The Revelation of Godliness (Matan Torah), Talk 1
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Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
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Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
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lowercase italics: emphasized words
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Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Reader: Today, we are beginning to study the article Matan Torah (The Revelation of Godliness) by Baal HaSulam, from the book Kabbalah LeMatchil ( Kabbalah for Beginners), page 111. [You can also find it on the site; it is called "The Revelation of Godliness."]
The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method for the correction of the world, correction of mankind. So essentially, we need to descend to the level of even the simplest person, because everyone must reach the correction and adhesion with the Creator, Dvekut. The whole universal Kli, that is, all the creatures, regardless of who they are or what they are. The whole of creation—still, vegetative, animate and speaking -- must reach complete adhesion with the Emanator.
And in order to explain to even the simplest person, without whom there would be no Gmar Tikkun (lit. end of correction), what his duty is, we have to write the material clearly, easily and in an understandable manner.
We learn in the wisdom of Kabbalah that everyone must do this work, and we thus have to explain to people why they have to do it; that it is necessary, that the reason for the suffering in the world is for the sole purpose of pushing us to become corrected. We have to explain that we need everything that happens to us, everything that we experience, in order for it to bring us to the Tikkun (lit. the correction).
What is it then, this correction? It is certainly in accordance with the way each and every one of us was created, in accordance with our soul, our degree of development, our upbringing and the way we were brought up, wherever in the world we happen to be; whether it is a Jew, a non-Jew, an adult or a younger person.
Everyone must ultimately reach the degree of adhesion with the Creator. And the human being, as the actual center of the world, is joined by the still, the vegetative and the animate levels of existence on his rise to the level of Dvekut, given that he sanctifies all the other levels of creation.
Thus, we must reach everyone in our explanation. Even if it seems to us that an ordinary person and who knows who at the end of the world are not ready for these things; we should never think that. Because the Creator who created that person and set that person’s current life, must have certainly prepared that person correctly to perceive reality and to perceive the correction to the extent required by that person for his correction.
In other words, we must not say “no, no, these guys cannot do it, they are incapable of it.” The extent of which they were created, the way they were created, is enough for them to grasp what they need in order to correct themselves.
Therefore, we cannot say that this is not for ordinary people, that it is only meant for special people, special souls; the way it used to be in the past. Indeed, starting with the times of Abraham and onward throughout the generations, the wisdom of Kabbalah used to be the privilege of a select few, of special people, pure souls.
But from our generation onward, which Baal HaSulam determines to be the time of the Messiah and a time where we must begin the general correction, we must certainly see the wisdom of Kabbalah as being ready to be accepted by each and every person in the world.
There are many who disagree with that determination. Some people think that it is only for Jews, and forget that the Jews specifically serve as conduits for delivering the method of correction to all the nations of the world. And that they, the nations of the world, are the actual Kelim, the real Kelim that need correction.
The people of Israel are the chosen people to be the light to the nations, but it is also said that: “They shall all know Me from the least of them on to the greatest of them,” and that “My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations,” etc. So the correction must be for all.
That is why Baal HaSulam made such great efforts, and tried so hard to explain the essence of the Tikkun and what the wisdom of Kabbalah is as a means for correction, in the simplest manner possible, so as to be understood by the whole nation.
In the book Matan Torah (The Revelation of Godliness ), it is written in the beginning, that it is dedicated to the distribution of the original knowledge of the essence of Judaism, religion, and the wisdom of Kabbalah among the people. That today, it is precisely the common people, not the wise disciples that must know these things, because time is a determining factor and it is forcing us to begin the correction. So let’s see all these things inside, and whatever else he wants to say.
[The article is The Revelation of Godliness, (Matan Torah).]
Love thy neighbor as thyself (Leviticus 19, 18)
Rabbi Akiva says: “it is a great rule in the Torah
1) This statement demands explanation. Because the word law (the word lawin Hebrew also means whole—C.R.) indicates a sum of details that when put together form the above whole. It turns out that when he says about the mitzva of “love thy neighbor as thyself” that it is a great rule in the Torah, we must understand that all other 612 mitzvot (precepts) in the Torah with all their interpretations are no more and no less than the sum of the details inserted and contained in that single mitzvah of “love thy neighbor as thyself." This is quite perplexing, because you can say that regarding precepts between a man and man, but how can that single precept support within it all the precepts between man and God, which are the vast majority of the precepts?
As we already know that each one of us has a soul. That is what we learn. This soul consists of 248 organs and 365 tendons; all in all, 613 parts, meaning desires, which we must correct to be with the intention to bestow contentment upon the Creator. In order to correct our desires there is a means, the Upper Light, which comes and corrects. “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice,” because “the Light in it reforms.”
When we correct all the desires, the 612 desires, then we come to the last mitzvah (precept), which is the precept of love. Baal HaSulam says that both the love for another and the love for the Creator are in fact the same love, the same attribute, the same correction that we must attain. There seems to be no difference between a person’s attainment of love for other people and the love for the Creator. And that state can only be attained after we have corrected all of our 612 desires.
In other words, it is impossible to even think that we understand what love is, that we can maintain it and be in it. I don't know what that attribute is, I am distanced from it, in all my 612 uncorrected desires. I don’t even know what it is. But once I correct those desires, with the intention to attain love, so that with each and every desire that I correct, this love serves as a rule, as my actual goal, then it is most likely that I subsequently attain that love.
What does he mean that it is the rule? It means that all of these 612 desires actually encircle this rule, this love that I must reach. But it is impossible to do so without those 612 corrections along the way, each of which builds in me some part of the concept of love that is revealed later on.
Meaning there is no significance or importance to any of the 612 corrections within me, called the 612 Mitzvot, the correction of my 612 desires, unless I reach the final precept of love. This final precept of love contains within it all of the 612 Mitzvot, its constituents, and it cannot exist without them, for they sustain this concept of love. That is, they support and sustain each other reciprocally; the 612 Mitzvot and the last Mitzva that contains them and sustains them. It surrounds them and crowns them. That is one.
Two, if I attain the attribute of love, it probably makes no difference if I use it in relation to another person, to humanity, or to the Creator. Because there is a reason why it says “Love thy friend as thyself”—your friend, not the Creator—as well as, “it is a great rule in the Torah,” meaning that it contains all of the Torah , that is, all of the Mitzvot, all of the corrections with all the lights within the corrected Kelim.
There might be another question here. When I work on another and reach the love for the other, is this the maximum that I can reach? And does this subsequently result in my love for the Creator which is beyond [the love for another] but is [currently] something toward which I cannot work? Or perhaps the attitude toward another is altogether the same as the attitude toward the Creator? There are many more things in it which we will clarify along the way.
Question: When a person embarks on his path, should he aim for the 613th Mitzva, “Love thy friend as thyself,” right from the start, even if he [does not] understand it?
It seems that way, because if we do not think about the end of our path where we must ultimately end up, then everything we do along the way will not be part of that way; it would just be aimless actions. If he says that this comprehensive precept is my final, good and corrected state, then I must aim toward it right from the start. Meaning that I already aim myself to reach it, and everything I do along the way is done for that purpose. So that aim must be there right from the start.
You can say how can a person, who lives in this world, in this life, be forced toward something like that? How can I, just a person off the street, even be told about it? How can Baal HaSulam even begin to explain to me about the love for the other?
I love myself and I love my family. For me, the love of another is detestable. If I can be honest about it, I really don’t care about other people. I care about other people only to the extent that I can exploit them for my own benefit. That is how man is built. Let's not lie to ourselves, we are all egoists. “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.” We are made of an evil inclination to begin with, albeit we have to correct it, but it is our nature.
So on the one hand, how can one even hear what Baal HaSulam is saying, that to “love thy friend as thyself” is what one needs? But on the other hand, it is possible, that with all the suffering we experience today, which causes us to start looking for the reason for our suffering in life, we are becoming gradually inclined to hearing about the love for the other and that it might actually be possible that that is the reason we feel so bad in our world. People come to correction because they are miserable.
And the things that appear in the world somehow indicate that man should be correcting himself and not that he should be correcting the world. We corrupt ourselves and the world, our environment, and that is why we feel bad. And the corruption is because of our ego. And just to clarify in a short sentence what our ego is, it is the hatred of others. And its correction is the love for others.
Whatever the case may be, we have to make that our goal right from the start, as written by Baal HaSulam at the beginning of the article. You might try to shut your eyes again and try to escape it until greater pains than those experienced today, will bring you back to that same point. But if we are forced to be in this world lifetime after lifetime, constantly suffering as a result of our nature, then we have to correct our nature, and its correction is expressed in the phrase, “love thy friend as thyself.”
It is terrible to hear that. There is nothing I hate more than that, according to my nature, and I still don’t realize just how detestable it is; that is yet to be revealed. But we’re just starting off with common sense, emotionlessly. This is what there is before me, and it is a fact. That is the actual situation.
In other words, by delaying itself from correction, humanity only draws greater and greater troubles to itself. Instead of correcting themselves by deepening their understanding, and by realizing that they have no alternative, and that they simply must correct themselves from the ego, they just wait for greater and greater blows to come.
Instead of those blows, we could deepen our sense of the structure of reality, of the purpose of reality, and then we would not need those blows. Because this vision that we are developing for the future will serve as fuel, as something that draws us. And that is the whole desirable result from the study.
So that even a person who does not want to hear about this duty of “love thy friend as thyself,” while hearing about it, begins to gradually understand that this is how the world is built and that there’s nothing he can do about it. And then he nevertheless starts looking for some kind of way to come closer to that phrase and to its fulfillment, for he does not have a choice.
And subsequently, out of his studies, he begins to see that it's not that he doesn't have a choice, but that this thing grants him an unlimited, endless and eternal existence. And following that, he begins to see that it’s not that he will be able to merely live that way, without any limitations, but that he is going to transcend reality altogether.
What I want to say is that it is nevertheless worthwhile for us to present it—even to those who can’t hear this sentence and think that it is just a nice but unrealistic motto—in much the same manner as Baal HaSulam does, by throwing it at them right from the start, hiding nothing. Because each and every action must be aimed at it and that is what he is going to explain.
Question: Is love bestowal?
I don't know if love is bestowal, or what exactly love is and what exactly is bestowal. We will sort it out along the way. We will see what this term is and its definition.
2) And if we can still strain to find some way to reconcile their words, there comes before us a second saying, even more conspicuous, about a convert who came before Hillel and asked of him: “teach me the whole of the Torah when I'm standing on one leg." And he replied: “anything that you hate, do not do to your friend (the Aramaic translation of “love thy neighbor as thyself”)," and the rest means: go study. Here before us is a clear law ( Halacha), that in all 612 precepts and all the writings in the Torah there is none that is preferred to “love thy neighbor as thyself," because they only aim to interpret and allow us to observe the precept of loving our neighbor unreservedly, since he specifically says—“the rest means: go study." Meaning that the rest of the Torah is interpretations of that one precept, which cannot be complete if not for them.
In other words, as we said before, “love thy friend as thyself” is the goal, the state one must attain in one’s own correction. This correction is gradual and must be known from the start. Just like that proselyte who hears about it. He isn’t told, “you have to perform many Mitzvas, you have to circumcise yourself, you have to pray, go to the Mikvah” and all of those things. But he just gives him the essence: “you have to correct yourself and reach the Mitzva of love.”
First of all, from here we see that they even give an example of someone who isn’t Jewish, wanting to know what the Torah is, and to whom the same form of sentence is given, because the correction is a correction for all. Secondly, we have yet to sort out what Mitzvot are. We said that it is the correction of the person’s desires, and not the observance of external customs in this world that one performs with his hands and legs without the work of the heart.
What he adds here however is that apart from this one precept, nothing else counts as correction. You might put it this way: Any correction in each desire is only a component of that attribute called love.
In other words, there are 612 desires in a person, and correcting each one of them, depends on how much one adds to the attribute of love.
This is what is meant by “love being a rule [“ Klal,” also meaning “general” or “all” in Hebrew],” and the rest of the desires are its particulars, its organs. All in all, the entire soul, the soul of a person consists of 613 organs, which are organs of love, in their corrected form.
Meaning that every Mitzva, every correction of a desire, a Mitzva is a correction of a desire with the intention to bestow, every corrected desire with the intention to bestow is aimed at “love thy friend as thyself.” The summation of all the desires is where the Mitzva of love becomes clear.
What am I trying to say? Do not look at the 612 desires as something separate as if I were building some machine and getting something else in return. But in the system that I am going to correct called “man’s soul,” every individual correction is already a part of the attribute of love that I attain at the end of the path.
That is why this purpose of reaching the attribute of love must be present in the correction of each and every individual desire. It’s not that I start here, at the beginning of my path, and reach love at the end of it. But that now even as I perform some minute correction, some tiny Mitzva, and reach a measure of let’s say 1%, that already constitutes 1% of that love.
That is why it is impossible for me here to refrain from aiming at the attainment of love and that is why he says at the beginning that you have to reach “love thy friend as thyself.” It does not matter if you are a Jew or non-Jew, a grown up or a child, or even when you start; because even the tiniest movement toward correction must already result in the acquirement of the attribute of love. Well, I may have succeeded in saying something.
Question: “Love” is a very common term, everyone uses it. What is this thing called “love"?
“Love” means correcting the egoistic desire. [Rav drawing] Here I am in my ego, and I have to correct my egoistic desire for the sake of another – what we refer to as “in order to bestow.” What does it mean to bestow, for the sake of another? It means that I use this desire to serve the other’s desires. There are many pictures we can draw here, many schemes and many drawings, to make it easier for us to understand. Well maybe we should.
All in all, the creature that was created is called Adam ha Rishon, (lit. The First Man). This creature is a collection of the souls that are all interconnected like the organs in a body, consisting of an infinite amount of connections between each and every one of them. And the system is built in this complete manner from Above.
In order to reach similarity or congruence with the Creator, we need to allow that system to build itself just like the Creator had created it. This Adam ha Rishon, this system of souls is the sum of all the souls; about 7 billion souls. And by building itself, that system will reach the equivalence of form with the Creator. [Rav repeats while writing “Creator”].
So what is done in order to achieve that? Matter remained matter, but the connection between all the parts ceased to exist. Now those parts need to find the connection between them. By finding the connection between them and building it as it was before, by that they repeat the same act performed by the Creator. And the relation between each part and all the other parts is called “love.”
It is as I have stated before that every organ, every part and every cell in a body serves the entire body and it does not think of itself more than it must. That’s what the phrase of love is. In other words, every part is connected to the others. So if that part is going to be corrected, it must connect to itself everyone else’s desires and satisfy them according to their will.
Or it can also be called “sharing the sorrow of the public.” That is what the love phrase is, to feel the other’s desires as your own and to work with your own nature and desire in order to satisfy the other’s desires. It will be explained later on.
3) Before we delve into the heart of it, we must observe that precept carefully, as we are told, “love thy neighbor as thyself." The word thyself tells us that you must love your friend in the same measure that you love yourself, and in no manner less than that. Meaning you must constantly stand guard to satisfy the needs of each and everyone of the Israeli nation, just as you stand guard to satisfy your own. That is utterly impossible, for not many are the people who can satisfy their own needs during the daily work, so how can you tell them to work to satisfy the wishes of the entire nation? And we couldn't possibly think that the Torah exaggerates, for it warns us not to add or subtract, to demonstrate that these words and laws were given with utter precision.
Meaning we have a problem. What does it mean “love thy friend as thyself?” How can I love everyone as I love myself? I love myself infinitely, and I don’t even manage to satisfy myself with all the things that I think I need, so how could I love another? How could I possibly satisfy the others and fulfill them with everything they need? And how could I stand guard to ensure they lack nothing just as I always care for myself? Is this thing even possible?
Again, according to the same drawing, if we talk about the corrected state within the general soul of Adam ha Rishon, then that is the law of the reality of how this system functions. Since every cell, every soul, are able to feel the entire body of Adam ha Rishon, of which they are a part, they act this way toward the entire body. Just like how every cell and every organ in our body operate. It is a biological law, otherwise the system cannot exist.
So how can we reach that state? That is the question. And what does that state offer us? That is what we have to work out. But the fact that the law of the corrected system is such that everyone works for the sake of the whole system and then it functions properly, that makes sense.
Question: Why does Hillel say to the proselyte, “What you hate, do not do to your friend” and not “love thy friend as thyself”?
A proselyte is one who is in a completely egoistic desire. It is not like in the first case. In that case he was told, “Love thy friend as thyself…a great rule in the Torah.” And in the second case he was told, “Do not do to others what you hate,” because these are two phases in the correction.
The first phase is when I am totally immersed in my ego. So first of all I have to make a Tzimtzum over it and correct the vessels of bestowal, called “do not do to your friends what you hate,” meaning “do not hate the others.”
We could say that it is “bestowal for the sake of bestowal” whereby I restrict my vessels of reception; I do not use them in order to receive. I relate nicely to others but I still don’t do them any good. I still don’t work with another’s desires using my own corrected Kelim for the sake of satisfying their desires. That’s the first phase. And the second phase is when I reach love.
When we study the ways, the degrees by which we reach the goal, we say that there are degrees called “single concealment” and “double concealment.” Subsequently, there’s “reward and punishment” and “love.” In other words, love is definitely the last phase, and prior to that there are a few preparatory phases. And in every state we work with all of our 613 desires, and transfer them from one degree to the next, by progressively correcting each and every desire.
The state called “a Jew” means that a person is in a state of unification. We are not talking about a Jew in our world, born to a Jewish mother, or of a convert. We are talking about a “Jew” from the word “unification.” Or “Israelite,” like he says here “of the Israeli nation," meaning “straight to God,” Yashar El, straight to the Creator, aimed directly at the Creator . This is called Yisrael, straight to the Creator .
So those who are already at the level of Israel, past the concealment, are told “you have to reach love.” But those who are still immersed in their egos, referred to as Goy (lit. Gentile) and are not corrected yet, also applicable to the Jews in our world for we are all egoists, are called Goyim (lit. Gentiles). And they are those being addressed when he says “don't hate others.”
Because these degrees that we have to correct are still degrees of correction of the ego; “not harming the other,” not the degrees of “loving the other,” as in the second phase. You see? That is the difference. That is why this one was said to the gentile and that one was said to be the Israeli. But again, these terms “ Goy” and “Israelite” are the degrees of where the person is at.
Question: What does it mean “to harm another” and what does it mean “to love another"?
“Harming another” means I use them for my own good. I take a look at the world and see, “who can give me pleasure and to what extent, and how?” That’s our ego. That is how I see the world time and again; what is more important to me, less important to me, worthwhile or not worthwhile. The desires, the Reshimot that awaken in me, cause me to see a different world each moment.
But how do I see [this world]? I see it over my will to receive. It’s as if I have a screen inside of me and on that screen there are 613 sensors. They work in such a way that they grasp from whatever is before me, they perceive whatever is convenient for them to perceive, of which they can enjoy. What can give them pleasure?
I have 613 such sensors, and I perceive the image of the world already in my ego. It is imprinted on my ego. So it turns out that the world outside of me is not an objective world, but it is how I perceive it in my ego. It is all based on the different things that awaken in me time and again, like my sensations, my mood, my memories, but all in all, I always see the world according to my ego. And that is called egoism.
Now if in all my senses I see where I can give and add to the world outside of me, then that is called love. I work with my same matter, with all my attributes, with everything in me, but the direction of the work is different. That is the whole correction we have to achieve.
If a person is in a state where he wants to exploit the whole of reality for his own self, he is told, “don't harm the other.” But if he is already not harming the other, then he is told, “love thy friend as thyself.” These are the two phases in the correction, the first and the second as I drew here.
Question: It is not clear how we can satisfy the needs of every person in the world if they don’t satisfy their own needs.
First of all, the question is, are we even built to satisfy our own needs? I’ve never seen anyone who had fulfilled them. Maybe it is just an illusion, our constant chase after things that are unreal. Perhaps if I satisfied another, I might then satisfy myself. Because I see that satisfying myself directly is just impossible.
That direction is merely a psychological problem, it has to stop and maybe that will cause me to be happy. There is a reason why people go to drugs or take their own lives or simply don’t know what to do with themselves. It is out of desperation of not being able to fulfill themselves. Maybe that is the solution. Let’s first contemplate it, it might just be possible.
Egoistic love is the greatest thing we feel in this life. So maybe, that altruistic love that he’s talking about can truly fulfill me totally and endlessly; I don't know. Let's not look at what it entails but at what it gives us. Perhaps those 613 desires that are built in me cannot be fulfilled in any other way.
I would put it differently. Why do we study the wisdom of Kabbalah? What is it for? What do we get out of it? I learn that at the beginning the system was in such a corrected state that each and every element satisfied every other element, and in that, it became fulfilled. That’s Adam ha Rishon before the sin.
So every item was working for everyone else, and in that they were fulfilled. So now I have to revert back to the same type of work, but with my own desire. With my preceding desire, that I want it to be so. But I nevertheless go back to the same system that was already in existence and in a state of fulfillment. So this here is an example for me, saying that everything becomes completely filled and whole in this way and not in any other way.
You are asking “I cannot satisfy myself, then how could I satisfy others?” So I’m telling you that there never was a situation where anyone did satisfy themselves, but when each one satisfies everyone else, then everyone is fulfilled.
Question: Was there ever a situation where anyone fulfilled the needs of everyone else in the Israeli nation?
Of course there was! In history too, we learn that it was prior to the ruin of the FirstTemple.
Question: How did they fill the needs of all the members of the Israeli nation? Say this guy living in the city of Acre, how did he fill the needs of all members of the Israeli nation?
We need to understand that the minute a person begins to correct his Kelim, his desires – we’re talking about the correction of the desires, not the correction of what he does with his hands and legs. The minute you start correcting your desires, your attitude toward others, you suddenly discover that you are in a different reality. A different reality, different forces appear in your world.
And such fulfillments that you never thought existed, start satisfying your desires. You did not know about them before nor did you know about their fulfillments; you didn't even know they existed. They become revealed according to your ability to acquire correction in the “love of the others.”
Previously, you wanted all kinds of things in this world for your own self, and saw that you could not satisfy yourself with them, no matter how much you were receiving. Even if you were to receive everything in the world, it still couldn’t satisfy you.
These Kelim are not even created to be fulfilled. They were built for the purpose of deciding that it is necessary to be above them, that’s one. Two, when you aim yourself toward the love of another, you discover a system of 613 desires, which does not currently exist within you.
Right now, what do I want from this world? I want physical things that pertain to my body. That’s all. Nothing more than what is perceived through my five senses, and that’s it. In other words, just leave this system be, allow it to exist.
But the minute you start developing an attitude toward others, you begin to open up the soul. From the point in the heart, you begin to open up the soul where there are 613 desires. These 613 desires can only be filled through bestowal because they constitute a mini system, just like in Adam ha Rishon. And then, a different world opens up for you.
What is this ‘another world’? It’s when you begin to feel the others, that is, you start connecting the others to yourself. [Rav drawing] In other words, I am here, and I am built of 613 desires in which I begin to relate correctly to the others, to the entire system. So I start adding the entire system to myself, for better and for worse.
First of all I absorb desires from them, a general desire of the whole system, and by that I sort of become like Adam ha Rishon, to the extent that I can love them and care for them. Just as he says, “stand guard to satisfy the needs of everyone.” “Standing guard” means “love.”
So at first I feel myself here, thinking that physical pleasures, money, honor, and knowledge, is all that I want. That that’s all I have. Well, power and honor are the same. And all of that is in my five senses and my tiny desires.
Then I suddenly begin to discover outside of me, out of my ‘point in the heart,’ when I start working on it, that it is in fact the soul (Sorry let's put it this way.) So I start to discover that my point is actually the soul, in the big system of Adam ha Rishon, and I begin to acquire this whole system. That is called “the spiritual world.” That is what I start feeling.
When I feel out of this point I still don't feel anything. But when I start relating to others so that at least I don’t harm them, by that I acquire the worlds of Yetzira and Assiya. And when I begin to work with “reward and punishment,” and come closer to “love,” that is the world of Beria. And “Love” is the world of Atzilut.
Where does it become revealed? It becomes revealed within the system of Adam ha Rishon. It is my system, I bought it, acquired it and drew it to myself in order to fulfill it with my attitude, with my love. That is my spiritual world which I have received.
Now my body can go, I don't need it anymore. I live in other desires; I live in a different dimension, in an endless spiritual life. The body can die or it can live, it no longer makes a difference to me. It supports me and it is next to me as long as I need it and afterwards it does not. And I no longer need to come and reincarnate, I have already acquired a different reality, an alternate existence.
Question: We always go back to “ me acquiring another reality,” “I buy the system,” “I change my perception.” But he doesn’t say “love the others and you will change your perception.” He says that “I fulfill the wishes of the nation.” How does my doing that, fulfill anyone else’s needs? Not my own [needs] when I change my perception; alright, so I change it. But what do I actually do for the other? What does the other get out of my performing this correction?
We will learn that later. That’s one, and two, the questions are not so correct. We'll explain that too, when we continue reading.
Question: When he says “the needs of every person from the nation,” which needs is he referring to?
Now you’re asking the same question as he did. Do I need to chase each and every person and see what they need? And if they’re all egoists, they certainly need things from here to infinity. So now I will have to run around the entire world? And I don’t even have to run around the entire world; I’d have enough just taking on my neighbor’s family and working on them for the rest of my life. Right?
We have to understand that it wasn’t meant literally. We have to look at this condition and how it is realized. Is it even realized in our physical world, or is this about correcting one’s own desire with regard to the other desires, to one’s egoistic, corporeal desires or with regard to one’s spiritual desires, and so on. That remains unknown for the moment.
Or maybe I am here in my physical desires and my desires for money, honor and knowledge. And now I have to satisfy this other person's similar desires; satisfy him out of my own desires. So all I did was replace my own desires with his, and there’s nothing in that.
There are plenty of people in the world, all kinds of nice organizations and bleeding hearts and their likes that are not doing anything for the world, just making it worse and perhaps even ruining it.
We are probably talking about a special attitude and correction that we still have to figure out. Life isn’t easy, I agree. But gradually it will become clearer. And when it does become clear and we realize it appropriately, we will reach an endless life.
But if we follow the current path we will only move through suffering from lifetime to lifetime and that’s it. So, have some patience and it will open up for us. In any event, this thing is fundamental. It is the beginning and the end of the entire reality. So let's continue with this tomorrow.