The transcript has been transcribed and edited from English simultaneous interpretation, thus there may be potential semantic inaccuracies within it.
Daily Lesson (Morning) April 21, 2024.
Part 2: Baal HaSulam. The Freedom. Two Creations: A) Man, B) A Living Soul.
Reader: We are reading in the writings of Baal HaSulam, page 428 in the Hebrew edition, article of the Freedom. Chapter heading “Two Creations: A) Man, B) A Living Soul.”
Reading Subtitle: (0:23) Two Creations: A) Man, B) A Living Soul.
From the above, we can clearly understand the verse: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living [Haya] soul [Nefesh].” Here we find two creations:
Man himself,
The living soul itself.
The verse says that in the beginning, man was created as dust from the ground, a collection of molecules in which resides the essence of man, meaning his will to receive. That force, the will to receive, is present in every element of reality, as we have explained above. Also, all four types emerged from them: 1) still, 2) vegetative, 3) animate, 4) speaking.
In that respect, man has no advantage over any part of creation. This is the meaning of the verse in the words, “dust from the ground.”
However, we have already seen that this force, called “will to receive,” cannot exist without dressing and acting in a desired object, and this action is called “life.” And accordingly, we find that before man has arrived at the human forms of reception of pleasure, which differ from those of other created beings, he is still considered a lifeless, dead person, since his will to receive has no place in which to dress and manifest its actions, which are the manifestations of life.
This is the meaning of the verse, “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” which is the general form of reception suitable for humans. The word Nishmat [breath of] comes from the word Samin [placing] the ground for him, which is like “value.” (And the origin of the word “breath” is understood from the verse (Job 33:4): “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life,” and see the commentary of the MALBIM there.) The word “soul” [Neshama] has the same syntax structure as the words, “missing” [Nifkad], “accused” [Ne’esham], and “accused” [Ne’eshama—female term of Ne’esham].
And the meaning of the words, “and breathed into his nostrils” is that He instills a soul [Neshama] in his internality and an appreciation of life, which is the sum of the forms that are worthy of reception into his will to receive. Then, that force, the will to receive, enclosed in his molecules, has found a place in which to dress and act, meaning in those forms of reception that he had obtained from the Creator. And this action is called “life,” as we have explained above.
And the verse ends, “and man became a living soul.” This means that since the will to receive has begun to act by the measures of those forms of reception, life instantly manifested in it and it “became a living soul.” However, prior to the attainment of those forms of reception, although the force of the will to receive had been imprinted in him, it is still considered a lifeless body, since it has no place in which to appear and to manifest in action.
As we have seen above, although man’s essence is only the will to receive, it is still taken as half of a whole, as it must clothe in a reality that comes its way. For this reason, it and the image of possession it depicts are literally one, for otherwise it would not be able to exist for even a moment.
Therefore, when the machine of the body is at its peak, meaning until his middle-age, his ego stands upright in all the height imprinted in him at birth. Because of this, he feels within him a large and powerful measure of the will to receive. In other words, he craves great wealth and honor, and anything that comes his way. This is so because of the perfection of man’s ego, which attracts shapes of structures and concepts that it dresses in and sustains itself through them.
But when half his life is through, begin the days of the decline. By their content, these are his dying days. A person does not die in an instant, just as he did not receive his life in an instant. Rather, his candle, being his ego, withers and dies bit by bit, and along with it die the images of the possessions he wishes to receive.
He begins to relinquish many possessions he had dreamed of in his youth, and he gradually relinquishes great possessions according to his decline over the years. Finally, in his truly old days, when the shadow of death hovers over all his being, a person finds himself in “times of no appeal,” since his will to receive, his ego, has withered away. Only a tiny spark of it remains, hidden from the eye, from clothing in some possession. Therefore, there is no appeal or hope in those days for any image of reception.
Thus, we have proven that the will to receive, along with the image of the object expected to be received, are one and the same. Their manifestation is equal, their stature is equal, and so is the length of their lives.
However, there is a significant distinction here in the form of the yielding at the time of the decline of life. That yielding is not a result of satiation, like a person who relinquishes food when he is full, but a result of despair. That is, when the ego begins to die during the days of decline, it senses its own weakness and approaching death. Therefore, a person lets go and gives up the dreams and hopes of his youth.
Observe carefully the difference between that and the yielding due to satiation, which causes no grief and cannot be called “partial death,” but is like a worker who completed his work. Indeed, relinquishment out of despair is full of pain and sorrow, and can therefore be called “partial death.”
M. Laitman: (11:57) Clear? What’s not clear?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:06) What is this point from which the person begins to wither and descends. It kept climbing and then?
M. Laitman: The end, the middle of life.
Student: What’s that point of inversion, why is that?
M. Laitman: Because what he said that he needs to receive and what he needs to invest in order to receive something, he said it is not worthwhile, and he agrees with it all ending.
Student: At this point, a man should learn something, do something, or just the picture of his evolution, his development?
M. Laitman: That is a picture of development, that is how it is. A person is activated, is operated upon.
Student: Should this point bring a person to ask about the meaning of life?
M. Laitman: No, if he doesn't get the answer, if the question doesn't come, then where will he labor?
Student: The point of inversion, he wanted all of his life and now?
M. Laitman: He wanted, and now he doesn't quite want it, he doesn’t agree with it, and he gives up something, and this is how he advances to the end of his life. That's it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (13:36) I’m going to ask about the first part of what we read. It says and He breathed in his nostrils a living soul. So, this is his molecules of the will to receive. He receives something that receives value, he said from the word Samin, receives an appreciation for a certain life, a certain value, and then man was born in him. Before that it was just will to receive, like the rest of the living creatures. So, what does it mean that he breathed in his nostril, the living soul? What is this process we're talking about?
M. Laitman: In our process when we begin to feel that we have a part of the Creator, or a part of the Creator in us.
Student: The desire develops and brings us here, or when a person attains the soul, what is he talking about?
M. Laitman: He doesn't attain the soul yet.
Student: What does it mean he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life?
M. Laitman: That's in each and every person. Not some special person who receives a point in the heart, or more than that, a part of the soul.
Student: Each and every person has an appreciation, a value of life called man?
M. Laitman: Well, yes. More, less, but there is.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:14) You answered the friend about the withering the death of the desire and the corporeality. The desire for revealing spirituality does not belong to this half-life process that is finished.
M. Laitman: No.
Student: It's a different system.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (15:37) The Kabbalist experiences the same states that he describes here? Meaning this decline of the ego influences the Kabbalist, or there's no connection there? That's a beastly desire of the body. He has a different process?
M. Laitman It's measured. It's balanced between them. It's measured. A Kabbalist uses his desires as much as he feels like he must in order to implement and realize his soul.
Student: In the middle of the life of the Kabbalist, he also feels his ego declining or his desires declining?
M. Laitman: No. He has the way to care for his soul, also meaning his ego, the central force in the soul, and he continues.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (16:45) What does it mean that the will to receive declines? Why should it decline? We said that the will to receive does not die, it doesn't disappear. It's a matter of creation. What does it mean it declines? What does it mean? Growing tired. We see it, but the physical body, we see it as the years pass, there's a point from which that I understand.
M. Laitman That's how it is with the desire to receive as well.
Student: But what does it mean that the will to receive grows tired? He wants to receive. How does it grow tired? He stops wanting?
M. Laitman Yes.
Student: What does it mean that he wants to stop wanting? He approaches bestowal?
M. Laitman: Did you ever have it in life where you yearned for certain things and you received and enjoyed them and then gradually you leave them and usually move to other things, or not all together? You prefer rest.
Student: Yes, in the corporeal world I understand the process. A person is born, grows, develops, declines, and dies. That I understand. But we're not speaking about the corporeal world. We're saying the will to receive is a substance of creation. It doesn't change. It doesn't die. It doesn't disappear. Nothing happens to it. What does it mean that it declines? What does it mean? What is this action of declining?
M. Laitman: No longer demands within a person all kinds of new feelings. It doesn't demand, and that's how a person, therefore, that's what we see in a person.
Student: It stems from the will to receive or from the person's body?
M. Laitman: What's the difference? The desire to receive or the body?
Student: Again, the will to receive doesn't change or is supposed to not change. So, how is it influenced by the body? Is it declining or not declining? Why should it decline?
M. Laitman: Our body is the revelation of the desire to receive.
Student: The will to receive, which is the substance of creation, that never disappears, has a process by which it grows old, or declines, as he writes, and then what happens at the end? It dies? The will to receive dies? Is there such a thing?
M. Laitman: No, it disappears.
Student: From where?
M. Laitman: It disappears to a person.
Student: Where does it disappear to, the will to receive?
M. Laitman: It's what we call that it returns to its source.
Student: So, a man's will to receive is something he receives on loan and at some point he returns it? In the spiritual work, let's talk about, not the corporeal body, this loan that I got, I'm supposed to work on it, and move it to in order to bestow, and that's a sign that I've done something with my loan, and if not, the way I received it, I return it, and it goes to the next, and the next, and the next?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (20:18) A person developing a soul has two systems, on the one hand, he yearns in his soul, on the other hand. his ego is declining, he doesn't want anything, two different systems?
M. Laitman: No, they're in some relative connection between them, this, and that.
Student: For a Kabbalist, the ego does decline or not?
M. Laitman: The ego changes in each and every one, both in a Kabbalist and in a regular person.
Student: Clear. The fact that it changes, I have many desires, so 20 years from now I'm not going to want anything, I'm just going to sit on the couch and that's it, but the soul will still yearn for the upper force?
M. Laitman: The soul is something else, yes.
Student: So that's what I'm asking, it's two systems?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: This system, like it or not, the couch is what's waiting for you?
M. Laitman: Yes.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (21:35) I wanted to ask, so why is he telling this to us? Let's say, it's a completely natural process.
M. Laitman: It's a natural process, but it's good to know about it, so we all have the same general knowledge.
Student: Could it be that he could say, hurry up, and it's like, hurry up to attain, is that what he's trying to say to us?
M. Laitman: No, there's nothing to say like that, no.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (22:11) The process that he's describing, a person who has meaning in life remains alert and awake, I remember reading a Viktor Frankl’s book about a person seeking meaning, this is known. What's the difference between us seeking meaning and finding it, or any person who decides that something is important for him?
M. Laitman: There's differences in the goal.
Student: There are people, let's say, scientists for example, live longer because for what? They're investigating and they have a reason to live. And for us, it's a completely different mechanism and nevertheless it leaves a person young from within, even though the body,
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: What's the connection or difference between these two systems, the system with us, or another meaning that the person finds?
M. Laitman: The higher the meaning, the more he continues in life, the greater the spirit of life that he has, that's it.
Student: Meaning a Kabbalist basically becomes younger, he doesn't deteriorate or dim.
M. Laitman: Of course, don't you see it on me?
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:48) This point is not clear to me. If I see a friend that doesn't have desires like once, he used to love to eat, to go out, to go for trips and things. Now he doesn't really have a desire for any of that. Do I need to respect that natural dimming of those desires in him?
M. Laitman: It might be changing his desires. It's not a wonder. We see it in life all the time. What you yearned for when you were little and what you yearn for today. There's a difference, right?
M. Laitman: Of course.
Student: So, do we need to respect this natural deterioration that a person has?
M. Laitman: It's not declining. He changes his desires from small ones to bigger ones, from corporeal ones to higher ones. This is something we have to respect.
Student: Okay, let's just say in the Ten, let's say a friend will change naturally his desire naturally and I need to try to encourage him let’s do more things or on the contrary. To understand that this is the desire of the friend, and I shouldn't try to act upon him or try to make him do something that seems to me like he should.
M. Laitman: With us, it happens differently. If a person is connected to our society and is incorporated in it, then he is moving in a different direction, a completely different direction in his development. And it has to do with people who developed under the rule of the Creator.
Student: Here I want to understand, if he decides that tomorrow he doesn't want to come to a meal that we want to do or to some gathering or something, because his desires changed. It's no longer suitable to me. How to relate to this? Is it part of the changes of desires that are in him as a result of his natural growth in life?
M. Laitman: It could be a thousand reasons, no. It says nothing.
Student: So, how to operate here? Respect the desire he has in him?
M. Laitman: We always need to attract a person to his place in society. In development, we're only speaking of society now, right now.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (26:22) In short, he writes here that a person, where his ego surrenders, and he goes and only a small spark of him remains that is not revealed to his eyes and a certain clothing of a certain manner. Therefore, there's no hope or any picture of reception here in this. So, a person just holds on to that same point, that spark, that acquisition. And the acquisition that he acquired, what is it?
M. Laitman: Nothing disappears, but it's not interesting to him right now.
Student: He's just concentrated into that.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (27:12) We are not dependent on the deterioration of these desires. Our development does not depend on the fact that there's this deterioration of these desires.
M. Laitman: If we wish to develop upwards, then it doesn't work on us.
Student: So, this could disappear, a person who had a desire for going to the beach or for respect and other things like that and that has no impact on my desire to develop spiritually.
M. Laitman: Yes.
Student: It can grow, or it can diminish in parallel.
M. Laitman: Yes. By the way, I wanted to ask, what of the dip in the ocean?
Student: It's usually done tomorrow after the morning lesson. We go down to the beach and do a dip in the ocean.
M. Laitman: Okay, good.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (28:30) The matter does not change, it's the desire to receive. So, what's the difference between still, vegetative, animal? What are the differences here that create these changes? If the matter is the same matter.
M. Laitman: The will to receive you mean?
Student: Yes, what he writes, the desire to receive, but there's a division. What creates this division?
M. Laitman: The height of the desire, the content of the desire. We see how each person has his own desire, both in quality and in quantity.
Student: There's still, there's vegetative, there's animate, it's all that same desire to receive that receives filling, depicts to itself. That's exactly what I'm asking, what are those degrees?
M. Laitman: The height, the height of the will to receive in that created being.
Student: I'm not talking about the created being, I'm talking about the still, vegetative and animate.
M. Laitman: There are also created beings.
Student: What the quantity changes, what's the size or the extent?
M. Laitman: Quality. You're taking sand or something vegetative or something from the animate, is there a difference between them?
Student: Yes.
M. Laitman: So, what are you asking?
Student: I'm asking what causes this change, if it's the same matter?
M. Laitman: This difference is caused by the root of each and every one of those parts. Its root, the coarseness of Shoresh, or root, one, two, three, and four.
Student: Is this different from the desire?
M. Laitman: That's the desire.
Student: If you could explain this maybe?
M. Laitman: I can't, you're not going to have an opportunity to understand until you attain it.
Question (Petah Tikva Center): (31:14) And the same, he could operate in the same forms of reception, meaning he's already working by the forms of the reception, but nevertheless he writes in the end that he's achieved forms of reception, but nevertheless, it's the same force of the desire to receive immersed in him, but he's considered as a dead body. So, why is it considered as the dead body at this point? What do you attain here, in these forms?
M. Laitman: I don't know. What does he say?
Reader: It's written, “the person will be a living soul, meaning because the desire to receive began to operate according to these states, he started to discover a living soul in this. However, prior to receiving forms of reception, though this force of the desire to receive was imprinted in him, it's still considered a dead body that is lifeless, since his will to receive has no place in which to dress and manifest his actions.”
Student: So, he attained some form of the Nefesh, or whatever he attained from what the Upper One wants to give to him?
M. Laitman: He started to develop.
Student: Yes, he didn't finish his development, he's beginning and he's defining it as a dead body, or something like that.
M. Laitman: No.
Student: He's considered like a dead body, a dead person.
M. Laitman: Because it has no motion of its own, life means that it has a motion of its own, movement of its own. So, he's still in the still degree, clear? What's happening, you're not agreeing? You have to be in it a little bit.
M. Laitman: What's happening now?
Reader: Should we complete the article? Okay. So, we're on the last heading.
Reading Subtitle: (33:53) Freedom from the Angel Of Death.
Now, after all that we have learned, we find a way to truly understand the words of our sages when they said, “‘Harut [carved] on the stones,’ do not pronounce it Harut, but rather Herut [freedom], for they have been liberated from the angel of death.”
It has been explained in the articles, “Matan Torah” and “The Arvut,” that prior to the giving of the Torah, they had assumed the relinquishment of any private property to the extent expressed in the words, “a kingdom of priests,” and the purpose of the whole of creation—to adhere to Him in equivalence of form with Him: As He bestows and does not receive, they, too, will bestow and not receive. This is the last degree of Dvekut [adhesion], expressed in the words, “a holy nation,” as it is written at the end of the article, “The Arvut.”
I have already brought you to realize that man’s essence, meaning his selfishness, defined as the will to receive, is only half a thing, and can only exist when clothed in some image of a possession or hope for possession. Only then is our matter complete and can be called “man’s essence.”
Thus, when the children of Israel were rewarded with complete Dvekut on that holy occasion, their vessels of reception were completely emptied of any worldly possession and they were adhered to Him in equivalence of form. This means that they had no desire for any self-possession, but only to the extent that they could bestow contentment, so their Maker would delight in them.
And since their will to receive had clothed in an image of that object, it had clothed in it and bonded with it into complete oneness. Therefore, they were certainly liberated from the angel of death, for death is necessarily an absence and negation of the existence of something. But only while there is a spark that wishes to exist for its own pleasure is it possible to say about it that that spark does not exist because it has become absent and died.
However, if there is no such spark in man, but all the sparks of his selfness clothe in bestowal of contentment upon their Maker, then he neither becomes absent nor dies. For even when the body is annulled, it is only annulled with respect to self-reception, in which the will to receive is dressed and can only exist in it.
However, when he achieves the aim of creation and the Creator receives pleasure from him, since His will is done, man’s essence, which clothes in His contentment, is granted complete eternity, like Him. Thus, he has been rewarded with freedom from the angel of death. This is the meaning of the words of the Midrash (Midrash Rabbah, Shemot, 41): “Freedom from the angel of death.” And in the Mishna (Avot, Chapter 6): “Harut [carved] on the stones; do not pronounce it Harut, but rather Herut [freedom], for none are free, unless they engage in the study of Torah.”
M. Laitman: Good, so, we all need to reach by realizing our independence, our freedom, reach such a state where we awaken the light of Torah, and it will influence us and bring us to true freedom, true independence, true freedom.
Reader: (39:48) Announcements. And we'll conclude with a song.
Song: (40:40)