Entries in the 'Free Will' Category

A Physical Model Of Spiritual Ascent

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf I arrange my physical life, my corporeal framework, according to the spiritual framework, meaning that I serve society, serve the world, am involved with dissemination, and am concerned that I have the support that will awaken me, this is called transforming this world into a model of spiritual ascent. I work only so that I will have the opportunity to learn. I learn only to know what to do, to advance towards the goal. It’s written that I need to be in Arvut, to be in a group by my free choice, so I try to carry this out. It’s necessary to disseminate, so I go and disseminate. In that way I make this world a spiritual framework.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Shamati #59 “About the Rod and Serpent”

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An Operation For The Assistant Director

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean for me to participate in my own development, that didn’t exist before?

Answer: Previously you were a box that was managed by orders that came from a network. Within you were only mechanisms through which they activated you with these commands. But now, into yourself, you must move the main part of the computer that is above you and sends you the commands along with the program that runs it. This is called, “a part of the Divine from Above.”

Question: Why are you calling me a box? After all, I am alive and learning.

Answer: Because you are a desire to receive that is activated only by self-interest that is managed from Above. But now you are getting a part of the computer that manages you, together with the program. You need to know the ultimate goal of creation and your true situation. You need to know how to advance in a mandatory direction.

You need to check yourself, understand, and see that you are a desire to receive, so you cannot advance towards the desired goal of creation. Appearing within you is a conflict between what you want and what is necessary. This will draw you towards troubles and wars through which you will gradually begin to change your mind about the goal.

You don’t want this goal, anything but to bestow, to give. But what is there to do? You receive blow after blow, flee until there is neither anywhere to flee nor anywhere to hide. You begin to accept that you have no choice but to agree. And through your consent, you begin to learn that until this point all was through coercion, and then it becomes according to your desire.

We see this according to the 4 phases of Ohr Yashar (Direct Light), how a receiver is made from a bestower, and that a receiver under pressure can resemble the bestower. But this is a very long way, since 400 years are required for this. These are the 4 phases of  Ohr Yashar, but in reverse, and this way is not very desirable.

So we needed progressive development over billions of years. And now through the wisdom of Kabbalah and a guide that is sent to you, you begin to see how to carry out actions that will be desirable to your ego and will gradually become a mechanism that works in the opposite way. All of this must be done gradually, not because you receive benefit for yourself, rather because this is good for others, including the higher power.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/25, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Seeing The Future

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I don’t understand what I have to add in order to actually participate in my own development.

Answer: When a baby is born, it first grows only instinctively. But gradually he becomes more aware.

What is the difference between a one-year-old baby and a five-year-old? What has changed besides the child’s weight? A five-year-old can somewhat understand the future, which means the outcome of the states he is experiencing. He can assess and see the future, which means expecting the next state.

Animals do it instinctively, but not humans. A baby can fall from a high place and doesn’t understand that it’s dangerous. He can put something hot in his mouth and get burnt. An animal would not do such thing; it wouldn’t fall from a high place and would not get close to danger. A baby grows and acquires the wisdom he lacks.

A wise man is one who sees the future, which means how a state develops. This is what animals do instinctively but only in the limited sphere of their existence. A person has a much stronger ability since he develops it himself.

Baal HaSulam says that if someone was shown a newborn baby and newborn calf, he would say that the calf is a more perfect creature than the human baby because the baby is totally helpless while the calf can already walk, understand, feel, and is strong.

But because we develop the ability to see the future, we understand who is more perfect. The whole wisdom is in the ability to see the future. Therefore people consult wise men who see what ordinary people cannot see. This is what we have to acquire these days because the whole world is becoming confused and depressed. No one knows what to do and no one sees any possible outcomes. Therefore, we have to learn to see the future.

In contrast to previous generations, we can already see the future, our future, only in vessels of bestowal. It’s because the spiritual future is approaching and we cannot identify it, and so we think everything is falling apart. However, the point is that we cannot perceive and see the future and enter it in our current vessels because we don’t belong to that system. In order to become compatible with that system, to see the future and understand the changes that we have to make in order to adapt to the future, we need to be wise.

A wise man is anyone who knows the wisdom of Kabbalah. Therefore it written in the prophets that thousands all over the world will hold on to every wise man so that he will lead them.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/25, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Instructions That Come From Inside

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In all religions, people believe that we should act according to the Creator’s orders.

Answer: Kabbalah doesn’t take any orders into account but only a person’s possibilities according to his level of development. It’s because every desire, every intention, the whole plan of creation, is meant only for that, for developing a person so that he will discover and create the image that he can call the Creator inside him.

He creates it each time as he rises higher and he regards the Creator that he creates as more and more sublime. But this is a very complicated issue that I wouldn’t recommend discussing with ordinary people since this perception is established in a person only when he feels the new spiritual elements, feelings, sensations, and discernments.

Question: So instead of instructions, there are yearnings and efforts that develop in a person which oblige him to advance?

Answer: We feel the instructions from inside us. What is an instruction? Where is an instruction given? Who carries out these instructions if they are written somewhere? All this doesn’t exist! No one carries them out! If according to a person’s nature something is egoistically beneficial, he does it, and if it cannot be carried out egoistically, he doesn’t since he cannot force himself. “Cannot,” means unable to, “doesn’t want to” because he isn’t made for that, there is no difference between wants and performs.

If people don’t engage in their nature, and don’t take it as the basis that needs to be changed and how to format it anew, they think “the Creator has instructed us and we shall do as He says.” But in fact we cannot change ourselves. Try! We see that nothing changes, but simply continues to deteriorate and becomes worse.

Thus there cannot be any orders here. If a person feels a certain inner awakening and to that extent begins to burn inside, he then works in order to fulfill his awakening.

Suddenly he discovers a certain new goal and that he has to perform certain actions in order to attain it. At the same time he learns the orders written in the books and tries to perform them, but it won’t help! If his desires are different, there is no need for any books. We see what happens in all the religions.

The fulfilled actions are only inside a person and only according to the parameters that accumulate inside him, that connect and manage him. It’s foolish to think that I can change myself according to someone’s orders. If it were possible, it would mean that I am simply programmed and that I am a zombie, that I have read a certain instruction like a machine and changed it inside me. Then I am simply disconnected from my analytic instrument and am programmed.

I cease to be a human being and am just an animal in their hands, since a human being is someone who gradually clarifies everything that happens to him with the help of his freewill and his analytic instrument and comes to conclusions that are beyond the limits of his nature. He begins to realize that there is a narrow bridge to the other nature, to another creation to another world. This is where the wisdom of Kabbalah begins. This narrow bridge is bringing offerings, changing my desires from egoistic intentions to altruistic intentions.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/13/13

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Who Directs The Puppet?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When a person discovers that he is completely dominated by his desire to receive and that he is simply a puppet that has no free choice, what must he do with this?

Answer: It is revealed to you that your feet and hands are tied and you have no free choice about anything. You cannot even look around.

You have no freedom of movement: not in thought and not in desire. All of your cells, all of your systems, your entire brain and heart are under the control of a foreign force. Only one thought in which you understand your servitude comes to you in particular so that you can escape to freedom, if you want it.

For this you need to accept this control voluntarily. This is the difference between Pharaoh and the Creator. The Creator arranges learning for you so that you will see that all of the desires sent to you are bad until you agree with them. But the moment you agree with them, they become good. In that way you go out from servitude to freedom.

Everything depends upon how you accept the upper governance: like the control of Pharaoh or of the Creator.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/14,Writings of Rabash

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Make Your Choice

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I advance if I need to reach a state where I don’t want the spiritual goal at all, but wish to remain in material life?

Answer: I must attain the state of the shattered Reshimo de Aviut.  I understand that I don’t want anything except remaining in a place that is comfortable for me. But together with this, there is a Reshimo de Hitlabshut in me, which is something from a level above this world.

On the one hand, I determine that I want to remain a beast. But together with this, I have a spiritual goal, a higher world, and I am suffering because I do not belong to it and remain on the level of this beast, and apart from that, I don’t need anything. I know that the beast will remain as such, and there is a higher level.

I really want to attain this higher level, and at the same time, according to the desire of my Aviut (thickness), I am only attracted to convenience and comfort, to remain in this dream. That is what my heart wants.

But the point in the heart calls to me to go out and attain spirituality. It’s impossible to understand how these two conflicting opposites are in me. What do I need to do if I am torn between both of them? What will determine my choice?
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/31/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Free Slave

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is not difficult for the Creator to completely control the creatures. This is the power of the Elyon, about which it is said, (Isaiah 44:6) “I am the first, and I am the last,”  the only one who activates and manages everything. The problem is only how to bring the creatures to free choice, to independence. It’s up to the creatures to take it for themselves since freedom and independence cannot be given from Above.

How is this done? We don’t know what freedom and independence are. If we hide from some unpleasant sensation, we suppose that we are free of it, and when we cease being under pressure or domination by someone, we think that we have become independent. But this is not true.

If we have this desire, first of all we require a desire and a need for independence and freedom. And this is a problem. How can there be something free in a creature that is the product of the particular forces which produced it?

If there is no independence, then there is no creature. There is only a protein substance that exists according to clear and defined laws and is under the influence of various forces that develop and support it, bringing life and death. However within all of this, it has no independence in anything.

If you look at the lives of all people, then it seems obvious that they don’t decide anything by themselves. Where might they have an opportunity for independent desire?

This is the problem, if this is possible to say,  of the Creator when creating creation. For a creature is someone who acquires the power of independence. He separates from the Creator. But how is this possible? And if he will not separate, how will he reach independence?

Therefore it’s important for us to pass through a sensation of exile, not once, but an exile that comes and goes several times on a more and more internal level all the time. The first exile, if it can be called exile, was the Babylonian exile. The second exile is the exile of Egypt, the third is the exile of Persia, and the fourth and last is our exile.

We attain these exiles through our inner work when we reach recognition of our dependence, and then we know how to become independent. Indeed our partnership, our adherence with the Creator, rests upon our independence. Otherwise I cannot be a partner.

Also, when it’s said that I am the servant of the Creator, this is not the same slavery I had been in at the beginning. I make myself a servant of the Creator from a completely independent state and level. The level of servant rests upon maintaining a state opposed to Him, meaning absolute freedom.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/07/14, Writings of Rabash

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Dual Control Of A Single Power

Dr. Michael LaitmanAs a result of our work in a group, in studying and in dissemination, we need to reach such a state in which we feel that we are under the control of two authorities, two forces. One control is the control of our ego, the evil inclination, the king of Egypt Pharaoh who holds us in slavery.

But sometimes, more or less, depending upon the advancement of the person, another control is also discovered: the good inclination, the power to bestow, the yearning to go outside of oneself towards the other, towards the friends, towards unity, connection, and so forth.

A person is in the midst of such dual power, under the control of two angels: the good inclination and the evil inclination, which hold him by the hands on both sides and guide him forward towards the goal of creation. Certainly the evil inclination also acts according to the program of the Creator and helps a person to advance independently, exercising his freedom of choice.

If he didn’t have free choice, he would be like a beast and not an Adam (man). Through clarifying for himself how to use the evil inclination and the good inclination, the power of reception and the power of bestowal, and choosing how to advance with the right mixture between them, he builds himself as an Adam in the likeness of the Creator.

The connection between the evil inclination and the good inclination begins from the first approach to Pharaoh together with the Creator. The person begins to establish these two forces one against the other. The two forces are under his authority. He decides himself according to his inner state, which of them manages him now and can even pass from one control to another control in that he chooses who has control over him and why, if he is able to do it or if he requires the help of the higher force.

Pharaoh wants to control, and if the person agrees to the evil inclination separating him from the Creator, then he truly is in the Egyptian exile. That is, he attributes some kind of independent control to his evil inclination and says that he is not ready to resist it and is in complete servitude to it.

Of course, if a person thinks this way, it is a sign that he is a slave. But everything depends upon the person himself. He decides and determines in which form Pharaoh will use him or if he will use Pharaoh.

And all of this work was to reveal that there is no other force involved, as it is written “I, myself, and not a messenger.” A person clarifies that the Creator is above the two forces, beyond both the good inclination and the evil inclination. These two forces come from Above. Through the two forces, the good inclination and the evil inclination, that are revealed to him alternately, a person reaches the final conclusion and decision that there is a force beyond them that plays with him through these two angels: the good inclination and the evil inclination.

Sometimes one of them comes to a person and sometimes the other one, which is why one feels he is thrown from one extreme to the other, in two directions. But thus it forms a relationship both with this force and that force, and ultimately with the one higher power, the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/02/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Source Of The Spiritual Movement

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Book Of Zohar, “Pekudei,” Item 3: It says how much goodness You have prepared for those who fear You, and have acted for those who find shelter in You against people. How much do humans have to see and to learn about the ways of the Lord since everyday a voice decrees and says, beware dwellers of the world, shut the doors of sins, leave the net that hunts people before your feet are caught in this net.

There is a perpetual spinning wheel in the world, which means that the Din (judgment) from Above ascends and descends, raising people and lowering people. Woe to those whose feet have been rejected by the wheel, since they fall into the depth prepared for the wicked of the world.

We learn about two ways of evolving here because a person is given freewill but it is very limited since the plan of creation must be carried out and it is running. The freewill is in realizing this plan independently and in the best way possible and executing it voluntarily.

Even if we see how beneficial this plan really is and how essential it is, our ego still opposes it and doesn’t let us carry it out. And it was originally done on purpose because the two forces, the positive and the negative (negative inside a person and positive on the outside) operate on us and influence us; between them we discover our freewill.

If a person is created by nature, the Creator, the upper force, the Light, he cannot be totally free; he is under the influence of this force like everything in nature.

How can our thoughts and desires be free so that we will be able to exist independently of the Creator? We are given two forces that descend from Above simultaneously, the ego and the attribute of bestowal that appears in us; both are under the control of the upper force and develop in parallel. Between them there is a mutual struggle, rejection, conflict.

If we place ourselves between them, we can choose a state in which the attraction on one side and the attraction on the other side balance one another. The balance point between these two forces is the middle line, and being in it we feel that we are totally free of all the egoistic nature and of the upper nature.

However, there is a problem here: How can we choose anything? A person cannot operate like a donkey. If there are two totally identical objects before him, he doesn’t know what to choose, the moment he feels a yearning for one of them there is an immediate identical yearning for the other, and he is between them, feeling split not knowing what to choose.

Thus we experience very unpleasant feelings: On the one hand, nothing seems to operate on us here, and, on the other hand, we don’t know what to do. It is in this state that a person has the option to create the source of a new movement inside him. This point is the starting point from which a person can raise the human being in him. Before he was like a puppet that the upper Providence operated by pulling its strings.

Only by raising the human being in us do we begin to feel how streams of Light descend from Above and flow into the sea, into Malchut of the world of Atzilut and this is never filled but actually leads us forward.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book”10/16/13

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Shrink The “I” And Expand The “We”

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If clear and absolute laws are working in a system, how can a person take the system out of balance? Unless the person is outside of nature?

Answer: The entire system is connected and works according to absolute laws. But within this integral system there is a unique layer that begins to grow, and this is called “man.”

This layer has the ability to shake the system up, to take it out of balance and each time to restore balance, and again to take it out of balance even more and restore it to greater balance. For this layer called “man” there are constantly such possibilities. After all, this is the way this layer acquires a feeling and intelligence of the entire system, by taking it out of balance and restoring it, again and again.

Certainly this layer doesn’t do this with its own powers: The system goes out of balance through a unique program for that layer called “man.” There are unique powers and formulas that take the system out of balance with respect to humans. The upper world is not changed, only its image in regard to us, in regard to the bubble in which we are found, changes.

This is done so that we will become familiar with the system and will require it to return to balance. Through our becoming aware of the lack of balance and demand it to return to a state of balance, we acquire intelligence and emotion, we become familiar with the general program of the entire system. And then we begin to shrink and expand, to inhale and exhale, and in this way we become familiar with the system.

Question: So does a person have free choice or not?

Answer: The free choice of the person is in gathering with people like himself in this system and together demanding balance, wanting to return the system to balance. This is a person’s unique freedom. This is only through work in a group with people like himself. He can gradually expand the layer and include all of humanity, connecting with them and demanding balance and harmony. This demand is called a prayer or raising MAN.

We must strive for change. To the extent that you balance yourself with the system, you will begin to feel it. To the degree that you can shrink your “I,” to this degree you expand and extend the “we,” and in this area you will feel the balance and harmony of all the forces that are working there in real nature. Only then will you be able to understand what is happening.

There is no greater joy than the resolution of difficulties. Precisely by your inclusion in a state of balance and harmony in which everything is balanced, Light comes from above and fills all the Kelim, and this produces true joy.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/14, Writing of Baal HaSulam

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