Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does the second commandment mean?“

The second commandment, namely, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor any manner of likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” means that everything we can imagine is a derivative of the single upper force. Therefore, we are mistaken if we think that there are forces besides this force, which create, implement or make decisions in our world. In other words, if we perceive forces other than a single force operating in reality, then we should recognize that we are not at the highest degree of attainment.

In order to observe the second commandment, we need to perceive and sense the single force behind everything in our world, all objects, plant life, animate life, and people. If we connect everything we see and feel to a single force positioned behind it all, then we fulfill this commandment.

The prohibition to make an image is due to our inability to portray the single upper force in reality. Similar to how we picture physical forces as vectors in our world, other than drawing an arrow to indicate a direction in which this force acts—i.e., as it is a force of giving, connection, integration and emanation which has no self-interest whatsoever—we cannot depict this force in a picture or an image the way we do with corporeal objects.

Based on the talk “Spiritual States: The Ten Commandments” on December 26, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Comment: The great Kabbalist Rabbi Akiva said that the Torah is love your neighbor as yourself.

My Response: This is its general direction, a general law.

Question: What should have been described there on thousands of pages? Everything is quite simple: Love your neighbor as yourself. You do not even need to explain anything here. But we have seen throughout history that no one succeeds. Who can fulfill this law?

Answer: The execution of the law is one thing. Even to understand what is written is also impossible.

This law includes all of nature, absolutely all characteristics of a person, his desires and thoughts, everything that can happen to humanity in full until the end of the ages. All this is contained in a very simple sentence: Love your neighbor as yourself. That is, everything that happens is necessary only for the implementation of this rule.

Love your neighbor is the law of correct union. Just as at the inanimate level, atoms consisting of protons and electrons combine to form molecules, so at the level of the human, people must unite in the same way.

Only, we need to do this not instinctively, but on our own. The Torah is an instruction explaining to a person how to do it on their own and come to the realization of the law love your neighbor.

But you need to know how to approach this. Before everything else, a person must know his own nature, the nature of his neighbor, how to get closer to him, and what to do. It is not easy at all! This requires thousands of books.

Look at the world around us. Who implements this? If only everything were so easy! People do not even want to come close to it.

Comment: Unfortunately, we do not understand that this is exactly what the Torah says. Throughout history, sages have never been able to explain this.

My Response: The one who wants it receives an explanation. For this, he must come to a Kabbalist and learn from him.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/3/19

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Question: What is the oral Torah and the written Torah?

Answer: The oral Torah means that both the teacher and the student are together on a certain spiritual degree and are communicating with each other through it. The written Torah is when everything they have attained is getting written down into the texts and passed through them from one to another.

Question: This means that what Moses received from the Creator on Mount Sinai is the oral Torah. And when, after 1,000 years, all this was written down, then from the point of view of Kabbalah, this is no longer considered oral?

Answer: From the point of view of Kabbalah, the oral Torah is everything that a person attains within himself. It is practically impossible to describe or convey this because it depends only on the attainment of the person to whom you want to convey it.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/3/19

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Question: Is there any difference between the oral and written Torah in terms of influence on a person?

Answer: Of course. The oral Torah is higher than the written Torah because it is transmitted from mouth to mouth, that is, through common screens between teacher and student.

Question: Even if you wanted to is it impossible to transmit that in writing?

Answer: No. Nobody would understand. These are not words.

Question: Is that why the Torah says that it is forbidden?

Answer: What the Torah calls forbidden means impossible, impossible to transfer. When the people went into exile, they began to write everything down because it was necessary to somehow save something. There was such a desire and a law was passed to allow recording.

Question: Why is it not clear what is written in the Talmud, Mishnah, and The Book of Zohar?

Answer: Everything is clear in the Talmud and Mishnah. Everything is explained there allegorically, in the language of branches.

Comment: But to a person who is not in attainment, this is incomprehensible.

My Response: For a person who is not in spiritual attainment or who does not understand even approximately what is said in all these books, the whole Torah, everything that he discovers is like a textbook on biology, zoology, history, or some kind of fairy tale.

In fact, the Torah is an instruction for the correct mutual inclusion and unification of people, in which the Creator or life is manifested, which, in principle, is the same. Like when cells in the body are connected, life manifests itself in it, so when people unite with each other, the vital force is manifested at the next level.

There are people who have attained this and described it in their writings. Therefore, everything stated by them is called the written Torah.

There are things that cannot be described. They are revealed only through internal contact between teacher and student, which is called word of mouth (mi peh el peh). This is the oral Torah.
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From KabTV’s”Spiritual States” 6/3/19

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Question: Why was it necessary after 1,000 years to write a commentary on the Torah?

Answer: It is impossible to pass the Torah from mouth to mouth all the time because each generation falls lower and lower. The next generation somehow changes what you pass on to them and partially begins to understand.

Question: Isn’t the information in the Pentateuch enough?

Answer: No. The Pentateuch is generally difficult to understand. It is perceived as an historical story and no one understands what is hidden behind it. Only the Kabbalists do.

Certainly The Book of Zohar is a full commentary on the Torah. But what a commentary! Does anyone understand what it says?

Question: What is the point of this commentary if no one understands it?

Answer: It is intended for Kabbalists who can use The Book of Zohar to understand what is written in the Torah.

Question: When you read The Book of Zohar, do you understand the Torah better?

Answer: Of course! And without The Book of Zohar, it is very difficult—there is no connection. The Zohar provides the connection between the Torah and what the Kabbalist attains.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/3/19

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Comment: It is said that the first letters that appeared after rock paintings [pictographs] were the letters of the Hebrew alphabet: Aleph (א), Bet (ב), and so on.

My Response: They did not appear. They were discovered by Adam who lived almost 6,000 years ago.

He discovered these letters because he began to understand the correlation between the quality of bestowal and the quality of reception and the connection between them. He saw that there are only 22 connections, and that through these connections between reception and bestowal, he could express all the qualities of the world. Therefore, he depicted them in the form of lines and dots. From that time, we have the alphabet.

Question: What is the black dot in a Hebrew letter from which everything starts?

Answer: It is something that is completely opposite to the quality of bestowal and goodness. Bestowal, love, and goodness are the positive qualities that flow from one object to another only for the benefit of the other, and they are called light. And the opposite of it is called a black dot.

Question: Does any letter start with this black dot?

Answer: Of course.

Comment: And then we draw a horizontal line, and a vertical line.

My Response: Yes, on the background of white light. On the background of the white sheet of paper.

Question: When the whole letter is written, what does it mean?

Answer: I depict to what extent negative qualities can become similar to the positive qualities.

Question: Do you mean that this black letter can become similar to the white sheet of paper, to the white light?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And when I combine letters into a word?

Answer: By this you just explain how you move from one quality of bestowal to the second one, and then to the third, fourth, and so on.

Question: And when I write a sentence and completely fill this, for example, white light, this sheet of paper?

Answer: By doing this, you lay out all your capabilities of bestowal against the background of the white light. After the Torah was written, which depicts absolutely all potential mutual qualities of bestowal and reception, there is no point in writing anything else. Everything is just all sorts of additions and commentaries to the Torah.

Question: So, does the Torah describe all the desires and aspirations of man to become bestowing and loving?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What if a person writes in English, Russian, German, Armenian, or any other language?

Answer: The fact is that what is being written now, you cannot read correctly because the languages are constantly undergoing changes. If you take a modern Frenchman today and one who lived during the Crusades, they would not understand each other. The language has changed so much!

Question: What about Hebrew?

Answer: No. Hebrew has not changed. We read books that were written two or three thousand years ago. Adam wrote his book The Angel Raziel 6,000 years ago, and we read it as if it were written today. It is not very clear, but we read it. We could talk to Adam just as we would to our contemporaries.

There is no other nation that could meet their ancestor who lived thousands of years ago and understand him and speak with him in the same language.

And the Jews could easily!

Question: Is it because the code did not change?

Answer: Yes. It cannot change because it is the interaction between the light and the darkness, the interaction between two forces.

Question: When they say that there is a certain code embedded in the Torah, is it about this interaction between the light and the darkness?

Answer: Yes. Darkness is the letters and light is the background on which we write.

The letters represent the equivalence of a person’s quality to the quality of the Creator. When man comes to this equivalence, then there will be no difference between the letters and the light. All the letters will only express the quality of light.

All the letters exist only to emphasize all the qualities of the light in those lines, in those images where it is absent.

Question: Is it true that horizontal and vertical lines represent different lights?

Answer: Yes, of course. There are many different signs, and there are many secrets in this, that is, things that we have not solved yet.

Question: Are there really unsolved secrets in the letters?

Answer: Of course! There is nothing but letters. The letter is a sign between us and the upper force. There is nothing else but these signs.

Question: Can we say that the light passes from above through a stencil called “letter” and is imprinted in a person?

Answer: Yes, that is also true.

Question: You once told a story about a completely ordinary person living in Siberia who wrote you a letter in Hebrew in the highest, purest, poetic language.

Answer: Yes. I showed it to my teacher Rabash. And he said that it was a Kabbalistic text written by a simple man because he had such spiritual enlightenment.

Question: Can we conclude from this that all the letters are within us, within each person in the world?

Answer: Yes. Later I met this man, and he did not understand or know anything. He came to Israel when he was released from Siberia after many years. There was nothing left in him from the state he had experienced then. It was given to him as such a brief flash because he was suffering so much. He wanted to exit himself, his body, with all his might! And this tension brought him to such a state that he was able to write in Hebrew. It just came out into the world through him.

Question: But can we say that it was his prayer?

Answer: Of course.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/4/21

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Comment: The Torah appeared 1,500 years ago. It was originally written as a single sentence consisting of 79,976 words.

In its first stage, the Torah consisted of five books. Then, if we talk about the Tanakh, in the period before the destruction of the First Temple, the Prophets were written, and in the period before the destruction of the Second Temple, the Scriptures were written.

In 1947, a huge number of scrolls were found in the Qumran caves, which belong to the same period, but for some reason were not included in the Tanakh.

My Response: These are scrolls of a very different type. They are different from those that existed in the time of the Great Assembly because they refer to the first century of our era, toward the end of the existence of both the country and the nation.

Comment: According to Baal HaSulam, they were written by people who were not in attainment.

My Response: It is very difficult for us to understand these people. But we are still a level below them, disconnected from the true Torah. Although they were already in a state of falling from its level, they still felt spiritual connection.

Question: Can a Kabbalist take a scroll, read it, and determine who wrote it: a person who has attained spirituality or not?

Answer: Of course he can. But that doesn’t mean anything. There were many who understood the Creator at different levels, both after the destruction of the Temple and after the Roman and Greek exile of the people. However, we only take into account what was written before the exile. These are the Torah, the Prophets, the Scriptures, the Talmud, and, of course, The Book of Zohar.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/3/19

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Question: Why was The Book of Zohar needed? After all, there is the Torah, the first part of which is written by Moses. It is considered fundamental.

Answer: What is in the Torah? We do not understand anything about it. And if you open The Zohar, it says that it is a Kabbalistic commentary on the Torah.

What does a Kabbalistic commentary mean? Moses wrote a really fundamental book, but it is encrypted. There is a single but very deep code in it. It is written in the so-called language of branches.

Kabbalah explains what it is and helps us understand what exactly is implied in the book of Moses. After all, the Torah is perceived by everyone as a purely artistic creation that tells about the history of some ancient tribe. It is written in a narrative language.

And Kabbalah teaches us to see the upper roots through this—the forces that cause corresponding actions in our world, to rise to the level of these forces, to understand the system that governs our world, and to be included in this system so that we can actively manage our world through it and correct ourselves and the whole world.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #3

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Question: Does one need to read the Torah only in the original language? Is it pointless to try to understand the meaning of the Torah and The Book of Zohar as it is translated in Russian?

Answer: It is pointless to read the Torah both in the original or in translation because man will not understand what it really wants to tell him.

In order to study the Torah in any language, one must first study Kabbalah. Then we will understand the meaning hidden in the Torah.
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From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 3/20/19

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The whole Torah writes only about how to get out of the egoistic desire and enter the desire of bestowal, which means exiting Egypt. Therefore, the whole method of spiritual correction is associated with Egypt. Every day, in every action, a person should remember how he came out of Egypt.

With each of our actions, we want to rise above the egoistic qualities that are increasingly revealed in us every second. It turns out that we are always coming out of our egoism, out of Egypt, either physically or mentally.

The physical exodus from Egypt may be long-past history, but it is not about history and geography. It is about human qualities. I am constantly discovering new egoism in myself and must always rise above it, which is called coming out of Egypt. Every action and effort we make is directed at how to escape from the Egyptian slavery.

For this exodus, everyone must come together. The plagues of Egypt came for this purpose, and the first blow occurred even earlier among the sons of Jacob and forced them to descend into Egypt.

The brothers did not want to join Joseph, whose name means “gatherer,” that is, a special quality that should unite us. They did not want to unite, so they sold Joseph into Egyptian slavery. But then, because of hunger and adversity, they themselves were forced to descend into their egoism, into Egypt, and when they met Joseph there, they joined together.

The Torah tells us about all the situations that can arise in the process of our work in connecting in tens and how to begin to appreciate the quality of Joseph due to the correct connection.

And then from Joseph we come to Moses (from the word “Moshech, pull”). After all, Moses was pulled out of the waters of the Nile as a baby, and on the other hand, he pulls out all the people of Israel, everyone who wants to get out of their egoism, out of Egypt, out to the Creator.

“Earth (Eretz)” means “desire (Ratzon)”, and “Israel (Yisrael)” means straight to the Creator (Yashar Kel). From the first introduction to the science of Kabbalah to the end of correction, we are concerned only with how to get out of our egoism, that is, out of Egypt.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/21, “Chapter Shemot“

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