Moments From The Daily Lesson – Soul
Posted on November 9th, 2009
The entire material of creation is desire created by the Creator, who also sends the Light that fulfills the desire. Man is the correct correlation between the Light and the desire, and since man’s actions most always come from desire, his actions are therefore determined by the Creator.
However, if we aspire to reach connection between us by helping each other, acting “against the Creator” who created this separation between us, it truly becomes our own action.
The quality which the creature acquires by this action is called “a soul.” This soul doesn’t initially exist in us, and the Creator cannot give us a soul. Rather, a soul is created by our desire to connect above our egoism.
All states descending from the World of Infinity to our world (the last stage) exist in us in the form of records, which can be realized only by our efforts towards unification. Our descent resulted in separation, and our ascension is the action of moving towards unification.
There is nothing but forces in the spiritual world. But the connection between them is determined by your perception (world-year-soul in a ready-made reality). And the Creator is also a detail of your perception. He is something outside of you. That is to say, from within your inner reality, you deduce something that provides and sustains it, and you call this part, “the Creator.” It is you who distinguishes and “depicts” Him inside your qualities.
The same thing is true regarding the rest of the picture (world-year-soul). When you are in the spiritual world, you reveal the spiritual matrix of forces, “world-year-soul and a ready-made reality.” You then reveal a different order of forces that influence one another. They contain an inner part (the soul) and an outer part (the world). And you understand some of the forces, seeing them as cause and consequence; this is the year. They contain an Upper Thought and a force that leads the process; this is the ready-made reality.
A question I received: If people learn to live in our world according to the law, “love your neighbor as yourself” and will defeat their egoism, then what will our world look like? After all, corrected souls do not return to this world.
My Answer: The entire corrected humanity will rise as one whole to the state of the World of Infinity.
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A question I received: Can a person who isn’t Jewish acquire a soul? According to Kabbalists like Rabbi Hiya, the soul (Neshama) can only be acquired by a person who observes the Torah.
My Answer: Of course, Rabbi Hiya is right. Every person who aspires to the Creator is called Israel. Every person who corrects his egoism according to the condition, “I created egoism and the Torah for its correction,” is considered a person who observes the Torah and the 613 commandments (he corrects the 613 desires of the soul). He then receives the Upper Light, the revelation of the Creator, inside his corrected desires, called the soul.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Everyone Is Jewish
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Questions I received on the soul:
Question: What happens to the soul when the body dies?
My Answer: The soul is “a part of the Creator,” and the Creator is the quality of bestowal and love. So, a person acquires a soul when this quality of “love for one’s neighbor” emerges in him. However, he does not have a soul until he acquires this quality of love and bestowal, and is similar to an animal. This is why it is written in Kabbalistic texts, “All of you are like animals,” “A person is born a small animal,” and so on.
One can acquire the quality of bestowal and love only under the influence of the Upper Light, which is a force that corrects one’s egoism. This Light is called Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif ) or the Creator because It surrounds us and we are inside it. It is written, “The Creator is like water that cleanses Israel (Mikve Israel Hashem), where Israel is Yashar-El, meaning, one who aspires to the Creator, to bestowal and love.
What does this mean? A person perceives our world using his natural, egoistic qualities. When he obtains the altruistic quality of bestowal and love, he feels the Upper World inside this quality. This means that he acquires a soul.
Once he acquires this quality, it stays with him even if his egoistic quality vanishes, or in other words, even if his body (the matter we feel in our sensations) dies. And that’s because there is only one created matter – the desire, and all existence is felt within this desire. If the desire has the intention, “for one’s own sake,” then one perceives “our world” or “this world.” If the desire has the intention, “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” then one perceives the Upper World or the Creator.
The birth of our bodies, our life and death, are but the emergence and extinction of the Light inside the egoistic desire. Spiritual birth, on the other hand, is the emergence of the desire to bestow and to love outside of oneself (to act not for one’s own sake, or not in order to feel egoistically comfortable).
The desire to bestow is independent of the egoistic desire, through which we feel our bodies and this world. Therefore, when the body dies and the feeling of this world vanishes, what remains is the altruistic desire and the feeling of the Upper World.
Question: How can the soul “see,” “feel,” and “perceive” without the functioning of the brain?
My Answer: We feel everything inside the desire. The brain only helps us to distinguish what we see, or rather, what we desire.
Question: Is it really possible for the soul of a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, who has lost his memory and cognition, to restore all of this after death?
My Answer: Once a person develops the soul, the quality of bestowal, it never disappears.
Question: Why does it happen that infants and small children, whose souls have not yet been corrected, die so young?
My Answer: By existing for as long as they were destined to, they corrected a particular part of their spiritual development.
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A question I received: As the population grows and develops, does this mean that the egoism also increases since it is distributed according to the number of people (for example, seven billion)? What happens to the egoism if the population is reduced, for example, after wars or natural disasters?
My Answer: The common soul divides into whatever number of souls it takes to overcome the egoism of each one. A war brings about suffering, which allows people to overcome egoism. Therefore, the population is reduced. This doesn’t happen because of the war, but because the souls do not need so many bodies.
Whether people live or die is determined by the necessity of the soul’s correction. However, in our world we are only able to see the result of this action – the body’s death, rather than the real reason for it. Thus, we draw our conclusions according to this degree of concealment of the world from us.
Related Material:
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Interview with the Future – “What are Corrections?”
A question I received: You said that men are polygamous by nature and are always looking for new sensations. In the past every man had several wives, and he would buy a new wife whenever he wanted one. There was no love involved in this, and sometimes men and women did not even know each other before being married. This is also the reason why men today cheat, get divorced, and find new wives.
On the other hand, you speak about spiritual marriage – man, woman, and the Shechina between them. How is it possible to attain the presence of the Creator between a man and a woman in the spiritual marriage if the modern man always needs new experiences with different women (today this is called cheating).
This is very painful and difficult to accept. Please help us, women, understand men’s behavior. Why is it so difficult for us to accept the fact that men are always attracted to other women? Do men do this because of some anomaly? Or is it just natural for them to constantly need new women, and it’s us, women, who are so uncorrected that we simply cannot understand their needs?
My Answer: This is the curse of egoism, which we fell into from the spiritual level. God said to the woman: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” So my advice to you is: Don’t look for truth, justice, loyalty, and love in marital relationships. They aren’t there from the beginning, and they can’t be there – the Torah warns you of this. Quit trying to resolve the mess in the physical world, and instead aspire toward correction. As a result of it, your relationships will be corrected as well.
You have to understand that egoistic nature cannot be changed, and everyone suffers from it until they rise above it. You should transfer your worries from the corporeal level to the level where you realize “Why did the Creator do this?” It is in order to push you toward correction!
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Polygamy – a Matter of Culture
Kabbalah Today Article: ” Man, Woman and the Snake Between Them”
Article: “Today It’s Spiritual Relationship or No Relationship”
Article: “The Spiritual Root of Cheating”
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