Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Now we can interpret what is brought in the Gmarah (Hulin p. 7): “Rabbi Pinehas Ben Yair was going to Captive Redeem. He came across the river Ginai (the name of the river was Ginai). He said to Ginai, “Split your waters, and I will pass in you.’ It told him: ‘You are going to do the will of your Maker, and I am going to do the will of my Maker; you, perhaps do, perhaps not do, while I certainly do” etc.
It says that the meaning is that he told the river, meaning the will to receive, to let him through it and reach the degree of doing the will of God, meaning to do everything in order to bestow contentment upon his Maker. The river, meaning the will to receive, responded that since the Creator created it with this nature of wanting to receive delight and pleasure, it therefore does not want to change the nature that the Creator had created.
Rabbi Pinehas Ben Yair waged war on it, meaning he wanted to invert it to a will to bestow. This is called waging war on the creation that the Creator had created in nature, called the will to receive that the Creator had created, which is the entire creation called existence from absence.
There are several facets to what he says. First, sometimes a person thinks that he can directly fight his own will to receive, that he can destroy it, restrict it, refrain from using it and that’s the purpose. But that’s not at all the case. The will to receive is a means that you have to use each time for obtaining a goal. The goal is not to destroy or eradicate the will to receive; the goal is to attain Dvekut in the Creator, which is attained precisely within the will to receive.
The will to receive is our whole Kli where everything happens. We feel ourselves, our reality, life, the world—we live within the desire. There is no other substance. We have to, within that desire, feel a higher degree than the desire. The One who created and designed the desire is also attained within that desire.
This is why, in approaching the desire, we have to determine the attitude. The attitude is not that the desire is redundant, but that to feel the Creator, to be with Him, to equalize, match or resemble Him, is possible precisely within the desire. The importance of obtaining the Emanator and the sensation of the Emanator will determine how one uses the desire. It is not to look down on it and try to stay far away from it. The important thing in our work is the clarification of true and false. When we use attributes our overall desires, which are divided into many attributes and many individual desires, this is the substance whereby arranging it correctly in order to obtain equivalence with the Creator, we reach the goal.
One must know that during the work, when the will to receive comes to a person with its arguments, no arguments and no rationalities help with it. Though one thinks that they are correct arguments, it will not help one defeat one’s evil.
Instead, as it is written, “He blunted its teeth,” meaning to advance only by actions, not by arguments. This is called that one has to increment powers coercively. This is the meaning of what our sages wrote, “He is coerced until he says ‘I want.’” In other words, through persistence the habit becomes a second nature.
Here it seems like we are fighting the desire. But how can you fight it? There are many people who think that they can limit or restrict themselves, so they try and stop using their nature and with that they’ll succeed. A person using this wrong approach will only become proud, and want honor and reward for what he does with himself. A person can not fight the will to receive he is in. The Upper Light can change, can correct the will to receive and change the way it is used.
This is why we shouldn’t fight the will to receive directly. Even, as it’s says ‘blunt its teeth,” means, don’t listen to what it says, rather now you have to acquire the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator. To the extent that you acquire the greatness of the Creator, you will know how to work with that will to receive correctly. If you don’t become attached to a higher degree, your whole work within the desire, even if you restrict it, if you don’t do anything with it, will only be lying to yourself, where you think you are working against the desire. Nonetheless, all of your calculations are within the desire.
Until you’ve not obtained the Upper Light, its attributes, its importance, until you’ve identified with the Upper Light and related to this desire as a means, until then the work is incorrect. Even though it is written in many places explicitly that we have to work seemingly against the desire, that we have to ‘blunt its teeth,’ we have to control it.
This is possible only to the extent that you elevate the importance of the goal, of the Creator, of the Upper Light, of the attribute of bestowal, above your desire. Only by that force can you ‘blunt its teeth,’ can you break it and can control it. If you go seemingly, you against the desire, who is you by yourself? With your pride, you are going against some desire in you and while still working within the ego, thinking that there is spiritual work here.
By subjugation to the Light, to the purpose of the creation, to the Creator, so that His attribute will control you, He will control you, by that you defeat the desire, begin to look at it as help and not as something that hates. The desire is then used effectively.
It’s a more mature approach and the main thing about this approach is that you acquire the second nature, the nature of the bestowal. You don’t fight the desire like the king’s son who built for himself a shield and a sword and fought the enemy himself. What does he have to fight the enemy with? If he’d lost the shield and the sword that he got from his father, from the Creator, he would not have the tools to fight the enemy. These tools are the same as the enemy itself. With pride, he was fighting against desires to rest, eat or other kinds of desires.
Just like us, shame keeps me from receiving something. Is this considered being a hero? I hold myself back as shame is more worthwhile for me than the pleasure I’ll be receiving by some refreshment. So I tell myself “no, I don’t want it.” I am guarding myself. By that I only gain. It’s an egoistic calculation; nothing is corrected by that.
You can only correct one nature with another nature, with the Upper Light. This is why we say that if a person is not in a group, if he doesn’t feel that he is facing his desire, then the whole direction of his work will be only from a greater desire towards smaller desires. He calculates which is more worthwhile, and thinks that he is progressing and making correction; but there’s no correction there. The correction is only the extent to which a person identifies with the Creator over the desire, and turns to the desire and uses it correctly. Only with this other nature,the Light corrects the desire.
Question: What does he mean when he suggests going by actions and not arguments?
Argument means one desire against another desire, what’s smaller, what’s greater. This is how arguments are, in fact. In actions, it means that you acquire the Upper Force, the force of bestowal and through it you approach the will to receive and then you defeat it. You don’t defeat it, rather its intention to receive.
Question: What are actions in the period of preparation?
The actions in the period of preparation are primarily to obtain the sensation, the understanding that you are not to remain in the desire itself.
This is why, all the results come from the group, where you are with others, and see yourself through them, where the group is like your mirror. It turns out that by that you can see if a direction is correct or not. Are you working between your two desires: do you prefer one against the other or are you working opposite the group, where you have to already work in actual bestowal as against reception. This is why if a person doesn’t take his scrutiny through the group, to an attitude where it can be pretty clearwhether or not I am attached to others here and through them I am attached to the Creator, then without this scrutiny he would not understand where he is.
It may take decades of his being in some kind of trip, where he thinks he is right before the barrier and he’ll reach Gmar Tikkun, it’s right ahead of him. He can imagine whatever he wants, but it will be completely incorrect. He still hasn’t even begun his corrections, he hasn’t done any thing yet, which is the real demand of the Upper Force to relate to himself correctly—he still does not have it. If he doesn’t take through the society, like through a check box, his own desires, his own scrutiny, his own calculations, then he never succeeds, he always gets it wrong.
Question: What does it mean to use your desire opposite the group? One uses the desire to sleep, another…
Using the desire through the group or opposite the group means that I always weigh, in all the different desires I have in me, whether by using these desires, I am connected to the Arvut that I want to see in the group, and within the Arvut with the Creator, or not. That’s all. Can the way I use my desires be realized in the ideal Kli, where they are all connected together and the Creator is in it? Can there be such a thing now as my relating to myself correctly, to my desires to my thoughts, to my calculations, or not? How do I know that it’s the ideal Kli, the Creator and I?
We have to concretize it more in the group. How do I experience them, in our trying to all be in it more practically, together and all that? Can there be such a thing or not? If it can be, then a person somehow is less erring than in the calculations that are completely detached from matter. Every time one does it, the habit becomes a second nature. First of all he gets used to it; second, the Surrounding Light shines correspondently for him, and he begins to feel the depth in it, the volume. Then he doesn’t make mistakes, he progresses in his scrutiny, in the right direction. It means he begins to identify with the general Kli.
These are exercises.
Question: From all these examples, we see that a person is in one particular state. How can it be that he can sustain another nature, that he can simultaneously have bestowal and reception? How does it work you have to split your personality to live with it?
It does seem to us that if we are in bestowal, how can we be in reception or if we are in reception, how can we be in bestowal? There is no split here. If I identify with the unity of the souls in which there is the Creator, and look from there at my will to receive, then I will suddenly see it as a help. Precisely by the use of it now, at the point where I hold the unity and the Creator, I turn to the will to receive. Now I can see that it can be in me as a force that implements the unity and the adhesion with the Creator, without which I will not have the strength, the glue, to be in it.
The will to receive becomes simply substance, desire that I add to the idea of unity and Dvekut; and within it I then feel myself as being in unity and Dvekut. Only in the beginning, when it was felt as dominant, as one, as “I,” as alone existing, then it was as an opposing help. But it’s not against, on the contrary, by regarding it, by seeing the negativity in it and that it’s used incorrectly, that’s the help. It’s like Pharaoh, who brings the children of Israel closer to their father in heaven.
Question: We say that if a person woke up for a lesson and doesn’t have the energy to get up, does he still get up and without the intention comes here rather than stay home?
He should stay in bed with intention, the intention to rest, to sleep.
Question: My question refers to the state where, you said, you cope with your desires, one against the other. We say circulate, even without the intention, and it’s better than not circulating. How do you weigh it with respect to not fighting one desire against the other?
It’s a good question. He says: if I’m only inside the desire, I still won’t have any Dvekut in anything. Yet I’m told to use one desire opposite another desire. They say that when you have the desire to sleep, wake yourself up to come to the lesson, not with the desire for spirituality, but with the desire to not be looked down upon, to be respected and appreciated. If you don’t come to the lessons, then who are you and what are you? It’s worth your while to come to the lesson, so you don’t hurt your self-respect, right? You place the desire to sleep opposite another egoistic desire, which is actually stronger and higher, and more scrutinized—higher on the egoistic ladder.
Is it correct to use it this way? Here we see and hear them say that only the Light can correct the desire, and only in Dvekut do you come back there and relate to the desire correctly. Yes and no. You’re in a state you did not choose, where you’re dead, and to wake yourself up and proceed to a place where you can already, from there on, leap to Dvekut, to the group, to all kind of thoughts. You certainly cannot awake in bed, because: “I’m sleeping, I’m dead, I can’t do anything, I don’t care, leave me alone, I’m just a beast. I’m in bed, I can’t think about the Creator, spirituality. It’s all too much.” In this state, I have to awaken in me the egoistic powers—the greatest egoistic powers that I only can—so they will help me get up.
That’s why it says that envy, desire and honor take a person out of the world. On the contrary, may we have many more such powers. I aught to worry what are they going to say about me, who am I, what am I, how’s my wife going to look at me, “what are you just an animal? Yesterday you said this and today that’s it, you’re done? Are you a man? And the children will look at you and say, “The father has no more spirituality or anything.”
So the entire world, the neighbors, even I will ultimately look at you this way. “What are you looking at me like that for?” If I can, through all these persuasions, bring myself out of bed, then I gained and I am on the right way to spirituality. I am already working with the will to receive, yet for the time being it’s on its own grounds. I am telling it: “It’s worth your while.”
How do we arrive at spirituality, in general? Also through Lo Lishma (not for Her name) by my telling you, “It’s worth your while to acquire spirituality.” Even in advanced degrees towards the barrier I still talk about what’s worthwhile. Even my calculations in the group, if I look deep into it and see all the calculations I make; it’s also worth my while.
But in this ladder of profitability, I have many degrees: double concealment, single concealment, such and such calculations. When we talked about the correction of the desire as being the adhering to the Creator, to the group, to bestowal, and only then approaching the desire and using it, that’s already when I am approximating corrections. But to advance toward corrections, in a state where I am already inside the will to receive, then I am coming to the society like a dead man and asking. What is the asking? I seek to hear something that will awaken me that will give me egoistically some awakening. That means that within the will to receive, without turning to the Light, we still have a part of the way in which we come closer to corrections.
This is why there is work of corrections, which is the work of men. But you have women and children, in whom these desires, these states are allowed to evolve gradually, until their knowledge increases and then these desires are allowed to work in corrections. Before this, to give to these desires, these states, a person needs all kinds of calculationsas to what is worthwhile.
Question: Maybe it’s worthwhile not to pressure myself, and wait for me to grow and want more, and not start running around and circulate twelve hours a day. Maybe it’s worthwhile to be more relaxed, or not.
Tell why it is worthwhile.
Question (cont’d): Because I don’t want to create a situation of pride and all that. I don’t get spirituality out of that anyhow, only pride, and I’ll work with one desire over the other. Or maybe I have—I don’t know—some attributes that I was born with, that are simply mine.
You’re one hundred percent right. We always calculate this way and that’s why we get relaxed, and this is the way we calm ourselves. “It’s okay, Michael, it can be tomorrow or maybe in a few more hours, slowly. Now you should think about this, now about something else. This is not all what life is about.” This is what we do and that’s the greatest stumbling block. When a person calms himself down and lies to himself that he’s in the process of corrections, but he’s actually not in it. Is it correct to be this way?
I remember, my mother told me, “Think about your health, getting up at night like that. Be normal be like everyone. You have children, a family.” She was right, as to her own child. What is he doing with his life? That’s how we are each one to ourselves. Is it correct to behave this way?
We have to understand that all of our calculations, from the inception, come from the egoistic desire. You have no correct measurement ever as to how many hours to sleep, how many calories to eat. All you have is necessity, which is neither praiseworthy nor condemnable. It is to the animal in you to which you have to give a thousand calories, or five, six hours of sleep. You have to wash it, whatever it needs. This is called necessity. After that, you can start working. Whatever things youwill do,if it is within the will to receive, beyond this the will to receive in this corporeal manner is built only to give everything else to bestowal.
What kind of calculations can you have beyond it? Just as you relate to necessity in this necessary manner, you have to do it without becoming righteous, or start fasting here. Thus, beyond it, you have to dedicate everything else to attain the goal. If you’re in the will to receive and you begin to judge things, then judge them according to this principle.
Question: What I’m asking about is internal fasts, fasting being a kind of coercion, because I can be coercive towards the other side. For a person who has just begun and pressures himself, more than he can, to evolve, that is also fasting.
Yes. Beginners sometimes exaggerate, seemingly, because a person works out of his impressions. Normally beginners are in the state of elation, before they grow old like we did, and say, “Yes, thank God, we are on the way, and we know how to progress, and we are progressing.” That’s how we calm ourselves instead of getting even more highly excited than we ever had been. We progress systematically, so to speak, which is the big lie, because in spirituality, if you’re not adding every second to what you had before, you’re not progressing.
Beginners are really progressing, and they open more and more degrees for themselves. You don’t want to stop a person from doing that; you don’t want to cool them down. You’re forbidden to do that. He should work according to his desire; give him a chance to do what he thinks. Then if he calms down, he calms down. That’s his own business, but it’s not for you to tell a beginner, “don’t study too hard, etc.” It’s forbidden, it’s just as coercive as the other way around. You just have to give a person the possibility to evolve and realize his desire. Doesn’t matter if he’s a beginner or is big or small. You just have to prepare for him what is right for him to the best of your understanding, but not do the calculations instead of him.
You might say that about anyone. Today my friend is really burning, he’s on fire, he wants to learn five more hours and I should tell him “no, what for, study as usual.” How can you say that? You also can not say its opposite: “Why didn’t you study today?” Even that’s forbidden to say. You have to awaken him the way the society awakens a person, through advertisement of the greatness of the goal, but you don’t pressure him directly, the way parents pressure their children to learn. Of course, nothing will come out of it.
One must especially try to have a strong desire to obtain the will to bestow and overcome the will to receive.
It means that on top of all the calculations, the blows and everything the will to receive awakens in us all these sensations of heaviness, discomfort, pain, torment, so that we will as quickly as possible obtain the will to bestow. That’s the work of the will to receive. If we turn back to it instead of attaining the will to bestow, if we want to do certain completions in the will to receive, so that it won’t hurt us, then we only increase it. Now it has to give us even greater afflictions. That’s our problem. That’s why humanity keeps progressing towards greater blows, because it’s not learning the lesson from the smaller blows as to their reason.
Because it is enough for a smart boy to just be reproached and he will understand why and correct himself. If he’s stubborn, then you’ll have to beat him until he begins to understand there is no choice, and somehow through the stubbornness, having no choice he breaks. That’s how we are. This is why to regard the will to receive, our entire nature, which is the worst, as help, as this Pharaoh, shortens the way.
The meaning of a strong desire is that a strong desire is measured by the in-between rests and the arrests, meaning the cessations of time between each overcoming.
Sometimes one receives a cessation in the middle, meaning a descent. This descent can be a cessation of a minute, an hour, a day, or a month. Afterwards, one begins to try and obtain the will to bestow once more. A strong desire means that the cessation does not take him a long time and he is awakened to the work immediately.
It is like a person who wants to break a big rock. He takes a big hammer and hammers many times all day long, but they are weak. In other words, he does not hammer the rock in one swing but brings the big hammer down slowly. After that he complains that this work of breaking the rock is not for him, that it must take a hero to have the ability to break this big rock.
Clearly, if we don’t give the will to receive a blow that is stronger than the will to receive itself, then we’re not getting anything. On the contrary, by that we weaken ourselves. Let us say I’m standing in front of an enemy, I give him a blow, but he keeps standing and does not fall. What did I get by that? He feels that I’m weak and can’t fell him; I feel I am weak I don’t have sufficient powers to fell him. So he gets stronger and I get weaker. It’s a double loss.
There are corrections where we have to split the big correction into many, many small actions, and by that we progress. This happens if we acquire powers from Above, and can divide the desire into smaller portions and correct it, and then connect the corrected desires together.
But if I’m opposing the desire, as Baal HaSulam explains the situation, then to give it smaller blows is only to weaken yourself. By that you become despaired. The problem is that you didn’t turn to the Creator to receive the strength for the blow from Him, but thought of coping with your will to receive by yourself. But it will never work when by yourself. Because the Creator wants to so arrange it for the person, so as to show him that he should take up the force of bestowal. That the appearance of the will to receive opposite a person, when a person already feels that it is against him, it’s so that he’ll equip himself with the force of bestowal.
What does it mean, to succeed or to fail, that he gave a small blow? It means that he fought himself, not together with the group, with the Creator, with the purpose of creation, with all the Arvut .So then of course he will not win.
He says that he was not born with such great powers to have the ability to break the rock.
However, one who lifts this big hammer and strikes the rock in a big swing, not slowly but with a great effort, the rock immediately surrenders to him and breaks down.
This is on condition that he goes along with the force of the Creator. “A hero will not win by much force,” but only with the power of bestowal can he break the rock.
This is the meaning of, “like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.”
Similarly, in the holy work, which is to bring the vessels of reception into Kedusha (Sanctity), we have a strong hammer, meaning words of Torah that give us good counsels. However, if it is not constant, with long intermissions in-between, one escapes the campaign and says that he was not made for this, but this work requires one who was born with special skills for it. Nevertheless, one should believe that anyone can reach the goal, though he should try to always increment one’s efforts in overcoming,thenonecan break the rock in a short time.
We must also note that there is a very harsh condition here in order for the effort to create a contact with the Creator. The effort must be in the form of adornment. Adornment means something that is important to a person. One cannot work gladly if the labor is not of importance, meaning that one has joy at now having contact with the Creator.
That’s already a test of my having made progress. Progress can only be tested in how much I am integrated in the group. The group means the idea of unity. There I must feel the mutual attribute of bestowal, and in it I can also feel those comprehensive forces, which is called the Creator. This is how we discover the Upper Force.