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Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel


Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel


Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel

February 28, 2006

Good morning to all our viewers in Israel and around the world. We are reading from the book The Future Generation, The Writings of the Future Generation, page 301, Part one.

The basis for all my explanations is the desire to receive, which is imprinted in every creature, which is the difference in form from the Creator. Therefore, the soul has been separated from it, like an organ which has been separated from a body. Since a difference in form in spirituality is like an ax which cuts things apart in corporeal life.

This means that all the wisdom of Kabbalah deals only with what separates us from the Creator, which is the desire to receive, and how and to what extent we are far from Him, and in what way we can reunite with Him.

We are not talking in terms of time, as it is written, “before the created beings were created," and later when the soul was separated from the body, from the desire to receive, which has to be reunited with it once again. We are not talking about the process which our mind is naturally designed to measure, in terms of time.

In terms of cause and effect, we are forced to see things sequentially, as one event following another, and we cannot even imagine how cause and effect can be detached from time and is only the result of something, with no time gap between the cause and the effect.

Actually, we have to attain the desire to receive which separates us from the Creator, to understand what separation is, when it was not like that and when we can correct it again, reuniting with the Creator once more. Just like an axe which cuts things apart in corporeal life, so in spirituality the desire to receive separates the soul from the Creator. Since the soul is called "part of Godliness," when we correct the action of the axe, the soul returns to be part of the whole. We learn about all these actions in the wisdom of Kabbalah, and we also implement them.

…and from here it is clear what the Lord expects of us, which is the equivalence of form, and we reunite with Him like before the Creation.

This means that in attaining equivalence of form of the soul to the Creator we first have to find out what that soul in us actually is, that part of Godliness in us, how it exists today, and what form we have to bring it to so that it will be in equivalence of form with the Creator. Once it arrives at this equivalence of form, it means that it has reached adhesion with Him.

…as it is written, “he who adheres to His virtues, what is compassionate, etc."

This means that we already go through discernments about what equivalence of form means; it is measured according to virtues. We have to find out what the virtues are, what virtues the Creator has and what virtues we have, meaning our soul. Perhaps we have something else in addition to the soul. So we have to find out about the soul and about the virtues of the soul in order to find out who the Creator is, what His virtues are, and adhere to His virtues. We have to reach equivalence of form between the virtues of the soul and the virtues of the Creator, which for the time being do not seem to be equal.

Meaning, that we should change our virtues which are a desire to receive and accept the Creator’s virtues, which are a desire to bestow.

This means that the sum of the virtues in the soul is now called "a desire to receive," and we have to transform these virtues into different ones, collectively into a desire to bestow.

In such a way that all our actions will only be to bestow to others and to be of use to them in any possible way. Thus, we achieve the goal to adhere to Him, which is equivalence of form.

This means that in order to clarify what it is that we have to attain, Baal HaSulam is telling us that it is the concern for others, the love for others. This is the expression of the desire to bestow which is in contrast to the desire to receive which fulfills us now. Now we have to find out, through a sequence of efforts, what it means to bestow and to love others, through which we attain equivalence of form with the Creator.

…and what a man does for his own existence, which is the minimum necessity for his existence and for the existence of his family is not considered a difference in form. Since a necessity is neither condemned nor praised.

It is because we exist in a special form called corporeal existence, that there is something inside of ourselves which requires some special nourishment. Even if it does not act in bestowal, it must be nourished in order to exist. Thus, the same matter, the same force, the same kind of bestowal that I give to the body—right now I do not know exactly what a body is, it can be a corporeal body or a spiritual body or something—there is also a part of my self that I must nourish so that it too will exist. And because this is how I am created, and this is the self, there is this part in it which is called a body.

Let’s call it a body for the time being. I have to nourish it somehow. So everything I give it is for its existence. It cannot exist without it. As for the other part of the soul, it is the opposite: the more it gives, the more it receives. And here, even if it does not do anything I must constantly feed it so that it will exist. That’s how it is built.

[Rav drawing] Why is it built this way? Because this is the level where I begin. I must exist at the level of zero, from which I begin to advance spiritually. Thus, I must start from zero. This is what is meant by corporeal existence. In this form of existence, I must also give my body something in order to exist. So if at this zero level I give it something only for its existence, with the knowledge and understanding that this is the only purpose for its existence and nothing else, this is what we call a minimum, which is neither condemned nor praised.

The clarification here is in the intention; what is the intention with which I nourish it? If the intention is to nourish it at the zero level and from there to continue my spiritual advancement, then the existence of the body is essential for the growth of the soul; it is the basis for it. Then we must provide it with whatever it requires, no matter what or how much, as long as you relate to it as its corporeal, its earthly existence.

However, if one hardly eats or drinks, not because he doesn’t have enough, but because he limits himself, and not in order to grow from this in his soul, then it is both condemned and praised and there are all kinds of levels that we will not go into, since our account begins from zero upwards.

…and this is the great revelation which will not be revealed to its fullest until the days of the Mashiach, when they will accept these teachings, then we will be granted the full redemption.

This means that that one can not reach full redemption and not even partial redemption unless one studies and increases his awareness of what he is made of and what separates him from Godliness. How? By what means? By studying and correcting the desire to receive, to reach the love of others through which he equalizes to the Creator and achieves adhesion with Him. One must reach all these things as a result of his studies and his own labor.

And I have already said that there are two ways to achieve this, either by the way of the Torah, or by way of suffering. Thus the Lord has turned things in such a way until people have discovered the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb, and if the world does not realize the destruction that they can bring yet, then people can wait for world war three or four, God forbid, and then the bombs will be used.

This means that this is what he actually says, that the techniques and the technologies which we have developed, meaning humanity throughout history, starting from the sin of the Tower of Babel (I mean the spiritual one) humanity has not been able to overcome the eruption of the egotistic desire to receive which broke out within humanity from the moment that people started to deal with technology and drift away from nature and from studying nature in order to be in balance with it.

This technological development, through man’s corporeal mind, has led him to drift away from nature. A man creates his artificial world and he does not feel the powers of nature anymore and is neither interested in feeling its powers nor in knowing it. He is interested in building an artificial world in which he will exist and thus be saved from all kinds of problems and from the threat of nature. Hence, he creates everything around him in the way that the desire to receive pushes him towards. This process has been going on for thousands of years, until today, when we discover that this process, this development, does not lead us to happiness.

We want to be safe from the forces of nature which threaten us; we want to feel peaceful, happy and fulfilled, but instead we feel miserable, empty and weak. We feel weak not in relation to the externality of nature from which we sought to protect ourselves, but in relation to our internal nature, the desire to receive inside of us, which has grown and which we did not want, and could not correct, when it was small.

We let it grow, we developed it, we tempted it; we filled it with whatever it desired through this process. And so after thousands of years we discover that it is so big that it rules us and we cannot exist without fearing the future, feeling both empty in the present and not knowing what to do in the future, since it rules us and pushes us into conflicts, as Baal HaSulam says, into hydrogen wars.

The question is, whether it is in our power to stop this development, of which we have lost control, that is, the development of the internal desire to receive inside a man. In retrospect we cannot say that this whole thing has no roots. Of course, this is the way it was supposed to happen. We are talking about having succeeded or not, and we refer to the balance of powers alone. After all we were not supposed to succeed or not to succeed. According to the end, this is the state we should have reached. But today, when we realize what the goal of this development was, we have to find out the right way to continue.

Man looks at his life and at his whole development as something terrible, and must arrive at the awareness that this is the desired state. Actually, as Baal HaSulam says, there is no greater moment in a man’s life than when he realizes how helpless he is, that he cannot do anything by himself and that he needs the Upper Force to save him. This is the point where all of humanity is at now, and hopefully we will be able to help bring everyone to the awareness that the point of crisis is not a point of crisis, but rather a point of awareness of the state, of its real cause and of its real purpose. Then this point of darkness will become the point where the Light begins.

Question: You referred to the sin of the spiritual Tower of Babel…

As we are told in different historical records, the Tower of Babel was built of bricks 90 x 90 meters, 90 meters high with seven stories, and the last storey was the temple for their god, Marduch, supposedly a sign for a man’s ego.

We are not talking about the fact that this whole building was destroyed. This is not the problem. The problem is that they wanted to build man inside of themselves: man who knows, who controls and trusts his own powers and who can reach the sky, meaning what they felt as the sky, namely nature.

Instead of adhering to nature, instead of finding the balance between themselves and nature, and finding out what the Creator/Godliness is, what this Upper Force that rules is, they started developing technologically.

They began to protect themselves from the powers of nature. Instead of adhering to the ruling power which is good and which does good, which is the altruistic power of love, (because the desire to receive erupted in them, as it was the time for it,) instead of correcting the separation which occurred from the time of Noah, they began the process of separation, which led to problems and conflicts with nature. They began to correct it and to fill it, not by a desire to receive that strives for love, but to protect themselves from nature, meaning, to fill the desire to receive and to give it a scientific and technological cover which will rule.

And they did not correct all the problems that occurred everywhere by correcting man through internal correction, but rather by correcting man’s environment, through external correction. Since then technology and science have developed in a different direction.

Science must develop. Science is a positive power in man. If man uses science to study nature as Godliness, in order to adhere to the ruling power, then it is actually the seven wisdoms that come together into one, in the wisdom of Kabbalah. However, if man deals with science not in order to study the Creator through the five senses and to adhere to Him, but in order to satisfy the desire to receive, not in order to change man, but in order to fill man’s ego which has grown, then this is human wisdom. As it turns out, there are different kinds of wisdoms—even wisdoms that a man reaches as a result of research using his five senses.

This is what happened then. It was the turning point when they began to deal in the research of nature, not in order to correct themselves and to adhere to nature with the inflated desire to receive but rather to protect it. This led to technological development.

Every field of science has already become distorted. Since man has changed his approach, weapons began to develop. Even the field of medicine became distorted and instead of correcting man in accordance with nature, its approach began to focus on adding things to man in addition to nature—you can stay the way you are and we will add different things from nature that you seem to be missing thus to make you healthier.

Everything that was supposed to develop in order to correct man has developed in the opposite direction. Science started taking different attributes and powers from nature and inserting them into man’s desire to receive as if the desire to receive is harmless. The philosophy behind this is that the desire to receive is harmless.

I use nature and bring it artificially close to myself in order to fulfill the desire to receive and feel just the opposite, that the desire to receive is good and that it helps me. I satisfy it but I don’t fulfill it by correcting it and attaching it to Godliness and filling it with the Light, with perfection; I wish to achieve the same thing by filling it with powers, artificially of course, filling the desire to receive in me in the same egotistic form that it is in.

This change in approach led to a change in the whole development of science, medicine and in general, man’s outlook of the world. This is what we call the sin of the Tower of Babel in spirituality. That was your question, wasn’t it?

There are many things here. This is the generalization of the development of humanity that started there. Since then, for thousands of years, it has actually been the same approach but the desire to receive which has grown gives it a different form each time. Actually it is the same principle.

Question: This process suggests that humanity had an option...

We describe this process as if humanity had an option. Of course in retrospect there was no option.

Question (Cont): Baal HaSulam writes in his explanations as if now humanity has an option...

Now humanity has an option; let’s talk about it in another thousand years. First of all, both things are true. Before we act it is “if I am not for myself then who is for me,” and when I finish I must say “there is no one else but Him.” But when I say “there is no one else but Him,” then the “if I am not for myself then who is for me” is already included in “there is no one else but Him” in the middle line. I raise myself to a different level of awareness and I then understand how these two things go together. It is because I ascend beyond time and place. I raise myself to a state where He and I are joined. Then there is no difference between He and I, in relation to “there is no one else but Him” or “if I am not for myself then who is for me."

In the meantime we are talking in terms of time since this is our state now. We cannot even express these things in words, in our words, or in our language. We cannot do it in our language. We can only say that something was, or is, possible, or that it is not possible.

Question: What is the difference between regarding nature as Godliness and worshipping the powers of nature?

When a man feels that he is weak in the face of the powers of nature, it does not mean that he bends, no; from here he seems to have two paths.

Look, the desire to receive that erupted now demands its fulfillment and its rightful place. It sees nature as hostile because nature is basically a desire to bestow, so the minute I have a desire to receive I see nature as hostile to me.

When I look at nature I see everyone eating one another; I see everyone in a negative way and the negative effects that things have. I see these things with my desire to receive; I don’t see with my eyes. The eyes don’t perceive anything, and neither do the ears. What perceives is the brain.

My brain was built and has developed upon the desire, as it is the desire which develops the brain, and reads nature this way. It perceives it in such a way and then I see it in front of me. This is what we mean by hostile. The Creator becomes distant; He seems to turn against us. You can call it either the Creator or nature, it doesn’t matter.

What do I do now? So they said, "let’s build a town and a tower and ascend towards the sky and we will rule and we will and we will and we will, as it is within our power, and we will protect ourselves." From here the approach has changed. Before that man sought how to come closer to nature, and how to actually come to balance with it.

Question: I would like to ask about the most corporeal part. Today a man considers driving a car, flying a plane, using oil, polluting the Earth etc. a necessity…

It doesn’t matter. We will find out that by doing these things we are not doing anything wrong in terms of ecology, technology and all these related areas. It seems to us now that there are too many people in the world; that there is a demographic crisis; that we have damaged the earth ecologically, polluted the air, destroyed the ozone layer, and caused the icebergs to begin to melt. This is a totally incorrect reading of the situation in which we exist. It appears to us that this is the problem, and that it is this which threatens our existence.

Just as scientists now discover that no matter how much you eat, it has no effect on your health or anything. In short, what do the new discoveries show us? That no matter what a man does in his life, it is all a matter of genes; everything is predestined, and no matter what you do it only appears to you that you have control over things and that you can change things. It is all derived from that ridiculous notion of the Tower of Babel where they believed that by protecting themselves they could change something. The same view still exists today, that if we do this or that our life will change, my health will change and even my fate will change. It is all wrong; just like we thought that if we killed the wolves, the sheep would be safer, or that if we took care of ourselves we would live longer. Although it seems to us that this is what is happening, this is not the reason. For instance, we may be advised to engage in sports in order to live longer, but then find out that just the opposite is the case.

In short, what I want to say is that today we realize that man has no effect on the world. This is yet to be understood in the next few years, that man has no effect on the world through any scientific or technological development. In short, man has no effect on the world using his hands or feet or his brain. The world seems to us like that’s it, but soon there will be such blows and the Earth will blow up, and that will be it. It is not as it seems to us, a result of technological development; this will not be the reason for the blows.

Of course, as he says, the blows will be from hydrogen wars, but these blows are not because we have nuclear weapons. The reason for the blows is different. We affect the world with our desire to receive, which is egotistic, with thoughts of hatred, and in return we receive blows from the world, from nature, from Godliness, according to the formula of nonequivalence of form.

It is as if these blows come partially from the threatening force of nature, which is only threatening, but part of these blows comes from the inner feeling, and that is the main thing, the emptiness, fear, insecurity, etc.—that’s it. We don’t cause these events by the use of technology. We cause these things by our thoughts, by an incorrect desire. It is not that nature threatens us in a corporeal way. It is through corporeal, mental threats that man can be brought to spiritual change, to the same Tower of Babel where we aspired to reach the sky. Now it is as if we have reached the sky, the peak of human development, and we see that we have come to nothing. We have reached a state where our desire has disappeared as we are at this last level of development, and along with it all the goals and the pathways along which humanity has developed have also disappeared.

When the desire disappears (you see it in science and technology), well, technology will still go on for a while, but a person has no reason to continue his development. Even demographers think that the population of the world has reached its limit; one more billion, let’s say we have doubled the world’s population in the last fifty years. The world’s population has doubled. Now it is the opposite, since gradually it is as if the desire is turning backwards; the desire does not want to move forward and develop.

Question: What is the source of the approach of protecting oneself? What does man want to protect himself from?

The desire to receive demands fulfillment. The truth is that the desire to receive has to change into the desire to bestow and be filled with the Upper Light, with the feeling of Godliness, of eternity, and perfection—an unlimited fulfillment. This is actually the natural way that the desire to receive should have responded and developed, if it had the brains and the built-in program to do so.

Inside the desire to receive itself there is a program that has to develop until it reveals evil to its fullest. The desire to receive which erupted during the time of the Tower of Babel has not yet reached the state of the awareness of evil. Since the people of that era were far from the awareness of evil, they began to protect the desire to receive. Instead of correcting it and bringing it into balance with nature, they began to satisfy it.

Suppose you are mad at one of your friends, then you have two options: you can make peace with him or you can protect yourself from him and remain in the feeling that you are in the right. They also preferred to keep their feeling of pride, which is called a "Tower." The Tower of Babel means that the desire to receive which grew could already mix with other desires and multiply as a result of their deeds. This is the beginning.

Later the desire to receive began to develop from this part of humanity, from the Tower of Babel into one part of humanity called the "Nations of the World," and into another part called the "People of Israel." These two parts began to develop.

Israel developed to a certain level, until the Temple, and up until it reached the breaking. This is because it developed in the direction of the desire to bestow until its dimension grew sufficiently in order to correct the desire to receive later. Then it had to continue and to mix, to assimilate. (the Hebrew meaning of Babel is Hitbolelut (assimilation)).

After the two temples, they had to go out and mix with the other nations. In the meantime, the other nations grew until the destruction of the Temple which was so profound that they were able to accept these sparks from Israel. Thus, they continued to multiply, and the desire to receive continued to grow, especially in Western civilization.

We can also see how the nation of Israel went from one country to another, developed that country by bringing into it its spiritual power, which caused the material development of each country. In our days, when this civilization has come to the end of its development and is now beginning to sink, the other civilization, the Eastern one, is beginning to rise.

We are going to study this. It is not relevant right now. The whole process is eventually to arrive at the largest desire to receive in order to come to the awareness of the evil in it. Today it can happen. We see it in relation to research; we see it in man’s approach today. People are beginning to acknowledge that the reason for all evil is man’s nature.

Question: You said that naturally the desire to receive has to be filled with Light and plenty…

It is made for this.

Question: Then why does it control it, why doesn’t it desire it, and why does it protect itself from a process which is good?

If you are asking me this then I will answer you that according to its inner program it must develop. He must sin, like the sin of the First Man, until the moment that he is fully developed and can become fully aware of his opposite status to the Creator. Until then he develops according to his inner program. There is no free will, everything develops.

All the discernments of development of the desire to receive are essential. Until now you could not tell anyone, any nation, that it did something out of its free will, that it had a choice of doing things differently, no.

It is not that now we are talking from a historical perspective, and if we were sitting here two thousand or one thousand years ago, we would have said, "well from now on, of course, when a person sits from now on, it is his own free will." No, because in general we must arrive at a state of the swelling of the desire to receive to its fullest, otherwise there is no awareness of evil as a result of our doing good. "Keep away from evil and do good." This ability, this point is missing, as it has not been discovered yet. Today it is so.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes about things that have to be done which are neither praised nor condemned. Literally it is clear. A man needs food and shelter in order to live.

When you see the word "body," "body" is a kind of a metaphor. In fact, it is only what a man needs in order to sustain himself. These are things that hedetermines as necessary. It is not a body.

What you are asking is whether a man who is totally in spirituality, whether his desires—a body means desires, this is clear—whether he has such desires that are part of spirituality, which he calls "body" and treats them as necessities upon which he builds his spiritual ascent, but not that they themselves are part of his soul.

[Rav drawing] Here, you see what I have drawn; there is a body and there is a soul, these are two desires, nothing more. I have to fill the body's desire with something called a necessity, and the soul's desire is filled by my advancement.

Question: What inside of me condemns and what praises? What does it mean that "it is neither praised nor condemned?"

A man himself according to his advancement. Go on.

Question (cont.): What is referred to by 'neccessity:' his existence, or the existence of his family?

It doesn’t matter. A family, his wife as himself, it doesn’t matter what he considers a necessity, a grandmother, or an aunt, it doesn’t matter.

We are not talking about bodies. We are talking about a desire and what I attach to my desire. This is mine and that is mine. What difference does it make? In this body it is called so. It is everything that has nothing to do with spirituality, but is essential for my existence; I cannot do without it. Who knows what a man can discover that he cannot do without.

I am not just giving you this example of Rabash: a bar of chocolate a day, 20 grams of good cheese a day, such things that a man can do without, no big deal. These are desires that a man treats as necessary on the one hand, but necessary in the sense that he feels as a strange ruling, which he has to satisfy in this manner, and he is unable to do anything against this ruling. This is why the desire to receive is said to be the snake, the dog; feed it so that it will not scream or bark.

"Body" means a ruling, a ruling which is not directly connected with spiritual advancement. It is revealed in different measures and forms according to one’s nature, with no relation whatsoever to the soul, to spirituality. We see what personalities and life-styles and habits different Kabbalists had; it depends where one was raised and it depends on things that are absolutely human.

Question: What is a spiritual deed?

Do you have a problem with this? I don’t understand.

Question (cont.): I want to understand what Baal HaSulam wants to tell me here…

What Baal HaSulam wants to tell you is simple. If your head is turned to heavens, then whatever you need for your body, for your surroundings, for your relatives, for whatever you are telling me, then give it to them; just don’t let it cut you off from having your head turned to heavens.

Question: If a large part of humanity studied Kabbalah now, wouldn’t they hasten the realization of evil, and attract bad situations much faster?

They will attract bad situations; the more knowledge you add, the more pain you add. You are absolutely right.

Question (cont.) So the world will face bad situations?

Bad? I don’t know what a bad situation means. If you ask people today, they may say bad? What’s bad, what crisis are you talking about? What problems? What’s the matter with you? Look at how people can fly anywhere, at how people travel, and look at football games, we’ve just had the Olympic Games; is this what you call a bad situation in the world? Prove to me that things are bad and I will prove to you that things have never been better than they are today. This is relative and this is how it is revealed to man in his awareness of evil. If we invite the awareness of evil, not as a result of the blows that come upon us, but as a result of finding out that there are better things ahead, then it is not bad, it is good.

Look, in this the situation I am in now, something bad for me today means that I receive blows. Bad may mean that I don’t feel a Light ahead of me but darkness. In both cases I feel bad. There is no sunlight, there is no Light ahead, and I feel bad in my present situation as something which pressures me from behind.

If in this situation, or even in a situation where a man does not feel bad here or there, if a man, if I discover, that there is something that shines and can fill me, I remove the screen from the future, from development, and from the goal. So, although I feel my present situation which is less in degree than what lies ahead, I feel it through the Light that comes, which is called "in your Light we shall see Light." So, there is something that shines on me more than the present situation. True, I no longer feel relaxed; I no longer have the feeling of the inanimate, the beastly feeling. I begin to feel restless, but restless in expectation of a better situation, in the expectation of development, of ascent. This in fact is part of being human; it is part of being a man, not like being a cat lying in the sun.

So although there is nothing bad from behind and there is nothing bad ahead, a man should be given this feeling so that he will develop this way instead of waiting for the necessary signs of awakening, such as darkness ahead and suffering from behind. This is called "development through the Torah," "through the Light," and not development through suffering. The way of the Torah and the way of suffering are actually the two ways.

You cannot avoid development completely, and stay as you are, or escape the changes around you. The more a man builds this shell around him, some kind of artificial environment which is better and safer, the more he begins to suffer from the inside.

Take for example the richest people who can build a whole artificial world; if you prick them just a little, you will see how many problems and troubles are condensed inside them the emptiness which they feel. This is actually a revelation of the whole technological process we have been through. We appear to have built this beautiful golden cage, but in fact, we’ve built ourselves a grave.

Question: Must we reach the state of hydrogen bombs, and if not, what percentage of the world must study Kabbalah in order to achieve a balance?

Do we have to reach the state of hydrogen bombs? We have reached it; as for using them, whether a Kabbalist reveals it to us—it doesn’t matter how he reveals it to us, here in writings, or by means of hearsay—these things come to the world in different and strange ways. But if the world has received permission to apprehend this information, and there is the possibility, and we see to what extent we are able, and the extent that we are allowed to learn it, it is a sign. I think, in my opinion, it is a sign that it can be avoided.

First of all there will, of course, be a very serious threat over the people of Israel and the state of Israel. The threat will actually be felt from every direction; corporeal situation will be rather unpleasant. We will be surrounded by enemies from all directions, as it is written about the times of the Messiah. You don’t need to be physically close today. These things can be sent from a distance, but the threat will be a threat, and it will first of all be on us. It will be very—I don’t know exactly how to put it—it will be focused and very sharp.