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

All Changes Are in the Desire, Not in the Light

“There is no change in the Light.” Rather, all the changes are in the Kelim, meaning in our senses. We measure everything according to our imagination. From this it follows that if many people examine one spiritual object, each will attain according to his imagination and senses, thereby seeing a different form.

In addition, the form itself will change in a person according to his ups and downs, as we have said above that the Light is simple Light and all the changes are only in the receivers.
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard) No. 3, “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment”
[52098]

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

All Changes Are in the Desire, Not in the Light

We attain everything according to our sensations. And reality, as it is in itself, is of no interest to us at all. Hence, we do not attain the upper Light and the Creator at all, but only attain our sensations. Thus, all of our impressions follow only our sensations.
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard), Article No. 66, “The Giving of the Torah”

The spiritual Light tells us not about its path, but only about the reaction within us to the encounter with the Light.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”
[51984]

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In the world of Infinity, the Light and desire merge into one whole with no difference between them. We are incapable of understanding how it is possible: Do they blend that much or just become alike? How can these two different qualities, reception and bestowal, merge into one?

It happens that one is much stronger than the other and overshadows the other with its power so much that the other becomes absolutely inconspicuous. But this is not something we call becoming one whole. At the moment we cannot grasp how two opposites can merge into one, yet nevertheless remain as two opposites.

For our rational mind, one cancels the other because this rationality is very limited and not capable of combining two opposites. This begets the whole complexity of perception, of our ability to understand the spiritual world and its concealment from us. Our present organs of perception do not capture spiritual reality, even though we are in it.

In order to gain independence and freedom of will, we have to come out of a spiritual state and return back to it from its complete absence. Like the Creator created the creature as “existence from absence,” the same way we should come to His “existing” reality—out of absence: attain reality out of absence thereof.

Then, we will understand what the creature is and from it, who the Creator is. As it is said: “Know Him by His actions.”

Therefore, the world of Infinity divided into two parts: the Light and the vessel, which merge and remain in unity in it. The descent of the worlds from the world of Infinity into this world means the divergence and separation of the opposites that merge into one whole there.

The lower the worlds descend, the further the opposites separate, in a cone-like manner, and get closer to our world becoming two completely separate poles. And now we are capable of perceiving them—one separate from the other, understanding that they cannot co-exist.

That’s why truth and faith, or knowledge and faith, the desire to receive pleasure and the desire to bestow, the work for oneself and for the other, I and the Creator, exist separately in our consciousness. It turns out that the truth of the world of Infinity: “He and His name are one” get separated in our world. And a common vessel, desire, divides into multiple parts; people become opposite to and separated from one another.

Therefore, we see that our fates are completely different, and we don’t understand why one person is given such luck, while the other punishment. We see that there are good and bad times, ascents and descents, and inequality among people. After all, one person earns a lot and easily, but the other labors hard and barely earns a living.

Some are healthy, the others are sick. One was born a prince, and the other was orphaned and left on the street. It only seems to us that all this “injustice” exists, but in reality, everything is arranged absolutely perfectly.

In fact, our vision divides all reality into separate incidents and different times. Therefore, some parts separate from others for us, and we begin to attribute each state to different people, assuming that one is blessed, while the other has bad luck.

However, the cause of that is our distorted perception. And it will remain such until we correct it. Then, everything will join into one whole, and we will see a perfect world.
[52304]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/23/2011, Shamati # 43

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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

As there is no perception of the Creator whatsoever, is it impossible to attain the essence of any of His creatures, even the tangible objects that we feel with our hands.

Thus, all we know about our friends and relatives in the world of action before us are nothing more than “acquaintance with their actions.” These are prompted and born by the association of their encounter with our senses, which render us complete satisfaction although we have no perception whatsoever of the essence of the subject.

Furthermore, you have no perception or attainment whatsoever even of your own essence. Everything you know about your own essence is nothing more than a series of actions extending from your essence.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
[51874]

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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

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
[51769]

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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
[51576]

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Question: If I have fallen down, what do I need to do in order to move forward?

Answer: When you have fallen, you are first of all sorry about it, and you want to come out of the fallen state, to rise above your nature, which you can no longer bear. You are even justifying this fall and you understand that “There is none else but the Creator.”

And then, gradually, you forget about this and you return to your usual state, thinking that there is nothing scary about that and that all kinds of things happen. And so it goes on until the next blow.

How many blows like this will be needed depends on the extent to which you connect your mind to it and work on your falls with the help of the group. The group must become your store-room, accumulating the whole of your mind at the time when you are completely under the control of your feelings, in order to balance it.

And on the contrary, when you fall under the control of the cold, dry reason, and when you do not even know how to awaken feelings inside of yourself in order to be inspired by spirituality, then you receive the impression in terms of feelings from the group.

But you will never be able to possess both, the feeling and the mind. That is why the connection to the group is so necessary for us; it can compensate for the lacking opposite and in a way connect both of them. Under the condition that you lower yourself in front of the group and are ready to accept its sorrow. Then you can connect the heart and the mind inside of yourself somehow.

Although, in reality, they do not really connect, because you are not yet really connecting to the group, but still it influences you from afar. And this indirect “surrounding” influence allows you to somehow connect the two opposites inside of yourself. And this is already helping you to understand a little bit about what the spiritual is and what the connection of these two poles means, when you feel and understand the spiritual simultaneously at the same one place.

This is an absolutely special feeling, in which there is understanding. Such things are almost non-existent in our world.
[52735]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/11, Shamati

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Question: If the Creator doesn’t exist outside, but is revealed within us, then what is the Surrounding Light? Doesn’t it come from the outside?

Answer: There is Malchut of the world of Infinity. Besides it, there is nothing else.

Once it was full of the Light of Infinity. Then a restriction was placed on, and it assumed a different form once the Light of Infinity left it. Then the same Malchut manifested itself in the form of worlds and souls, meaning its parts. Some of them pertain to external orbits, and others to internal ones.

Similarly, in our world the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature represent the external part, and the human or speaking level represents the internal one. This determines spiritual development as well: Man is tasked with the intention, while the other parts of nature only carry out actions. Ultimately, Malchut of Infinity arrives at its final state: the end of correction.

Thus, there are many states, but no matter what they may be, they are all permeated with one desire and one Light. What changes, then? The awareness, the intention over the desire. In other words, changes occur only with respect to the creature’s attitude toward the Creator or desire for the Light. Nothing changes except for my attitude, understanding, perception—my acquaintance with the world I live in.
[52740]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/2011, “One Commandment”

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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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