When Does Salvation Come?

Question: In one of the posts in your blog it said: “After people are in complete despair over all that they have attempted, we can let them know that we have a method which will give them health, control, respect, money, and so forth. They will have all that they require in this world, a Garden of Eden on Earth, but to do this they must connect.”

How can we explain this if, in spite of all our efforts to connect, we still don’t have anything?

Answer: A person can never carry out any spiritual action if he is not “in complete despair about his own deeds” and doesn’t scream to the Creator when he is found on the last level and with a little more, he will fall from there into an abyss. Only then does salvation come from the Creator. Otherwise he doesn’t have a “Kli” (vessel) that is ready.

How can we achieve this in this world? If we don’t do anything, then the Creator will send us blows, the Light will shine on us all the time and we will feel ourselves more and more to be opposite to Him and this is to say, in states that are worse and worse. This is the path of suffering. As long as we have not reached a terminal state of death from this way, we cannot deviate from it. But we can reach a state of need for receiving help from the Creator consciously, without reaching a state of powerlessness. How do we reach this consciously? This would be when I feel myself to be the opposite of the Light.

Everything depends on the conditions in which the person is found. Suppose that I was born in a poor village in Africa and I get a half a cup of rice and a hundred grams of bread per day. Suddenly a group arrives from the United Nations and begins to distribute a kilogram of bread and a bottle of milk to everyone, saying that if the children behave well, then they will give them food. And whoever eats well will also see a movie. This is to say, a completely different world is revealed, completely different conditions.

Can I attain conditions like these? When I was living in a village in Africa a kilogram of bread per day seemed like the Garden of Eden to me. But if I were to find myself in some advanced nation, then if the day doesn’t end with a visit to a restaurant with friends, this is a wasted day. I get even more depressed than during the time that I only got a kilogram of bread per day in the African village.

This is to say, everything depends on the conditions in which the person is found. Therefore there is no absolute meaning of sufferings.

I am an ordinary person, okay. Suddenly I win a million dollars in the lottery. I check the numbers ten times, everything is in order, everything is according to what is in the newspaper. I “sprout wings.” At the end of the week they present the prizes, I get there and they inform me that there was a mistake in the newspaper. What can I do? I am found in absolute despair, but it is artificial, for I didn’t have anything before. The despair appeared as a result of the thought that I won the lottery but it was explained that this was a mistake.

This is to say, we can bring ourselves to a state like this artificially, when I will be immensely depressed because I yearned very much to attain the Upper Light and I don’t have it. How can I do this? With the help of the environment. With the help of the friends I can hasten myself so much that I scream that I want this now and immediately! And together with this I attain a clear awareness that I didn’t get anything except “a punch in the mouth.”

It is up to us to do this to ourselves. This is not easy. Certainly we need to make ourselves a little childish like this, but then we will come to a state of a great desire and correspondingly with a state of immense despair about our “own powers,” and I will demand from the Creator that here He must help me! He has no choice, for I am demanding it! It is up to us to make ourselves really and truly want and despair. And then everything will succeed.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman