Maamar Az 1934 #3 Diff bet Yetzer HaRa and Nefesh Bahamis - Mind over Matter - Imagination

everyone we're on page in the aussie book from 1934 that the frida kadampa said in in uh glubaca uh we're on page 183 and i want to just briefly recap a very important idea that that ever spoke about in this mimer yesterday good morning shmuel um you know when we learned taylor when we learned gemara when we learned you know muslims for him and we're used to one term and the term is uh yetzer tov and yetzer hara that that's generally what we're accustomed to and we translate generally yetzer means an inclination in other words when a person is inclined to do something good we say it comes from the gates of tafe he does something bad from the yates that hurt it and although that's true in in in [ __ ] in in in talmud and in the normal way of learning that's ms a hundred percent nevertheless i see this and in this particular case in this mimer what we learned yesterday is that the word yet comes from the word sea or ceuer which means a form an image and that the yetzer hora begins in the brain not in the heart it's the see or the seer tov that is the ikar that's the primary aspect and drive of the inclination which is a fascinating idea because if you know once something is in the heart once something is an emotion it's in the emotion stage it's very hard to change let's not kill ourselves it's very hard i mean tanya is all about that right mayak shalom but nevertheless it's it's it's a rough and tough avoider so the the the the the altered and that obey him after the altar they they they they have a an approach and they say if you begin you hear this if you begin by working on your on your seer on the on the image and forum that you created with your brain with your mind and you make a change over there what will follow will be much healthier much better and it when we look at yeah even gatesahara from this perspective it also i think gives us um more uh hope and more reality to the fact that we can make a change so when someone says it's gates or herrera they mean yet to her it's the way i behave and the answer is i know you behave this way i want to go to the what we call in psychology i want to go to the paradigm shift i want to go to the makshava i want to go to the intellect to the brain i want to i want to i want to i want to deal with the issue from that perspective and if i can make a difference over there the result will be a better a a better one that's what we learned yesterday let's see yes sorry just a quick question i'm sorry i know it wasn't yesterday as opposed to what was if how would a person make a change otherwise if a person doesn't make a change in the in let's say um in the brain like what what what what would be an example like an example an example is a a change in behavior that different what was talking about is the difference between making a change in behavior versus a change in the thought process a behavior a person is is drinking a lot of alcohol it's it's very hard to stop if you just uh you know behavior it's a you know it's addicted or it's not even it's not addictive it's not a right now if you if you're able to to to make a change in the way you think about you know drinks and alcohol and who you are and and your family and and and and hashem and you you begin with making the the what we call the brain surgery the sp the brain surgery over here um you'll see a difference i think the uh the jewish the the jewish psychologist psychiatrist abraham maslow 1960s those that are familiar i've this was um one of his theories uh and ideas i think some say it has it even goes back to william james of the early 1900s you know i i did a little research on that years ago um whether it's exactly like not like uh you know i'll let the mavinim uh have a pill in that but but the idea is that the the change the way you think i mean it's basic tanya 101 right but but what i'm saying is that in this miner that ebb is applying this thought to the yetzer you understand he's talking about to the yates here in other words there's a part in the brain that already is connected to inclination we're not talking about abstract intellect we're not talking about that now we're talking about that part of the brain that already is oriented towards behavior even there you could make a change okay so we have three three domains we have pure intellect removed kind of from behavior we have intellect that's already associated with behavior and the third thing we have is behavior and it seems from what i'm what we're learning that that is right now at this point he's he was identifying and dealing with that middle stage of intellect as it's associated to behavior and the re and the result moshe is um is a powerful one so you know i again you know hillary this is his field i guess but i would think that you know the aaa program and the steps you know it's like they give you these ideas to think about and repeat and and and and to to to make a change in the behavior coming beginning with certain ideas that you change so submitting to a higher power i think that's one of them right submitting to a higher power so if if you if you understand that it's not just about mimicking words you know say 55 times submitting to higher power submitting to higher power that's ridiculous that this that's not nothing's going to change from saying something 60 times okay that that's another issue that that we can discuss at another time this whole approach of you know mimicking words no change comes from understanding something and realizing this is no good for me or this is great for me and you understand it so again i'm not an expert in a 12-step program but i would hope that when they say submitting to a higher power that they want you to think about and understand and realize what it means to submit to a higher power now naturally you know what's their idea of a higher power we could debate that back and forth but there's no question that there's it seems to me he'll tell me if i'm right or wrong that that's the approach yes hillary uh i i would just say um just uh i arrived to what you're saying that the lesson of the 12 steps is that i think it's the second step came to admit that a power greater than us could restore us to sanity so came to admit seems to me to be a aria for for a for a uh cognitive for a uh oh that was the word i was looking for before the cognition thank you that was the word i was looking for abraham maysville speaks about the cognitions right so but let me ask you is is is practically in the in the in the in the aaa program steps besides saying do they train you how to come to admit well i mean i think that the um you know the 12-step programs are one of the most successful uh sort of self-help communities uh ever and um uh and they um and the main ways that they work is you you listen people have the opportunity to sort of tell their stories and then and then also you work with with a sponsor kind of a counselor somebody who's been there before like yourself like a peer counseling kind of uh approach usually somebody who's sort of farther along so i would say very very much so that it's kind of based on group support it's based upon a series of of easily digestible steps manageable steps that are that that are easy easy to understand not um not not abstract and uh and uh and on um a combination of both group support and personal support okay let's go back into the text now page 183 uh let's go to um the middle of the page it's probably about 10 12 lines down um oh one more point that he spoke about at the end yesterday we were left off is that we talk about hessed in to do he said you need you need someone else and he brings araya from avromavinu that he was you know the epitome of yet he needed to have those those those people those arabs to to to bring him in to to his tent to do hesit and uh the line actually it's much closer to the bottom of six lines at the bottom [Music] was generous with his nephesh with his soul why because middles because emotions ekaran was awesome their prima their primary mode of operation requires someone else zoulos means another someone else to to do has it with okay so again we're five six lines from the bottom 183 the last word um num when we say that the middles are primarily primarily require another to bestow the emotion the carrot uh upon that ebba says this is what we identify as and you could make a quote around it or underline it it's the activity of the only if there's an other you can't do a paula of a medayakov to the wall it just doesn't work the wall doesn't respond to your meter but you can do it but you can only do a meter to someone a f to a person and i would even go further probably to an animal too because they have some fear their feelings they can react so you could but but of course best is is the is the human species avo sierra hamidah so here you see he's distinguishing between us and sir amida however the image and form of the medium cane moisture is is relevant to yourself the activity of an of a motion requires another but the seer the format the image the uh idea of the media is re can be experienced within yourself even if there isn't someone else to share your idea with all the ms and in truth truthfully speaking true but this image when it comes to bad middles they're very bad illness natural illness explained by many people being young very very important line that sounds like french but what he says here is and this answers a lot of things why people have idiosyncrasies stick stuff you ask yourself am i and about yourself why do i got this nars guy the answer is because you have a certain c or ra or a c or 12 and it it it you know it it triggers you and that's tvs that comes natural to you now the thing is that if it's unhealthy or even if it's healthy but you want it to be healthier you have the key to make a change in it through changing the cognition but why why why are certain people certain times and all of us in different ways why do we have something but tv is calm up and look what that says in all kinds of strange and weird ways that's what sri lanka means yeah but but not yongi not mr gas it's like natural mystical it's like you come out of your mother's womb with that mystic us does that mean does that mean the person literally like like what you just said a person comes out of a person's born with a certain natural uh he's he's wired a certain way who made this give this person he's wired a certain way okay okay but the fact is that that wire might need to be fine-tuned okay right no one said no one's saying yes yes [Music] let's see another line to see how i hear what you're saying and these mesh but the rabbit now says something different young he says these bad thoughts in other words it's not just a misha says what you said you're wired that way it's you you embellish that wire by thinking about it and how and you scheme it as the oldest was saying with the shame to you or the messiah it's the imagery which man forms becoming your name in many in many issues it sounds like he's talking about fantasy that a person fantasizes how he's going to act out whatever he fantasizes about but where is it it's not in the poll in the activity it's in the seer in the form in the image and these thoughts and him koscium verroy and beyster are very difficult and very bad very bad because as the sages say top of next page 184. thoughts about doing aveda are actually cushion worse than a vader why why what's the simple shot you're doing a veda you did it you know you did it and now you try to detuva is like wait a minute i didn't do enough veda i didn't actually do the sin i just thought about the sin so you're always seen to be justifying that position yes but don't we usually refer to it in the word as in here well you could do the word hero means a thought thinking of so if there's a thoughts of doing shiva and then there's available to so the word herod is a generic word it's neutral it's not a bad word it means thoughts in this case he's applying it you need to the yetzer horror so so he's saying that the position of the yetzer as it begins in the mind is the position of the fantasy where you constantly justify i didn't do it yet and if i didn't do it yet big deal it's just in my mind so that i'll say there's a lot of bodies and muslims for him that he are very very damaging to a person and and again the demonic sesmo should cost him worse why and that's like i told you because in aveda you did it you know you did it and now you know but but here you're always satisfying yourself i didn't do it yet i didn't do it yet so what why can't i do the yakov if you want to say something yeah then it works the other way too and and haha preparing to do it yes right right and and and thank you for bringing that up that's that that's absolutely true there's uh ideas brought in this forum that mitzvah is in a way greater than the mixville preparation why because you're constantly preparing yourself it means you're constantly working on yourself you didn't admit you didn't divide the gaffer and let next right but if you constantly be making yourself they say the joke you know the the the jew is is always in in in a mode of a mitzvah and he doesn't do the mitzvah that that's not good you got to do the bottom line and say i'm going to go to the mikveh i'm going to dive i'm going to learn to see this i'm going to learn more sir and then i'm going to dive in after hot sauce i mean come on you know what i'm saying i'm saying you know the nakuda is so hakona is important but we should never forget the poemish let's see what he says in here this year 184 top line a person who is in the mode of yetzer of hihurim is called atsu lazane hearts the word in yiddish to lozen means like melted the loose loose a loose heart vasatsu lost the hearts he allows his heart to be loose lashkiya to immerse himself in his mind and in his ideas with in low life type of thoughts and corporeal course type of thing item issues that he thinks about he doesn't just mean you know sexual issues it means other type of you know indulging in food i'm gonna have a steak with this and that on top and it's gonna be big and it's gonna be ah whatever that's not an aveda means it's this person he lives with the fantasy as if he's actually doing so the fantasy actually is so real to him that he's like doing it before you know you mentioned that who passed away several months ago he he speaks about this idea probably it's in many of his books i think even told me this once that he would do he would do uh hypnosis on patients even patients who were very very ill and diagnosed with illness that you know medical science couldn't cure anyway and he would he he would he he would um hypnotize them and bring them back to a a state of being when they were a young boy or a young girl he said in the farms and in the pastures green pastures of milwaukee where he grew up and he would ask them what do you remember and they would speak about how nice they were playing ball with their siblings and friends and the trees and the grass and in other words what i understood if again hillary correct me if i'm wrong but not an expert in this field but what i understood is that he he brought them to a place of fear of fantasy again don't quote me you know that hypnosis or fantasy i i don't know so i just using my own words no actually i i think that that that's a pretty good um characterization in that um uh but i would instead of the word fantasy i'd use the word imagination imagination okay really has the word image in it right you know and it refers to kind of the mental faculty of visualization to the formation of pictures in our mind's eye uh and one second and and the word fantasy does what does that word connotate well fantasy tends to uh connote like a more developed um uh like almost like a movie in your mind of having of doing something or having done something i was reminded that just now of a you know of a situational client i once had who um you know was a young like stay-at-home mother who'd grown up with television and she she she was now home i think with two special needs children it was very difficult situation and and she began and she she like lived for a certain television daily television like soap opera and she began to sort of confuse her life with the life of the people on the television program you know uh it was kind of a mental deterioration so you know very much uh very much um a case example of what we're talking about here okay now that that's a fantasy that's a fantasy now in hypnosis the technique that um you're describing of taking somebody back to a more pleasant earlier experience this is called it's called age regression to go backward in time and typically for the therapeutic reason to do it would be to help somebody like just reconnect to some resource or some something positive from the past that they could help them in the present mm-hmm so so so though there was someone who was in pain and pain today if you could bring it back to a place where there was pleasure and not pain yeah and but you remind me that's what rabbit said that's what he said that that's kind of that's commonly done in pain and pain management uh because you know the one of the keys to pain management is to be able to sort of remove yourself from the situation it's called the the clinical term is dissociate and it's something that it's something that's a natural part of the life of the mind you know these both age aggression is something we naturally do it's a natural you know we'll search in our past when we're going through something memories and and so on from something that to help us in the present and and he lives in this imagination as though it's actually happening in addition to the fact that when he does this he loses god forbid all of his powers and his is his soul he's talking about because it's right it's it's it's an imagination of of ra of bad i told you uh once that i think that the rebbe is alluding to what's brought i believe in the even in the rambam and in other swarms that uh fantasies okay you know or not sorry um yeah if fantasies leading to you know masturbation and and and and um uh waste of semen uh the the the the hazal say it it it hurts all of your physical clauses don't ask me how to reconcile that with science i'll let everyone come up and answer that themselves but the ghazal say that that um this is a damn you know too much of it etc uh is is is the word mahala means it destroys right so we're talking first he says it it it impacts you spiritually it it makes a very bad spiritual blemish i think that's what he's alluding to he doesn't say clearly but that's i believe and it it leads you to god forbid become like nuts with bilbao or confused disturbed the zeb look what he says further this is a cause why there are different different bad illnesses many people in in people that's why i think he's talking about this issue because you know in ghazal the term used for wasting of siemens called um which by the way is usually done in an acronym of hess final nun youthful sense what what youthful sins playing baseball and then and and and and watching the world series i mean what's katas newton is a reference to wasting the semen masturbation okay so the rabbit says here um specifically this issue and we all know this is something as young people we we experience and struggle with and deal with so the rebbe says that this type of um thinking and involvement and he says you know like uh actualizing the the fantasy um that's why i used the word fantasy earlier hello because i knew this was coming but anyway um that ever says this is um very damaging so um so so this is cl this is kind of classical uh yetzer hara 101 in in in the world of muslims this issue that's been identified here um however but by the way i do want to say i want to say many uh bacharam many laboratory students wrote to the rebber for a tickle they they they engaged you know like normal teenagers and um they felt very guilty they felt very bad and they asked the rapper they wrote to the rebel and they asked him for a tickle uh um what should they do and the the the general usual answer the rebel was that's number one divert your attention from this don't think about the fact oh i did a sin i i no and there ever said then learn something by heart and memorize that so that was like a proactive ticking for the issue but number one was stop thinking about it stop going over and saying oh yeah and this and this day i did this and i'm listening this morning i did this and this and this night i did this and this is where i went she just know that that was the the the the rapper's general approach to many things of you know of transgressions but also to this issue yes yes you want to say [Music] they give something medication and the medication causes you to to deal to be able to help that you don't have the connective advantage anymore i i i heard you but i didn't pick up did anyone i didn't pick up what you're saying that what what's the i said that the medication helped the psychological medication oh oh but wait wait wait wait wait i i understand but are you are you also suggesting taking medication to deal with these type of issues in very very uh severe cases yes okay i i i i i i don't want to go there because i know that in certain yeshivas and i heard about him i assure him i don't know that this is something they do and i i i i'm very uncomfortable with it i didn't learn this from my teachers and and and i i don't you know but if you say in very bad cases i don't know i i don't know i you know i never heard in my years that people should take medication to deal with this this issue but but if you say a hilo i mean are you familiar with this uh issue um i think that that it verges on the criminal to to administer things like that to pre to they it's often done with prisoners uh to do it with yeshiva students it seems to me would be verging on the criminal it's uh i would not i would think very harshly of it right okay let's go further i'm closer episode all of our discussion till now is about the yetzer hura which focuses on the middles and the and the part of the brain that's associated to the medias the term that we use in habakkuk which is nefash and that's your answer the only right that question that you asked me four years ago i remember the question what's the difference between the neferjah bahamas and the yates of hara and the rabbi answers in this mimer that the the yetzer hara is primarily dealing with the east and the nefer shabbam is is the aspect the way it's in the mind in the seiju i will call sikhlori who being your name the nefesh abbami's drive is in the course part of the material just as the name indicates nefer's quote the animal soul cane who that's the way it is he's immersed in corporeal matter task and seeks to pleasure himself through them ula has killed haskolos and to come up with innovative ideas all these hacking and to scheme and use them eichle how to get his indulgences kane literally community this also then leads to finding argumentation and uh you know defense mechanisms just to benefit what he can benefit from so the rabbit says so the process of the nepheshabam is is what in the mind how am i going to justify my stick that's never shabbat right so it's a process in the mind it's a drive in the circle so that's the difference yes yes yes the word death is normally being intellect means emotion and the chamber means action right oh you mean action ruach bye