Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2014-01-12_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’12.1.14′]
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“: To understand these questions and inquiries, the only approach is to examine the end of the act, that is, the purpose of Creation. For nothing can be understood in the middle of the process, but only at its end. And it is clear that there is no act without a purpose, for only the insane can act purposelessly.
A person never acts purposelessly. If a person doesn’t think, why he should exert himself; it is a sign of mental disorder or that it is a child who is driven by the plan of his natural development, although we cannot detect that by the actual actions. When a person builds a house in order to live in it, everything is clear to us. But we must understand that we cannot always see the clear outcome of an action. If we don’t see the outcome, it means that it is a certain disorder that does not exist in nature.
We will speak about why there are such defects in the world, but for now let’s agree that they bring about unplanned actions.
I know that there are those who cast over their backs the burden of Torah and Mitzvot (plural for Mitzva), saying the Creator has created the whole of reality, then, left it alone, that because of the worthlessness of the creatures it is not fitting for the Exalted Creator to watch over their mean little ways.
In other words, there are people who don’t think that we have to correct our desire to receive by the Mitzvot, as it says “I have created the evil inclination I have created the Torah as a spice for it.” So the Torah is the Light that Reforms, the means of correction in which there is a special force.
Our desire is divided into 613 parts and they are all corrupt; “a person’s inclination is evil from his youth.” We have to correct the evil inclination with the help of the Light that Reforms called the Torah. So, people who assume that this is not true are called those who cast over their backs the burden of the Torah and the Mitzvot. They want to live their ordinary life and not correct their nature and reach an equivalence of form with the Creator and adhere to Him. They don’t understand the goal of creation and don’t understand why the evil inclination was created in the first place.
Indeed, without knowledge they have spoken, for it is impossible to comment on our lowliness and nothingness, before we decide that we have created ourselves with all our corrupted and loathsome natures.
The goal of creation is to benefit the created beings. To “benefit” means that the created being becomes similar to the Creator, since He is good and benevolent to a full measure that cannot be underestimated. I cannot do something good to a lesser degree since it would mean that I am not benevolent. So the created being has to reach the level of the Creator, but in order to feel the Creator, he has to remain a created being. So when the created being comes closer to the Creator, he feels how opposite he is from Him. It is only by the contrast between the Light and darkness in a person that he feels the full height of the level of the equivalence of form with the Creator.
This is the reason for the corruption of the world, and this is the reason that we don’t understand or feel the Creator and so we cannot justify this state.
All this is true, but we have to study the reason for that. The world is built that way on purpose so that we will correct it by ourselves. The world is actually the general corrupt desire to receive. So we were given the Torah, not the book of the Torah but the Upper spiritual force, the Light that Reforms, that we can draw upon our ego, upon all the corruptions in us, and thus fulfill the correction until we are not “those who cast over their backs the burden of the Torah and the Mitzvot.”
“But while we decide that the Creator, who is utterly perfect, is the One who created and designed our bodies with all their admirable and contemptible attributes, surely there can never emerge an imperfect act under the hand of the perfect worker, as each act testifies to its performer. And what fault is it of a bad garment, if some no-good tailor has made it?”
So we cannot have any complaints about the created being, since if there is a Creator, all your complaints should be to Him.
This is why we said that the creation was initially corrupt so that we will correct it by ourselves and on the way collect all the parts of the puzzle so that we will feel that He is the good and the benevolent leading us to eternity and wholeness.
Such as this we find in “Masechet Taanit,” 20: “A tale about Rabbi Elazar who came across a very ugly man.”
Rabbi Elazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, felt inside him the revelation of the most terrible ugly man. He felt that he was totally filled with all the possible negative attributes a person could have. It is a very high level. Since “the Creator has created them in contrast to one another,” and “he who is greater than his friend, his desire is even greater.” This means that Rabbi Shimon was ready to accept the revelation of all the evil in him in the ugliest possible forms.
He said to him: “How ugly this man is.” The man replied: “Go and tell the craftsman that made me, ‘How ugly is this vessel you have made.’” Hence, those who claim that because of our lowliness and nothingness, it is not fitting for Him to watch over us, and therefore He has left us, do nothing but display their ignorance. Try to imagine, if you were to meet some man who would create creatures, precisely so they would suffer and agonize their whole lives as we do, and not only that, but cast them behind his back, not wanting even to look after them, to help them a little. How contemptible and low you would regard him! Can such a thing be thought of Him?
Has the Creator created everything only so the created being will suffer? Of course not. Imperfect actions cannot be derived from the perfect One who acts.
[123988]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
Related Material:
The Conversation Between The Creator And His Beloved Creation
Genuine Creation
The Purpose Of Creation Is Adhesion With The Creator
In the News (from PressTV): “The childlessness rate among women nearing the end of their childbearing years in the United States is among the highest in the world, according to the latest World Fertility Report by the United Nations, which also shows that 41 percent of all US births occurred to unmarried women.
“Among 118 places for which comparable data is available, only six have rates of childlessness higher than the US rate of 19 percent, Pew Research Center noted Friday in its analysis of the World Fertility Report 2012.
“Women between the ages of 40 and 44 in the US have, on average, about 1.9 children in their lifetimes, which is one of the lowest levels of 171 countries analyzed, with just 19 places having an equal or lower lifetime fertility levels.
“However, US women fall squarely in the middle range when it comes to the age at which they first become mothers, which according to the UN is 25 years for US women.
“In the area of non-marital births, the US ranks 49th among 91 places with comparable data. The UN report shows that 41 percent of all US births occurred to unmarried women.
“Fertility has declined worldwide to unprecedented levels since the 1970s, the report noted. ‘Total fertility fell in all but six of the 186 countries or areas for which data are available for all three periods considered in the analysis. In the most recent period covered, 80 countries or areas had a total fertility below 2.1 children per woman, the level required to ensure the replacement of generations in low mortality populations.’ The Christian Post.”
My Comment: The problem is not in this crisis, but in the loss of orientation in life; it is not clear: “What do I live for?” And hence the question, “Why give birth, grow, work, and …?” As a consequence, and with the lack of an answer to these questions, consumption of antidepressants, drugs, and alcohol is continuously growing.
Thus, the low birth rate is just one of the consequences of the general crisis—the lack of understanding of the meaning of life. This question subconsciously sits in everyone’s mind, even if we do not feel or automatically cover it with various activities.
[124945]
Related Material:
A Successful Woman’s Career Jeopardizes Marriage
Will We Go Extinct Like The Dinosaurs?
French Teachers Strike Over Job Cuts
Concealment of the face becomes a Kli for discovering the Creator. Without this period of preparation the person would have nothing with which to feel this discovery. It is impossible to discover the Creator just because you want it now. How can you have a desire if you don’t go through the stages of search, clarification, pressure, and helplessness while attempting to discover the Creator; meaning to discover the characteristic of bestowal and love, which you want to acquire but cannot.
It is impossible without a search like this, and the main thing is that you must be in an environment that directs you toward the goal all the time. And even though you still aren’t connecting yourself to the right goal, don’t see it, and are confused, yet you are constantly, incessantly searching for it. And so the way begins to be stabilized more and more; it’s stabilized from many ways and paths and contracted more and more into one way. Ultimately the goal begins to be clearer, begins to reveal it’s imperative. Thus you reach a state where there is a goal in front of you; there is a clear mission. The higher goal becomes clearer, and so does your goal. You are already working from an agreement to approach it, to discover, and realize it.
It’s impossible to get along without this stage because specifically through this we assemble the Kli for feeling the Creator, the Kli for feeling spirituality. There are 125 steps on this way and every step includes very many ways, states, ascents and descents, infinite integrations of Sefirot within each other.
We don’t feel the changes that are taking place in us that much now even though, together with this, we are passing through a multitude of states. Like a little child who plays and runs after his parents, he doesn’t see and doesn’t feel that there is a big world around him with a multitude of activities and events where something is happening all the time. He lives in his own little world.
So we are also in some kind of Klipa that hides the true reality from us. But when we gather experience, meaning that we learn to do actions that are directed more and more towards the goal, according to the possibilities that are summoned for us from a higher supervision, then more and more we expand our horizons, meaning that we expand our absorptive Kli, and then we begin to feel a wider world with all of the systems that are in it.
This is the way maturation occurs in material life, and it is precisely the same in spiritual life as well. Only in spiritual life, the expansion depends on our ability and readiness to tolerate bestowal, Lishma, that is, the ability to act not for my own sake, but for the sake of all. And afterward, from this “for the sake of all” we pass to “for the sake of the Creator,” as it is said: “From love of the creation to love of the Creator.” Thus we pass through the stages of development.
[125074]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/5/13
Related Material:
The Train Stops At Each Station On The Way To The Goal Of Creation
You Cannot Advance Without The Environment
Degrees Of Mutual Guarantee
Question: A regular social system always develops in the direction of differentiation, complexity, when a number of sub-systems develop in it where each becomes autonomous.
This system becomes so complex and grows so much that it eventually falls apart and something new forms, thus taking a new turn of development on a different level.
Answer: An integral system develops internally, not externally, because development does not happen in an egoistic way; it happens through a universal connection of a greater quality, though mutual guarantee, our mutual inclusion of one inside the other.
This is not the Brownian movement because it happens in a completely different way, when one submits to others. There is no disorganized, chaotic intrusion; on the contrary, we offer ourselves to everyone else, and this is why the system always grows in quality.
Question: Any development always includes a certain battle of opposites. Does this also pertain to the previous level?
Answer: It depends on the level that you are referring to. If you are referring to rising above our egoism, which has already lost its opposition, and it stands under altruism in order to help and support it, then egoism can no longer perform the function it has previously performed. The battle ends.
[124991]
From Kab TV’s “The Integral World,” 11/27/12
Related Material:
Altruism’s Assistant
At Another Frequency
Come And See!
Question: What difference does it make to whom one builds an intention for the sake of bestowal: the friends or people who don’t belong to the spiritual process?
Answer: The idea is that you don’t feel bestowal from strangers. They will not support you, but will begin to relate to you, to put it mildly, like a person who is insane. If you behave like a divine dandelion who only wants their good, they will not understand you.
For something to be okay, there must be mutual cooperation between you; you must develop this reciprocity, where you are to them what they are to you: You support each other, stimulate each other, discuss your problems, and so forth. It is possible to do this only in a group of like-minded people.
In a group we cooperate reciprocally between us, support each other, and yearn to attain fusion of our hearts, mutual guarantee, Arvut. With whom do you intend to do this? With those who are walking in the street and someone this doesn’t matter to at all? A person doesn’t know where they are moving him, for everything happens in a general field. People are like electrical charges that are moving in a general field of light; they reach the lowest point of balance with it and are concentrated there. So we are also gathered in a group in our world. You suddenly begin to feel where they are dragging you and with whom it is necessary to connect. This is because your charge, your “point in the heart” is moving in a field of Light and comes to this state.
[124650]
From the Moscow Virtual Convention “Unity Without Boundaries” Day Two 12/14/13, Lesson #2
Related Material:
The Group As An Envelope Of The Creator
The Point That Connects Me With The External World
The Door To The Creator’s Territory
Question: You have said many times that a person studies, let’s say, for ten years, but still doesn’t succeed in adhering to the group, becoming a spiritual embryo. So what happens during this time, does the ego simply grow?
Answer: When a person truly adheres to the center of the group and becomes a spiritual embryo, he begins to feel as if he exists in the spiritual world to his full capacity. Exactly as in our world, an embryo that is found in his mother’s womb attains the same thing, for everything that is happening in her body, in fact, is designed only for him.
A spiritual embryo is a state that is not simple and is a very high state from which the entire spiritual level begins.
Suppose that ten years of studying has passed for someone and he still hasn’t become a spiritual embryo; that is, he has not succeeded in nullifying himself towards the group. And no matter how much we tell him about this, no matter how much he reads in the sources himself, he cannot do anything with this because he is not participating physically in the work of the group; he is arrogant, separated from it.
We are in a special world in which even all of our physical actions invite spiritual results; I cannot love the friends, I hate them, but in spite of it all, I still force myself to sit with them, smile at them, approach them through some kind of external action with the hope that this will change me, and this truly does change me. If a person doesn’t do this, then it is too bad, even after ten years he will remain the same.
[124647]
From the Moscow Virtual Convention “Unity Without Boundaries” Day Two 12/14/13, Lesson #2
Related Material:
Spiritual “Restart”
General Rules Of Successful Unification
People Close To You
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Workshop “Unity”
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, Parashat, “VaYikahel”
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 9, Item 103
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to the The Book of Zohar“
| [media 9] | [media 10] |
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
