Shamati 30: The Most Important Is to Want
Only to Bestow
Lesson by Rav Michael Laitman, Bnei Baruch, Israel
September 29, 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, Article #30: The Most Important is to Want Only to Bestow.
The most important is to not want anything except to bestow because of His greatness...
Where do all these principles about bestowal come from? There is One Force in reality. It exists before the creation of the creature and that One Force is the only one that acts, the force of bestowal. When It created the creature, It did so with the intention to bring it to the same form of bestowal. Eventually that creature appears in the form of a person in this world at the most remote point from the force of bestowal, in a way that it only receives.
It doesn’t even know and doesn’t understand that it is in an attribute of reception, that it is in contradiction to the Giver, to the Upper One, to the Only One that stands opposite him and detached from Him. It doesn’t know why it exists. It exists in some kind of imaginary state, like a dream. And as it is written, “we were as dreamers.”
When one returns to spirituality, that’s how it appears: our existence seems like a dream. And that Upper, Unique One Force of bestowal prompts that creature, which is in the most remote state, the most detached state from It, to know the goal and realize it. The creature must realize this task during his lifetime here, in this worst of all states, the most remote, and the lowest state from that Upper Force.
That is how, as Kabbalists explain, we in this world have to attain love, bestowal, spirituality, adhesion with that Upper Force, even though we exist here, in this world. It means we are left in our physical reality and bodies on earth, in our Universe, and here, in this state, we attain the highest state that exists. In other words, on the one hand, a person should be the worst from the worst substance of reception, completely opposite to the Giver. On the other hand, he has to acquire all the attributes of the Giver.
And this is all that we need. Until we begin to understand it, it takes many years, tens of thousands of years of human evolution. And before that, it took billions of years in the evolution of matter in general like the still, vegetative and animate. After all those billions of years, now we have come to a period where we are approaching the true realization of bestowal. Here and now, we have to realize what creation was focused and intended for all the time, and the reason for which it evolved.
It is not up to the still, vegetative and animate to realize this task but only the speaking. Among the speaking, there are also degrees of still, vegetative and animate. And in them too, only the human degree must realize it; this is called the people of Israel. As it is written, “You are called man and not the nations of the world are called man.”
The reason is that there is a preparation for bestowal in this degree because, back in the days of ancient Babylon, there was a group of Kabbalists organized by Abraham, the first Kabbalist. That group evolved into a nation (through history actually) and, because it already has this preparation, it now must realize this whole process to be a Light to the nations, first on itself and then on the rest of the world. Thus, there is a general task that we have to perform. Of course, this general task is made of particular tasks, where each person must bring himself to complete bestowal just the same as the Upper Force. Through that, we are awarded with being exactly like It. “Like It” means eternal and complete.
The Kabbalists explain to us how we achieve this on an individual as well as on a general level. Usually, all the articles in Shamati (I Heard) are aimed toward a person’s private, personal correction. The articles Pri Hacham (Fruit of Wisdom) and some of the introductions are aimed at a more general correction of the human society.
So, let’s see what Baal HaSulam says about how we carry out this correction on ourselves, the correction of acquiring on ourselves the attribute, the quality of, the Creator, to be like Him.
The most important is to not want anything except to bestow because of His greatness, because any reception is flawed. It is impossible to exit reception, but only to take the other extreme, meaning bestowal.
“The most important thing is to want nothing else but to bestow...” That’s clear because that’s called pure bestowal but it’s not enough to want bestowal.
Why do we want to bestow? If we want to be as great as He is—eternal, complete, to be content, happy—we can only imagine what the Creator has, if He is the source of reality. We shouldn’t want to be the Giver because it puts us above everyone but we should want to be the giver because of His greatness.
What does ‘because of His greatness’ mean? It means that there is nothing more sublime and better than to be within this attribute. This is not because of our egoistic side but because of the greatness of this quality, of the act of bestowal. By itself, such an act has such great merit that we don’t want anything other than to be a giver.
…because all receptions are flawed.
Why? From the egoistic side, we see that it is impossible to receive any fulfillment in vessels of reception. As much as we’ve tried for thousands of years to enjoy our ego, we couldn’t enjoy it and we are still empty.
It is impossible to exit reception, but only to take the other extreme…
It means that one can’t be in-between: a little receiving and then a little giving in some intention or some way. In order to really switch to bestowal, there is a complete separation, a boundary, a very clear and sharp distinction where one has to be completely detached from reception.
First, we have to perform this action on ourselves called the act of Tzimtzum (restriction).
The moving force, meaning the extending force and the force that compels to work, is only His greatness...
“The greatness of the Creator” means that a person sees that the quality of bestowal in itself has the highest merit. One doesn’t have to add anything to it: “then I’ll be awarded, then I’ll receive, then something will happen to me.” Just to be in it is the greatest possible thing.
One must think that, ultimately, the efforts and the labor must be made...
In every way, whether we want it or not, we exert ourselves in this world because we are sensing creatures. We want to feel good. Our ego pushes us to feel good with respect to ourselves and, with respect to others, there is pride, a desire to rule.
There are many urges in a person that he must fill that don’t give him any rest but he has to make the effort anyway. He never receives fulfillment through the effort that he makes in the form of reception as to how to grab, how to fill himself. If sometimes he does feel momentary fulfillments, they pass immediately because it’s nature that the pleasure extinguishes the desire and then the pleasure stops.
So Baal HaSulam says,
…the efforts and the labor must be made, but through these forces one can yield some benefit and pleasure.
In other words, if a person enters bestowal, he feels pleasure from the act of bestowal itself because this act is in congruence with the act of the Creator. So, out of the equivalence of form with the Creator, a person gets pleasure from bonding with Him. Again, it is not pleasure from receiving and feeling for himself, but it is pleasure from being in equivalence with someone.
Let’s say that I am like someone. I do something like he does. I feel no taste in the act itself but I do feel taste in that I am similar to Him. This equality gives me great pleasure.
In other words, one can please a limited body with one’s work and effort, [with our work here, in this world, egoistic work] which is either a passing guest or an eternal one, meaning that one’s energy remains in eternity.
This is similar to a person who has the power to build a whole country, [That’s how we are, a priori we have the powers to reach the world Ein Sof (Infinity)], and he builds only a hut that is ruined by a strong wind.
It means that we die, and we have nothing left out of all our efforts and of our seventy years, and again we have to be born and reincarnate. In the next life, the pains are even greater than before and thus we reincarnate.
You find that all the forces were wasted. However, if one remains in Kedusha (Sanctity)…
This means that if one’s effort was toward acquiring the attribute of bestowal, even if he didn’t actually acquire it, but if he worked for it.
…then all the forces remain in eternity.
It means a person passes from one reincarnation to another, or accumulates within the same life, until he reaches his fill, the complete measure. Then he enters spirituality, the attribute of bestowal itself, what he wanted to reach.
It is only from this that one should receive one’s basis for the work, and all other bases are disqualified.
That’s what he has to scrutinize, that’s what he has to feel, and he should constantly sharpen his scrutiny and strive through this scrutiny to acquire the attribute of bestowal.
The force of faith is sufficient for one to work in the form of bestowal. It means that one can believe that the Creator receives one’s work...
The force of faith! Faith is the ability to work above the ego, to live above the ego, to think above the ego, to be detached from the natural attributes. This is called faith. It’s not the faith that we learn at school and what we learn in novels, from all kinds of people, which is that we ‘have to believe.‘
There is no such thing as ‘having to believe’. It is a contradiction in terms. Faith is a quality, an acquired quality, the attribute of bestowal. Bina is called faith. Faith is an ability to work in giving, in bestowal, without any connection to oneself, to transcend our materialistic nature.
Of course, there are many degrees in that. The more egoistic one is, the more faith and power he has to have in order to transcend his ego. That’s why faith always relies on the human ego. A person who acquires faith acquires some capacity to be above his ego, to be detached from it. He then is given additional ego and has to increase his faith again. He again is given more ego and has to increase his faith again. And thus he grows until he reaches complete faith: where above his whole desire, which is in his foundation, in his soul, he acquires the attribute of bestowal or faith.
This force can only be acquired above the ego. That’s why this term in Kabbalah is called faith above reason. Reason is everything we understand, feel, know, everything within us. One’s foundation is reason which is where one feels how he lives, what his elements are, what his plans are from yesterday to today to tomorrow. Faith above reason means that one is above all of that. One is with the force of bestowal, and not taking into account anything that he has within reason.
What is ‘not to take anything into account’? Is it simply to be detached? No. It is that one builds faith above reason corresponding to all the discernments that he has in his reason, with great intellect and great emotion too. A person that progresses in spirituality becomes richer in discernments and smarter. He doesn’t become like an orthodox who tries to detach his intellect in being more obedient. Here, a person grows through doubts, through questions, problems, and contradictions. So he builds faith despite that, on top of reason.
Faith has the same but opposite depiction as reason. One builds his faith exactly against and above all of his thoughts and sensations, the doubts he has with all kinds of problems, and he disagrees or agrees, and the picture of his world with his intellect and sensation. In other words, faith has the same depiction as reason but opposite, just like a seal and an imprint.
Then, a person begins to identify, live and experience reality in the attribute of faith that he builds above reason instead of identifying himself with what he feels and thinks naturally, the way he was born. This is called switching to the sensation of the Upper World, the spiritual world.
When he identifies with this attribute, when he is in it, when he senses it, after he has built it as an exact copy of his reason, he begins to find the attribute of the Creator: complete bestowal, eternal, the annulment of boundaries, and time. He begins to see his existence in the body as necessary only to go through some corrections, as when we do some work, or wear something, or do something that doesn’t quite belong to us but have to perform as something external. This is how he now relates to his life. He, himself, feels eternity and wholeness.
So, Baal HaSulam says again in this paragraph:
The force of faith is sufficient for one to work in the form of bestowal. It means that one can believe that the Creator receives one’s work...
What does it mean to ‘believe’? He begins to see that, if he is in bestowal, he is similar to the Creator; and he hears and sees and feels in all of his senses, all of his desires, the corrected ones, with the force of bestowal. In them, he begins to feel the Creator.
The sensation of the Creator in the attribute of bestowal, according to the equivalence of form with the Creator, is like when one begins to understand someone, that one is like him, that one has come to have his intellect, his emotions, that one understands him exactly. That’s called believing in him. Why does one believe in him?