The wisdom of Kabbalah describes how nature works on all of its levels: still, vegetative, animate and human. It engages in how we are made and operate at deeper levels of reality, and not in any abstractions.
One of Kabbalah’s areas of study is in how forces cascade from our original state, which it calls “the world of Ein Sof (Infinity),” where our souls exist as a unified system, through a series of worlds, Sefirot and Partzufim to our world.
Kabbalists are people who ascended in their perception and sensation of reality from our world into the spiritual worlds, many of whom wrote texts based on their attainment.
Key Kabbalistic texts throughout history include:
- Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation), written about 4,000 years ago by Abraham the Patriarch.
- The Zohar, written about 2,000 years ago by Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai.
- Various texts by the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) in the 16th century.
- Various texts by Baal HaSulam (Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag) in the 20th century.
Baal HaSulam’s texts are optimal for our current era. They describe the structure of the worlds, their descent and succession through many lower worlds, all the way to the creation and evolution of our world, our universe and everything in it.
By learning the system of the worlds, how they emerged and descended into our world, we can then rise through that system back to the root where we were originally created.
One of Baal HaSulam’s key texts that we study is his six-volume work, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot). It is a modern textbook in Kabbalah study, including Q&A, diagrams, as well as material for repetition and memorization, which explains the succession of worlds, Sefirot and Partzufim.
Kabbalistic texts change those who study them. How? It is because they contain special forces that their authors inserted into them. When students seek their way into the deeper layers of reality through the texts, they adapt themselves to the worlds that they study.
The wisdom of Kabbalah engages solely in the spiritual worlds, and not in this world. Via the study of Kabbalah, we attain the place we had in those worlds before our descent to this world. While we rise to that place, called “the root of our soul,” we develop spiritual qualities that we lack in our world.
The spiritual system starts establishing itself in the person who desires its attainment, and who studies it with that objective. While we are alive in this world, we feel the beginnings of the spiritual desire as a very small point, called in Kabbalah, “the point in the heart.”
The point in the heart can be likened to a drop of semen, which contains all the future states of the human being, and which only requires the proper environment and conditions in order to realize its full potential.
Regular Kabbalah study aims to provide the environment and conditions for the spiritual desire’s optimal growth, so that we can each attain the root of our soul.
That is the benefit of Kabbalah study. Even if we understand nothing at all in what we read, our desire and effort to understand awakens spiritual forces to operate on our spiritual desire, developing it.
Then, the more our spiritual desire develops, the more we feel a new world opening up inside us.
As such, the wisdom of Kabbalah provides us with the means to sense the spiritual worlds, to understand both our own nature and the nature of everything around us, and also, to take charge of such a process.
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