Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 259

What Is the Reward of the Next World?

Does every person know what the reward of the next world is? What do we labor for in this world? This world is like a corridor, and when we enter the next world through it, we receive everything there that we earn in this world. Prepare yourself now, receive later. In this world, it is impossible to receive any reward. There is no reward in this world; it is only in the next world, as it is written, “There is no reward for a Mitzva in this world.”

The problem is in the interpretation of “this world” and “the next world.” “This world” means that we hold intentions to receive. “The next world” means that we hold intentions to bestow. Baal HaSulam writes in one of his letters that we attain both this world and the next world while we are alive, during our lifetime in this world. They are simply two states. One is without a screen, and the other is with a screen.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 258

What Is Fear of the Next World?

Fear of the next world is fear of the Creator. Fear is always present in us and stems from the emptiness of our vessels. We are afraid that we will be unable to fill our empty vessels, or we are concerned that we will be unable to fill the Creator with our vessels. If we have acquired a screen that enables us not to think about ourselves even when we are empty and to be delighting in mercy (Hafetz Hesed) despite our emptiness, to feel wholeness even when we are empty and delighting in mercy, we can think about how to fill the Creator. Before we have acquired a screen, we cannot think about this at all.

From this we can understand that correction must be gradual. At first, we think only about ourselves. Afterward, we examine the extent to which we think about ourselves and wonder whether this distances us from spirituality. Even within thinking about ourselves there are several discernments that include the question of what do we want to fill ourselves with in this world, whether we want to fill ourselves with small or great pleasures, whether we think only about ourselves and do not care about others to such an extent that we could kill them or extort something from them, or whether we already know how to take them into consideration, and so on. There are all kinds of states and degrees.

Afterward, we begin to think: “It is not worthwhile to enjoy this world. There is a next world. We want to enjoy spirituality.” When do we think that way? It is when there is something of spirituality in us, when we have a point in the heart. When the point in the heart begins to emerge, instead of this world’s pleasures, we want to receive the pleasures of the next world. Then the time of preparation begins, during which we begin, as it were, to receive spiritual pleasures. We want them. The surrounding light illuminates for us that there are pleasures in spirituality, and we also grasp something of the Creator’s bestowing nature.

When light shines, it also always gives something of its bestowing nature. Therefore, within Lo Lishma (“Lo Lishma” is when we want pleasures for ourselves from the Creator, from spirituality) we grasp something of the illumination of the surrounding light, something of Lishma. The light, whether inner or surrounding, always shines together with the pleasure and gives a sensation of its nature.

From the nature of the light that we grasp, from the grace of Kedusha, we already begin to feel that there is something else and that it would be good if we could remain in this point of the grace of Kedusha without all the other pleasures of this world. Why would that be good? It is because the light gives us the sensation that it is the best thing and that we are detached from myriad problems and troubles. In the meantime, everything is still in Lo Lishma, but there is already the grace of Kedusha. At this stage there also are many states, and afterward comes the state of Lishma.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 257

How Can We Intend Lishma Before the Barrier?

It is impossible to truly intend Lishma before the barrier, but there is “the grace of Kedusha (holiness),” which means that we would like it. Why? Just because. It has grace. “Grace” cannot be explained. Why? This is because it is surrounding light. It does not enter the vessels and does not give knowledge. “Knowledge” is light that is in the vessels. It shines from outside, and therefore it is called “grace,” something that cannot be explained. We want it. It attracts us, but why? What is happening? What will we get from it? Why do we want something that is against this world? We do not know. The surrounding light provides all of this to us.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 256

How Do We Transition from Lo Lishma to Lishma?

“I labored and found.” No one knows how. A special upper light comes and performs that transition on us from Lo Lishma to Lishma. Everything depends on the light. Until now, surrounding lights have come, and now the first inner light comes, together with the screen, with everything. It gives us a screen and the strength to withstand it. Everything happens at once.

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Why Do the States Disappear and Return?

The discernments of Lishma and Lo Lishma toward the Creator and toward this world change each time according to the surrounding lights that descend upon us from the world of Atzilut. We exist in the world of Atzilut in potential, that is, in the corrected state, in the corrupted state, and in all the in-between states. The upper light that descends from Ein Sof through the world of Atzilut performs a kind of scan through all these states, from the lowest state, gradually, up to the highest state, to our roots in the world of Atzilut, and accordingly we receive changing surrounding lights. According to what the upper light passes through there, through our states in potential, we change here in actuality. We do not know how we are supposed to change, but we simply change.

After the barrier, in our initial acquisition of a screen, we begin to identify with, desire, understand, and recognize these changes. We even begin to anticipate them, and to such an extent that we already think in advance that we now want to do something, and indeed we do it. We begin to recognize the Creator’s thoughts and identify with them to such an extent that our thought and desire, and the Creator’s desire, unite. This is truly called “Lishma.”

In our present state, we certainly do not know how we change, but we need to believe that we change according to our root in the world of Atzilut. The pace depends on us, on our awareness, on our state, but the changes of states do not depend on us. Our awareness is what changes our inner sensation: we can feel that we are being struck, or we can feel that the blows are not really blows, but a force through which we enter correction. The restrictions can be pleasant if the goal stands before our eyes. This is how we are forcibly compressed into this “pipe,” but with joy that we attain something. Also, if we do not see the goal before us and we are compressed into some “pipe,” we experience it like death.

Therefore, our awareness, our own work, is to change our sensation from one extreme to the other regarding the very same action that is performed on us from above. However, as a result, it is not only our inner sensation of good or bad that changes, nor only the pace. The content changes as well. This is because, from these states we receive lights, and our world changes. It is difficult to explain the extent to which our own intelligent and independent participation in the work of correction, which we ourselves also desire, changes the entire picture. Even though the states that descend from above are predetermined, we determine everything below.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 254

How Is the Desire for Spirituality Structured During the Time of Preparation?

The desire for spirituality during the time of preparation is divided into two desires: a desire to enjoy spirituality for personal benefit alone, and a very small desire to bring pleasure to the Creator. That is, 99 percent Lo Lishma and one percent Lishma.

Although the Lishma is not through a screen, there is nevertheless something of it. Also, everything is still at the expense of the upper one. The upper one holds us in a state in which we have no screen. If we had a screen, we could actually use the quality of the screen, but during the time of preparation it disappears, returns, and disappears again.

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What Does a Person Go Through Before the Barrier?

The states we go through before the barrier are called the “time of preparation,” the beginning of Lishma. There is no screen to speak of yet, but we already begin to relate to our state from the point in the heart. What does it mean to enter the time of preparation? For thousands of years, we reincarnate in bodies of this world, and suddenly we receive an awakening from above. This is called “the point in the heart entering us.” It is the point in the heart being revealed in us.

In addition to the heart, which is a desire for all kinds of pleasures in this world, we have a desire to enjoy spirituality. Although it is an egoistic desire for spirituality, dressed in the intention to receive, it already belongs to spirituality. Within it there is a certain sensation of the surrounding light that gives the grace of Kedusha (holiness), which means that there is something of the intention to bestow. We are clueless as to what bestowal means, but this gives us a sense of truth and falsehood.

Beforehand, we viewed the world only from our heart and thought about how to grab and enjoy. Now we sometimes look from within our heart and sometimes from within the point in the heart. We are thrown from one to the other, and this brings changes of states and moods. When we look from within the point in the heart, we begin to criticize ourselves and think that we are beasts, and from the point in the heart we begin to understand a little of what it means to be human.

But this is still not birth. Spiritual birth begins with the actual acquisition of a screen, from root coarseness (Aviut de Shoresh). However, for those who study Kabbalah, preparation for birth begins. Even during the time of preparation there are many stages that cannot be clearly divided in succession. This is not yet birth; it is preparation.

What is birth? Even birth that comes after the barrier is not yet birth; it is only the “entrance of the seed into the womb of Ima Ilaa (Upper Mother),” called the “three days of absorption,” and so on. The “nine months of pregnancy” begins, a state in which we feel that we are in the Creator’s world and begin to acquire a screen in order to annul ourselves toward it, so that everything we receive will be in order to bestow and will not touch our will to receive.

Like in spirituality, the states preceding it, which correspond to spirituality, are also given such names. In any case, these are states in the point in the heart’s development that receive a screen at the barrier.

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What Does It Mean to Cross the Barrier?

A person who crosses the barrier is a person who has acquired an intention in order to bestow, even if it is the smallest possible intention. This is called “crossing the barrier.” It does not mean reaching some boundary in the middle of the road with a sign stating, “Barrier Ahead,” which can be removed to let someone through. Crossing the barrier in spirituality is the inversion that takes place when we acquire the smallest measure of Lishma from Lo Lishma, the smallest measure of bestowal.

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Chapter 22. Kabbalah Before the Barrier

There is a great difference between the work of the general public and the work of the individual. It is the difference between heaven and earth. A beast has no purpose of creation; it does not ascend anywhere, and just as it was born, it dies, with its role amounting to serving man. This is the degree of the beast. The whole world is on this degree, not even on the degree of Lo Lishma. Certainly, on this degree too there are several changes, states, and degrees, and accordingly, in the animal world there are also countless species and ways of life, from tiny lice to large animals, and they are all copies of the qualities and forms that exist in a person who is on the animate degree.

Lo Lishma is on the beastly degree, and so is most of humanity, including those who relate to life out of a self-aimed intention. What determines the difference between the beastly degree and the human degree is a screen (Masach). There is the self-aimed intention, which is called “fear of this world,” “fear of the next world,” and “fear of reward and punishment,” and there is the intention outside of us, which is fear concerning how much and in what way we will be able to bestow upon the Creator. The latter is fear that is not self-aimed, but outwardly directed. Outside of us there is only “None else besides Him,” and then we are born from the beastly degree into the human degree.

They say that the main thing is studying Lishma, but the problem is that we do not know what Lishma is. Our measure of Lishma is our measure of unity with the Creator that we reach through a screen. We then certainly study Lishma.

Only the goal of Lishma or Lo Lishma brings about the importance of the wisdom of Kabbalah. This is because, if we do not attract the upper light during the study, which we attain through the study of Kabbalah, we cannot rise from the degree of Lo Lishma to the degree of Lishma, acquire a screen, and become a human instead of a beast. There is no other means to do so.

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How Do We Distinguish Between a Klipa and the Recognition of Evil?

We distinguish everything according to the way the light illuminates us.

From a Talk on the Article “What Are Holiness and Purity, in the Work?” 6/17/2002

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