The Basis Of Prayer

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn childhood, parents give a child everything possible, but to the extent of his growing up they begin to demand more and more from him until he becomes an adult and he himself has to give.

We are now entering the next stage of growing up; therefore, we must be in constant prayer. We will never be able to unite if we do not try to connect with the Creator because direct efforts, not through the Creator, lead to nothing.

Any connection with anybody, with studies, with the work within the group, with the organization of events, even just washing the dishes or cleaning in the group is an empty activity if it does not pass through the Creator. Everything that relates to our common life should pass only through the Creator, only attracting Him, meaning, the property of bestowal. It is necessary to try to rise above oneself and operate only in this way. This is called a prayer.

It is said, if a person behaves in this way, it means that he prays all day long. This is good! Whatever I do, everything passes only through the upper. If I stick to this, my actions are performed only as calculations: I pay for what I do, for the opportunity that was given to me. Then “the book is open and the hand writes” but in the opposite direction: I pay next to what was given to me, and I make a payment. A person must feel in this way.

Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: Rabbi Akiva depicts two kinds of people: the first are the “open store” type, which regard this world as an open store without a shopkeeper. But the law of development acts in every creature, and according to this, it takes from a person, so in the end, he will have to pay for everything.

In what form? In the form of suffering if you do not want to move forward consciously. Suppose, you have to perform an action, but you have not done it in the way you should have done, through the group, because you cannot be aimed at the Creator if not from the group, if not from the general Kli, vessel.

A personal address to the Creator is considered egoistic; it gives nothing. This is religion, not Kabbalah.

As soon as you can aim at the Creator through the group, at the general force of bestowal in order to attract it, and the one thing that you ask is to get closer to Him or to bring Him closer to you so that this force is in your actions relative to the same group, and through it, relative to humanity‑if a person focuses on this, he works fully on himself in the general Kli, vessel, and begins to feel the new world concretely. It approaches him; its network begins to open before him, and a person sees how it works.

The second type of people are called “those who want to borrow.” They take the shopkeeper into consideration, and when they take something from the store, they only take it as a loan. They promise to pay the shopkeeper the desired price, meaning to attain the goal by it. And he says about them, “All who wish to borrow may come and borrow.”

The difference between the people of the first and the second type is that they are moving forward differently: consciously or unconsciously. The first ones advance through punishment, and the second ones with understanding and revelation.

Those who move consciously reveal the entire system, which raises them to the level of the Creator, to the level of that single force. They begin to feel how they exit the body, that is, a gradual separation from their egoism because all that we feel, including our body, is the feeling in the ego.

This gradually dissolves, dissipates. We enter such a subatomic level of sensing matter when it practically does not exist. Instead of it, we see and feel forces, that is, not the image, but its essence, the sum of forces that control this image. We already deal with a more inner essence of man and with the whole spiritual system.

When this system becomes clearer, we begin to work with it, not with faces, not with bodies, not with the still, vegetative, and animate matter. Working with a spiritual system, we start seeing in Kabbalistic books the structure of connection between us, between all the elements and forces because the primary sources describe only this.

Any force is broken down into five parts: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. It consists of five parts because all these forces are manifested in our egoism.

The system of the upper world is revealed between us up to its complete realization. We ascend through it, master it, and begin to manage it. It gives us a sense of the upper, external world. At the same time, the feeling of the body and connection with it is lost.

The fact that the body lives, gets sick, or dies is necessary because through it we must sense and feel ourselves in this world. When we finish our part in the general correction, we do not need to be connected to this world through the body because we complete our part of correction. The body is our representative relative to those who still sense the upper world in the form of this world.

We have to reach this state to fully reveal that judgment is the judgment of truth; everything is corrected and ready for a meal, and then the whole world enters the corrected Kli, vessel, and complete attainment of the Creator fills all our common desire‑one general soul.

A prayer is based on this idea. It is a person’s constant aspiration to work on the moment in which he currently is.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

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