Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 213

Is There Spiritual Value in Intention Without Action?

First, we need to be concerned with the intention. That is, first we must find the Creator, establish some kind of connection with the Creator. Then we examine what kind of connection exists with the Creator. Maybe it is for the sake of receiving, or maybe there is no connection at all? Also, when a connection exists, we check whether that connection is for the sake of bestowal. Suppose we reach a state where we can truly be in a restriction (Tzimtzum), restricting our desires so that our entire attitude to the Creator is for the sake of bestowal.

What does “for the sake of bestowal” mean? What degree of strength is required for it? Consider eating a salad, a piece of bread, fish, or even meat. This represents the difference between five portions, five degrees of Aviut (coarseness of desire). For which portion, both quantitatively and qualitatively, can we confidently calculate that this pleasure is being received for the sake of bestowal? This is called “the calculation made in the Rosh of the Partzuf.” Only afterward does the action take place.

However, in spirituality, the calculation made in the Rosh of the Partzuf is considered the action itself, because the actual operation follows immediately afterward. There is undoubtedly a calculation in the Rosh. In other words, when we examine and determine in the Rosh that we are already capable of building the Rosh of the Partzuf, this testifies to everything that will follow. This is called the intention in the Rosh for the sake of bestowal. According to the action that we examine and prepare, we prepare everything for reception in the vessel.

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 31 “What Is the Work of Man, in the Work that Is Attributed to the Creator?” (1988) (10.1.2002)

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 1, “Inner Observation”

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Question: Should the feeling of the greatness of the Creator always be above reason, or can it also be within reason?

Answer: The importance of the Creator is always above reason, because at present, I have no possibility to see Him, feel Him, or verify that I am completely filled with Him.

But I can acquire a feeling of His greatness through the friends and use it. In return, however, I also have to invest in the friends. Only in this way does it become a force that can be used.

Question: And after crossing the Machsom?

Answer: After the Machsom, a person truly acquires an understanding of the greatness of the Creator, because he actually receives this feeling. This gives a person a feeling of His greatness, which is called faith, and as a result, he acquires the strength to bestow.

Then, when his faith becomes complete, he already has the ability to receive in order to bestow, and the greatness of the Creator becomes a reality.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/13/26, Rabash, “What Is Do Not Add and Do Not Take Away in the Work?”

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Question:  When we meet a person for the first time, we form an impression of them, and it may change.

Speaking about the spiritual and the material, how do we avoid falling into the standard set of human experiences when a person enters a new environment, meets new people, sees only the good in them, and over time begins to criticize them?

Where specifically is the spiritual and material work here? In the material world, I can push such a person away from me and never meet him again, whereas here I overcome myself and continue communicating with him. Is that where the difference lies?

Answer: You do not pay attention to anything material; you rise above it because through your connection with this person you can build a common spiritual aspiration toward the Creator. Therefore, the friend is infinitely important to you, because without him, you will not have a purposeful aspiration toward spirituality, and you will remain without a soul.

Comment: Essentially, we are speaking about a screen with the Creator that I gradually build. But I build it independently, with respect to myself.

My Response: With respect to the common connection with everyone. You can never build anything directly! It is only through connection with others, because we are one shattered soul.

If I do not connect with others, I have nowhere to feel the Creator. The Creator is between us, but He disappeared, fell into the shattered network between us. Restore the network, and you will see Him again.

What is unclear here? There was a “fishing net” between us in which the Creator was felt. The net was torn, the connections between us broke down and became egoistic, and the Creator disappeared. Restore this network, like a web, and as it is restored, a radiance will appear in it—the Creator, the property of bestowal and love.

Comment: But all the examples that you give, I understand at first, and then I do not.

My Response: That is because your egoism changes instantly, and in the new egoism, you can no longer accept this; you do not feel it.

Comment: But it is impossible to repeat this a hundred times.

My Response: Of course it is possible; even a thousand times! The point is that it is not repeated, because each time a new degree is being worked through. I never repeat myself.

Comment: Yes, I know. But it sounds as though it is the same subject.

My Response: There is nothing else.

Comment: Let us say you speak about mutual guarantee, but there are so many different aspects there. You look at lessons from previous years, where you revealed certain things, and now you reveal other things. And it seems that they are being revealed, but at the same time, they are not.

My Response: Because this must be revealed in you. And in whom else? Do not wait for favors from the Creator! There will be none! Take it yourself.

Question: From where?

Answer: From Him. But demand it!

Comment: How to demand correctly is a very big problem. Because the usual idea of demanding is to shout, or clench your fists, or swear.

My Response: That helps too. Go ahead!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call.First impression of a person ” 9/25/10

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We see that nature is preparing traps for us that we will inevitably have to change, whether we want to or not. Moreover, we will have to change ourselves! Or at very least we will be compelled to recognize how we need to change, even if we might ultimately fail to do so.

Question: Can we reach what you call a “spiritual chip”? Is that what we are being led toward?

Answer: The spiritual chip is about unity. Nothing else. It is just like a chip operates—zero and one. That is all.

Question: Does the chip also work through this, through connection?

Answer: Only through that. Through the connection of duality, meaning through opposites.

Question: Is the spiritual chip the same thing? The connection of opposites?

Answer: Yes, above both opposing phenomena.

Comment: So one way or another the conclusion is still the same. We are being led toward this.

My Response: We are being led in such a way that we will simply lie down and agree to be “chipped,” that is, to be connected with one another in such a way that something intelligent is formed.

Just as chips are the center, the brain, and heart of a device, so too will we be ready for this.

Question: So is our unity also the brain and center of the device?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Of the entire universe?

Answer: Of everything!
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 7/20/26

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Question: If a person has already embarked on the path of bestowal, how can they accelerate their development?

Answer: Read a lot. At first, they do not understand what the friends are, what the work is, or what is required of them at all. Sometimes people grasp this thanks to their nature, but for some, their nature is not suited to uniting and working with other people. There are people who are simply not adapted to this; by their character, they are more contemplative. Therefore, in the first stage, one needs to read a lot.

Nowadays, the process of development is accelerating, but nevertheless, during the first year a person should grind up various articles and letters of Baal HaSulam and Rabash within himself, , like a meat grinder, and absorb them and repeat them, in order to take in as much material as possible.

Let the person forget, not understand, and not reflect on it; he will reflect on it later, but at first, he is not capable of this. He simply needs to read what is written, open himself up, and fill himself with knowledge. Then it will begin to work within him. Through his initial aspiration, while reading the material, he already establishes a connection with the surrounding light, and when he gains sufficient experience in this—several months, half a year, a year—then he will begin to work well.

For some, it is better instead of all this reading to work in the society, but one is impossible without the other. It is necessary to vary them, and in what proportion depends on the person’s character. Both work for the benefit of the group and study should constitute a certain proportion with each other.

So development can be accelerated, especially at the beginning, by reading a great deal, and then, on the contrary, by working more and reflecting on why I am doing this. At later stages, one needs to work more for the society, because then we encounter difficult questions and problems, the overcoming of which helps us advance.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/26, Rabash, “One Should Always Sell Everything He Has and Marry a Wise Disciple’s Daughter”

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Question: How can we constantly preserve the greatness of the Creator?

Answer: A person grows through the Creator’s Kelim (vessels). He wants to feel what the Creator is preparing, what He takes pleasure in, and how He manifests Himself toward him. A person acquires the Creator’s Kelim, because regarding his own Kelim, he only has the point in the heart.

All of Malchut’s greatness beyond the point in the heart is only through the Giver.

What is the greatness of the first stage (Behina Aleph) of the four stages of the development of the direct light? It is awareness of the giver; it is qualitative growth, the growth of understanding, rather than physical volume. In spirituality, it cannot be that I want one or two grams of the same thing.

“I want something” is a point, just pleasure. Beyond this, I want a deeper pleasure, one more connected to the giver, because besides the bodily and human pleasures contained in the point, all other pleasures are due to the giver, due to my connection with Him. They come because I am close to Him.

It is as if you were taken on as a cleaner in a palace and given a minimum reward, just enough so that you would not starve to death, while all the other pleasures come only to the extent that you realize where you are. We see something similar in our world. There are people who are close to power, and their pleasure is not in their salary, but in the feeling of being connected to power.

The pleasures that exist above this world are similar to this. They are all due to the greatness of the Creator in our eyes. And all the other pleasures that we receive through the body or through the environment of this world are like a point, like the hundred dollars that you receive and that are enough for you; you do not demand more. But the demand for more is due to the greatness of that to which you are connected.

Here you can truly increase the importance of this to such an extent that you will receive infinite pleasure. Everything depends only on the importance you attribute to it. You can be next to a king, and the hundred dollars will mean nothing to you; His greatness fills you. “He who is devoted to the perfect becomes perfect.”

We see this at work in the material world as well, within our ego, and that a greater reward is not necessary. But even in this world, devotion is required of a person. This is his payment for being given the awareness of belonging to great things, for example, to power. The laws are opposite in their use, but they are the same laws.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/23/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘Anyone Who Mourns for Jerusalem Is Rewarded with Seeing Its Joy,’ in the Work?”

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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 212

Chapter 20. Intention and Action

Kedusha (holiness) is called “in order to bestow,” meaning intention. The action itself is not important, except insofar as it testifies that the intention is indeed in order to bestow. Therefore, all Kedusha—from the barrier onward, up to the soul’s final correction—consists entirely of degrees of “in order to bestow,” intentions aimed at bestowal.

It depends on the particular desire to receive, on the receiving vessels, and on which actions can be joined to that intention. To the extent that we can increasingly attach our very selves to the intention to bestow, we ascend to higher and higher degrees.

Therefore, the intention is of utmost importance. The path begins and ends with it. All of spirituality is intention, and the desire upon which the intention rides determines our degree. There is a certain gradation in this. Our level is measured according to the coarseness (Aviut) of the desire and according to the coarseness of the screen (Masach) that we can place upon that desire.

If the intention to bestow is used with a desire to receive of Aviut Shoresh, Aleph, and Bet (root, first, and second degrees of coarseness), we do not receive in order to bestow, but only bestow in order to bestow. Why? This is because bestowal in order to bestow does not actually exist as an action that belongs to the created being; a created being is a vessel of reception. However, since the desire to receive in the degrees of Aviut Shoresh, Aleph, and Bet is still unfelt as receiving pleasure, the work with it is called the work of bestowing in order to bestow.

Only when the intention to bestow rides upon a desire to receive of Aviut Gimel and Dalet (third and fourth degrees of coarseness) is it called “receiving in order to bestow.” This is because in Aviut Gimel and Dalet there are already sensations of reception, pleasure, and shame. Then we begin to receive in order to bestow, and the feeling of being a receiver who bestows begins.

Therefore, every soul, every vessel, is divided into Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE) and AHP, and the work of each part is different:

The work of Galgalta ve Eynaim—the work of conception (Ibur), birth, and nursing (Yenika), up to the state of smallness (Katnut).

The work of AHP—work with the vessels of reception of Aviut Gimel and Dalet, the vessels of greatness (Gadlut), meaning that we begin to work with the AHP.

These are the two discernments in Kedusha. However, Kedusha is not measured according to desire, but according to intention. The minimal intention to bestow that we acquire immediately places us in the spiritual realm, in the spiritual world.

What does it mean to cross the barrier (Machsom)? It means acquiring an intention to bestow that is called “Lishma” (“for Her sake” or “for the sake of bestowal”).

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 46 “What Is the Son of the Beloved and the Son of the Hated in the Work?” (1991) (10.28.2002)

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 1, “Inner Observation” (8.21.2007)

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