September 13, 2024
September 17, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Did You Know There Are 125 Degrees of Spiritual Attainment?
Our task is to attain the highest degree in our advancement toward the Creator. That is the purpose of creation. The ladder between the Creator and us consists of 125 degrees or steps, also called desires. Each desire constitutes a complete and separate degree and is different in each stage of development. However, our own world does not constitute a degree of spiritual desire and is therefore excluded from the count of the 125 degrees. The 125 degrees begin only one step above our world, starting with the first degree of the spiritual world, and so on until the end of the 125th degree. What characterizes a higher degree is a greater desire to give and be altruistic.
The range of spiritual degrees is also divided into five worlds: the worlds of
- Adam Kadmon,
- Atzilut,
- Beria,
- Yetzira, and
- Assiya.
Each of these worlds is also comprised of five Partzufim, and each Partzuf is divided into five Sefirot. Thus, the entire structure consists of 125 degrees (5 by 5 by 5). The worlds, the Partzufim, and the Sefirot define desires, their power, and spiritual degrees in ascending order.
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September 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
There are 2 Forms of Spiritual Development
The Creator creates the desire, which is a given constant. It rises from below, within us, and surfaces in various intensities. The aim, however, is to change the desire from a corrupted wish to receive for the self alone to a corrected desire to receive for the sake of the Creator. Even an ordinary person, one who is not a Kabbalist, can raise MAN through thoughts, desires, and aims, because there is always a desire in his or her mind to receive from the Creator, though he or she may not even recognize the Creator’s existence.
We must turn to the upper force and approach Him. The very nearness is enough. The Creator’s light, which draws us all toward Him, is, to the creatures, the one and only law of creation. This gravitating force first affects the Jews, and then the rest of the nations. The force awakens us, through pain, to make us approach Him. When a person fails to want the Creator independently, he or she is pushed to it by pain. We will be at ease only if we avoid this force before it acts on us, by drawing ourselves toward the Creator of our own accord. This is called progress in the “path of light,” as opposed to progress in the “path of pain.”
How a Person Attains Adhesion with the Properties of the Concealed Spiritual Reality
Our situation depends solely on how we relate to the upper force that pulls us toward it. It is not a question of politics, and attempts to please our enemies will not do us any good either. Our situation depends not on our willingness to practice the regular Mitzvot (precepts), because the Creator wants the heart, not a mechanical act. We must attain the spiritual degrees of the precepts, meaning to keep the law of creation in the spirit. It is impossible to keep a spiritual law as though it were a mechanical law, because to truly keep a spiritual law means to equalize with it, to be inside it, and to be identical with it. The Creator and the entire spiritual world are a single giving force. Humans must come to resemble it, meaning correct all their desires to be used only for bestowal upon the Creator, just as all the Creator’s desire is to bestow goodness upon humans.
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September 11, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
The Need for Additional Senses to Sense the Spiritual Reality
To research itself and the surroundings, humanity has developed various sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. These are called the natural sciences, and they are based on our five senses. To help ourselves study nature, we have built instruments that extend the range of our senses. Gradually, from generation to generation, we have gained experience and reached a better understanding of the problem of survival in this world. But among all sciences, there is one that develops us quite differently—the science of Kabbalah.
Beyond the corporeal world that we research, there is another world, which is concealed. But if it is invisible, how can we assume that this other world really exists? It is because we see that there are specific laws, which are a part of a broader reality. We understand that such general, more rational laws, which describe our lives and our existence comprehensively, simply must exist. There is something that eludes us, something around us we cannot grasp. But how can we come to grasp it if we don’t have the appropriate senses?
Why Human Development Increases Suffering
It is quite possible that this alternate creation does exist around us in all its layers, but we divide it into the apprehended part we call “our world” or “this world,” and the as-yet-unfelt layer. If we had other senses, although it’s hard for us to imagine it, we would probably also feel the world differently, perhaps with a broader and deeper vision. But such senses don’t exist, and so we suffer. We don’t know how to behave with one another and with our surroundings because we don’t see our past and future lives.
When dealing with a scientific study of the world, we come to a stage where our knowledge is exhausted, and we’re left helpless. Though there are many ways to enhance our ability to predict the future, beyond the boundaries of our regular senses, they in fact add very little to our understanding of the world. We are capable of attaining very limited abilities to predict events, but we never achieve clear knowledge of the future and complete attainment, which can only happen when we are acting in full cooperation with the world around us.
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August 22, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Who Was Baal HaSulam?
Since Abraham and Moses there have been many brilliant Kabbalists through the generations, writing some of the fundamental books of Kabbalah, The Zohar and the Ari’s writings being the most important among them.
However, in the end, neither The Zohar nor the writings of the Ari were intended for a systematic study of the Kabbalah. Although the Kabbalah is indeed a science, before the 20th century there never was a true textbook. It is only in our days that a comprehensive and concise method suitable for all souls of this world was established. To fill in the gaps, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, the great Kabbalist who was born in Warsaw in 1885 and lived in Jerusalem from 1922 until his death in 1954, wrote a commentary on the Zohar and the texts of the Ari. Rabbi Ashlag, called Baal HaSulam (Master of the Ladder), evolved while writing the commentaries and published his principal work, The Study of the Ten Sefirot (Talmud Eser Sefirot), considered the predominant Kabbalah study book of our time.
This textbook consists of six volumes, containing more than two thousand pages. It includes everything that Kabbalists have written since the dawn of time: the writings of the first man, Abraham the Patriarch, Moses, Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, and the Holy Ari. This book displays Kabbalah in a concise manner, fit for study. Thus, we have with us today everything needed to learn how creation was made, how it comes down to us, and how we can influence it from below, all the way to the highest world, to have the future we’d like to have.
Why Kabbalah Is Completely Opposite to Other Spiritual Teachings
Today The Zohar is incomprehensible without the Sulam commentary. Yet, the method of Baal HaSulam is often misunderstood. To those who have not achieved spiritual fulfillment, the book may be perceived as dry, schematic, and unemotional. It can read like an instruction manual rather than something that moves our heart. But this perception stems from a lack of understanding.
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July 20, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Perception of Reality
A Quick Rundown of How Kabbalah Speeds Up a Person’s Entrance into the Spiritual Reality
The difference between the revealed and the concealed in this world and the spiritual world is only with respect to us. Everything we still do not know—in this world, as well—is called “concealed.” If what is unknown becomes known, it becomes revealed. Thus, at any given moment we are in both the revealed and the concealed. The difference between this world and the spiritual world is in the way we acquire forms and patterns of perceiving reality.
The spiritual world is a reality where the patterns to perceive it do not come naturally, from within us or from the environment. Because the spiritual reality abides by opposite laws than our natural laws, where we presently exist, the spiritual world requires that we invert our attitudes. But where can we find the “opposite” strength to build “opposite forms”?
Such an inversion requires a special process, called Segula (merit). Segula refers to an indirect process that traverses the Upper System, and then returns to the individual. Using Kabbalah studies, one draws nearer to the Upper, altruistic Thought. This Thought does not act upon the will to receive, or upon the ego, but rather on the altruistic point—the point in the heart.
Utilizing the Point of Contact with the Spiritual Reality to Advance towards It
The similarity of nature between the point in the heart and the Upper Thought creates a connection between them, and they possess the same nature. The Upper Thought acts upon the point and molds it into various patterns, which we perceive as seeming to exist outside of us, in the spiritual realm.
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