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

Daily Lesson (Morning) August 24, 2024.

Part 1: Baal HaSulam. Letter 38, 41.

Reader: Hello, we shall be reading from the Writings of Baal HaSulam, Letters, we'll be starting with Letter 38. You can find all of our texts on kabbalahmedia.info as well as on the Arvut platform, where you can send us questions live. Now anyone asking a question here in the study hall is requested to stand up, hold the microphone close to his mouth and to speak loudly and clearly. 

Reading Letter 38: (00:41) 8 Nissan, Tav-Reish-Peh-Zayin, April 10, 1927, London

To ... may his candle burn:

I received your letter and I congratulate you for the Semicha [rabbinical ordination] you have obtained. This is the first wall that barred you from going forward. I hope that from this day forward you will begin to succeed and go from strength to strength until you come into the King’s palace.

I would like you to get another Semicha, but from now on hurry yourself and spend the bulk of your time preparing your body to muster strength and courage “as an ox to the burden and as a donkey to the load.” Do not lose a minute, “for the way is long and supplies are scarce.”

And should you say, “Where is this preparation?” I will tell you as I heard from the ADMOR of Kalshin. In earlier times, one had to first obtain all seven external teachings, called “the seven maidens that serve the king’s daughter,” as well as terrible mortification. And yet, not many gained favor in the eyes of the Creator. But since we have been rewarded with the teachings of the ARI and the work-ways of the Baal Shem Tov, it is truly possible for anyone, and the above preparations are no longer necessary.

If you step in those two, which by the Creator’s grace I have been favored by Him and have received them firmly, and my view is as close to you as the closeness of the father to his son, I will certainly pass them on to you when you are ready to receive from mouth to mouth.

But the most important is the labor, meaning to crave to labor in His work, for the ordinary work does not count at all, only the bits that are more than usual, which is called “labor.” It is like a person who must eat a pound of bread to be full. All his eating does not merit the title, “a satisfying meal,” but only the last bit from the pound. That bit, for all its smallness, is what defines the meal as satisfying.

Similarly, out of every service, the Creator draws out only the bits beyond the ordinary, and they will be the letters and the Kelim [vessels] in which to receive the light of His face.

Yehuda Leib

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (05:43) Why was it so important for Baal HaSulam that Rabash will receive two rabbinical ordinations? 

M. Laitman: This is what he demanded, because nevertheless, in this way, he thought it would be possible to publicize the wisdom of Kabbalah more. 

Student: What about us? Should one of us also receive this ordination? 

M. Laitman: No, no, in our times, there are different laws. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (06:28) He writes here, in the first days, to attain the Creator, you had to first learn all the seven external wisdoms, and remember, I'm explaining to us about those seven external wisdoms at some point, but if perhaps you can… what are those seven external wisdoms?

M. Laitman: This is what does not belong to the Torah. This is why they are called external.

Student: It seems that this is something very important for the students working. 

M. Laitman: No, this is how it used to be once. 

Student: So no longer relevant? 

M. Laitman: He writes that it's no longer relevant.

Student: Another question. He writes that you should be worthy of receiving mouth-to-mouth. This is also very curious. What is that state where the Rav gives the students something mouth-to-mouth? 

M. Laitman: It's not apparent from the outside, and it's only under special conditions that exist between the teacher and the student. It's hard to reach that. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (07:52) In the last sentence there, Baal HaSulam writes about adding to the exertion when it's regular, one's regular exertion. He calls it the bits above, regularity above. So, we need to add to our exertions, and he says that the Creator draws only the additional bits. Meaning only the exertion that goes beyond a person's norm. So, what happens to our normal efforts throughout the day, does He not take those into account? 

M. Laitman: Everything enters the account, and nothing disappears. This is how it is in spirituality. But a person should know that the most important is what is beyond the ordinary, what he's now adding, in what manner and in what quantity he's adding his labor, his effort.

Student: He also relates that to vessels, the additional exertion. How does it affect a person's vessel? Does it build a new vessel? Does it expand his vessels? What does it do with the vessels? 

M. Laitman: It adds up more and more until it reaches the quota. 

Student: One last question regarding the types of exertion. There's inner exertion, external exertion. For example, external exertion would be, for example, a student that sleeps in the morning lesson and one day he decides that he is not going to sleep. So, can you say that that's an additional exertion?

M. Laitman: We will learn about that. This is a separate learning. What does it start to be exertion or labor on the side of the person? And what is an addition? 

Student: It's just important to understand what true exertion is?

M. Laitman: Well, true exertion is in faith above reason. That's it.  

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (09:59) Now we see how he relates to his students with unconditional love, it seems. So how do we take the way he relates to his students, and also we want to be like that. How do we take that example? How to do that in the state we're currently in? 

M. Laitman: How do we learn from the way Baal HaSulam relates to his students to the way you are in relation to your students? You don't have the same conditions, I can’t say. We can't feel and explain and pass on such relations between one person and another.

Student: But can we take some kind of example from this? 

M. Laitman: No. There are no teachers or students on such levels like he's talking about.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (11:09) You just answered the friend. You said that the extra bits, that's adding in faith above reason. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: How do we add in the work we do between us in faith above reason? 

M. Laitman: Well, first we need to reach faith above reason, then we will learn how to add in that. 

Student: So what are those extra bits for us at this moment? 

M. Laitman: We haven't yet reached that. We can only understand it according to the corporeal examples. That if yesterday I devoted to it so many hours and so much strength, today I give more than before. 

Student: And this satiation he talks about, when we add, we want to reach a state where we're full, satiated. What is that? 

M. Laitman: The quota, if we are under such conditions, but usually it's what we set for ourselves and we say that's it, that's enough.

Student: Because we say that we need to reach a lack, some kind of prayer. The sum total of our efforts should bring us to a prayer. So is the prayer the quota of exertion? 

M. Laitman: No, the prayer is the result of our effort, the correct effort.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (12:54) So you say that we're not yet in a state where we make sufficient exertion, but he says here that we still have to prepare our bodies every day. So I ask you, give us advice. How should we prepare the body so that we can reach that kind of exertion that the Creator expects? 

M. Laitman: To keep what we have in our hands. That means to try to connect all of the friends into one connection, and it should help the other in the study, in understanding, in advancing, in connection, in all the senses of it, until we reach one vessel. 

Student: How much of this is prayer? Or the prayer, how much does it give us proper preparation? 

M. Laitman: From the moment that we begin to study, to do something in order to get closer to the Creator, we have to operate the prayer.

Student: In the preparation for the lesson there was this question, how do we come to the lesson, how do we prepare ourselves, what do we actually want to request? So I'm asking do we have to ask for our collective vessel and the connection throughout the lesson? 

M. Laitman: Certainly, yes. 

Student: So, the whole lesson to be focused? 

M. Laitman: Yes, as it is written, I wish one would pray all day long.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (14:52) Yes, I'm also about that question, about exertion. And he says that the main thing is exertion, meaning to think about how to exert oneself in service of the Creator. So, what does it mean to think how to want to exert oneself in the Creator's work? 

M. Laitman: To want, to carry out the act of prayer, an act that a person wants to show the Creator so it will seemingly be beyond his forces. Where he agrees to all of the conditions that the Creator gives him, establishes before him, and he wants beyond that to adhere to the Creator. 

Student: But there needs to be this kind of craving, you have to build up a kind of craving to always be doing the Creator's work. So, where do you get that kind of craving? 

M. Laitman: From friends, from the friends, that we're together with them, we're under their influence, and from the actions that are directed, we influence ourselves with these general forces, each one shall help his friend, and in that, each and every one truly yearns to reach beyond his forces.

Student: So, together, we evoke this craving for the Creator's work? 

M. Laitman: That's the whole thing, that you cannot study Torah by yourself. 

Student: Craving sounds like a very, very strong emotion. You crave that thing, you want only that. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: So, how do you focus on this kind of exertion, and you don't confuse yourself with other things?

M. Laitman: This is only on the condition that you're in the right environment and it awakens this craving in you. So that all the friends who are in this environment, each one of them within himself is separated from you, and each one has a special disposition, a different disposition towards the Creator, different from the others. And when he activates his inclinations, and each and every one starts to feel the others in this way, he sees how much he has before him, more, and more, and more to attain these states, and how to carry this out. Each one shall help his friend, as we say, either togetherness or death, all kinds of such slogans that speak about it, that a person must be in a society that awakens him.

Student: He also says, as the friend previously asked, that the only work that actually counts, that's the extra bit. So we're always working on awakening that craving, and now how do we know that we've come to something beyond the ordinary? 

M. Laitman: If we are always drawn to it, then we also reach it. We reach that as well.

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (19:37) You said that prayer is the outcome of proper exertion. 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Student: Now, this system between prayer and exertion, when prayer rises, when suddenly a prayer rises out of us, a true desire, should it aim us towards the exertion we should do? Does it go both ways? 

M. Laitman: Possibly. 

Question (Women Turkiye 8): (20:15) In the last paragraph it is written about letters and vessels in which to receive the light of His face. How can we reach these letters through our prayers? 

M. Laitman: Well, over time, we begin to feel and understand the actions that we can perform with our desires, with our… with the interconnections between us until we reach states that we assign such discernments that are called letters. 

Question (Novosibirsk): (21:07) Yesterday you talked about having a journal. Will that help me see if I made any additional efforts throughout the day? 

M. Laitman: Well, we can't yet measure that, but it will come. 

Question (UK 1): (21:30) Can we reach from mouth to mouth study with you? 

M. Laitman: This depends on how much we want it. 

Question (Women German): (21:45) What does it mean to study the seven secular teachings? External rather, not secular. 

M. Laitman: These are seven wisdoms, seven external wisdoms that humanity has.

Student: And what is the process of going through those teachings? 

M. Laitman: In the study of Kabbalah, we also touch upon them. And they enter into us just like the spiritual ones, more or less. 

Question (USA Northeast): (22:25) We studied this letter in the past, and we talked about how it's Baal HaSulam writing to the Rabash, and the name is actually not mentioned here. His name is... 

M. Laitman: In none of the letters it's written to whom it is addressed. So, here, too.

Student: So, it's not meaningful? 

M. Laitman: No, it doesn't matter to whom he writes. 

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (23:16) In this letter, it sounds as though a person's first love should be for the Creator. I don't know if you could put it this way, but a person's primary yearning, craving, should be for the Creator. And even here in the letter, which we know is written to the Rabash, there's no sense of it being written from a father to his son. The love of one who serves the Creator is always for the Creator, and then everything is synchronized with that? Why is that so important? 

M. Laitman: Because he doesn't have anything else in his life. Only the Creator is before him. 

Student: Is it something received from above? 

M. Laitman: It's something that we receive in return for our effort. When we want to reach it, we receive it. 

Student: And that special thing you said, each one adds to the Ten, to the society where the friends are impressed by that uniqueness? 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: Is there something you can recommend for us? 

M. Laitman: I don't want to recommend anything. We study, and you have to take this study as close to your heart as possible.  

Question (Petah Tikva Center): (24:48) When a Kabbalist sees only the Creator before him, maybe that's something I can't understand exactly, but we want to be like that. But I feel that creates a kind of distance between me and my close environment, my family, my corporeal environment.

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: So that doesn't sound like a good state, a healthy state where your close environment feels like you're trying to grasp something they don't understand. How do you do all this without reaching such states with your close environment, with your family? 

M. Laitman: We try to organize it in such a way that it won't harm them so much, and that they will give you the possibility to do this work, like time off, time for yourself.

Student: With the Kabbalists we hear that they also had states of very serious alienation like that we heard. 

M. Laitman: Yes. 

Student: I'm not sure how to avoid that, or is there no choice here? 

M. Laitman: There's no choice. There is no choice, because the engagement in spirituality, it truly takes over the person, and you cannot run away from it. 

Reader: (26:29) So we shall read Letter 41, the Writings of Baal HaSulam, of course, Letter 41.

Reading Letter 41: (26:46) 13 Tammuz, Tav-Reish-Peh-Zayin, July 13, 1927, London

To the honorable students, may the Lord be upon them:

I received your letter, and I am now sending the introduction. Although I have not proofread it, not even in writing, I trust you to understand how to proofread it perfectly. I cannot send you paper from here, simply for lack of funds.

The introduction will probably take up a printer-sheet and a half, six pages, and with the index and references, it will be two complete pamphlets, eight pages.

But the introduction is one complete thing, and there is no division in it whatsoever, for they are matters that are most sublime, as you will see once you understand. You should hurry with it as much as possible so I can be on the good day.

... And we hope that everything will be for the sake of the Creator and for our sake. We only need to exert in His law and in His work, to fill the lack and to correct what is broken...

I do not understand your lack of longing for my replies. As for me, I find myself truly near you, not in any way less than when I was with you. I share your sorrows and your joys, just as though I were with you in the same house and we were speaking to each other. But you know two, and I know one, hence my words are few.

Please follow everything I wrote above concerning the wholeness of the introduction.

Yehuda

M. Laitman: Well, this is about what he writes, about how they should relate to it. Is that it? Next? 

Reader: (30:05) Should we move to the next part of the lesson? 

M. Laitman: Yes.

Song: (30:11)