Entries in the 'Daily Kabbalah Lesson' Category

Looking At The World From The 2nd Floor

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe desires of the public are as if on the 1st floor, where there is a simple relationship between desire and fulfillment. And we need to be on the 2nd floor, where there is a relationship between the recipient and the giver; that is the intention.

I can go to a restaurant, pay money, and get pleasure in exchange. And I can visit a friend and pay no money. After all, I pay him by my attitude and he also brings me pleasure by his attitude. That is, we are already on the 2nd floor.

The restaurant had only one floor; I got pleasure, and compensated for it with money, gave pleasure at the same level, on the same floor. But it is not so with a friend: I received a treat from him, but did not pay for it with money, and I enjoyed his relationship to me more than the treat itself.

On the 2nd floor, fulfillment is our relationships with each other. No matter what treat I received from you, just a cup of coffee, your attitude towards me can be a billion times more valuable.

We bring pleasure to the Creator by what we do on the 2nd floor. I do not feel fulfillment on the 1st floor; it is just filling the stomach, and I do not care from whom I got it. The tools of the 2nd floor are personal relationships.

I feel the pain of others on the 1st floor; it is called to “empathize with the suffering of society.” But then I am rewarded with the “pleasure for the whole society.” And why am I doing this? To delight the Creator.

I go out to them as a restaurant owner to hungry visitors and say that I have the food they will receive. But I immediately begin to teach them and invite them to the 2nd floor. I am saying that if we unite, we create connection between us that will give us a special strength with which we shall depend on no one, neither on any government nor on officials. We ourselves will put our world in order.

You cannot just say this to people at once; they will not believe it. First, you have to make them feel that this is indeed possible in some workshop. And then we can say: ” Please note: Due to this force, which we now reveal between us, we can fix all of our lives.”

We can get this force only by connecting with the group, the teacher, and the books. Even on the 1st floor we cannot be successful without their help. We see that the world cannot cope without this. The world is abundant, but people cannot live a good life because they have no power of unity.

The force of their connection is negative because everyone wants to use everyone else. Therefore, half of the world throws away surplus food and half of the world is starving. This gap will grow day by day. After all, we need to understand that the reason is the bad connection between us that we cannot correct, but everything depends on it. And in the meantime, the split between us grows more and more.

The world has changed completely in 30 to 40 years—everyone is in conflict with each other. Arab countries, first united by one idea but now divided, are in strife and war with one another. After all, the higher management seeks to reveal clearly that we do not have the right connections between people and that this is the cause of all the evil in the world.

People already understand this. When you talk about this, they quickly agree. That is, perhaps a few sentences are enough to lead anyone to the conclusion that our good life depends on good relationship between us. But he immediately says that it is impossible to correct.

You should not argue here; you just have to invite him to a workshop so he will experience this himself and check whether it is possible or not. It is not for nothing that it is said: “There is none wiser than the experienced.”
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/13

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Two People Is Also A “Group Of Ten”

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why doesn’t the Creator hear us if we are less than ten?

Answer: This actually is not true. It isn’t about a group of ten that you can actually count, but about a finite fixed desire, which as a result of our connection actually becomes strong and real.

It makes no difference if 50 or 80 people participate in it. In spirituality the quantity is not taken into account, but only the quality. When I say that the lower level is ten times further away from the upper level, I refer to a qualitative measure and not a quantitative one.

On the whole, it says that the minimum of many is two, when each one can exit himself and rise above his ego and connect to another, so even two can be called “a group of ten.”

This is a conditional term. In our world we measure the quantity while in spirituality we measure the quality. But although we use the words of this world, we have to understand that here it refers to real changes.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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An Opportunity Is From Above, Realization Is Up To Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Messiah’s Horn”: Know that this is what it means that the children of Israel are redeemed only after the wisdom of the hidden is revealed to a great extent, as it is written in The Zohar, “With this composition, the children of Israel are redeemed from exile.”

In my assessment, we are in a generation that is standing at the very threshold of redemption if we only know how to spread the wisdom of the hidden to the masses. We are required to disclose the secret wisdom to the public. But what will be left of the mystery if we reveal it? The fact is that at this stage, we are talking to people about good interconnection based on the principle of love of the other as yourself, about unity for the sake of correction of humanity.

Through numerous incremental phenomena that add up to historical evolutionary development, our vessels, desires, are prepared for the time when there is the generation that is capable of bringing intention into its life and existing on Earth not because it was placed in this “cell,” in this “barn,” in this “kennel,” but because people want to know why and for what purpose this situation occurred and what state they are destined to achieve. We live in this generation. The crisis, despair, and other negative things of the day are the signs of the changes about which Baal HaSulam writes. The necessary conditions are already established from above, but we must finish our work from below. Only the opportunity for redemption comes from above, and the rest is up to us.

We have accepted that there is a precondition for the redemption—that all the nations of the world will acknowledge Israel’s law.

As a result, our entire receiving desire, revealed by this moment, will reach the point where we understand that it needs to be changed. And even if we are incapable of this, even though the egoistic power of “Pharaoh” dominates over us, at the same time it is clear: We have to rise above it. We understand that one day we will achieve universal correction and in advance agree with this future state and wish that it will come, although we have not yet come out from under the power of egoism.

This knowledge, this awareness, this requirement, means that Pharaoh also knows, understands, and agrees that his parts went into the altruistic intention. He is willing to sacrifice himself to let go of a part of himself so that it would be corrected and come into bestowal, having disconnected from egoistic intentions. This is deliverance.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/23/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Gradual Implantation Of The Creator Into The Creature

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen we rise from below to above on the spiritual ladder, I am renewed all the time. So in what way is my “second self” different from the “first self”? In that I perceive the Creator, my Maker, in all these levels?

In the previous level I was found under the influence of particular forces and also in the new level. Yet the difference between the levels is that in the previous level I had a “first Creator” and in the new level I have a “second Creator.” The ascent from level to level is in the perception of the Creator and not just that I perceive myself. I perceive myself in a more primitive form if I rise from below to above. Yet in addition to this, I perceive the Creator, I attach Him to me.

Which is to say, the “second creature” is different from the “first creature” in that he adds the Creator to himself, to his essence, and therefore he transforms into a great man, into an Adam relative to his previous state, he becomes more like the Creator.

It follows that spiritual attainment is not involved with the addition of greater feelings and intellect, rather it is qualitative. New Kelim are formed, desires are renewed and reorganized all the time.

From time to time the structure of the Creator penetrates more and more into the creature and organizes him according to His image. Because of this, we begin to think otherwise, to feel, to accept other decisions, we look at the world in a different way. Everything is changed within us. The substance seemingly is left unchanged, although it gets new information.

This is the ascent from below to above. The person is changed all the time, so that nothing of the previous state is left for him, not even memories. The desire for pleasure is left, yet it gets new complexity, division, structure, and organization. To this substance is added the structure of the Creator every time, meaning, the characteristic of bestowal and love. The connection between all the parts causes changes and influences the structure itself.

It is possible to compare this to a computer that is rebuilt yet is not changed in itself too much. Only a little memory, processing speed, and clock signal frequency is added, yet apparently the hardware, the machine is left the same, only it becomes more sophisticated, complex, faster, and responsive, which is to say it becomes more sensitive. Inside, those zeros and ones still alternate, yet with a higher speed than before.

Within these zeros and ones a new program acts, a new connection that changes the quality of the substance completely. The program establishes everything and controls the substance. The machine itself, the “metal” is unimportant—what is important is the program that works inside. Our ascent from below to above involves a more sophisticated program.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/20/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Be Cautious Of “Know-It-All” Philosophers

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: Philosophy loves to concern itself with His Essence and prove which rules do not apply to Him. However, Kabbalah has no dealings whatsoever with it, for how can the unattainable and imperceptible be defined?

Kabbalists do speak a great deal about His illumination in reality, meaning all those illuminations they have actually attained, as validly as tangible attainment.

Kabbalists attain an abstract Light when it dresses into vessels and turns from a theoretical form to a tangible structure by manifesting Itself in us as various features of ours.

It is said that “we do not define by name or word that which we do not attain.” We attain everything there is by analyzing it in our vessels of receiving. They are our “eyes,” our vision, the channel through which we perceive the world. Only on condition that we know a certain phenomenon can we explore it to the degree of our immersion in it. Thus, we advance. There is a rigid principle: “We shall know You by Your deeds.” That’s why we always rely on our perception within our vessels, desires. Our internal reactions to them are in fact the Light.

Similarly, we recognize electricity not by its essence, but according to its results. Something flows through wires and generates various phenomena. All we see are the results. Baal HaSulam writes about it in his article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.” Actual things are found even in the corporeal reality set before our eyes, although we have neither perception nor image of their essence. Such are the electricity and the magnet, called “fluidum.” Nevertheless, who can say that these names are not real, when we vividly and satisfactorily know their actions? We could not be more indifferent to the fact that we have no perception of the essence of the subject itself, namely electricity itself.

We always explore the consequences of various essential categories, rather than deal with the categories per se. I have no idea what the subject that I look at is in fact, but I know how it acts.

All I do is check my sensations and reactions: Something looks black to me, other things feel solid, some are long, and certain things I can taste or smell. Reality is comprised of my internal reactions to outer impacts, rather than the factors that cause them per se. Therefore, phenomena that we differentiate are actually the effects that externality causes in us.

Why do philosophers refuse to admit it? The answer is that it will obligate them to become Kabbalists and study the Wisdom of Kabbalah in order to explore spirituality. Common sense prompts that they don’t know or understand a thing and have nothing to say. Really, what can one say if one doesn’t live in spirituality, nor does one sense It in one’s vessels, desires?

We shouldn’t approach Kabbalah with a regular human mind; we are not in the dimension that Kabbalah describes as of yet. We can fantasize about what’s inside the Earth and imagine life on other planets since these things are at least somehow interlaced with our sensations. However, they have nothing in common with spirituality. Moreover, we don’t have any connection with the spiritual realm: Our material reality as we see it is absolutely detached from the picture that is created in our minds. How can we deliberate about something that we have no contact with whatsoever?

This is one of the reasons the Wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed from humanity throughout millennia. Kabbalists were afraid of “smart alecks” who just tended to philosophize about the topics that are related to Kabbalah.

It also applies to the philosophers who valued Kabbalah, such as Reichlin, Goethe, Pico Della Mirandola, and others. Even these people did not understand a thing in the great wisdom, nor could they realize that the general universal knowledge that is beyond traditional disciplines originates from Kabbalah. What they proclaimed is in fact nothing but philosophizing. Some philosophers approach Kabbalah with critical analysis that is based on a subjective approach, others admit its importance, although none of them understand it. Their position lacks rationalism that is so much needed. Nevertheless, the truth will be revealed soon; we are very close to it.
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In A Higher And Higher Field Of Tension

Dr. Michael LaitmanAll of reality except for us is found in a state of rest and waits for our work. Everything is seemingly evolving and changing at every moment, yet without any free choice. The result of the cooperation between the Light and the Kli that is found opposite to it, is projected, extended, and evolved downward, and influences the world more and more.

 

 The link between the Light and the Kli in the meantime is created without our participation, without an attempt to establish a proper link between them. And if we don’t link them correctly, then these two lines of force will evolve further and further downward, in parallel to each other, and will influence us who are found between them.

The entire world is found in a field between these two forces, plus and minus: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking (humanity) and within it also Israel. The positive and negative forces evolve further and further from above to below, meaning they are revealed one against the other with greater and greater intensity, where the minus and the plus are made more opposed to each other.

And if we, with our free choice, cannot link and complete them in the right way, then they will descend to an even lower level and cause more and more trouble. As if there was a -10 tension opposite a +10 tension, and this becomes -100 opposite +100; that is, the opposition between them is made much greater. Therefore the troubles grow and become greater, and then we have no choice, and they oblige us to make some kind of link between the plus and the minus.

If we create a link like this, then the entire nature of the still, vegetative, animate, and all the nations of the world, also merit a more balanced supervision, which is to say a quiet life. There is no longer such strong opposition between the minus and the plus, rather the opposite; there is something that links them together. The positive force supplies intention and the negative force supplies desire, and if we combine intention and desire correctly, then all of of creation will enjoy the fruit of this covenant. That is how it works.

All of the negative egoistic forces, all the wicked (Nebuchadnezzar, Amalek, Hitler), which collectively are called “Pharaoh,” have no free choice. Therefore, there is nothing to curse or blame them for; rather, it is necessary only to understand that nobody can correct the situation except those who have free choice, that have a natural inclination towards correction of the world.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/20/13, The Zohar — Introduction

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The Open Dissemination Channel

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe entire world is my outer vessel. There is nothing in the world besides one person, and all the rest are my parts that are presented before my eyes as strangers that I must elevate and evaluate, because in this way I will reach the form of bestowal.

The expression of bestowal is with love. We bestow to whom we love. If you love someone, you think about how to do something good for him all the time. Look at how a mother doesn’t divert her gaze from her baby and only searches for what else can be done for him. This is an example that nature gives us.

Therefore, when we go out to disseminate, we realize our personal correction very rapidly, appropriately, usefully, and directly. It is up to us to feel that solely and only with these people will we discover the Creator, and not inside us. All of our inner desires that exist now will need to be rolled up, contracted.

Only this eternal aspiration remains in its pure form, net, without any calculation, when it comes directly from the point in the heart. And we say that all the rest of our desires are to be contracted, we must rise above them. The efforts directed outside of us, together with the external desires, this is what will become our soul.

To that degree that we begin to take care of people and feel their advancement, we begin more and more to be concerned about their success even to a much greater degree than our own personal advancement. This is like foster parents who invest more love and concern in their adopted children than they would in their own children because they are afraid that they will not love them and they try to win their love. And whereas their own child can sometimes be punished because we think that they can bear everything; with  adopted children they need to increase attention throughout their lives relative to their own children.

Thus when we go out to the general public and invest our efforts in them. The further that these people seem to be, the more we receive the Light that Reforms.

From the moment that we open a channel of bestowal to the external world, there is nothing more important than dissemination. With this we are assured that everyone is prepared to attain the spiritual world! If not dissemination, then only uniquely chosen students would be able to reach the discovery of spirituality. Solely and only thanks to the channel of dissemination being open can we receive them all, and not necessarily here, rather in the entire world. Everything now depends only on the person himself.

Without dissemination we have no possibility of turning to parts of our soul. Our soul is found outside, in the entire world around us: in the still, vegetative, animate, and human. We need to correct only the person, and all the rest of the parts of nature will be corrected together with us because they are without free choice. This free choice is not in the people around you rather it’s within you and in how you utilize the opportunity that is given to you and begin to disseminate this method to implement it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/04/13, Shamati #121 “She Is Like Merchant-Ships”

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The Security Deposit The Creator Left In Creation

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Book of Zohar, Chapter “BeHukotai,” Item 30-31: There is an allegory about a man who loved his friend. He said: “Indeed, since I love you so much, I want to dwell with you.”

His friend asked: “How can I be sure that you will dwell with me?” Then, he took the most valuable belongings and brought them to his friend and said: “Here is a guarantee that I won’t ever part from you.” Similarly, the Creator wished to dwell with Israel. He took His precious Shechina, lowered Her to Israel and said: “Here is my pawn; it shows that I will never part from you.”

Even though the Creator was removed from us, His pawn is still with us since Shechina accompanies us in exile. We preserve His jewel, and when the time comes, He will ask us to return the pawn, and then He will come back and remain with us. Nevertheless while Israel is still in exile, Israel keeps the Creator’s pawn and will never abandon it.

The Creator made a desire to receive. He developed it with the help of the Upper Light and fulfills it endlessly. All other states exist only in the creation’s perception. The Creator stopped acting at the four stages of direct Light. He stopped at the stage of Malchut of the world of infinity. By acting this way, He “handed” Himself to the creation, and later on the creation started to act in order to attain the Creator, its Maker.

Therefore, all His actions are associated with creation. The Creator has given Himself as a “pawn” to creation by filling it with feasible revelations, love, and Light. The creation’s task is to attain the perfect potential state that can be achieved between the Creator and the creation. The entire development is just about this process.

That’s why it is said: “I, HaVaYaH, do not change” and “the Light is constantly in the state of an absolute stillness,” meaning that the Creator has already done His part of the work; He has settled Himself forever in the creation and merged with it infinitely. However, the creation has to perform several actions on its own in order to completely sense the One Who created it, Who fulfills it, with Whom it adheres, and then discover the “pawn” that the Creator left in it. So far, the pawn is hidden inside the creation and is waiting for the creation to disclose it, for its readiness to reveal the Creator by obtaining similar qualities to Him.

The entire concealment exists only when we look at it from the creation’s point of view. When we say that “the Creator is in concealment,” it is just words; in fact, the “ball” is in the creation’s hands. According to actual laws, the properties, and conditions that were passed to the creation by Him, everything depends only on the lower.

Of course, it is not in our power to change the basis of creation nor can we alter the original HaVaYaH. Our task is to rise to infinity in accordance with the same laws. At the same time, the speed and nature of our elevation depend solely on us. We can act freely within the boundaries of the law that defines the relationships between the Light and the desire until we finally find the Creator inside us; realize that He is already present, and that He waits for us to reveal Him. So, on one hand, everything happens in accordance with the upper laws, which is why we study the chapter called “BeHukotai”; however, we are the ones who are supposed to reveal the Light.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/19/13

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Not All Kinds Of Unity Are Identical

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”: …the Israeli nation was to be a “transition.” This means that to the extent that Israel cleanses themselves by keeping the Torah, so they pass their power on to the rest of the nations.

Question: Upon what does the power of the Light that is conveyed by us to the rest of the world depend?

Answer: It depends on the upper and the lower. First of all, the upper has to “line up” with the lower. Prior to other nations’ awakening, we obtain a chance, an arousal, a “tool”… This is what the current period is about; we should adapt to other nations. We have to recognize, comprehend, and feel them, we have to organize ourselves correctly, and make educational materials available to them… In short, we should do everything that is needed to take good care of the world. Everything depends on us.

Our accomplishments on this path and our readiness to take care of others balance out other nations’ sense of detachment and hopelessness. They don’t see any solution to the situation they are in, which they were led to by the normal course of development. And we need to help them understand the natural development is in fact an egoistic type of advancement. By no means should we blame or scare anybody, we should simply explain to them the ongoing unavoidable phase of evolution.

Today, we have hit a deadlock: There is no need to advance anymore, people don’t care about advancement any longer, nor are they as active as they used to be previously. Everything is approaching the final stage.

Therefore, our egoistic development inevitably comes to an end, this fact doesn’t allow us a chance to escape or run away. All we can do is to “stretch” the very last portion of our path. In the meantime, evil forces mount up and augment. On top of it, we should elucidate the causes of our current situation.

At this point, we should bring up the topic of nature. On one hand, nature “cultivates” our egoism, on the other hand, the closer we come to the peak of egoism the more it manifests. Egos were growing throughout the entire history of humankind, whereas nature acts as a “round” integral system. That’s why we do not progress as “singles” or selfish individualists, but similar to other live cells, we tend to unite and form collective “conglomerates.” We should be ready to contribute to each other and cooperate as do the organs of one body.

Thus, nature develops two approaches in us: individualism and conformity. Eventually, we will unite in this global world, whereas nature demonstrates its “roundness” and integrity. As a result, a collision happens. Regardless of our unity, we continue taking advantage of our neighbors. At the same time, we acknowledge that we should “love our neighbors.” The difference between these two states manifests as a world crisis (∆). It’s caused by the fact that the evil in us confronts nature.

Overall, they are two opposing forces that nature provokes. There is only one solution to this situation: to instigate a benevolent unity among us. Exploiting our neighbors is also a kind of unity, but it’s negative. That’s why on one hand, the world became global, and on the other hand, it plunged into a crisis that was caused by our detachment, although by now the world should have become global and united as nature.

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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Dr. Michael LaitmanRav Kook, “The Purpose of Israel and Its People’s Specificity”: There is a need for much studying in many generations that lays the beginning of the high ideal of serving the Creator, given to Israel. Its goal is the elevation of the entire humanity.

It can only be raised through the elevation of the people of Israel—the people who started to illuminate the darkness of the world and have to finish what was begun. Only in its own light, clearly realizing its importance and mission, will it learn how sublime and beautiful this goal is.

Question: The responsibility for the humanity imposes more responsibility on Israel and makes greater demands compared to internal, group work …

Answer: I need the group in order to get power from them. The group is my upper. I constantly recharge my “battery” in the group; I meet with our common power in it, with the Creator, and based on that, I appeal to a wide audience.

The group is “Israel” from which environment I can go out to the people, to all of humanity. To keep in touch with the task, with the goal, with the Creator, with the method of correction, with the force that unites us—the force of love and support between us—I have to be in the group. Otherwise, I just have nothing with which to “reach out to people” because I have neither strength nor the right approach.

Question: So in his articles about the group, did Rabash want to explain to us how to be “recharged” by friends to transfer energy further?

Answer: Of course. In general, every Kabbalist said as much as he could say to reveal in his generation. Therefore, Baal Shem Tov began to implement the method in the form of Hasidism, and then Rav Kook, Baal HaSulam and Rabash continued this revolution in spite of resistance.

Question: So today it is possible to reveal love and bring pleasure to the Creator only by working with a wide audience?

Answer: Yes. You come to a group and unite with the friends in brotherly love to gather strength and power and to take the right course to turn to the masses. It is among them that you will discover the need for the Creator. Your relationship with Him will be manifested there. There, among the people, He dwells. “Do you want to find me? Please. I am there and nowhere else.”

This is the specificity of our time in the “era of Mashiach (Messiah)”; we begin to actually implement the method, going out to “the people.” We just prepare ourselves in the group, it gives us strength, but the action itself is carried out among the masses, where we are building the “Third Temple” from the broken vessels of the entire world.

That is why Baal HaSulam says that the deliverance of Israel is possible only after the whole world learns about the method of correction due to our work with the external audience. Just as Pharaoh knew the God of Israel and agreed to let the people go.

Working with external desires, we do not correct them all at once, but start the process of sorting and the correction of the vessels belonging to the worlds of BYA, and to the same extent come out of exile. After all, the “exile” for the vessels of bestowal is the inability to correct the world. “Deliverance” means that we can take the broken vessels of the worlds of BYA from humanity, raise them to the Creator, and thus bring Him pleasure by allowing you to open them.

In doing so, we ourselves are just intermediaries, the connecting link.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/13, Writings of Rav Kook

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