Local Meeting

"The Freedom"

This week we continue on both the "Tens Course" and reading from Baal HaSulam's clarifications around the freedom of choice in "The Freedom" article.

As we've mentioned before, Baal HaSulam wrote extensively in order to assist students attain the purpose of creation - reaching equivalence of form with the qualities of the Creator (love and bestowal). This week we focus on our freedom in choosing the environment

In the local meeting, we will read some excerpts from the article and then try to understand what is going on in the text, followed by another reading and discussions on the topics together.

We also have extra clips from Rav Dr. Michael Laitman as important clarifications of the article.

In addition, we will do a workshop or two on the topic of the "Tens Course".

"The Freedom"

Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Baal HaSulam

The Necessity to Choose a Good Environment

Now you can understand the words of Rabbi Yosi Ben Kisma (Avot, Chapter 6), who replied to a person who offered him to live in his town, and he would give him millions of gold coins for it: “Even if you give me all the gold and silver and jewels in the world, I will live only in a place of Torah.” These words seem inconceivable to our simple mind, for how could he relinquish millions of gold coins for such a small thing as living in a place where there are no disciples of Torah, while he himself was a great sage who needed to learn from no one? Indeed, a mystery.

But as we have seen, it is a simple thing and should be observed by each and every one of us. Although everyone has his own source, the forces are revealed openly only through the environment one is in. This is similar to the wheat sown in the ground, whose forces become apparent only through its environment, which is the soil, rain, and sunlight.

Thus, Rabbi Yosi Ben Kisma correctly assumed that if he were to leave the good environment he had chosen and fall into a harmful environment in a city where there is no Torah, not only would his former concepts be compromised, but all the other forces hidden in his source, which he had not yet revealed in action, would remain concealed. This is because they would not be subject to the right environment that would be able to activate them.

And as we have clarified above, only in the matter of the choice of environment is man’s reign over himself measured, and for this he should receive reward or punishment. Therefore, one must not wonder that a sage such as Rabbi Yosi Ben Kisma chose the good and declined the bad, and was not tempted by material or corporeal things, as he deduces there: “When one dies, one does not take with him silver, gold, or jewels, but only Torah and good deeds.”

And so our sages warned, “Make for yourself a rav and buy for yourself a friend.” And there is also the choice of books, as we have mentioned, for only in this is one rebuked or praised—in his choice of the environment. But once he has chosen an environment, he is at its hands as clay in the hands of the potter.

The Mind’s Control over the Body

Some external contemporary sages, after contemplating the above matter and seeing how man’s mind is but a fruit that grows out of the events of life, concluded that the mind has no control whatsoever over the body. Rather, only life’s events, imprinted in the physical tendons of the brain, control and activate man. Man’s mind is like a mirror, reflecting the shapes before it. Although the mirror is the carrier of these shapes, it cannot activate or move the shapes reflected in it.

So is the mind. Although life’s events, in all their manners of cause and effect, are seen and recognized by the mind, the mind is nonetheless utterly incapable of controlling the body, to bring it into motion, meaning to bring it closer to the good or push it away from the bad. This is because the spiritual and the physical are completely remote from one another, and there is no intermediary tool between them to enable the spiritual mind to activate and operate the corporeal body, as has been discussed at length.

But where they are smart, there they disrupt. Man’s imagination uses the mind just as the microscope serves the eyes: Without the microscope, we would not see anything harmful, due to its smallness. But once we see the harmful being through the microscope, we distance ourselves from the noxious element.

Thus, it is the microscope that brings man to distance himself from the harm, and not the sense, for the sense did not detect the harm-doer. And to that extent, the mind fully controls man’s body, to push it away from bad and pull it toward the good. Thus, in all the places where the attribute of the body fails to recognize the beneficial or the detrimental, it needs only the mind’s knowledge.

Furthermore, since man knows his mind, which is a true conclusion from life’s experiences, he can therefore receive knowledge and understanding from a trusted person and take it as law, although his life’s events have not yet revealed these concepts to him. It is like a person who asks the advice of a doctor and obeys him even though he understands nothing with his own mind. Thus, one uses the mind of others no less than one uses one’s own.

As we have clarified above, there are two ways for Providence to make certain that man achieves the good, final goal: The path of suffering and the path of Torah. All the clarity in the path of Torah stems from this. For these clear conceptions that were revealed and recognized after a long chain of events in the lives of the prophets and the men of God, there comes a man who fully utilizes them and benefits from them, as though these concepts were events of his own life. Thus, you see that one is exempted from all the ordeals one must experience before he can develop that clear mind by himself. Thus, one saves both time and pain.

It can be compared to a sick man who does not wish to obey the doctor’s orders before he understands by himself how that advice would cure him, and therefore begins to study medicine by himself. He could die of his illness before he learns medicine.

So is the path of suffering compared to the path of Torah. One who does not believe the concepts that the Torah and prophecy advise him to accept without self-understanding must come to these concepts by himself by following the chain of cause and effect from life’s events. These are experiences that greatly rush and can develop the sense of recognition of evil in them, as we have seen, without one’s choice, but because of one’s efforts to acquire a good environment, which leads to these thoughts and actions.

Open Discussion

According to your understanding, how can we choose our environment?

How can you help in building a spiritual environment for yourself?

Clips

RABASH, Article No. 17 - "Concerning the Importance of Friends" >>

Workshop questions

1) According to your understanding, what' is "unity" among friends?

2) How can we increase the importance of the friends in our spiritual environment?

See You Next Week