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

We Have Neither Attainment Nor Perception of any Matter

It’s impossible to attain the essence by thought. Moreover, we do not even know our own essence. I feel and I know that I take up space in the world, that I am solid, warm, and that I think, and other such manifestations of the operations of my essence. But if you ask me about my own essence, from which all these manifestations stem, I do not know what to reply to you.

You therefore see that Providence has prevented us from attaining any essence. We attain only manifestations and images of operations that stem from the essences.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 12
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

We Have Neither Attainment Nor Perception of any Matter

We have no perception whatsoever in the essence of the person in himself, without the matter. This is because our five senses and our imaginations offer us only manifestations of the actions of the essence, but not of the essence itself.

For example, the sense of sight offers us only shadows of the visible essence as they are formed opposite the light.

Similarly, the sense of hearing is but a force of striking of some essence on the air. And the air that is rejected by it strikes the drum in our ear, and we hear that there is some essence in our proximity.

The sense of smell is but air that emerges from the essence and strikes our nerves of scent, and we smell. Also, the sense of taste is a result of the contact of some essence with our nerves of taste.

Thus, all that these four senses offer us are manifestations of the operations that stem from some essence, and nothing of the essence itself.

Even the sense of touch, the strongest of the senses, separating hot from cold, and solid from soft, all these are but manifestations of operations within the essence; they are but incidents of the essence. This is so because the hot can be chilled; the cold can be heated; the solid can be turned to liquid through chemical operations, and the liquid into air, meaning only gas, where any discernment in our five senses has been expired. Yet, the essence still exists in it, since you can turn the air into liquid once more, and the liquid into solid.

Evidently, the five senses do not reveal to us any essence at all, but only incidents and manifestations of operations from the essence. It is known that what we cannot sense, we cannot imagine; and what we cannot imagine, will never appear in our thoughts, and we have no way to perceive it.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 12
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Attainment Results from the Interaction between the External Essence and Our Senses

We have no attainment or perception whatsoever in any substance as all of our five senses are completely unfit for it. The sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch offer the scrutinizing mind mere abstract forms of “incidents” of the essence, formulating through collaboration with our senses.
– Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part One, “Inner Reflection,” Chapter 10
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Entire Reality Is Contained within Man

The Creator has made in our brain a kind of polished mirror that inverts everything seen there, so we will see it outside our brain, in front of our face. Yet, what we see outside us is not a real thing. Nonetheless, we should be so grateful to His Providence for having created that polished mirror in our brains, enabling us to see and perceive everything outside of us.

This is because by that, He has given us the power to perceive everything with clear knowledge and attainment, and measure everything from within and from without.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 34

Even though we see everything as actually being in front of us, every reasonable person knows for certain that all that we see is only within our own brains. So are the souls: Although they see all the images in the Giver, they still have no doubt that all these are only in their own interior, and not at all in the Giver.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 34
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Entire Reality Is Contained within Man

It is written in The Zohar, (Vayikra, Parashat Tazria, p 40) that all the worlds, upper and lower, are included in man. And also, the whole of reality within those worlds is only for man.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 1

When we see a wide world before us, we don’t see it in reality, but only within ourselves. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain, which portrays everything that appears to us and nothing outside of us.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 34
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

By the very thought to create the souls, His thought completed everything for He does not need an act, as do we. Instantaneously, all the souls and worlds that were destined to be created, emerged filled with all the delight and pleasure and the gentleness He had planned for them in the final perfection that the souls were intended to receive at the end of correction, after the will to receive in the souls has been fully corrected and was turned into pure bestowal, in complete equivalence of form with the Emanator.

This is so because in His Eternalness, past, present, and future are as one. Hence, there was never an issue of a corrupted will to receive separated from the Creator. On the contrary, that equivalence of form, destined to be revealed at the end of correction, appeared instantly in the eternity of the Creator.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 13
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

All the efforts of the Teacher should be directed not at attaching the students to himself, but at making them independent so that they won’t be looking at him at all, but through him would turn to the Creator. A student has to learn to be similar to the Creator, not the Teacher.

Indeed, our entire development is a kind of imitation of the Creator. As much as our properties and actions resemble the Creator, to that same extent we bring contentment to Him.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Meaning of Conception and Birth”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

The Creator truly resides within the heart of every person of Israel, and that is from His side. Hence, what does one lack? Only to know that. And the knowledge changes, and the knowing completes.
– Baal HaSulam, A Sage’s Fruit, Vol. 1, “Letter No. 32”

All is set ahead of time and each and every soul is already in all its Light, goodness, and eternity. Thanks to the descent into the egoistic body and the return to its root, the soul is rewarded with the complete similarity with the Creator and a real adhesion with Him.
– Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 25
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

The revelation of the Creator does not change one’s actual reality but adds to it the awareness he had not had before.
– Baal HaSulam, The Writings of the Last Generation

There is nothing more natural than attaining contact with one’s Maker for He owns nature. In fact, every creature has contact with his Maker, as it is written, “The whole earth is full of His glory,” but one does not know and does not feel it.

Actually, one who attains contact with Him attains only the awareness. It is as though one has a treasure in his pocket, and he does not know. Along comes another who lets him know what is in his pocket, and this knowledge in particular makes him rich.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Solution”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Right Conduct at the Assembly of Friends

The beginning of the assembly should be about the praise of the society. Each and everyone must try to provide reasons and explanations to their merit and importance, until the importance of the society is clarified.

Then each should state his mind about the actions we can take so that each and everyone will be able to acquire the love of friends. In other words, what each person can do to acquire love in his heart for each and everyone in the society.

And once stage two is completed, stage three concerns carrying out the friends’ decisions about what should be done.
– The Rabash, Rabash—the Social Writings, “The Agenda of the Assembly”
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