The Steps Of Ascent – Laitman Unplugged
Posted on May 23rd, 2011
Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.
The Remedy in the Engagement in the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Why are we all obliged to study the wisdom of Kabbalah? It’s because although those who study it do not understand what they are learning, through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 155
It is written in The Zohar: “With this composition, the Children of Israel [those who aspire to His revelation] will be redeemed from exile [His concealment].” …only through the expansion of the wisdom of Kabbalah in the masses will we obtain complete redemption [from sufferings of this world].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 5
When a person engages in the wisdom of Kabbalah, mentioning the names of the Lights and the vessels related to his soul, they immediately influence him to a certain extent…and time after time during the engagement…bring him closer to achieving perfection.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 155
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Related Material:
Kabbalists About Studying Kabbalah, Part 19
Kabbalists About Studying Kabbalah, Part 18
Kabbalists About Studying Kabbalah, Part 17
It is very hard for us to imagine how a created being that was made by the Light, existed in adhesion with it, and didn’t sense any deficiency caused by being opposite to it suddenly felt ashamed and didn’t agree to stay in this state, restricted itself, and expelled all the Light. What must the creature feel when it sees itself as totally distant from the Light and desires to be identical to it?
The state of adhesion and perfection, which the created being experienced while being in the world of Infinity before the restriction, later on makes it take this road back to Infinity through all the states (1-2-3). And despite the fact that on the part of the Light there are no changes and the Creator never separates Himself from the created being, doesn’t see any flaws or the need for correction in it, the creature itself can’t accept being different from the Creator in any degree.
This marvelous feeling compels the created being to undertake such dramatic steps: to restrict its desire, obtain a screen, undergo the entire process of distancing itself from the Creator, from the Light, and then return back to Him, having completed the full circle. This is how desire acts.
And how can it be that the Light which gives the created being a feeling of their oneness, unity, and the absence of differences between them at the same time evokes in the creature a peculiar type of shame that forces the latter to restrict itself and walk this entire long road away from the Creator?
This feeling of shame has something unique; it becomes a powerful engine that makes the created being withdraw from the Creator, hide itself from Him, just like one person hides from someone that he is ashamed of, to make all the necessary corrections later on. And it’s not so that he may feel proud of himself, but rather so that he could return to the Creator His love that the created being felt emanating from Him when it felt ashamed. These are very exalted notions.
So it follows that it’s worthwhile for the creature to make this horrific full circle, never stopping on this path, giving into nothing, although it could return back to the state of Infinity any time! And still, every new instant it decides again: “No, I am not going to succumb to this infinite pleasure unless I act consciously in it and can feel proud of and respect myself!” Obviously, it isn’t about egoistic pride; it’s about the creature wanting to give to the Creator the attitude that it revealed in relation to itself.
Essentially, in the world of Infinity, the Creator’s love doesn’t commit the creature to anything. The Creator treats it like a father who loves his son infinitely and is willing to bestow everything to him, without any reservation and implying no shame. And yet, the son, while having known the Creator’s love for him, realizes that he himself is unable to love. And it is the only thing that makes him feel ashamed: that he himself is unable to love unconditionally and give to the Creator the same kind of feeling from the point of darkness and separation.
Hence, the son makes a decision to accept from his Father darkness rather than Light and the most horrible blows. He pledges to keep loving Him no matter what, as if he is receiving only the most kindly, true Light of Infinity. The Father’s love is endless and absolute, and hence the son decides to love Him no less.
Therefore, he has no other chance of reaching this state except by walking the path of darkness, which is directly opposite to infinite fulfillment. It’s because above this entire darkness, he can reveal unconditional love.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot
Our will to enjoy is constantly changing and growing. There is an inner engine in it that keeps spinning and thereby unfolding our will to enjoy one layer after another.
If I am not in sync with this engine and don’t correct my will to receive so that it is filled with the Light, this desire unfolds darkness to me, and I feel worse. In the meantime, the engine continues to spin, whereas I, having not corrected my previous desire, am delayed and cannot correct my current state either. This makes my life much more disappointing and difficult. Day by day I am feeling more miserable.
Therefore, if a person understands that nothing is going to come from the Creator and it is the created being who is supposed to provide everything, if he realizes that nature has been arranged so as to reveal to us our entire will to receive and all we have to do is reach correction, only then does he view reality in the right way. It is all up to us. The ball is in our court.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2011, “Introduction to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
All we need is to develop the desire. I remember when I used to own a clinic, one of the workers used to bring Yemenite food with her. At first I couldn’t come near it since I simply did not understand what this was. That’s how different it tasted from anything I was used to. But with time, I started becoming familiar with this food and tasting it, and little by little, I developed an appetite for it.
It’s the same as how a baby is born into the world without having any tastes yet. Afterwards, depending on the customs and predilections of his society, he begins to get used to food and to acquire a taste for it. Without taste, without the desire to eat precisely some specific dish, we would not be able to enjoy it. Of course, it’s possible to eat so you don’t starve to death, but that’s not the same as pleasure. You can receive the pleasures of this world as a bare necessity, but anything beyond that is admissible only if you desire to enjoy—and that enjoyment has to come from bestowal.
Question: Baal HaSulam writes that this requires only a psychological shift. What is that?
Answer: We do not understand how it is possible to enjoy by loving and filling someone you love. “Someone you love” is not just my child, taking care of whom gives me pleasure naturally. Rather, we are talking about someone who’s a stranger, who is alien, distant, opposite, and even hateful to me. This is like food from a foreign country that nauseates me. So I deliberately start developing the taste for it, looking for an approach to it, for closeness and understanding. Gradually the corresponding desires are born inside of me and then I suddenly feel that I love this person.
A question arises: If I love him, then won’t my bestowal to him be egoistic? After all, I will be enjoying it.
That’s true, but my love does not revoke the hatred I felt before. That hatred remains with me constantly and even increases, just like it happened with the students of Rabbi Shimon who write in The Book of Zohar that at first they hate one another, but then they reach love. We continuously advance in two lines, elevating love above hatred, as it is written, “Love will cover all sins.”
Precisely the hatred and love together create the taste, the “juice,” the might of the pleasure. They are like two reigns. If you nullify hatred, then only a tiny material relish will remain with you from the entire height of pleasure, but if you rise above the hatred, covering it with the screen of love time after time, then you end up with a huge vessel that has a huge pleasure inside.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/11, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 14: Thus, we have thoroughly clarified that the worlds, the generation, the changes, and the number of degrees, and so on were said only with respect to the Kelim (vessels) that give to the souls, conceal, and measure for them so they can gradually receive from the Light of Ein Sof in them. But they do not affect the Light of Ein Sof itself in any way since no coverings affect the one who is covered, but only the other, who wishes to feel it and receive from it, as said in the allegory.
Baal HaSulam explains also in “Preface to The Book of Zohar” that the entire perception of reality occurs only relatively to the receiver, person, observer. Everything is relative; it all depends on a person’s properties, and according to them, he or she perceives everything as if existing outside of him or her.
Is there reality outside of man? We don’t know that. It’s known from the wisdom of Kabbalah that the simple Surrounding Light exists outside of us. We don’t have any possibility of sensing it from the outside. We are sensible creatures, meaning that we sense what is perceived inside of us. If I sense that something exists outside, I perceive it in all my senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). However, I perceive it inside my sense organ, and if deprived of it, I don’t perceive what exists outside of me.
Our aggregate sense organ is called the “will to enjoy.” It’s divided into five parts, according to the levels of Aviut (thickness) of desire. These levels (Shoresh, Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet or 0,1,2,3,4 accordingly) can be called spiritual or earthly sense organs: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.
That is, our desire consists of five parts or five forms of perception: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch as in our world. I perceive something that within me acquires the form of desire, vessel.
This is like “manna” that nourished the people of Israel in the desert. I take this “manna” and taste “barbecue”; the other tastes fish, the third salad, the fourth chicken or cereal. Each receives according to his desires. However, all this is called “manna.”
What is “manna”? It’s something from the sky that has no properties. Who perceives these properties? The receiver does. As soon as I absorb this “manna,” desiring to taste steak, I taste steak. I want tea and taste tea. I want saltier food, and the food becomes saltier instantly. I want it spicier, and it becomes spicier. It’s good, isn’t it? “Make your desire like His,” and then “He will make your desire like His.”
The upper Light existing outside us doesn’t have any form; it has only the desire to bestow. If you want to derive pleasure from it the correct way, He will give you this sensation at once, without problems. Therefore, everything depends on the creature. The form of reality depends on our desires, vessels of perception. That is why we have nobody to pray to, nobody to ask, nobody to turn to, but only to ourselves, to the extent of our corruptness and the ability to become a little bit more corrected.
We’ll feel better to the extent we correct ourselves. In essence, this is the entire process we experience.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2011, “Introduction to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
Question: Kabbalah has taught me to accept all the troubles that come my way with a smile. Is that wrong?
Answer: The science of Kabbalah gives a person the strength to feel, after all of the troubles, that they have a reason. And it doesn’t matter whether you are crying or smiling form the misfortunes. The most important thing is that you use them beneficially, for taking a step forward. The misfortune has to be perceived as a force that obligates you to advance.
But we have to try to advance even before we receive the blow, just like in the cartoons about Tom and Jerry where a huge cat chases a small mouse. They always show how the mouse runs away from the cat, who is just about to catch the mouse, but the mouse always runs away. That is how we should run toward the goal, while the problems will keep on chasing us, running right behind us all of the time. But try to escape them!
We have to understand that the problems are exactly what enables us to run to the right place and very quickly. We have to try to be that smart mouse.
From the 2nd lesson at the Rome Convention on 5/21/11
Why is the created being made egoistic? Why does man always think about himself? Why didn’t nature make us feel and love each other as our own children who are even more dear to us than we ourselves? Why didn’t we receive such properties? Why do we, like the infamous cuckoo birds, drop our eggs into somebody else’s nest?
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that it is done so intentionally, that there is nothing accidental in our unwillingness to hold another person dear. On the contrary, we view the other person as appalling, alien, and foreign. It is written: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” but what kind of neighbor is he? He is not a neighbor; he is the most distant and hateful person to me! It would be great if there were just a few of them left in this world to service my needs, and the rest can go to hell, drop dead. It would make our life even easier, wouldn’t it? That’s how we are all made.
So, Kabbalah explains that this mutual hatred is given to us intentionally so that above it, we would aim at unity, bonded by ties of love. “Love” means that we feel the other, sense his needs before our own, and serve to fulfill them the best we can.
The force of rejection remains between us in the form of hate, as some sort of resistor, a resistance element placed between the points of a microchip. But we, despite this resistance between us, are paving the way above it and pass on it with our desire, our “electricity,” the yearning to be together. And that’s when we find the energy in this resistance: the energy of love and personal participation.
We will emit this energy; we will get familiar with and conscious of it by attaining the entire force of nature, its parts, and its timeless harmony. In such a state, we will be living not as individuals, each in their own little element, but between these elements, growing on and rising above this resistance. Mutual hate and love, together, will build a net of relations between us that will be a degree higher than those today.
Right now, we live in a state of resentment among ourselves, as separate, disconnected, and broken apart elements. On the other hand, as we rise, we create unity, solidarity, oneness between us, and we start to experience this network as a new, higher dimension, where we begin to live now. This is what we call eternal life. This is, in fact, the upper life: a timeless, perfect existence that lies above the present one, limited by death and, essentially, killing us day by day.
This is why we need egoistic resistance on one hand and its correction by love on the other. This is where we need to specifically unite the two opposing properties within ourselves. And yet, love prevails over hate and allows us to ascend spiritually so we may break free from this world upward, into perfection and eternity.
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From the Virtual Lesson, Fundamentals of Kabbalah Series 5/15/2011
Kabbalists explain that we have to live according to the law of bestowal not for the sake of society or ourselves, but for the sake of the Creator. What does this mean? “For the sake of the Creator” is a formula, definition, which means that bestowal must be absolute.
We have to give not simply for the sake of survival, not just to live our life comfortably and egoistically. This bestowal is for self-interest: “We have no choice, so let’s re-educate ourselves to become good, kind, compassionate, and responsive.” This egoistic correction is not sufficient because it stems from the need to survive.
“For the sake of the Creator” means that you live according to bestowal even if nature doesn’t compel you to achieve harmony and cooperation with other members of society for the sake of survival. Nature may not require you to bestow and receive in the conditions regarded as a complete connection with others, meaning to receive the necessities and to give maximally, which is called “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This slogan should not be for the survival of society, for the victory of socialism throughout the world, or for any party. It should be “for the sake of the Creator.”
“For the sake of the Creator” means that my bestowal should be absolute, not for the sake of something earthly. I have to reach a state where the property of bestowal in me replaces the property of reception, my egoism, completely. I shift into a completely different part of the world, into another dimension. I begin to think, feel, perceive only in terms of the property of bestowal rather than reception.
It’s possible to compare this state with a mother who doesn’t feel that she is cold or hot, it’s dark or light; she feels that only relative to her baby. She exists in him, inside: whether he’s cold or hot, in the dark or light, in pain or comfort, and the like. She feels everything inside of him rather than inside herself. This “beastly” love is present in our world as an example: Thanks to it in particular we can truly develop and continue to exist.
It’s a necessary condition of life in spirituality. We endure our life on Earth, constrained by space, time, and motion. The illusion of life in egoism exists only here. In fact, the true life in its eternal, perfect flow exists in the absolutely opposite property: that of bestowal.
Similarly, a mother lives in her son, feeling and fulfilling him instead of herself. All her sensations are in him, everything is for him, and she herself is only for his fulfillment. Essentially, this state is called “to receive the necessities and to give maximally” but not for herself, in order to survive thereby, but for his sake, for the sake of her beloved child.
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From the Virtual Lesson, Fundamentals of Kabbalah Series 5/15/2011
Question: How are the 613 desires and 613 Mitzvot (commandments) connected? How can I correct these desires if I don’t know what they are and am totally stuck in my ego?
Answer: I have a certain point, similar to a drop of semen a human development starts with. I must attach to this point the entire mass of my soul, which will result in its developing based on the information instilled in this point.
Similarly, a drop of semen contains the entire information about a new human being: That he or she will grow and weigh, let’s say, 200 lbs, be 7 feet tall, be brilliant, exalted, and so on. We don’t know any of this, but all human characteristics, his path in the material and spiritual world, all of this is contained in the drop of that semen. We simply need to infuse it with a certain force. This force is provided by the mother.
We study that in the spiritual world there is also a mother: Bina. From there we receive the force to develop spiritually. Inside this spiritual mother, there is a place regarded as the “womb” or AHP, where our “droplet” ascends to. This is what we call MAN. The drop gets accepted by Bina and begins to grow.
This spiritual mother is the group. We had previously mentioned that a person has to enter the group and cleave to it, cling to the “wall of the womb.” Thereby, he starts receiving from it the force of development for its point.
The group itself doesn’t add anything to us; it exists to allow us to receive the upper Light through it, something regarded as blood (Hebrew “Dam” comes from the word “Domem” or “still”). In other words, we are still being developed at the still level, with Aviut Shoresh (the coarseness of desire of the root level).
In our point, there are 613 desires. They all evolve, but we don’t know how it occurs.
Besides, we don’t know what desires are developing now and which of them will be unfolding later. This process can be demonstrated as a diagram that looks like an ultrasound scan: All desires, from 0 to 613, develop in various degrees: some more, others less.
Each of us has 613 desires but in their various combinations. Let’s say desire “20” is developed in me greater than in someone else, while desire “40” less so. They are the same 613 desires which differ in their might and exist in different combinations and proportions between themselves. And when the group becomes a channel through which the upper Light influences all these desires, the Light is regarded as blood and nurtures them, even though I have no idea how.
I don’t know or understand it, just like an embryo in the mother’s womb doesn’t comprehend the process of its development and doesn’t think or ask about it. It is fostered by the nature’s force. This is why this is the development at the still level: without understanding, feeling, and attainment.
What then is the development of 613 desires? When I cancel myself before the group in order to cleave to it, be one with it, so that it would impact me, it means that I am performing the acts of annulment of 613 desires. I am clueless of what it is. All of it together is my ego that I cancel relative to the group. Then I am influenced by the upper Light and advance.
In other words, my action of nullifying myself before the group in order to receive new desires, thoughts, and a scale of values is regarded as carrying out of the 613 commandments. Each action is called a “day.” Thus it is written that every day, a person must perform 613 commandments. And it is so until a person has completed all his or her corrections. This concerns both men and women.
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From Lesson 8, WE! Convention 4/3/2011
Related Material:
Bestowal Exercises
Luminous Garments Of The Soul
Deposit Your Desire And You Will Receive The Light
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