Root and Branch, Part 1
With Dr. Michael Laitman
-
Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
-
Regular: Transcription of dubbed commentaries of Rav Laitman
-
Capitalized Italics: transliteration from Hebrew
The language of Kabbalists is a Language of Branches
Meaning, that the branches indicate to their roots, being their molds that necessarily exist in the Upper world. This is because there is no reality in the lower world that is not elicited from its superior. As with a mold and an imprint, the root in the Upper world compels its branch in the lower one to reveal its entire form and feature, since each and every branch in this world well defines its mold situated in the Higher world.
The highest root is the Creator, and out of His desire—thought to delight His creatures. Thought, desire, and action in Him are the same thing, they’re equal; and from Him, this desire, this thought is being implemented because we are created beings, and a created being is opposite to the Creator.
In order for us to feel anything, there has to be a sensation that includes both aspects: black/white; darkness/light; good/evil; and so on. This means that we only perceive out of a collision or a boundary between two opposite entities. Our state is similar to a state of unconsciousness, from which we very gradually awaken and come to a full awareness.
The wisdom of Kabbalah sharpens for me the sensation that it is bad to be unconscious. It is called the “realization of evil.” It is good for me to be in this awareness, meaning that I get a push from within to open up my senses, my channels. This is all that I get from the method, but it’s enough. As I develop, I begin to see and attain that all of the states that a person goes through, are states that happen inside the person and they are called “worlds.”
This means that I renew the sense and reveal the world in a more and more clear way. I start to attain, in addition to this world, what is beyond it, through which more and more states become apparent to me and I begin to see the picture of reality that includes many layers. They are actually identical. When I am in a world, I am also in that same state. Only each time it becomes clearer, and this elevation through these levels from below, moving to above, these levels of awareness, of attainment, opens up for me the awareness of that Upper Force, which itself evolves from above to below. This is called the “root” and all that emerges from it, within my senses, is called “the worlds.”
Meaning that the difference between all the worlds is not in what is in them, what they include; they only include my Tariag (613) desires. But it is in the fact that the more I reveal of the quality of the action of the Upper Force in my 613 desires, the more it is considered that the Light is revealed in the vessels.
We have five worlds. Why five? The world of Ein Sof (Infinity) is the entire life, without end. This world (our world) is complete darkness, and in between them, there are filters—the Olamot, derived from the word Ha Olama, which means "concealment."
The Upper Light comes through Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya—five worlds—and becomes weakened towards the creatures of that world. But the items of each world are five Parzufim; each one containing five Sefirot, or ten Sefirot. It doesn’t matter how we count them. They are identical in each and every world. In each and every world exist the same, say, 25 levels or steps. What is different in each one? What is the difference between the worlds?
The difference between the worlds is in their coarseness, the extent to which they conceal the Upper Light or absorb it from above to below, on its way to expand downward. The lower the world is, the greater the coarseness is. The coarseness in the Upper World—it is Shoresh (root), then Alef, Bet, Gimel and Dalet. These are the levels of coarseness/thickness.
Question: Why is it possible to attain the reality only from an opposite state? Was there no other possibility of doing it?
Why is it possible to attain the reality only from an opposite state? Because we are opposite.
Created being and Creator are two opposite things. The attribute of the Creator is the property of bestowal. The attribute of the created being was created by exclusion. Something was excluded from Him, called Nivra (created being), derived from the word “ Bar,” meaning external. Thus, outside of Him can only exist something that has the opposite attribute—reception. In this way they are two opposing entities.
There cannot be anything outside of one attribute that is not contrary to that attribute. That is why the Creator and created being are two opposite entities.
At first there is the Light, the Bestower. Then the Light desires to build itself a vessel, a receiver, and then to make the vessel a true receiving vessel. This is the entire evolvement down to this world.
The vessel starts attaining coarseness of the level of Shoresh, Alef, Bet, Gimel, Dalet, and then inside the vessel is born accordingly a lack, a desire, darkness, more and more and more. At the same time, the issue of concealment is also created in the vessel. It gradually senses less and less.
If in the world of Adam Kadmon, according to how fine it is, it senses more of the Light, and the coarser it becomes, it senses less light, this tells us that the sensation is according to the similarity.
Being in this lower world, it is first of all divided into a multitude of souls, not sensing at all that it belongs to the one single system. Each and every soul is entirely disconnected from the Light, not even sensing the light of Behina Dalet, but only what is below the barrier; meaning, completely disconnected from the sensation of the root.
Who am I? I can discover me only if I reveal first that there is someone—the Creator —opposite to me. One cannot be without the other. This sensation always includes two entities.
We, as created beings, can never sense anything out of a single property because we begin sensing ourselves out of the action of the light within the desire. A desire can not awaken unless there is some kind of a filling opposite it.
We can see that this occurs even in how we are influenced in order for us to develop a desire. I want you to want something, and so gradually by giving and giving to you, you start developing some relationship to it, a feeling, memories, Reshimot (impressions), and then you gradually develop a desire for the filling.
Light is always preceding the desire. It must work in the desire in order to create it, to grow it, to nurture it, and then to fill it.
Therefore, what is missing in our world for me to advance? I only lack the sensation of the Creator within the contrast, the oppositeness between me and Him. The more I reveal Him, the more I will reveal my self, and then I will receive a greater impression of my reality.
Who am I? The “I” is the one who senses what is opposite to me. This is called the sensation of life, the sensation of how juicy, how rich life is.
What is the opposite of me? What is there in life? Openness, right? A picture which is as wide as possible. What does wide mean? More extreme. Therefore that is my goal, to reveal divinity, through all of my channels, as much as I can, in the most opposite vessels. That is why the created being needs to incarnate into this world, and in this world, start to reveal the Creator from the opposite state. Then, once the created being reveals Him, it really possesses the whole vessel: from zero to a hundred percent.
Here, in this world are inside some vessel, some sense. Our general sense is the will to receive. It has five inputs: vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Overall, what I receive from their totality is called the picture of the world
Through sensing the world, I develop language. I develop a language, so I give names to everything that I sense, to all that goes through my five senses.
I developed the language, I have all of the names, this sense, and how I sharpen this sense further with the sensation of the Upper degree. Through this sense I begin revealing that it includes 613 desires. It always was this way before, but I never felt it. Now, how will I name what I sense in each and every desire?
I name the sensations using the same words, describing what I felt before as well, only that before I did not know which impression or sensation belongs to which sense. Now I find out how to relate them. Meaning that I begin to attain more clearly what the root of my sensation is.
The root is here and the sensation was in me before as well, so here the sensation is called “branch” and what awakens it is “root.” This is called "attaining the roots." When I rise from below to above I attain the roots. Meaning that I actually attain Lights, actions, that build me on the lower levels, from above to below.
In this way, every time a person rises, the person discovers in those same 613 desires, what activates them, what fills them, while his or her language remains the language of the level below—of what the person has already previously attained in the reality of this world.
That is why, if you open a book, you will not see any weird symbols, like those you may see sometimes on a computer, you know, like some sort of hieroglyphs. When you open books written by Kabbalists you do not see anything like that; just the plain regular language. You just don’t know what they mean by every word, but the words themselves are familiar, just the true meaning of what they write is not known. That is because they took words from our world, but they are not discussing our world, they are discussing different states that they are in while in the Upper World. So if you want to understand the Kabbalist, you need to rise at least to some level, some place in the Upper World.
At each state you will be in, in the Upper World, you will use the same words, but each time a different picture will be revealed to you. It is revealed to you like a movie in a cinema on the screen. This screen is those 613 desires as perceived by your senses, to the extent that they become more adapted to the sensation of the light.
So you always use words of this world, but the image you attain is according to your ability to decipher the words.
Question: Are the five spiritual senses equivalent to the five senses of this world or do they develop independently?
The five spiritual senses are named the same way as the senses of our world. Where else would we get names from? These five senses supposedly are behind our five senses, but there is no connection between them. Because generally our senses are derived entirely from the final, inanimate degree of the desire to receive, and these senses could exist or not exist.
A person may exist without a body, only within the soul with its five senses, its five Sefirot—Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, Malchut. The person may also be inside the body, within the corporeal body: perhaps without eyes, or without ears, God forbid, but it wouldn’t disturb the spiritual attainment.
These senses do not belong, do not depend on the quality of inner effort, the development and correction of the desire that is in a person. They belong with the body itself, which is the beast, which exists in this way at the lower level. What is outside of this box of ours, this body with its five senses, we must already attain at our stature.
How do we reveal the picture: we could say this, that we generally are within the light, Upper Light. In order to reveal it, to have any sensation of our state, the created being needs to be transparent in relation to this light, meaning that my desire, would be completely similar to the light, to that property of bestowal, and then I will virtually disappear inside this light, in relation to… to how it passes through me, and then my sensation as a vessel, towards the light, will be the most extreme sensation.
On the one hand, by my attribute which I now acquired, attained, I will be similar to the Light. In my feeling, the feeling is not… sensation is always based on my nature, so in my sensation I will feel the entire one hundred percent of the difference between me and the Light that passes through me.
In such a way, while I try to make myself similar to the Light, in the external form, in the intention, the external correction, I begin to feel how opposite I am, inside of me, in my nature of receiving, to it. This extreme sensation gives me a hundred percent feeling of existence and life, a complete attainment of similarity to the Creator and I attain eternity and wholeness.
These two opposite things are what confuses us. We cannot comprehend this, how the attainment is not achieved through one channel, but two, because in our life we have no contact with anything that is opposite to us. We are not constructed to have any perception, any understanding that it is possible to attain anything spiritual. It happens only through revealing the opposite of it, on one hand, and on the extent that you reveal in your stature the similarity to it. For us, in this world there is only “preparation of the vessel,” me the egoist, the greater my “ego” is, the more I can grab, swallow.
In spirituality your vessel has to be made of two points: Malchut and Keter. Malchut remains as coarse as possible, and Keter must be as fine as possible. Reaching this understanding, that in this way we can feel the spiritual, out of the two extreme points, the attainment of the extreme point, the similarity to the light, is actually our entire difficulty.
The attainment of the opposing point, which is not in us, is already beyond the barrier, it is “the point of Bina.” It is not understood that the feeling, the attainment and perception of life includes two opposing entities. This is not comprehended.
That is why this sensation, which is built on the feeling in Malchut and in Keter, overall this sensation is concealed, and is called Upper World, spiritual life.