Shamati, Article 15: What is Other Gods in the Work,

Lesson 3

Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel

July 13, 2006

Bold and indented: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew

The heaviness in the work is primarily because they are two texts that deny each other. On the one hand, one should try that all his work will be to reach Dvekut (lit. Adhesion) with the Creator, that all his desire will be only to bestow contentment to his Maker, and not at all to himself.

On the other hand, we see that this is not the primary goal, since the purpose of creation was not that the creatures would give to the Creator, since He has no deficit in Him that the creatures will give Him anything. On the contrary, the purpose of creation was due to His desire to do good to His creatures, meaning that the creatures would receive delight and pleasure from Him.

This means that a person can not connect these two directions. How can it be that his nature is not to desire enjoyment or fulfillment for himself, the purpose of creation being seemingly to bestow upon the Creator and give to Him? So then give to whom? Who should receive?

These two directions are in contradiction within a person. He is unable to reconcile them. The source of it is the extreme oppositeness between Behina Aleph and Behina Bet in the four phases of Direct Light. This oppositeness can be united only after one goes from Behina Aleph in Ein Sof through the whole round of the descent downward and then back upward, bringing all of reality back to Ein Sof, in the third state.

When he reaches the end of correction through the middle line, these “two texts which deny one another,” join together. Then Creator and creature are in Dvekut. Then and only then, the concealment is removed from the creature as to how these two directions specifically through their connection can become complete.

Because these two forces of bestowal and reception are such great opposites, we get confused in various aspects of our emotional or intellectual approach to reality. We cannot connect good and bad, true and false. Everything is divided, split before us into things contradicting each other. Thus our concept of time, space and motion result from these two contradicting things, reception and bestowal.

Also, another question is with respect to whom do you measure concealments? On the one hand, if a person is in concealment, he doesn’t know it. On the other hand, when there is disclosure towards him, he then feels he is in concealment. Thus, with respect to him, this is concealment because previously he was in a state of not knowing.

It turns out, since the nature of the Creator and that of the creature are opposite to one another, it provides a permanent lack of foundation for a person, a blank in his perception of who he is and which reality is he in. This is really what the Creator meant to do in creation, that in between “these two texts which deny one another,” a person would be able to determine his own self through the way, the measure and the force which brings them together.

This is why the creature called “man” is only the force of unity, the craving to connect these two things together on top of the attributes of bestowal and reception, which come to him readily from Above.

These two matters contradict one another from one end to the other. On the one hand one should bestow, and on the other hand, one should receive. In other words, there is the discernment of the correction of creation, being to reach Dvekut. This is discerned in equivalence of form, being that all his actions will be only in order to bestow. After that it is possible to reach the purpose of creation, which is to receive delight and pleasure from the Creator.

Hence, when one has accustomed oneself to walk in the ways of bestowal, one has no vessels of reception anyhow. When one walks in the ways of reception, he has no vessels of bestowal.

Thus, through the “stones to weigh with” one acquires both. After the negotiation he had during the work, when he overcomes and takes upon himself the burden of the Kingdom of Heaven in bestowal in mind and heart, when one is going to extend the Sublime abundance, it causes him to need to have everything in bestowal, as he already has a sound foundation.

Hence, even when one receives some luminescence, he already receives it in order to bestow; this is called that one receives in order to bestow because the whole foundation of his work is built solely on bestowal.

This means that the attributes of reception and bestowal that come from the Creator are not the ones we feel today below the barrier. They can be felt as right and left lines, only on condition that one can connect them to the third line. This one does either when he is in Ibur (conception), when he connects them by rejection from below upward or whenever he is between them as a connector through his attributes of Aviut Shoresh, Aleph and Bet, or even if he can connect them in Aviut Gimel and Dalet. That is what the connection called Ibur, Yenika and Mochin depends on which are the phases one experiences in every situation.

Below the barrier, below the ability to connect these two writings, a person doesn’t feel them as they really are, as two lines. Only on condition that one can connect them, does he begin to understand the nature of the right and left lines, meaning the nature of the Creator and the creature; what reception and bestowal are, which he should connect within him. It becomes clear to him that his reception too is from the Creator and bestowal is the force of the Upper One. When he connects them, he then finds himself, his essence, as an embryo, so to speak.

This is why we can’t even provide the right, the true depiction of what three lines are, until we actually reach them.

Question: Why does Baal HaSulam depict that for spiritual evolvement one has to live in a gap that grows all the time? Why is that necessary?

To reach spirituality, a person has to be equipped with a deficiency for it, specifically for spirituality and not deficiencies for anything else that he needs. When something other than spirituality is needed, these are desires or lacks of this world, which he tries to fulfill, and finds that he doesn’t have the strength or the desire to fulfill them.

In order to come to a spiritual state and in general to any situation, the creature must first want to be in it. Without a desire for it, he won’t feel that situation itself. All situations exist before us in potential, in their infinite form, in an unbounded way. It means that from Above there are no limitations. All the limitations are from below, from the person himself. To the same extent that he is limited, he limits his own perception.

What is the right desire for spirituality? It turns out, that the right desire for spirituality is a desire for my own next state to be in between these two forces, so both of them connect in me together.

Who is ‘me’? ‘Me’ is the creature, intellect and emotion (that is what we call a creature) that will connect right and left together in the unique way possible to connect them. And that combination, that unification of them, this specific drop of unification—that will be me.

Before that, it is not me. Before that it is something that exists through the Creator and is controlled by Him. This connection will no longer be under the control of the Creator; that will be me. What I can do is, (and that’s the wonder), that I can now seemingly crave that situation, where I am being connected or made of these two contradicting forces. When I create that connection: this will be my essence.

It’s something that never existed and you can’t even imagine it before it is created. It also didn’t exist in Adam ha Rishon prior to the breaking. It is not in the breaking. In the breaking they are two contradicting forces. It is the person that creates that connection, unity. To want it, is actually the preparation that we must constantly develop within us.

It turns out that without sensing the incompleteness due to the lack of connection between these two forces; without the sensation of our confusion of being under their influence and feeling that we can’t understand if it’s the creature or the Creator, or if it’s one authority or many authorities, etc; without being in between these two forces, how then will we acquire a desire to join them?

Either we connect them from negativity, from the side of reception where I’m confused and don’t know where I am, and what about me and so on. Or I can connect them from the side of bestowal, when I begin to progress and understand that specifically through these connections I can give pleasure to the Upper One.

There are the phases of evolvement of the intention. This evolvement is possible only from the sensation of pressure between these two writings, which deny one another.

And since “He who is greater than his friend, his desire is greater than him,” the more we progress, this gap between these two diverging forces grows more and more like the two sides of an opened scissor. It grows according to a person’s preparation and one’s ability to tolerate this gap, not to shut his eyes, but try to connect them and not just try to pretend, but to do so from above reason. This is because the connection is always in a state that is impossible for our emotion and intellect in our present state.

“You sacrifice your son Isaac and through him you will have progeny.” On the one hand, you slaughter him and on the other hand through him you will have many grandchildren. How can that be? This is the basis of the separation of the right and the left, Abraham and Isaac.

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