Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Shamati, page 29, Article 18: What is, My Soul Shall Weep in Secret in the Work.
When concealment overpowers one and he comes to a state where the work becomes tasteless, and he cannot picture and feel any love and fear, and he also cannot do anything of holiness, then his only counsel is to cry to the Creator to take pity on him and remove the screen from his eyes and heart.
What Baal HaSulam is trying to explain to us (he spoke about these articles before his students, at many occasions: during meals, short meetings, in a middle of a lesson) is that one is born in his substance, the substance of creation—the will to receive, to enjoy. All one’s movements, his thoughts and actions are only to delight himself. There is no other possibility to do anything opposite or differently since that’s how one’s nature conducts him and that’s how one must do things. Every single moment one’s thought is to maneuver himself and his environment so that he will be more comfortable, in other words, maximum pleasure for minimum effort. That’s the basic plan by which one exists.
Nature constantly prompts one to evolve. One’s desire and one’s ego evolve constantly. If a person remains in his ego, then he is drawn into a state where he is immobilized and doesn’t do anything. He would then find himself in a comfortable, convenient and permanent state.
But there are two reasons here for which we cannot remain calm and at ease. On the one hand, rest is very natural to us, to our desire to enjoy. We see how living bodies operate, they’re drawn to rest. But within a person there is a chain of Reshimot (reminiscences) , which awakens and our desire and ego are constantly renewed, we want to enjoy other things and greater things each time.
When a cat or a dog is born in a family they have the same desires pretty much when they’re small or when they’re mature. They live ten years in a family and you don’t see any changes in them. However, a child within ten years (when it’s born it’s what, five pounds, it doesn’t understand anything) grows into fifty pounds or a hundred pounds and he wants to swallow the world. Evolution increases constantly and prompts one to want more and more and more.
If one paid attention, he would see that these Reshimot are against nature. They constantly awaken in a person and push him forward; otherwise, he would have remained at rest. Would that be bad to be like someone just sitting under the tree?
If we have pleasure, then why should we change location? Why would we move, unless the Reshimot awaken us from within and forces us to realize them. We always picture for ourselves pleasure, comfort, rest and ease in a different way and then we have to chase after them and attain them. Poor us, we’re constantly trying to obtain new pleasures, which the Reshimot picture from within us, but we never reach or attain anything where we can say, “That’s it, I’ve come to something and that’s all I want.” That’s one thing.
In addition, the nature of the will to receive is that to the extent of pleasure attained, the pleasure immediately neutralizes the desire and then the sensation of pleasure disappears. We want to eat, and enjoy the food but in the end we remain with a full stomach and without pleasure. The pleasure is there only for that brief moment in the meeting between the piece of food and my palette and throat. That’s it.
This is to say, that the pleasures constantly disappears. They don’t stay permanently. However, the desire for them is constantly renewed and so are demands for new pleasures. It’s not that one wants the same thing even though the pleasure disappears but he will always want more and greater things. A person discovers this process after many life cycles; that this process is a deadlock and it is fruitless, that he can’t keep running like that. A person discovers that he is just suffering and he’ll never be able to stop this chase and be able to say, “I have fulfilled myself and now, I have an unending pleasure.” This is on the one hand.
On the other hand, because he sees that this chase doesn’t have an end where he’ll satisfy himself and be fulfilled, he therefore despairs. And on the contrary, instead of chasing pleasures he then, on top of his large will to receive, stops running. This is because in his mind he can already see that he will never get anything. That’s how people end up in despair. This despair comes when one sees the world as black and his life as useless, but actually we should say that this is not concealment. It’s not darkness but this is the Light, this is the disclosure. Now, he finally understands that he was constantly running like a machine chasing its operators without calculating, without seeing that there isn’t any good reward for its actions.
Now, he’s got this revelation and he sees that this whole process is useless. Thus one has to understand that the concealments, the darkness that a person feels is not only from the perspective of the sensation that he feels bitter or sweet, but also from the perspective of his intellect. He discovers that now he is in a state of truth. He has obtained something in life, and now he understands that maybe he can evolve differently.
There are two forms of attainment: in Mocha (mind/brain) and in the heart ( Liba). In the heartit is bitter and sweet. Perhaps he’s feeling bitter right now and he’s seemingly crying, but on the other hand, in his brain, this is the disclosure. Now, he has discovered that life is built differently and he’s built differently and it’s good that he stops running because it’s useless. Why waste all those years in vain?
After all of this despair, he discovers the point in the heart. He still doesn’t understand what is happening to him. It’s always the same when we evolve. We first discover things in sensation and only after by intellect, which comes from within the sensation. Because we are feeling beings, we constantly operate by attraction to pleasures and the intellect develops in obtaining what we want, along side the pleasures.
If a person wants more then he has, then there is a greater intellect to get what he wants. If he wants less, then he doesn’t need to be so smart. The mind goes according to his wants. The mind is a possession; it grows according to one’s desires. When a new desire appears, it appears for the time being without the intellect. However, when a person wants to realize the desire he looks for a way, and he grows respectively smarter, his intellect grows.
It’s the same with the point in the heart. A person despairs. He doesn’t know what to do, his life is in darkness. He doesn’t see that there’s any point to his life and that he can ever be fulfilled. Then he discovers a new drive which he doesn’t understand; he looks and he still doesn’t know what and how. Only afterwards, after a pretty long time perhaps, he begins to discover that this new desire is for something other than what he had before.
Previously he would chase physical pleasures: money, honor, power, knowledge. Now, he’s chasing perhaps knowledge too, but knowledge and sensations that are not at the level of this world. He doesn’t know what it is, but something else, something higher or farther, from an unknown source. Then too, he’s actually searching, exerting, running and is also crying, but now it’s a different weeping.
First, he has to understand what is happening to him, what he’s drawn to. And within these concealments too, he has to differentiate between the sensation and the intellect. As much as one’s sensation may still be bitter and empty, it’s precisely through this sensation that the intellect grows. When one wants to obtain something and understand why he’s feeling miserable, then one gets smarter and begins to evolve a spiritual intellect.
This is because the same desire that begins to evolve in him on top of all the previous desires (the earthly ones of this world,) is now for something that doesn’t exist in this world, something beyond this world. Hence, also the intellect that develops next to the desire is already a spiritual intellect (beyond this world). The intellect asks how to obtain something outside of himself and he slowly begins to discover.
What does he discover? Through the way that he experiences, he discovers that there is a source of pleasure. There are both physical pleasures and those beyond this world of corporeality, which are spiritual ones. This pleasure is called, “the Light or the Creator or the attribute of bestowal.” It’s all the same.
When a person feels the Light—the Creator, the attribute of bestowal—it gives him pleasure. Therefore, the final goal that we want to reach is Dvekut (adhesion), connection with this source, with the pleasure, the Light, the Creator, and with the attribute of bestowal. But the only problem is that it is only possible to obtain it according to the extent that a person is also in the same state, in bestowal like the Light, like the Creator. One can’t draw near the source of pleasure without being the way it is; this is why the final goal is called Dvekut.
How can one be integrated in the Creator, within this source of pleasure and feel good there? Since one’s nature pushes him toward it, he has no choice. He has to respond according to the Reshimot (reminiscences) that appear in him; he has to run toward it.
We have to take examples from this world just like little kids learn from us how to be grown-ups. We prepare for them whole systems of games, kindergartens, schools and books; all kinds of things because without these things they’ll never be grownups. They’ll be grownups in weight and years but not in their growth as a person.
To develop these little creatures into humans one has to now exert twenty years into developing them in a deliberate manner. A person exerts at least a third of his life only to learn to be similar to grownups, not to mention how much he has to continue studying and evolving afterwards. This third is precisely when he has all those powers, desires, urges and ambitions. He exerts himself, just to be similar to grown-ups.
From those same natural systems in this world, that is also how one should understand that he has the same system with respect to spiritual attainments. If he wants to be grown-up in spirituality, as grown up as the Creator, then he has to learn from Him how to be like Him. Then he is incorporated in the same state of endless pleasures and the boundless, eternal and complete life.
How? For that we have a system. That system of being like the Creator is called society. If we in society, in the group or in the human society in general, obtain the same attribute of bestowal, that same love, the same nature of the Creator, then we will be like Him. This is basically the game, the model, or the pattern which He presents to us, where through it we can become more and more like Him.
Take for example how kids grow through games they play in school throughout the years. They grow through all kinds of patterns, and through problems that they resolve. We prepare those problems for them, they work them out, and thus, they grow and they develop. That’s how a person is with respect to society as it is written in the articles of Matan Torah, and Arvut (mutual responsibility/guarantee) that a person is born loving himself only.
If he wants to start resembling the Creator, he must choose a little group where he begins to be similar to the Creator. In the same way the Creator relates to the creatures, similarly a person relates to that little group of creatures which is before him. It is clearly written in the Introduction to the Talmud Eser Sefirot that the Creator brings a person to this group and thus, places one’s hand on the good fortune and says, “Take this.”
The rest is one’s free choice, to position himself correctly in the group and relate to the group in the way the Creator relates to the creatures. By that, a person begins to become similar to the Creator and by being similar, he becomes Adam, from the word ‘Domeh’—similar. The more that one is overly-exerting and overly-dedicated and excessively loving to his friends, so as it is written, “From the love of man to the love of the Creator; from the love of the creatures to the love of the Creator.” By that, he equalizes himself with the Creator and feels that equivalence, the Dvekut, his similarity to the Creator. The measure of this similarity to the Creator is called the Olamot (Worlds).
The more that he can bestow to others and the measure of this bestowal means that he is at a higher level of the Olamot. He is in a higher and higher world until he arrives from giving to a small group to bestowal upon the whole of humanity and this is called reaching the world Ein Sof (Infinity). His bestowal is endless and thus, he becomes equal and adhered to the Creator and is incorporated in the roots and the source of all the abundance.
Originally, one’s will to receive is built from the Upper Light. The Upper Light created one’s will to receive, existence from absence, in such a way that what is found in the Light is felt in one as pleasure, whereas the opposite is felt as pain. Thus, if one is incorporated in the Light, in that attribute of bestowal, then he certainly feels pleasure in it.
In order to grow independently, to eliminate shame, acquire independence, eternity and completeness like the Creator, one then begins from the opposite nature and obtains everything by himself. Therefore, his way is made of concealments; either his will to receive is hidden from him or the corresponding fulfillment is. Something is hidden and something is revealed. A person should constantly be scrutinizing. The pleasures are hidden and the pain might be good because they are hidden, a person develops his intellect, and his craftsmanship of obtaining what he wants.
This concealment is for his benefit just like when one hides something from a child to let him search, develop, and know how to do things himself. If we give him everything he wants, then he’ll remain undeveloped. He has to be a little shrewd, to know how to operate himself and his environment. Therefore, in this game, one should understand the Creator’s attitude toward him as a grown-up as toward a little one and recognize that He stands behind him and the whole of creation is called the game. The fact that one cries (we see that kids cry too) is a sign of his Katnut (smallness) of intellect but when he opens and discovers the relationship among people, he sees that there’s no room for weeping or for concealment but only for pure love.
That’s why one has to always see where the concealments are leading a person, as it is written, “My soul shall weep in secret.” Why does one have to weep and from what? If concealments are from Above, from the Creator, then the crying is like a baby. Or it is exactly the opposite, perhaps he is happy because he has concealment and he can cry but for something else: not because of the concealment itself but because of the reasons for it.
If one feels bad, he doesn’t feel bad because he feels bad but because he doesn’t feel His attitude as good and for the time being seems bad to him. Just like when a child he is punished, pressured and demands are made on him. The child thinks his mother and father are bad for pressuring him and making demand on him so he hits them.
Perhaps in time he learns to see that his own nature is bad and then he’ll cry not because mommy and daddy are bad but because that’s what he thinks about them. This is now an entirely different weeping; it is not because of their attitude. He understands that their attitude is good but he interprets it as bad so he cries because that’s how he interprets their attitude. He wants a correction, he wants to justify them and because of that he cries to receive corrections and for his eyes to be open to see the correct attitude.
There are many forms of weeping according to the scrutiny, according to the discernments that a person obtains. Baal HaSulam says, “When concealment overpowers one and he comes to a state where the work becomes tasteless.” This is the concealment in the senses.
I feel bad and that’s it: dark, tasteless, no future, nothing. “And he cannot picture and feel any love or fear.” In other words, he feels that he can’t picture it as coming from the Creator who loves him and it comes specifically as love. This is just like a baby who can’t picture that he’s being asked to do things because he’s loved. He doesn’t have the intellect to understand that it is so. As much as you explain to him that “he’s being beaten because you want him to grow and understand,” he can’t understand it. His brain can’t absorb a plan from a higher degree because at this point his intellect has evolved only according to his sensation.
If he feels bad then his intellect determines, “I feel bad” and that’s it. But within us, in our spiritual evolvement, not as it is in the corporeal evolvement, there is always a part in us from a Higher Degree, from our more progressive state.
In one’s present state, within him there is something of a Higher Degree. It’s called the AHP
(Awzen, Hotem, Peh) of the Upper One; it’s in him. It brings him darkness from the Upper One. He feels concealment, darkness and has a bad attitude. “He can’t picture and feel any love or fear and he also cannot do anything of holiness.” What does it mean “anything of holiness”?
There is a person and the Creator. A Higher Degree is called “The Creator.” Why? From the words “come” and “see.” Come to a Higher Degree and then, you’ll see how great He is, how loving, how much He gives, filled with pleasure. Be incorporated in Him.
The Creator is like “Come to Me,” that’s the meaning. You have somewhere to progress, to enter; it’s like an invitation. You shouldn’t picture Him, G-d forbid, as an image or something. It’s just a higher quality than you called “The Creator.” When a person pictures it this way, he has no other council except to cry to the Creator to take pity on him and remove the screen from his eyes and heart.” Why cry? One sees that from the perspective of nature crying is a good thing. Why is it good? Because after a lot of work when one begins to feel himself as small, the receiver, corrupted compared to the Upper One who is more improved and who is more giving than the person.
Then, one’s feeling toward Him should be like a little one compared to a grown-up and he has to crave His degree, His state, and this is called “weeping.” Weeping is called “a desire to be great but one is unable to make himself this way.” When does one cry? When one is helpless and powerless, when he is in despair and he can’t get anything with his own strength.
If a person reaches these discernments, then it is called that he is weeping and this is really a desirable state. Otherwise, how is it possible that by nature one would be able to rise to his anti-nature, to something that’s totally above him and that he has no preparations for and no source or means for? All that one is left with is to determine the difference between himself and the Creator. What is the difference between them? From that difference one will develop a desire to cry.
If one gets that desire to cry, then that desire to cry in itself contains within it everything that’s needed to reach a higher degree. It is not just weeping like when one cries in this world, but this weeping is the attainment, the recognition of what is lacking in a person.
It’s not like in corporeality. In spirituality weeping is called MAN, a Kli, a prayer, a request. There is already a lot of understanding and wisdom in that, of what one would like to obtain in the Upper One (what one sees in the Upper One), but one thing is missing: the strength to get it. One has the desire. The desire to weep is the Kli except without the Masach (screen).
One wants to be like the Upper One, to give like the Upper One, to be integrated and become attached to Him and have the same form as His, but one can’t and that’s why he is crying. It’s helplessness. Only for this very last thing that “I can’t be like You.” It’s a real Kli for a Higher Degree. The lower one doesn’t need any more than, and the Upper One doesn’t need any more than that either because if that’s the desire in the lower one, it’s enough. He expresses his willingness, his preparedness to rise to a Higher Degree. Let’s see what Baal HaSulam says about weeping.
The issue of crying is a very important one. It is as our sages write, “all the gates were locked except for the gates of tears.” The world asks about that “If the gates of tears are not locked, what is the need for the other gates?” He said, “It is like a person who asks his friend for some necessary object. He asks and begs before him in every manner of prayer and plea, yet his friend pays no attention to all that.
In other words, from Above there is a process that has been arranged for us of how to get to the gate of tears. First, one has to understand exactly what his nature is, what the Creator’s nature is, what exactly it is one wants: money, honor, knowledge, power, physical pleasures, spiritual pleasures, and if they are for oneself. One has to understand many, many things. And these are called “gates” where he thinks that through all kinds of other desires, other states he’ll be able to enter spirituality.
He tries and he sees that he can’t, so he tries again and sees that he can’t do it with these attributes, this intellect, nor to gain something with these drives, to get something or even to give but in some other ways.
After all of the work and the efforts that he attempts to acquire spirituality, he comes to a state where from these gates (through which he wanted to enter) he builds the gate of tears. Meaning that he begins to understand that he can't jump to the gate of tears at the beginning, which it is built on top of all the same attempts and efforts through which he wanted to break into spirituality, but didn't succeed. It was built through all of his attempts to acquire spirituality through knowledge, through study, through engagement in all kinds of things. He thought that through all kinds of virtues he’d be able to do it, but when he gets past all those deeds and has completed them, he then comes to the building of the gate of tears.
The gate of tears is the last gate and it is not counted amongst all the gates. One might say that all the gates are the desires of a person through which he thinks he can attain spirituality. These desires are in a person. He has Taryag (613 numeric value) desires. When he sees that not through any desire, nor power, nor trick of his own is he able to come to spirituality, then beyond his nature, and beyond all of his desires, he builds this despair.
And from all of these desires he builds the understanding of what the gate of tears means. He knows exactly now what he wants to obtain, what it means to be similar to the Creator and to enter Dvekut with Him (as this gate is a gate to sanctity). This means he comes to a state where he is at the source. And then, if he comes to that state, it is considered that he comes to the gate of tears and that gate opens.
Baal HaSulam says that one can’t know in advance what the gate of tears is and in general what the gate to enter sanctity is. In corporeality, there is the door but there is the sign that the door is closed and one has to have an opening there; in spirituality, there is no such thing.
In spirituality, you have a wall and you don’t know in advance where the gate will be. Through all of one’s efforts, when a person wants to break this wall of Taryag egoistic desires, (through which he thinks he’ll acquire spirituality and despairs from them all), he then comes to a state where suddenly the door, this gate, opens for him in the place he’s at, and he enters spirituality. He couldn’t see in advance when this would happen, in what place, in what state.
When one sees that there is no longer reason for prayers and pleas, he then raises his voice in weeping.”
It is said about that: “All the gates were locked except for the gates of tears.” Thus, when were the gates of tears not locked? Precisely when all the gates were locked. It is then that there is room for the gates of tears and then one sees that they were not locked.
What does it mean that the other gates “they were not locked?” It’s precisely through them, on top of them, that one built this gate to enter sanctity, and then all one’s desires enter along with him, and with them, in joining them, he works in the spiritual world.
One didn’t just travel the entire way with all of these desires and tricks. Nothing was in vain. One has to experience them one by one. Through one’s efforts one can only accelerate his development as it is written, “Israel accelerates time and sanctifies time.” It’s not that one can skip from one state to another and go through several states without getting into them and despairing and then continuing. It turns out that through the gate of tears one enters all other gates into Holiness.
However, when the gates of prayer are open, the gates of tears and weeping are irrelevant. This is the meaning of the gates of tears being locked. In other words, when are the gates of tears not locked? It is precisely when all the gates are locked, that the gates of tears open. This is because one still has the advice of prayer and plea. [Meaning if one asks and prays but doesn’t cry then, he hasn’t come to the final scrutiny yet and he’s still standing before the gate of tears.] This is the meaning of “My soul shall weep in secret,” meaning when one comes to a state of concealment, then “My soul shall weep,” because one has no other option. This is also the meaning of “Whatsoever thy hand attaineth to do by thy strength, that do.”
Until one completes all of his options, tries to implement them and has realized that he will fail, then he will come to the gate of tears. In all the previous states he asks, prays and also wants to get help from Above, but this is not considered weeping. Meaning, he still connects his effort with the Creator’s help that both of them can seemingly work here.
Of course, without luck from Above he can’t, and it is not a problem to agree to that, but he thinks that there’s something that depends on him. What’s the problem from the start to say that nothing depends on oneself and cry? He can’t cry because without despairing from his own power, his egoistic nature does not allow him to cry.
One has to try everything he can to come to that resolution which is that only the Creator, the Upper Force, the Force of Bestowal, the Upper Light, the Force of the Torah, only this power can give one the intention to bestow on top of his desires. As it is written, “I have created evil inclination and I have created the Force of the Torah as a spice.”
Then it turns out that all of one's Taryag desires remain as desires. However, what one obtains (through weeping for them through the gate of tears, over all the other gates), is that he add to them the intention to bestow. Then, one has Taryag desires called 613 gates where he wanted to attain spirituality through every desire and failed and when he comes to the gate of tears, he’ll receive from Above the strength, the Light that reforms, which constructs the Masach (screen) for him, over all the other gates, over all the other desires. And he then enters spirituality.