary or what isn't. So, if you could make it a bit more clear to us, what the restriction actually means, the first restriction. 

Student: In the Ten we're working in connection, that's the emphasis. So, what does restriction mean? In the Ten, what is that expressed? 

M. Laitman: Without restriction, you can't perform connection, because without the restriction you are in your will to receive, which is opposite, what it needs to be. 

Student: So, when we say we need to connect between us in the Ten, so before that, we have to perform a restriction.

M. Laitman: I don't quite understand what you're saying. It's written, and in its place it becomes, it serves as a vessel, a vessel of reception, and the vessel of the will to receive becomes a system of impurity. 

Student: So again, the friend’s question says that our main work in the Ten is connection.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So, the restriction, where is that expressed? 

M. Laitman: Seemingly like the restriction separates between us? That's necessary. In such a way that the Creator created, we are in a necessary action. First of all, to reach the restriction, and then already, through the corrections, to connection. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (44:13) Another question. I understand there's two states: reception and bestowing. What does it mean to want not to want? That I want not to want.

M. Laitman: There are also such actions in our times, in the relations between us. 

Student: I want not to receive. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: What is that state? I understand, I can receive or bestow. What does it mean that I want not to receive?

M. Laitman: But when you perform a restriction upon yourself, then certainly you want something, then you cover it with your desire to bestow, with your restriction. 

Question (Beer Sheva): (45:18) In chapter 4, there were many things, but I'll ask one question. When we're talking about the Creator, according to what he describes, so Bina gives birth to us. After the restriction, it sorts between vessels to bestow, meaning the world of purity and impurity. That's the maximum degree the created being can reach, once it does everything Bina does, that's the central point of the system, except from the light that comes from Ein Sof, but that's the part where it determines all of our process in the spiritual development. 

M. Laitman: Processes that happen to us stem from our nature; it stems from our nature to the extent in which we are opposite the nature of the Creator, accordingly, it defines how much we need to go through changes.

Student: When I, when we see the final correction of a person in the Ten, in equalizing to Bina, so that's the degree, that we learn is 620 times more, that's the maximum degree a created being can reach, no? 

M. Laitman: We didn't learn that yet, about the 620 times.

Question (CzechSlovak 2): (47:27) Is the equivalence of form - to want to bestow to the friends, or only to want the Creator?

M. Laitman: That's not a simple question. To want to bestow to the Creator, for sure we need to work on. On the way, we are incorporated in the desire to bestow of the created being, and from the desire to bestow of the created being, we relate to our friends, to the group, to the Creator. Through that, to the Creator, and from the Creator, we receive a response.

Question (W Spa): (49:17) What's the sign that in the work of the Ten we started revealing the soul? 

Student: What is the sign that in the work of the Ten the soul started being revealed? 

M. Laitman: Neshama [the soul] is the desire to receive that's in each and every one, which reaches a connection with the other desires to receive, and this general desire to receive we need to correct so it will be in order to bestow. Understood?  

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (50:34) In the beginning of 15, Baal HaSulam says, “Now we shall explain the matter of the origin of this soul. It is said that it is a part of God above.” In what is it a part, and why isn't it the whole God? 

M. Laitman: The Neshama [the soul], is it a Kli, a vessel, or a light? So, in the soul, there's both this and that, there's both vessel and the light. We learn about the connection of the parts of the soul, which united and were filled according to their connection with the upper light. That is actually the purpose of our work. 

Student: Then he explains that through the disparity of form, a big change was made, and He made the created being distant from Himself. Then he says that the souls that were created in order to give them pleasure, which is the thought of creation, were necessarily imprinted with this law of wanting and yearning to receive His abundance. So, the Creator inserted into the will to receive a law that the will to receive will constantly yearn to resemble the will to bestow? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So, what's happening here? It's like it's all predetermined. So, where is the choice that he was speaking about in the previous item? 

M. Laitman: After we learn that the Creator wants the created being to be free, we also learn to what extent the created beings use their freedom, their desire, and accordingly, they will be closer to the Creator. 

Student: So, in the will to receive, there's a law that he constantly yearns to bestow? 

M. Laitman: Inside the will to receive, there is, yes, you could say. 

Student: Actually, the godly part from above? 

M. Laitman: Yes, yes, correct. 

Reader: Should I keep reading? 

Reading: (54:01) Baal HaSulam. "Study of the Ten Sefirot" (TES). Vol. 1. Part 1. Inner Observation. Chapter Four #16

Man feeds on the yeast of the shells, and thus uses the will to receive as they do.

17) Now you can understand the root of the corruptions that were incorporated promptly in the thought of creation, which is to delight His created beings. After the cascading of the five general worlds, Adam Kadmon and ABYA, the Klipot appeared in the four worlds ABYA of Tuma’a, too, as in “God has made them one opposite the other.” In that state, the turbid, corporeal body is set before us, of which it was said, “For the inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth.” This is so because its entire nursing from its youth is from the yeast of the Klipot. The whole matter of Klipot and Tuma’a is the form of the desire only to receive that they have, and they have nothing of the will to bestow.

By this they are opposite from Him, for He has no will to receive whatsoever, and all He wants is to delight and bestow. This is why the Klipot are called “dead,” since their oppositeness of form from the Life of Lives severs them from Him and they have nothing of His abundance.

Hence, the body, too, which feeds on the yeast of the Klipot, is also severed from life and is filled with filth. And all of this is because of the will to only receive and not to bestow that is imprinted in it. Its desire is always open to receive the whole world into its stomach. This is why “The wicked, in their lives, are called ‘dead,’” since their fundamental disparity of form from their root, where they have nothing of the quality of bestowal, severs them from Him and they become truly dead.

Although it seems that the wicked, too, have the form of bestowal when they give charity, etc., it has been said about them in The Zohar, “Any grace that they do, they do for themselves, as their aim is primarily for themselves and for their own glory.”

But the righteous, who engage in Torah and Mitzvot [commandments] not in order to receive reward but to bestow contentment upon their Maker, thus refine their bodies and invert their vessels of reception to the form of bestowal.

It is as our teacher said, “It is known and revealed,” etc., “and I did not enjoy even with the little finger” (Ketubot 104). This makes them completely adhered to Him, for their form is identical to their Maker without any disparity of form. Our sages said about the verse, “Say unto Zion: ‘You are My people.’” It was interpreted in the “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Item 67, that you are with Me in partnership. This means that the righteous are partners with the Creator, since He started creation, and the righteous finish it by turning the vessels of reception into bestowal.