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 in the book Shamati, Article #124, Shabbat of Genesis and of the Six Thousand Years.
There are two discernments of Shabbat: 1) of Beresheet (Genesis/beginning); 2) of the six thousand years. And the difference between them is this: It is known that there is a stop, and there is rest.
What does Shabbatmean? Shabbat is the time of rest. When everything is corrected, organized, everything is in harmony, in absolute rest. When all the Kelim (vessels) are filled with Light and are therefore without any thought of filling themselves, of getting something, but all is at peace and rest. There is congruence, there’s equivalence of form between the Kli (vessel) and the Light. Only this state is the permanent state, unchanging. It doesn’t ask for any corrections or changes. And this is why this state is called Shabbat.
There are two kinds of Shabbats, two kinds of such states only. One state comes from the Creator, when He established creation. This is called the Shabbat of Bereshit, when He created the Kelim, to the extent at which they were filled with abundance and Light, fulfillment. They wanted and felt in it complete satisfaction from the Creator’s side. Afterwards, when they needed to bring man and elevate him to the degree of the Creator, then this environment of the worlds had to perform this change, and this is why further changes occurred there, like the breaking of the vessels, deficiencies, recognition of the evil in concealment.
Because of that, a person who’s like a creature in the system that is unbalanced, that system pushes him to balance it. And a person who corrects himself and balances the system reaches a state of Shabbat of the six thousand years, when the whole external system is rebalanced, according to man’s level who wants of it fulfillment according to his measure of attainment of the Creator.
And then we say that the Kelim are 620 times greater and accordingly the filling in them is 620 times greater. This is the actual difference between the two Shabbats, because there are many expressions of Kabbalists about how to express it. But the first Shabbat is the Shabbat from the Creator, a given, and the last Shabbat is the Shabbat of the creature, who builds it.
A stop is where there is nothing more to add. A rest, however, stems from the words “standing” and “resting,” meaning that one is in the middle of one’s work. And since one has no strength to continue with one’s work, he stands and rests to revive himself, and afterwards continues with his work.
A Shabbat of Beresheet is a discernment of having nothing more to add. This is called “a stop.” A Shabbat of the six thousand years is considered rest, by which one receives strength to continue one’s work on the weekdays.
Now we can understand the words of our sages: “Shabbat said, ‘You have given everyone a mate, but to me You did not.’” And the Creator replied, “Israel will be your partner.” A partner means ZA. If there is a Nukva, there can be a Zivug (coupling), and from the Zivug come the offspring, meaning renewal and additions.
Nukva is a deficiency. If there is a deficiency in some place, there is room to correct the deficiency, and all the corrections are considered having been fulfilled by extending the Upper Light in the place of the lack. It follows that there was no deficiency here to begin with, but all the lack that they previously considered to be a deficiency, came in the form of correction to begin with, meaning that thus the Upper Light would flow from Above.
It means that the first Shabbat, and also all the following Shabbats during the six thousand years and the last Shabbat , actually have nothing of themselves; they are all corrected. But a person who comes and constantly corrects himself, discovers (or should discover) from Shabbat to Shabbat the additional deficiencies, for each next Shabbat would be as a cessation, like determining a different degree with respect to the corrections he had attained, until he comes to the Shabbat of the six thousand years, the complete one, when no deficiencies appear anymore.
This is similar to one who delves in some matter, and exerts to understand it. And when he attains the meaning, then it is to the contrary, he does not feel that he was previously suffering when he did not understand the matter. Rather, he is glad because now he has joy. The joy is measured by the extent of the effort that he made prior to understanding the matter.
Thus, the delving time is called Nukva, a deficiency. And when one unites with the deficiency, he produces the offspring, the renewal. This is what the Shabbat argued, “Since there is no work on Shabbat, there will be no offspring and renewals.”
So what did the Creator say? “Israel will be your mate.” What does that mean? The deficiency will come from him, from Yisrael, from those who want to reach the Creator. And this is why a person that wants to reach adhesion with the Creator constantly adds deficiencies from the previous Shabbatto the next Shabbat and thus adds the degrees of the Shabbat until he comes to the final Shabbat, the last one.
From the perspective of the Creator, all the Shabbats are complete, but from the perspective of a person, because he wants to reach the Creator's degree, he constantly finds higher completions called progressing from Shabbatto Shabbat. In every Shabbat he has a Zivug with that wholeness which he found. This is why the state of Shabbat is so important to us: it’s a sign for us: of rest and of the end of correction, and in spirituality it symbolizes the completion of the degree. Where in the end we have to count these degrees in order to add all those degrees into one big degree of Baalim Mekatzeyl (?), it’s called the big Shabbat.
Question: Is Shabbat something personal? Can Shabbat be on Monday? What are the six days before the Shabbat?
If we are talking about Shabbats , everything that's spirituality is clothed in corporeality, it creates like a replication in corporeality to our eyes because only with respect to us is there a difference between corporeality and spirituality. A person is someone who feels so, according to his Kelim, he distinguishes that uniform reality is divided into two pieces, spiritual and corporeal. Those who feel it, for them too, of course, all the processes that happen in spirituality happen in corporeality as well and he sees that it comes as a result. In other words corporeality is a result of spirituality.
And then because in corporeality we have the inanimate matter, in which everything happens according to a clock on the wall and the calendar on the wall, and a person doesn't determine that Israel accelerates time, sanctifies time and progress not according to “in its time,” but through “I will hasten it.” That’s the spiritual progress, the spiritual time that is relative for everyone, and according to the effort is the reward, while the effort determines the pace of a person’s progress.
That's why the physical time that we count in this world is the time of “in its time,” whereas the spiritual time is the “I will hasten it” time. And there doesn't follow the same times for everyone, but each according to his time and his effort, his own clock, which is also relative for each one and the pace changes according to the way a person determines the pace, according to his awakening—the quality and quantity of the effort.
This is why if we are talking about spiritual motion, it has nothing to do with physical motion. The days of the week, the spiritual days of the week, can be completely without any connection to the days of the week and the holidays, and all those signs—corporeal signs, of course.
Moreover, death, birth, all of that takes on a completely different characteristic; the pace is different and the signs are different. So these are two axes of time that have nothing to do with one another. Even in our world, we see that there are such phenomena in physics concerning high speeds, and times seemingly change. There is an issue of compressing of time or jumping through time, changing time. Next to the big masses in the universe, time stretches differently. So time is relative.
Also, we used to use relative time before, when time was divided. The time during the day, from sunrise to sunset, when there was light was divided into twelve parts; and the dark night was divided into twelve parts. So then they used a relative clock. Today it’s a little different, because we are in neither day nor night. Today, everything's confused. Electricity corrupted the right pace of the physical functioning, but that's what we have. Like all corruptions we have towards Gmar Tikkun (end of correction).
This is why our time is getting more and more “in its time” in our world. It means it passes only according to mechanical motions, whereas in spirituality, our time is opposite. It is getting more rhythmic, and a person who delves today, to change his spiritual times and spiritual evolution, the pace of his evolvement is much faster than it was before, because it's not the time that determines because there is no time. But what determines it, is the depth and the strength of our ego, times the awakening and recognition, revelation of evil in the world, they determine that a person who takes the axis of time and his spiritual evolution in his hand, changes himself very effectively as opposed to those who don't.
Question: What does it mean to keep Shabbat in spirituality?
Keeping Shabbat in spirituality is once a person completed his corrections in the six days of the week which means in Hesed, Gvurot, Tifferet (HGT), Netzah, Hod, Yesod (NHY), he reaches Malchut. Malchut is also relative. Malchut of six thousand years, meaning Malchut that ascends to Yesod.
So he comes to a point where he ends his degree, where he has completed all the corrections in it, and then he reaches it’s fulfillment. Malchut that gives the deficiency to Zeir Anpin corrects itself through Zeir Anpin in Hesod, Gvurot, Tifferet (HGT), and Netzah, Hod, Yesod (NHY). And when it finishes absorbing from Zeir Anpin all these discernments on itself, it becomes its pair and then an act called Zivug comes when there’s a Zivug between them because she reached congruence with it. And then she's filled by that portion which is in Zeir Anpin because of the deficiency that she brought Zeir Anpin.
It turns out that Shabbat is a time of Zivug and filling between them. Between ZON and what exists in ZON, the souls receive too. So the work on that day, in that status, is to not show the deficiencies. It is a lot of work, because all kinds of deficiencies appear in a person, and he has to sustain himself in completeness. It’s an opposite work from the six days of the week. And it is real work. It’s called keeping Shabbat , but it’s an effort.
It’s not that in this world we rest and don’t do anything. We sweat quite a lot in the work of Shabbat in spirituality. But it’s a special kind of work, in keeping from showing deficiencies. Say, try not to see anything wrong with your life now, any deficiency. Everything is peaceful, filled, corrected. Everyone is in a corrected state. No evil exists.
A person who reaches that, after the corrections, with equivalence of form with Zeir Anpin and with the Upper One, begins to discover the additional Kelim, so to speak, in these states. And then he has to keep himself, because Shabbat is a relative Shabbat. It’s corresponding to the Klipot (shells) to all the forces that are on the outside.
As is the case with Galgalta, does it have no deficiencies? It has deficiencies; it has its own NHY that are unfilled. She can’t fill them. She has Surrounding Light that pressures her. There are tensions there, there are the revelation of deficiencies, but the internal situation for the time being, which is what it can do, is called the Miluy of Shabbat, ( filling of Shabbat) so to speak.
Why is that? Don’t think that it is some kind of a wild state, and free. No. It’s a very, very tense situation, I would say. But it is tense in the ability to disclose the completeness. And thus, until the six thousand years, from that state a person rises in degree, begins to discover the next week.
There are special corrections here that he does toward the next week, which we consider the end of Shabbat , the King David meal, etc., Havdala (differentiation). And when he makes those corrections, he enters the next degree.
Question: How do we know that Shabbat is over if we don’t engage in deficiency?
How do we know that Shabbatis over? We know according to our clock, if we are talking about people in this world. If we are talking about spirituality, a person who reaches in spirituality after his corrections, if he comes to a state called Shabbat , he knows because he determines it. He reached it. It’s a summation of all his efforts.
Now he has reached the ability to make a Zivug. So in this Zivug he actually brings the worlds to ascent. First ascent is called sanctifying Shabbat . The second ascent, that’s afterwards, we call that the morning, Mussaf. And the third ascent is in the third meal, in Mincha. And all of these ascents he experiences, and these are ascents with prayers and meals, it’s work. It’s work in correcting the Kelim. He corrects them; he fills them. He makes a spiritual Zivug, which is very hard work. But he does all that in a state called completion. He completes the degrees and this is why it is called the day of rest; because the deficiencies already happened, and now they are being filled.
It’s a little different than our state in this world, when we have physical rest, as if you just don’t do anything—you just sleep all day. This is called being okay. Spiritual Shabbat is a lot of work and not a simple one.
So with respect to this world, it has no expressions. Well, there are expressions here and there—Shabbat corrections—all kinds of things. And in the temple there were all kinds of signs. But it’s a special day. In spirituality it’s very, very different from corporeality because we don’t know what the real rest is in this world. Rest is when you can be in complete bestowal. When you wanted to sweat, no problem.
Question: What can I do to make this spiritual Shabbat come as quickly as possible to me?
You have to discover what the work is in the six thousand years or the six days of the week and want it. You must receive support, because without it, it is impossible to discover what the work is, and what the means are to perform it. And it is impossible that a person enters the week of work, if he doesn’t know the Shabbat that comes afterwards, because he actually makes all the efforts in order to reach correction.
He has to clarify what the end of correction is, what the final state is, so he counts towards that the actions, each and every day. He cannot place before him the workdays during the week without knowing what is the Shabbat that should come afterwards. So you have to know the whole degree, which comes when a person first of all annuls oneself before the Upper One. Then in his annulment he receives from the Upper One a plan and examples and also like an accurate schedule. And in annulling oneself before the Upper One in every single moment, he finds how to be integrated in it; it’s the work of Malchut towards Zeir Anpin. So that is what he does.
It includes especially scrutinizing his desires, cancelling his desires, directing them and annulling them and in relating them to the Upper One, to receive from Him the degree of faith. And then to reach integration in the AHP and in the GE. That’s the order, the complete sequence, and in each degree, it repeats itself in all kinds of different ways. But it comes back according to the same sequence. It’s just as we have only six days, from the first Shabbat to the last Shabbat , six days.
But in between these two Shabbats , we divide the week into six thousand years, so to speak, into many weeks and Shabbats along the way. It all symbolizes the degrees. You can’t jump from this world into the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). You do it gradually. Each degree is a week.
Question: If the spiritual work is a very personal process, individual, where is the work with the other souls here and how can you celebrate holidays together?
You can’t. In spirituality a person experiences them personally. He works with everyone, he works on integration in the general Kli, and with respect to the general Kli he makes his corrections in order to be integrated with the other souls and reveal the Creator in them and what appears toward the souls is actually his higher degree and through it he receives the example of what he should resemble.
By him discovering a more corrected system in his eyes of the souls, he’s discovering the next degree, the example of the Upper One who brings to a person the ability to work. He shows him a place of the work but all the corrections are personal corrections in the inner work. The public means all of my desires, “all my bones shall say,” the public is within. I don’t add to myself all the other souls and now we are celebrating some holiday according to my time or his time or someone else’s time. Each and every one has his own time he’s in a different situation, each one in his own, until we reach a general Gmar Tikkun. Then we can say that we will have theBig Shabbat. But before that, in spirituality, there is no general holiday along the way but it is very different for everyone.
When we gather, say great Kabbalists gather together and do some special work externally, in order to be in a special state. It’s true, we read about it, we heard about it, of such groups of Kabbalists that did that. Let’s say they celebrated Shabbat on Tuesday or Monday or Rosh ha Shanah on New Year’s eve they celebrated on some special day during the year. But what does that mean? They brought themselves to a state called the beginning of the year or spiritual Shabbat, on some weekday in this world. There is no connection between them. Then of course the whole world is on some weekday during the year and they are in their internal Shabbat .
In any case, they are all internally in their own states but they did it as a group, with a group effort. So of course they didn’t feel any difference with respect to what happens on schedule in this world, say, in this world it’s Tuesday and for them internally it's Shabbat . It can happen any way for those who are on degrees. But for them, they did these exercises on themselves as a group, that’s it. Nothing more.
There’s nothing to it. We have to understand that this world is inanimate. What we do here has no impact whatsoever on the spiritual world. Only our point in the heart, when it is integrated like a spiritual Kli, integrated in its place, in its root, to the extent it is integrated in its root from which it came down and fell, determines there in the spiritual world, our personal progress. All the other arrangements in this world have nothing to do with spirituality, they’re all either an application of it, and are operated from Above downward without any connection back from below Upward.
This is why all the actions a person does, if he does them only in action without intentions, desirable intentions, meaning to reach bestowal, these actions remain below and they have no results, spiritual or eternal impact. He does it, so let him do it. Maybe it’s good to determine something, a society to sustain him in some process, or maybe at the end he will come to something, upbringing, but as it is written ‘a Mitzvah (Precept/Commandment) without an intention is like a body without a soul’. It’s even written that the Creator doesn’t even care if you slaughter a beast from the throat or from the back of the neck.
In other words, if you keep the Mitzvot in a way that you just do things without the intention then you haven’t done anything by that. The Mitzvot were given in order to cleanse people, meaning if you want to be purified by that, to reach bestowal, and then you begin to ask “what do I have to do to reach this cleansing,” then you go from this act, which is slaughter [what could be more animalistic], to the root, which is to slaughter your own beast, so to speak. Then you understand how to slaughter it, not from the throat but from the back of the neck or the other way around and why? Then you begin to see and learn what correcting the desires in you means, because the person contains the whole world within.
A beast you have to slaughter this way, all the actions, all the 613 desires, you learn how to do them. If, for that purpose, you perform physical Mitzvot, then they elevate you to the spiritual root. But otherwise if you don’t enter it then their results don’t go up. Then there is no reward or punishment on them, but they are only to sustain the people on a popular framework until they discover that they are ready to understand the spiritual principle too, and then for them it will be Torah.
Baal HaSulam asks in the Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot about that, that the Torah was only given to cleanse people with. To begin with, it is forbidden to study Torah if not to attain Lishma. Only to attain Lishma (for Her name) it is given, the Light in it that reforms, it is only against the evil inclination when a person feels he has to correct it. In the other cases it is forbidden.
This is called, ‘teaching Torah to the gentiles’ to those who don’t want correction, to reach Dvekut (adhesion), to resemble the Creator. So it’s forbidden to teach non-Jews Torah. And gentiles is defined only according to one’s intention, he doesn’t want correction. He studies for a reward in this or the next world. For all kinds of reward; in this world it is money, honor, power, health and family, for himself. So in these ways it is forbidden to study Torah. This comes from the Gemara, from the ancient sources and we understand that, for “by the same rule I’ve created the inclination and then I have created for it the Torah as a spice because the Light in it Reforms.”
Only for that do we use the Torah , can we use the Torah . Otherwise it becomes a potion of death and the results of it we see around us. People who do not study the Torah to correct themselves through it become cruder, worse, because this force is only intended to correct the will to receive according to what a person wants and determines. Otherwise, it operates differently, the other way around. From a rooster you become a bat, so there is a lot to learn here.
There is a lot to be learned here, to learn how to use the spiritual force that was given to us. It’s a spiritual Light that was given to us. Baal HaSulam describes it in the beginning of the Speech to the Completion of the Zohar, that the Creator threw us a rope because we were drowning in the swamp of egoism. He threw it to save us and that is the Torah. If we catch the rope to come out of the ego then it works. And if we want to pull the Creator who is holding the rope from the other side into the swamp, it turns out we get the opposite results.
Question: If a person’s work is individual, how are the general and the particular equal?
The entire inner work is personal work, because everyone feels only himself. And through himself, as we learned in the perception of reality, he can say what his impression is of what is seemingly outside of him—seemingly. Because what I feel to be outside of me isn’t outside of me, it’s how I feel it because my will to receive is corrupted. To the extent it is corrected I will feel that all of it is mine, an integrated part of me, meaning that’s me without separating and re-pasting.
At the end of correction it all sticks together to such an extent that it was never corrupted, it was never separated. This is why we say the particular and the general are equal, because there are no individuals. Those individuals are because of the lack of our correction. That’s how it seems to us only.
Question: How does one keep from the deficiencies that appear on Shabbat and what is this special time we should do?
This is an incorrect question, ‘how do I keep it away from the deficiencies appearing.’ I don’t decide what appears and what doesn’t appear. G-d forbid, that I should intervene in it. If you shut your eyes so that they don’t appear, you stop yourself from progress. Everything that appears let it appear—free. It’s an awakening from Above. I don’t know what should happen. According to my degree, I should go through these states.
But in every situation, I determine my attitude to what appears. That’s man’s work. It depends on his preparations, society he’s in, his orders, everything. We can’t talk about a state called Shabbat right now; it’s preparation of all his Kelim to a state of Zivug with the Upper One, when he is in bonding with Him. And then in bonding with the Upper One, there are many forces that can obstruct.
In every situation, there are forces that we corrected in order to bond and forces that we distanced so they wouldn’t obstruct us from bonding. There are positive forces, which are now operating in a corrected form to create a Zivug among us, even though by nature we are opposite. And there are external forces which I cannot use in a Zivug, even though they are great but I still can’t, so I distance them and push them away. So I keep between those and these so that they help me continue with my Dvekut, in this degree. I completed this degree just like Galgalta. Galgalta received up to the Tabur and can’t receive more. That’s it. That state of receiving up to Tabur, let’s say it is called Shabbat. And that’s it, that’s all there is.
What can happen? The removal of the degree. The state that is called Shabbatby us, we experience all the three ascents. It’s not as if it is a spiritual moment, a single state. It is the 24 hours, because it corresponds to the entire process of correction. At the end of correction you have to have day and night, which is experienced in the state of Dvekut. When it’s completed, you complete the degree. Now you go within your Reshimot (reminiscences) to discover a Zivug in a new degree, on the next Shabbat.
So I have to constantly keep my internal corrected Kelim and as yet my corrupted Kelim, my external Kelim.
Question: A person does not own his desires, so what is the keeping, in respect to a person, how does he keep? He makes a Tzimtzum or what? How does he determine his internal attitude?
I can’t give you an example. It’s as we learn about the two thousand years, Amah, that you can’t go beyond them because it’s Shabbat zone, because over there are Klipot (shells) that you have no Masach (screen) for. A balance between forces has to be accurate, a form of Malchut corresponding to Zeir Anpin. Every state in our world consists of internal and external forces that sustain that state. They actually stabilize the state.
I give an example of domestic peace with your spouse: we awaken positive relationship, and do not arise negative ones. You always have both among people. So we remain in a situation in which we can remain in contact. We have to keep both. That’s life until Gmar Tikkun and you can’t help it, for everyone. Those who are sane and living in this world have no other situation because that’s the state of the Kelim when they are still insufficiently corrected.