“To Follow the Creator in the Desert”
Question: About the convention, what is this event, this occasion where we walk and go to the desert?
Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman: It’s like what it says, go follow the desert until the land.
Question: What does it mean?
Dr. Laitman: That without any preparation, without any plans, and walking with our feet and not with anything else, not with some carriage or something at least. That is, we need to try and be ready for walking in the desert, and the fact that there is no path, that we can see every moment and every point there can be a fall and no one will help in a land that is not being seeded. But I’m going to search for the Creator in the desert. When I am in the force of the desert, I feel my dependence on the friends. I have nothing as a support, besides the upper one and only to the extent that I grab onto the friends and that we hold onto one another, by that we advance. If we are certain that in such a way, the Creator is between us, that our connection is so strong that the Creator becomes revealed to us, that is considered as us advancing on the correct path. We then reach the goal.
Question: What is the calling of the Creator when He says, “Follow Me into the desert”? Why does He call us into the desert?
Dr. Laitman: That is the stage when we need to do the act of connection, where we have nowhere else to run. It is the degree that we never reached, not us nor anyone else. It is the final correction that we want to attain, and it is something unique, of which there are no examples.
Question: What does our ability depend on to hear the calling of the Creator, to follow Him into the desert?
Dr. Laitman: It depends only on the friends; only on the connection between us.
Question: What does it mean that there has never been anything like this before?
Dr. Laitman: We never had such a situation before where we moved toward the correction, wanting to adhere to one another and reach correction—to the soul of Adam HaRishon as it was before the shattering—and to connect in such a way with a great number of people that we now have.
Question: What about the children of Israel who walked in the desert?
Dr. Laitman: No. They went from shattering to shattering until they reached the Land of Israel, and then they continued shattering from the First Temple to the Second Temple, in the wars and so on, until they reached exile, and then they were driven away from the Land of Israel.
Question: It’s happening for the first time in history if I understand correctly.
Dr. Laitman: Yes
Question: How can we follow the Creator in the desert? How can we manage to do it if we have no example of it?
Dr. Laitman: We will seek it and raise its importance, and we will place these matters where they should be according to what we pray and ask, and the Creator will show us His way.
Question: If you can summarize what is our work, you said that together with the friends we will be able to hear the Creator’s calling. What is our work to be able to hear the Creator’s calling?
Dr. Laitman: All of our work and all of our advancement is only in increasing connection, to one of increasing sanctification. That is our advancement, which we continue until we reach a certain state, and that is it. We see within us the force that is revealed, which unifies, and which stabilizes us “as one man with one heart,” and the Creator fills this force with His internality.