SUNDAY: BINAH-TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN

READING: between after midnight and sunrise of Sunday.

Baal HaSulam. The Freedom

Morning Lesson June 2, 2023

Transcription is made from simultaneous translation, which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio.

Part 2:

Baal HaSulam. The Freedom. (Pleasure and Pain)

Reading Article. (00:21) “However, when we examine the acts..”

1. S. (07:52) He says that the pleasure and pain push us and pull us to its will where he sees fit. I was always certain that I am an egoist, I know that I am an egoist?

R. You are an angel!

S. Truly in my environment I am a big egoist, but if I was not an egoist then I wouldn’t attain anything, so what does it say here that even though you are an egoist you have no rest, you are not an egoist, you are okay there’s no egoism in the world, there’s no selfishness in the world, so what is he explaining to me here?

R. That it’s all from the Creator, “go to the Craftsman who made me.’

S. Meaning if I’m an egoist or selfish with a big will to receive he can’t come with complaints to me?

R. Not to you, to the One who made you this way.

S. They come and tell you, you are a huge egoist, you are not social with your friends. Let’s go even further into the text, if I behave unpleasantly what should I say, that it all comes from the Creator?

R. No, no this is something else. Why, because this is a place for correction, so they accept you as still uncorrected and that’s fine, they agree to tolerate you because gradually you are correcting yourself, then you will be incorporated in them and all of your terrible forms and it will bring them benefit.

S. He says that I am not the doer because I want to do, I am not the owner of the act, so it says that you are not to blame, the Creator makes you this way, you are an egoist. So there are people who are less and more egoistic so what happens?

R. None of them is guilty of who they are.

S. What does it depend on that he is an egoist?

R. It depends on his root in the system of Adam HaRishon.

S. What does that mean?

R. It means that you don’t choose anything, that’s the way I am. Why? Go to the Craftsmen who made me.

S. All these things that you were talking about that people who are more or less egoistic, more or less controlling, that’s all from the Creator?

R. Yes.

S. No one has anything, no one has anyone to blame?

R. No one is guilty of anything until he receives the ability of free choice.

S. What does that mean that he gets the ability for free choice?

R. But those are not people off the street.

S. But…

R. Those who are like us, who are searching for ways to reach correction.

S. Only those who are studying here?

R. Yes.

S. Really?

R. Yes. That’s what they are, the sinners.

S. Those who are outside? Do I need to relate to them?

R. No. I have no need to relate to them.

2. S. (11:24) How do we relate properly to pleasure and pain?

R. Try to aim them as they pass over us and direct us. They point us to the purpose of creation.

S. When I feel pleasure or pain what am I supposed to do?

R. When you feel pleasure or pain what should you do? You should try to understand where everything is coming from the pleasure or the pain and how you can use them to aim yourself at the root of creation, the Creator.

3. S. (12:22) We spoke about free choice. What free choice does the ten have?

R. I don’t know yet, hold on, hold on. I don’t know it, we didn’t finish the article. So I don’t know what he is going to say next. It’s possible that we have to understand where is our free choice, does it even exist if there is none else besides Him and only one force operating through all of reality. How do I come to my own free choice? How do I use it, how can I manage the whole world with my free choice? I don’t know yet how to actualize it.

4. S. (13:28) What’s the approach of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the daily decisions of a person in life or a student. A person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah, what does Kabbalah recommend for that person in his daily decision-making?

R. To try to combine his life with the correction.

S. That means what? I need to make sure I am in the lessons in the ten meetings, all those things?

R. That’s clear, that’s clear.

S. What’s unclear? What else?

R. I don’t know what you’re asking about.

S. I am asking, he’ says there’s this situation in life where they pull me to pleasure and I am pushed away from pain and he says whatever you do that’s a calculation, a commercial calculation, so my question is: does the person need to make that calculation, does he need to play that game, because it’s already inside that calculation, or does he need to say that’s not my place of choice and I am going to focus on another area which is what the wisdom of Kabbalah recommends to me or do I play this game because I have seemingly free choice like every person in this world?

R. However you choose.

S. We always have to play that game just like everyone else who’s unconscious that he has no choice and play that game, make that commercial calculation?

R. If he chooses this way.

S. He could maybe not play that game?

R. You see that this is what’s happening to us.

S. Right, so I’m asking what’s this plus one, what’s the advice of the wisdom of Kabbalah to a student of Kabbalah to do in his daily decision-making?

R. The way he decides..

S. I don’t understand that. What does it mean the way he decides?

R. What do you want out of a person?

S. What do I want out of a person? He needs to develop, to realize his purpose in life?

R. That’s what you want from him?

S. Yes, that’s what he was born for, that it is his goal in life.

R. What’s the question then?

S. On the way to realizing that goal he has stages of development right? In those stages of development, let’s say in the first ones he is still in that game of that commercial calculation. So he has no choice but to play that game, that he has choice and he’s certain of that, just like every single person in this world. What’s the recommendation of the wisdom of Kabbalah to that person in that state to play that commercial calculation game?

R. As much as he can bend it towards the truth.

S. What does that mean?

R. As much as you can relate to this life truthfully?

S. He needs to stop as if he has some choice and he has to think, so what am I going to take out of this decision, out of this calculation?

R. This is something that he has to do at each and every moment.

S. He has to say at every moment, wait I have no choice?

R. Why no choice?

S. Because Baal HaSulam says you have no choice, that you’re…?

R. It depends on you what kind of forces have been arranged in you.

S. How do you work correctly? What does that mean?

R. By being incorporated in the group you can change the balance of forces that are operating in you.

S. That’s connected to the daily decision making of a person?

R. Yes. It’s built in. What you decide once for the whole life?

S. What for example out of the changes of the weight of the forces that can change in his life?

R. Each time you can change the balance of power.

S. To what?

R. Toward the good, toward bestowal, connection in the ten and so on and so forth.

S. And how does that influence us in daily decision-making in life?

R. Accordingly, each moment in life he changes his behavior also towards society, toward nature, all of that, everyone.

S. And that balance, He’s the One who determines that, that’s what he needs to focus on and only that? Because it appears to him that he can make that change as if he limits himself in all kinds of seemingly disturbing desires and he chooses those desires that progress him to the goal?

R. Yes, that’s how we should operate.

S. How can I do that correctly?

R. You don’t know that you are in the middle of the road.

S. Can you say a few more words about that so we don’t get confused?

R. No.

S. Why, I don’t want to steal from you, is that part of the process?

R. Yes.

S. What should we focus on to summarize that? A person has daily decisions to make in his life that seem to confuse him, maybe they don’t confuse him, maybe he just gets confused because he is on that comparison?

R. You need to make decisions for you, for me to develop in your place, what do you want?

S. The recommendation and advice from the Wisdom of Kabbalah. What does it say to a person that wants to develop towards the goal, as he has a 1,001 decisions to make in life on a daily basis which seemingly aren’t connected to the goal but they are connected, so how am I supposed to choose correctly?

R. Only out of his connection with the correct environment. What else can he rely on?

S. How will that determine that correct connection? What is that correct connection?

R. Where he connects himself to the correct environment, he follows it he’s incorporated into it.

S. And he needs to say that this connection implements his decision-making?

R. Ultimately yes, he has to feel it.

5. S. (21:24) According to the Wisdom of Kabbalah a person is above creation or inside creation according to what is defined as a man, a human?

R. A human, Adam is inside creation and he can rise above it.

S. We say that nature is God, if a person can rise above nature, so is he rising above the nature of reception or the nature of bestowal?

R. He cannot be above the nature of bestowal.

S. Rising above nature means rising above his first nature, the natural reception and when we say, when we are talking about that balance of forces, so that’s the ability of a person to get rid of that first nature and to connect to that new nature that controls him?

R. Yes.

6. S. (22:36) Is free choice the ability or the awareness to oppose the control of the Creator and then man’s work is to receive gratefully the providence of the Creator according to his desire?

R. Yes.

7. S. (23:03) What’s the pros of free choice in relation to our generation? In relation to an absence of choice?

R. A person in his free choice brings himself closer to the Creator.

8. S. (23:29) In relation to an average student in the time of preparation and a person on the street, how does nature relate to those people in different ways?

R. That I don’t know what to tell you, the average person on the street is a beast perhaps, most likely. I don’t know what to do with this question.

9. S. (23:58) What’s the difference between a person and an animal?

R. The difference is that a person is drawn towards free choice, to rise above his egoistic desire and then choose for himself a true goal.

10. S. (24:17) If it turns out that a person has no chance to exit himself and to love others if the environment doesn’t act on him? If the environment just projects general business then he has no way to exit his will to receive?

R. When will you ever have a desire to come out of it?

S. Even if he is strong and wise, it won’t help him?

R. No, how will you be strong and wise? He has to acquire these things through the society, from the society.

S. Only in Arvut and connection is that thing given?

R. Yes.

S. The one thing that we can ask for that the Creator will be our Guarantor?

R. Yes, that’s ‘The Arvut’ article.

11. S. (25:16) Kabbalists discuss the roots in this way that the freedom comes from an upper place, and gradually it brings us to a certain scrutiny. I see that it’s always the opposite, that we are always in this opposite world. Whoever thinks he’s free, he is even more, that’s my question: is in our reality, our corporeal reality, someone who is a slave and who is not free, did he do some scrutiny towards our scrutiny, is he closer to our scrutinies?

R. I don’t understand your question. A person lives in our world and he works in biology, let’s say, and then he sees that all living organisms behave according to their inner impulses in what is he different from a cockroach? What is an animal? He decides too, I am an animal.

S. Say they give an example of a professor at a hospital who looks at a problem, he says it’s very complicated but the person who is a cleaner, a janitor, they say it is very simple. The question is whether we are free or not. A person who lives in this feeling, that he is free and everything is okay, or a person that feels that he’s under all this pressure and he doesn’t see any free choice, does that bring him to a more inner scrutiny or is there no connection?

R. No.

12. S. (27:29) How am I different to a cockroach?

R. If I want to rise above a cockroach or some other primitive organism, I must accept the quality of bestowal because in the quality of reception there is a difference between all of the created beings and accordingly they are ranked on this scale, this scale, a ruler. But according to the quality of bestowal, I don’t belong to any creature in this world, then I begin to weigh myself differently and evaluate myself differently.

S. A bug or an insect that runs according to all kinds of awakenings, it runs here or there and that’s how a person runs around as well. What changes in him when this quality of bestowal is revealed to him in this scheme?

R. When a person acquires the quality of bestowal he begins to run around not like the, but according to foreign desires that are in his environment and he wants to bestow to everyone more and more and more, it depends on his degree of development. Accordingly, we evaluate how closely he resembles the Creator because the Creator is also thinking of our development. Hence, we evaluate a person according to his development, according to his reflected light. It doesn’t matter how you say it, according to his equivalence to the Creator.

S. We depict ourselves that we are some insect who is drawn into one or another direction. If I have the quality of bestowal, so I stop myself and I act according to the desire of the collective, of the ten?

R. Yes, yes, yes. If I am an insect, a cockroach, I work according to my inner impulses. If I’m a human, Adam, then I want to resemble the Creator and I work according to the society, the environment. Is that clear, good.

13. S. (30:53) In relation to the commercial calculation that he writes about, it seems that people are very bad in this calculation. That they always think it is going to be pleasure but they don’t know how to calculate it and then they receive more and more pain. I wanted to ask why if everything that we have is pleasure and pain why do people, why aren’t people good at that calculation?

R. In order to reach the true goal the Creator interferes. Clear, yes, good.

Reading The Law of Causality (31:40) “It is worthwhile taking some time…”

14. S. (34:12) What are these ancient causes that Baal HaSulam talks about that influence us?

R. You can’t speak of everything and take everything into consideration and study everything. The important thing is that he explains it to us and it’s enough for us to understand who is influencing us and who surrounds us, you can say it like that.

15. S. (34:48) Does a person come to the right environment or if the Creator comes to the right environment, what is the choice of a person in this matter?

R. There is no difference, it’s always the Creator.

16. S. (35:19) What in relation to the social and public opinion, in the will to receive the person is necessitated to act in a way that he acts in a certain way, that he dresses a certain way, etc., but in the will to bestow, what does a person rely on?

R. Only his ten, only that group that is aimed at the purpose of creation.

S. What is the difference between the public opinion before that?

R. The calculation is different, he’s not asking for reward from human society, but instead he’s asking for it from his group that’s aimed at the goal and the reward is the Creator that is revealed within them.

17. S. (36:31) Other than choosing the environment, what else do we have for choice in as students of Bnei Baruch?

R. Nothing.

18. S. (36:50) If I asked for example, for friends and I get an answer from them in the thoughts and mind or in the environment, where do I get that answer? If I ask for the friends, where do I get the answer: in the mind or in the heart?

R. It depends on how you ask, but we want to receive an answer in the heart, meaning that our desires will require correct direction towards the goal.

S. Could it also come through the environment?

R. Yes.

19. S. (37:47) In relation to what you said with the friend, what is a choice?

R. Choice is always between the group. When the Creator shattered the vessel of Adam HaRishon and arranged for each one of us, an individual group and through our participation, our adhesion in that tiny group, the ten, as we call it, we can advance ourselves towards the correct goal, and in this way influence our spiritual advancement; that is the choice.

S. A person thinks that he has choice between two options in his life, either to do one thing or another, maybe either to come to a ten meeting or to go to the gym, but from what I heard you say to the friend the choice is between inner forces, that a person needs to organize his inner forces?

R. As preparation for choice.

S. How do we determine in our internality to strengthen the right direction or the right side?

R. How to determine it in your internality, to strengthen, to reinforce the correct side, choice, well by investing in it more importance, you talk about it, you hear what the environment, ultimately, it’s up to the environment. I need to choose an environment in whom the goal, the actions and connections and everything they’re doing, that should be aimed more and more toward the purpose of life.

S. And these choices accumulate in a person as if they strengthen and increasingly you could say the good inclination or each day it as anew?

R. This could be a daily examination in the process of development, could also be daily.

S. If I want to take a tip of how to correctly choose, I have no approach to my heart but I just choose the correct environment and then my inner decisions become correct?

R. True, that’s what’s written, “A person is not in charge of his heart,” he’s not a master of his heart but through the environment he corrects the heart.

20. S. (41:05) You answered here that in our participation in the environment, we can influence our decision-making to come to better development. The problem is that a person sees the direction, not the same direction, everyone has a different way of bestowing and progressing and there’s this conflict?

R. There’s no conflict?

S. Why? Because one person wants to meet on Monday and one on Friday?

R. That’s a conflict?

S. How do we progress correctly? In the article, ‘The Arvut’ everyone needs to reach “as one man and one heart,” and we reach the Torah. There is no “as one man in one heart?”

R. There isn’t, start to annul yourself, each one relative to the friend.

S. It’s impossible.

R. Then there’s nothing to do, so you are now starting to build a group.

21. S. (42:25) I want to scrutinize this law of causality, that is the title here of the section, and then he says that there is a general connection among all the elements of reality before us which abides by the law of causality. Which means that I naturally want a good life. That’s the law of causality, meaning what’s the reason for me wanting a good life and why do I suddenly want to be in bestowal? What’s the reason?

R. That has to do with a hierarchy of values in you.

S. Naturally, we all want a good life, a nice looking woman and a nice house.

R. I didn’t mean that.

S. How could I want to change that I don’t want a house, I want an ugly woman, I don’t want a house or a car? Where does this thing change in me?

R. As a result of the environment.

S. I’m in an environment that people have things and not an environment that’s lacking, so where is that environment?

R. A person who changes his environment changes his life.

S. If I’m in a place with wealthy people, until I go to this place and then what, I suddenly change my environment, something else happens?

R. Of course something else happens.

S. I’m saying, why should I leave my nice house and go to a place which is worse?

R. If in a rural place or in the projects, let’s say, you receive proper compensation, then you are pure.

S. You once said that Rabash told you to leave Rehovot and come live next to me and you conceded and you went from a penthouse to a life with three rooms. So what brought you to where you left everything and you just left everything and how can you suddenly come to a place where you just left everything and that’s it?

R. That’s from Above.

S. It comes from above, you just left everything easily?

R. I was waiting to get rid of everything.

S. Why, what brought you to that point?

R. The Creator did it.

S. That’s how you felt?

R. Yes.

S. You’re great to leave everything, it’s a great thing?

R. No, I didn’t need to give up anything because it wasn’t great for me.

S. Explain to me what that point is?

R. Because the moment I wanted to move to Bnei Baruch from Rehovot, a duplex to an apartment, then that’s it, I made my choice.

S. And that’s the law of causality, that you conceded everything and you left to go to a place of three rooms?

R. Yes, because I saw that through that I advanced towards the goal.

S. And we just receive that all of a sudden, without any preparations, we just get that?

R. Like that.

22. S. (46:25) How to correctly understand what Baal HaSulam writes about how everything is motivated by cause and consequence?

R. I don’t understand, again.

S. Baal HaSulam writes that everything abides by the law of causality, by the way of cause and effect. How to understand that correctly?

R. Cause and effect, that each time we attain something it draws us to attain the next point in our path.

S. What should it awaken us each time for?

R. That we would check where we are progressing to.

S. We always move forward. What is the essence of the examination?

R. Where we are progressing and where is forward and toward the Creator, adhesion with the Creator, the purpose of creation or to a penthouse.

S. What are the things that influence us so that we’ll scrutinize our progress correctly?

R. Do you want to continue?

23. S. (47:29) Our choices in the ten, let’s say, my choice, if there’s such a thing, does it influence my friends in the ten?

R. Certainly.

S. I wanted to see how we can strengthen our choice as a ten. There are things I speak of, us, there are things in society that are clear, that advance us towards the goal, everything has to do with the friends gathering in the morning lesson, it’s clear. The choice might be tough but it’s clear what are the right choices but we see on the path, over the years, I see that a choice I had to make in order to reach a lesson or gathering, it was clear to me that this is the most important thing, more than anything, and suddenly it’s not so clear?

R. They give you a place of choice.

S. But it turns out that in our tens, how can I influence the friend’s choice, where suddenly it feels like he needs to make a bit more money and it becomes more important than the lesson or he needs to travel a bit more and it becomes more important than the social gathering. Many examples: does it have anything to do with the friend’s choice?

R. To go to him and tell him you very much appreciate him and that he chose to be with a society and not to go out to some vacation, for instance. Not that I think that that’s what we need to do because we also need vacations. That’s it, to strengthen it.

S. Because it’s an example of vacation and making a living, those are bad examples but what I see in the end is that friends’ choices can influence the ten and can weaken the ten?

R. So what.

S. I don’t know how we can advance with this. I don’t know what to do. I can see that I grow weaker, additional friends can grow weaker as a result of other friends’ choices, we can’t really get into it?

R. Everything is according to how a person understands the path. I have nothing to say.

S. About the attitude towards the friends, does it have to be an equal attitude towards each friend? My attitude toward each friend who I might see, they invest everything and are present everywhere. Should my attitude be equal to such a friend and to a friend who is less there and invests less, and how can my attitude be equal?

R. You cannot, whoever exerts more, you need to relate to him in a more respected way, you respect his investment, but what?

S. Because I hear often that it has to be an equal attitude towards each one in the ten?

R. That’s after all the calculations, but really you relate to each and everyone according to how you see their investment, however much they invest in the society.

24. S. (51:33) How to scrutinize, we keep running into it. This is our connection with the Upper, if you can open it up, I’ve been walking with this feeling for over a month already. How to make a scrutiny: what are the stages of a scrutiny?

R. We cannot open that and we cannot get into that psychology. What do you need that for? We need to go according to a few general principles that Rabash explains to us and that’s really enough, to respect everyone, to care about the connection of everyone and to move forward like that, the less details there are, the less ability to get entangled.

25. S. (52:35) If I see that one friend invests and I appreciate him more, that another friend invests less, and then over time he invests even less, so where’s the connection in the ten, where do we give the power to the friend?

R. It’s always that way in a ten, where no one is similar to one another.

S. That is correct, but if I love the friend, if I give the power to a friend who invests more, how do we give the power to a friend who invests less, in order to draw him in, so he can invest more?

R. You give him forces too, in a different way so that he knows that you help him.

S. What other form can we use to bring it?

R. I don’t know, you just are stirring around the water. Nothing will come from that, you need to try for the society to be connected, to be united and that each friend will have support; each friend.

26. S. (53:55) Is there a difference in spiritual advancement between one who gives up conditions to advance her or one who does not need to give up anything?

R. That he has no need to give up anything; that’s stronger, he has greater work later on.

27. S. (54:32) How to make a choice every second, how to force ourselves?

R. It all depends on the environment. If a person incorporates and subjugates to the environment, then the environment influences him and changes him, and it doesn’t matter how it changes him. He shouldn’t criticize that because after he enters the environment he needs to really give himself to the environment and receive it and accept it as a whole thing.

28. S. (55:40) In this item, he asks how the I appears to us but it seems he does not answer. How does this feeling of I he gives to us..?

R. In as much as we submit ourselves to the environment, we increasingly can feel ourself according to the extent of our subjugation to the environment.

29. S. (56:32) If a person’s healthy choice is about making choices that will benefit the environment, does that include all of humanity or only our spiritual environment?

R. Only the spiritual environment of a person, but afterwards we will see, we will move forward anyway, we are moving forward.

30. S. (57:01) The greatness and importance of our society, is this what brings us closer to freedom and the extent that we invest in the environment, the importance and the greatness grow? How, in what way, can we make the heart more sensitive in order to not squander the opportunity that the Creator gives a person to bestow in the society?

R. It’s a very fundamental question: you need to open it separately.

31. S. (58:28) How can you determine the inner forces in order to reach the ideal choice and internally advance?

R. You think that you’re managing the process and that’s what I’m impressed to hear more and more in your questions. The Creator is the Manager, the Upper Force, who is connected to us and who’s connected to the final goal, and He’s in the whole process that each and every one of us needs to receive on the path. And that all of us, at the end of it, reach connection, “as one man with one heart.” “And My house will be a house of prayer for all nations,” and that’s what we need to see before us and to accept.