Our Task Is To Cling To The Upper One

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Who is our “Upper One” in spirituality?

My Answer: We don’t know that. We exist in the womb of the Upper One as a mere point, a droplet of semen, our spiritual Reshimo (record, gene). Beyond this Reshimo, we have nothing else!

In fact, our corporeal body, mind, and feelings have no relation to the spiritual world and cannot be seen there. In the spiritual world, there is only a womb of the Upper One (Malchut of Infinity) and us inside it. And each of us is a Reshimo (0/1, Shoresh Aviut/Aleph Hitlabshut) or in other words, a point in the heart.

Our task, as a point in the heart, is to try to cling to the wall of the spiritual womb! Beginning with the three days during which the semen is absorbed, the first problem for the embryo (us) is to attach itself to the wall of the womb. Attaching to the womb is establishing the very first contact with the Upper One.

In order to do this, we must annul ourselves before the Upper One. But where is this Upper One, this wall of the womb? What is it exactly? The Upper One is the Kabbalistic group, my environment! This is how the Upper One reveals the Creator for me.

Thus, there are the group and me, who adheres to it, despite all the obstacles. I accept the entire force of the group’s desire for bestowal, and I am willing and ready to take it all in through annulling myself before them.

When I attach myself to the group, my Aviut, which is the strength of my will to bestow, begins to grow and cause unpleasant sensations in me: disappointment, growth of egoism, and burdening of the heart. But I must go even deeper in, like a leech, clinging to the group which is the “wall of the womb.”

Then, between us, the first connection will appear, not through a point, but through the tube through which “blood” will start flowing into me. This connection, so far, is on the inanimate level (“Dam”- blood, from “Domem” – inanimate), but I will have already received spiritual sustenance from the Upper One.

All of this takes place through my connection with the group. There is no other “wall” through which I can enter the spiritual world!

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/10, Article Preface to the Sulam Commentary”

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Who Benefits From My Actions?

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: What is bestowal for the sake of bestowal?

My answer: Bestowal for the sake of bestowal is when I don’t feel pleasure as fulfillment of my personal desires but when I use it solely as fuel to fulfill the act of bestowal.

Question continued: How then does this fuel differ from pleasure if the only thing that exists is the will to receive (Kli) and its fulfillment (Light)?

Answer: If I am using the fuel solely to accomplish my work in fulfilling the other, then my own fulfillment is just fuel for me. If, however, I am going to use the fulfillment to please myself, it means that I am receiving pleasure. Ask yourself: “What is my vehicle working for? What underlies my actions? Who is the benefactor of my efforts?”

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/10, Article “The Matter of Bestowal”

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Then Everything Will Be All Right

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Can I receive an awareness of the necessity to love others from the group without a prayer and an inner crisis?

My Answer: You have to work in the group; you must oblige it to influence you. How can you oblige them? Buy them! As it is written: “Buy yourself a friend.”

You must invest yourself in the group in order to persuade the friends to have an impact on you. You need to annul your ego in regard to them because only the lower one receives from the greater.

Work in the group:

1. Influence your friends. Where you are greater than them, give them everything they want, as if you are bigger and able to bestow (like the greater bestows to the lower one) .

2. In the measure that you are lower, you must receive an awareness of the importance of the purpose of creation from them. You must annul yourself and receive from them.

You should say to the friends: “Whatever and in whatever quantity of it you desire, I bestow it to you, so that I can receive the awareness of the importance of bestowal and love from you. Only this I need from you. I have everything else, but this I cannot get anywhere else except from the group.”

Yet, I do not receive love and bestowal from them; from them I feel the sensation of a lack of it and the desire for it. Later, the Light arrives and brings me love and the quality of bestowal. I receive the desire for the quality of love and bestowal from the group; the Light that Reforms brings correction and replaces the sensation of lack.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/10, Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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First, Let’s Receive A Soul

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: How do I combine inner work with studying The Zohar?

My answer: Don’t think that The Zohar was written to serve as an ordinary book to tell or explain something to us. This isn’t the case. Baal HaSulam wrote his commentary for a different reason as well. We don’t study using our earthly mind to comprehend what is written and to learn in detail how to work in the three lines by memorizing all the terms. We must understand the necessity for correction and not the structure of it all.

The additional commentaries on the authentic sources provided by the Kabbalists (on the Kabbalistic works of the Torah, the Prophets, and other sacred texts) are impossible to comprehend through the ordinary, external mind. They can only be comprehended through correction of the soul. Therefore, all Kabbalistic commentaries are primarily designed to draw the Upper Light onto the student. Then, the reader can use the sources correctly, enjoy the light contained in them, and, along the way, discover what is written in the books. This is what is called commentary.

Every commentary is an additional instrument that helps us to connect to the authentic source, not to just understand it. When we are reading Baal HaSulam’s so-called “technical” explanations about the three lines, Sefirot and Partzufim, ascent and descent, and Reshimot and screens, we think that he is trying to teach us some regular science for us to learn with our brain and to be able to draft all this schematically. But, this is not the case.

Baal HaSulam’s addition, “The Sulam Commentary to The Book of Zohar,” helps us to draw the Light that Reforms. Its purpose is not to give us abstract knowledge of the structure of some higher world. It is impossible to know the Upper World until we are able to perceive it within our souls. Essentially, we are studying our own construction.

A person begins to sense that the entire reality, all of creation, is enclosed within him, not outside of him even though it appears to be external. Therefore, we must tune ourselves into studying correctly with an understanding that we will gain nothing but the Light that Reforms. After this, attainment will follow, and “the soul of a person will begin to teach him.” First, we must receive this soul, the spiritual substance, in which we will discover all the phenomena about which The Zohar speaks.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/10, The Zohar

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Kabbalists On The Purpose Of Creation, Part 4

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. Commentaries in brackets are mine.

What Is the Purpose of Creation?

…His guidance is purposeful and aims to eventually bring us [our souls] to adhesion [similarity] with Him, so it would reside within us [within our corrected desires, in full equivalence with the property of bestowal and love called the Creator]….
– Baal HaSulam, Article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose

the purpose of instilling the soul [the point in the heart] within the body [desire to receive] is so that the soul, being precisely in the body [to receive in order to bestow], returned [became similar] to its root [the Creator] and merged [in complete similarity] with the Creator, as it says: “(1) And love thy Creator, (2) and walk His ways, (3) and keep His commandments, (4) and merge with Him.”
– Baal HaSulam, Igrot (Letters) pg. 63

Every person is obliged to attain the root of his soul.
– Baal HaSulam, Article “The Acting Mind

It turns out that the purpose of the whole Creation is that the lowly creatures will be able, by keeping Torah and Mitzvot [Torah is the Light of correction, and the Mitzvot are the corrections of man’s 613 egoistic properties which are performed by the Light. The soul is the desires of bestowal, a soul’s qualities of bestowal toward other souls], to rise ever upward, ever developing, until they are rewarded with Dvekut with their Creator.
– Baal HaSulam, Article “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Item 6

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Answers To Your Questions, Part 1

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator is  Absolute Good
Questions about the post “Kabbalists On The Purpose of Creation, Part 1

Question: “…He is fundamentally devoid of a desire to harm anyone.” Then why do I see people suffering.

My Answer: To the extent that people are opposite to the Creator’s quality to bestow and love, they perceive all the goodness that comes from Him in the opposite form, as evil.

Question: Are all events prepared by the Creator and sorted in the set of acquired habits for the soul?

My Answer: All the events are deliberately determined by the initial and final states of every soul. However, they are perceived by the souls as states ranging from extreme suffering to immense pleasure, depending upon the similarity of the souls to the Creator.

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The Body Is Transient, The Soul Is Not

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Does it make a difference how a person is buried?

My Answer: First, Kabbalah engages only in the correction of the soul. When a person comes to a Kabbalistic group and begins working on himself in order to unite with the friends so as to reach the quality of a mutual guarantee, he realizes that he hates the others and is repulsed by them. This rejection of friends is, in fact, the egoistic quality that a person needs to correct by turning it into love toward them.

This is possible only with the help of the Light that influences a person while he studies Kabbalistic texts (especially those written by Baal HaSulam and RABASH). A corrected attitude to the neighbor, up to the point of loving him, is what forms a person’s soul, which becomes filled with the Light of bestowal and love: the Creator.

Second, the human body has no sanctity. This attitude to our animal body comes from religions which are based specifically on the concealment of the Creator and on the fact that people don’t feel the soul and mistakenly attribute it to the animate body. It seems to a person that there is something special or unique about the body since they don’t feel anything except the body and perceive everything only through it.

In ancient times, food, utensils, and slaves were buried along with the body of a dead master in order to help him in his future life in the same body. For that purpose, the body was embalmed. American Indians (Native Americans) still dig out the bones of the deceased from the grave, wash them, and return them to the grave as a token of respect. Hindus choose an infant for worship and make him holy. Christianity has an array of relics as well, which they argue about to this day.

Funerals are accompanied by a variety of  rituals. They all are based on ignorance and the adoration of the flesh. Muslims believe that the pleasures of our world also exist in the future world. Over the years, as Judaism descended from feeling the spiritual world and the Creator to the exile (Galut), Judaism became clothed in various external rituals. People began to honor graves and to practice fortune-telling and other “spiritual” manipulations. And although people are trying to re-build the Temple, they are doing so only in an external way according to their exiled spiritual state, and in this way it will be nothing more than an ordinary building.

Conclusion: There is no sanctity (eternity, perfection, and divinity) in our world (our thoughts, feelings, actions, objects, and rituals). Our whole world consists of three levels of nature: inanimate, vegetative, and animate. We need to reach the “human” level (from the word “Adam,” meaning Dome – similar to the Creator) through our work on correcting the mutual hatred among us into mutual love. Thereby, we will become similar to the Creator and thus feel eternity and perfection irrespective of our animate bodies.

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 06.24.10

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, Article “The Matter of Bestowal,” 1984
The veil of concealment will fall when I will truly wish to bestow.
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), Item 118
“The holy land” is the desire that’s totally aimed at bestowal. “Other lands” are the desire aimed at receiving.
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary,” Item 73
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 1, Lesson 1
The Hebrew language is based on Lights and Kelim. The purpose of this language is to explain the spiritual development in all its depth.
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