Article "Love for the Creator & Love for the Created Beings", lesson 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
Today we are beginning to read Baal HaSulam’s article from Pri Hacham, Maamarim (Fruit of Wisdom, Articles), page 183, The Love of God and the Love of Man. You can also find it under that name on the site.
When you approach the wisdom of Kabbalah, you don’t come because you want to love man, or because you want to love the Creator. In fact, a person comes in the state when he hates everyone and the whole world. He curses the Creator and everyone. He comes with the question, “What is the meaning of my life? Why do I feel so bad?”
For sure I feel bad. I am not here to love everyone. I can love everyone when I feel good. Then I can love the world and everybody. If I feel that I get pleasure, then I’ll love the source of the pleasures. The world is filled with pleasures and then I’m willing to love it. But if I feel bad (and as a matter of fact, who feels good today, especially those who come to Kabbalah?), of course I don’t have any desire to love everyone—people, the Creator. And anyway what is this all about?
Normally, we think that Kabbalah can give me strength to get over my problems, to control my state, maybe even to bend the world a little bit, in correspondence with how I understand it should be, and so on. And when we open books, we start to see that we’re getting back to school, or kindergarten again, “Be a good boy. You have to love each other.” It is something that looks like morality.
Let’s see if we really, by force, have to accept these recommendations of Kabbalists who told us that The Love of God and the Love of Man is a must state, that it ought to be. What does that give us? Will I ever be able to get over my ego and love others? If it’s worthwhile, maybe I’ll be able to, but then I have to see that it’s worthwhile. But if it’s worthwhile, then it’s probably not love anymore because love means that you simply love without condition. We’ll see.
Of course when we begin to study these articles, the body doesn’t agree to it; the man, his heart doesn’t agree to it. We’re disgusted by these things and we’ve eaten all that in our lives plenty. We’ve all had unrequited love, and not once, concerning anything. We all believed and had all kind of relationships with people and have gotten a bad response in return. And this response taught us not to love, not to open ourselves at all. That’s what we’re taught today to be hard, to defend ourselves so that we’re not hurt by society, so our heart is not broken again. Why do they say that it’s a necessary thing, as unreal as it seems to us today, far and even undesirable? Well, let’s see.
I just want to add that, as we know from the rule about Lights and vessels, and from our lives, everything appears through its opposite. That is why our whole life, which today is so full of disappointment, terrorism, harshness and cruelty to each other, tells us that from this darkness the opposite state will appear. Meaning that we’re actually very close to the love of man, closer than ever before; as much as it seems now opposite, we are very-very close. Let’s see how it should happen.
The Love of God and the Love of Man
“Love thy friend as thyself.” Rabbi Akiva says this is a great rule in the Torah.
Collective and Individual
The above statement, although it is one of the most famous and cited sayings, it is still unexplained to everyone with all its vastness. That is because the word rule (or collective) indicates a sum of details that relates to the above rule, that each and every detail carries a part within it in a way that the gathering of all the details together creates that rule (or collective).
It says, “Love thy friend as thyself,” that’s the commandment from Above, from the Torah and Rabbi Akiva who was a great sage. He said, “This is a great rule for the Torah,” meaning from the perspective of the Kelim. He saying that if you prepare yourselves in “love of man,” then what will appear in you is the Torah, something called the Torah. What is the Torah? I don’t know, but if my Kli is love of man, what will appear in it will be the Torah. That’s why Rabbi Akiva says, “It’s a great rule in the Torah.” Meaning, everything you do, all of the desires, when they are corrected they will be as one rule for the Torah.
And if we say “a great rule in the Torah,” it means that all the texts and the 612 Mitzvot are the sum-total of the details that relate to the verse of “Love thy friend as thyself.”
Mitzvot (commandments) are all the desires in a person. In each of us there are 613 desires. What does he say that we have if we correct all of them?
…are the sum of the details that relate to the verse ‘Love thy friend as thyself.’
That is, we have 613 desires that we can carry out, that we should fulfill. And we have another Mitzva (commandment), which is called love, and which comes as a result of the 612 corrections. If through the 612 corrections we reach the point when we begin to live in the attribute of love, then we reach the corrected Kli in which with respect to the Creator, to the Upper Force, we receive something called “Torah.”
It is difficult to understand how such a statement can contain the sum-total of all the Mitzvot in the Torah? At most it can be the rule (the collective) of the part of the Torah and texts that relate to the Mitzvot between man and man. But how can you include the greater part of the Torah, which concerns work between man and God in the verse, “Love thy friend as thyself”?
We have a whole lot of desires. Baal HaSulam’s talking about Mitzvot, and it’s not that obvious in regard to the Mitzvot. A Mitzva means a certain attitude towards all kinds of phenomena we have in life. It stems from the desires in us. We have desires between man and God, and man and man. There are two kinds of desires: one relates to the Creator, and all the rest relate to the creatures.
With respect to the Creator, we understand that if I arrange, put my relationship with Him in order, then it will give me something. And the same thing we know regarding our relationship with the creatures. Perhaps if I put my relationship with the creatures in order, then I’ll gain good things too. But what is the connection between these two things: that if I arrange my life with respect to the creatures, because of that I’ll put my relationship with the Creator in order? That’s the problem.
In our world I can kill, rape, steal, I can do anything, and then I go and pray and thank God. I give a part of what I stole to charity and I’m fine. People think like that, we all think like that; we’re all thieves, we’re all robbers, and we don’t have a problem with it. Why does it happen this way? It’s because we don’t see that it’s the same thing, that society and humanity and the creatures is the Creator that is immersed in them. It’s the same thing.
How can we incorporate in “Love thy friend as thyself” everything that has to do between man and man? In other words, what does a great rule in the Torah, an attitude to the Creator, to Godliness, to eternity, to the spiritual world, have to do with “Love thy friend as thyself?” “You want me to love him? I'll love him, but what’s the connection between him, whatever he is, and eternity, the natural forces, the worlds? What is the connection?” That’s what Baal HaSulam wants to sort out, to clarify.
That Which You Hate, Do Not Do To Your Friend
If we can somehow reconcile the above text, here comes Hillel’s statement to the foreigner who came before him and asked to be converted, as it says in the Gmarah, “Convert me so that you will teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one leg.” He told him “That which you hate, do not do to your friend.” This is the entire Torah, and the rest means just go and study. We see that he told him that the entire Torah is the interpretation of the verse, “Love thy friend as thyself.”
Now, according to the words of Hillel, the teacher of all the Kabbalists of his time, it is perfectly clear to us that the primary purpose of our holy Torah is to bring us to that sublime degree where we can observe this verse “Love thy friend as thyself,” because it specifically says: “the rest means go and study.” This means that they interpret for us how to come to that rule.
It is surprising that such a statement can be correct in most of the issues of the Torah, which concern man and God, when every beginner evidently knows that this is the heart of the Torah and not the interpretation of “Love thy friend as thyself.”
What is happening here? The stranger who came to Hillel is our will to receive in order to receive, the corrupted one which recognized itself as corrupted and hence came and said, ‘give me correction, tell me what to do.’ Because he is in a will to receive in order to receive, he can't be told “start giving to others, love others,” but “come to a state, when there is only a desire to bestow or even Tzimtzum (restriction). Don’t use your ego.”
That’s why Hillel says “don’t do to another that which you don’t want others to do to you.” Test on yourself, on your own ego, so that caring for your ego will be exactly like caring for another’s ego. By that you will acquire the sensation of the other. You don’t want to give him yet but you are already equal. It is not that he is below and you step on him, but now you raise him to your level. That’s an intermediate state, “on the way,” because it is impossible to speak in any other way to the will to receive that is in the ego.
And after that, when you come to this state you’re already called Yisrael, straight to God. You’re already looking for a way to equalize in form with the Creator. And then when you come to the equivalence of form you are called Adam, similar to the Creator, which is already a will to receive in order to bestow. That’s love already. Hillel doesn’t talk about love, he talks about equality.
Question: Is it possible?
It’s possible. Do you know how it’s possible? If you separate yourself from your body, from your desires and look at them from the outside, as if you’re looking at something terrible, something disgusting, then it will be easy for you to hear what they say. You’re looking at it like a researcher observing a natural phenomenon. You didn’t do it, you didn’t build it, the Creator did these bad things and now you want to research His actions.
Question (cont'd): Is it is possible to do this, “that which you yourself hate, don’t do to your friend” without Tikkun (correction)? Can’t we educate to it without correction?
Our upbringing is entirely altruistic. It is a wonder, in an egoistic society we teach people to be good, to be courteous, don’t steal. We don’t understand what we’re doing in life compared to what we teach children. Is this how we behave? If I can steal, will I not steal? If I can scorn the other, so will I trouble myself to be polite and considerate with him? If I was brought up a certain way, I have no choice; I do what I was brought up to do because it’s easier for me. But just for the sake of it? So why do we give a child by force this kind of upbringing, to be so nice, considerate, to be lenient, why?
Do we have to be like that in life? But still we continue to do it. Why, what’s wrong with us? We lie to our kids, we corrupt them, cheat everyone, trick everyone. That’s what we should do, because we know within us that ego is a dangerous thing. That it is not worthwhile for a child to show his ego on the outside because he’ll immediately be beaten from all sides, and no one, no person will be punished for treating an egoist this way. Therefore, to defend the child (who knows what will happen to him in life), the most accepted form, the safest way to live, is the altruistic form, the altruistic way. It is precisely relinquishment, giving up to others. We just don’t know how to use this altruistic form, not in order to be lenient and safe, but to acquire the whole world as well. That’s already Kabbalah. For that you have to acquire wisdom.
But even without the wisdom of Kabbalah, subconsciously we already use the same attitudes and ways to at least defend the child. Not only our own upbringing, our culture, but 99% of human systems in our lives are altruistic, we just don’t see it. It’s surprising, we’ll learn about it, you’ll see. All we need to do really is just to agree with this form, just agree. The whole world is giving. We just don’t want to see it this way because of our natural ego, and that corrupts our perception.
So as a teacher, you’re right, this is how we bring up kids. Now we already bring them up as if for correction. But then as they grow and we don’t add our upbringing in accordance with the intensification of the ego that grows in a person with the years, then a person stands opposite his ego and starts using it against himself. If we could continue our upbringing correctly and enable people to know how to use their growing ego to benefit themselves, then everyone would be happy, everyone. That’s the trick. That’s what we’ll have to add to our upbringing. The present generation will see that it will not be able to survive without it.
Hence the approach to Kabbalah is changing. In the end it’s a method of the upbringing, to teach a person to realize his life in such a way that it become infinite, that he will commence on an infinite process.
Love Thy Friend as Thyself
We should examine further and understand the meaning of the verse, “Love thy friend as thyself.” The literal meaning of it is to love your friend in the same amount that you love yourself. However, we see that the collective cannot keep up with it at all. If it had said love your friend as much as your friend loves you, there still would not be many people who could observe it completely, yet it would be acceptable.
Indeed the problem is that we don’t feel our natural system, the natural system we are in, because if we take every aspect of our lives, it is egoistic. Any atom, molecule, the tiniest living organisms of the still or the vegetative, it’s like every item in and of itself. But when it must survive and live (and this is possible only through connection), then every part relinquishes its own ego and connects.
We also see it among ourselves in time of danger, time of war, or when there is some task to do, we connect. Each relinquishes himself just to survive, to reach his goal. Nature itself is built in such a way that all of its parts within nature, each and every part is egoistic. But if they want to come to a united cooperative life that is above the individual one, and the individual life will not be able to go on living but is about to die, so it’ll be able to give itself up and to connect to others, to unite with the others in any way just in order to survive. That’s how body parts or individual cells in our body connect.
Each and every cell egoistic in itself, but in order to exist in a single body it becomes altruistic. So much so that it gives itself over to the body, and this giving up enables the cells to share different professions. Some become intestine cells, some become heart cells, and some become brain cells. Each takes upon itself a different functionality and then they all co-exist. This enables the body to live at a much higher degree than any simple cell, or single cell.
And then the head controls his whole form of existence where one is in charge of heat, another of cold, and another one of pressure. Each group cares for the maintenance, for the unity of the whole body, and that’s only because each feels all the others and is willing to do anything for all the others.
Look at the wonder of the living body; living only on condition that each cell relinquishes itself for the life of the whole body. It’s a very special condition. In biology this law has to apply to all living cells, otherwise there is no life. This means I take for myself as much as I have to take in order to survive and I serve the whole body. However, we have a high level of communal life where I belong to the human degree, and each and every cell belongs to a high level. Each has a life beyond the life it would have while living on its own as the most simple cell.
In other words, in our world too, even at the lowest degrees where life begins such as birth, reproduction, and continuation, there has to be the force of giving that determines all of our functioning, our way of life. That is why there’s the condition of “Love thy friend as thyself,” at least, as thyself.
And afterwards Baal HaSulam will say, “more than yourself.” It is because the life of the body proceeds, comes before your life; if the body isn’t alive, then you will not live. You can’t calculate that your life and life of the whole body are equal, because by that you can’t calculate if it’s for you or for it, for another. The life of the body must come first and we see these things in the body too. Cells kill themselves in order to give life to the body. But what is rational here? If I live in a body and I’m willing to revive the body in order to live myself, how can it be that I will put myself to death for the body?
But we see that even this happens. We see that people will go and kill themselves; people are willing to put themselves to death. For what? For life, for a common life, because in this common life, they begin to feel the life beyond their own private cells. This is called acquiring spirituality, eternity, beyond their own body. To the extent that they love others more than themselves they acquire life within the other and remain alive this way, only their bodies disappear.
It is arranged in our system, in our life-systems in this world. We shouldn’t think that our world is opposite from spirituality. The only thing that’s opposite is our own perception. All of the worlds are the same thing, nothing changes, only our perception. That is why “Love thy friend as thyself” comes first. And then there’s more, but more than that is “Love thy God,” because the life that we acquire then is of a higher level called Godliness or Creator.
Question: In what does each cell feel that it’s the whole body?
In our life, we can’t ask a cell about it. But a person who begins to feel the other, acquires the needs of the other, acquires the vessels of the other. He does so by relating to others not in order to, “I’ll serve you, give me life in return,” since that’s a give and take thing; that’s not love. If I obtained the needs of the whole body, meaning if I bought everything besides me into myself, it becomes me and I feel this whole life as my own.
The problem is that we look at our body; we don’t look at a desire. But the true vessel is a desire and a desire itself is eternal. It doesn’t disappear; it’s a force of nature that exists in reality. But there are forces that are concealed and forces that are not concealed; forces that have taken upon themselves clothing—gas, liquid, solid, plasma, fire—whatever. But inside they are forces.
If I obtain the willpower above my private strength, it becomes my own, I’ve obtained it. Then I feel the life outside my own self as a life that I had bought and that’s called buying an eternal life. I exit my own limit, my body dies but I continue to live and I feel it already while living. What does it mean in Kabbalah to ascend the spiritual world? It’s when I acquire these deficits outside of me and in them I feel life. This life outside of me that I feel is called the Upper World, the outside world, the spiritual world.
Why is it called the spiritual world? After all, I feel it in someone else’s desires. I feel it in their egoistic desires but through my altruistic attitude towards them. This is why for me it’s called a spiritual world. For me it’s a spiritual world, for them it’s a corporeal world. Then while living in a body, I feel my body and their bodies. As my altruistic attitude clothes in them, it is clothed in them as the Light, as the Creator in accordance to my level of congruence with the Creator, and then I have eternity and perfection. In other words, it is felt in the egoistic desires of the world in my altruistic attitude towards them. It’s very simple. We don’t have to change anything except our intention.
Question: Isn’t there risk in it? For example, a mother who loves her children. Some kids evolve okay, and when they evolve sometimes they fall. If there is a child who was born retarded or whatever, limited, so she constantly lives in his pain. She lives in constant grief because she has no solution for it. Isn’t there risk in it? Let’s say I grow spiritually and I feel someone who's suffering terribly and I don’t see a solution for him. All I get is his pain.
I am happy to announce that the minute you begin to feel the love for others, within this love you begin to discover the state of the other in his eternal state. They do not see or feel their eternal life: where they come from, their previous incarnations, their future incarnations, how will they end. You don’t feel it now. But by relating to him with an intention to bestow, if you love them more than you love yourself (which is possible only through the spiritual process that will come), you will begin to feel his state when he is at Ein Sof (Infinity). You acquire an eternal Kli.
What is a collection of the souls? It’s the Kli of MalchutdeEin Sof. Then you will not see them as suffering, as ill, retarded, mentally ill, sitting in some hospital, whatever. You will see them in a complete form. When you see them in the complete form, you will thank the Creator. At the same time, you will see their present form and you will see why precisely this present form brings them to the perfect form. That will merit you the name righteous because you will justify the providence. So relax.
But to love my friend as much as I love myself appears to be impossible. Even if there were but one person in the world except me, that would still be impossible, much less when the world is full of people. Moreover, if one loved everyone as much as one loves oneself, he would have no time for himself. But one must willingly satisfy one’s own needs without neglect, for one loves oneself.
It is not so concerning the needs of the collective; for one has no strong motivation to stimulate one’s desire to work for them. Even if one had a desire, could one still keep this statement literally? Would one’s strength endure? If not, how can the Torah obligate us to do something that is not in any way feasible?
We should not consider that this statement is spoken by way of exaggeration, because we are cautioned by the saying: “Though shall not add to it nor subtract from it.” All the interpreters agreed to interpret the text literally. Moreover they said that one must satisfy the needs of one’s friend even in a place where one is himself in need. Even then we must satisfy the needs of our friend and leave ourselves needing.
The Tosfot interpret that anyone who buys a Hebrew slave, it is as though he buys a master for himself. And the Tosfot interpret that should one happen to have but one pillow, if one lies on it oneself, he does not keep, “For he is happy with thee.” And if one does not lie on it and does not give it to one’s slave, this is sodomite rule. It turns out that against his will one must give it to one’s servant. It turns out that one has bought oneself a master.
It means that the law of connecting to one system, one body, as one man and one heart, “Love thy friends as thyself,” to be one soul, one creature with respect to the Creator, obliges all of us to love the other more than today we love ourselves. Why is it necessary? Because by that I acquire a general Kli that contains all of reality. By that I become one person standing opposite the Creator. Each of us should do that.
That condition should not seem to us like some curse, on the contrary. It’s a problem to reach this condition and to want it. But if we look at it objectively, unemotionally, and regardless of us but of how the system should be, by that we acquire a huge system of all the souls, all the desires instead of our little egoistic desires that we can‘t satisfy anyhow in the ordinary manner. Therefore, all of the pains, all of our afflictions are in order to give us the intellect and the mind, and the sensation to understand that the condition for love of man is acquiring the eternal Kli.
Question: We said that besides the society we are in, we have no connections to other societies. How can I love everyone? I can only do it here.
Is it enough for me to settle for a few people? Why do I need humanity for it? Meaning, you can imagine that perhaps, you can love a few people though. We see it in our society. (I love) my soccer team, maybe some other guys that I go to the bar with, or whatever. It’s okay to love a little group, but humanity, all those people? Just the thought of it! How is it possible by any means?
These are nice words. I hear them often on television. Who says he hates others? Everyone loves everyone. Everyone wants to do good to others. No one takes pride in being an egoist. Everyone is proud of being good-hearted people.
Indeed, this evolution is a gradual one. We must not work against the desire. Here you have to understand, if you go against your desire, you will not follow your free choice. You will not advance according to correction. The fact that now you are looking at what they're saying and you feel like running away from it, not hearing about it, that you can hardly stand what we are reading right now, these sentences—that’s how you should continue. Otherwise you’ll blind yourself.
That is to say, we always have to test what our heart wants and not hide it from ourselves, not cover it. But afterwards answer to yourself or maybe ask yourself, “What should I do if this is necessary? First of all, how do I see that it is necessary? And if it is, perhaps it would have been good to be that way. Well, I am told that by exiting myself, I reach spirituality, eternity, perfection. Well okay, I’ll just shut my eyes. How will I jump now?” Then you start learning how this can be done.
But what I’m trying to say is that all of it happens with a desire that goes first, not against the desire. When Baal HaSulam says, “Love thy friend as thyself,”he says that within your desire it must appear in a most desirable way or that besides that you want nothing. Now you’ll picture it as something, “Well, I have to love the others but I hate them. I have to love them; I have to run to all those people, including my wife’s relatives...”
We are talking about the correction of the desire, not at all against the desire. The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about correction of a person, not about nice upbringing, “Be a good boy.” What we teach kids is false. It’s a lie. It’s flattery. Here we are saying the opposite, “Be honest and always test yourself.” That’s what we should do.
We don’t relate to it, with any regard for superficial actions. When we talk about our upbringing toward kids, we don’t tell them, “You have to love him.” We say, “Don’t tell him, be nice,” meaning, look nice to others on the outside, don’t change inside. We just pretend to be nice on the outside. That’s our upbringing; the lie is already in there. That’s why it can not be maintained. But we do not have a choice, because we do not have the wisdom of Kabbalah in there to start correcting. That’s how humanity exists.
If we had wisdom of Kabbalah in our hands and we could come to people and say, “Don’t do anything against your desire, don’t force yourself. But it is for your own good to love the others. Don’t do it superficially. It’s hard, but let us convince you. We‘ll show you that it’s worthwhile to do it, what you get by it. Next to it you‘ll have a means to change your desire from within, to really love others. And then you’ll suddenly see the eternal world, you will feel yourself living forever—eternity, spirituality, unlimited, endless pleasures. What’s bad about that?”
That is, only our false perception tells us that we have to seemingly go against our present egoistic desire. We also received it from upbringing that taught us up to be nice hypocrites. That’s the only thing that stands in our way. We don’t understand the principle. Here the principle is inner correction. I do not do anything against desire, nothing.
Baal HaSulam also talks about the seemingly developed nations, the Europeans. By coming to other nations and starting preaching to them and forcing their own culture to them, they corrupt those people greatly. It’s not culture, it's notupbringing. It’s a lie. It’s just the greatest and the most aggressive lie, the greatest hypocrisy. On the contrary, what they’re doing is preventing these natural ancient cultures to exist as they are.
That’s how we should relate to ourselves. Nothing is done forcefully. We see it in our life too. Those who win at war will see that afterwards they don't succeed. Nothing goes by force: only according to the correction of the inner desire. That’s the only thing that should change. That’s why, “'Love thy friend as thyself'? Wonderful. There is such a thing, there is spirituality and everyone will come to that. The prophets talked about it.” But we have to relate to it as a process through which we acquire our heartfelt desire and within that desire eternal life.
Why do I keep stressing this point? Start relating to it as softly as possible, without the natural resistance. I remember myself. (It's especially hard) when you came from Russia where you were told “Love thy friend as thyself” so often that later, you can’t hear it anymore, you feel you don’t know what to do. So relate to it as something that is preceded by the desire. It has to happen willingly and that’s how it must appear.
Question: The inner desire determines what is necessary? How do we know what is necessary?
I don’t know what’s necessary, what’s not necessary. I see a mother. Tell her you don’t have to love your child, let go of it. What’s she going to say, “Thank you very much?” A desire is a desire. You live in your desire. You don’t ask about it because it’s nature, it's our preliminary substance, our fundamental substance. That’s why if we have such a desire where we love, that’s it, that’s all I need to do.
We are not talking about our love. It is called love of fish when I love someone or something because it gives me pleasure. Here we are talking about wanting to love, and a kind of love where what is in that person felt like pleasure, gives me pleasure and that’s it. It is enough for me to feel the pleasure in the other.
One Mitzva (Commandment)
This raises several questions: According to the aforesaid, we all sin against the Torah. Furthermore, we do not keep even the primary part of the Torah, the essence of it, because we keep the details but not the actual rule. [That is not so bad. He says we're all like that.] It is written: “When you keep the will of the Creator, the poor are in others, not in you.” Yet, how is it possible that it will be poor when everyone keeps the rule, the desire of the Lord and love their neighbor as themselves?
The issue of the Hebrew slave needs further study. The meaning of the text is that one must love one’s slave as oneself, even when referring to a stranger or an alien who is not a Hebrew. One should not excuse oneself because the rule for the stranger is as the rule for the Hebrew, because “One law and one ordinance should be both for you and for the stranger that sojourned with you.” The word “stranger” also means a partial proselyte, meaning one who does not accept the Torah , but only retires oneself from the idolatry.
Here I have to add a few words. These articles were not written as they are here. Sections that were pretty much in accordance with each other, on the same theme, were taken and put together. Meaning, what is written in each section, in each part, such as “Love thy friend as thyself” and then 'One Mitzva' are of course Baal HaSulam’s words, but it’s not that “Love thy friend as thyself” was the actual title, and that they were originally connected this way. These are just pieces he wrote in several places. Many papers were left of him without any order. They took parts and pieces and somehow put them together into one article. It’s not a consecutive article that was built like that by Baal HaSulam.
Hence what he says here and does not interpret, or pieces of sentences, references, are what he wrote more for himself. We can somehow interpret it and we will talk about it. But we should know that we shouldn’t look in these articles for the flow of material, for a nice attitude or to relate to us in our level. These are just sketches that he wrote for himself.
Question: Is it possible that in all these things are taken out of context, because he meant something and someone else came and used it in another way.
You’re right. This always could happen. We know that when you take single words and put them together in a different order, you get the opposite meaning, and the same happens if you misplace sentences, pieces. Yes, so that can be. But these articles were tested by my teacher Rabash. They were prepared by Baal HaSulam’s grandson, Hezekiel. I know him very well; I was in touch with him all the years that I was with Rabash. He collected these things. He was a boy of six or seven years old. Baal HaSulam called him and told him: “There is a bag of papers here that I don’t need. Go and burn them.” They were things that he wrote. But Hezekiel was pretty shrewd; he was a clever little boy. Some of these papers he hid as a child and they remained; some of them he burned.
We have photocopies of what was left, 81 such pages, in our archive. These are 81 pages where Baal HaSulam wrote with tiny hand writing a lot of things. This tiny handwriting is also because the paper was expensive.
It was 1983. I was present there when Hezekiel put these pieces together. He would bring it to Rabash to test it, and we would go together to the park or to the beach, normally to the park, for it was winter. We, Rabash and I, would sit on a bench and read these articles, “Is this the right sequence, or…?” We can relate to them as pretty much orderly articles. Meaning, the theme is the same theme. There is no such thing as taking things out of context here. There was no addition here whatsoever of anything Baal HaSulam did not say. But these are still discrete sections around the same topic.