Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
We are reading from the book Shamati, article 35, Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha.
The verse says (Psalms 104): “Yonder sea, great a
nd wide, therein are creeping things innumerable, living creatures, both small and great.”
We should interpret:
1. The sea as the sea of the Sitra Achra.
2. Great and wide means that it manifests itself and shouts “Give, give,” referring to great vessels of reception.
The give, give is “give for the will to receive,” and the other give is for “in order to receive,” depending on how it is used.
3. “ Living creatures” means that there are Upper Lights there, which one steps and tramples on with one’s feet.”
Feet are called spies (in Hebrew it's the same spelling), where a person prefers to work with one's natural will to receive and a doesn't believe that he can reach a higher degree than that.
4. Innumerable, that there are small with large animals, meaning whether one has small vitality, or whether he has great vitality, it is all in that sea.
It's also swallowed in that sea. Whatever a person is given, it is swallowed in the sea of the Sitra Achra.
This is so because there is a rule that from Above they give giving, and take, they do not take (all that is given from Above is not received in return, but stays below).
Baal HaSulam gives a fine example of that in the article Thou Hast Hemmed me from Behind and Before, where if a force, an angel, comes from Above to lead a person, and the person can't work with this force, this force is cancelled and in its place comes something else through the providence. It means that by cause and consequence, all kinds of forces come to a person, and according to a person's willingness to absorb and work with it, it is registered and is absorbed in himand changes him.
If a person is incapable of working with one of these forces because of spies, thoughts, obstructions that befall him from Sitra Achra, then these forces, those beneficial forces that should have promoted him by way of Torah, by way of accelerating, they are cancelled and other forces come.
Hence, if one extends something from Above and then blemishes it, it remains below, but not with man. Instead, it falls to the sea of the Sitra Achra.
It is as though an upper force comes to a person according to his readiness and the person can work with this force otherwise it would not come tohim.
But if he can't, the force that was supposed to bring him closer to Kedusha, enters into the Sitra Achra. It increases a person's ego and he enters into greater doubts, greater problems, greater falls and he stretches time and the blows until that force that comes to him from Above, through the back—in its time, yet works in a person and compels him to realize that force, but now it's the forced, bad way.
In other words, if one extends some luminescence and cannot sustain it permanently because one’s Kelim (Vessels) are not yet clean to be fit for the Light, meaning that one will receive it in vessels of bestowal like the Light that comes from the Giver, the luminescence must depart from him.
At that time this luminescence falls into the hands of the Sitra Achra. This continues several times, meaning that one extends, and then it departs from him.
Hence, the illuminations increase in the sea of the Sitra Achra, until the cup is full. This means that after one finds the full measure of the effort that one can find…
It means that even though he prepares himself and draws forces from Above but can't stay in them permanently, they go to his ego, to his Sitra Achra. From all of that the Sitra Achra is filled, which we can say it is a filling made of failures of a person that works. These desires must be filled in this way. A person has to experience that time when he is forced to fill the Sitra Achra yet it's through his effort.
That's the path of concealment until a person reaches Machsom (the barrier). Only after he completed his measure of effort and failed all those times, since he should have failed from the very beginning, because he had to increase his vessels of reception, he then comes with his corrupted vessels of reception, with the ready Sitra Achra, into Kedusha. Now he has something to correct.
As we learn that before a person comes to Kedusha he must go through a period of double concealment and single concealment, and both those times he necessarily makes mistakes and sins. If he doesn't go over all of his 613 desires, in sins and mistakes, he will not have anything to correct once he crosses the Machsom and enters reward and punishment and eternal love.
Therefore, a person must make great efforts and fall again and again, and not be despaired with his efforts as seemingly being swallowed into the sea of the SitraAchra, without any benefit from the efforts. Instead, one should believe, as our sages say, that by increasing the Sitra Achra, his ego, and by becoming one with great desires who does not despair and wants the goal with his great vessels of reception, by that he eventually touches upon the purpose, and then he enters corrections.
…the Sitra Achra gives him back everything she had taken into her own authority. This is the meaning of “ He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again.” It follows that all that the Sitra Achra had taken into her own authority was only as a deposit, meaning as long as she had command over man.
And the whole matter of the dominion that she has is so that there will be room for one to scrutinize one’s vessels of reception [to know through negativityhow he exists in the great ego and all of his calculations are egoistic, the opposite of Kedusha]and admit them into Kedusha (Sanctity).
Once he has given all the measures of effort in quality and quantity, the matter is inverted and he begins to bring in everything the Sitra Achra taken as deposit into Kedusha.
In other words, had she not governed a person, one would settle for little and then one’s vessels of reception would remain separated. Thus, one would never be able to gather all the Kelim that belong to the root of one’s soul, admit them into Kedusha, and extend the Light that belongs to him.
Because how can he accumulate Kedusha if he can't stand in it? Kedusha, that is, ascent in degrees, begins only after one has scrutinized all of his sins and mistakes. He didn't correct them; rather he prepared them for correction. As Baal HaSulam says in the Speech for the Completion of the Zohar and several other places, that in Kedusha, a person can stand, on the condition that he is in it on a permanent basis the way the nature of Kedusha is. If he falls for a moment, it is no longer Kedusha and everything disappears and is lost.
Therefore, to prepare a person with great Kelim, you can't prepare it when a person is already in Kedusha. This is why we have the sea of the Sitra Achra which is filled by the person. In the beginning he doesn't have a drop of that sea. But through his work when he progresses toward the goal and he wants it, and he works on scrutinizing the breaking and how to correct it, and how to overcome his ego, with the love of friends, with the study and the intention, he fills the sea of the Sitra Achra. He wants the goal and correspondingly sees that he is in sins and mistakes.
These sins and mistakes show him precisely where the place of the breaking is. Once he scrutinizes this deep fissure that happened between him and other souls, he begins to correct them with reward, punishment and eternal love.
… admit them into Kedusha, and extend the Light that belongs to him.
Hence, it is a correction that each time one extends something and has a descent, he must begin anew, [But in every descent something goes into his sea of Sitra Achra] meaning new scrutinies. And what one had from the past has fallen into the Sitra Achra, and she holds it in her authority as a deposit. Afterwards one receives everything that she had received from him this whole time.
When he is in sins, mistakes, and concealment he has veritably a sea of discernments, descents, falls, and sins that he has at his disposal, in order to correct them.
Now we can see what is called SitraAchra. It is the help against him. If there wasn’t this system, he would not be able to prepare himself for corrections. He needs to come to corrections, equipped with all the mistakes and the sins. When he begins the corrections, he will no longer fall into the Sitra Achra, but only into the new Aviut so as to correct it and be renewed at a higher degree.
That is why with the preparation these discernments he accumulates and stores before he begins the corrections, are his storage, his treasury of the ego in every way. It is a necessary thing. This is why God created one as against the other. You have to understand that nothing was created for no reason. There is a huge task for the system of Klipa that works alongside the system of Kedusha.
Yet, we must also know that if one could sustain any luminescence, even a small one, but if it were permanent, one would already be considered whole. [Permanence is already called spirituality.] In other words, one would have been able to advance with this illumination. Hence, if one loses the luminescence, one should regret it.
Just as we learn about the simple law in the World of Atzilut. There is a permanent state and there are additions. The permanent state means the person has the force of Bina and nothing can harm him. He doesn't need anything; he is always in the force of Bina. He received something like the uterus of Ima (mother), the blocked MEM the powers of Bina, Noah's ark. We have various descriptions of the force of Bina. This sustains him.
Then it doesn’t matter to him even if he is in the sea of the Sitra Achra, he is in the ark and is preserved in it. This is called that he is already in spirituality and he can expand around it the place of his life, of his settlement.
Hence, if one loses the luminescence, one should regret it.
This is similar to a person who placed a seed in the ground so that a big tree would grow from it, but took the seed out of the ground right away. Thus, what is the benefit in the work of putting the seed in the ground?
Moreover, we can say that he not only took out the seed from the ground and corrupted it, we can say that he dug out a tree with ripe fruits out of the ground and corrupted them.
It is the same here: if one had not lost this tiny luminescence, a great Light would have grown out of it. It follows that it is not necessarily that he had lost the power of a small luminescence, but it is as though a great Light indeed had been lost from him.
It means that if there is a pause in the process of progress towards the goal and a person falls into the Sitra Achra, it is a sign that he is not on the way toward correction. Even though we see that it is seemingly necessary… But the pause for even a tiny moment—and that's what happens to us, and we agree to that, but actually a person must not agree to the pause in progress towards Kedusha even for a moment, because it is as if you lost Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction), as if you lost an entire tree with its fruits.
If that's how he feels and that's how much he regrets it, then he feels the mistakes and the sins he is in. Otherwise he doesn't feel the mistakes and the sins. The measure of everything is according to the feeling individual. This is why the rejections, the falls and pauses a person has in the progress must be accepted as if he has lost the whole process, the whole purpose. He must not calm himself in that he can come and he will be in it again and again.
If he relates to what he loses with severity this is called “being swallowed in the sea of the Sitra Achra,” and experiencing the sins and the mistakes and they accumulate. Once they accumulate and come to a complete measure, according to his feeling and he cannot take anymore. He sees that he totally drowned in this sea and has no possibility of getting out of it. He has “swallowed down riches and he shall vomit them up.”
In this begins a new era of correction. If he doesn't feel that he's lost the whole way and the end of correction, and the purpose by having even the smallest pause in the work, then this is not called “being added to the sea of his Sitra Achra” that he accumulates the mistakes and the sins to correct them. This is because all is measured according to ones sensations and decisions.
1. Question: What factors can bring a person eventually to this feeling?
We have learned that he can only receive the feeling of the greatness of the goal and the sense of his own lowliness from the society. It is not that it will tell him, “you're nothing, and the Creator is great.” Society shows this to him through reciprocal work, the exact place of defect, the sin and the fissure. And correspondingly he feels the severity of the state and as against it feels the ego and the real Sitra Achra. He doesn't imagine that if he enjoys this or that a little, that this is what is called the force of impurity. It is not so. The impurity is only against that fissure that occurred in the connection between the souls.
The problem is that we think about the definitions of righteous and wicked, but not according to how they really are in spirituality. We don't know what sin is and where the sin happened. In what sense should we accept it? What is the breaking, in what is it?
We ascribe breaking and the sin, reward, punishment, pleasure, pain, to our corporeality, the way we are used to in this world. But we should picture the sin, the place of the incision, the place of the Sitra Achra, and all, we should picture it against the Creator. But it's impossible to picture it against the Creator because He is hidden.
Only in a group can we measure precisely and see where this Sitra Achra is, that I hate others instead of loving them. The more I want to love them where the Kabbalists describe the expression of love as bestowal; I discover how much I'm not in it. This I call, “the force of the breaking and Sitra Achra.” The more I discover it, each drop accumulates into a great account, and this is called “the sea of the Sitra Achra.”
When it is filled into a veritable sea, according to all the discernments we have to make, every desire, the mistakes, and the sins, this is called “he shall swallow down riches;” that everything is swallowed in the sea and that he shall vomit them. But now it appears gradually by the phases of correction, where instead of the sea of the Sitra Achra, you have the sea of Kedusha.
We must know that it is a rule that one cannot live without liveliness and pleasure, since it stems from the root of creation, which is His desire to do good to His creatures. Hence, every creature cannot exist without liveliness and pleasure. Therefore, every creature must go and look for a place from which it can receive delight and pleasure.
But the pleasure is received in three times: in the past, in the present, and in the future. However, the principal reception of pleasure is in the present. Although we see that one receives pleasure from the past and from the future, too, it is because the past and the future shine in the present.
One doesn't feel the times, past and future the way it appears to us. We only feel the present. Whatever we attribute to what happened previously or what we assume will happen later on, give us sensation of relation to times. There is no time, time is an illusion. Other than feeling ourselves in Kelim of the presentwe have, according to the Reshimot, the ascribing to the presentpleasure what we mentally addas past or future. In that way we come to assume that it seemingly belongs to time.
However, as we learn in Kabbalah, the concept of time doesn't exist. It is only an illusion of a person that he is seemingly in time. Because one can be in corrupted Kelim that still surround him as Makifim, then these surrounding Kelim, before they are corrected, give him the sensation of time around the current state, the present. Therefore, as against the corrupted Kelim, he increases his will to receive at the expense of these Kelim before they are corrected, and hence can be happy or sad with respect to the past or to the future. But he still interprets it with calculating and feeling in the Kelim of the present.
We learn more of it when we learn about how our perception is in Kelim of Yosher (straightness), and the Kelim of the Igulim (circles). The Kelim of Igulim give us an additional luminescence in the Kelim of the present,of Yosher and this is why for us they increase the pleasure and pain which is called past or future.
Therefore, if one does not find a sensation of pleasure in the present, one receives liveliness from the past, and he can tell the others how he was happy in past times. One can receive sustenance from that in the present...
Here we have the defensive, living force in the body, which must give the body the power to exist. The will to receive, the creature, must exist and wants to exist and existence is possible only out of the positive. Either it pictures itself fulfilled or being better than others since the fulfillment is relative to others.
Fulfillment is always relative, either with respect to the past or to the future, or to others. That's how a person measures it. He doesn't have absolute measurement, but only with respect to his attitude to himself, in the past or in the future seemingly, or with respect to other Kelim. Then he measures it according to his egoistic measurement or according to the measurement of Kedusha, the extent to which he tried and reached bestowal upon others. But either way, he still measures himself with respect to his own Kelim, with respect to the Kelim of others.
…or picture for oneself that he hopes that in the future he will be happy. But measuring the sensation of the pleasure from the past and the future depends on the extent to which they shine for one in the present. Also, we must know that this occurs both in corporeal pleasures and in spiritual pleasures.
As we see, when one works, even in corporeality, the order is that during the work one is unhappy because he exerts himself. And one can only continue in the work because the future shines for him…
The animate degree is in that it feels the present only. The person who feels the future and the past is because it is his vessels that constantly give him deficiencies so as to progress, to correct them. A person is first of all incorporated in Kelim of others because the souls are incorporated in one system and other than that, he calculates himself with the past and the future.
On the animate degree, a person considers only the present pleasures. The Rabash gave, as an example of this, the shop owner. Hegives the merchandise and gets immediately payment in return. The payment is profit above what he paid for the merchandise. Let’s say that he paid 10 cents for the bread and got 50 cents in return, he knows he has this profit and each time he has this profit in the present. That gives him strength to work and to continue to work, and he's even sorry that he has to close the shop, because he sees immediate profits each time.
More developed people can work according to the benefit that shines for them in the future. Their surrounding vessels grow and shine in the vessels of the present, of Yosher, and give them the sensation of belonging to the surrounding Kelim.The more a person is evolved, he sees the surroundings as unlimited because the surroundings are unlimited as compared to the Kelim of the present, which are of measure and of weight, being Kelim of Yosher.
It follows that a person's nature is such that the more evolved he is, the more willing he is to work for a further future, that he sees like a greater future than the present. He's willing to suffer his whole life only because the future surroundings shine for him, which at some point he'll enjoy.
When a person comes to phases in the evolution of humanity as we are reaching now, these surroundings have shone a great deal. Humanity could suffer and actually rushed forward to obtain the good future and was willing to devotedly dedicate itself for good, egoistic and corporeal reward. But it suddenly discovered that these far Kelim that gave the sensation of the future disappear, because the Kelim too have to come inside and be corrected.
Then one loses the future and have a sensation that there's nothing to live for, then one is left in a state where in the present too one has nothing to work for. There is nothing to work for in the present, like the shop owner. That's because he's not in that small degree anymore where he can settle for these short little pleasures, which he can gain instantaneously, and they're always very small pleasure, veritably pennies.
He has no reason to run forward because he doesn't see that the future shines as great because of the unlimited vessels of the Igulim. So he loses both the future and the present. He can't be satisfied by the past because he measures the past compared to the present and the future. He becomes completely desperate and sees no way out of it except to overturn the Kelim. If he comes to a state where he must live, and that's our nature, foundation, then he's willing to go even from Lo Lishma to Lishma, only to receive vitality of Kedusha—and not even Kedusha sanctity, just vitality.
That's why we have to fill the Sitra Achra until it is a sea where all of the future, past and present, all these Kelim enter it. The moment it is filled a person receives the despair, namely the power of hate for the present state namely sufficient power from it of repulsion, to cross the Machsom.
As Baal HaSulam wrote in the previous section, “we must know that this occurs both in corporeal pleasures and in spiritual pleasures.” Past, present, and future happen because, as we have learned, our world is a copy of the spiritual world. However in the spiritual world we have two forms: the Sitra Achra and the Kedusha, and the person is in between them.
In the corporeal world, we are only in corporeality, not even in the Sitra Achra or Kedusha. But still, we have here a kind of replication and model of the spiritual world. When we build this model as a person, a group, as the human society, Baal HaSulam says that this applies both in spirituality and corporeality.
Wherever it says: “also in spirituality and corporeality,” we have to understand that spirituality is the connection between the souls in order to bestow upon each other. We say that in corporeality too it applies. It means that we see in corporeality that there is a connection as well among people where they all must reach bestowal upon one another. Then we can say that this world and the spiritual world are similar, they have similar conducts. Otherwise, if we just take this corporeal world, as it always behaves, it has no relation to spirituality. The copying and the matching between corporeality and spirituality are on condition that a person tries to find in this world the same system and connections that exist in spirituality.
For example, when we say that Kabbalists found a language to speak about spirituality from within the corporeality, they took that language from the relationship in this world of a person with respect to the society, to others, a relationship that is seemingly corrected, and then they could adapt it to the spiritual world.
Of course, we lack the correction to be “in order to bestow,” but the system is the system of people who are connected in some resemblance to the love of man. Otherwise you won't have one as against the other, the spiritual world and the corporeal world.
We are saying that from the spiritual world forces come down into the corporeal world and then these forces manage the corporeal world. When each of these forces comes down from the root to its branch and no two branches can suck from the same root; it means that we see in this world a replication of spirituality. To the extent that we can see it as the same order, the same system, the same connection, we can picture corporeality as somehow similar, matching spiritually, where forces in fact come down in parallel from Above, every root comes down to its branch
But if we simply look through the eyes of a person on this world, there is no replication of spirituality here and that's the problem. If we had a replication apparent to the eyes of the corporeal, we would have seen how to somehow place ourselves in balance with the forces of nature. We would bring ourselves to discover that we have to be in the love of man, “love thy friend as thy self,” and in contact that is in accordance with spirituality.
But because we don't see the model here below, like a model from Above, we are confused on the laws of nature and arrive at confusion. That confusion is not that we filled the sea of the Sitra Achra, we don't fill anything. Now we’ll have to discover the connection between corporeality and spirituality, the matching between the root and the branch, and exert to discover the branch in the correct form of its root. Then when we want to have the same conduct, rules, in the branch as in the root, we will begin to discover the Sitra Achra and fill it.
2. Question: How can the group help a person strengthen and not become relaxed or do it so that no other person falls back on the way?
This is called Arvut, where everyone understands that if all are not connected, we will not have sufficient strength to rise above one’s own nature. One person must care for all. And vice-versa: all those who seemingly feel themselves as a collective force, should care for each and every one. Because if they don't give them sufficient force, they won't have personal strength to block the hole, and the hole will open up and all will drown because they are in the one boat.
It turns out that one person determines the state of everybody else and everybody determines the state of every single one. This Arvut arrives at a state where without Hitkalelut (incorporation) called “as thyself,” all as one, one as all, we don't discover the spiritual Kli. It's not that we don't discover the spiritual Kli. We don't discover the spiritual model in which we feel our breakage, our Sitra Achra, andcorrespondingly cry to the Creator, to the force of the Arvut that is received from Above. We don't give each other anything, only the discovering of the need for adhesion with the Creator among us. It is He that is the glue. That is what we need, that's what we have to discover.
…when he will receive the payment for his work. This shines for a person in the present, and this is why he can continue the work.
However, if one is unable to picture the reward that he will receive in the future, one must take pleasure from the future, not from the reward that he will receive for his work in the future. In other words, he will not enjoy the reward, but he will not feel suffering from the exertion. This is what he enjoys now, in the present, what he will have in the future.
It is as we learn that a person is pushed forward either by pain or by pleasure. These are two forces that lead him and these forces don't change. It means that only by this can we continue to progress towards the goal. So what is the difference? Either we progress toward the goal in a false way where we don't know that we are progressing through incorrect society that promotes us through pain and we don't ascribe our actions as necessarily under the control of society and therefore think that we have free choice and seemingly progressing the way each one decides.
Or we open our eyes and see that we are conducted by society. Then we choose a better society, a more determined one which influences us, which gives us both the attainment of the lowness of each one and the greatness of the goal. These two forces, the pleasure and the pain, the pulling and the pushing, lead us to the goal. In all cases we are managed by society. But it depends by which society. This is basically our whole work.
The future shines for him in the present, in that soon the work will be over, meaning the time that he must work, and he will receive rest. Thus, the pleasure of rest that one will ultimately receive still shines for him. In other words, one’s profit will be that he will not be afflicted by what he now feels from the work.
It means that pleasure and pain are all relative. If today at this very moment, I feel minus 20 kg of pain and in the future I will have minus 10 kg of pain, that is pleasure for me compared to the present state, and for that I'm willing to exert and pay a lot, only to obtain it. Compared to the present state it is called benefit or pleasure. It's all measured with respect to the attaining individual of what he feels now in the work.
And this gives him the strength to be able to work now.
If one is unable to picture for oneself that soon he will be rid of the torments that he suffers now, one will come to despair and sadness, and that state can bring one to take one’s own life.
A person always progresses through pains. Where the present state seems to him intolerable and hated, only then can he move forward. But when he is in spirituality, we learned as well in the beginning of this article, that there is no pause. He is constantly in spirituality, constantly justifies the Creator and constantly in love and bestowal. How can it be that he progresses by hate of the present state?
Yet hate of the present state appears to him on top of the deficiencies, the new Aviut that bursts and appears in him every time, the new Reshimot. When the Reshimot appear, he feels hatred to the present state compared to the next state. And once more we are talking about the ratio where minus 20 compared to minus 10 is already pleasure. And plus 10 in bestowal compared to plus 20 that he can reach in bestowal, where he is in now in the spiritual degree, he feels them as pain that he cannot agree to be in, because he's got pains of love. It is through both of the two forces that he is drawn forward.
The fact that we sometimes say that in spirituality, he is drawn forward solely by the force of attraction to the good, it is because we want to be brief in our explanation. The truth is that we always have two forces and primarily the rejecting force, when even in spirituality, in bestowal, in the present Dvekut (adhesion), a person feels his state as intolerable compared to the brighter state that appears.
That's because everything is only with respect to the attaining individual. There is no absolute standard measurement with respect to which we measure. Unlike our world where we receive a kilogram or meter, that's how we measure. In spirituality it is only one state compared to the next state or the previous state.
3. Question: How is it, when I am now in pain knowing that it has come to advance me while I ought to be in pleasure? Either I'm in pain or I'm in pleasure.
4. No. We just learned that a person can be in pain and be joyful that these pains will soon stop. He'll come home and sit with his family and rest. For that he is willing to do a hard day’s work. And he assumes the pleasure he will have in the evening, when he brings food to his family and has rest as well, and that sustains him. He lives from this, from the future. We can never livefromnegativity, from emptiness. We will not have the fuel to move the smallest finger.
What do we need to do? We always look for what to live from, and normally these are Makifim (the Surrounding Lights) from the future that shines for us in the present. It may be that these Makifim are also negative and I fear that I'll remain sick, but at least not the way I'm now. It is already worth my while to work for it as the gap between the states is felt in me as having attained pleasure.
I remember myself unable to breathe; I was willing to be sick, it does not matter, but at least to breathe. After that would I be healthy? No, but I didn't care. That was at least a goal that I was willing to suffer for. I would be willing to pay, have another operation or whatever. What shines ahead lights the whole path. The pleasure that shines ahead is greater than all of the difficulties, pain and effort you must give to reach this pleasure.
And the greatness of this pleasure depends on the greatness of the goal. The greatness of the goal can only be brought by society, because a person only operates according to the way society operates him. Therefore, it depends on the goal and the greatness of the goal that society provides a person, accordingly he works.
It turns out that if he chooses the right society and a strong society, it gives him a sufficient image with the sufficient strength of the real goal, that he is willing to break anything as long as he can reach it. He has no choice. He operates without any other calculations, what society says he keeps. He has no choice in that. The choice is only of the society itself.
This is why our sages said, “One who takes one’s life has no part in the next world,” because he denies Providence, that the Creator leads the world in a form of “good that doeth good.” Instead, one should believe that these states come to him because Above they want it to bring him Tikkun (Correction), meaning that one will collect Reshimot (reminiscence) from these states so that he will be able to understand the conduct of the world more intensely and more strongly.
These states are called Achoraim (Posterior). And when one overcomes these states, he will be awarded the discernment of Panim (Anterior), meaning that the Light shines into these Achoraim.
There is a rule that one cannot live if one has no place from which to receive delight and pleasure. Thus, when one is unable to receive from the present, one must still receive sustenance from the past or from the future. In other words, the body seeks sustenance for itself in every means at its disposal.
Then, if one does not agree to receive sustenance from corporeal things, the body has no choice but to agree to receive sustenance from spiritual things because it has no other choice.
It means that the body doesn't care after all.If he’s about to die, if he feels that he has nothing to enjoy from, to fill himself with, he is willing to do anything as long as he receives some filling. And this is the springboard from Lo Lishma to Lishma, from corporeality to spirituality. It will be bestowing in order to receive, but toward the goal where, “I labored and found.” “Do the work here” so that one will reach the real vessels of bestowal
Hence, it must agree to receive delight and pleasure from vessels of bestowal, since it is impossible to live without sustenance. It follows that when one is accustomed to keeping Torah and Mitzvot Lo Lishma (not for Her Name), meaning to receive reward for one’s work, one has an ability to picture receiving some reward later on, and one can already work on the calculation that he will receive delight and pleasure afterwards.
However, if one works not in order to be rewarded, but wants to work without any reward, how can one picture for oneself having anything from which to receive sustenance? After all, one cannot create any picture, because he has nothing to do it on.
Hence, in Lo Lishma, there is no necessity to give one sustenance from Above, since one has sustenance from the picture of the future, and Only necessity is given from Above, not luxury.
That's how the forces are arranged. It's not that there is a desire that chooses to give or not to give to a person, but the degrees are arranged that way from Above downwards, and that's how they appear. We're not speaking of the Creator as wanting or not wanting. The fact that we say that, that's just how we express the natural laws, its forces: “I the Lord do not change.” In every degree there are its own laws.
The fact that a person is shown or not shown the future or the order of degrees is because that's how his vessels are arranged. That's how he perceives or doesn't perceive the Light, and in this Light he sees his 613 desires arranged in degrees of past, present, and future, which depicts for him the states and the ladder of states.
Hence, if one wants to work only for the Creator and has no wish whatsoever to take sustenance for other things, there is no other counsel, but he must be given sustenance from Above. This is so because one demands only the bare necessity to go on living, and then one receives sustenance from the structure of the Holy Divinity.
As in the corporeal life, according to the right model, we have to come to a point where everyone receives the necessary and more than the necessary he gives to the life of the society. That's the correct condition for a person to be in the human society, as a cell in a living body.
Then the whole society progresses and exists by its general force in which there is Godliness, eternity, perfection, and everyone feels not their own personal lives in which they receive the necessary minimum for their sustenance. Rather everyone feels the Upper Light clothed in the whole body of the whole structure of Adam ha Rishon, feels the belonging to every cell to every individual soul.
Baal HaSulam says that the same condition should appear in a person in his first spiritual degree. This is our entrance to spirituality, where we are willing to be like a single cell that receives for itself only for its sustenance, in order to provide, beyond this sustenance, everything to the other. And if a person is willing to persist in it, doesn't want more than what is necessary and not luxury, then he is incorporated in the spiritual picture, in the spiritual reality. And the transition from one to the other is called “crossing of the Machsom.”
It is as our sages said, “Anyone who is saddened for the public is rewarded and sees the comfort of the public.” The public is called “The Holy Shechina (Divinity)”...
It is one and the same thing: Holy Divinity is called “the “revelation of Godliness in the Kelim of the creatures.” The dweller is God and the Divinity is the Kelim in which he dwells. And this is why the collection of souls and the right connection among them, where each receives the necessary and bestows the rest on others. It is the condition by the law of equivalence of form, of the dweller clothing and appearing in Divinity, meaning that the Creator will appear in a person and clothe in man's soul
…since public means a collective, meaning the assembly of Israel, since Malchut is the collection of all the souls.
Since one does not want any reward for oneself, but wants to work for the Creator, which is called “raising Divinity from the dust,” so it will not be lowered so, meaning that they do not want to work for the Creator, but all that one sees that will produce benefit for oneself, then there is fuel for the work. And what concerns the benefit of the Creator, and one does not see what reward he will receive in return, the body objects to this work because it feels a taste of dust in this work.
Only a society that can provide a person with new values can necessarily force without any calculation and choice on his own part, to accept the new values and work accordingly. He must serve society, and in that is his higher degree because he receives from society support, help, appreciation, and everything his ego needs to work, for the time being egoistically, towards society, as a Bestower. Of course, it is in return for honor and appreciation from society, but this is already the right phase. After the habit becomes second nature he will come to Lishma as well.
Such a person does want to work for the Creator, but the body resists it. And one asks of the Creator to give him power to nonetheless be able to work to raise Divinity from the dust.
Society compels him and the body asks: “Let me just have the strength.” Because if there is a goal that now seems important to a person because society influences him this way, he then only looks for the strength to obtain this goal. Why? Because it is great in the eyes of society, and he necessarily wants to be great in the eyes of society, so now he seeks powers to implement it.
Hence, one is awarded the Panim (face) of the Face of the Creator, which appear to him, and the concealment departs from him.
Why? It is because he wants strength. The Creator as strength, so as to provide one with the strength to work, is revealed to him.