It is impossible to understand what faith above reason means until a person attains this sensation, this revelation. And the revelation of faith above reason comes simultaneously with knowledge. Right now, we do not know what our mind truly is; it instinctively, subconsciously always strives toward good states and distances itself from bad ones.

I do not have the power to investigate, see, understand, or feel why I act precisely the way I do. Such behavior is already embedded in my nature in advance even before it reaches my sensation, comprehension, or conscious calculation. This is my nature.

It is written: “And He separated the light from the darkness.” This refers precisely to the state when a person begins to feel that his mind is fully governed in everything. Yet he is already able to look at this governance from the side. And from this observation-point, he sees another approach beginning to form within him and preparing to develop.

This means he acquires new desires (spiritual vessels) in which he can separate himself from his initial nature. There he exists together with other souls, together with the Creator, and there operates a different, so-called integral calculation that includes the interests of all to the extent that it has been revealed to a person.

From this zero point, these two directions, reason and faith above reason, begin to develop together: as much the one, so much the other, until we reach the end of correction in both. The reason is the development of my natural, inherent egoistic desire. And above reason is the development of the desire to bestow.

And what separates them from each other is the light. One is always built at the expense of the other. Therefore, the meaning of receiving is to be for the sake of bestowal even though these words seem incompatible and contradictory. But only if reason develops, above it faith above reason develops correspondingly.

The sensation that one is being separated from the other is called the salvation of the Creator. From that moment onward, a person begins to feel new spiritual vessels, new desires, within himself.

This requires a sensory understanding, because the matter being discussed is desire, and reason comes even later.

As long as we are merely trying to attain the desire to bestow, applying effort in the study and in the group, it is considered the time of preparation. We still do not possess spiritual desires, and therefore, we have not yet reached that zero point from which the two branches reason and faith above reason begin to grow. It is precisely from there that we begin to work with faith above reason, not during the preparation stage.

Then we constantly move from one to the other: from reason we rise into above reason, and then fall back. One must sink completely into reason in order to rise from within it to faith above reason. Reason is necessary in order to rise above it.

The only thing we have is the desire to receive pleasure. And it must be revealed in order for us to learn how to work with it in reverse form.
[50257]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/2/11, Baal HaSulam, Shamati 207 ”Receiving In Order to Bestow”

Related Material:
A Dog Of The Field: A Plant-Animal
Reason And That Which Is Above It
Calculate Your Faith

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Spiritual Work | Add Comment →