The Subtleties Of Spiritual Ascent

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus,” Acharei Mot, 18:20: And unto the wife of thy neighbor thou dost not give thy seed of copulation, to defile thyself with her.

“The wife of thy neighbor” is a Kli (vessel), the desire with which I am not able to perform an action of bestowal. This is beyond my ability.

There are situations when a person is unable to think about the correct intention. Say, I am dying of hunger when a tasty dish has been placed in front of me. At this time am I really able to think about the fact that I am fortifying myself in order to bestow all my strength for the benefit of my neighbor?

In the corporeal world of course, I can pretend that I am supposedly busy thinking about bestowal. But in the spiritual world, “supposedly” does not exist. Everything is distinct: There is a degree to which one can control oneself, and a degree below which it is impossible to hold back. And so it is in everything.

This applies to all pleasures: food, sex, family, money, power, honor, knowledge. A person always has a certain threshold under which he can restrain himself. If you put $100 in front of me and I know that my entire life depends on it, I will not be able to help myself, I will take it. That is our nature, which puts us at the mercy of some circumstances.

And I need to know my nature, because in the system of ascending from below upwards, I study myself, raising my moral level not through the brainwashing accepted in our world or through pumping myself with all kinds of ideas, but through the help of connection to the upper system.

If I rise to the first degree, then no matter who I am, I will not be able to carry out here that which I will be capable of in the second degree. Everything happens so precisely that each degree can be numbered in accordance with what can be done on it and what can not.

So it is written here about the conditions in which I have to work if I reach the level described in this specific chapter of the Torah. Previous chapters do not yet mention it, and the following ones will not discuss it further. So at this given level, I need to correct such inner properties in myself that will allow me to secure myself against mistakes on this degree.

 Question: What does it mean “And unto the wife of thy neighbor thou dost not give thy seed of copulation?”

Answer: This means that at a lower degree if I came across such property as “the wife of my neighbor,” I would have surely used it.

But on this degree, whenever I encounter it, I must make a correction so I will not get into contacts that would lead me in a completely different direction, because then I wouldn’t be able to ascend.

And so it is on every degree! This is the work of the whole system. By correcting himself internally, a person ascends higher and higher each time. In our world there are no analogues to such corrections. These are neither moral, nor ethical, nor aesthetic forms. It becomes our inner nature.

Rising to the next degree means drawing the Upper Light to myself, which will correct me to such an extent that I will be able to rise to the level of the next degree. Then I will absolutely be able to use the previous degree correctly.

At the level of the material world around us, however, there is no manifestation that I might not disturb; I cannot do anything correctly. In other words, only the ascent to the next degree gives me the assurance that from this point on, the previous degree is absolutely right for me and that I will act correctly.

I use the lower degree in order to rise to the upper one, and it becomes my place of work. I evoke the Upper Light on myself, which gradually influences me, leading me through various chaotic states, their analyses and syntheses, until finally it accumulates to such a quantity and quality that it lifts me to the next level.

Through this, I fully establish the previous degree as corrected and I can be confident that I will never fall into it. Therefore, every part of the Torah refers to some specific degrees, moreover, with the same words as in several previous chapters. Yet, while they may be similar, there are no repetitions, because each time it is written about the next degree.

This is why we need to know which chapter of the Torah this excerpt comes from, from which section, or, in other words, on which degree it is taking place. The Torah includes the complete sequence of our ascent to the full correction of the soul.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/19/14

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The Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery”
The Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Steal”
“And A Wise Wife Is From The Lord”

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