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

Studying the Concealed Torah Is Preferable to the Revealed Torah

Even though they [unfortunately] do not succeed [do not reach correction of their egoism] through the practice in the revealed Torah, since there is no Light in it, and it is dry [not by itself, but rather] due to the smallness of their minds, they could still succeed by engaging in the study of Kabbalah. This is because the Light in it is clothed in the clothing of the Creator – the Holy Names and the Sefirot [for example, is closer to them]. They could easily come to that form of Lo Lishma, which brings them to Lishma [the property of bestowal and love]. [In spite of being unsuccessful in their study of the revealed Torah they still remain unwilling to change it into the study of Kabbalah and thus remain uncorrected.]
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 35

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Question: If everything depends on the power of thought then why can’t I participate in the Convention while sitting at home on my living room couch in front of the computer screen, with a cup of coffee and a cigarette?

Answer: Trust me, I understand you very well since I also like doing that. However, the matter is that I require inspiration. I have to receive an impression from the group. I need a society that’s as strong and as high as possible. I need a goal-oriented, gutsy group, a team, and a mass of people to influence me and turn me into whatever it wishes.

Can I receive this impression while sitting at home on my living room couch in front of a computer screen? If the answer is yes, then there’s no problem – go ahead and stay at home. However, we know our nature better than that. A person has to find a place where he can dissolve in society and receive the society’s mind and feelings. Let them replace everything that fulfills my heart and mind; then I am bound to be moving in the direction of the plan of creation.

The Creator works with the group, as it is written, “I dwell among my nation.” However, He does not work with me alone. If I become part of the group, then inside it I find contact with the Creator. That is how I reveal His thought (which becomes my thought by virtue of my choice) until I begin to understand and accept His program even before it is actualized.

Baal HaSulam talks about this in his article, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before.” If I connect to the Creator, I gain the opportunity to plan actions as if I am planning them and He carries them out. The Creator gives me this opportunity if I attain His thought. Of course, all of this is a result of love, just like our children control us, their parents.
[24768]
From the lesson on 10/21/10, “The Power of Thought”

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In “Within My Flesh Shall I See God,” section “The Realization of Attainment – Only through the Method of Kabbalah,” Baal HaSulam writes that the denial of Providence is like asking a person: “Who wrote this incredibly wise book?” and him answering that there is no such sage in the world, that everything only happened because his small son spilled ink on blank sheets of paper, and the ink spread to form letters which combined into the words of this incredible science.

By denying the presence of the Upper Governance, people act according to the principle of “whatever I do not feel does not exist.” That’s so even if they see that there is a reason for everything, which is the essence of a materialistic approach.

All of our scientific experiments are based on studying the preliminary causes; otherwise our natural sciences would have no value. But at the same time there are those who deny the existence of the source of the entire creation. Even though man understands that his knowledge is limited and there are many things that he does not grasp or understand, he tries to prove that the universe is exactly what he perceives.

But in order to study the universe, it is necessary to rise above nature because I can study a certain state only when I am above it. In order to study animals I need to be a human for animals cannot study themselves. I can study the stages below me, but I cannot study myself.

Psychology, a science of human behavior, is an example of this. In psychology we base our knowledge on real facts that we have experienced, but we are unable to rise above ourselves to begin to understand the actual methodology of human relationships, the system of connections, or human mentality even though it seems to us like we are capable of doing this objectively.

This is why Baal HaSulam writes that he respects materialistic psychology; its data is based on the study of matter and its form. But until man is able to examine the matter of the spiritual world and the form clothed into this matter, he is unable to say anything about himself, just like a cat is unable to study human behavior or explain its actions.

Thus, Baal HaSulam says that attainment is only possible through the method of Kabbalah because it lifts a person to the next level of consciousness.
[23807]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/10, “From My Flesh Shall I Know God”

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

Studying the Concealed Torah Is Preferable to the Revealed Torah

It is easier to draw the light in the Torah [the only Light that can correct us] while practicing and laboring in the wisdom of truth than in laboring in the literal Torah. The reason is very simple: The wisdom of the revealed is clothed in external, corporeal clothes, such as stealing, plundering, torts, etc. For this reason, it is difficult and heavy for any person [who reads these “material” stories] to aim his mind and heart to the Creator [essential condition] while studying, so as to draw the [Upper, correcting] Light in the Torah.

It is even more so for a person for whom the study in the Talmud itself is heavy and arduous. How can he remember the Creator during the study, since the scrutiny [described in the Talmud] concerns corporeal matters, and cannot come in him simultaneously with the intention for the Creator?

Therefore, he [Chaim Vital] advises him to practice the wisdom of Kabbalah [instead of studying the Talmud], as this wisdom is entirely clothed in the names of the Creator. Then he will certainly be able to easily aim his mind and heart to the Creator during the study [of Kabbalah], even if he is the slowest learner. This is so because the study of the issues of the wisdom and the Creator are one and the same, and this is very simple. [This is why the study of the internal essence of the Torah, the wisdom of Kabbalah, is the only possible way for masses to reach correction and to reach the purpose of creation.]
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 22
[23458]

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

Studying the Concealed Torah Is Preferable to the Revealed Torah

It has also been clarified that it is impossible for the whole of Israel to come to that great purity [complete correction of egoistic intentions] except through the study of Kabbalah [in the group with the right intention], which is the easiest way adequate even for commoners [regardless of one’s level of development]. However, while engaging only in the revealed Torah [rather than Kabbalah], it is impossible to be rewarded through it, except for a chosen few and after great efforts, but not for the majority of the people [who are not yet ready to go through affliction for the sake of correction of egoism].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot”, Item 36
[23305]

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

Attainment of the Torah Begins with “Sod” (Secret) and Ends with “Peshat” (Literal)

Now you will understand the truth in the words of the Vilna Gaon in the prayer book, in the blessing for the Torah [to which he added his note]. He wrote that the Torah begins with Sod (secret), meaning the revealed [to a common person] Torah of Assiya, which is considered hidden, since the Creator is completely hidden there [and that’s why it seems to us that the Torah speaks about the earthly matters].

Then he moves on to [studying the Torah at the level of] the Remez (intimation), meaning that He is more revealed in the Torah of Yetzira [when a person rises to the level of Assiya]. Finally, [as a result of correction] one attains the Peshat (literal), which is the Torah of Atzilut. It is called Peshat, for it [the Torah] is Mufshat (stripped) of all the clothes that conceal the Creator.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 148
[23214]

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Baal HaSulam writes in his article “The Peace” that the society punishes man for taking something he is not entitled to, but there is no punishment for failing to give the society something he has to give. It is the same on the spiritual path: Every person receives his conditions from Above. Hereafter, if you fail to use the received conditions fully, by one hundred percent, it is like stealing from the group.

This is also referred to as “drilling a hole in the common boat.” For this reason, every person should ask himself whether he is doing everything he can.
[23248]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/11/10, The Zohar

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

Attainment of the Torah Begins with “Sod” (Secret) and Ends with “Peshat” (Literal)

The concealed Torah implies that the Creator hides in the Torah, hence the name, “the Torah of the hidden.” Conversely, it is called “revealed” because the Creator is revealed by the Torah.

Therefore, the Kabbalists said, and we also find it in the prayer book of the Vilna Gaon (GRA), that the order of attainment of the Torah begins with the concealed and ends with the revealed (Peshat). This means that through the appropriate labor, where one first delves into the Torah of the hidden, he is thus granted the revealed Torah, the literal [revealed meaning]. Thus, one begins with the concealed, called Sod (secret), and when he is rewarded, he ends in the literal [when everything becomes completely clear to him].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 103

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

All the Languages Are Included in the Wisdom of Kabbalah

The names, appellations, and Gematrias [also] belong entirely to the wisdom of Kabbalah. The reason they are found in the other languages, too, is that all the languages are included in the wisdom of Kabbalah [they derived from the wisdom of Kabbalah and represent its particular languages]. This is so because these are all [nothing else but] particular cases that the other languages must be assisted with.

But one should not think that these four languages, which serve to explain the wisdom of Godly revelation, evolved one at a time, over time. The truth is that all four appeared before the sages simultaneously. In truth, each consists of all the others [the other three]. The language of Kabbalah [for example] exists in the Bible, such as the standing on the Tzur (rock), the thirteen attributes of mercy in the Torah and in Micah, and, to an extent it is sensed in each and every verse. There are also the chariots [the Upper systems of governance over the worlds that are described] in Isaiah and Ezekiel, and atop them all [King Solomon’s] The Song of Songs, all of which [in spite of their earthly romantic character] is purely the language of Kabbalah.

It is similar in laws [written in the style of legal documents] and in legends, and all the more so with the matter of the un-erasable names [of the Creator], which bear the same meaning in all the languages [meaning that all of them speak solely about one main point: the revelation of the Creator to a person].
– Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and its Essence”
[22853]

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

The Language of the Kabbalists Is a Language of Branches

[After the language of branches was created] all the beings of the tangible creation and all their instances have become to them like well-defined words and names, indicating the High Spiritual Roots. Although there cannot be a verbal expression in their spiritual place, as it is above any imagination, they have earned the right to be expressed by utterance through their branches, arranged before our senses here in the tangible world.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
[22436]

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