READING: BETWEEN AFTER MIDNINGHT AND DAWN THURSDAY

Baal HaSulam. Shamati, 50. Two States

LESSON MATERIAL

50. Two States

I heard on Sivan 20

There are two states to the world: 1) In the first state the world is called “pain.” 2) In the second state, it is called “Shechina [Divinity].” It is so because before one is endowed with correcting his deeds to be in order to bestow, he feels the world only in the form of pains and torments.

However, afterward, he is rewarded with seeing that the Shechina is clothed in the whole world, and then the Creator is considered to be filling the world. Then the world is called “Shechina,” who receives from the Creator. This is called “the unification of the Creator and His Shechina,” for as the Creator gives, so the world is now occupied solely in bestowal.

It is like a sad tune. Some players know how to perform the suffering about which the tune was composed, because all melodies are like a spoken language where the tune interprets the words that the person wants to say out loud. If the tune evokes crying in the listeners to the extent that each and every one cries because of the suffering that the melody expresses, then it is called “a tune,” and everyone loves to listen to it.

However, how can people enjoy suffering? Since the tune does not point to present suffering, but to the past, meaning torments that have already passed, were sweetened, and received their fill, for this reason, people like to listen to them, for it indicates the sweetening of the judgments, that the sufferings one had were sweetened. This is why these sufferings are sweet to hear, and then the world is called “Shechina.”

The important thing that one should know and feel is that there is a leader to the capital, as our sages said, “Abraham the Patriarch said, ‘There is no capital without a leader.’” One must not think that everything that happens in the world is incidental and that the Sitra Achra [other side] causes one to sin and say that everything is incidental.

This is the meaning of Hammat [vessel of] Keri [semen]. There is a Hammat filled with Keri. The Keri brings one to think that everything is Bemikreh [incidental]. (Even when the Sitra Achra brings one such thoughts—to say that everything is incidental, without guidance, this is also not incidental, but the Creator wanted it this way.)

However, one must believe in reward and punishment, and that there is a judgment and there is a judge, and everything is conducted by guidance of reward and punishment. This is because sometimes when some desire and awakening for the work of the Creator comes to a person, and he thinks that it comes to him by chance, he should know that here, too, he made an effort that preceded the hearing. He prayed to be helped from above to be able to perform an act with intent, and this is called raising MAN.

Yet, he has already forgotten about it and did not regard it as doing, since he did not receive an immediate answer to the prayer, so as to say, “You hear the prayer of every mouth.” Still, one should believe that the order from above is that the response for the prayer may come several days and months after he prayed.

One should not think that it is by chance that he received this awakening now. Sometimes a person says, “Now that I feel that I do not need anything and I have no concerns, my mind is clear and sound, for this reason, now I can focus my mind and desire on the work of the Creator.”

It follows that he can say that all his engagement in the work of the Creator is “My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.” Thus, when he can engage and attain spiritual needs, he should believe that this is the answer to the prayer. What he prayed for before, that prayer has now been answered.

Also, sometimes when reading some book, and the Creator opens his eyes and he feels some awakening, then, too, his regular conduct is to attribute it to chance. However, it is all guided.

Although one knows that the whole Torah is the names of the Creator, how can he say that through the book he is reading came some sublime sensation? One must know that he often reads the book and knows that the whole Torah is the names of the Creator, yet receives no illumination or sensation. Instead, everything is dry and the knowledge that he knows does not help him at all.

Hence, when one studies in a certain book and hangs his hope on Him, one’s study should be on the basis of faith, that he believes in Providence, that the Creator will open his eyes. At that time, he becomes needy of the Creator and thus has contact with the Creator. By this he can be rewarded with Dvekut [adhesion] with Him.

There are two forces that contradict one another, an upper force and a lower force. The upper force is, as it is written, “Every one who is called by My Name, I have created him for My glory.” This means that the whole world was created only for the glory of the Creator. The lower force is the will to receive, which claims that everything was created for it—both corporeal things and spiritual things—all is for self-love.

The will to receive claims that it deserves this world and the next world. Of course, the Creator is the winner, but this is called “the path of suffering,” and it is called “a long way.” But there is a short way called “the path of Torah,” and this should be everyone’s intention—to shorten time.

This is called “I will hasten it.” Otherwise, it will be “in its time,” as our sages said, “rewarded—I will hasten it; not rewarded—in its time,” “when I place upon them a king such as Haman, and he will force you to reform.”

The Torah begins from Beresheet [in the beginning], etc. “And the earth was unformed and void, and darkness,” etc., and ends, “before the eyes of all of Israel.”

In the beginning, we see that the land is “unformed and void, and darkness,” but then, when they correct themselves to bestow, they are rewarded with “and God said, let there be light,” until the light appears “before the eyes of all of Israel.”