TUESDAY PRAYER: GEVURAH-TIKKUN CHATZOT תקון חצות – LESSON WITH RAV MICHAEL LAITMAN
READING: BETWEEN AFTER MIDNINGHT AND DAWN TUESDAY
Rabash. Record 162. Love of Others
LESSON MATERIAL
162. Love of Others
I look at one tiny dot, called “love of others,” and I think about it: What can I do in order to benefit people? As I look at the general public, I see the suffering of individuals, illnesses and pains, and the suffering of individuals inflicted by the collective, meaning wars among nations. And besides prayer, there is nothing to give. This is called “He who aches because of the affliction of the public— medial.”
LESSON
Morning Lesson October 8, 2023
Transcription is made from simultaneous translation, which leaves a possibility for differences in the audio
Part 1:
Rabash. 162. Love of Others
1. Rav’s Introduction: (00:23) Yes, just like what we learn from Kabbalah, from our nature which is purely a desire to receive, only to receive and we have no love for others and perhaps even the opposite. In our nature all we want is to receive from the others to our benefit and we have to overcome this will to receive of ours and transform it to the benefit of others, to a desire to bestow, to go through this inversion and that’s possible only if we are together, “one shall help his friend.” And through examples and support and help that we give to each other, this way, we will be able to, bit by bit, to understand that what we have to do is to truly invert our nature from reception to bestowal, from hate to love, from rejection and distance to attraction and embrace. And that’s essentially the whole reason for our existence. Meaning that we exist in a nature that is between the will to receive and the will to bestow. The will to receive is our entire nature, that’s the still, vegetative, and animate and we are included in the animate level and we have to change ourselves in a way that we will reach the speaking degrees, the human degree Adam. Adam means Do-Me, similar to the Creator, meaning that we do we wish to get close to the Creator and then be in partnership with Him and this is how we need to advance.
How do we do that? If it’s in the plan of creation and all that the Creator did and designed in creation is so that we invert our nature from reception to bestowal, from hate to love, from rejection to connection. How do we do it? So it is said, “I have created the evil inclination,” this is as if what the Creator says, “I have created the evil inclination,” meaning you will live in your nature which is referred to as the evil inclination, as it thinks only about itself and rejects the others and doesn’t want to get closer and do good to the others but out of behaving that way you will feel, you will feel how connected you are or can be, and this is how you will be able to live. And this is our work, that’s it, it is actually very simple. Doing all kinds of actions to invert ourselves from the nature of reception, of rejecting and hating the others or even the feeling of the others to transform that to the opposite, to bringing the heart’s closer, connecting the hearts, embracing each other, mutual assistance, “one shall help his friend,” all our friends. To perform that action on human beings the Creator put a few conditions before us that we should certainly use and then we will succeed.
The fact that we live through our egoistic states where we hate and reject and feel distant from each other, that’s how we feel the entire world as well, the forces of nature, human society, everything and therefore, we are relatively suffering everything that we do takes a lot from us, a lot of effort, a lot of difficult states. We live through pressure, stress, anxiety, all that we feel. However, if we get closer to each other and begin to feel each other’s shoulder, if we embrace, if we try to better understand each other and incorporate with each other then we improve reality. The world that appeared to us as hostile and bad and threatening and pressuring according to our inner changes it then seems soft and beautiful and encouraging. Encouraging us to connect even more and the more we connect between us and build from ourselves something that is one, “as one man with one heart.” According to that, we feel that the whole of nature is actually one and that’s how we actually emerge from the framework of this world that we’ve received to begin with in our egoistic vessels, and that’s why it’s seems so dark and unfriendly and hostile to us and then it becomes a world that is filled with good. So it all depends on how we relate to the world to what surrounds us.
Moreover Kabbalists explain that it’s not that we see the world correctly, we see it through our qualities, if we had other qualities we would see a different world. That’s because the quality we were born with is the egoistic will to receive, so we see everything in the world as existing in a separate, isolated manner from the others, we see how it is completely disconnected from all other pieces of reality. Whereas if we follow the method of Kabbalah, meaning that we connect and wish to see that the whole world functions that way and is connected, then we gradually reveal that the world exists in a nature that is One and there is one root and one force that dwells in the world and that is the force of connection, that force of love, the force of reciprocity and that’s how we also attain the Creator as the force that holds all of reality within it, in His force of love and then we, too, get closer to feeling that Force governing us. Then we reach a state where we reveal ourselves more and more to be connected and that there’s really no difference between us. And even though to begin with we are in the most egoistic will to receive, we have opposite qualities against that so that we can fight and cope with our egoistic qualities and elevate ourselves to a degree above that. And this is how we connect. We achieve connection, we achieve unity, we achieve an understanding of how our world works according to positive forces of nature.
Okay, well, that’s essentially our state and we live in this world. It doesn’t matter in what time. Our nature is the same nature, it is in order to receive, our egoistic will to receive where we naturally, instinctively only want to do good to ourselves and here there are some differences with regards to all the good that we want to do to ourselves. So, there are degrees: root, 1, 2, 3, 4 or still, vegetative, animate, and speaking, and so accordingly, we operate. When we begin to evolve a bit more, then we come to the understanding that there are different laws in nature and these are laws of connection not just to push each other away and fight each other and try to be in states of unity, connection, oneness to the point of love. In such a way we begin to reveal the other nature, it’s hidden from us, it’s called the hidden world. Meaning that we have no perception of it in our mind, we can’t digest that reality, we weren’t born with this quality of love and bestowal and connection, we were born in the opposite quality of self-love. And so we have a great deal of work here to learn and convince ourselves to work on ourselves, so that bit by bit, we receive from nature a force of bestowal, the force of connection, that’s how we should look at our development. In the current time of our development, our time is referred to as the “last generation,” where in our generation we already have to transform ourselves. Meaning rise from our egoistic will to receive to an altruistic will to bestow and if we do ask and perform such actions then we also succeed. That’s it.
Therefore, Rabash writes to us in a short article called, “Love of Others,” I look at one tiny dot called love of others. It’s as if a tiny dot because we don’t have any love of others. Maybe there is something like a kernel or a seed from which something can develop but not more and I think about it, about that point. What can I do in order to benefit people? What can I do in order to benefit people? That’s the thought that arises from that tiny dot called love of others. As I look at the general public I see the suffering of individuals, illnesses, and pains, and the suffering of individuals inflicted by the collective, meaning wars among nations and besides prayer there is nothing to give. This is called he who aches because of the affliction of the public. Meaning that if a person looks correctly at reality then nothing else comes out of his attitude to reality but wanting. That’s what we call prayer, it’s our inner desire that everyone will receive some inclination towards connection, towards the positive force that lies in nature and that this force will be revealed and in the meantime where this force is not revealed but it has to become revealed according to one’s observation, then he is sorry and he’s not sorry about himself but he is sorry for the whole. The rule of the medial is that he suffers in life, everything he suffers in life from the smallest details to the biggest collective things. Everything comes from this relationship between us, that if the relationship between us is not good we will suffer more, and the more we can get closer to each other, even though it’s not exactly our nature but we will see how good that is. That’s all. Any questions?
2. S. (20:40) It’s strange he says, I look at the collective and I see pains and illnesses etc., and besides prayer there’s nothing to give. It doesn’t say, I say that no one is thinking about the Creator. He doesn’t say, I see that no one engages in love with friends. He says I see illnesses and pains and I pray. Why is he praying for the result and not over the source, the origin?
R. Because he sees that there is no other force in nature that can help the person, raise him above his degree, take him out of his natural hatred that he was born into, everyone, to the still, vegetative, animate, speaking; to everyone. Man was born in self-love and self-love means that he loves himself and to that extent he also hates the others. And therefore, he says I have nothing to do. Although, in my development I can achieve the feeling of the sorrow of the public but other than that feeling there’s nothing to do ultimately besides the prayer. All right.
3. S. (22:28) What is the prayer that Rabash raises in order to help all the people with their troubles?
R. In his heart he feels how much these people suffer and how he must be among them and help them and that’s how he becomes included with them and prays for them.
S. How should we take an example from our teacher and work as he does? What should we ask when we see this suffering and problems?
R. Only that the Creator will show us how our will to receive is the evil inclination, how it ruins us, it ruins our lives, how it comes to teach us by way of suffering, which is for now the only way that we can learn. Because the moment that we feel good, we immediately forget about the blows and only during the blows we ask where does it come from, why do I deserve it and so on and that’s the time where we can somewhat understand the reason for the blows and their purpose.
S. If our work mainly focuses on the ten, on the connection between us and here the Kabbalists are asking for all the people, the whole world. How do we use that example and also become incorporated in the troubles of the collective, of the general public and ask for them?
R. Certainly we can ask for all of reality, for the whole world, for humanity but it’s not going to be so realistic because we don’t understand and we don’t feel this mass of people that is so vast, so huge. We can’t put it into our heart, into our head, so it’s sufficient for us to take the kind of collective that we can imagine to ourselves for now and thus, we will advance but at least to have some prayer even for some people that we can pray for. Then the Creator, the general force of nature will be impressed by our deficiency that we insert into nature and it will balance our deficiency, answer it, in such a way that there will be a change in reality, in the world towards those people. Therefore, he writes in a different place that one cannot save himself from imprisonment and in our world it is referred to as the prison, so we have to be sorry in such a way that everyone is in some dark, closed, pressured state and the more we all want to connect and embrace and help each other, to that extent we will draw the upper Force, the Good that does good, the Creator to help us and to pull us above, above this worse reality that there is.
4. S. (27:54) What is the point of love of others or the dot of love of others?
R. The point of love of others exists in each and every person; it doesn’t exist on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, only in the speaking level. There are people who are more sensitive to their point in the heart, to how much it operates and demands some response from the person and other people are not so sensitive to it yet. In fact over time, over generations we gradually evolve more and more as we see on the speaking level that in the past people were more wild and then they became more evolved in their emotion, in their mind, in the structure of society, in relationships between us and so forth and accordingly we evolve and then we begin to see ourselves and how we succeed in understanding that in the world there’s more than just food, sex, and family. But there are also higher degrees of desire, of deficiency, and we begin to approach them and then we see that these are actually five degrees: food, sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge. So we evolve through these degrees and we see that even our history can be viewed as these levels of food, sex, family, money, honor, knowledge, and then comes Godliness.
Today, we are already at the higher levels of human development, food, sex, family are natural things that develop within us on a natural, beastly, egoistic, simple level that’s understood to us as the needs of the body, that we can’t let go of but money, honor, knowledge, that already pertains to the feeling of others. How do I connect to others through buying and selling with money and so forth or honor, how much I respect someone and someone else respects me and so forth that, too, is similar to money, it’s a kind of currency. And then there’s family, how dear it is to a person. All of that is only on the human species, food, sex, family, money, honor, knowledge but then from that development also comes a development of asking ourselves, why, what for, why do we need to develop these qualities? And when we begin to ask that, then we have all kinds of methods by which we can calm ourselves down or silence ourselves and how we can advance more and more. We exist in a state where basically all these degrees precede a spiritual degree. After we achieve all of this development then we enter spiritual degrees which is already an opposite form. Also in the previous degrees where we would develop ourselves through money, food, sex, family, money, honor, knowledge, from that, in that, too, we begin to move away from ourselves to some extent, we are willing to exchange this for that but when we complete these degrees, food, sex, family, honor and knowledge, knowledge already belongs to what’s beyond the body, we get no bodily pleasure in that, we want to fill ourselves up with knowledge of this world. And that’s why it’s already considered a degree that is intermediate between the beastly degrees and the human degrees. Well, and there’s more.
S. What does it mean to look at the point of love of others, what are you actually looking at?
R. When I look at love of others, I see how much this thing is higher than me. I am requested of something that is detached from me. What do I get from this? Feeling good from this I can’t because that means loving the others, bestowing good to others, what do I have from that? We can’t, we can only do it on the condition that this other one is close to me, dear to me like my children, my friends, and so forth but not just any one that is other. The others means that I have no connection to them except for being able to develop this connection from nothing, where I don’t depend on him and he doesn’t depend on me but in order to achieve a higher, spiritual degree that we don’t know and we don’t feel but to the extent that we connect to each other in such a way we will then reveal what love of others means.
5. S. (36:57) I see that people are suffering but it is not really touching me. I think that even before coming to Kabbalah I felt even more. What is this state of indifference and what to do about it? Should I go to the frontlines of some war to experience the suffering myself?
R. You need to come closer to each other and convince each other how much the tendency toward connection, to be closer to each other will open a new mind and a new heart and you will feel how the world becomes broader accordingly and as a result you will have a feeling, a broader feeling in sensing the world.
S. What should we do with the various conflicts around the world? Should I look at it, should I try and sympathize with it because at the moment I’m not really sympathizing with it?
R. You need to learn to what the world is intended to develop. And in this way you will come to, you will realize what situation, what state you are in compared to what state you should be in, that’s it and then from the gap between the two states, the difference between them you will have a demand to rise to the next degree. Okay.
6. S. (39:23) How to find the stubbornness of praying for others when you understand that you want to do good to the friend and not to yourself, how to do that?
R. It depends on how much you feel dependent on others, that you feel you are dependent on the others, that’s the problem. It is very important to feel that I am totally dependent on the state of those around me, absolutely. Meaning I don’t look at each one as an individual but I look at the environment that he’s in because he’s totally dependent upon his environment.
S. Realistically this environment of the friend that I see how much it depends on me and not that I depend on him?
R. That’s what it seems to you like now you are dependent on him. He’s dependent on you. The mutual responsibility is necessary for us to help each other to rise above our situation.
7. S. (41:05) Baal HaSulam mentions that without, besides prayer, there is nothing that I can do. Can a person reach a prayer if internally he’s not convinced that it is working and he’s just following the advice of the teacher? Is this action called prayer?
R. No, an action is an action, a prayer is a prayer. One has nothing to do with the other.
S. Sometimes we give an example that even animals pray. An example of a request that comes naturally out of fear or need. I wanted to know what is the prayer on the speaking level? What is it that a Kabbalist prays? What does it mean, what is the precondition for it to be prayer not on the animate level but on the speaking level?
R. We turn to the Creator because everything depends only on Him, on the upper Force and we ask of Him to arrange us in such a way that we will understand and feel all the conditions where we are, so we can rise above our ego, so we can understand the forces of nature that operate on us and that’s it. We only need to work with it, to talk about it.
8. S. (43:18) Regarding the prayer when you want to feel something you don’t feel yet and when you ask for it you gradually feel like the prayer gives you the force to reach this Force, this unique nature that we want to acquire. What is so special about the prayer, what is this unique power that you feel that you are receiving this sense of feeling nature as ‘one’ like you said?
R. You turn to the Creator because There Is None Else Besides Him and although threads by which He manages, governs the world are in His hand, so you turn to that Force because you can and you have the right to turn to Him and ask. Now the question is: How do you ask and what exactly do you ask for because anyone can turn to the Creator but there are those who cry out all the twenty-four hours and those who say one word and it immediately becomes realized. So we learn more and more it needs to be in the feeling, too. How much our feelings, our problems, our goals, our expectations, how much they are in the same direction as the Creator’s and then we have a better chance of coming into one action, operating together with Him as one and then we succeed. This is basically what we learn.
S. Like we learn from Rabash and Baal HaSulam that many times that the Creator may be even all the time we can say that the Creator calls upon us to give the prayer for getting closer to Him. Is that about bringing ourselves to a demand that we don’t know yet that the Creator is giving us the deficiency to ask for it?
R. Correct, we are coming closer to the purpose of creation. Sometimes with steps that we do not recognize, that we do not feel, do not summon. Yes, and gradually these things, it’s like a baby, like a little child. Sometimes he doesn’t know what he’s doing, sometimes he takes something to imitate you as if he’s using the same tools. That’s the way it is but afterwards he learns more and more and feels more and more and begins to perform the right actions.
9. S. (46:51) When we are afraid we remember the Creator and then afterwards we go back to our normal life, we forget about everything and we continue our life as if nothing happened. Why is our nature that way? How much suffering will we need to live in constant awakening?
R. The same happens to us with the education of children and how we were educated. I remember how many times I was yelled at. I was even smacked here and there, so what do I remember from this? That’s the way it is, when it’s gone, it’s gone. This is our nature, this is life. So what we need to do is to understand that all these blows in the end accumulate and give us an additional attention to what is happening to us and how we are responding incorrectly to our surroundings, to our parents, to strangers etc..
S. How can we at least raise our awareness so that tomorrow we don’t forget again?
R. This is to the extent that these things are important to your friends. You have a very strong group and if your friends also think like you, then there is no question you will be able to constantly be in thoughts about the purpose of the group. Okay.
10. S. (50:08) Like many of our friends and many other people I received a call, a red alert call from the army. I have to wear the uniform in a few hours and be there. Please tell me how can I turn the hate to a useful hate in respect to the ten and so forth?
R. When you join the army, when you get drafted, you have to follow the orders of the Commander’s otherwise there cannot be an army and whatever your Commander says this is what you need to do. That’s it.
S. Not to think about love your friend as yourself towards the enemies that doesn’t work?
R. You are forbidden to work with your own laws which you take from the wisdom of Kabbalah while you are in the army. There, they work according to different criteria and therefore, anyone in front of you is an enemy, an enemy and this is how you have to relate to them. All deep within your heart you actually want everything to be okay and good and both your enemies and friends, for all of them to go back home, to return home. But this is what happens, what can you do?
11. S. (52:10) It’s a real dilemma. I understand him.
R. Gilad was a Commander, a big Commander for seven years in the army, and he can tell you more than I can, more than I am saying.
S. Well, back then I didn’t study Kabbalah yet but I am thinking about what the friend is saying. It is a dilemma. I understand him. But a time of war is a time of war. What can you do? Not joyfully but you have to do what you have to do.
12. S. (53:20) In order to reach a state of Good that does good what is missing in the connection we have built in the congress?
R. We don’t see that He is Good and does Good, we only hear about it, we learn it. There are forces in nature, many forces, many hidden forces and we don’t see from them good results, we don’t see. They may accompany us, they raise us but we don’t know, just like you raise on the hands of the mother and the father and we don’t really understand what they do to us but to the extent that as we grow, we can understand and process what they did for us, especially when we ourselves become fathers and mothers, then we begin to understand from our own ego which suffers from children’s education and bringing up children, out of this we understand how much our parents suffered from us and how much and how dedicated, how devotedly they tended to us, they took care of us and then we understand them.
S. I heard that all the problems that we go through in life are because we don’t connect?
R. Correct. There’s nothing more than that. The Creator created Adam HaRishon, it’s a system. He broke it into many, many pieces that are strangers to each other and gave them the possibility to begin to connect some of the operations of connection the Creator does by Himself. These are called the operations of nature, when atoms and molecules connect, a species, genders: male or female, etc., etc., etc., what we all in all, call nature, all of it, that’s the still, vegetative, animate and speaking. When we talk about this still, vegetative and animate we talk about nature. When we talk about the speaking level, there it is a different story. Entry into the speaking level is not a simple entry. Not all of us come in immediately and we don’t understand that there is such a thing. We just evolve, just like animals have all kinds of habits and rules, people, too, have them. And therefore, we have to learn how we can be connected to each other more than the still, vegetative and animate and how nature obligates them from within because they evolve. But we have to correct ourselves on the speaking levels by wanting to be together above our ego.
This is what doesn’t exist on this still, vegetative and animate levels but on the speaking level we have to, despite the force of rejection, bring ourselves into connection. Therefore, today as well we see this, that we are not performing acts of connection on the speaking level, right, so when we don’t do it we have wars, we have all kinds of actions, one against the other. Humanity is in hostility, developing weapons etc., and natural forces are also pressuring us more and it is all in order for us to understand that we have to come to the speaking level which is above nature in our body, in our flesh, in our minds, in our hearts, there is no such tendency toward it. We, all in all, only need to develop within us the sense of love of others which doesn’t exist in nature and in this way come closer to each other.
S. So how can we spread love in the world?
R. We understand that the world has advanced to a state where on the levels of still, vegetative and animate it is quite connected. We have connection between nations and countries in commerce, in industry, in knowing one another all around the world. We all travel and understand what is going on and we studied it in school for the last one-hundred years about what is happening with us and how we develop. Now we have come to a state where we have to connect on a higher level. Where even though we all exist in the egoistic form in the still, vegetative and animate, egoistic manner, above it we have to start getting closer and connect altruistically and it’s not like we feel like it, whether we want to or not, it’s because the Creator, nature, God in Gematria is nature, will obligate us to connect. And if we don’t connect then there will be such conflicts and problems between us that as Baal HaSulam writes, that even atom and hydrogen bombs will convince us to connect.
13. S. (01:01:40) When I feel the humanities pain it feels too intense, too powerful and it shakes me. How can I cope with this pain so it’s not pain but from the point of connection that it becomes suffering of love?
R. It depends on you, you are given the sense of pain so you would feel what’s missing for you. Try to turn that pain into a tendency for connection, for unity and at that point of pain you will feel pleasure, you will feel love. That pain is like being separated from someone you love very much and it hurts you, the separation, so try to connect and you will see that instead of pain comes pleasure.
14. S. (01:02:56) When we see such things that happen all your students understand it as a clarion from the Creator. You want some very decisive decisions but how to answer the Creator’s call and not to turn it into something that serves my will to receive but to really answer the Creator’s call which is very different from a decision I can think about?
R. There’s nothing to think about, we only have one direction, to come closer between us. We need to set an example to the whole world that there is nothing else in our actions other than to come closer and therefore this is what we do, that’s it. We have to talk about it, explain it, yearn for it, aspire for it.
15. S. (01:04:30) Question from a friend, the feeling that the suffering of others happens because of my lack of connection with the group, does that come from my egoism or from getting closer to bestowal?
R. I didn’t understand.
S. Feeling the sorrow of others happens because I’m not connected to the group and it comes from the ego, that I feel like the center of the world or it’s getting close to bestowal?
R. Both, both. To the extent that I am in altruistic qualities I advance in love and joy, to the extent that I am still on egoistic degrees, I feel that I am advancing or going in, let’s say suffering and pain. Clear? This is how it happens, like a wheel. One side advances and it feels good, the other side goes seemingly backwards so it feels bad but that’s how it rolls and advances.
16. S. (01:06:19) He says when I look at the suffering of the individual and the individual is inside the collective besides prayer there’s nothing to give and this is called he who aches because of the affliction of the public medial. Why medial?
R. Because there are all kinds of forms there from one end to the other but he’s talking about the medium state.
S. So there’s a way to raise a prayer that will be on a higher level? I don’t understand.
R. No no, don’t pay attention to this for the time being, don’t start adding interpretations to it.
17. S. (01:07:13) When I see the suffering of the friend, how can I take him out of this black hole when I myself am under the influence of self-love?
R. But still, you have a duty to awaken the friend a little bit so go down to his degree, acquire his external form, connect with him and gradually begin to put him out of it upwards. It’s like jumping into the ocean in order to save someone. I have to come to him, I have to grab him and only after I grab him I begin to elevate him together with me from the water. Try and see how good it is.
18. S. (01:08:32) You said when I connect with the friend his pain becomes light and love and it really turns out that to feel this I want to look for that pain. So we’re always nourished by pain to draw the light?
R. You are egoistic, this is why you feel more colors, more shades in the pain rather than in joy. What is joy? Laughter, it’s this kind of giggle, nothing serious beyond that. Whereas pain, tears, all kinds of worries have so much depth to them and we can describe them, write entire volumes about them. Why? Because we still don’t know what shades exist in love and joy, we haven’t come to it. For the time being all of humanity is living on the level, on the plane of suffering.
S. But in principle we can feel the light out of love, out of joy or it always comes in the background of pain, suffering and negative feelings?
R. In principle, initially, yes but afterwards no, we will feel joy.
19. S. (01:10:38) If I don’t feel my heart or the friend’s heart how can we bring the heart’s closer?
R. You will begin to feel, you will begin to feel that you are dependent on the friend’s heart because only through his heart you will advance toward the Creator. For the time being we are like pieces of meat on the barbecue. Until we present our hearts, put them all together we won’t be able to present them to the Creator, only on this condition we will be able to advance toward the Creator.
S. Concern for the friend in action and in concern, is that called working in order to bestow and from there we need to acquire flavors and joy?
R. Yes, yes.
20. S. (01:11:53) I read an article you wrote that says there are no wars in the Creator’s plan. As Turks we came out of a war with unity so we came to the conclusion that unity is most important to life. How could it be that there are no wars in the Creator’s plan if There’s None Else Besides Him? We always go through wars, through such states. How does it work?
R. You have to read a lot of material, you have to give her what to read. You have many friends and they should recommend to you what to read. According to what you’re saying, you’re not getting the essence of connection and development at all.
21. S. (01:13:47) Yesterday a friend from Hadera asked a question. He asked whether we attracted the light of Hochma and that’s why we feel the judgments in the world like it happened after other congresses before. The question is: What do we need to focus on in order to draw more light of Hassadim?
R. Only on connection, Hassadim comes only from connection between us.
S. It’s basically what we tried to do and we felt we connected on a certain level and still we drew Hochma?
R. Why? Maybe we drew some Hochma but basically we felt lack of Hassadim as well.
S. So why is what’s happening now happening?
R. What is happening?
S. The war, all the mess.
R. It’s not a mess, it’s according to the higher plan and to the extent that we are in a state of going this way or that way, accordingly we basically are advancing. I don’t see anything negative in what is happening. It’s a shame that it’s happening and brings suffering to people but there is no other way to make people learn and push them toward connection, only through these terrible actions.
S. So what you’re saying is that the direction is correct, we just have to strengthen?
R. Of course, for lack of Hassadim we suffer wars, death and all kinds of things and if there is Hassadim then we receive development, connection, that’s the way it is.
22. S. (01:16:09) It’s written that I have created the evil inclination. Is it right to say that what’s revealed now is that same evil inclination that the Creator created or is it the evil inclination that comes out of us?
R. Nothing stems from us, all the good and all the bad are in the Creator and we with our attitude toward one another express or reveal externally those qualities we choose.
S. I also wanted to ask, if we say I’ve created the evil inclination can we say there is some kind of package or volume that is limited, like a limited volume and once the evil is revealed what was given to us to correct, that same evil is now lessened?
R. Of course, of course.
23. S. (01:17:30) How can we get mercy? How do we increase it?
R. If we come closer to one another we awaken Hassadim, mercy. That’s how it is, simple.