Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

What Is The Basis Of The Wisdom Of Kabbalah?

What does the wisdom revolve around? This question comes to the mind of every right-minded person [because by asking the question about the meaning of life, he will definitely arrive at the need to reveal the Creator, and that means to the science of Kabbalah].

To properly address it, I will provide a reliable and lasting definition: This wisdom [Kabbalah] is no more and no less than a sequence of roots [causes and sources], which hang down by way of cause and consequence, by fixed, determined rules, interweaving to a single, exalted goal described as “the revelation of His Godliness [the quality of bestowal and love] to His creatures in this world” [over the course of this life or in subsequent lives if a person does not reveal the Creator fully in this life].
– Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

What Is The Basis of the Wisdom of Kabbalah?

What is the wisdom of Kabbalah? As a whole, the wisdom of Kabbalah concerns the revelation of Godliness, arranged on its path in all its aspects—those that have emerged in the worlds and those that are destined to be revealed and in all the manners that can ever appear in the worlds to the end of time.
– Baal HaSulam,“The Teaching of the Kabbalah and its Essence”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

What Is The Basis Of The Wisdom Of Kabbalah?

In this introduction, I would like to clarify matters that are seemingly simple [they appear to us as such]. Matters that everyone fumbles with, and for which much ink has been spilled [in every generation], attempting to clarify. Yet we have not reached a concrete and sufficient knowledge of them. And here are the questions:

1. What is our essence?
2. What is our role in the long chain of reality, of which we are but small links?
3. When we examine ourselves, we find that we [the created beings] are as corrupted and as low as can be. And when we examine the operator who has made us [the Creator who is perfect and absolute as those who have revealed Him claim], we are compelled to be at the highest degree, for there is none so praiseworthy as Him. For it is necessary that only perfect operations will stem from a perfect operator.[For the action’s result and quality testify to its maker.]
4. Our mind necessitates that He is utterly benevolent, beyond compare. [If He includes everything in Himself and is the basis of life, then He must be perfect] How, then, did He create so many creatures [all of them!] that suffer and agonize all through their lives? Is it not the way of the good to do good, or at least not to harm so [fill their existence with evil]?
5. How is it possible that the infinite, that has neither beginning nor end, will produce finite, mortal, and transient creatures? [The creation of a finite creature suggests the existence of the quality of finiteness in the Creator].

– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 1

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Life’s Meaning

Indeed [the question about the need for all of us to study Kabbalah vanishes], if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question… This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, “What is the meaning of my life?” In other words, these numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily, and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them, to complete them to the fullest [in vain!], who is it who enjoys them? Or even more precisely, whom do I delight?

It is indeed true that historians have grown weary contemplating it, and particularly in our generation. No one even wishes to consider it. Yet the question stands as bitterly and as vehemently as ever. Sometimes it meets us uninvited, pecks at our minds and humiliates us to the ground before we find the famous ploy of [forgetting about it and] flowing mindlessly in the currents of life as always.

3) Indeed, it is to resolve this great riddle that the verse writes, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” [This can be done with the help of the science of Kabbalah as the method of the revelation of the Creator and thereby also resolve the mysteries of our entire life.]
– Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Items 3,4

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Creator’s Guidance Is Purposeful

This [purposeful guidance] means that the corrupt [egoistic, natural] conducts in the states of humanity are the very ones that [to the extent of their correction] generate the good [corrected] states. And each good state is nothing but the [ripening] fruit of the work [correction] in the bad state that preceded it. Indeed, these values of good and bad do not refer to the value of the state itself, but [only] to the general purpose: [the state is is not evaluated by itself, rather] each state that brings humanity closer to the goal is considered good, and one that deflects them from the goal is considered bad.

By that standard alone is the "law of development" built—the corruption and the wickedness [egoistic evil] that appear in a [any] state are [also] considered the cause and the generator of the good [perfect] state so that each state lasts just long enough to grow the evil in it to such an extent that the public can no longer bear it. [That is, it depends on the society’s realization of evil, time that can be hastened by explanation, upbringing, and education.] At that time [after realizing evil in itself and resolving to correct it], the public must unite against it, destroy it [the egoistic evil in itself, its relationships], and reorganize in a better state [particularly] for the correction of that generation. [Without trying to skip over any successive periods of development.]

And the new state, too, lasts just as long as the sparks of evil in it ripen and reach such a level that they can no longer be tolerated, at which time it must be [involuntarily] destroyed and a more comfortable state is built in its stead. And so the states clear up one by one and degree by degree until they come to such a corrected state that there will be no sparks of evil. [There will be nothing to correct, and this state will be recognized as final correction.]
– Baal HaSulam, Article, “The Peace”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Creator’s Guidance Is Purposeful

By observing nature’s systems, we understand [the purposeful development under the Upper guidance of the Creator or Nature, which is the same] that any beings of the four types: still, vegetative, animate and speaking, as a whole and in particular, are found to be under purposeful guidance, meaning a slow and gradual [necessary] growth by way of cause and effect, as a fruit on a tree, which is guided with favorable guidance to finally become a sweet and fine-looking fruit. [The purpose of man’s development is the same: to reach a state of perfection.]

Go and ask a botanist how many phases the fruit undergoes from the time it becomes visible until it is completely ripe. Not only do its [absolutely all] preceding phases show no evidence of its sweet and fine-looking end, but as if to vex, they show the opposite of the final [correct, perfect] outcome.

The sweeter [more spiritually developed] the fruit is at its end, the more bitter and unsightly it is in the earlier phases of its development. [Since the final state is the corrected original state, then naturally the greater the imperfections revealed in a given creature, the more perfect it is at its final state.]
– Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Creator’s Guidance Is Purposeful

Thus, we have thoroughly shown the conducts of His Providence in our world, which is only a purposeful Guidance [that is, it can be understood only from the final result]. The attribute of goodness is not at all apparent before Creation arrives at its completion, its final ripeness [because the Creator can be comprehended only in the Creature’s corrected properties]. On the contrary, [until the creature corrects himself and his evil into love and goodness] it [his and the world’s state] rather always takes a form of corruption [although inside, it is absolutely corrected as good, yet concealed by the qualities of the observer himself] in the eyes of the beholders.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Creator’s Guidance Is Purposeful

His guidance over the reality that He has created is in the form of purposeful Guidance, without taking into consideration the order of the phases of development [determined by the initial and final states], for they deceive us and prevent us from understanding their purpose, being always opposite to their final shape. [By constantly challenging us with new tasks, the Creator teaches us, like children, how to become similar to Him.]

It is about such matters that we say, “There is none so wise as the experienced.” Only one who is experienced has the opportunity to examine Creation in all its phases of development, all the way through completion, and can calm things down, so as to not fear those spoilt images that the Creation undergoes in the phases of its development, but believe in its fine and pure end.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Creator’s Guidance Is Purposeful

To understand these questions and inquiries [to comprehend the Thought of Creation and what happens with us] the only tactic is to examine the end of the act, that is, the purpose of Creation. For nothing can be understood in the middle of the process, but only at its end.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 4

“God is the [the property of] Absolute Good, and … He [this property, force] watches us in complete benevolence without a hint of evil, and in purposeful [and absolute] guidance. That means that His guidance compels us to undergo [consciously, that is, with the same love and appreciation] a series of phases, by way of cause and effect, preceding and resulting, until we are qualified to receive [on our own] the desired goodness. And then we shall arrive at our [shared] purpose as a ripe and fine-looking fruit.
– Baal HaSulam, Article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. Commentaries in brackets are mine.

Why Is The Creator Concealed From Man?

Everything is prepared beforehand [created in its perfect state] and each soul already exists in its entire light, abundance, and eternity. Only because of “shame” [in order not to feel humiliation because of undeserved reception] the soul came out of it [the initially created state of complete fulfillment by eternal pleasure] by the way of restrictions [increasingly greater concealments of this state] until it clothed in a filthy [concealing reception completely] body [egoistic desire].

Only [yet specifically] thanks to it, the soul returns to its source where it existed before the restriction along with the reward from the horrible path that she had traveled. All in all, the reward is complete adhesion. In other words, the soul gets rid of “shame” [undeserved reception] since its vessel of reception [egoistic desires] turn into the vessel of bestowal [altruistic desires], and it becomes similar to the Creator in its properties. [And hence is able to feel the entire Light that initially filled it.]
– Baal HaSulam, Pri Hacham, Igrot (Letters), Letter 25, pg. 81

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