Entries in the 'Baal HaSulam' Category

Baal HaSulam’s Special Method

961.2Question: What is special about Baal HaSulam’s method?

Answer: This is a practical method that he developed for our generation and described in all his works. Therefore, we study his writings and strive to become similar to the image he described.

The main principle of this method is connection between people, such closeness between them that each person feels the other as himself. Through this connection, they can rise to the attainment of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Practical Kabbalah” 12/5/23

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Two Souls Opening for Us the Door to the Creator

115It is difficult to overestimate the greatness of Baal HaSulam and Rabash because these are people who help us and do their best to raise us from the lowest degree, that is, from this world, to the spiritual degree of the upper world. Apart from them, there are no other people who would care that we rise from the level of death to the level of life, realize why we live, and thanks to what we exist.

They introduce the Creator to us and teach us how to open the door to Him and come closer to Him. Therefore, Rabash and Baal HaSulam are not even two people, but two upper, special spiritual forces that take care of us, and therefore are closer to us than all other created beings.

Reading the lines written by Rabash in honor of his holy father, Baal HaSulam, we will try to connect to them with all our heart and soul and understand that we are granted a connection with these special souls.

Kabbalists are the system of connection in the common soul of Adam HaRishon, which has already been corrected. A person who corrects himself joins this system and, together with all Kabbalists, builds a network that raises all other souls: picks them up, and helps them rise closer and closer to the Creator.

Besides the fact that Kabbalists have left us their articles, they are still all between us and participate in our work. It is said that Kabbalists have no rest either in this world or in the future world because they help us until the very end of correction. After all, all souls are connected, tied up together, and help each other. Even if we do not feel it, like babies who do not understand who cares for them and how, nonetheless this is how it happens.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/23, “Baal Hasulam Memorial Day”

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“The Memorial Day for the passing of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam)” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: The Memorial Day for the passing of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam)

Today is the Yahrzeit, the Memorial Day for the passing of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam). According to the custom, we need to mark the date and day of the passing of our teacher, Baal HaSulam, the great Kabbalist who paved the path for the world’s correction.

Thanks to him, we know how to act in order to not get confused and err in the path of the Creator, i.e., the path of connecting among each other in which to discover the Creator’s eternal and perfect quality of love and bestowal.

Baal HaSulam’s entire path and his teaching is based on Kabbalists who preceded him, and we are thus happy in that there is such a teacher who can guide us on a path that advances us to the purpose of creation during our lives.

Baal HaSulam left us many texts. He was the only Kabbalist in the 20th century who wrote commentaries both on The Book of Zohar and the writings of the ARI (Kabbalist Isaac Luria), and he also wrote several essays that explained Kabbalah’s basic concepts and fundamental principles so that any person could learn Kabbalah’s fundamentals and progress to the purpose of creation.

He taught a few people, and mainly it was his older son, the great Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (RABASH), who wrote the entire method of spiritual development for us, which is suited to us living in our times, i.e., to the souls that now descend to the world.

I invite everyone to watch today’s Daily Kabbalah Lesson where we studied the article, “The Order of the Work of Baal HaSulam” by Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (RABASH).

Also, if anyone is new to the wisdom of Kabbalah and to the method of Baal HaSulam, then I recommend getting started with courses that my students put together in our learning environment for beginners, KabU, in order to get a structured grounding in Kabbalah’s fundamentals (see the links in my bio).

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on Tuesday, September 26, 2023. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Gratitude to Those Who Paved the Way for Us

961.2Today is a special memorial day for Baal HaSulam, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, the great Kabbalist who paved the way for us that leads to the correction of the world. Thanks to him, we know how to behave in order not to make mistakes and stray from the path of the Creator.

Baal HaSulam’s methodology is based on the achievements of Kabbalists who lived before him. That is why we are grateful that we have such a teacher and that we can be his disciples, follow him in his way, and be sure that we will achieve the goal of creation in this lifetime.

Baal HaSulam left us many Kabbalistic articles and books and also taught his students, and most importantly, his eldest son, Baruch Ashlag (Rabash), who described the entire method of spiritual work suitable for our days, our time, for the souls descending into the world today.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/23, Writing of Rabash “The Order of the Work, from Baal HaSulam”

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Baal HaSulam’s Innovation

209Baal HaSulam wrote the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” in the language of Partzufim and Sefirot. Before him, practically no one had described Kabbalah in such volume.

By this, he shows us how our desires and the connection between desires and light develop. These are sensuous states, which he tried to explain in mathematical language.

One needs to understand the material very deeply and feel it in order to be able to depict it in such a physical and mathematical language.

Question: It is interesting that scientists do not study the works of Baal HaSulam at all. The Torah has been studied inside and out for thousands of years but not his works. Is it because this is something new? After all, he wrote his articles only 100 years ago.

Answer: The Ari began to use the language of Kabbalah even earlier in the 16th century.

Question: But in the Ari’s work this is very veiled, and not as open as in the case of Baal HaSulam. Do you think the time will come when people will be exploring this or will it stay like that?

Answer: I think that people will be exploring this from being alive, since we are in the transition from the concealed world to the world of revelation. Therefore people will feel like it is actually happening.
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From KabTV’s “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” 8/13/23

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Hierarchy of Souls

962.3Question: Did Baal HaSulam feel dependent on his students?

Answer: Baal HaSulam is the greatest soul who absorbed all the previous Kabbalah and explained it for us. This is a special purpose of a special soul.

We can’t look up to him, but not because we don’t have to burst forward, but because we and he are different types of souls. We have to improve, and he has given us a method of correction and is working with us even now.

Twenty generations of Kabbalists from Adam to Abraham, generations from Abraham to Rabbi Shimon, from Rabbi Shimon to the Ari, and from the Ari to Baal HaSulam and Rabash work together with us and bring light to us.

And we are already receiving it and trying to implement it for our correction. We are completely different souls.

Question: Does this not mean that their souls are better and the current ones are worse?

Answer: There are no better and worse souls in any way and in nothing. There is simply a purpose based on the structure of the common soul.

There are souls who rise first. They are called forefathers, fathers, and teachers, and end with Rabash.

From our generation onward, there are souls who realize what we have received from them. Of course, we still continue to develop this technique on ourselves and give out a lot of various sources and styles of information. But in the end, this is the realization of what the previous Kabbalists gave us.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Role of the Kabbalist” 3/6/11

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A Revolutionary of His Time

962.3Comment: If we compare you and Baal HaSulam, he was not as public as you are and he did not disseminate to such a large number of people.

My Response: I am sure that if he could, he would have done everything. In 1940, Baal HaSulam published the newspaper The Nation. Can you imagine what it meant to publish a Kabbalistic, Zionist newspaper at that time?!

And the book The Giving of the Torah in which he addresses ordinary people! A Kabbalist comes out of his corner and addresses ordinary people! He was a true revolutionary!

Who am I compared to him? Now everything is open, do what you want. It is a completely different century!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Who controls Laitman?” 12/27/12

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The Greatest Souls

961.2Question: Baal HaSulam descended from the high level of understanding at which he was in order to explain the Kabbalistic methodology in simpler words. How did it happen with him?

Answer: I do not know. It is as if you jump from a chair to the floor, and someone jumps from the stratosphere. This is a completely different technique I have not yet attained at all.

I study Baal HaSulam at my own level, not at the one he is at. His level is unknown to me. I know only what he wrote about himself. If he had not written, I would have said about him: “Yes, he is at a high degree, but I do not know where.” After all, any upper degree feels like infinity relative to the lower one. You cannot measure it in any way with your instruments; therefore, it is infinite, without end, and without boundaries.

Question: Did Rabash tell you about his father?

Answer: No. Both Rabash and Baal HaSulam are unattainable to us. These are the greatest souls! The fact that we are connected with them and receive directly from them is, of course, a great fortune. For this, we must constantly be in a state of gratitude and awe!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Most Significant Kabbalist of All Times” 12/17/12

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Baal HaSulam’s Amazing Revelation

226Of all the great Kabbalists of the past, Baal HaSulam is the most universal. He presented Kabbalah in a scientific style, in a language that links both the ancient language, the ancient biblical approach, and the scientific, psychological, Kabbalistic approach. He interconnects it all. He made an amazing revelation!

I can’t stop admiring how he turned everything around, took it, and opened up everything! Before him, everyone was beating around the bush and did not know how to convey the methodology as if they were tasting it. But he opened it up!

Of course, he can be compared with other great Kabbalists, but in the sense of revealing Kabbalah, he certainly made an amazing step forward!
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Most Significant Kabbalist of All Times” 12/17/12

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Angel—Mechanical Executor

568.01Question: Did Baal HaSulam have a special soul? In principle, he was like an angel.

Answer: No, he is not an angel. An angel is someone who is given something to do, and he does it without putting any effort of his own, like, say, a horse, cow or dog, like any person on the street. They obey the calls of nature that are aroused in them, its signals, and they fulfill them.

And here the man worked on himself and made great efforts! Therefore, it cannot be said that he is an angel. He is a “Man.” And an angel is a very small degree.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. The Most Significant Kabbalist of All Time” 11/17/12

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