Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
“His desire to do good to His creations.” He is called Ein Sof because the speech comes before the restriction and even after the restriction no change occurs in Him as there is no change in the Light and He always remains with this name.
It means that we have to understand that prayer to the Creator means there is the connection between the lower one and the Upper One, and the connection has to be to the same discernment of wanting to do good to His creations, otherwise it won’t be heard. If He wants to do good, He’s got a plan how to do good, and He knows what to do good, then when the creature, according to its preparation and deficiency, discovers its deficiency, it is called raising its prayer upward. If the deficiency is different from the one that’s in the plan of the Creator to do good to His creation, then there is no connection between the lack and the benefit, and there is no prayer.
The prayer and the answer to the prayer come simultaneously – as a Kli (vessel) and its filling – and they have to match one another. It’s impossible that the creature will pray and ask, and not receive an answer. It is a sign that its request, its prayer is not considered a prayer and request. They are not called prayer and request.
The proliferation of the names only relate to the receivers.
It means that according to what the creature is requesting, what kind of corrections on the Kelim (vessels) that the creature discovers that it needs to correct, accordingly it receives the Light that corrects the Kli, and then the Light that fills the Kli. The creature gives names to the Creator according to the Creator’s performing of its corrections and fillings.
Hence, the first name to appear as a root for the creatures is called Ein Sof, and this name remains unchanged. All the restrictions and the changes are made only with regard to the receivers.
It means that from the start the Creator wants to see the creature as a Kli, as a need for all the benefit that He wants to fill it with and He has prepared everything for him in advance. The creature comes to receive this benefit gradually and discovers the Creator as his corrector and his filler. Accordingly, it’s called that the creature discovers the holy names. What does it mean “the holy names?” He discovers his own Kelim, HaVaYaH with the screens and Ohr Hozer (Returning Light) and the fillings which it receives from it.
And it always shines in the first name, “His desire to do good to His creations,” endlessly.
This is why we pray to the Creator, called Ein Sof, who shines without restriction or end. What comes afterwards becomes an end and these are corrections for the receivers so that they may receive His Light.
The Upper Light is made of two aspects: attaining and attained. Everything we say regarding the Upper Light concerns only how the attaining is impressed by the attained. However, in themselves, meaning only the attaining, or only the attained, they are not called Ein Sof.
In that case, the attained is called Atzmuto and the attaining is called “souls,” being a new discernment that it is part of the whole. It is new in the sense that the will to receive is imprinted in it, and in that sense, creation is called “existence from absence.”
The Upper Light, which emanated according to His desire to do good to His creations endlessly, restricted itself by 125 restrictions (degrees) and through them the souls were created. These souls attained that Ein Sof (Infinity) in that gradual form bit by bit, so that the Kli, the deficiency in the souls, precedes the Light.
We are talking both about the correction of the Kelim and the filling of the Kelim. There has to be the disclosure of the lack prior to the disclosure of the filling. The deficiency has to correct itself, to be similar, and then to receive in order to bestow so as to benefit the Creator, to also be in equivalence of form with Him, etc. This is the work of the souls, and for that purpose Ein Sof was restricted in the beginning to give the souls the possibility of working this way.
For themselves, all the worlds are regarded as simple unity and there is no change in Godliness.
It means that he who doesn’t attain that the worlds exist, for him then this doesn’t exist.
One may picture these things not the way we draw it but differently: that there is one Kli, which at one time received an endless filling. This Kli was later on restricted in the first restriction when the filling left. Then the filling in it expanded in all kinds of forms called worlds and from within these worlds, out of this desire, all kinds of discernment and differentiations were made called souls. The inner and the external of the Kli werecreated, and it all happened within this Kli.
The slightest measure of existence of the sensation in that Kli is called this world. When it’s a little clear to this Kli where it is, it’s called the world Assiya; when it’s a little clearer it’s called the world Yetzira, etc. It’s all in this Kli.
So as to depict more openly and clearly the inner states in this Kli, it is drawn graphically as if there are souls separately and worlds separately and difference between them, relation and connection between them, etc. Actually, it is the sensation or Ein Sof within the souls called the worlds.
…there is no change in the Godliness. This is the meaning of “I the Lord do not change.” There are no Sefirot and Behinot (discernments) in Godliness.
Even the most subtle appellations do not refer to the Light itself as this is a discernment of Atzmuto where there is no attainment. Rather, all the Sefirot and the discernments spoken of are only what a person attains in them. This is because the Creator wanted us to attain and understand the abundance as “His desire to do good to His creations.”
In order for us to attain what He had wanted us to attain and understand as “His desire to do good to His creations,” He created and imparted us these senses, which attain their impressions of the Upper Light.
In that regard we were given many discernments since the general sense is called “will to receive” and is divided into many details, according to the measure that the receivers are qualified to receive. Thus, we find many divisions and details, called ascents and descents; expansion and departure etc.
Since the will to receive is called “creature” and a “new discernment”, the utterance begins precisely from the place where the will to receive begins to receive impressions. The speech is parts of discernments of impressions, for here there is already a correlation between the Upper Light and the will to receive.
This is called “Light and Vessel”. However, there is no utterance in the Light without a vessel.
In the evolution of the will to receive through the Light, there are phases of evolvement that one cannot feel. One only knows them as a result of one’s own evolvement. It’s like a baby who, as he grows slowly, begins to attain that now he is, but there is time before this moment when he was smaller, when he didn’t understand, when he didn’t feel; when he was a baby, when he was an embryo, when he was in a seed, as a power or a thought of someone or something, who knows what. From some moment in his life, in his existence and onwards, he begins to attain, to recognize the state, the reality he is in, and then he can know his past and accordingly relate to the future as well.
It is similar with the creatures. They recognize only a part of their evolvement, from the point of recognition onward and not before that. Those who begin to evolve and attain the root, they also know what they had before, what happened with them, the process they went through from the overall beginning of the evolvement to the moment they know themselves.
There is some kind of evolvement from the root to the point of recognition and from there onward, when they begin to know the Creator. Up to the point when they begin to know themselves and the Creator, it was an unconscious evolvement where they didn’t even feel that they are, exist, that something was happening around them, and neither internality nor externality was felt in the souls. From the moment there is a point in the heart that begins to evolve, we might say that they know themselves. That’s also not so yet let us say that from this point onward there is a certain measure of awareness where internality and externality begin to be sensed.
When the internality and externality, in which the souls exist, are sensed by them, then they also begin to feel those states they experienced previously. It means that those who attain the roots, the Creator, attain their own roots.
This is called “Light and Vessel.” However, there is no utterance in the Light without a vessel since a Light that is not attained by the receiver is considered Atzmuto where the utterance is absolutely forbidden since it is unattainable. Moreover, how can we name what we do not attain?
From this we learn that when we pray for the Creator to send us salvation, cure and so on, there are two things we should distinguish: 1 – The Creator; 2 – That which extends from Him.
Otherwise there is no prayer. If we pray, we have to know who we are addressing. We can’t just walk up to anyone and say, “Heal me” if he is not a doctor. We have to know what a doctor is, to distinguish these attributes in him; that he knows and understands and has a heart for it, the ability and all. Then we come to him and ask or request that he does something additional for us.” When something is burning, “put it out” is addressed to the fireman. We can ask someone wise to help us solve a problem, etc.
First you have to recognize the Creator in a simple way. Who are we turning to and with what? We can’t just cry to someone who doesn’t have these attributes. It means that the Kli has to be there beforehand with the sensation and the understanding that you turn and click with someone who has the ability and the willingness to fill your things, to correct them, to do something with them. Otherwise, it’s not a prayer when you just cry. As a result of this you see that there is no result. A prayer without awareness, without reciprocal sensation, is not a prayer.
Question: Is the plea to want to know the Creator not a prayer?
Yes, but that too has to be a need that is to some extent formed already – what you want to know, who you want to know, what is the need that is the reason you are searching for Him. This has to be already clear. Otherwise, these cries might be in preparation and in the right phases and necessary, but it still is not a prayer. A prayer is a connection between the need in the creature and the Creator’s desire to fulfill that need, and they have to match one another. The creature, as we understand from this, must have a certain knowing of the Creator.
Read that line again.
This is called “Light and Vessel.” However, there is no utterance in the Light without a vessel. Since Light that is not attained by the receiver is considered Atzmuto where the utterance is absolutely forbidden since it is unattainable. Moreover, how can we name what we do not attain?
From this we learn that when we pray for the Creator to send us salvation, cure and so on, there are two things we should distinguish: 1 – The Creator; 2 – That which extends from Him.
One distinguishes that there is someone, a source that has something that one is asking for. That means there has to be within one some sort of a Kli, a preparation for a Kli, something that as a result it will come from Him. Where one knows what one has to receive and that He has it, it will come and change something and fill something within one; there has to be a preparation. If it just cries, then of course it is still not a prayer. Regrettably, that’s what the whole world cries, so it is no wonder they’re not getting answers to their prayers.
In the first discernment, considered Atzmuto, the utterance is forbidden, as we have said above. In the second discernment, that which comes from Him, which is considered the Light that expands into our vessels, meaning into our will to receive, that is what we call Ein Sof. This is the connection of the Creator with the creatures, “His desire to do good to His creations,” [From the Creator there is an endless approach, His desire to do good to His creations.] where the will to receive is regarded as the expanding Light that finally reaches the will to receive.
That means that from the Creator expands Light and this Light, this endless bounty, created the will to receive.
When the will to receive receives the expanding Light, the expanding Light is then called Ein Sof.
That means that if only the Light expands without the awareness of the creature, this is called the Thought of Creation, that’s the benefit. If there is someone who notices that, that is Light that expands endlessly, this is already a creature that is in the form of Ein Sof.
When the will to receive receives the expanding Light, the expanding Light is then called Ein Sof. It comes to the receivers via many covers so that the lower one will be able to receive them.
Still it’s Ein Sof. What many covers? For the lower one to discern that it is Ein Sof, it must acquire many covers.
As we said that from below we attain Ein Sof; we constantly acquire coverings, Masachim (screens). Only in this way can we do it. Without covers there is no one to feel Ein Sof. Ein Sof isn’t called Ein Sof, but either the Thought of Creation or Atzmuto (His Essence). If we’re speaking with respect to the creatures, we say, “the Thought of creation.” If not with respect to the creatures, we say, “ Atzmuto.”
It turns out that all the discernments and the changes are made in the receiver with specific relation to what impresses the receiver. However, we must discern the concerned matter. When we speak of discernments in the worlds these are potential discernments; and when the receiver attains these discernments, they are called “actual.”
Spiritual attainment is when the attaining and the attained come together, as without an attaining there is no form to the attained since there is no one to obtain the form of the attained. Hence, this discernment is considered Atzmuto, where there is no room for any utterance. Therefore, how can we say that the attained has its own form?
There is no place for utterance at all.
Question: If we can’t talk about Atzmuto, how come he says that the Creator has a desire?
The Creator is not Atzmuto. The Creator is what the creature attains and says about it that it’s the Creator. The Creator means in Hebrew, “Come and see” and Atzmuto is not the Creator. Atzmuto is the Upper root of what the creature sometimes feels. This Upper root always remains the Upper, outside the creature. The creature says, “There is something that is the cause for my existence and my sensation.” There is a cause for it, but I don’t attain this cause. Besides the cause, which I don’t attain, there is nothing I have to say about it.”
Is there sensation in the creature or not? Yes, it is a sensation but it’s only the sensation that there is a root, which we do not attain.
This is why we call it Atzmuto (His Essence). Everything else that the creature attains, about himself and what happens with it, and what fills it, all this it defines in different forms, either as itself or its filling. Within its filling, the creature discerns the filling itself and the desire of the filling, which it calls the Creator.
We learn this in the simplest way, in the four phases of Direct Light, Dalet Behinot de Ohr Yashar. Where the creature as Behina Aleph, which is not created yet, discovers that within the filling, this someone that fills it wants to fill him, wants to bestow, and wants to please it.
As the creature attains the filling of his desire, it also, as facing his desire, attains the desire of the filling, because the filling has its own desire . The higher the creature ascends and acquires coverings accordingly, it discovers who fills it.
Thus Behina Aleph of the Daled Behinot de Ohr Yashar (aspect one of the four phases of Direct Light) begins to discover there is someone who created it in order to please it and because of that it evolves. There is the filling and the Filler who exists within the filling, a higher root, and we call that higher root the Creator. We feel the filling through our desires, and the Creator “come and see” we attain as the root for the filling, according to the evolvement. It is already evolvement in Mocha (in mind). Bina attains what happens in Hochma. That is why Bina comes from a word “understanding” and according to the equivalence of form, we attain.
Question: It says here, “When we speak of discernments in the worlds these are potential discernments; and when the receiver attains these discernments, they are called ‘actual’.”
Yes, because a person doesn’t know what the worlds are, but within him, as he is here in the point in the heart, the whole reality is.
A person exists in the same world EinSof. With respect to him, this reality now appears as a mere point. But this reality is already divided, already exists in potential. What does it mean “potentially exists”? Where he, who is now about to correct his Kli and expand it to the measure of the endless, will certainly experience the same degrees and restrictions that have already been prepared for him, for his gradual evolvement.
This is why all the worlds, all the degrees are before him in potential; they are not there. When he expands his Kli, by that he will discover them. Until he discovers them, before he builds them from within his desires, they exist in him only as Reshimot (impressions). That’s why it’s called potential and he can’t evolve any other way except realizing them one by one. These little items of measure that he should constantly receive discover and realize, when the Reshimot emerge from hiding and he realizes them, this is considered that they are in potential.
We can only speak from where our senses are impressed with the expanding Light, which is “His desire to do good to His creations,” which actually comes into the hands of the receivers.
It means that we speak only of what we receive through our senses and understand with intellect what we are receiving and feeling. We’re talking about a sensation and how we judge it. Mind and heart is all we have, and other than that, we cannot escape towards anything. It means that a person can’t talk about what is not in his Kli and he can never even imagine it. It can never come into his senses or imagination. He will never be able to receive any measure or impression from the outside. There is no such thing as from the outside, it’s a sign it’s already in his Kli. “Someone told me” – that someone is in his Kli. There is nothing outside of the Kli.
Question: Are they interdependent Mocha and Liba, mind and heart? The more one can understand the more one can feel?
Mocha and Liba (mind and heart), is of course dependent on each other. Through the Mocha one can perceive discernments more quickly and correct the Liba. The evolvement in Liba depends on the ability of the mind to digest and move on in the phases of impressions from the fillings.
Of course, there is reciprocal work here. We see how a person sometimes receives many blows until he wizens. We can see that a person, as much as he tries to activate his mind through all kinds of means and as he activates himself, becomes more sensitive, more understanding, and by that causes progress in the evolution of the heart. Of course, the mind here is the means for the acceleration of the evolvement of the heart.
We can never go from degree to degree, but only with sensation in the heart. Before the sensation in the heart is recognized to the extent that it should be recognized, at that degree, we don’t move on to the next phase. We don’t have a choice but to experience all the sensations one by one and understand them as to what we are feeling. In each degree the measure of the understanding is different, but there is no other way. That’s why what we can do is only accelerate the pace of the evolvement. But both in mind and heart we must, in each degree, receive the discernments – in full.
Question: Why or how is there a possibility to be impressed and picture what is abstracted from matter?
Where are you taking this from, this assumption?
Question (cont’d): Because a philosopher for example pictures forms.
How can it be that these things come to their imagination? Because there is a mind and a heart and one can detach one from the other. It means that if one has a table, then one already knows there is a table. How? He built it from wood. Once he built it from wood, he sees the form. Now he can describe this table made of metal or stone or other material. He can imagine it a hundred meters high. He can imagine a table resembling the whole universe that he knows, the whole universe as a table. Imagine it. So what of it? It still gives him nothing. But if he can now, working with this abstract, form and draw some conclusions from those abstract forms, those might mislead him.
It is forbidden to detach one’s mind from one’s sensation and begin to build abstract forms in it, and from these abstract forms obtain some results, conclusions converted into matter, to action. Because one is not certain that these actions, these phenomena can really happen in matter. There is no prohibition on dealing in abstract forms – one actually can fantasize whatever he wants – but if one takes it as proofs of some sort, as one’s abstract facts, and begins to actualize them in life, then one might fail. Because what is the proof that it exists?
There is Kli and the Light, this is the first state. Let’s say, there is a table, and we feel it. Second state: there is no table, it’s just in our imagination, w e think about it. It means that we don’t have a Kli and we don’t have the Light. We have something imaginary, and then we begin to describe this philosophical category detached from matter, in all kinds of forms.
Then, when we imagined it, in all kinds of forms, we want to return these forms into matter. This is already the third state. In the first state, there was matter, the Kli and there was a filling, a form. That was certain; that’s realistic. But why suddenly should it be realistic in the third state? We picture it from a different substance, and the form, the filling is also different. Why should it suddenly exist?
It turns out that we might picture states, as Baal HaSulam says about communism, where we saw a few good things that could clothe in matter as nice, bestowal, etc. Afterwards, in the imagination, we take it out of matter and build some kind of theory, then with these theories we want to turn them back into matter and that is not correct.
That phase doesn’t give us any proofs. About it was written, “A judge has only what his eyes see.” We have detached the first state from the third state through the power of imagination.
That’s the whole problem of humanity. It doesn’t feel where it exists with realistic attainment and where it is jumping into imaginary states of love or whatever. We picture all kinds of good things that might happen to us now. We can see how unreal all of it is, because we clothe into matter states which cannot exist in matter. We detach facts from matter and add some imagination, and when we go back to matter, we fail. This happens all the time.
Even you, when you’re working on the Internet, it happens to you, too. You can only gradually teach yourself to be more consistent and realistic in the process of doing something. It happens with everyone. This is the problem of our work with our Kelim, we don’t feel our Kelim. We are not demanding attainment within the Kelim. Only when we’ll attain the root by that will we be able to guard ourselves from escaping into imagination. It is the Creator who is the guard here that we’ll be able to evolve without these mistakes. And this way is how we always make that mistake, always err. These mistakes are because we have an endless space that we don’t feel.
What is this that’s called imagination, the force of imagination? It is a hidden state that we haven’t discovered. If it weren’t hidden we wouldn’t have to escape with our imagination to some far off distance. But because there’s concealment, there are within us desires that are not disclosed, they’re unconscious. We want to fill them as if we attained, as if we know the Creator. Then we’re breaking into the imaginary realm. If we’d worked with our Kelim both in disclosure and in concealment, meaning if spiritual and corporeal vessels were before us, we wouldn’t need to imagine anything, because everything would be open in the Kelim. But there is emptiness in the Kelim; there is no information in them that the Kli seemingly needs.
It is then we fill it up with imagination. By saying that “the judge has only what his eyes see,” go only by the realistic forms, the Kabbalists want to commit us to not filling ourselves with imagination like philosophies and with all those assumptions, but fill ourselves with attainment of the Creator.