Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
First of all what is spiritual attainment, what do we need to attain? What is spirituality?
We are living in a sensation. This sensation is the sensation of our life, of our living. You can detach a person from that sensation and he won’t feel anything. Sensation happens in our senses. Our senses are our internal mechanism. They are filled by something and present that something, the impression of these senses, as a sensation of the world, of reality that we exist in.
Of course, everyone has his own private impression and sensation. There is something where it seems to us that we have a common sensation, where there can be some contact between us by exchanging sensations or understanding one another. This happens inside each and every one of us, where we think that there are besides me other people with whom I can be in contact in an environment. All of this happens inside a person, all of this is called attainment; which is what one attains within himself through the impression of his internal system.
The internal system presents an impression that’s divided into several parts. Here, Rabash wants to explain to us how this impression of ours is divided into Atzmuto (His Essence), into Ein Sof (Infinity) and intosouls. How the souls with their sensation attain their own reality and something outside of them.
Of course, it all comes from within the soul and is attained by the soul, meaning through that mechanism which attains something, which feels something, through which something passes. The perception of this reality is very important to us because that’s the source of all our confusion. A person either makes all kinds of mistakes and abandons his progress thinking that there is no reality outside of him or that on the contrary, there is the whole reality but it is credited to a force outside of him. The correct perception in which he and the source of his reality, the Creator, are connected together in the right connection, is the state that a person should set up first within himself, and from it begin to act. Toward what? To a more correct perception of reality.
That is why there is no other issue besides the present attainment and the purposeful attainment, which I want to reach. I exist only in this: the present state, the next state or maybe (movement) on the way to it, and then the final state that I want to reach. These states are states of attainment of reality in my senses, in my sensation.
We discern many degrees and discernments in the worlds.
This is what Kabbalists tell us who have developed additional senses to their senses. In these senses they feel an additional, a new reality that naturally is affecting our reality. It is perceived in our five physical senses, in what we now refer to as our body, which seems to us like our body, like us. Kabbalists who develop new senses feel an additional new reality, which is divided into many parts. They call those parts worlds, Sefirot, Partzufim, and those who fill them: the more internal parts which are souls, spirits, angels, etc. This additional reality that a person finds through his internal evolvement, called spiritual evolvement is what they are talking about.
We must know that everything that relates to discernments and degrees speaks of the attainment of the souls with regard to what they receive from the worlds. This adheres to the rule, “What we do not attain we do not know by name.”
Just as now, attaining something, we call this attainment, this sensation “this world” or “our world,” “my world.” Of course what I attain is all that“ I have attained that it is so.” It’s not that I can say that this is a picture or a reality that exists outside of me. It’s all in my senses, in my existence.
It's just like when we have a measuring device. It measures only what it’s intended to measure. A thermometer is sensitive to hot and cold, a barometer measures pressure, another measures radiation, another measures contamination, etc. Every device measures parts of reality.
We have a collection of these gauges. It’s a certain collection. You can’t say that it’s everything, and of course it’s not everything. If we had the complete perception of reality, nothing would be concealed from us. There wouldn’t be an event that suddenly happened, we would know, understand and feel everything. In that too there is also a question. If what we perceived and understood everything, would that really be everything or is it just our sensation that we are filled with results? But whatever the case may be, even in our situation we have a sensation that there is a very restricted reality that we attain and there’s something outside of it which we do not attain.
Even in our physical senses we feel that there is something else that is hidden: past, future, before birth, after birth, things that happen to me now, and their reasons. I don’t understand peoples’ thoughts, and all that is happening within me and even less, everything that happens outside of me. I perceive everything in what my mechanism of perception, my awareness is capable of.
Kabbalists say it’s the same with spiritual attainment. When we develop new senses, in them too there is a limitation. What we perceive with them, we perceive within our Kelim of spiritual perception alone. What is outside of them? Who knows what is there?
This is so because the word Name indicates attainment, like a person who names some object after having attained something about it and does so according to his attainment.
It means that we name all kinds of items, parts, incidents, things that happen in us, outside of us, things that we feel. In other words, we name actions as well as details of reality according to how they relate to us, to our perception, according to how we are built. I cannot name something objectively. I name it according to the way that something operates on me, whichever way it awakens in me some impressions. I can’t name it anything else. I might be able to throw out a number randomly. Then you might say that I give it without any connection to what it is with respect to me. But if I name something, I always name it in a measure, in a way that I’m impressed with something.
Hence, reality in general is divided into three discernments, with respect to spiritual attainment…
That is, Kabbalists say that the way we are impressed with spiritual reality, this reality is with respect to us, and what is not with respect to us we don’t know. It is because all is perceived in the soul and the soul is the Kli from which they determine the names. If so, then the entire reality, through the impression of the souls, is divided into three discernments:
1. Atzmuto (His Essence)
2. Ein Sof (Infinite)
3. The Souls
1. On the matter of Atzmuto we do not speak at all.
There is something that we can define as Atzmuto (His Essence), butwe define this discernment only according to the way we attain it, as Atzmuto. Meaning besides its existence, we cannot define it in any way, we cannot limit it in our senses, we cannot talk about any measure of impressions which is called name. We can’t name it. Since we cannot name this object, we call it by the lack of name in it, the lack of impression-perception of it hence Atzmuto. It indicates the lack of perception.
This is because the root and the place of the creatures begin in the thought of creation, where they are incorporated, as it is written, “The act ends in the preliminary thought.”
It means that the souls and Ein Sof come to be incorporated in this Atzmuto after everything they go through in their corrections, actions, whatever they experience. Then they are incorporated by way “The end of the act is in the preliminary thought.” They cannot do more than to express to us this final attainment in this slogan.
2. Ein Sof pertains to the thought of creation which is “His desire to do good to His creations.” This is considered, and is called the blessed Ein Sof.
That is, Atzmuto presents itself with respect to the souls in an endless form. Meaning, the souls feel, receive and are impressed by His attitude to the souls in such a way that they call this attitude Ein Sof (no end, no limit, and no limitation).
We’re not speaking in terms of time, of before or afterwards, after we attain, before we descend, after we rise, no. We are speaking about degrees of attainment in which there isn’t a past, present or future. Everything is only about the measure of perception.
It is the connection existing between Atzmuto and the souls. [This Ein Sof is the connection between Atzmuto and the souls.] We perceive this connection in the form of “desire to delight the creatures.”
We do not perceive Atzmuto. What we feel of Him – not Him but from Him – is the measure of Ein Sof, His endless unlimited attitude to benefit the souls.
Ein Sofis the beginning. It is called a Light without a vessel yet it is there that the root of the creatures begin, meaning the connection between the Creator and the creatures, called “His desire to do good to His creations.”
What does it mean that there, “is the beginning?” Where is the beginning and where is the end? Meaning that the highest degree that we can attain is there. This is why it’s called a beginning. Although we learn cause and consequence, but with respect to us in our present state we shouldn’t never look at the process as evolving. Nothing evolves outside of us. Everything is static; it depends only on the changes in us. Our attainment depends on these changes.
This desire begins in the world of Ein Sof and extends through the world of Assiya.
Atzmuto wants to present His attitude to us according to our measure of perception. He relates to us benevolently to the good and to the bad, endlessly and unlimited. The souls that attain it have the possibility to perceive or attain this attitude – the Thought of Creation – in different measures. These measures are called worlds ordegrees.
3. The Souls receive the benefit that He wishes to give.
Atzmuto is attained inside the souls; the measure of His endless then the gradual attitude is attained inside the souls. The souls are the ones that talk about the perception that is divided into Atzmuto, Ein Sof, and the souls themselves. The souls attain, sense, and name. Souls are the creature from which we always speak about reality. This reality exists only with respect to the creature that is called the soul.
He is called Ein Sof because this is the connection between Atzmuto and the souls, which we perceive as “His desire to do good to His creations.” We have no utterance except for that connection of desire to enjoy.
We do not perceive any other attitude of Atzmuto towards the souls but His desire to do good to His creations. In lower degrees of attainment this may appear in all kinds of strange, peculiar forms, incorrect ones, opposite and limited. To the extent that the souls come closer to the perception of the Thought of Creation to do good to His creations to the fullest, they attain that it is limitless.
This is according to the Kelim of the souls: the greater the volume in the souls, the more they absorb the benefit. From Above, there is no limitation on the filling, but all limitation is only in the souls themselves. This is what Kabbalists attain, namely those souls which correct themselves, improve themselves, as it is called “ascend in the degrees of the perception of reality.”
Question: How do we know that it’s an attitude from Atzmuto and not from Ein Sof?
Ein Sof is a measure by which Atzmuto relates to the souls. It’s as if He dedicated it to the souls. The Thought of Creation is to do good to the created beings, where He created the creature (the soul, one general soul or many souls, it doesn’t matter). With respect to these souls, He created in them a desire to enjoy. According to the amount of the desire to enjoy, He created the same amount of the filling and dedicated it to the desire. In other words, the desire and the filling are equal. That is why they are received by the complete correction of the soul as endless, Ein Sof.
It’s not that I created some lack, and I dedicated eighty percent of filling to the lack. The filling is always one hundred percent in any way that might be born and suddenly evolve. It means that all the deficits, all the desires, anything you might even say that is felt in the souls as a deficiency will be filled unendingly from His Essence. That is why His attitude to the souls is called Ein Sof. Meaning Ein Sof is a measure of attitude, the emanation, the filling that comes from Him to the souls.
Question: We can feel, perceive, attain attitude. Why is it attributed to something unknown such as Atzmuto?
It is because we do not attain the source from which the pleasure, the benefit itself comes; we attain the benefit in and of itself. When I attain within my Kli, I attain the filling. According to the filling, my attitude to the filling and my work on the filling, I can feel within the filling the Giver and attain Him. That’s our work.
Question: Is it true that when you attain the Giver it is Ein Sof, it’s not Atzmuto, since on Atzmuto there is no perception?
The Ein Sof that we attain, of course we attain the perception of Ein Sof and not Atzmuto. Again it’s not because we do not have a connection to Atzmuto. It’s because we cannot, with respect to the Kelim, attain anything outside of the Kelim, outside of what is in us, outside of our impression. This is to stress that I don’t perceive Him, but only how I’m impressed of Him, I say that I attain Ein Sof.
Let’s say you give me something, I attain you, I attain the giving, and through the giving I attain you. Even without the giving, I swallow you, so to speak, all of you, you’re in my attainment. I perceive your image in my senses. But I perceive it according to my own attributes; I split it to pieces and bring it back together into a complete form. This image is in me, I attained it. Meaning that I can never say anything about what it is in itself.
That’s why we divide this perception into three parts: I, what I perceive and what I can never perceive. It doesn’t matter if it’s this world or the spiritual world. I is the soul, the maximum it can perceive is Ein Sof. Who is outside of it that arranges everything for it in the perception, the feeling, and the living of its reality is what could never be perceived outside of the soul (because we’re speaking from within the soul, from within ourselves), and this is called Atzmuto.
So that word stresses inability to ever perceive. It’s not because of our weakness, it’s because it just can’t be that we will perceive something outside of our Kli. It will always be from within our structure, from within someone who perceives.
Question: But the perception changes. Reality doesn’t change, but the perceiver changes, right?
The perceiver changes, it means that his reality changes.
Question: But the perception changes. Reality doesn’t change, but the perceiver changes, right?
No! Atzmuto doesn’t change because he doesn’t perceive Him, so he can’t say that it changes. Atzmuto is some source, which I don’t attain and if I don’t attain it, there are no changes in it with respect to me in my perception. You might ask it this way: “I am imagining Atzmuto, let’s say as some black cloud, grey cloud I don’t know what it is, who it is. When I am a great Kabbalist and reach endless perception, will I perceive Atzmuto differently?” You will attain Atzmuto differently. How? By the lack of the perception of it.
The extent of how much you cannot perceive Him will be clearer to you as compared to today. But you can’t say, as Baal HaSulam explains about philosophers who say, “However we can’t attain the Creator Who has something like this, which we do not attain or something like that, which we do not attain.” Because ultimately what is being spoken of is attainment. You attain that it is unattainable. Meaning that concept of Atzmuto becomes clearer and clearer to you. But it’s not that you can say anything about things that there are not in Him as though they are in Him, with respect to our perception.
Question: Can we say that just like in any scientific scrutiny there is a part that is hidden and a part that is revealed? For any attainment is there a part that is still hidden from you and a part that’s revealed?
No, with respect to Atzmuto you cannot say that. That’s with respect to our attainment in our Kelim. Our Kli is always divided into a corrected part that’s calibrated towards feeling reality, according to the equivalence of form, and a part that’s not ready to perceive reality, which is not in equivalence of form with it.
Now we are with Ein Sof, with reality in a very small measure of equivalence of form called ‘this world.’ It’s also a kind of equivalence of form; otherwise we wouldn’t have any perception. But this equivalence of form is one that dwells in us from Above. We are allowed to exist this way without our own correction, without equivalence from ourselves, from within us. It’s like a baby has the right to exist because grown ups constantly care for it and worry about it, it doesn’t matter what he does. Nothing depends on it. Whatever he is they serve him in every way. They don’t ask for anything in return. That’s how we exist right now.
Our existence is as though given to us as a gift. It’s not because we have equivalence of form from within ourselves. Ein Sof comes down to such a degree that it is in contact with us and by that it revives us. More than this the Creator will not give of His unconditional attitude towards the created. Rather He’ll demand that we independently reach some equivalence of form with Him and to that extent He will appear in us and from then on it will be a matter of spiritual degrees.
There is no change in the formula of the perception of reality. It’s always according to equivalence of form. Equivalence of form is either through the Upper One or as it comes from the effort of the lower one.
Question: If the Kli is filled, the state of the equivalence of form appears to us as Ein Sof, even when the Kli is very small.
Even now we perceive Ein Sof but in a measure called this world.
Question: What motivates it to progress in this scrutiny?
What motivates the creature is that Ein Sof restricts itself and doesn’t give satisfaction to the creature with respect to itself, by that He awakens the creature to start coming closer to a greater perception of reality. The perception of reality is sensed in the creature as the sense of living, of life. So Ein Sof
restricts itself. You see how the whole world feels itself in trouble, depression, drugs, etc., etc. As much as we want to pretend, attain all kinds of games and satisfactions, win the World Cup and all that. You see it doesn’t help.
The Ein Sof restricts itself and then the creature must start attaining a measure of living that will not be felt as suffering. By that, because he doesn’t have any choice, he begins to understand that the formula for grasping life, reality and the sensation of living is a simple formula of equivalence of form with Ein Sof. Then he begins to understand through the books, through the study, through the explanation, how to reach it, how ultimately to fulfill itself.
Ein Sof plays games with us, the way adults do with children. This game, we can say, is not what happens according to some desire He has, just because He feels like it. Rather it follows the same law of the desire to receive, which was created. It is already according to the Reshimot, within the will to receive that was created.
The Creator created only one thing, a point of existence from absence and later on all its development is already law. From this law stems only the creation of existence from absence; it comes from the Creator and is something that we cannot investigate. Everything else is already evolvement of two forces. The force of His thought to do good to His creations and those who need to receive this benefit.
Question: From the moment of creation the creature has two discernments: one is the gift and the other is the sensation of the Giver. Is the sensation of the Giver Atzmuto, or is it also Ein Sof?
The sensation of the Giver is Ein Sof.
Question: (cont’d) Yet he calls it the sensing of the Giver and not the sensing of the gift.
But within the sense of the filling, you feel the one who gives you the filling. You name it according to the sense of that filling. You cannot give names to Atzmuto.
Again, everything that we can even say about the Giver is called Ein Sof. In Ein Sof we have two givens: the gift itself and the Giver Who wants to appear in this way towards us. Ein Sof is called the Thought of Creation to do good to His creations. To do good to His creations is not just the benefit itself; it’s the sensation of love. Everything that you can even say about it – good, bad, I feel this way, that way – that’s the Giver. It’s all incorporated in Ein Sof.
We learn that Malchut de Ein Sof, is Malchut that feels the complete filling in all of its desires, and the sensation of the one who fills it. The only thing that is missing in that state, is what Malchut wants to determine, wants to add from itself; how it relates to it, how Malchut reconciles its two impressions between the Giver and the Giver of the pleasure. That’s it.
This whole round that Malchut de Ein Sof makes is so as to connect these two things within itself. It cannot at first connect it because they come to it and awaken in it a negative sensation. It is a large negative sensation called shame, which brings it to all kinds of actions. These are not actions of Malchut de Ein Sof, these are impressions that it experiences.
The Host places before me a table filled with all the refreshments and also places Himself in front of me, next to the table and I am standing in front of it and that’s it. I can’t escape this state. Now the whole issue is how I relate to it. How I go through my internal changes here.
The state in which three of us – the Host, the refreshment and I – exist, is the state of Ein Sof before the Tzim tzum. My sensation of this whole state is called shame. Once I feel the refreshment, the greatness of the Host and His love, out of the collision of these two things in me (it's all within my senses), I feel shame.
We don’t know what shame is, it was just given such a name, but it’s a bad feeling. Why must it be bad? It is because if it were perfection, I would later do nothing. So that bad feeling brings me into actions and stretches the string till the end of all the corrections. Bad sensations now force Malchut de Ein Sof to reach, to get on with these two givens.
That’s what we learn because a part of this whole development happens with respect to this situation itself, as it becomes clearer in the desire of the creature. It is called “the expansion from above downward” with all things, where I first relate to the Creator and I would like to do these things only for Him. Then perhaps it’s pleasures, and then I enter the breaking of the vessels and all kinds of things. Everything starts to percolate much like when you are affected by some incident and then begin to boil inside. The incident you saw affects you and you can’t stop yourself; you’re all agitated about it. At the end of this level of evolution, from within, you begin to relate to everything that happened.
That is, there was a certain status that entered you. You perceived it and it influenced you: all kinds of circumstances were built in you, all kinds of decisions, impressions, sensations. And now you yourself, from some external, distant point, where you are seemingly completely disconnected from it; when it doesn’t work on you any more, it doesn’t influence you; when you are not agitated, neither negatively or positively, you completely came out of all the impressions – now you still take yourself and begin to correct your attitude with respect to this incident, which has so influenced you. You now want to relate to it correctly. First of all you have to choose what’s correct, how to reach it, and to what status. This is actually one's work.
And apart from this connection of the desire to give delight we have nothing that we can say. And that is the beginning of the issue.
What we attain (if we actually do attain anything) in our consciousness from Above, we attain His desire to delight us. The measurements of His desire which we attain, is felt in us as pleasure.
The Creator gives us something. He gives us only the sensation that He wants to give us pleasure. He gives only the sensation; the sensation that He wants to benefit me, give me pleasure. This is what’s felt in the spiritual world. You don’t feel the pleasures detached from the Giver of the pleasures. There is no such concept because the will to receive that was created as existence from absence, through the tiny spark of light, was created as opposite from Him. This is called the measure of necessity to exist of the will to receive. There is no shame about it, because its existence, is neither condemned, nor praised.
Anything besides it, there you already have the attitude of the Creator toward the creature; His desire to do good to His creations. There is nothing besides His desire to bestow. Then the desire to benefit is felt in the creature as the sensation of love, of good.
It means that we cannot discern between sensing love and sensing the good. In our case we seemingly feel the refreshments on the table and we don’t want the Host to be there. Let me enjoy. The Host either spoils my pleasure, my possibility to enjoy it or vise versa, He keeps offering to me, as much as I can now enjoy the cake, with the knowing who is serving the cake and how.
We may think that there are Klipot and in the Klipot there is an issue of perceiving spirituality and enjoying it, detached from the Host. There is never such a thing in spirituality. It’s just given to us as some kind of imagination, as an illusion that such a thing can happen. But in truth it doesn’t exist. A sensation of the love of the Host isthe very refreshment itself. That’s all there is.
What sustains the will to receive is the tiniest Light that created it and sustains its existence. Only in it, there is no sensation of love because here there is only its existence. For an example, in our state of existence, we exist in our world without any sensation of the Creator. It’s a kind of existence called this world, something that exists, though in spirituality it’s not considered existing. Just as we cannot say about this point called existence from absence, that it is an existence. The only thing that we can say about existence is in connection with the Host.
We have no utterance except for that connection of desire to enjoy and this is the beginning of the study.
Listen to what he says: other than “that connection of the desire to enjoy” of the Host to us, “we have no utterance.” We don’t attain anything but that. We attain only the measure of love of the Creator towards the creature.
…this is the beginning of the study. It is called a Light without a vessel yet it is the root of the creatures, meaning the connection between the Creator and the creatures, called “His desire to do good to His creations.” This desire begins in the world of Ein Sof and extends through the world of Assiya.
“His desire to do good to His creations.” What seems to us in the Klipot that there is seemingly an ability to perceive Ein Sof, to swallow it, without a connection to the Creator, is the illusion the Creator Himself sets before us so that we will have the opposite, a contradictory point to understand that everything depends on love alone. That what we attain is love, that love is the refreshments. There are no two things. Two things are in us. They are because of the incompleteness of our attitude toward the Upper One.
As we say there is one Upper Light, and if it spreads with respect to the creatures, it’s because the creature is divided into the will to receive and the intention. But there is never such a thing as refreshments without a sensation of the love of the Host or the possibility of receiving in order to receive without a connection to the Host. There are no such thing, no such refreshments.
You see the refreshment as seemingly existing outside of the Host. It’s an illusion for you to see this way, so that you will have the possibility of connecting it to the Host, to love of the Host. But the fact that you can perceive it seemingly outside of the Host is a mirage, it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing in spirituality. Only we picture it this way because the system of Klipot corresponding to the Creator created the illusion that you can leave Him and just take the pleasure.
The pleasure doesn’t exist outside of love and the Klipa makes you picture it as if it exists outside of it. This happens so that it will give us the possibility to see the points of darkness, where we are deficient. When these Klipot appear, the sensations that there is refreshment in front of me without the Creator, it helps me to understand what I have to connect, one to the other. Without the Klipot I wouldn’t know that they are separated and that they are disconnected, that I have to make the connection.
Through the connection I obtain my own “I.” From within me I build love. This love is built from this picture of the refreshments and the Host as two separate things. So we thank the Klipa very much for bringing us the sensation of deficiency, the place that needs my work of connecting the Host with the refreshment.
In this world you might say whatever you want, it doesn’t matter as it’s just a lack of perception. However in all spiritual degrees it is the same. That’s why it’s a little hard to explain what it means to receive in order to bestow. What I receive from Him, a piece of tasty cake and then I take the flavors in me and turn them to Him in order to bestow? If I don’t build this attitude on account of the Klipot, then I cannot receive these flavors as though refreshments without the Host, and direct it to the Host where without Him there is no refreshments. I don’t have the words but it’s good that we’re beginning to talk about it.
Question: I don’t understand what the refreshments are without feeling the Host?
Refreshment without sensing the Host is a Klipa that shows me that there could be such a reality.
Question (cont'd): What is this thing?
Pleasures.
Question (cont'd): From what?
From anything: money, honor, knowledge. This you understand?
Question: Is there something more of what is being spoken of?
We are not going to get into it. We’ll proceed to the next part of the lesson, all the rest will be confusion. This is for the meantime.