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

Daily Morning Lesson: July 4, 2025 

Part 1: Recorded lesson – Oct 14, 2021. Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work? 

Reader:

Reader: We are reading from the writings of Baal HaSulam on page 535 in Hebrew, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work? We will continue from “We must know that God has made the one opposite the other.” You will find the study material on our websites and the Arvut system. You should click the study material button, the top menu. You can also send questions here and selected questions will be asked during the lesson.

Rav’s Introduction: (00:37) Yes, we have been studying this article for several days now – today we will finish it, I hope. I recommend that each one or every Ten will nevertheless get back to this article again because it really organizes the right approach to obtaining godliness.

Reader: We continue from “We must know that ‘God has made one opposite the other.’”

Reading: (01:15) Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work?- Twice

We must know that “God has made the one opposite the other.” It means that as much as there is disclosure in Kedusha, to that extent the Sitra Achra [other side] awakens. In other words, when one claims, “It is all mine,” meaning the entire body belongs to Kedusha, the Sitra Achra, too, argues against him that the whole body should serve the Sitra Achra.

Hence, one must know that when he sees that the body claims that it belongs to the Sitra Achra, and cries the famous questions of “Who” and “What” with all its might, it is a sign that one is walking on the path of truth, meaning that one’s sole intention is to bestow contentment upon one’s Maker. Thus, the primary work is precisely in this state.

M. Laitman: What am I working for? For whom am I working? Why do I need the spiritual work, etc.?

Reading: Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work? 

it is a sign that one is walking on the path of truth, meaning that one’s sole intention is to bestow contentment upon one’s Maker.

M. Laitman: He still doesn't get an answer for it but the fact that his intention to come to bestow upon the Creator, to give him contentment, this is already clear because he sees resistance from his ego which doesn't let him do anything. Even the smallest things which he used to do without thinking about them, today, even after much thinking and after great effort, it's still very hard for him to do anything that pertains to bestowal, to connection, etc.

Reading: (03:41) Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work? 

[...] Thus, the primary work is precisely in this state.

One must know that it is a sign that this work hits the target. The sign is that he fights and sends his arrows to the head of the serpent, 

M. Laitman: It’s the Sitra Achra.

Reading: Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work?

since it yells and argues the argument of “What” and “Who,” meaning “What is this work for you?” meaning what will you gain by working only for the Creator and not for yourselves? And the argument of “Who” means that this is Pharaoh’s complaint who said, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice?” 

M. Laitman: Meaning these two arguments we hear from our ego: What is this work for you? Why do you want to bestow and not receive; and who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? Meaning why work for someone else is more important, whether it's the Creator or others—it doesn't matter but someone else outside of me, says the body—why is it more important than working for me? These are the two questions that a person is always in. If he's really in them, it's a sign he is directed correctly on the path.

Question (Kyiv 1): (05:31) What's so bad about those questions of who and what?

M. Laitman: Great, they are great questions, you shouldn't need to erase them. You just need to work with them correctly. Because without scrutinizing them correctly and rising up and answering them correctly, you can achieve spirituality, the truth, the one force that controls the Creator. All those questions—there are many manners in them—all those questions which are called, what and who: What is this work meaning what is the work of bestowal, why do you need to bestow? You’ve got a certain nature— work and get benefit for yourself and that's it. Those questions in your mind and heart, sometimes, you can't be in it. What is this work for you and, also, there's the work of who: Whom do you want to serve? If you're working for yourself and you understand what is good for you and you work accordingly, as in this world, with your job, your family, anything that you want to achieve in your life. This is called the right work, when you see what to do in order to succeed, to gain. But to work for the Creator, He is hidden, we don't even know if He exists. Who He is, what is He, what does He want from us? Are you sure that when you come to bestowal you actually come to Him? Who is He that you should work for Him? How do you know for sure, your ego constantly hides the Creator from you. Those two questions: What is this work meaning bestowal—what is it—and the Creator, who is He, those two things are constantly hidden from us. I don't see them on the horizon. Sometimes, they appear and then I feel bad. How can I, out of this bad feeling, when I search for the Creator and can't find Him. And maybe I want to do some act of bestowal—let's assume that I want it—but I don't know what it is. How, to whom, to what, how can I reinforce myself in this work of who and what? That's the problem.

Student: How should we answer these questions?

M. Laitman: We will see. We will soon see.

Reading: (08:42) Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work? 

It seems as if the “Who” argument is a rational argument. Normally, when someone is told to go and work for someone, the person asks, “For whom?” Hence, when the body claims, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice,” it is a rational argument.

However, according to the rule that the intellect is not an object in itself, but is rather a mirror of what is found in the senses, it appears so in the mind. This is the meaning of “The sons of Dan: Hushim.” That is, the mind judges only according to what the senses let it scrutinize and devise some inventions and tactics to suit the demands of the senses.

In other words, what the senses demand, the mind tries to provide their wish.  

M. Laitman: In other words, what is important for us is, nevertheless, the senses and the senses give the intellect all kinds of depictions, all kinds of forms. Then, the intellect brings it as a rational argument. But, still, everything depends on the senses because we remember, at the basis of creation is a desire. And the intellect comes in order to serve the desire in all kinds of ways—direct, indirect. But, in the end, it is to do what the original desire wants.

Reading: (10:49) Baal HaSulam, Shamati #19. What Is “The Creator Hates the Bodies,” in the Work? 

In other words, what the senses demand, the mind tries to provide their wish. However, the mind itself has no need for itself, for any demand. Hence, if there is a demand for bestowal in the senses, the mind operates according to a line of bestowal, and the mind does not ask questions, since it is merely serving the senses. 

M. Laitman: There are many things here that we can scrutinize if you want. The mind or the intellect, and the senses are two things that manage us or that we manage them—depends how you relate to them. But that's the main thing in all of creation, the intellect and the senses, meaning the mind and the heart. Them, we need to explain to ourselves as much as possible so that each time we will be able to distinguish what is the mind, what is the heart—arguments of the mind and arguments of the heart. And how we work, how we correct the mind and the heart.

Question (PT 20): (12:20) In the beginning, we work with the intellect as if we convince ourselves by the work in the Ten, that the Creator exists, and we are headed His way and I guess then descents come and the mind changes. Is this how it is?

M. Laitman: Normally, yes, we come to the wisdom of Kabbalah, in general, because we want to know, we want to understand the secrets of life, who is managing life? How can I manage my own life, etc., it is all from the perspective of the intellect. What I am lacking is knowledge, attainment. Afterwards, we learn and besides learning, we also go—we become treated from above. Forces operate on us and begin to expand our desires. Then, we become confused, our desire grows and asks all kinds of questions in the desire. The questions become, what is this work for you? Why do you need to bestow or why are you told to bestow? If you want only to receive and satisfy yourself, which is your natural disposition—call it egoistic, never mind, that's me, I want to satisfy myself with all kinds of emotional satisfactions as well as intellectual ones. And here I'm told, no, and the wisdom of Kabbalah, gradually—it also takes a long time until I understand it—that you don't need to work with your intellect and with your feeling but try to come to a Godly mind and heart. Godly mind and heart means you feel the other and only then yourself, to the extent that you can help others. Your mind needs to work after the feeling only in a direction of how to help others. 

It turns out that those discernments, definitions, values of bestowal that I’m not used to, that I don't want, that I always reject. All of a sudden, the wisdom of Kabbalah shoves them into me and I have to be in them and I really don't want it. There are people who are closer to bestowal, to love of others—let animals live, they help people. I'm not like that, I'm a normal person, I have no problems. I don't want to do anything bad to anyone but, also, I'm not really too keen on going out and helping everyone and I don't feel like I have to. And I also see around me that people don't do that, each one cares for himself, for his family, for his country. If we're talking about climate things and all other global things that pertains to everyone, so everyone is concerned with the planet, maybe, but it's not like I have a natural disposition for it. Here, in the wisdom of Kabbalah, I hear that I am required to turn myself upside down? What are we? Communists, socialists, idealists, I don't know who those Kabbalists are. They say, no, it's the laws of nature and whether we like to or not we will have to follow them, to obey them. In nature, there is only one force, the power of bestowal and love. Therefore, all of nature, if we didn’t spoil it, if we didn't see it through our egoistic perspective, we would see perfect harmony which is called, paradise or the upper world. But the more we install our evil, egoistic “I,” we spoil our vision. We shorten our field of vision to the boundaries called this world and even in these boundaries, we see and understand everything in a distorted way. So that whatever happens, in the end, we will have to change our approach to life, to existence, to nature, either in a good way or in a bad way, normally it happens in both. It's called through the middle line, this is what we are told but in truth, initially, the Creator created us and positioned us opposite from Himself. He created the will to receive which works which used to work in bestowal when they were Adam and Eve, meaning the will to receive and the intention to bestow. They were in the Garden of Eden, meaning everyone in bestowal, everyone within the upper light in the force of bestowal, in that state, they didn't attain their state. In order to give them a feeling and attainment in the Creator, in knowing the Creator, to be like the Creator in their minds and hearts. For this, they have to receive opposite qualities from the Creator because you can study anything only from its opposite form. 

This is why there was the breaking which is called the sin of the tree of knowledge. We begin from the point of the shattering. Each and every generation begins to correct its own sin, as it is called, and this is how we begin to know ourselves. When we come to a certain state where we are pushed by nature's forces to know the system of bestowal more and more, opposite from our system which is the system of reception. Then we see that there are mainly two questions—everything concentrates around two questions—a question from the intellect and a question from the feeling: Who is the Lord that I shall obey his voice?—that's the emotional one—and What is this work for you?—the intellectual question, the question from the intellect. We have to work on those two questions and through them, through scrutinizing them, we can come to understand what we have opposite from it in the system of bestowal. We are in the system of reception in our mind and hearts, in who and what, and then we can come from this into the system of bestowal, also to who and what? To attaining the Creator and to feeling all of reality, this is where we are, now, about to come. Even though we don't quite understand what is happening to us, the more we engage in this just like kids who don't exactly know what they are doing. But they are busy with their games and the game itself promotes them, advances them. And they begin to see that you should do this and that and this and that, they learn. They fall, they get all kinds of bruises, they cry but that's how they grow. As it is written, “There is no righteous man on earth who does good but he went through the bad.” Yes, there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin. Only through sins and mistakes do we come to the right operations, etc. Don't get excited, we will go and do it, those questions of who and what are the main questions in creation. And they start from being made of an intellectual system and an emotional system.

Question (Turkey 1): (22:42) Will these who and what questions ever end or will it be renewed for us to rise above it every time?

M. Laitman: Even the tiniest part of Adam HaRishon, when the whole vessel of Adam HaRishon shattered and split into myriad pieces. Each such piece has contact with the Creator and has a place and a plan by which they all have to reconnect into that body called Adam HaRishon, which is basically a Partzuf or a soul, Neshama. There, there's a place for everyone and without that someone, it cannot be complete, there cannot be the final correction. We're in this system, we cannot get away from it, we can’t change anything other than to agree and accelerate, hurry on the way. I can accelerate my approaching the corrected place, the corrected state. If I don't do it, then, there are forces in nature that will pressure me and force me to, nevertheless, come to it, sooner or later. I can only rush my development, it's a lot because I can come in this life to my personal end of correction. But I can also spend many more lifetimes with other people who also didn't succeed in doing it or didn't even come close to it. It all depends on our efforts and on how much we want to put together this Adam HaRishon, this mini Adam HaRishon, in our Ten; to the extent that we want this system to really live among us. Then we will scrutinize what are the relationships that should be in the corrected Partzuf and elevate this Partzuf from the level of the world of Assiya—even this world—to elevate it and elevate it through all the worlds to the world of Ein Sof, through the 125 degrees. This is basically our goal and our work in the Ten.

Question (Kyiv 3): (25:47) When you accustom yourself to learning in order to bestow in the intellect, it does not ask whom. Is this in the middle of the way or the end of it?

M. Laitman: I can't say, it can be in any situation; perhaps, a question will awaken in a person: What am I working for?—I don't want it, he resists and yells and discovers that he hates this whole matter. But he doesn't run away from the path, and then immediately after almost, he feels that he has a solution. And he can advance by doing a slight change in his perspective on what is happening. That's why our advancement is precisely in the what and who. Once, it's intellectual, once, it’s emotional, and so on and so forth, because, often, I stop and say why am I doing it, what for? It's not worthwhile, I don't get anything out of it. Other times, I am just under my feeling so I don't care about the intellect. I feel in closeness and advancement and development and, all those intellectual things that I had, don't come into my mind anymore. The feeling is stronger than intellect while it's present, while it's active. The mind is stronger than the feeling when the feeling is not operating and then, we can awaken the intellect. That's how they alternate.

Student: (32:31) It seems that there is a part on the path that we go through it without descents, the condition you describe here. Is that it?

M. Laitman: I don't think that there are places where there is no fault, no descent. It is written, “a thousand times will a righteous fall and rise.” There cannot be a spiritual ascent if there isn't a descent or a spiritual descent or fall before it. It's impossible because you have to discover the broken vessel. How to correct it, to look for how to correct it, to organize the whole environment to its correction and then rise. Otherwise, how will you do it? Without descents there are no ascents and the descents are not descents, they are ascents on the left line. We call them descents, for short, but it's not a descent; the fact that we're adding to the will to receive and I discover myself falling again and again. It's an order for me to take these vessels and with them come close to the group again into the Creator and try with all of those vessels that appeared in the fall, to achieve adhesion again and again. You can't say that there is a state of an ascent without a descent that comes before it. 

Moreover, it is written that the greatest descent will be in the final steps before the final correction. The states there will be very difficult on planet Earth, too, in our world. There will be such waves of hunger and cruelty among all the people to the point where people will not be able to trust the people in his own household. It is written, A man hates the dwellers of his household, and there are others. There are even Kabbalists who wrote, I wouldn't want to live in that time. They were trying to convey to us those states—that each time we approach great corrections—before them we will have great descents. But we need to understand that this whole picture that we feel is a picture that exists in our minds, as we learn in the perception of reality. Therefore, if we know how to approach it, how to correct it, we can see in the world that the world is good, or relatively, and it's not that terrible. What am I trying to say here? We can change the world because the word, Olam [world] comes from the word, Alama [concealment]. So, to the extent that I conceal my ego, under the screen, I see the real world; I see the Creator above me. To the extent that I can’t conceal it, I see the opposite: the shattering in front of me. We will talk about it, I just want you to see how much we can talk about in this article, okay?

Student: It’s not clear, on the one hand, he writes that you accustom yourself to work in order to bestow, the mind doesn't ask the question of ‘’who’’. But, on the other hand, it seems like these questions are going to go until the end of the path, so it's confusing. What's the essence of the mind, of these questions when the mind doesn't ask ‘’who?’’

M. Laitman: We have two parts along the way: A part of the way is the ascent of Malchut to the level of Bina, and there's a part from the middle of Bina to Keter. When we rise from Malchut to Bina, we want to acquire qualities of bestowal. Therefore, we don't want to deal with our vessels of reception, only to bestow, bestow in order to bestow, to give, to connect, to bond, etc. After we acquire the qualities of bestowal, we are drawn to use them. What will I do with them if I want to bestow now? I am in a state where it is like a woman at the end of her pregnancy. She really wants to give birth, she’s got labor pains already, she wants to eject, to deliver the embryo already, the fetus. So, where are we when we're in the qualities of Bina and we are filled with the qualities of Bina, with bestowal? We want to extend it. Then, we deliver out of ourselves the next stage, the next part of the way when we already want to come to bestowal. Then, we come to bestowing but in bestowing we also have ascents and descents, and all kinds of states that are much more juicy, emotional than before. We will talk about it.

Question (ITA 4): (35:06) The work of Kabbalists is a constant war between those questions and the goal?

M. Laitman: I don't think it's a war, you could put it as war, but I think it's a celebration. Let's look at it this way, why not, I think that regular people who still haven't come into some contact with corrections, they are at war. A war of survival, of understanding what am I living for, most people would even prefer to end their lives, etc. They are under the governance of corporations, all kinds of companies that manipulate them, that sell them all kinds of trash. They work only to buy this trash and enrich the bank accounts of the rich people who sell it to them and manipulate them. I don't think that the way we look at life we lost anything. We've got a perspective that maybe we haven't quite solidified our perspective on the world. Nevertheless, where are we and where are those miserable people who don't know what they are living for and what is the purpose of life? And are constantly racing to get, and get, and get at least something as they're taught by the media and by other people. So, at least we take for ourselves the purpose of the work, the purpose of life, the purpose of nature that is eternal, complete. And to it we aim, we haven't succeeded so far, but we are on the way. At least, we are moving towards something eternal, complete, infinite and not a life like everybody else's.

Question (Hadera 1): (37:51) You said that the intellect is also kind of a sense. How come only by complimenting the two of them can we process the picture of reality we need?

M. Laitman: The main thing is the feeling, desire is feeling; but in order to give us certain discernments the different desires in order to change one desire, we need the mind so the mind will criticize and we'll look at the feeling.

Student: Is this connected to the right line, left line, or the qualities of the creation and Creator?

M. Laitman: Later inside of us we will learn how it's connected but for now the principle is simple: All of creation is feeling desire. Desires to material of creation and we need the intellect, the mind just because the desire was shattered into many pieces. And we need to reassemble them somehow, and assign each of the desires weight and direction. To locate its place in this new corrected system and for that we need the intellect, the mind; meaning the mind developed to the of the extent we will perform our spiritual corrections.

Student: In the end, when we rise and connect to the light, will the intellect disappear?

M. Laitman: The intellect will not disappear, it will be on the same level as the feeling. We will use them both to attain wholeness.