Kabbalah Moments: What To Ask For

Opening The Zohar – 07.04.10

The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Heaven and Earth”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

The Perfection of HaVaYaH

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, ChapterVaYetze (And Jacob Went Out),” Item 176: The keys to the treasures are on her right hand. These are the third discernment that she brought down with her from Ima to the Garden of Eden, the light of Hassadim whose place is in the right hand, which clothe the Hochma, and which are called “keys to the treasures,” since they open the treasures of the wisdom. Without them, all the treasures of the wisdom would remain hidden, like a lock and bolt.

Ultimately, what is the wisdom of Kabbalah telling us? It explains how we make use of the changes within our desires, which we have certain control over, to become similar to the Creator. All desires come equipped with the original structure, called HaVaYaH, which we cannot change. All the material of the creature, created by the Creator, received its original imprint, its true model called Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey. Indeed, otherwise this material would not perceive the Light as coming from the Creator. And that is why this imprint must be in the material, for otherwise there is no creature; that is, something that feels that it is one, receiving and two, receiving from the Creator.

Therefore, HaVaYaH signifies the very minimum below which there is no creature. The Light must spread through the full four phases of the desire. This form must exist in the material. After the creature already has this original imprint of the Creator, we learn the forms that the creature assumes, adopts from the Creator as it begins to grow in similarity to Him.

HaVaYaH is the perfect structure. Its perfection is either that the creature’s material does nothing, while the Creator imprints everything in it, or that the creature does everything, becoming similar to the Creator and existing in perfect HaVaYaH.

For the creature to exist in perfect HaVaYaH by being similar to the Creator, it must bestow back to Him the ten Sefirot of the Reflected Light, akin to the Creator’s ten Sefirot of the Direct Light. How is this possible? It is possible, if the creature has the power to bestow, which it elevates from Malchut to Keter.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Genius In Simplicity
Laitman.com Post: The World In The Reflected Light
5 Minutes Of Light: “The Meeting Point Between Creator & Creature”

Answers To Your Questions, Part 9

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Attainment of the Purpose of Creation Rests Upon the Whole of Mankind
Questions about the post “Kabbalists On The Purpose Of Creation,” Part 7

Question: Suppose we raise the group prayer to awaken the question about the purpose of life in our souls before apocalyptic events and suffering come. If such prayer comes from the heart, does it have merit? And how can I influence my friends without being with them physically? Should it be my prayer or thought, or both, when I appeal to the Creator?

My Answer: In whatever way possible: by writing letters and talking to them, with your thoughts and prayers to them and to the Creator.

Question: A quote: “All the nations [in the future, either against their will, through the path of suffering, or consciously, though the path of Light] will unite and be ready for the Creator’s work [mutual bestowal to the Creator whereby they receive infinite fulfillment from the Creator for His sake]. If we wish to unite but don’t feel within ourselves inner exalted sensations, are we really uniting?”

My Answer: We should strive for it until our aspirations reach a certain measure. Then we will perceive this quality within ourselves and the Light that fills it.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: A Prayer That Will Be Heard
Laitman.com Post: We Must Only Unite Our Points In the Heart
A Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: "Group Study"
5 Minutes Of Light: "Aim For The Light By Connecting With Others"

Fulfillment Is The Screen And The Reflected Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe always think about fulfillment because we were created for it. However, perfect fulfillment is only possible in an unlimited, external desire. This desire undergoes constant renewal. You fulfill it with your bestowal and love, and therefore you feel that you exist in perfection and eternity.

To bestow means to have a desire and an opportunity to bestow, where both the desire and the opportunity never end. Yet, the goal of creation is not bestowal, but to fulfill the creatures. The Creator’s goal is to fulfill the creatures, to give them pleasure, for us to receive from Him.

This is true from the perspective of the Creator, but from our perspective reception means always wanting to receive in order to enable the Creator to give to us. This will give Him and us unceasing, eternal pleasure.

In other words, the aim of my work is to have a constant aspiration for Him, and this aspiration is also my fulfillment. After all, the fulfillment of a Partzuf is the screen and the Reflected Light. Today we have no understanding of this state. It seems artificial, repulsive, and unreal. Nevertheless, today we also live just according to the degree of our fulfillment, which is egoistic and therefore limited. In fact, it even causes us suffering!

True fulfillment is not Direct Light, but fulfillment through bestowal. It is the screen and the Reflected Light. How can a screen be fulfillment? A screen is something that throws the Light back, not allowing it to enter the soul (Partzuf). It is a boundary. How can fulfillment come from a boundary?

When I place the boundary there myself, when I create it myself, it fulfills me since it is my bestowal to the Creator. It is a boundary against my egoism, my will to enjoy (the way a guest would), but not against the Host. (See the parable about the guest and the Host.) It is a boundary that does not allow me to receive for free, and the Reflected Light is my fulfillment. It enables me to do something for the sake of bestowal as well, and that fulfills me.

If that’s so, then why do we need fulfillment? We need it only in order for the screen and the Reflected Light to exist. The Creator does not feel pleasure from fulfillment, but from bestowal, and I also enjoy by giving. This equivalence of form is adhesion with Him.

Therefore, the initial will to enjoy that the Creator created and the fulfillment against it are just the necessary conditions which we have to use as a basis in order to build a new desire and a new fulfillment above them. I am the one who creates the new desire and fulfillment!

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/4/10, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: When He Who Knows All Mysteries Will Testify
Article: "The Dining Table"
5 Minutes Of Light: "Desires And Their Fulfillment"

The World To Come Will Come In The Next Moment

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are inside a system of souls that are interconnected and exist in a corrected state, which was initially created by the Creator. It is written, “The end of the action is in the initial plan.” The Creator does everything with His Thought. He had a plan, and it all came true.

We have to attain the same state through our own work. Why? It is in order to be able to differentiate all the nuances, qualities, and components of that state. We have to feel that we own, sense, and attain it.

That is why we are in the same state, but totally unconscious. What should we do? We should ask for consciousness. I want to see, discover, and feel where I am! Which state in the world I feel is similar to the spiritual state that the Creator made? That state is the connection among people who aspire toward Him.

Right now the corrupted connection among us gives me a sensation I call “this world.” I experience our connection this way because I feel only myself. I am entirely immersed in myself. However, if my senses start to work in the opposite fashion, from within to the outside, then I will feel the true reality where I exist.

This change of the sensation “from within to outside” takes place gradually, along 125 levels, by virtue of our work, our efforts, and our request for it to happen. Where do I implement this entire process in order to avoid living inside illusions, getting confused, and making mistakes? I do it in the group and in my current state. That is where I have to implement it in practice.

This is exactly what I ask for. Everything is very tangible and simple: There is a group in which everyone aspires to attain a connection among them. This is what we ask for while reading The Zohar. Why? Because by reading this Book, we awaken our true connection with the force that rules us, the force called “the Creator.” Then our expectations have a chance of coming true, even if they are inauthentic and artificial. Concerning this it is written, “We will do and we will hear.”

This attitude to our state, to the studies, and to what should happen is called “intention,” and our work is man’s inner work, the work of the Creator. The use of this system through a book and through the force that rules inside us is called the science of Kabbalah.

These are all phases of revealing the Creator to the creation. What is the meaning of “the revelation of the Creator?” It is the revelation of the force of bestowal inside us. That is why the Creator (Bo-reh) means “Come (Bo), See (Reh).” At the end of the day, we are doing the Creator’s work, and that is the entire science of Kabbalah.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/4/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The New You
AskTheKabbalist: “Why is there a Creator. Why is there a World?”
5 Minutes Of Light: “Inner Work And The Zohar”

Don’t Cry In The Wilderness

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator will never unite us “just because”; unity won’t happen until we ask for it. We must realize that we lack and desire only unity. The desire for unity stands opposite to all the other desires that arise, desires whose purpose is to obscure our yearning for unity. Rising above all the obstacles that only increase our desire to unite, the desire for unity will grow so intense that we will start crying. That is our goal,opposite to all the other desires as it is written, “And the sons of Israel cried out by reason of the bondage.” Only with this cry will the Creator unite us. If you sit and wait for this to take its own course, it will never happen. No spiritual action will occur until there’s a definite and complete desire for it.

Such a desire must burn within the group. Make sure to awaken the others and demand that they awaken you. Be willing to pay any price for them to be awake and to keep waking you up.

Only our collective outcry can save us. There are many people who are eager to cry alone, but the Creator doesn’t hear it as this is a voice crying in the wilderness. However, if we cry out together as one and if we possess only one common desire, effort, and goal, He will hear us at once because we will be similar to Him in our desire.

Otherwise, there is no way to draw the Light that Reforms. You don’t have the desire to receive this Light. It has to correct your egoism and the separation into bestowal and interconnection. However, you don’t yet feel the need for such correction.

We have to examine ourselves to make sure that all our actions are aimed solely at attaining the common prayer: that everyone’s desire should match the common goal so that all will be united in one common outcry. This is a prayer that will receive an Answer.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/10, Article, “You Are Now Standing All of You Today”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Unity Is A New Reality
Laitman.com Post: Whom Do We Pray For?
5 Minutes of Light: “Prayer, The Desire I Wish To Correct”

Up And Down The Spiritual Ladder

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe World of Atzilut acts in a totally new way regarding the World of Adam Kadmon since the spiritual objects (Partzufim) that are created in it are born only after the breaking of the vessels. Since the breaking took place between the Worlds of Atzilut and Adam Kadmon, their initial data are absolutely different.

Before the World of Adam Kadmon, there was only Malchut of Infinity which was filled with Light, desires, the power of screens, and the willingness to reach the end of correction. From this state, the World of Adam Kadmon was born. However, its development ended with the breaking in the World of Nekudim; the breaking gave rise to a completely new starting point.

Now, development occurs not from Above downwards but from below upwards starting with the embryo (Ibur) of each Partzuf. Every Partzuf goes through the following three stages: the embryo, feeding/nurturing, and maturity (Gadlut). After it grows up and corrects itself, it is now able to give birth to the next Partzuf that develops in exactly the same manner by going through the stages of small, medium, and big. Each Partzuf doesn’t descend from Above downwards any more, but grows from below upwards.

However, on the other hand, these Partzufim expand from Above downward, from the head of the World of Atzilut to the end of the World of Assiya. Each Upper One, after it has reached Gadlut (the grown state), produces (in relation to itself) a lower Partzuf as an embryo. Then, the Upper One feeds/nurtures the lower one, and raises it by providing the necessary conditions for the latter to grow and mature by transferring to it all Reshimot in order for the lower one to start working independently.

A peculiar synthesis occurs here. On one hand, the Upper One gives birth to the lower one. On the other, the lower one, after being born, begins developing from below upwards.

This process occurs in all the Worlds of ABYA (Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya) that are designated to provide the environment for man’s ascension. A human being grows solely from below upwards. He goes through the stages of the embryo, feeding/nurturing, and maturity at each stage. Then, he ascends (not descends) to the next Partzuf and enters the same stages of embryo, feeding/nurturing, and maturity. The entire ascension occurs only from below upwards in the order of the Partzufim, one after the other, the higher after the lower, and following the order of stages in each Partzuf.

  • In the World of Infinity, everything is one whole.
  • In the World of Adam Kadmon, development takes place from Above downwards.
  • In the Worlds of ABYA, expansion takes place from Above downwards, but the growth of each Partzuf is from below upwards.
  • After the primordial sin of the First Man with the Tree of Life, we grow and ascend only from below upwards like an inverted reflection of the World of Adam Kadmon.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/10, “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Assembly Line
A Guide to the Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: "Up the Ladder"
Kabbalah Moments: "Upper And Lower"

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 07.04.10

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “But The More They Afflicted Them,” Page 110
Our work is to try to unite with one another. Only then does the truth begin to reveal itself.
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out), Item 259
What do we want to gain from The Zohar? We want it to unite us, to grant us the force of bestowal, which we don’t even want to hear about.
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 2, Part 7, Item 3, Lesson 2
Our desire to understand the words of the Kabbalists attracts the Upper Light, which opens our eyes. The mind is helpless when it comes to the correction of desires.
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 6, Lesson 7
To become like the Creator means to reveal Him within you.
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio