Religion Is Not for the Sake of the People, but for the Sake of the Worker

We are two days before a very special day - our day of Love, Tu B'av, where we'll do many exciting things. Including a special event in the evening that's open to the public.

Next week we'll start to prepare for the next cohort of students joining our learning community.

Today we'll finish the article The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose.

We'll start with a clip of Rav speaking about this article -

Clip: Ascending The Spiritual Ladder

This article is so special, really, so he starts with this, what is religion, for what benefit is it, for the benefit of mankind or for the benefit of the worker? Do you receive a reward in this world or the next? He sets up a trap and continues, that no one knows this and the Creator is good and absolute, good and absolute for what? Because He has no predecessor, and therefore He has no one to receive from and therefore His entire desire is only to bestow, and therefore He created us to bestow upon us, and bestows upon us all good, for the good and the bad, and in general only good comes out of Him. So, why do we suffer all the time? If He is so good, a question immediately jumps out of our ego. So he explains to us that His providence is purposeful providence. What is purposeful? So I must feel torment that comes from Him? No, the torment does not come from Him, the torment comes from your vessel, as soon as you can fix your vessel, so please go fix it and feel good.

That is to say, providence is purposeful providence, that you will constantly correct yourself in order to feel good, but every time you correct yourself to feel good, you must develop, and each time your good will be a different good, meaning that you will advance qualitatively in defining what is good. Goodness is not just receiving and not even just bestowing, but ascending to bestow to the Creator in order to be like Him, it is also not enough to be the bestower, there are many people in our world who are willing to bestow. Even Baal HaSulam writes that 10% of the entire population is supposedly under a natural, altruistic influence, and then it does not count, because the opposite is a certain corruption, later we will know why this is happening, it is not for the good of humanity that they are in so-called bestowal.

Therefore, His providence is purposeful providence and we receive the good only on the condition that we adapt ourselves each time to the development of His providence, to the extent that He allows us to feel the evil, if we correct it we feel the good. And each time it is arranged for us to feel the evil, so that we correct ourselves for the good. That is, we always have the possibility of feeling good, but why feel bad? In order to each time ascend not just to goodness, but in qualitative distinctions, what is called good. Good is not just doing this or that, but increasingly becoming like the Creator, ascending the spiritual ladder. Michael Laitman

If we're on this ladder in an unconscious way, then we advance through suffering.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is for us to go through all this consciously.

We have this learning community so we can advance together. I may not know everyone's names but I know they have a point in the heart, and they can help strengthen my yearning to be more like the Creator.

Throughout this lesson, let us pray that the upper light will come closer to us and purify us.

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Bnei Baruch Learning Community

As he explained in the article, there are two benefits here -

In order to reach that recognition of evil - there is no need to suffer. There are two types of suffering when you want something and don't get it - or have no desires left. But whoever is on the path doesn't need to suffer at all.

The other benefit is our ability to accelerate time. We can't call ourselves victims of anything. We are the masters of our time and we can speed it up.

We are reading the last part of the article: Religion Is Not for the Sake of the People, but for the Sake of the Worker

Ethics and morality were meant to make us good, moral people - meaning a person who won't steal or take bribery, and help those in need. Religion and the wisdom of Kabbalah brings a person to rise above their nature. So it appears that they have a common goal. But he explains that they couldn't be further from each other. Because those who brought us religion - they reached the Creator and are telling us to attain like them. The Torah of morality is something they made up to feel better and act in a more moral manner in society. It has no connection to the Creator. Morality is something people invented to suit their ideas of how things should be. While the wisdom of Kabbalah is about attaining the attribute of bestowal.

So with this in mind, "bad" is discovering our distance from the Creator - understanding how our egoism is harming everything. "Good" is becoming similar to the attribute of bestowal - similar to the Creator.

So the goal is very different. Morality is based on life experience. There is no rising above our nature. When we have a goal to feel good in the group - who can promise that I'll be happy in the group?

There is only one pure good - the Creator. And if we help each other get to Him then we help each other rise above this world full of challenges. We get to a wider, higher world. Once we reach the attribute of bestowal - we come out of ourselves to be like the upper one. Then we're not dependent on what the society thinks of us based on these or those values - but rather feed from the upper light itself. And it's eternal.

Clip: Exercising Free Choice

"Many make the mistake of comparing our holy Torah to the moral law, but this came to them because they did not taste the taste of religion from their days."

You see again he is criticizing the moral law. What is the moral law that he tells them no no no you must observe you must do there are 313 actions before you, or twenty or thirty actions, you must be in them, you must must must put yourself into restrictions" put yourself in. Baal HaSulam says it's not good for a man to go wild without any limits.

But how good is it to know the situation, to know nature, to acquire it, to be above it, above the entire plan of creation and to flow, as he says that the horse should be together with its rider. So it is not good to be under it and not good to be above it, because in both of these things man is not in truth, but must flow with the divinity in understanding, in attainment, in mutual feeling.

And morality, either it completely eliminates the person, saying "Leave everything, follow your nature, do whatever you want," is also morality, it is just saying, it is a kind of education, it is not just anarchy, it is a kind of education "Do whatever you want, read newspapers instead of textbooks, learn from life, do whatever you want." It is also morality, because you enter some kind of society that limits you and gives you some kind of rules, values, restrictions, it can be a society of criminals that tell you to do it, do whatever you want, it is not what you want, it is what is determined for you from within, and by society, or another moral teaching, that this is forbidden and this is forbidden and this is forbidden, and this you have to uphold and this you have to maintain and so on. The wisdom of Kabbalah is against this and against this, against anarchy and against all kinds of forms that oblige the person, but only one thing in the development of the person, the development of the person himself. And this is what Baal HaSulam says, who, by comparing true religion, means the wisdom of Kabbalah to the moral law, meaning that in fact, in a proper education a person is not allowed to say anything, nothing, because whatever you tell him does not work. It limits him, it spoils him, it bends him.

You only need to organize a society around him, because only through society can he realize his free choice. If you pressure him and do not let him realize free choice, you cause him to lose those qualities that he is obliged to cultivate correctly, in order to build from himself the image of a person who resembles the Creator, precisely so that he will resemble the Creator. Therefore, the whole concern for educating a person, small or large, it does not matter, is to put him in the right framework only, and to influence him only through the framework, and not in the form of a finger pointed at him, both on the large and the small and that this obliges him.

Society is obligatory, that's something else, because society is obligatory in such a way that he wants to be obligated to society, because then he receives good treatment from society and nature, that we all come from the society of the first Adam, from the connected souls, and that is the natural thing for him, that is the right thing for him. Organizing a society around man, which will always promote him to the right relationship with the environment, is called the right education instead of morality. Michael Laitman