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

Daily Morning Lesson: September 9, 2025 

Part 1: Recorded lesson - Nov 12, 2021

Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

Reader: Hello friends, in the first part of the lesson, we will learn from a lesson from November 12, 2021. This is on the writings of Shamati, Shamati 61. Go ahead.

Reader: Hello, we are reading from The Writings of Baal HaSulam, the articles Shamati, number 61. “Round About Him, it storms mightily.” Our study materials appears on our site, and you can find it on the Arvut system up on top on the upper menu. You could send questions, pertinent questions to the lesson will be aired during the lesson. Rav, please.

M. Laitman: Okay, this is a slightly different lesson, because I'm not in our center, Bnei Baruch, but I'm on the border of Lebanon, at a friend's place with a few other friends. I hope the connection will be good, and we'll have our lesson as usual. So, let's read the article, and we'll talk about it. A very special article. I'll be happy to have as many questions as possible, men and women. Write them down, and then we'll see how much we understood the article. Shamati 61, Round About Him, it Storms Mightily.

Reading: (02:07) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

I heard on Nisan 9, April 18, 1948

Our sages say about the verse, “And Round About Him it Storms Mightily,” that the Creator is meticulous with the righteous as a hairsbreadth. He asked: If they are generally righteous, why do they deserve a harsh punishment?

The thing is that all the borders we speak of in the worlds are from the perspective of the receivers, meaning the lower ones limit and restrict themselves to some degree, and thus remain below, since above, they agree to everything that the lower ones do. Hence, to that extent the abundance extends below. Therefore, by their thoughts, words, and actions, the lower ones cause the abundance to come down from above in this manner. 

M. Laitman: We determine how much we will receive, how much that will be revealed to us, and what degree of connection we will be with the Creator. Meaning, the lower one, in his attitude, opens up the connection, that pipeline that connects him to the Creator.

Reading: (03:46) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

It turns out that if the lower one regards a minor act or word as if it is an important act, such as considering a momentary pause in Dvekut [adhesion] with the Creator as breaking the gravest prohibition in the Torah, then there is consent above to the opinion of the lower one, and it is considered above as though he really broke a serious prohibition. Thus, the righteous says that the Creator is meticulous with him as a hairsbreadth, and as the lower one says, so it is agreed above. 

M. Laitman: A person decides on increasing his state, his connection with the Creator, and also decreasing or diminishing his connection with the Creator. We need to understand that here the connection is present, but from 0% to 100% how that channel will be opened, that is up to us. And so, there is no point in waiting, sitting around and waiting, or complaining that the Creator is not making a connection with us. Rather we need to increase our sensitivity for that connection to apply as many conditions as possible, just like now, we connect to each other through all kinds of wires of connection. Similarly, we need to understand that this is what we need to do with the upper force. There is no restriction on His part. On the contrary, until the end of correction, of the connection between us. But on such conditions that would ensure it doesn't push us away but will bring us closer, and the connection would be more and more substantial, meaning more and more according to equivalence of form, as much as we understand one another, we feel one another, accordingly, we will advance. 

Reading: (06:29) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

When the lower one does not feel a slight prohibition as a serious one, from above they also do not regard the trifle things he breaks as great prohibitions. Hence, such a person is treated as though he is a small person, meaning his Mitzvot [commandments] are considered small, and his transgressions are considered small, too. They are regarded as having the same weight, and he is generally considered a small person. 

M. Laitman: Meaning it's all up to us, we open or close our connection with the Creator, or we change it, we change the volume of the connection, a greater intensity or a smaller intensity. Even as it seems unrelated to a person, but a person in his attitude to the connection with the Creator, he determines the intensity and the mode of connection. 

Reading: (07:56) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily However, one who regards the trifle things and says that the Creator is meticulous about them as a hairsbreadth is considered a great person, and both his transgressions and his Mitzvot are great.

M. Laitman: Meaning, just like in our world, still, vegetative, and animate do not belong to the connection and the speaking degree, and the speaking degree, little kids are undeveloped people are not paying attention to it. But the more developed a person is educated, I'm not talking about spirituality, even corporeally, he is more aware of what's happening around him, and how connected he can be to others. And the same in spirituality, the more we can pay attention each moment to our connection with the Creator, although we can't quite feel it, or maybe we can't feel it at all that connection, but if we take upon ourselves the fact that the connection to us is open from the Creator's side on all channels, to each and every one, especially to each and every Ten,

then we need to make sure we only increase, amplify this connection to learn how to control it. 

Reading: (09:50) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

One can suffer when committing a transgression to the extent that he feels pleasure when performing a Mitzva [commandment]. There is an allegory about this: A man did a terrible crime against the kingship and was sentenced to twenty years in prison with hard labor. The prison was outside the country in some desolate place in the world. The sentence was carried out right away and he was sent to the desolate place at the end of the world.

There, he found other people who were sentenced by the kingdom to be there like him, but he became sick with amnesia and forgot that he had a wife and children, friends and acquaintances. He thought that the whole world is nothing more than the desolate place with the people who are there, that he was born there, and he did not know of more than that. Thus, his truth is according to his present feeling and he has no regard for the actual reality, only according to his knowledge and sensations. 

M. Laitman: He is talking about us. We are born, we grew up, and we feel ourselves today and that is how it is for generations. The people who discover themselves as existing in a special world, strange perhaps, but we are accustomed to it, and certainly we can imagine to ourselves that there is something else, that we do not even belong to it, then we are in exile in this world. And this exile is not a physical exile, like we were thrown into the corporeal world, but rather in our senses in order to receive, we are in the corporeal world, and we can feel anything outside of that, meaning the exile is an emotional one. So, how can each help his friend to come out of it? How can we arise above this feeling? We are all in this confusion, this disorientation, we imagine a world that does not exist, and it is also referred to in this way in the wisdom of Kabbalah, in the imaginary world. We depict those senses, those qualities that were given to us so we can discover ourselves as existing in exile, in a prison, and for us to want to come out of it.

Reading: (13:56) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily There he was taught rules and regulations so that he would not break the rules once more, and keep himself from the transgression written there, and know how to correct his actions so as to be brought out from there.

M. Laitman: And this is on the condition that a person finds the wisdom of Kabbalah, begins to study, is being taught that there are other laws opposite to the world he is in and if he wants to come out of that state of exile in this world, then it can be only in the condition that he learns the laws that belong to that other world where he was brought down from. And then, when he learns about those laws and he wants to keep them, he'll have questions and problems about the way he fits into the real world, the world of the Creator in order to bestow. 

And in this way, he gradually learns, he gets accustomed to it. It takes many years to go from one world to another. It's not like the way it appears to us, like two little children that you can just make that change in us in one leap. It has to do with programming all our senses and the mind that belongs to those senses, that we’ll be able to feel and be ready for existing in the upper world, in the spiritual world. 

Therefore, it was not given to everyone. And if it was given, they're tested. Can they seriously want it? Are they ready for it? And then they're starting to learn, which also takes time. But all of it works according to the connection between the two worlds: the corporeal world and the spiritual world. To the extent to which we're capable, we must learn about all the transitions from one world to another. 

Reading: (16:51) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

[...] In the books of the king, he learned that one who breaks this rule, for example, is sent to a punitive land far from any settlement. 

M. Laitman: He learns that in order to receive this attitude, immediately throws a person from the spiritual world to the lower corporeal world. Then gradually, he begins to see that there is no other choice but to change his behavior. Of course, he can't do it by himself as it is written: “prisoner cannot break himself free from prison.” But if he wants this to happen, then he already receives the strength. The changes he begins to fit the upper world, and he comes out of his exile into redemption, where the difference between exile and redemption is in the letter Aleph, which symbolizes the champion of the world, the Creator. Where the revelation of the Creator to a person, raises a person from the lower world to the upper world. So, we learn those laws, as he calls them, the rules of the king, and anyone who makes the transgression is sent to this place far from the world, from spirituality. And he's impressed by this harsh punishment, and has grievances at why such harsh punishments are given, such severe punishments. And it's true, it seems to us that how can it be that we were born and developed in such a material form, why do we even need this world? Well, only so we'll be able to climb from this world to the spiritual world, only so that the connection and the opposition between the two worlds will be able to detect spirituality. 

Otherwise, there would be no way for us to do it. If had we been born in the spiritual world in spiritual qualities, we'd have known all the spiritual laws and rules and we would keep them, of course, we were born in them. We would be angels. An angel is on the animate degree, but in the spiritual world, there's still vegetative and animate, like in this world. And there's still, vegetative, and animate in the spiritual world. So, we would have been like that, meaning we could keep all the laws, rules, and conditions in order to bestow without any problem, just out of habit. And there would be therefore, no way for us to come closer to the Creator, because to come close in understanding and feeling has to include two states: for, and against, plus and minus, north and south. Let's say in the magnet or anything. We have no choice. We have to understand that. Also, the Creator seemingly had no other choice. And He had to create a man as including two parts. And that's very hard for us to accept. Also to understand and to accumulate inside of us, and contain, and be incorporated, really of the two worlds: the lower world and the upper world. And we never disconnect from the feeling of in order to receive. And even when we reach the highest degree in order to bestow, we cannot disconnect from it. Otherwise, this contradiction, this contrast between the two worlds, if it disappears we won't be able to feel and understand the depth of what the Creator wants to open before us so we would understand Him, get to know Him. Because if we are created beings, we have to get to know all of creation from the word Briera Above from outside of the spiritual degree. And together with that, to be in the high spiritual degree itself. And then in the connection between plus and minus, over this resistance, this conflict inside of us, we act like a resistor. We connect the two ends of the resistor to the upper world and to the lower world, and specifically by that, we reveal inside of us the level of the Creator. 

Reading: (23:15) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

[...] He is impressed by this harsh punishment and has grievances at why such harsh punishments are given.

Yet, he would never think that he himself is one of those who broke the rules of the state, that he has been sentenced harshly, and the verdict has been carried out. And since he became sick with amnesia, he will never feel his actual state. 

M. Laitman: We see it on these people, that if you don't open up even a minimal connection with the spiritual world, then we feel ourselves alive in this world. What can you do? We live better or worse, each one according to his fate, seemingly, but that's how it is. And only those people who are given a certain connection, a point of contact with the upper world, this gap begins to flow through them, the difference between the upper one and the lower one, and only in this way, they begin to feel this comfort.

On the one hand, there's something new, it opens up a possibility, an opportunity for knowledge, for a feeling. On the other hand, it seems so disorganized and unclear that they are unwilling, unable, it's very difficult for them to tolerate these two worlds together. 

Therefore, the more we connect between us in the group, the sooner we build our resistance to be in either the upper world or the lower world, but instead be in both worlds. We insist on it that we want to be creatures, created beings. If the upper world by itself is the Creator, if the lower world by itself is still vegetative and animate, we wish to be in the connection between the two worlds, to tie them together for the darkness to shine as light and that's what we want to happen through us, we wish the Creator to short the connection between the two worlds, to tie them together, bind them through us, in us, that we will be as a conduit, like Baal HaSulam explains, we are as a conduit. We'll get back to it.

Reading: (26:28) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

[...]This is the meaning of “and round about him it storms mightily”: One must consider his every move, that he himself had already broken the king’s commandment, and has already been banished from the world.

 M. Laitman: And the more he feels this expulsion and his distance from spirituality, and closeness to corporeality, and the other way around as well, and accordingly, he needs to see how he's checking himself. What is he closer to, what is he more distant from, and it's not that he is leaving the corporeal world. Kabbalists are not mystics. They are standing firmly on the ground of this world, and it says “his head reaches into the heavens,” the upper world, the Creator's world, and they stand with an erect posture, upright, and that's what we learn about the spiritual Partzufim. We have Rosh, Toch, Sof, 125 degrees that touch this world, the corporeal world, the world to receive in order to receive, in the worst possible way, and all the way up to the heavens, up to the Creator Himself. 

Reading: (28:21) Baal HaSulam. Shamati 61. Round About Him It Storms Mightily

[...]Now, through many good deeds, his memory begins to work and he begins to feel how far he has become from the settled place of the world.

He begins to engage in repentance until he is taken out from there and brought back to the settled place, and this feeling comes specifically through one’s work. He begins to feel that he has grown far from his origin and root until he is rewarded with Dvekut with the Creator. 

M. Laitman: That's important. Only through the work of man, if we make the right calculation, carry out the right actions, we will come to a state where we truly discover these two worlds, and in this way come to the revelation of our true home she's in the Creator's home. 

In other words that Ten or that group of Bnei Baruch that humanity excepts, we see them as desires and not as corporeal images. Desires that are interconnected and the Creator fills all of us. So, a person who begins to come to it, he begins to engage in repentance until he's brought out of this lower world and they bring him back to the place of settlement. And this feeling comes through man's work. He begins to feel that he has grown far from his origin and root until he's rewarded with Dvekut, adhesion with the Creator.

Question (ITA 4): (31:09) To understand what's written. It's written in a very extreme way, meaning we're talking about this wicked person and judgments. But if in this state a creature didn't even have an awareness of one's state, then why is it written that he is to blame for his state, and that's why he was dispelled and is in this faraway land? 

M. Laitman: Look, you can say it's the Creator's fault or the creature's fault. We're not looking for blame. We're not discussing who's guilty. There's no such thing. There's a reality. How the created being, according to the Creator's desire, can come to, must come to the degree of the Creator. How can the Creator create the creature in such a way where the creature is opposite the Creator? Otherwise, he would not be a created being. He would be included, incorporated in the Creator. So, how can the created being start as opposite the Creator, which is why he exists in and of himself in his will to receive. That's the creature's nature. Otherwise, he would not be truly disconnected from the Creator. He won't have any free choice or a place of his own. So, how can this creature, this created being, reach the degree of the Creator, the Creator's state, the feeling, the knowledge, the awareness of the Creator on all of his greatness? So, although we can't understand those things enough to investigate them properly, nevertheless, gradually, over time, we will find out.

Question (ITA 4): (33:40) Why does the writing say that we're in exile?  

M. Laitman: We're not in exile. Rather, he who is a person, a human in this world, who feels like he does not have connection with the Creator, and he wants to come to a connection with the Creator, he discovers the state as exiled from the connection with the Creator. And gradually, we come to this connection. And as we teach about it, in Egypt, we should have been there for 400 years. Those are four complete degrees that we needed to spend in Egypt. Meaning outside of the revelation of the feeling of contact with the Creator we are under the rule of Pharaoh, and not anyone else. 

So, in this way, we need to discover how this great will to receive is controlling us, to see how it is a contradiction and conflict with the Creator, to see how much we hate it, and to such an extent that through this feeling of hate, we wish to come out of it at any cost. And here it's clear to us that we need a great deal of help. How can we accept this help? They tell us that we can do it only by being incorporated in the friends, and that's where the Creator shattered the vessel into many separate pieces, opposite pieces at odds with one another, distant from one another, hate one another, repel one another. And then inside such a society, which is on the one hand included of great egoists, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is made of such people who are, in addition to being egoists, they're starting to hear. 

It's very difficult. It takes many years, sometimes ten, 20, even 30 years, even more until a person begins to hear, nevertheless, that he's an egoist, and that he must rise above his ego and connect with others, or he will have no chance whatsoever to come to the recognition of the Creator, to come out of this place of exile that he was thrown into in this world. And if he wants to come out of it, then it's only through his connection with the other. That is his way out of exile. 

Question (Turkye 1): (37:53) My friend is asking, why did the Creator have to create Adam? 

M. Laitman: The Creator wanted, from the nature of the Good that does Good, for there to be outside of Him creatures that will feel His benefit, for them to be able to discover His greatness. For them to live, to be able to live eternal, whole, complete life. Because it's the nature of the Good to do Good and this is what we can hear for the time being and to understand.

But in truth, slowly, slowly, the more we advance, we will understand these things in a more clear and very different and broad manner.  

Question (Almaty 1): (39:23) When a person feels himself closed, locked in a prison, and his friends are with him, and there's no end in sight. What should we ask for on this day? 

M. Laitman: It's written, “a prisoner cannot save himself from imprisonment.” I think the most important thing is to be connected with the friends, because then the Creator operates upon us in such a way that we begin to feel His bestowal, His influence, and this is how we will be able to advance towards Him. Only to the extent in which we connect between us, to one Kli, to that extent, this Kli, this vessel, becomes closer to the Creator. 

Reader: Only to the extent that we connect between us, so by doing so we'll come closer to the Creator. In the next part of the lesson we'll learn from the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, a lesson from the 24th of October 2006.