Likutey MoHaran Lesson 18 Video with Chaim Kramer

About The Author

Chaim Kramer Chaim Kramer

Chaim Kramer is largely responsible for introducing Rebbe Nachman’s teachings to today’s generation. He is a sought-after lecturer on Rebbe Nachman’s teachings by English-speaking congregations around the world. Chaim has been the director of the Breslov Research Institute since its inception in 1979. BRI has been the main publishing-house for translations of classic and contemporary Breslov books. More than 100 titles are currently in print, in English, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, French, and even Korean. Chaim himself, is the author of “Through Fire and Water”, “Crossing the Narrow Bridge”, “Anatomy of the Soul”, “This Land is My Land”, and many more titles, as well as annotating the entire 15 volume English Edition of Likutei MoHaRan.

View Authors Posts

2 Comments

Max Kirk January 23, 2011

I have just listened to Rabbi Kramer’s series of two lessons posted on this site on L.M. 1 #18. At one point, Rabbi Kramer states that this lesson is one of the more difficult ones to explain. One of the more difficult points to understand in the lesson may be that of the metaphor of the echo. Please let me know if the following understanding of that point is in harmony with the way that you understand it.

When we speak, the last letter to leave us is the closest to us in space and thought, but it is not the letter that has traveled the least distance from us but the letter that has the least distance to travel to us that we should hear first. Thus, if we listen to hear what we have said we do not literally expect that we should hear what we said with the last letter first and the first letter last. We do not literally expect this and yet, because when we speak we are still attached to what we have said in thought, subjectively, we feel as though we should hear our last thought first. This subjective experience can serve as the basis of an instructive metaphor.

When we think a thought, before we articulate it as a word in our minds, it is whole, like a single picture. The thought even retains this quality of being an undivided whole when we think of the word that has the power to articulate it. However, the word as a picture has a design of an head and a body, its first letter and following letters, ending with its last letter. Only as we begin to speak the word is it broken into separate parts. In this way, at least in Hebrew, the beginning of the thought is articulated by the letter that is the beginning of the letters and the end, or purpose of the thought, is articulated by the letter that is the final letter of the word. There can be great value in speaking a thought, therefore, because by speaking a thought its end can be distinguished from its beginning, the purpose of the thought can be clearly discerned.

Now how can a person actually hear clearly what they themselves have said as if they were another person hearing it and not the person who said it? Sometimes people try to talk to themselves in order to understand their own thinking. However, this generally does not work well, as if there was a cognitive distortion embedded in the sound of their own speech. Why is this?

We could say that it is because they cannot hear themselves as they would if they were hearing a clear echo. If there is not enough magnitude or delay or isolation of a sound to make an echo clear, the person making the sound may simply hear a reverberation.

When a person tries to talk to themselves it is as if they hear the sound coming back to them and the phantom sound of their own original thought at the same time. This causes interference, like a reverberation effect, rather than clarity. It is as if they were hearing the word backward and forward at the same time.

When we speak to others, they can reflect back to us what we say and we can hear it in some ways better than if we try to talk to ourselves, but still, it is never quite like a perfect echo. There is always, metaphorically, some kind of reverberation in the sound. Either there is not enough delay effect, so the thought the other person is expressing back to us seems to be our own but inverted, or else they are reflecting too many other things at the same time, or else they were not that good a reflector in the first place.

However, if we should hear the Bat Kol, it is like hearing our thought and our speech reflected back to us from another like a perfect echo. It is as if we heard our thought spoken by another, and we are then able to hear in it clearly what is the beginning and what is the end and perfectly understand what is the purpose of our thought. There is no reverberation. There is no interference from our own thinking process that makes it seem like the last thing we thought and said should be the first thing we hear back instead of the last. Because thought must be articulated and heard to be articulated in order for the purpose of that thought to be clearly understood, it is essential, therefore, that we come to the place of being able to hear our thought and speech reflected back to us from Above, as if in a perfect echo, if we are to know our own mind, if we are to know our own will. Corresponding to this knowledge is the knowledge of G-d’s purpose for one’s life. A tzaddik is one who is able to hear the Bat Kol in this way. By extension, one attached to the tzaddik can also know their own mind and their own will.
???????? February 13, 2013

Governments are all the same and don’t mean anything. Governments have nothing to do with leadership, governments are just there to punish the people. Thank you for sharing such understanding.