Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
We are reading the book Shamati, Article #94, And You Shall Keep Your Souls.
In the verse, “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves,” the care refers primarily to the spiritual soul. However, one cares for the corporeal soul even without commandments from the Torah.
This is because in the corporeal soul a person feels that he is harmed. If you put your hand in the fire, of course, you will immediately take care of yourself. Likewise, if you feel that moving your hand from the chair to the table, you will feel greater pleasure and profit, then, of course, you will do that; you have the fuel to make this movement.
In corporeality, reward and punishment are revealed. That is why, according to this revelation of reward and punishment, of how bad it is for me now compared to how good it can be; or, how good it is for me now compared to how bad it will be for me in some future situation, a person calculates and takes care of himself instinctively, consciously or subconsciously. He does not need to obligate himself, to calculate where he is losing, or where he is winning, because reward and punishment are revealed. The profit and the loss today, or in a minute in the future, are revealed to me. This is called revealed reward and punishment, the gain or the loss.
So my desires, my body, the entire sum total of all of my desires, constantly make the calculation, uninterrupted. It might even be sleeping, half-conscious, or whatever. To the extent that the body works and feels this reward and punishment, it always acts according to those calculations.
Question: Why does it say the 'corporeal soul?'
Corporeal soul is the corporeal body. What is a corporeal body? This body does not understand anything. The corporeal body is my desires. We are talking about desires, not about the flesh; we are talking about desires within this flesh. Within these desires, is also a question, where are they within the flesh? It seems to us that it is flesh, but it is not.
So, my desires at the corporeal level have a sensation of reward and punishment with respect to all kinds of manners, and states, and values. Those desires, with the impressions from reward and punishment, evolved next to the intellect. The intellect constantly works, and ceaselessly checks how to serve the desires. This is so that the desire will be in the ideal form with respect to the calculation of the intellect. It is to exert the least energy, and gain as much as possible. That is the simple formula.
Of course, in that formula you have a thousand elements, which we cannot even understand. Psychologists think that they understand them, but very little, really, because we cannot see within a person. The desires not only come from previous lives, but from upbringing, from culture, a person’s inner character, a person’s mood, physical health, from a thousand reasons.
This intellect is not the one that can understand. It is internal intellect in my subconscious and makes those calculations. In addition, I can activate my intellect as well, but they are all toward realizing the same formula, the maximum gain for the least amount of effort. It is similar to how a formula in math equals maximum, a differential formula. So, in a simple way, that’s how the body works. It says, “Take care of your souls,” and that relates to the physical soul. We work this way and we keep it, because there is no problem when the reward and punishment are revealed.
This is because the rule is that a Mitzva is primarily evident, meaning it is evident that he does what he does for the purpose of a Mitzva when he would not do it…
This means that for him, there is neither gain nor any loss. However, he has some reason outside of him that he does not feel in his desires he calls this outside of him. That reason compels him to do something.
How can that be? How can I compel my body to feel? If I do not feel, I cannot feel this reason that commands me. If someone who commands me presses me, of course, I will do it. His pressuring and the fear in me, is already a reason. However, a Mitzva is something that does not come to me revealed in the reward and punishment.
One must consider two things. How will I force myself to work according to some abstract idea? From whom will I hear it? Will he compel me or not? It is he himself who brings me the command. Where will I get the strength to obey the command? Why should I?
So Mitzva is something very strange, because if it comes to me through my own interest in that I will discover some attitude toward it out of my desires, it’s no longer a real command, as is a Mitzva. Rather, it is now touching my desires, my calculations in ordinary ways, just as we experience in corporeality.
How do we hear this Mitzva? In addition, how do we behave according to it? I have to build within me a system of values that is very different and strange, that is not yet in me. So, I will feel something and will calculate that is completely abstract from me, and not perceived in me in forms of reward and punishment. This commandment will stir-up in me just the same values, such as reward and punishment, but in this other unnatural system.
I cannot explain it… You just have to understand what a Mitzva means. It occurs in a way that does not compel me in anyway, yet I get some advice. Otherwise, if it is mandatory, then a person does it, because of desire. It has to be above and detached from it, where I want to discover what is that which will compel me, which, when in me, there is no connection to it, gain or punishment. I want to discover my attitude towards something that I can completely distance myself from, and disregard. It does not compel me in any way, as I do not need it.
So, the creature discovers that with respect to the Creator, he’s free. You may determine your attitude however you want; there is no reward, nor punishment. There is no, as we say, pains that bring you down. We have it in the present, to develop our sensations toward it, but not afterwards! The Creator does not come and force you to arrive at loving Him.
This is because the rule is that a Mitzva is primarily evident, meaning it is evident that he does what he does for the purpose of a Mitzva when he would not do it, were it not for a Mitzva. Rather, the reason he does it is because of a Mitzva.
This means that he does not want to have that Mitzva come to him in any other way. He wants to develop his attitude toward the Mitzva, as if it came to him from the greatest physical benefits or from the worst physical punishment. That is the attitude that he wants to cultivate.
From here, we can understand, let us say, the commandment “Love thy friend as thyself.” I have no need for it, no interest in that precept, because there is no benefit. It is not as it appears to me now that we will all gain by that benefit in that we will have security, peace, and tranquility. That is what we present to the world.
However, the spiritual correction is to having no benefit from it. “Love thy friend as thyself” without any thought of self; that you precisely prefer to have no reference to yourself. You want to build within yourself, a completely new system with respect to others that has absolutely no connection to the previous system. This you call “I am keeping the Mitzva.”
Here, we can understand and feel somewhat, how detached those two systems are. A person builds from within, the physical and the spiritual system with respect to the other. The system of relating to the other has to be completely without any calculations of reward and punishment, without those desires which the intellect considers as to how much to fill oneself or not, how much to move towards or not, and towards whom, and what, and in which way, to maintain oneself. There is no connection or shred of remembrance of all these systems in the corporeal system.
Rather, the reason he does it is because of a Mitzva.
Question: What is the connection in this form of life, where the person has no connection to reward and punishment? What is special about it?
What is special about it is that a person builds himself from zero. He has to build out of himself the image of the Creator. Our corporeal form enables us to be, to exist, in some kind of existence that later looks like a very strange existence; and to build from within it, our spiritual body, the ten Sefirot, our soul, the spiritual form that exists.
Then we see that the form in which we exist, before we build this spiritual form, and during the building of this spiritual form, that this corporeal form is independent of us, that it is not us. It’s just some existence of desires in a way that they are all completely controlled by the Upper One, by the Creator. This enables us to build the system of the soul, from within them, independently.
We build the soul from the three lines of different desire. These other desires in the soul are those for the Creator, and the Lights are the knowing of the Creator within those desires. They are completely detached from desires for food, sex, honor, money, family, and knowledge that we have here. Because those desires a person does not direct at the Creator, they are completely detached from the spiritual system that a person builds.
So we have to build a system in which we will feel a Mitzva, and that system becomes clarified in us with respect to the Creator. All the desires with respect to the Creator, which are to receive in order to bestow, are the desires which a person should live and attend.
That is why we say that a thought that has no desire toward the other, so that in this desire the Creator will be discovered, is not a thought that belongs to spirituality. A person has to be oriented toward Israel, Torah, and the Creator. If not, he is at a corporeal, physical level, for which there is no consideration as to how else it should correct itself. Later on, we find that this whole existence does not need correction.
The only way a person becomes accountable, is if there is a point in the heart. Without it, he is just like everyone else, operated from Above. He does not even have a point of free choice. He is just a puppet, like an animal, operated from above, and that is it. We will discuss this more because it has to be revealed. It is difficult to explain things that are obtainable only from within the sensation.
Question: What happens to a person, who received the point in the heart and came here to study, then suddenly left because he lost the desire? Does a person become an operated puppet again?
Of course, he returns to be operated upon, as he did not realize the free will that he could have had. He rejected and mocked the ability to evolve above his desires and returned to his desires. He did not develop his free choice, that area, that point, from which he could open himself as the ten Sefirot. So, what free choice does he have? He returns to become like an animal in every way. He just does not escape the effect of the forces, the Reshimot (reminiscence), all kinds of instincts, and his education.
What happens with a person who begins to realize the desire of the point? He becomes detached from the life, the stigmas, the desires and his previous goals. Something different is created in him. He becomes weird in the eyes of society, becomes detached from relatives and old friends too. He has different goals, a different life, a different society, and a different environment. This is as it should be.
Now he is building himself around the point in the heart. That is what he will develop until it acquires the measure of ten Sefirot, in which he will feel the spiritual world for the first time. Of course, he will distance himself from the previous life, from relatives and friends, and what everyone else is interested in. It is natural, and there is nothing to hide here. It is because he wants to feel the next world that is coming toward him. Of course, he becomes different from others. So, why is this bad?
I remember people saying, “Look what you did with my son? Look what happened to him! He used to be an ordinary person and this and that.” “Well, you are right! What did you think?” Typically, you hear that from a mother who says that about her son. “Previously, he went abroad, he was advancing at work, and now he’s not. He doesn’t want to progress.” So what? Has he no food? He has values that are more important now. What can you do? So, there is no need to hide it. Of course, it is a different goal and it is a different life.
Accordingly, a person should understand that when he continues, of course, he‘d be distanced from all the forms of life that are in the environment of human society. Of course, he wants to reach a Mitzva, those things that according to nature do not obligate him at all. He wants to come to a state where he will feel himself obligated by some kind of new values. Those, he will take upon himself freely, completely detached from this life.
It is the same as in this life, where I feel committed to fulfill my own desires, in which society impresses me, education, previous lives, etc. Now, I want to build different system of desires, in which reward and punishment will be completely independent, not belonging to me, where the calculation will be a reward and punishment with respect to someone else, not towards me. Mitzva will be a command, for me to consider others and not myself. These are very strange things. It is an opposite system, and even more than opposite. So this detachment is very, very purposeful.
Hence, with a Mitzva that he performs, if he would do it even if it were not a Mitzva, he needs special care, to find a place where he can say that he does this only because of a Mitzva. Then the Light of the Mitzva can shine on the act of the Mitzva that he performs.
It is in the same bubble, in the same ten Sefirot that he builds around the point in the heart, that he can feel himself. These ten Sefirot are the inclusion of all these 613 desires, in which he feels the command, where, with the respect to his corporeal desires, he does not feel them as commands. This command is called the word of G-d, the voice of G-d. It is detached. We cannot feel it in us.
This is called “making a Kli with the Mitzva,” in which the Upper Light can be. Hence, the care refers primarily to the spiritual soul.
What does it mean that the Upper Light is there? It is not satisfaction. It is a sensation of the realization of that system that he built called the complete ten Sefirot of the soul, which acquired values of this Mitzva, this command, where all of his calculations are now in the system of bestowal. There is no “I” except outside of him and in that system he calculates. For him the execution of this act he calls the fulfillment of reward. He understands that it is natural for the system that this is the reward.
In that system, the part that he corrects appears, namely, that he builds the system of bestowal called Galgalta ve Eynaim. Then opposite desires appear to him, which does not even resemble our corporeality. It is a Klipa (shell); it is something else. Such desires appear in him where he seemingly uses the Creator egoistically, which then we call ego. He adds on top of the ten Sefirot of bestowal—to bestow in order to bestow—the reception in order to bestow. That is already a very high degree.
However, these are two completely different systems: bestowing in order to bestow and receiving in order to bestow. The system is completely different from our present system because it is detached from considerations with respect to a person. A person builds entirely upon calculations and desires that are outside of him: calculations in bestowal to somewhere outside of him.
You must simply imagine this. A person has to build it. That which we have from the very beginning, thousands of things one feels and all the calculations which happen in us subconsciously or consciously, have been prepared for us from birth. While here, we have to build those systems within us.
That is the meaning of begetting me, building myself, creating myself. Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, and Atzilut is degrees that you climb, where you learn from the Creator how He emanated, acted, formed, and created. A person reviews it, and that is what he does with himself. He builds those systems as if from zero. He is his own Creator, otherwise you cannot say that he reached the Creator and became equal to Him, as a partner.
Question: Baal HaSulam says, “…if he would do it even if it were not a Mitzva, he needs special care, to find a place where he can say that he does this only because of a Mitzva. Then the Light of the Mitzva can shine on the act of the Mitzva that he performs.” Can you explain this? Can you give me an example in the preparation period, if such a thing exists?
There is a Mitzva, and there’s the one commanded. We say that the reward of a Mitzva is to know the commander. To know is to cleave, as in “Adam knew Eve.” However, one should cleanse itself of the commander. A person has to examine himself, where from the beginning he has to appreciate the act of bestowal, in and of itself, regardless of the Creator. Even if the Creator had not commanded the act of bestowal, he would still accept it as something sublime. He would cling to it not because the Creator commands. This is to cleanse himself, in reference to a person, from every anxiety for, or connection to some spiritual gain.
There is more to it, but I cannot find the words. Let us say, for the time being, it is enough.
Question: What is the practical technique to build the image of the Creator beyond words, by reading in a book, and discussing it?
Well, of course, we need to go beyond the words, to execute what he writes here and in all the writings, everything that Baal HaSulam explains to us. We have to go beyond words, and the technique is simple: simply to do it. To do it, meaning, to arrange our relationships in a group with one another in such a way, that afterwards, we will discover how we are all not in it, that we want to be in it, and receive support from the group so that everyone’s desire to reach that state will be great.
I alone can never desire to come out of self-love, to be useful and serve others. There are no such things within me; rather, they are for my own benefit. It is like a waiter who brings you food: is he thinking about you? He is thinking about your tip and about the salary from the boss, and that is it.
Our desire should be to detach ourselves from the act in such a way that our will to receive will be uninvolved. A person cannot develop that inclination and that desire of himself, unless he is in a society where everyone tries to do that. No one can, except by participating in such a society where the inclination is to reach real care for others, without any thought of self. We begin to receive from the society a desire for it to happen. It is not yet desire of others, but it is a desire that I will come to feel the other as a reason for my vitality, my life, and for my actions. Then, with that desire, I can come to study and ask for the realization of it, and that this desire will indeed happen within me.
Only the Upper Light can do that, because that is what the Upper Light is intended for it. It has no other action besides building that desire in me; a desire to serve others according to the others' desires, without any connection to me. When that happens to me, I can consider that I have received the first spiritual Kli.
So, the desire to exit myself toward others is only received from the group. With that desire, I have to approach the study together with the group and ask for the Light that Reforms and then I am able to reach it. If a person is detached from society to begin with, he has no ability to demand correctly. That is a condition we just have to accept. We may understand it or not. If we do not understand now, we will understand later on.
However, it may take many years.