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 in the book Shamati, Article #65, About the Revealed and the Concealed.
It is written, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” We should ask, “What does the text come to tell us, that the secret things belong unto the Lord?” We should not say that concealed means unattainable and that revealed means attainable. We can see that there are people with knowledge in the concealed part, as there are people who have no knowledge in the revealed part. And it cannot be said that this means that there are more people with knowledge in the revealed part than in the concealed part.
In general, how do we define revealed and concealed? If a little child doesn’t know about real life but knows only about the area of his games, his little bed, and his own little world, that’s actually his world. Does that mean that the rest of reality is hidden from him or not? If a person doesn’t know how to be a tailor, or if he didn’t go somewhere in the world, nor understands physics, astronomy or whatever, and has never dealt with bacteria or atoms, is that hidden from him or not?
If at the present, we can’t discover something in nature, we don’t know about certain phenomenon or laws and tomorrow we will find them, as of today, are they hidden from us or not? What does hidden mean? Is it hidden because we haven’t evolve yet like a child, or like humanity, whereas, tomorrow it will be revealed? Or is it hidden because it is hidden from me, but others have been there and saw and read about it, whereas, I haven’t? Because if no one knows about it, then it’s not called hidden because how would we know it’s hidden?
Hence, something hidden should be that which you know exists, but hasn't been attained. Then you can say that it’s hidden. So, spirituality, is it hidden or concealed? Everyone can reach it. It’s hard? Yes. So what? There are such laws in nature, in physics, and in chemistry that we’ll also discover in five hundred years, so it’s also difficult, and also we don’t have it now. Can we say that they are hidden?
About what do we say that’s it’s hidden? There is no such thing as revealed and concealed: it’s only hidden now, but soon it will be revealed. Because if it doesn’t become revealed soon, if one doesn’t know that it should be revealed, then one doesn’t know about it and then one can’t say that it’s hidden, so a person has nothing to say about it. Perhaps, there are all kinds of worlds, all kinds of natural phenomena, but if a person never discovers them, he doesn’t talk about them because he doesn’t feel them. He can’t say about them that they are hidden.
Hidden means that a person feels that it’s hidden from him, that now it is hidden but soon it will be revealed. Or the others say that it exists, however, within him it still doesn’t exist. These things are relative. With respect to everyone, there are people who are already in Gmar Tikkun (the End of Correction), where everything is revealed, Ein Sof (Infinity), yet there are those who don’t know that it exists. Soon, they will know it and then they will feel that it exists and what is hidden from them, with respect to them, we will then be able to talk about.
In other words, each and everyone actually is himself, saying from within his own evolution, his own Kelim (vessels) what is revealed and what he feels as still being concealed from him. And there are other things that he doesn’t talk about because he doesn’t recognize that they exist; it’s all relative.
The thing is that in this world, we see that there are actions that are revealed as actions to our eyes. This means that man’s hand is involved there. Alternatively, there are actions where we see that an act is done, but man cannot do anything there. Rather, a hidden force operates there.
It is as our sages said: “There are three partners in man—the Creator, his father, and his mother.” The revealed part is the commandment to be fruitful and multiply. This act is done by the parents. And if the parents do their things properly, the Creator puts a soul in the newborn. This means that his parents do the revealed part, as they can only do the revealed part, but the hidden part—placing the soul in the newborn—here the parents cannot do a thing; only the Creator Himself does that thing.
What I said about revealed and concealed was what Baal HaSulam writes about in The Introduction to the Talmud Eser Sefirot. He explains it when discussing the revealed and the concealed part in the Torah. Here, he talks about something else.He is talking about the two forms of actions that we generally encounter in our world of reality. If the only One, “Creator,” is operating as “There is none else beside Him” without permission to give man any kind of freedom of choice, then of course, there wouldn’t be anything revealed or concealed here, because we are not talking about animals and beasts that have something that is not revealed by them.
But a person has within him parts that should be corrected within his desire and then filled, something that doesn’t exist in an animal, on an animate level. And being that it exists in a person only as a result of the breaking, it turns out that man should compliment himself by himself. In the process of complementing, all of reality comes out according to actions which are divided into two. There are actions that come from the Creator called MAD and there are actions that come from the creature called MAN. And both should be balanced and work harmoniously with one another until they reach reciprocal love, which is the end of the correction.
Therefore, until a person learns about his own actions in which he should replicate examples from the Creator and perform similar actions to reach equivalence of form with the Creator, it turns out that all of these actions that he still didn’t succeed in placing over the will to receive over his own private system are actions that are hidden from him. And they are deliberately hidden to allow a person free choice, free growth, and to be free in the same level with the Creator, so he is not cancelled but actually allowed to rise.
That’s why it says, “The hidden things are to the Creator and the revealed are to us and to our sons.” It means, to us in this situation and to our children, meaning in future situations, which are the next phases of the corrections, to do everything that the Torah requires. Meaning to do whatever the whole system of correction requires us to regarding the desires (that need corrections) that are within our soul.
And Baal HaSulam brings an example. It’s not an example; it’s actually the only act that we do within the whole system of correction, which is the birth of the new state. It’s “his father gives the white, mother gives the red and the Creator gives the soul.” By that, after he performs every act, a person sees to what extent he becomes a partner with the Creator in this act of correction. Then they participate together; the will to receive that the Creator created and the Light that the Creator dedicated to creating the will to receive, both are like a place where the Creator and a person meet.
There is Malchut deEin Sof filled with the Light, but there is still no Creator or creature there. The creature is the one who will reach this Malchut de Ein Sof by his correction from below upward, and thus will make the creature to be filled with the Light. And the Creator is the one who with the Thought of Creation, created this status of Malchut de Ein Sof.
It turns out that both the Creator from above created Malchut de Ein Sof and man from below caused it to exist. And then both are there within a desire that’s filled with Light when a person brings the intention to bestow and the Creator brings the intention to bestow and then all this exists.
Similarly, with the Mitzvot, we must do only the revealed part, as only here we can act, that is, engage in Torah and Mitzvot by way of “that fulfill His word.”
In other words, whatsoever one is able to do by his strength, he does in order to achieve the correction of the desire, a Mitzva (commandment), that is, to correct the desire in order to bestow. We cannot correct our desires, the 613 desires in us. Each desire can be corrected only through the Light of AB-SAG, through the Upper Light, the Light that Reforms. For this, we were given a system called Torah so that we can awaken the Light through a special engagement, even if we are not yet in contact with it.
This system is above us. We are like a child who operates in higher systems around it—shops, factories, whatever else that create things for him. He doesn’t know what’s happening there in the big world, how many people learn and trouble themselves to bring him these little toys. He just plays with toys, he takes what’s ready. And he can’t attain the fact that the whole world works for him, he has no connection to it, and we are the same.
We don’t know what happens in this huge system. It’s enough for us to want it to work so that we will progress. And it’s built in such a way that it’s ready and we operate it and it works. That’s why it says, “The secret things are to the Lord our God,” to this whole system, and “the revealed are to us, to our sons,” what we need for the time being. In the future of course, we will know the whole system. Besides operating it, we will do so not like kids but with understanding and awareness about the whole system. But for the time being that’s just the way it is.
We have 613 desires, which we should correct through the Light that Reforms in order to bestow. The Light that Reforms comes from the Upper Source and we don’t know what the source is, what the Light is or how it operates, or what it does in us. We don’t attain it, just as we don’t attain how we eat, we just enjoy the food. We are compelled by nature to eat, otherwise, we suffer. If we didn’t eat, we wouldn’t live. To force us to give to the body what the body needs in order to live, a desire was joined to it so that we want to eat. In this way we are forced, then keep it [this precept], and thus it [the body] lives.
But even when I keep this Mitzva that nature forces me to keep (thus it is called a Mitzva, a commandment), whether I want to or not, I don’t know how it’s absorbed in me, how it’s disintegrated into a thousand components, how they affect me, or how they work. It’s just a wonder of wonders what happens there! And I learn maybe a millionth of what happens there through all of our sciences, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s called, “the concealed are for the Creator and the revealed are to us,” which is what we have to do in the system so that it operates.
That’s how it is in all the systems that we are in. We just try to feel the wall in the dark; we don’t see anything about the reality we are in. We think we understand science—we understand nothing. The whole actual system, the real nature is completely locked away from us for the time being.
This is also the case with respect to corrections in our desire and with respect to other external research in nature. We just have to see where we have to work in order to reach our goal. Because there are thousands of ways to research, but they will only confuse us.
That’s why Baal HaSulam says, “The revealed are to us and to our sons:” scrutinize what appears to you in a purposeful manner, check it out, and accordingly proceed. Otherwise, you just fall into an endless research and you still won’t find anything. You can sit researching an electron for a million years and you won’t discover even a billionth of it, nothing, you won’t discover anything of its essence. The real disclosure is when a person goes to the root of nature and from there understands and discovers everything else that happens from the root down.
However, the hidden part, meaning the soul in the keeping of Torah and Mitzvot, there one cannot do a thing.
This means that he has to work in correcting his desires and do whatever he has to do. That is, to raise MAN, to disclose his desire, that is, to understand why he has this desire, and to aim the desire toward the goal through society. As Baal HaSulam explains in the beginning of The Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot, the Creator brings the person to choice, to the group where he should acquire a greater desire than what he is given, what is awakened in him, and acquire the importance of the goal.
This importance of the goal is not because it’s just important. It’s important because one wants to reach bestowal. Thus, a person can then absorb this desire only from society when he gives to society and is affected by them. When we all understand how much we need the desire to bestow, he then elevates the desire to bestow, that need for a desire to bestow, upward.
Then only on that condition, when he reaches a true, strong desire does he get the result from Above, He operates the system. He doesn’t know how, which system, but he operates it. It’s called, “the hidden things are to the Lord our God.” Only later on will he know which system did he operate according to the equivalence of form. By equivalence of form he will be able to discover a part of it.
To the extent that a person now receives from the system the Light that Reforms, the Light that fills him, by compiling within him that system, he begins to understand it. It’s as if it comes within him from the outside or that he discover it within himself. It doesn’t matter how you explain it. A person becomes by his correction incorporated in or he swallows the system. He discovers that it is within him, that all the worlds are in him.
And when one keeps the Torah and Mitzvot in action, called “doing,” one should pray to the Creator that He will do the concealed part, meaning place a soul in the practical part of our share.
It means that it’s not enough for a person to do what he has to do, to show his desire for correction. Within his desire for correction there should be a scrutiny of what he wants to happen. He doesn’t know how the Creator does that, but he has to know exactly what he is about to receive. It’s still “I labored and found.” A person doesn’t know it for certain until it really clothe in his desires, but he has to know the extent that he understands it exactly, according to his present Kelim.
He has to know that. Otherwise, it’s not considered asking, or demanding that there is a request in him. Request means that he is yelling for something specific. In other words, in his work he has to come to a strong desire in a clear form of what he wants.
The practical part is called “a candle of a Mitzva,” which are only candles, which must be lit by the “Torah, Light.” The Light of the Torah ignites the Mitzva and gives the soul and the liveliness in the practical part, as with the newborn, where there are three partners.
The Light comes and corrects the Kli (vessel) and then the Creator appears to a person as great, the will to receive is willing to work in order to bestow. Just like Behina Aleph (phase one) that discovered BehinaShoresh (root phase), wanted to resemble Behina Shoresh and thus brought about Behina Bet (phase two) out of the four Behinot (phases) of the Direct Light, that’s what happens here. The revelation of the Creator to a person is called “He who knows all those secrets testify that he will not turn back to folly,” and then the person receives the attribute of bestowal, to a certain extent according to the desire, the MAN that he had exposed.
Then, through this force, the greatness of the Creator, that appears in him (just like the greatness of the Host) he is willing to do something for Him. That is, one has the powers to adapt one’s desires in some form toward Him or with respect to Him. That’s the correction.
And this is the meaning of “the things that are revealed belong unto us,” meaning that we must work in the form of “whatsoever thy hand attaineth to do by thy strength, that do.” It is only here that we can act; but obtaining the soul and vitality depend on the Creator.
And this is the meaning of “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God.”
This means that a person doesn’t know exactly when he will receive an answer from Above. He thinks he is ready at the end of the request, and he is just exploding. But we see with kids how they want, and they demand with a lot of tears, and after thirty seconds you see that they’ve forgotten about everything. That’s what happens with us. It’s not that we are like kids in the sense that we run from one state to the other, but the desires that change in us change like they do in kids, though we don’t feel it so much with ourselves.
As is the case with kids, they bring us out of the desire that we had into a new desire. And in the new desire, we still haven’t obtained the desire for the goal, for the new desire being in the property of bestowal. Until we put together all the desires that make up our cup and over each one of them we place a demand that this desire will have the form of bestowal, it is not considered that we have built the MAN.
It is because there is no partials in spirituality. The act should be an act from a complete Partzuf, ten Sefirot, even if it’s just a point. All the 248 organs and 365 tendons have to be arranged. We don’t know them in numbers, quantity or quality, but until they are all arranged in the present request—while the person doesn’t know as we don’t know how our body works, as it’s written, “All of my bones shall say —until then it’s not considered an orderly request, a ready one, one that is absorbed in the Upper Partzuf, in the Creator, that He hears and accordingly responds.
As Kabbalists say, “there is only one promise.” The minute the lower one can awaken the Upper One, the Upper One will immediately work toward the lower one and will execute everything the lower one asks. Because otherwise, the Upper One is not giving and the lower one who is asking, is requesting only bestowal, therefore it puts them in equivalence of form, in requests, intentions, goals and now in action. And what the Upper One does is actually make the lower one similar to itself.
And this is the meaning of “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God.” The Creator promises that if we do the share that is revealed to us, acting on the conditions of the Torah and Mitzvot in the practical part, the Creator will put a soul into our actions.
This means that the desires have been corrected and the corrected desires have been filled with the force or the quality of bestowal, the Light of Hassadim (mercy). And this is actually what the lower one asks for: for bestowal, for the attribute of bestowal, for the force of Hassadim, the Light of Hassadim to dominate him, and fill him. And by that, it will resemble itself to the Creator. The disclosure of Light of Hochma (wisdom), illumination of Hochma within Hassadim comes later; it’s an addition, it’s not the essential. And we have to want the essential which is the Katnut (smallness), the Hassadim.
However, before we are awarded the concealed, called “a soul,” our revealed part is like a body without a soul. Thus, we must be awarded the hidden part, and this is only in the hands of the Creator.
Of course, body doesn’t refer to the body of flesh and blood, but refers to a person’s desires. We have to understand that unless he is speaking specifically, all of these words that talk about our physical body actually, according to the language of root and branches, refer to the spiritual body, to our desires, whether they are corrected desires or corrupted.
Question: Baal HaSulam writes that if we do the part that is revealed for us to do in Torah and the Mitzvot , the Creator will place a soul in our actions. What is revealed for us to do?
What is revealed for us, according to the state of the generation, state of humanity, our own private states, after all the incarnations, all the evolution, what we see is reality, I and something around me—that’s what’s revealed. And within each of us some desires reveal themselves, which prompt us in all kinds of directions. The desires that appear in a person sometimes surface in him in a purposeful way: they are asking for a connection with their source. And then a person carries out what these desires awaken in him. He asks, “What’s the meaning of my life?” From these questions he reaches some place where he can realize his desires.
In every single situation and every time there is a part that is revealed, say that desire, and the concealed part, the filling. A person never asks about the desires; he always asks about the fulfillments. Even when he sometimes asks about the desires, “Why I am not hungry?” That is to say, “I am in danger because I don’t want to eat.” Some people are like that. But still, he is not asking about hunger, he is asking what will happen from it, about the fulfillment that he will receive.
So desires are always revealed to us and fulfillments are what are hidden from us. As we learn in the wisdom of Kabbalah, the filling is the Masach (screen) and Ohr Hozer (the Returning Light); this is what fills the Kli. And it’s not at all the Light that is seemingly about to fill the desire. It’s impossible to understand how the Masach and the Returning Light fill a desire that wants to be filled with what seems to it to be the Light of Wisdom. But this is what later on appears.
It appears to such an extent later on that when it gets the ability to bestow, it receives the Light of Wisdom and enjoys within it and then sees that it is a pleasure of bestowal. The pleasure is not when it enjoys; it enjoys only on condition that it has connection with the Loving One and only in order to express his love, is he filled with pleasures. Otherwise, it is impossible at all to be filled, it’s the Klipa (shell) that awakens, but you can’t receive any other fulfillment. Hence, the desires always appear and the fulfillments are always concealed.
Question: “…if we do the share that is revealed to us, acting on the conditions of the Torah and Mitzvot in the practical part, the Creator will put a soul into our actions.” It sounds as if there are conditions that we have to work by and then it will be okay?
Yes, because every degree, every corrected state demands that there is a desire for it. You the corrupted one should want the corrected state. That’s the condition and then you will get it. How can you want it? You are given possibilities. This is called, “revealed to us.” When you do what’s revealed to you, you will receive what is hidden from you.
How can that be done? First of all, we have to understand that all of reality is only designed for that. And everything else you have, all kinds of escapes from the direct path toward correction is all just obstructions. And if you concentrate only on that and work only toward that, within a short time you will finish your cup. You will have a complete desire for what you should want. At the end, you only design your desire.
Say, it is like a restaurant owner. He puts in front of you a nice dish, but he wants you to want it and that’s it. He has his pride. He will give you a thousand of possibilities, things you know, things that you are used to, things that are right for you, things in which you understand the flavors and are so attached to, [but he wants you to want that particular dish.]
The Creator wants you to know as much as possible about this dish without touching it yet. But as much as you can see it as desirable, as much as you can want it, as much as you can crave it beyond everything you know (and don’t know it and that’s the game); if you really seal that thing with Him, and somehow you want that thing more than anything, then you get it.