January 18, 2025
December 22, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Zohar
Past Writings of Kabbalists Were Often Hidden
Anything that people need spreads naturally in the world. But when it comes to The Zohar and the Kabbalah, matters are not that straightforward.
The disclosure of the writings of Kabbalah has been accompanied by intriguing stories. The Book of Zohar has undergone many hardships, and only a small portion of the original manuscript remains today. The writings of the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria, author of The Tree of Life], were dug out of his grave only three generations after his demise. Indeed, there is a special integration of revealed and concealed, and painful labor pangs when it comes to expanding the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Difficulties that Surrounded the Spreading of Kabbalah in the 20th Century
Baal HaSulam made great efforts to publish his interpretation on The Zohar, the Sulam [Ladder] commentary, and wrote as much as 20 hours a day. When he fell asleep on his desk, it was hard to pull the pen out of his hand because his fingers were cramped around it.
For lack of funds to print the manuscripts, he had to wait until he could find the resources. And once he found them, he arranged the lead letters in the printing press by himself, although he was already ill and very weak. Yet, volume by volume, his life’s work was completed.
Still, people were afraid to open The Zohar and preferred to stay clear of it. As early as 1933, Baal HaSulam began to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah in an effort to prevent the looming holocaust. “Time to Act” was the title of his opening essay in the first tract that he printed—out of fifty that he had planned to publish. However, his work was frowned upon by certain orthodox circles, and within a few weeks they managed to apprehend the printing of the tracts to prevent the expansion of the wisdom.
In 1940, Baal HaSulam published a paper, The Nation, in which he called upon the Israeli nation to unite. His wish was to establish a by-weekly paper, but the paper initiative, too, was thwarted after the publication of the first issue.
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April 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
How Kabbalah Was Kept Secret Up Until the Renaissance
In tune with the shifts that took place at the onset of the Renaissance, Kabbalists began to remove the veil from the wisdom of Kabbalah, or at least to speak in favor of removing it. Since the writing of The Book of Zohar, Kabbalists have set up various obstacles before those who wished to study. It began with Rashbi’s concealment of The Zohar and continued with declaring all sorts of prerequisites that one had to meet before receiving permission to study. The Mishnah, for instance, gives the apparently paradoxical instruction to avoid teaching Kabbalah to students who are not already wise and understand with their own mind, but the text does not specify how is one to come by wisdom if one is not permitted to study.
In the Babylonian Talmud, there is a well known allegory about four men who went into a PARDES (an acronym for all forms of spiritual study—Peshat (literal), Remez (Implied), Derush (interpretations), and the highest level being Sod, Kabbalah). Of the four, one died, one lost his sanity, one became heretical, and only one, Rabbi Akiva, who was a giant among Kabbalists—entered in peace and departed in peace. There are other deeper and more accurate explanations to this allegory, but the story was nonetheless used to intimidate and deter people from studying Kabbalah.
Another prerequisite that Kabbalists set up was to “fill one’s belly with” (be proficient in) Mishnah and Gemarah before one approaches the study of Kabbalah. To justify that condition, they cited the Babylonian Talmud, which warns that one must spend a third of one’s life studying the Bible, another third studying Mishnah, and the remaining third studying The Talmud.
This, of course, leaves no time to study Kabbalah, so when the time came for Kabbalists to permit the study, they had to “make room” in the day for the study of Kabbalah. Thus, Kabbalists such as Tzvi Hirsh of Zidichov, “detoured” the prohibition by declaring that every day, one must “fill one’s belly with” Mishnah and Gemarah, and then study Kabbalah.
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April 27, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
The Ari – The Greatest Creative Force of the Renaissance
Preceding every new stage in the evolution of desires, the appropriate precursor appears. First, there was Abraham; he was the Root. Then there was Moses, representing Stage one, followed by Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (Rashbi), who corresponds to Stage Two. And now the time has come for Stage Three.
The emergence of Stage Three in the evolution of desires roughly corresponds to the advent of the Renaissance in Europe. Its harbinger was the greatest Kabbalist since Rashbi: Isaac Luria (the Ari)—founder of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the most systematic and structured school of Kabbalah. Today, it is the predominant teaching method, thanks to the 20th century commentaries of Baal HaSulam, who interpreted the writings and adapted them to the scientific/academic mindset of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Despite his short life, the Ari (1534-1572) produced numerous texts with the help of his prime disciple, Rav Chaim Vital. The Ari did not write his texts by himself. Instead, he would speak and Chaim Vital would write down his words.
After the Ari’s early demise, Vital and several of his relatives compiled the Ari’s words into cohesive texts. for this reason, many scholars have ascribed the Ari’s writings to Chaim Vital and not to his teacher. Yet, even though Vital was the scribe, the provider of the information is undisputedly the Ari.
How the Ari Reformed the Wisdom of Kabbalah
In Stage Three there is an “inverted” modus operandi, where the act is reception but the intention is to give. This was true for the initial four stages of desire. However, after the breaking of Adam’s soul, the prevailing intention in the collective soul—of which we are all parts—has been inverted and regressed from bestowal to reception. And because we are all parts of Adam’s soul, the hidden intention in all humans is to receive, as well. Clearly, when everyone wishes to receive, and none wish to give, it induces an unsustainable situation.
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February 13, 2014 at 5:55 am · Filed under Evolution
In the below excerpt, the Ari (Kabbalist Isaac Luria) describes the intermediary stages of the four stages of creation, and mentions how between the animal level and human level of evolution, there is the intermediary stage of monkeys.
This raises the question, how could the Ari, the great Kabbalist who passed away in 1572 (three centuries before Charles Darwin, who is famous for discussing this phenomenon), state that monkeys were an intermediary phase of development between animals and humans, i.e. since Kabbalists only write about what they clearly attain & perceive?
The answer is in what is known as “Reshimot“(informational genes) in Kabbalah. Reshimot can be thought of similarly to frames and scenes in a long film reel (of our life) that unravel like a chain, from small to large, and which give rise to everything that exists.
Since Reshimot precede and give rise to our perception, we cannot see the Reshimot themselves. What we see is a resultant picture where species’ originate “one from another,” whereas in reality they originate “one after another.” This is what the Ari explains in the below except, i.e. the order of development of Reshimot.
The world was created by the desire to bestow (in other words, Nature or the Creator), and every creature was also created by this same desire to bestow. The only matter of creation is the desire to receive, which develops and expresses itself by creating an outward appearance (a bodily shell) according to its qualities. However, we do not perceive the forces of the desire (i.e. where the Reshimot reside) and only perceive the external wrapping. This is why we think that they come from one another.
Here is the excerpt by the Ari:
Indeed, in all these four inner Behinot there is one Behina that contains them all. It is a median between each two Behinot and consists of both. For example, biologists write that between the still and the vegetative there is the coral; between the vegetative and the animate there is Adnei ha Sadeh (Ledges of the field), mentioned in Masechet Kilaim. It is like a dog that grows on the ground with its navel rooted in the soil, from which it sucks its sustenance. When you cut off its navel, it dies. Between the animate and the speaking there is the monkey.
The above is an excerpt from Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) Part 3. This text is part of the study material for lesson 10 in the Free Kabbalah Course – “Creation & Evolution Explained: From Before the Big Bang to the Future, Final State of Existence.” Sign Up for the Course Here »
November 1, 2007 at 9:54 am · Filed under Tree of life
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDtBnn4KbmM]
Music Video of the Tree of Life poem by 16th century Kabbalist Isaac Luria (the Ari)
– Read the Tree of Life Poem in Kabbalah Today, Issue 2
– Watch this Video at Kabbalah TV
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