Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 200

What Does the Upper One Give Us?

The upper one gives everything. It gives the vessels, the lights, and the forces needed for us to build a screen (Masach) so that the lights can enter the vessels corrected by that screen.

What is required from us is only to discern, feel, ask, and desire these things. In other words, we do not perform the action itself. Instead, like a small child, we only need to understand, demand, taste, and discern, which is to carry out the inner work of scrutiny and prayer.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 199

How Can We Be in This World as If in the State of the End of Correction?

We are given a special state from above, something like a glimpse of the next world. It is one degree higher than the one we are currently in, and thus it is already considered a kind of “next world” for us. We receive this tiny illumination from the end of correction.

Then, after this illumination disappears, we make an effort to preserve it, not through the upper one (since the upper one has concealed itself and the illumination is gone), but through our own strength. We aspire to hold on to that illumination, to reach it again, so that it will exist within our own vessels through our own efforts.

If we succeed in doing this, it is considered that we have attained the next degree.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 190

How Can We Imagine What Bestowal Is?

When we are in a group, we are told that love of friends leads to love of the Creator and that bestowal to the friends leads to bestowal to the Creator. Why? It is because we try to establish the same conduct among ourselves as if we were truly among the souls at the end of correction. From that higher world, where all souls are included and connected together, we draw surrounding light (Ohr Makif).

If we try to establish that same law, that same state, in this world, through bodies, through an idea, through an attitude, through connection, and the common goal of advancing together, even in a small group, we effectively create a resemblance of the state in which the souls exist at the end of correction, on the spiritual level within that group. To the extent that we make this effort, we draw the surrounding light, which comes and corrects the vessels.

Therefore, the connection between friends in a group directly affects their spiritual progress. Through this reflection we create in this world, we gradually begin to feel what spiritual connection is. Of course, we can never truly know the higher form in advance. If we are on a certain level, how can they perceive the level above it? Even in ordinary life, within our current state, the next state is always unknown and is revealed suddenly as something new.

So how can we yearn for something above us? The higher level (the upper Partzuf) shows us a small example of bestowal as it exists on a higher degree. It does so in two stages.

In the first stage, the higher level shows us a bit of the light within it, the pleasure it contains. Then, we desire it, long for it, and feel uplifted. Kabbalists call this an “ascent,” although it is not a true ascent, as we do not actually rise. Instead, the higher level gives us a little vitality from a higher degree. This illumination is light at the higher level, but only a faint glow for us, since we cannot receive more in our current vessels.

In the second stage, after illuminating us, the higher level gives us a descent. It lets us feel our own vessels. What are these vessels? They are vessels of bestowal through which we feel darkness. In other words, we feel ourselves calculating, “How is it possible to give without thinking of our own benefit at all?”

Thus, through these two impressions from the higher level, we experience two extremes: what the light is (even if only partially perceived) and what the vessel of bestowal is. Then, we see how much we love the light and how much we resist the vessel. From these two poles, through study, effort, and persistent work, we gradually reach the higher level.

When we attain it and realize that state, an even higher level again reveals both the fulfillment and the vessel within it. These two states once more give us a sense of the extremes within the higher level, and again we strive to attain them, step by step, ascending further.

Therefore, our path is built from ascents and descents:

1. Ascents—the sense of fulfillment that exists in the higher level.
2. Descents—the sense of vessels (the nature of bestowal) of the higher level.

The effort between them is our constant desire to acquire these qualities, whether more or less, until we fully attain them.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 197

Why Is Our Interpretation of Fear and Joy So Far From the Correct Meaning?

Our understanding of fear and joy stems from the natural qualities we are born with. We are born with a will to receive, and all our thoughts, intentions, desires, and longings are aimed at self-fulfillment. This is the most fundamental and initial form of the will to receive. The true will to receive that exists within each of us is actually far greater than what we currently feel. It has been deliberately reduced to a minimal level called “this world” so that we will strive, by our own efforts, to establish a screen (Masach) over it, an intention to bestow.

Once we are able to place an intention to bestow on this small desire, we are given greater desires. Thus, at every step from one level to the next, we first find ourselves in a will to receive for our own sake, then recognize its evil, wish to correct it in order to bestow, ask for strength from above, establish an intention to bestow upon it, and finally receive fulfillment. This is the only way.

We could ask, why we are not born with a will to receive already combined with an intention to bestow? Why must we seek for what it means to bestow, how to acquire this intention, and how to apply it to the will to receive within ourselves? Why must we do this independently?

The reason is simple. This intention cannot come from above because it concerns our relationship to the Giver. Otherwise, it would not be considered bestowal, nor would it truly belong to us. The intention needs to arise within the individual. Therefore, we are given simple desires to enjoy, along with an opposite intention, so that we initially use our desires to fulfill ourselves. These desires are not neutral. They are, in a sense, opposite to us, like a negative point. Therefore, we must first neutralize them, not use them at all, neither for ourselves nor for the Creator, and only afterward transform them into bestowal.

This stage, where we neutralize our desires and reach a state of not wanting to use them, is called the “correction of restriction” (Tzimtzum) or “Hafetz Hesed” (desiring mercy). Beyond this stage, we begin to work actively in order to bestow to the Creator. These are the stages of correction. If we did not perform all this work ourselves, it would not be true bestowal and we would not feel the pleasure of bestowing. Instead, we would remain with only the smallest pleasure, called a “thin candle” (Ner Dakik), which exists only in this world and can be received egoistically.

In our natural, initial state, we can enjoy only a very small measure of pleasure in this world. Each time we approach pleasure, it slips away, appearing briefly and then vanishing with only a tiny portion that we momentarily grasp. This is the entirety of pleasure available in the will to receive before it disappears.

Therefore, if we wish to experience more than what this world can offer, there is no alternative. We already see that progress does not bring happiness. Humanity advances, the will to receive grows stronger from generation to generation, and we provide it with pleasures beyond imagination, such as abundant food, endless products, and advanced technologies that are meant to serve our desires, yet we fail to become happier. In fact, compared to people who lived one or two hundred years ago, we are generally more dissatisfied and despairing today.

In other words, increasing the will to receive and supplying it with pleasures does not help. The result is negative, because the will to receive itself is insufficient. Today, people run around the world searching for pleasure, on the Internet, television, and in countless distractions, but fail to find fulfillment. On the contrary, they discover even greater emptiness. Many then turn to drugs and other addictions, but for what purpose? Humanity needs to eventually realize that this method of receiving, this way of trying to fill ourselves directly and quickly, is flawed. It will not bring true pleasure.

Ultimately, humanity will reach a state of complete helplessness. We could eat the finest food and taste it like gravel, follow ever-changing fashion trends and derive no enjoyment from the way we look, and change partners many times in a lifetime and grow weary of each. We will not find any “garment” through which to receive pleasure. Desires arise from within, and we continue to develop them by acquiring more pleasures, yet achieve nothing.

This process will unfold rapidly. Within a few years, humanity will feel lost, not knowing where to go next. In the past, there were thinkers, such as philosophers and politicians, who at least offered some vision of progress. Today, even leaders and economists are clueless on how to proceed. We lack both direction and knowledge of how to fulfill ourselves or guide our lives.

This is the true nature of the will to receive. It is a vessel that cannot fulfill itself directly. From this realization will come the recognition of evil and the correction of the world. There is no other way. Kabbalists define the will to receive as something from which we can derive only a tiny spark of pleasure. After the first taste, the pleasure disappears like a “thin candle.” Compared to the upper world, to the higher pleasure, it is merely a small spark that has fallen into this world and sustains it.

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Is Fear Directed Toward the Creator?

Fear is a correction applied to the vessel of the will to receive so that it is aimed in order to bestow. Fear is an attitude toward the Giver. There is an attitude toward the Giver that expresses concern: perhaps He will not give to me. Also, there is an attitude that expresses concern: perhaps I will not give to Him.

The former is egoistic, corporeal fear that belongs to the level of this world; it is the fear that the Creator might not provide me, in this life, with what I need. After that, we come to true fear, to a genuine attitude toward the Creator, not the concern that the Creator will not give to me, but the concern that I might not be able to give to Him.

Fear is the correction of the vessel, and joy is the filling of the vessel.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 195

Chapter 19. Fear and Joy

Fear and joy are opposites. How can they be connected? Baal HaSulam writes in the Introduction to The Book of Zohar that the first action, the first correction, is called “fear.” There are commandments of the Torah, which are commands of the light, commands of correction, and which form the path that ascends from this world to the end of correction. This path is divided into corrections. The first correction we must attain is fear.

The Zohar asks, if the Creator is good, perfect, does good, and exists above any self-consideration, then why should a person fear Him? In this world, fear is usually attained through force. Indeed, it seems unfitting for the Creator, who is absolutely perfect, to demand fear.

The Zohar then explains that there is a type of fear called “fear of this world,” where we are afraid of punishment that could come upon us or our family in this world. Then there is fear of punishment in the next world, a higher level of punishment (and fear), but one that is still punishment. Later, when we correct our vessels into those of bestowal and acquire a screen (Masach), we completely stop fearing the Creator because we see that everything is good and does good. The Creator becomes revealed, and we understand that our previous fear of punishment did not stem from the Creator’s ability to punish, but from our own uncorrected vessels.

In truth, punishment from above is nonexistent. The only punishment is disconnection from the Creator. Then, we reach a different kind of fear, one that is related to bestowal: the fear of not being able to bestow. This fear itself is a correction. It enables us to build vessels of bestowal from our soul. Then, within the revelation of this fear, we receive fulfillment called “love.” Love is a result of fear. The greater our fear of being unable to bestow, the more the upper light fills us and brings the sensation of love, equivalence of form, connection, and adhesion (Dvekut) with the Creator.

Therefore, fear is a correction. Since we are initially made of a will to receive and this will must be aimed in order to bestow, otherwise we cannot feel pleasure, the correction lies in vessels of bestowal, or what is called “fear of the Creator.”

What does it mean that the correction must be fear, vessels of bestowal? If we receive pleasure in the will to receive, the pleasure immediately cancels the desire. For example, when one begins eating while hungry, the food is tasty and enjoyable. But as one continues to eat more and more, the pleasure diminishes, even if the food is the most delicious. Even exquisite delicacies will not add to the pleasure felt in the first bite. This is because the pleasure that enters fills the will to receive and cancels the lack.

Therefore, it is impossible to be both completely full and satisfied, meaning enjoying one hundred percent, and still feel pleasure. Once the vessel reaches saturation, it stops sensing fulfillment. This can also be seen when we yearn for, dream about, and pursue something for a long time, yet soon after we attain it, it loses its taste and feels ordinary. This does not have to do with time. Instead, the pleasure filled the vessel, and the lack, i.e., the hunger and the appetite, disappeared.

For pleasure not to be accidental, temporary, and fleeting, but eternal, it needs to grow along with the fulfillment and not disappear. As fulfillment increases, pleasure must increase as well, so that they support each other’s growth. How can we achieve this? We can achieve this by transforming our vessels into those of bestowal. That is, if we add an intention to bestow to the will to receive, the vessel attains a status above time and space. Then, even when the lack becomes filled, when the “stomach” is full, if the intention is to bestow, the more we become filled, the more we give, and the desire to give continues to grow.

“Above time” means that as we are filled more and more, our lack, appetite, and hunger do not diminish but increase, because we can give more. Therefore, we need to add intention to the will to receive. This intention makes the will to receive eternal. It does not vanish before the light that fills it, but instead it becomes eternal like the light itself when equipped with the intention to bestow.

This is the whole essence of the wisdom of Kabbalah—knowing how to receive. If we learn how to do this correctly, we begin to receive incessant pleasures and ascend from level to level, from strength to strength. We acquire more lack, correct it further with the intention to bestow, fill it more, and again increase the lack, and so on, progressing until we reach unlimited fulfillment, which is called “the end of correction.”

The end of correction does not grant the vessel a fixed capacity. If the vessel had a fixed capacity, it would cease to enjoy, even in order to bestow. Fixed bestowal cannot exist. On the contrary, bestowal must constantly grow, otherwise it is not bestowal. Therefore, we reach a state called “Ein Sof” (“infinity,” or literally, “without end”). In Ein Sof, we can expand our vessels unboundedly, along with intentions and fulfillment.

Then we arrive at true fear, which is the question of whether we can bestow. That is, as more deficiencies are added, can we establish a screen over them in order to bestow and through it receive in order to bestow?

This is the essence of true fear. As a result, we receive fulfillment from above, the light of the Torah. When the light of the Torah fills this fear, together they create a sensation called “the joy of the Torah,” a feeling of joy. By correcting our vessels, we receive fulfillment, the upper light called “Torah,” and reach joy.

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Why Is Love of Friends Considered the Most Important Action, Even More Than Actions Such as Being Content With Little and Other Corrections?

This is because in Kabbalah it is known that a person cannot correct themselves. What can correct us is the upper light if it comes to us from a more corrected state and illuminates upon us. Only in such a way does it correct our vessels. Therefore, we should not act on our own to correct the vessels, as if we had an adjustable wrench in our hand with which we open, close, and repair. Instead, we must invite a “repairman” to come and fix the system. This is the kind of light we must invite.

Therefore, we do not perform direct actions for correction. We do not look for where the screen is, bring it, place it over the will to receive, and hammer in a few nails so that it will not come loose, between the will to receive below and the screen above, like in diagrams, so that the will to receive becomes covered by a screen. Instead, we look for the means that will bring us a screen that will bring us correction. This means is not an approach to the correction itself but an approach to the one who corrects. This matter presents a great obstacle to people before they begin to understand that we must seek the corrector and not the corrections themselves. Without the corrector there will simply be no correction. It is exactly like a washing machine that breaks down and you try to fix it yourself without any knowledge of how to do it. It does not work. You will have to invite a specialist who will bring the required part and know how to install it in the proper place. Therefore, we must look for the right “person” who knows how to do this work. This “right person” is the upper light.

Therefore, the actions that must be performed are not actions relating directly to the vessel itself, but actions through which we can draw the lights most beneficial for correction. Kabbalists tell us that the most beneficial surrounding light for correction comes when we read a Kabbalah book during study with the intention of reaching our root, the place where we, our action, the study, and the Creator are in adhesion at a single point. Kabbalists also say that in order to sit and study with the correct intention, intention itself is most important.

How do we reach such an intention? Kabbalists describe several means for building the correct intention. Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Freedom” that the society comes before everything. Without society, we cannot unite our desire toward the goal and strengthen it, and our intention will be smaller than what is required to attract the surrounding light.

If we torment ourselves with statements such as “I am not okay,” “I am stingy,” “I am lustful,” “I am ambitious,” or “I am cruel,” then we invest ourselves within our bad desires to receive. A person is where their thoughts are. From that place, nothing is left for us except to get drunk or take drugs in order to dull the terrible pain we feel. Self-flagellation is useless. Therefore, it is written: “The fool sits with folded hands and eats his own flesh.” Such behavior is true foolishness because it does not aim us in the right direction. By looking at the filth within ourselves, we do not clean it. When a part in a car breaks down it must be repaired by a specialist who brings a new part and knows how to install it.

Many times, we constantly turn our gaze inward to our vessels and make ourselves miserable. Our inner state is spread before our eyes and we do not know how to detach ourselves from this sight, and we sit, grieve, and mourn over ourselves. Society must influence each and every person to come out quickly from this bad state, because from it we develop the “speech of the spies” about the Creator.

From a Talk on the Article “What Is the Substance of Slander and Against Whom Is It?” – Part 2, 6/13/2002

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Does This Law Operate for All Souls, Regardless of the Group?

This law operates for all souls whether they are in a group or not, but a person who belongs to a group draws surrounding light from the end of correction because they are connected with their friends here just as they are connected with them there. According to the same state in which they choose to connect with them here, they draw it to themselves, as if physically pulling that state from there to themselves, because they wish to realize it here and now in this world. This is considered that the upper world descends to this world, and this is indeed how it will be at the end of correction.

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Why Is It Not Always Possible to Understand an Action or a Thought?

We never know why we acted one way or another, why we are tossed from thought to thought, from state to state, because these all depend on the inner structure of the soul. We must scrutinize this desire now, afterward another desire, following the structure of their soul. We do not know with which souls and in which matters we are connected within the structure of Adam HaRishon. We do not know ourselves, all the more so we do not know the souls with which we are connected or the type of connection. There is no way for us to know this based on the physical bodies of the people connected to us.

Therefore, various situations and states are brought to us that appear to us as coincidences, because if we were to see the structure of the entire Adam HaRishon, from within it we would know what we must do now, what we will do in the next moment, and what will be given to us in the future.

For this reason, Kabbalists give us simple advice on this matter, in every situation we find ourselves in, do not calculate with the other souls how to act. We are in a body, and even the body does not need to think about how all the cells in the body operate at every moment, how each cell is planned and functions in order to know how it should act. In the end, the body indeed operates as it was designed, as a closed system with all its parts, even the smallest one, but we are not at the degree where we can recognize this. In our present state we are completely incapable of comprehending it. Only later, at the end of correction, when we are included in this system without any disturbances, does the entire structure with all its functions become revealed.

Therefore, the most correct and simple general advice given to us is that we, our action, and our goal must be one. We descended from the root where we were adhered to the Creator. Who is the Creator? The Creator is all the other souls we are incorporated in, and all together they receive the upper light within them. This sensation within us is called “the Creator.” We do not know what is outside us. Outside us is His essence. What we receive in connection with all the other souls in the corrected state at the end of correction in our root, is called “the Creator.” “From Your actions we know You.” We know Him through our sensation. We need to long for this from within the action we now perform. If we constantly push ourselves in this way, pressing only on this point, then in the end we will reach it in a precise manner.

It is impossible to give someone this entire great program so that before performing even the smallest action they would understand it fully and wisely in complete control, that they would understand it from beginning to end. How could we know the entire system in advance before we are adhered to all the souls, with all the parts of the system, as one structure? Therefore, we are given a solution. If we wish to be included in this system as good and active parts, we must intend that we, our action, and our state of adhesion with the Creator will all be one. We must already now want to be at the end of correction as we imagine it, to want to realize and create the state of the end of correction.

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 191

Why Is It Not Always Possible to Understand an Action or a Thought?

We never know why we acted one way or another, why we are tossed from thought to thought, from state to state, because these all depend on the inner structure of the soul. We must scrutinize this desire now, afterward another desire, following the structure of their soul. We do not know with which souls and in which matters we are connected within the structure of Adam HaRishon. We do not know ourselves, all the more so we do not know the souls with which we are connected or the type of connection. There is no way for us to know this based on the physical bodies of the people connected to us.

Therefore, various situations and states are brought to us that appear to us as coincidences, because if we were to see the structure of the entire Adam HaRishon, from within it we would know what we must do now, what we will do in the next moment, and what will be given to us in the future.

For this reason, Kabbalists give us simple advice on this matter, in every situation we find ourselves in, do not calculate with the other souls how to act. We are in a body, and even the body does not need to think about how all the cells in the body operate at every moment, how each cell is planned and functions in order to know how it should act. In the end, the body indeed operates as it was designed, as a closed system with all its parts, even the smallest one, but we are not at the degree where we can recognize this. In our present state we are completely incapable of comprehending it. Only later, at the end of correction, when we are included in this system without any disturbances, does the entire structure with all its functions become revealed.

Therefore, the most correct and simple general advice given to us is that we, our action, and our goal must be one. We descended from the root where we were adhered to the Creator. Who is the Creator? The Creator is all the other souls we are incorporated in, and all together they receive the upper light within them. This sensation within us is called “the Creator.” We do not know what is outside us. Outside us is His essence. What we receive in connection with all the other souls in the corrected state at the end of correction in our root, is called “the Creator.” “From Your actions we know You.” We know Him through our sensation. We need to long for this from within the action we now perform. If we constantly push ourselves in this way, pressing only on this point, then in the end we will reach it in a precise manner.

It is impossible to give someone this entire great program so that before performing even the smallest action they would understand it fully and wisely in complete control, that they would understand it from beginning to end. How could we know the entire system in advance before we are adhered to all the souls, with all the parts of the system, as one structure? Therefore, we are given a solution. If we wish to be included in this system as good and active parts, we must intend that we, our action, and our state of adhesion with the Creator will all be one. We must already now want to be at the end of correction as we imagine it, to want to realize and create the state of the end of correction.

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