A Cup Of Coffee Or How To Give Pleasure To The Creator

Question: Can I determine independently which of the 125 spiritual levels I am on now?

Answer: It is possible, but the question is how will you measure your state? What do you know about yourself?

First of all, a person must acquire tools, measuring instruments, for these parameters. A unit of measure for a spiritual state would be one gram of bestowal, one gram of the force with which the person bestows. In this world, we don’t possess tools and instruments like these because we don’t have these units of measurement.

Let’s suppose that someone approaches me and wants to make coffee for me in my coffeemaker. At first, I am doubtful because I feel sorry about wasting electricity, coffee, and water, and after that, even milk, sugar or honey. But in the end, so I won’t appear stingy and so that I won’t be condemned and hated, and in order not to get treated the same way in the future, I agree.

However, even if I make an effort to arouse absolutely pure thoughts about people within me and want to give them pleasure without making any calculations, how much could I measure the amount that I bestow? Is it through the amount of coffee, sugar, milk, water, electricity, and the depreciation of my coffeemaker? How do I do it?

It follows that we don’t have the tools and instruments for measuring the force of bestowal, so we cannot understand where we are. However, if a person ascends the spiritual ladder, he can measure precisely where he is in relation to his ego, in relation to all of the conditions. There is no deviation in any direction there. All of the counting, the initial ones, the changes, further changes, and so forth are connected together to give a person an account of where he is.

Together with this, a person must always observe himself and see how he can use himself and for what. In the spiritual world, a person is no longer a puppet managed from above. Rather, he does everything consciously. The entire system is under him. He is included in it and gradually can run it. Instead of carrying out all kinds of automatic actions unconsciously, he must manage those actions, meaning that he thinks about them and makes decisions.

Question: Your example with the coffee impresses me. Suppose that I drank the coffee. It was very tasty, and I tell you that. How would you react then?

Answer: I would begin to get pleasure from your saying this to me, that you respect me.

However, the next time, it would be much more difficult for me to prepare coffee for you because another calculation would come. I would begin trying to clarify if I am giving you the coffee so that you would respect me even more, and it could be the other way around. I would not do anything for you when I get the feeling that I am working against my egoistic desires. So, when I clarify that I am doing this and discover that I am doing this so that you would begin to respect me, I would prefer not to do it, and you would not receive any pleasure. That is, I must oppose my egoistic thoughts and prepare the coffee for you in spite of everything. But on the next level, I must not take your attitude toward me into account. This is an entirely different matter.

Question: Where is the Creator in this entire scenario of calculations? There is coffee, there is you, and there is me. Where is the Creator?

Answer: The Creator is not in this scenario if I do not insert Him into it myself. Inserting Him into the scenario amounts to the meaning of life. If it weren’t for the Creator, I would never prepare the coffee for you. After all, this is talking about giving someone pleasure with no compensation. If I expect bestowal from you in return, it means that I am not bestowing.

For what would I want to attain a state of full bestowal? It is to give pleasure to the Creator. So, I am ready to make coffee for you, and I am not making the coffee for you, but to give pleasure to the Creator. This is a requirement for a spiritual level. What’s next?

Let’s suppose that I am doing this for the sake of the Creator, and now the Creator treats me well. Will I need to get that good attitude from Him? If I get that kind of attitude from Him, then we have a transactional relationship. How can I reach a state in which I bestow to Him, to you, or to any person with no calculation? Can I do this?

If I am an egoist, I cannot bestow without compensation. I need to fulfill my ego in the same way that one must fill a car with gasoline so that it will run. This means that I must insert a pipe into my ego and fill it. Only after I have filled it can I bestow. When I fill my ego again, I will be able to bestow again. However, if I bestow and am filled only after that, this becomes a problem.

I must be sure that I will be filled. If that succeeds for me, then good. If not, then that’s it; the pipeline of trust ceases to exist. If I truly want to bestow, the Creator must change my nature. I see that billions of people pray to the Creator, do everything that He says, each one according to his understanding, but there is no benefit from their actions.

How can we humans achieve a relationship with the Creator so that He will be able to change our nature so that we won’t depend on our ego? After all, somehow He can help us rise above ourselves since He created the creatures, meaning that only He can change our nature.

So, a person must begin to act in the direction of bestowal. In the meantime, since he cannot bestow without compensation, he asks the Creator to help him so that he would be able to bestow in one direction. If a person truly has a drive toward this, the Creator brings him to a group. It could be that the person was in it even before then, but he didn’t know how to use it and what to do with it. It could be that this same person even carried out everything that the Kabbalists say automatically, but there is no benefit in this.

Now, he is beginning to understand that when he is working with his friends, when he seems to be bestowing to them, he is receiving from them, and they all intend for the Creator to make it possible for them to operate in one direction without receiving any response in return, with no compensation, no future benefit, with no calculations. Then, the group has become a laboratory for him in which he is beginning to change and shape himself as an immaterial creature who can bestow without receiving anything in return.

But the person himself cannot do anything. He just receives energy from the Light that the Creator gives him. It is as if a pipe has been inserted into a person, like at a gas station. Through it, he becomes filled, and then he can bestow.

There is a normal cycle in nature: a person bestows to others in order to bestow to the Creator, and when the Creator sees that a person can bestow, in exchange, He gives him the energy there. However, this is not a payment, but the potential to bestow.

This energy is called the Upper Light. It comes and fills the person by making it possible for him to bestow. Eventually, the person begins to work without pay.

There is a very simple reciprocal relationship between the person and the Creator here. The person understands that if the Creator created him and the Creator created his ego, the Creator must make it possible for him to work with this ego, and this is not a payment, but the potential and opportunity to work.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/10/16