Confidential! – Laitman Unplugged
Posted on November 17th, 2013
Question: What is the difference between cleaving to the teacher or cleaving to the group?
Answer: It is necessary to cleave to the group in order to cleave to the teacher in order to cleave to the Creator.
It does not mean that the student cannot ask the teacher questions, clarify, express doubts, and even make some claims. This should always be in the form that does not harm their connection, the student’s self-nullification. This is the main thing.
The problem is not that he will not have enough respect for the teacher, but the fact that he will lose his connection with him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/10/13, Shamati #25 “Things that Come from the Heart”
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Question: When is a person considered a student of his teacher?
Answer: A student is called someone who adheres to his teacher (meaning in the inner way) and tries to “suck” everything possible out of him. Like a baby who is sucking milk out of his mother, a student is trying to suck out of his teacher everything he has and to grow, meaning develop what he receives.
He is not capable of receiving all the knowledge, attainment, and sensation instantly, but he can obtain the tools in order to develop everything within himself. After all, a child receiving his mother’s milk does not digest it inside of him, but rather he turns it into meat, muscles, and bones. He is building his organism and developing himself. The same thing happens here.
We have to understand that from a teacher we receive something that we wish to receive and only in the form and to the extent that we put forth our efforts toward it. We do not hear what the teacher says; we only hear what we wish to hear. The work of a student is to annul his psychological obstacles and begin to listen to the teacher. In other words, the work of a student is the annulling of his ego.
[119474]
From the Talk about Group and Dissemination 10/20/13
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Question: In what way should the connection with you be expressed by those behind the screen?
Answer: Your connection with me should be expressed in that you write me specific, serious questions about the lessons, not made-up, but thoughtful. I will be answering them in writing or verbally.
Indeed, communication occurs when we do something together. A portion of knowledge that you get from me every day is not considered connection. Connection is when we make, create, something new together. If I teach the wisdom of Kabbalah or integral education and upbringing and you study this, then there is a connection between us.
Connection is possible only when you are similar to me. We know that unification between the two objects happens only to the extent of the similarity of their properties. And what similarity can be between us if I am a teacher and you are a student? What similarity can be between the created being and the Creator if the Creator only gives and the created being only receives? What can you give in return? Unity with me. And what can it be? If you act the same way I do. Only that! And how else can you act? To teach me as I teach you? No, teach others as I teach you.
Therefore, there can be no more effective state than that of dissemination; otherwise, you do not process material. In the spiritual world, the one who does not pass information through himself closes himself and does not perceive anything. You cannot imagine what a tiny dead fraction of what I give you, you perceive, precisely because you do not pass this along further in any form.
Those people who are engaged in translation or processing the lessons are the happiest people because what they hear or process eventually reaches someone. And those who do not do this have no other way out of themselves; they are a dead end.
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From a Talk About the Dissemination 10/17/13
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Question: How can we ultimately realize what you say to us?
Answer: It’s necessary to realize what Baal HaSulam and Rabash say to us. I very much ask you to realize their advice and no more than this. Leave me, I have simply taught you to read what they write correctly. Realize their writings and forget about me. The main thing is that you should stick to them.
Question: But I cannot forget you. Moreover to read the texts by myself and expect a remedy, and that the Light will bring me back in repentance is one thing, but to hear you explain the texts is something else completely.
Answer: Right, we “open” the texts together and we begin not only to understand them, but the main thing is to bring them to realization. This is my function: to help in their realization and implementation.
Question: But we need to do something between us in order to get the method from you and to realize it in life.
Answer: Yes, you must establish the greatness of the Rav in your eyes. But this doesn’t say that it’s necessary to kiss my hand. You want to bring me gifts, so bring me the gift of your connection in order to receive a gift from Above.
Question: We make a lot of effort but so far it seems something is still lacking…
Answer: What you are lacking is to be connected below. When you are standing, hold hands and raise your head upward, as is drawn on the cover of one of our books, The Arvut. If you attain a state like this, then the answer will come. For this, inside you need to be like a “child,” a student who is ready to hear and to listen to teachers…
[121098]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam
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Question: Please explain how you establish internal contact with people?
Answer: I try to search for and immerse myself in the place where spirituality is revealed, and each time to re-enter there from our external world. Through the external group, I go inside it in a way where faces and material characters disappear and only the points in the hearts are exposed; I delve into the relationship between them, their connection in one place, and through it, I penetrate more and more deeply into their spiritual properties.
This work has to be done over and over again, and this place constantly expands while acquiring more components, supplying the spirit of life. At this point, when you walk in and experience that connection, tangible forms of connection begin to manifest: the spiritual Partzuf with the occurrence and Histaklut of Light, the complete TANTA (Taamim–Nekudot–Tagin–Otiyot, the taste of the filling and the gradual departure of the Light leaving memories, letters, the tools for further work)
And this place is the internal oneness that expands to the entire creation so that you feel it is all around, that there is nothing but it. And conversely, the entire material world that was all of your reality and which left one tiny point for spirituality, contracts, and this spiritual point grows and fills the entire universe!
And finally, the corporeal world fades away from the foreground, as if the still, vegetative and animate levels are not the most important things for a person. In truth, you start feeling that those people are completely controlled from Above and don’t have any freewill or independent identity. Hence, this world vanishes from your perception. And what is left is only the place where all these spiritual relationships exist. You recognize the upper and the lower ones there, all the Partzufim and how they work with each other and are starting to better understand all of it. And it all depends on how much effort a person exerts in order to have it revealed.
We have to return to it anew each time since we are constantly thrown out from spirituality, pushed down to this world, and we return to the external picture, suddenly seeing the same faces and this entire world that cover the internal picture from us.
And a person starts making more effort striving to penetrate it so that the inner world will grow and expand onto the whole world. In this way, spirituality constantly either contracts and returns to a point or expands again—as if it is breathing.
[30031]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, Letter #13
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It says: “for they shall all know Me, from their smallest to their greatest,” (Jeremiah 31:33). This means that everyone must reach the end of correction.
It is very hard to fulfill this, but there is no other way. Everyday each of our friends who are on the spiritual path perform certain spiritual actions of correction, partly by their own freewill and partly unwillingly. Yet people still go through the process of correction, partly consciously but mostly unconsciously.
I have no doubts that I am leading my students correctly and that they will never say that they don’t understand where I have brought them to. They can check my recommendations by reading the sources based on the writings of other teachers, etc.
Question: Did you have any doubts when you were a student?
Answer: No, I reached the wisdom of Kabbalah having no doubts that it was the right choice. I immediately felt that the place I arrived had everything. Until then I had been through a long road of searching and had seen a lot of stupidity and folly.
It is impossible to find anything in science anymore. Internally, I understood that philosophy is empty. It is all nonsense and it is totally limited to our world. Then I thought that I might find something in religion, but would I?
After being in several religious institutions, I saw that some engaged only in observing the physical Mitzvot (commandments) without changing their inner attributes, so what’s the point? Others read Kabbalah, but they didn’t understand what they were reading at all, thinking it was enough to simply engage in reading. This means that they were like the other religious people who observe all the Mitzvot but read too and that there is nothing more to it than that, so what’s next?
So when I heard a logical explanation, I realized that I had a found a place that was undoubtedly right—the most serious thinking, accurate direction, with total connection to all the sources!
Before I found my teacher I read many books: the writings of Ari, the Talmud, and the Bible. I knew all the Mitzvot and observed them in part. So when I came to Rabash I was already living a religious life for about five years because in order to visit religious institutions I had to look accordingly at least externally. Besides, I believed that I had to be tied to our roots since my grandfather was also a very religious man.
But when I came to Rabash I realized that these people’s dealings are based only on the sources. Before, I also tried to read Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, The Book of Zohar, which describe special corrections, but what could I understand then? After all, I had never seen such knowledge, such extensiveness, such penetration of the still, vegetative, animate, and human connection.
So people who don’t understand what we study and what we speak about think that it is mysticism. Even today people have no idea what a great system we are dealing with.
We, however, play, juggling: this world, the next world, how they connect, how they integrate, and how a person feels himself in them. It is as if all this volume is before us. Of course, it is still theoretical and abstract for us now and cannot be described; it isn’t mystic but theoretical and abstract. We work with this volume of forces, of interactions, attributes, and connections, while a person on the outside has to spend years in order to enter this system.
[116864]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/29/13
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Question: We need to take upon ourselves work that is foreign to the ego and completely above its power, and charge the group’s to do its best. Then not having achieved the result, we ask bring the matter as a helper to and worker of the Creator, and only then do we get the result.
How can we differentiate at the beginning of the work between madness and folly versus courage and consideration? Where is this boundary found?
Answer: Here it is necessary to have someone who manages the process who “there and then” can approve or reject every detail that the operators need to know about using it. So they need to be maximally connected among themselves more and more, so as to turn to Him nevertheless.
The world cannot get along without a “king,” without his representatives, without those who are loyal to him. Man needs someone near him who knows more than he does, who sees the future and outlines the right directions. “This is not for us but we will go there, will do what you think is right within these limits.”
This hierarchy must be constant. Among our groups there cannot be some kind of group that does everything it thinks is important according to its discretion will ultimately succeed. This is because the ego constantly accompanies it and the group needs new discernments, new stages of clarification all the time.
Regretfully I don’t think that this great dependence will diminish with time. On the contrary, it will grow. I know this from my mutual relationship with my teacher Rabash: The more I advanced, the more I needed him, actually came closer and closer to him.
In our world it is precisely the opposite: The more that a child grows, he becomes more and more independent until he leaves his parents’ home.
Whereas here you become more and more adherent to those who are higher, for essentially they link you to the Creator, you simply are not ready to get along without Him. And therefore, I now learn much more from my teacher than I learned thirty years ago….
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/13, Lesson on the Topic: “Sukkot”
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When I was Rabash’s student he could answer every question that I had but only to the extent that it was possible to reveal things. If you reveal more than a person can grasp you may harm him.
A teacher knows exactly what can be revealed and what must remain concealed, only to the extent that a person is loyal to you can you reveal something to him. This usually happens among relatives, with a son or with a son-in-law. This is interesting since they value your good name.
You cannot be more important to any other student than he is for himself. This is the essence of our nature! So you should conceal yourself from them so that they will feel that there is something they should overcome here.
What do our corporeal difficulties to get close indicate? If your followers are a son, a son-in-law, or a brother, they value you no matter what. So even if they descend to the corporeal level, they will guard your good name since it is also their name. A student, on the other hand, loses contact with you when he descends to the corporeal level and stops being your student.
It is not a person’s fault. This is how the connections between us are arranged naturally, and so you cannot give a student what you give a son, a son-in-law, or another relative.
This is very meaningful during the first phases. A student can be like a son to you only if he is spiritually connected to you. Otherwise, what other connections do you have with him? You try to bring him to the spiritual level, but the question is to what extent he can do so.
It is about interesting corporeal attributes and how they come in contact with spirituality, but in the meantime, through the simple ego. If we speak about a certain level of loyalty when it comes to a son or to any other relative, it exists to some extent since it is based on egoism. You may say some more to them and they will never use it against you. It is possible to reveal to them a bit more than to others on a minimal level.
But this stick has two ends. The student can grow to a level on which he treats the teacher as a father despite his inner resistance. Here an opposite attribute is created and the student can do more than a son. In order to do so, both have to work seriously.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/29/13
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