The articles in the book Shamati (I Heard) were not written by Baal HaSulam as works in which the writer examines every word, but rather, these articles were delivered as talks during meals with his students, which RABASH (Baal HaSulam’s son and first student) heard and later recorded on paper.

Baal HaSulam did not allow students to write anything down in his presence, including during the lesson. Until today, this approach existed throughout the entire history of Kabbalah. Throughout all generations, none of the Kabbalists recorded a single word during the studies, since it was forbidden to write.

After all, a student received the “oral” Torah, “from the mouth” of the teacher. One perceived in accordance with what he heard and comprehended. This is because when a person writes, he doesn’t comprehend. Whereas when a person listens, the material is absorbed; it enters one’s desires and qualities, thus raising him.

Moreover when one enters spirituality, every word that the teacher spoke including the minutest details, will be remembered. One remembers the form in which it was said, along with everything in its deepest meaning.

Nothing vanishes in spirituality. Our entire “movie” already exists and is premiering before us. We only need to learn to move from it and live in an absolutely new informational space.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/1/10, Shamati 59

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Shamati – The Most Valuable Book In the World
Shamati #25: “Things that Come from the Heart”
Video: The Book of Shamati (3:14)

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A question I received: What does it mean to “receive from the Creator in order to delight Him”? What is this referring to?

My Answer: Baal HaSulam explains this through the example of a guest and a host in “The Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah.” The guest comes to the host. The host sets the table for the guest because he loves the guest with selfless love, without any calculations, and the host really wants to give pleasure to the guest.

The guest feels how much the host loves and wants to give pleasure to him. The host knows ahead of time and prepares exactly the dishes the guest likes in precisely the proportions the guest would like. He has done everything exactly according to the guest’s desires – in quantity and in quality. Realizing this, the guest feels shame. What is he to do?

The guest refuses to accept the food, saying “I don’t wish to be a receiver! I wish to be a giver like you! You have shown me your love, and I feel it. How can I give the same in return to you?” The guest continues to think and recognizes, “But if I don’t receive anything, I am disregarding the host. Is this my response to his love?! What can I do?”

Accordingly, he finds the solution: “I will receive only for the sake of the host. Since the host has a desire to give, and he wants me to receive, I first need to enter his desire, so that this will become the goal for me. If I enter his desire, feel how much he loves me, how much he wants me to receive, and how much he suffers from the fact that I don’t accept his refreshments; I can work with his desire and think only about how to fulfill him. While I am inside his desire, striving to fulfill only him, I discover an opportunity to do this in me – by accepting the food and receiving pleasure from it. After all, I can bring delight to the host only through the pleasure that I feel. I must receive delight immeasurably, since I feel how I can fulfill him through this.”

In this manner everyone works with the desires of the other. The host thinks about how the guest will receive from him and experience pleasure. And the guest thinks about how he will receive and experience pleasure in order to fulfill the host’s desire to give him pleasure. Each uses his desires to fulfill the other’s desires. Meanwhile, each gains double, and even more than that; each comes out of himself, and in doing so, he feels infinite and boundless pleasure.

This patent seems very simple. However, if we begin to think about it, it appears difficult to achieve. Yet ideally if we understand it, we see this is our only opportunity to fulfill ourselves with infinite pleasure, since I use the desires of others outside of myself.

The Creator is an infinite desire, and I am merely a little point. However, if I begin to adjoin and connect to Him, I thereby acquire an infinite desire which I can fulfill. I begin to feel how I fulfill Him, and I feel how this desire is experiencing pleasure. It turns out that by treating Him with love, I receive infinite desires, an infinite life, eternity, and perfection. This happens if I treat the Creator as the goal which I must fulfill. Therefore, the science of Kabbalah is truly a science of reception (the word “Kabbalah” in Hebrew means “reception”), a science of how to receive and how to delight without limitation.

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In the article, “The Nation,” Baal HaSulam writes that a person differs from an animal in that animals completely rely on nature. Animals cannot adapt nature to themselves. In contrast, human beings are endowed with the power of thought, and without having to rely on nature, can, for example, instead of waiting for a chicken to hatch eggs, invent an incubator to perform the job of hatching eggs.

In a similar fashion, a person always strives to better his state, without placing himself under the blows of nature. A person attempts to find the most comfortable means of achieving his goals using the least effort to get results as quickly as possible and with the least suffering.

For people aspiring for the goal of spirituality, the science of Kabbalah serves as an “incubator” helping us speed up our spiritual development without waiting for it to occur in a severe natural way, which is both lengthy and painful. The goal of our spiritual development is to give rise to a sensation of an independent (free) equivalence to the Creator. The spiritual “incubator” for people needs to be multilayered, so that each person can find his place in it and feel as though he is in the arms of his caring mother. Then he will receive beneficial “nourishment,” which will gradually develop and raise him.

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In the book Beit Shaar HaKavanot (The Gatehouse of Intentions), Baal HaSulam explains that the intention depends on the desires that lack the screen (Kelim de Igulim). In other words, the intention depends on the extent of our understanding that we are under the power of these desires, as well as our wanting to turn them into desires with a screen (Kelim de Yosher).

A screen, which is the anti-egoistic force, will only appear if I myself want to build it. This means I must figure out the “head” and “feet” in my desires, which are things that are more and less important to me. When I want to work with the screen in a “straight line,” I begin to clash with the desires De Igulim. Tension arises between us because I want to set a new scale of values according to Yosher, the anti-egoistic screen, and not according to Igulim. And then Igulim begin to influence and push me in such a way that they ultimately help me arrive at the place where I need to be.

If we want to advance, then a screen is needed. And on the contrary, if we want to acquire a screen, then advancement is through the desires De Igulim that operate without a screen. Subsequently, this is like adding one’s “line” to the field of Kelim de Igulim. It is like a straight piece of a wire moving into a magnetic field, where electricity (Light), begins to flow down this line according to the laws of “spiritual induction.”

By wanting all of our desires oriented in one direction (towards the Creator), we build a “line” (desire with a screen) within the Igulim. This is called an intention or a prayer. Baal HaSulam wrote Beit Shaar HaKavanot as the introduction to a Kabbalistic prayer book that he wanted to write.

A page from the Rashash’s (Rabbi Shalom Sharabi) Prayer Book:

[11420]

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A question I received: What kind of “just” social framework does Baal HaSulam write about in the article, “The Nation”? Is he really concerned with organizing a more comfortable, well-fed life within the boundaries of this world? How can this be the concern of a Kabbalist who knows that everything is governed by the Upper Force, and we are temporarily placed within this world only in order to correct our soul?

My Answer: Despite what you say, Baal HaSulam also knew that people will reach a point in their development when they would reveal that they lack the Upper Force to correct their relationships. Then they will need the science of Kabbalah because only the Upper Light can correct the relationships between people. There cannot be a good relationship between people unless they are connected by the Creator. Only through Him can people unite with one another. In other words, life itself will force people to reveal the path and forces of correction.

Two people can never be connected with one another directly, but only through the quality of bestowal, which is called the Creator. Baal HaSulam understood this very well since he possessed the highest spiritual attainment. However, in order to bring the regular reader closer to this, he starts his explanation from afar. When a person understands what kind of unity and connection we have to attain according to nature’s plan, and that this is inevitable, the only thing remaining for him to do will be to reveal the means of implementing the correction: the Upper Light that Reforms.

Of course, Baal HaSulam did not think of socialism or communism as a goal in and of itself in order to create a well-fed life for the average person in this world. Rather, he had great understanding and personal attainment of the goal of creation.

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A question I received: Baal HaSulam writes about things that humanity went through a long time ago – socialism and communism. Aren’t these things ancient history now, and we don’t want to go back to them?

My Answer: Our entire reality takes place inside our egoistic desire, which develops and undergoes different stages as it gradually grows under the influence of the Upper Light. This is also why the desire invents various theories regarding what kinds of relationships are more beneficial for it to have with its nature and with human society. It is according to this that its attitude to socialism, Marxism, and all other periods’ changes.

This is not determined by how “developed” or “undeveloped” we are, but only by the Upper Light’s influence upon us. It leads us through various social structures in order to develop our egoism. Therefore, we have to understand the way by which the Upper Light leads us through all the socio-economic formations because then we will understand what Baal HaSulam writes about in the newspaper, The Nation, and this will also help us to understand the things happening to us today.

Baal HaSulam thinks that Marx reached an awareness of the process of correction by the Upper Force, but thought that people would reveal their spiritual birth, which is inherent in nature, on their own, through practice. However, Baal HaSulam ascertained that this theory can only be applied in a developed society, rather than Russia, which was socially and politically retrograde.

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYaera (And The Lord Appeared),” Item 37: He taught him every profound and sublime secret in the Song of Songs and adjured him to not use any verse in it, so the Creator will not destroy the world because of him, since He has no desire for people to use it because of the great sanctity in it. Afterwards, Rabbi Akiva went out sobbing and his eyes were shedding water. He said, “Woe my teacher, woe my teacher, the world will be orphaned without you.” The rest of the sages entered and asked him, and he replied with words of Torah.

We can continue reading The Zohar for hours on end, but the question is: Do we have the right intention? The text itself might seem very difficult and closed to us, or it might seem simple. Regardless, we are always talking about inner qualities where Moses, Rabbi Akiva, Abraham, Esau, and good and evil forces are all inside a person. This is the manner in which The Zohar describes the phases of our spiritual path.

I don’t understand what is written here, and I don’t even want to know it. I want to feel it, to attain this state so as to experience it for myself, to live it. I don’t want to understand it through my mind, but through my inner qualities. I want my inner qualities to change so I will identify with the states that The Zohar describes.

It is talking about things that are inside of me, but are concealed from me. I am being told about what is taking place within me, and I want to feel it. All of these qualities and states, all of these “scenes,” all 125 degrees exist in every person right now because there is no time in spirituality. I want to reveal the degree about which I am reading in The Zohar, and I am entitled to this because that degree is mine. I want to change so as to experience this state.

This is called “to attain what one studies,” as Baal HaSulam says in Item 155 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.” He writes, “…through the yearning and the great desire to know what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls.” Here “to know” means to unite, as it is written, “And Adam knew Eve.”

I want to unite with this state, to live it. I don’t need anything else but this. Everything else inside me is bad, and I don’t care if I don’t understand or feel anything. I only want to “open” this text through my sensations, rather than through my mind. I want to experience it.

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There are special souls, which are very valuable for the entire system of souls since they bring this system to life and help the other souls to reach revelation and attainment and consciously join the process of development. There are many special souls, but we only know some of them. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains this system. These special souls open the gates of attainment and perception of spiritual existence to us.

These systems are part of the common system of the single spiritual organism, and they serve as the carriers of Inner Light to the other souls on the stages of development. The development of our generation depends on the souls of Rashbi, the Ari, Baal HaSulam, and Rabash. For us, they are the fundamental parts of the system, who reveal the influence of the Upper Light to us, carry the Light, the force of life, and create the proper environment, where we can develop spiritually.

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When we read The Book of Zohar, we understand that it talks about qualities, forms, and images that we don’t perceive yet. It is precisely this sensation of not understanding that pushes us forward and makes us form the right perception.

If we read other Kabbalistic books, then we might perceive everything in a purely mechanical manner, with our mind, or in the form of material pictures. Then we will be satisfied with the perception that lowers all the concepts to the level of our world, without understanding that they are all imaginary. Alternatively, we might consider them spiritual, yet merely theoretical.

In contrast, The Book of Zohar with Baal HaSulam’s Commentary forces us to search for a new perception and to unite these two images. This results in the emergence of the true perception of reality. A person doesn’t understand how it happens, but the book works on him and he gradually acquires a new perception.

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A question I received: You have me completely convinced, but what specifically should I do from this moment on?

My Answer: From this moment forward you must understand that the future depends on you, to the extent of your dissemination of the science of Kabbalah in the world. This is because it is the method of correction for the whole world: It is for us to connect with each other and with the Upper Force.

If we will come to widespread dissemination of this principle, as a cure for all our problems, then we’ll succeed. We only need to make attempts to achieve it and the Upper Light will do everything else for us. To the extent of our efforts it works through us, on ourselves and the whole world.

Thus, I strongly recommend everyone who has the opportunity to come to our convention on March 24th, 2010 in Israel, as well as to our World Zohar Convention 2010 that will take place in New York, May 7-9, 2010 (registration is already open). These events influence spiritual advancement very effectively.

Baal HaSulam attempted to disseminate Kabbalah to the people some time ago, but he had no success because the time had not come yet. At that time, all that he wanted to do didn’t work out. However, everything that we now do in this direction is successful. It is evident that we are receiving a blessing from Above, and everything depends on us.

Let us hope that together with all our groups and friends around the world, we will bring the world to correction.

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