Shamati 18:
What is, My Soul Shall Weep in Secret in the Work
Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel
August 25, 2006
- Bold and indented: 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, page 29, Article 18: What is, My Soul Shall Weep in Secret in the Work.
When concealment overpowers one and he comes to a state where the work becomes tasteless, and he cannot picture and feel any love and fear, and he also cannot do anything of holiness, then his only counsel is to cry to the Creator to take pity on him and remove the screen from his eyes and heart.
What Baal HaSulam is trying to explain to us (he spoke about these articles before his students, at many occasions:during meals, short meetings, in a middle of a lesson)is that one is born in his substance, the substance of creation—the will to receive, to enjoy. All one’s movements, his thoughts and actions are only to delight himself. There is no other possibilityto do anything opposite or differently sincethat’s how one’s nature conducts him and that’s how onemust do things. Every single moment one’sthought is to maneuverhimself and his environment so that he will be more comfortable, in other words, maximum pleasure for minimum effort. That’s the basic plan by which one exists.
Nature constantly prompts one to evolve. One’s desire andone’s ego evolve constantly. If a personremains in his ego, then he is drawn into a state where he is immobilized and doesn’t do anything. He would thenfind himself in a comfortable, convenient and permanent state.
But there are two reasons here for which we cannot remain calm and at ease. On the one hand, rest is very natural to us, to our desire to enjoy. We see how living bodies operate, they’re drawn to rest. But within a person there is a chain of Reshimot(reminiscences), which awakens and our desire and ego are constantly renewed, we want to enjoy other things and greater things each time.
When a cat or a dog is born in a family they have the same desires pretty much when they’re small or when they’re mature. They live ten years in a family and you don’t see any changes in them. However, a child within ten years (when it’s born it’s what, five pounds, it doesn’t understand anything) grows into fifty pounds or a hundred pounds and he wants to swallow the world. Evolution increases constantly and prompts one to want more and more and more.
If one paid attention, he would see that these Reshimot are against nature.They constantly awaken in a person and push him forward; otherwise,he would have remained at rest. Would that be bad to be like someone just sitting under the tree?
If we have pleasure, then why should we change location? Why would we move,unless the Reshimotawaken us from within and forces us to realize them. We always picture for ourselves pleasure, comfort, rest and ease in a different way and then we have to chase after them and attain them.Poor us, we’re constantly trying to obtain new pleasures, which the Reshimot picture from within us, but we never reach or attain anything where we can say, “That’s it, I’ve come to something and that’s all I want.”That’s one thing.
In addition, the nature of the will to receive isthat to the extent of pleasure attained, the pleasure immediately neutralizes the desire and then the sensation of pleasure disappears. We want to eat, and enjoy the food but in the end we remain with a full stomach and without pleasure. The pleasure is there only for that brief moment in the meeting between the piece of food and my palette and throat.That’s it.
This is to say, that the pleasures constantly disappears. They don’t stay permanently. However, the desire for them is constantly renewed and so are demands for new pleasures. It’s not that one wants the same thing even though the pleasure disappears but hewill always want more and greater things. A person discovers this process after many life cycles; that this process is a deadlock and it is fruitless, that he can’t keep running like that. A person discovers that he is just suffering and he’ll never be able to stop this chase and be able to say, “I have fulfilled myself and now, I have an unending pleasure.” This is on the one hand.
On the other hand, because he sees that this chase doesn’t have an end where he’ll satisfy himself and be fulfilled,he therefore despairs. And on the contrary, instead of chasing pleasures he then, on top of hislarge will to receive, stops running. This is because in his mind he can already see that he will never get anything. That’s how people end up in despair. This despair comes when one sees the world as black and his life as useless, but actually we should say that this is not concealment. It’s not darkness but this is the Light, this is the disclosure. Now, he finally understands that he was constantly running like a machine chasing its operators without calculating, without seeing that there isn’t any good reward for its actions.
Now, he’s got this revelation and he sees that this whole process is useless. Thus one has to understand that the concealments, the darkness that a person feelsis not only from the perspective of the sensation that he feels bitter or sweet, but alsofrom the perspective of his intellect. He discovers that now he is in a state of truth. He has obtained something in life,and now he understands that maybe he can evolve differently.
There are two forms of attainment: in Mocha (mind/brain) and in the heart (Liba). In the heartit is bitter and sweet. Perhaps he’s feeling bitter right now and he’s seemingly crying, but on the other hand, in his brain, this is the disclosure. Now, he has discovered that life is built differently and he’s built differently and it’s good that he stops running because it’s useless. Why waste all those years in vain?
After all of this despair, he discovers the point in the heart. He still doesn’t understand what is happening to him. It’s always the same when we evolve. We first discover things in sensation and only after by intellect, which comes from within the sensation. Because we are feeling beings, we constantly operate by attraction to pleasures and the intellect develops in obtaining what we want, along side the pleasures.
If a person wants more then he has, then there is a greater intellect to get what he wants. If he wants less, thenhe doesn’t need to be so smart. The mind goes according to his wants. The mind is a possession; it grows according to one’s desires.When a new desire appears, it appears for the time being without the intellect. However, when a person wants to realize the desirehe looks for a way, and he grows respectively smarter, his intellect grows.
It’s the same with the point in the heart. A person despairs. He doesn’t know what to do, his life is in darkness. He doesn’t see that there’s any point to his life and that he can ever be fulfilled. Then he discovers a new drive which he doesn’t understand; he looks and he still doesn’t know what and how. Only afterwards, after a pretty long time perhaps, he begins to discover that this new desire is for something other than what he had before.
Previously he would chase physical pleasures: money, honor, power, knowledge. Now, he’s chasing perhaps knowledge too, but knowledge and sensations that are not at the level of this world. He doesn’t know what it is, but something else, something higher or farther, from an unknown source. Then too, he’s actually searching, exerting, running and is also crying, but now it’s a different weeping.
First, he has to understand what is happening to him, what he’s drawn to.And within these concealments too, he has to differentiate between the sensation and the intellect. As much as one’s sensation may still be bitter and empty, it’s preciselythrough this sensation that the intellect grows. When one wants to obtain something and understand why he’s feeling miserable, then one gets smarter and begins to evolve a spiritual intellect.
This is because the same desire that begins to evolve in him on top of all the previous desires (the earthly ones of this world,) is now for something that doesn’t exist in this world, something beyond this world. Hence, also the intellect that develops next to the desire is already a spiritual intellect (beyond this world). The intellect askshow to obtain something outside of himself and he slowly begins to discover.
What does he discover? Through the way that he experiences, he discovers that there is a source of pleasure. There areboth physical pleasures and those beyond this world of corporeality, which are spiritual ones. This pleasure is called,“the Light or the Creator or the attribute of bestowal.”It’s all the same.
When a person feels the Light—the Creator,the attribute of bestowal—it gives him pleasure. Therefore, the final goal that we want to reach isDvekut (adhesion), connection with this source, with the pleasure, the Light, the Creator, and with the attribute of bestowal. But the only problem is that it is only possible to obtain it according to the extent that a person is also in the same state, in bestowal like the Light, like the Creator. One can’t draw near the source of pleasure without being the way it is; this is why the final goal is called Dvekut.
How can one be integrated in the Creator,within this source of pleasure and feel good there? Sinceone’s nature pushes him toward it, he has no choice. He has to respond according to the Reshimot(reminiscences) that appear in him;he has to run toward it.
We have to take examples from this world just like little kids learn from us how to be grown-ups.We prepare for them whole systems of games, kindergartens, schools and books; all kinds of things because without these things they’ll never be grownups. They’ll be grownups in weight and years but not in their growth as a person.
To develop these little creatures into humans one has to now exert twenty years into developing them in a deliberate manner. A person exerts at least a third of hislife only to learn to be similar to grownups, not to mention how much he has to continue studying and evolving afterwards. This third is precisely when he has all those powers, desires, urges and ambitions. He exerts himself, just to be similar to grown-ups.
From those same natural systems in this world, that is also how one shouldunderstand that he has the same system with respect to spiritual attainments. If he wants to be grown-up in spirituality, as grown up as the Creator, then he has to learn from Him how to be like Him. Then he is incorporated in the same state of endless pleasures and the boundless, eternal and complete life.
How? For that we have a system. That system of being like the Creator is calledsociety. If we in society, in the group or in the human society in general, obtain the same attribute of bestowal, that same love, the same nature of the Creator, then we will be like Him. This is basically the game, the model, or the pattern which He presents to us, where through it we can become more and more like Him.
Take for example how kids grow through games they play in school throughout the years. They grow through all kinds of patterns, andthrough problems that they resolve. We prepare those problems for them, they work them out, and thus, they grow and they develop. That’s how a person is with respect to society as it is written in the articles of Matan Torah, and Arvut(mutual responsibility/guarantee)that a person is born loving himself only.
If he wants to start resembling the Creator, he must choose a little group where he begins to be similar to the Creator. In the same way the Creator relates to the creatures, similarly a person relates to that little group of creatures which is before him. It is clearly written in the Introduction to the Talmud Eser Sefirot that the Creator brings a person to this group and thus, places one’s hand on the good fortune and says, “Take this.”
The rest is one’s free choice, to position himself correctly in the group and relate to the group in the way the Creator relates to the creatures. By that, a person begins to become similar to the Creator and by being similar, he becomes Adam, from the word ‘Domeh’—similar. The more that one is overly-exerting and overly-dedicated and excessively loving to his friends, so as it is written, “From the love of man to the love of the Creator; from the love of the creatures to the love of the Creator.” By that, he equalizes himself with the Creator and feels that equivalence, the Dvekut, his similarity to the Creator. The measure of this similarity to the Creator is called the Olamot(Worlds).
The more that he canbestow toothers and the measure of this bestowal meansthat he is at a higher level of the Olamot.He is in a higher and higher world until he arrives from giving to a small group to bestowal upon the whole of humanity and this is called reaching the world Ein Sof(Infinity). His bestowal is endless and thus, he becomes equal and adhered to the Creator and is incorporated in the roots and the source of all the abundance.
Originally, one’s will to receive is built from the Upper Light. The Upper Light created one’s will to receive, existence from absence,in such a way that what is found in the Light is felt in one as pleasure, whereas the oppositeis felt as pain. Thus, ifone is incorporated in the Light, in that attribute of bestowal, then hecertainly feels pleasure in it.
In order togrow independently, to eliminate shame, acquire independence, eternity and completeness like the Creator,one then begins from the opposite nature and obtains everything by himself. Therefore,his way is made of concealments; either his will to receive is hidden from him or the corresponding fulfillment is.Something is hidden and something is revealed. A person should constantly be scrutinizing. The pleasures are hidden and the pain might be good because they are hidden, a person develops his intellect, and his craftsmanship of obtaining what he wants.
This concealment is for his benefit just like when one hides something from a child to let him search, develop, and know how to do things himself. If we give him everything he wants, then he’ll remain undeveloped. He has to be a little shrewd, to know how to operate himself and his environment. Therefore, in this game, one should understand the Creator’s attitude toward him as a grown-up astoward a little one and recognize that He stands behind him and the whole of creation is called the game. The fact that one cries(we see that kids cry too) is a sign of hisKatnut(smallness) of intellect but when he opens and discovers the relationship among people,he sees that there’s no room for weeping or for concealment but only for pure love.
That’s why one has to always see where the concealments are leading a person, as it is written, “My soul shall weep in secret.” Why does one have to weep and from what?If concealments are from Above, from the Creator, then the crying is like a baby. Or it is exactly the opposite,perhaps he is happy because he has concealment and hecan cry but for something else: not because of the concealment itself but because of the reasons for it.
If one feels bad, he doesn’t feel bad because he feels bad but because he doesn’t feelHis attitude as good and for the time being seems bad to him. Just likewhen a child he is punished,pressured and demands are made on him. The child thinks his mother and father are bad for pressuring him and making demand on him so he hits them.
Perhaps in time he learns to see that his own nature is bad and then he’ll cry not because mommy and daddy are bad but because that’s what he thinks about them. This is now an entirely different weeping; it is not because of their attitude.He understands that their attitude is good but he interprets it as bad so he cries because that’s how he interprets their attitude. He wants a correction, he wants to justify them and because of that he cries to receive corrections and for his eyes to be open to see the correct attitude.
There are many forms of weeping according to the scrutiny, according to the discernments that a person obtains. Baal HaSulam says, “When concealment overpowers one and he comes to a state where the work becomes tasteless.” This is the concealment in the senses.
I feel bad and that’s it: dark, tasteless, no future, nothing. “And he cannot picture and feel any love or fear.” In other words, he feels that he can’t picture it as coming from the Creator who loves him and it comes specifically as love. This is just like a baby who can’t picture that he’s being asked to do things because he’s loved. He doesn’t have the intellect to understand that it is so. As much as you explain to him that “he’s being beaten because you want him to grow and understand,”he can’t understand it. His brain can’t absorb a plan from a higher degree because at this point his intellect has evolvedonly according to his sensation.