Article "The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy" - Lesson 1
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Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
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Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
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lowercase italics: emphasized words
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Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
Baal HaSulam went to a lot of trouble to explain to us the connection between the wisdom of Kabbalah and everything that people do in this world – philosophy, other teachings, all kinds of religions, politics, the history of humankind, social structure, and the structure of government – because the wisdom of Kabbalah that he presents as a means for Gmar Tikkun that must be realized in our days, is a means for improvement of our whole life and elevating humanity to a spiritual level – to the level of the Upper Force. Therefore he tried to explain to us everything that we did in this world, in our human systems, and it is those that we need to elevate to the Creator.
A person in this world consists of the levels still, vegetative, and animate, and speaking. The still, vegetative, animate, in the surrounding nature, and the still, vegetative, and animate in our nature are systems that are operated automatically, without any effort on our part and they operate on us independently – on their own or involuntarily. The human degree in a person should also be according to the Upper Nature, but not be operated by the Upper Nature – this is discernment in a person. But a person out of his own free choice should complete himself to become adapted, matching, similar to the Upper Nature. That is what makes us human.
Humanity, thought a lot about how one should do something with his human part, with the Adam part in him – above the still, vegetative and animate – in desires, in thoughts in a person and how he should arrange them and organize them, and how he should accept the world that he is in, his freedom that was given to him, and everything that humanity has accumulated throughout history is called history.
Summarized, it is the wisdom you might say, “of what is man and what is his role in his world?” Of course, these things stem from the thoughts of a person, from what he sees and feels, and understands and accumulates throughout history, out of all these attempts. Because the degree we have to acquire, of correct realization of the human part in us, is a higher level in ourselves, before we obtain this degree we cannot understand it. That is why philosophy is actually engagement in something that is abstract and unknown exactly. We don’t know exactly what it is, but humanity somehow tries to understand things that are above it and are unattainable – unfelt – in any of our Kelim our tools. So, what do we do?
If we read philosophers starting from the ancient philosophers to our days, we see that they try in every generation to give some kind of an answer to human life, to the universe, to life in general. You can see how ancient philosophers were very, very primitive; for instance, one thought that a soul is breath, and many such things can be found written by the forefathers of Philosophy. Afterwards they improved on things a little bit, they took some things from Kabbalah and started to somehow even speak somewhere close to it. But still we understand that without obtaining the goal that humanity should come too through realizing the speaking part in it, it is of course, all this talk is empty words and completely devoid of content.
On the contrary, the results at the root of philosophy more than once confused humanity and brought it to very difficult situations, where they wanted to realize words of philosophers in our days, because these conclusions were imaginations of philosophers and because they didn’t come out of scientific experiment, out of clear attainment. But because they engaged in abstract matters it just seemed that way to them. They were engaging in forms that were not clothed in matter. Therefore, their conclusions were incorrect and when humanity wanted to realize it, it fell into a lot of trouble and agony. That is why we have to understand that philosophy is only a fruit of the human mind and imagination, and it is very limited, especially when it does not pertain to this world but somehow tries to discuss something above this world.
It is no wonder that today philosophy for the past several decades, if not more, is in the periphery of human engagement and no one really takes it seriously, but only to philosophize, and see what else we can fantasize out of our whim about our life. We can see that if previously philosophers were connected to science, studying mathematics, physics and philosophy together. Even a PhD – a PhD is a doctor of philosophy; the "Ph" is from the word philosophy. This is because Philosophy seemingly comprises all the sciences.
Afterwards, because technology evolved and human experience became more technological practical, philosophy doesn’t come through experimentation. Gradually, it was cleaned up and moved out of the way because humanity sees that only according to the principle of ‘the judge has only what his eyes see’, can you progress in our life.
Therefore all of the sciences and the materialistic psychology, everything that we can see through experimentation and according to experiments, moving forward according to measurements, this is what we have and that is what we respect. Everything that is abstract and has caused a lot of trouble in our past experiences, out of fantasies that we were trying to realize and failed bitterly, so all these things lose their value with each passing day. Philosophy today is not what it was before, especially in the time of Rambam, the era in which it thrived.
Today, there is no pure philosophy, but rather philosophy comes along with psychology, and with all kinds of other things. Technology enters there as well and they begin to research the sources of science, the sources of technology synergetic, globalization. They are beginning to discuss things that are not philosophy per se, but it just expanded today and takes on broader forms. So that is why today, philosophy itself is still alive today. If it hadn’t connected and taken into itself Reshimot, like recollections from natural sciences, and precise sciences, and discussed them, of course philosophy in itself would have ended by now. Let’s see what Baal HaSulam says about it.
Why is it so important and why doesn’t he write about anything else besides philosophy in Kabbalah? Because philosophers indeed think that they have an answer to the essence of life, even though they have a thousand opinions about it, and the purpose of life even though in that too there are a thousand opinions. Their approach is a rationale and correct approach, because it is based on history; the fact that history is entirely a chain of errors and disillusions is irrelevant. But still we have to understand that humanity doesn’t have any other approach, so whatever it has, this that, they maintain and somehow develop. That keeps it important, because a person in this world can’t do more if he does not connect to the higher wisdom. Okay, questions?
Question: We normally see that these circles, in them there is one person who claims that he experiences things, for him it’s a reality or a philosophy?
No, philosophers don’t claim that they experience the things that they talk about. No. If he talks about ghosts and demons, and all kinds of things, he doesn’t say that he is in contact with them, but they research what is written in the books and what you can understand from it. Not that they’re experiencing it, no.
We are talking about an ordinary person; it’s as if he is standing on his own two feet. He works with his mind, and using his mind he wants to somehow intellectually see the picture. But it is not that he emotionally sympathizes with it, there is no connection there.
More? We will see according to what Baal HaSulam writes. We just want to remind you…Yes we have another philosopher here (laughter).
Question: We say that humanity is coming to a phase where spiritual attainment is not in one person, but in a group, and something that never happened in reality. How is it different from philosophy where it is also without prior experimentation, and just intellectual?
No. We constantly go through experiments within ourselves. We are the matter over which each form occurs until we come to the right forms. The form is clothed in our matter, more spiritual, well closer to spirituality, it’s not spiritual yet, but it’s closer and closer to spirituality. I feel myself constantly under pressures, changes, I experience them and by that I just want to know what I am experiencing and what forms I should come to. I myself am in the experiment, I am the laboratory, and I am the researcher. What do I research in my laboratory? The actions of the Creator, and how I should react to them, learn from them, and what I can do with them. That’s the wisdom of Kabbalah; everything is out of experimentation. Where do we read articles? Where is it in us? What should we do? How can we change something within ourselves?
I don’t care if it’s some theory, if it can’t be dressed in me. How is it going to help me if all kinds of smart things are written there? We see in reality too, if we open a Kabbalah book; if we don’t understand anything there, if I don’t see a response that it’ll happen to me, I can’t connect to the book, I don’t want it. The more we advance, when we open a book, ‘oh here I can find something.’ just like even in Talmud Eser Sefirot, there are parts that we react to more, parts that we react to less. Over a few pages you are alive; you see how it is connected to you. I’m here, maybe I’ll do it, but I can’t do it right now, but maybe I’ll do it soon. But in some cases, you’re still detached from it. Right, well you’re detached, but I’ll be in it.
The bottom line is that it’s a guide book to how I should experience all situations written there, all of them and each and every one of us, the same states, everyone, and you will become perfect, eternal, and identical to Godliness like Him. This book is a manual.
Philosophers don’t have to be in what they are saying. When I talk about something, I either experienced it, or I am in it right now or I heard that in the future, soon, if I try, I’ll experience it. But these are forms that clothe in my matter and philosophy never talks about it, not out of experimentation. Again, the experiments that I read in a book are the experiments of a great person who experienced it.
This whole root that humanity should experience, each and everyone from this state to Gmar Tikkun, and he writes about all his impressions with the reasons. It’s research - why it happens this way, why that way, what happens, what did happen - so he explains the system to me in order to help me through it. It’s all taken out of experience from A to Z, even in science you don’t have such a thing.
A researcher thought for 30 years about the big bang or something, and after 30 years he says ‘oops sorry I was wrong’ and science is fine. Through all kinds of theories, we eventually come to something, we have to speculate. But even in science, look what we’re doing. In science, there are many things we use and don’t know the exact reasons for it, but it works. As Baal HaSulam says, we don’t know what electricity is, what is the magnet? We don’t know anything. We know the results of them. What we know is fine, it’s enough, we can use it. Look our whole life our world is built on electricity, we don’t know what that force essentially is, so it’s not important here.
Our science too is pretty limited and all our equations, all the coefficients we have and calculations. Go and calculate a building, you have formulas that... from our experience, that’s where we got them. It’s not an accurate science. It doesn’t come from a place where I have already experienced it, have reached Gmar Tikkun, and these things are tested, and that’s how it happens. We progress in science toward unknown things, and it’s unknown to all of us.
Here in Kabbalah, it’s not known to me. But it is known to someone who is greater, who always takes me by the hand and tells me what to do. And science, we’re not in things like that, so the wisdom of Kabbalah is the most certain thing. If I am standing there like a baby in the world, and don’t know what to do, in the wisdom of Kabbalah I have someone who accompanies me. The books are written first of all by someone who has experienced it and usually next to me there is someone who is greater who can answer something.
Even with respect to science, the wisdom of Kabbalah is at a completely different level of confidence, and experimentations and sure results. According to the councils that he gives a person, in every way, you can’t compare it to philosophy where nothing is out of experimentation. Our mind, without experimentation, you never know what it yields, ‘there’s none such wise as the experienced.’
Question: That’s the question, the form of a corrected group had never materialized before, so how can Baal HaSulam convey to us?
You’re incorrect, because such a form did exist. We are going from the perfect to the imperfect. This form exists. You might say, ‘yes, but I can’t see it’ and that’s exactly where I evolve. By not knowing, and in that section where I don’t know, where it opens up to me, I look for the way to compliment it. If I complement it, I get into a higher situation; if I don’t, I am still on hold. But these states exist, we don’t build them, we don’t create them. Only if my effort is sufficient, I acquire my new state which is already in me, but then it emerges.
Nothing at all in the world is new; I discover it according to the correction of my Kelim, according to my ability to perceive it, which I constantly increase. The approach in the wisdom of Kabbalah, the approach in the wisdom of Kabbalah, is so accurate, so clear with respect to something known, according to discernments that you’re told to carry out. You can’t compare to anything else, even though it seems to us that we are in confusion. But that confusion is exactly what is opened up to you, that tiny bit of free zone where you are confused and you don’t know. But that confusion is the oppositeness of the Kli; that confusion is the mist that you have to absorb; you don’t need to chase it away. That mist is the measure of concealment that should be accepted within your Kli, and it adds another level to you Kli.
This concealment comes... it looks like confusion. It comes in the discernments that you need to acquire. In that too, there is measurement for an accurate,,, a completely accurate form of lack of... absence of perception in the mind or in the heart or in orientation, but it’s all measured and you have to complete it by yourself. You complete it through all kinds of discernments, this concealment, and then you grow, it’s all very accurately measured. All these forms exist already, it’s nothing like ordinary science, I’m not even talking about philosophy.
Here you are in a very rigid form, connected to reality and there is nowhere to run, you just go from state to state, deterministically. If you scrutinize what is up to us, then it is a very narrow zone, very small, very limited, well defined, and if you sort it out very quickly then there is no confusion, no mist. It’s like a sick person finally finds a cure and that’s it, now everything’s fine, I know everything, ‘I take my medicine three times a day for a week, and I will be fine’ that’s it.
Question: Without a need there is no filling of the Kli. Want, is it when I come and sit in the group, or does it go wherever I go?
I don’t know, what do you mean by go? It doesn’t matter where you go or fly or fly to. That want is yours; the group can be next to you physically or not, it makes no difference, the measure of connection is tested by equivalence of form. The group in general has a message, has a goal, idea it’s got motivation. The group is like a spiritual collection of souls, of desires that more or less connect to obtain the general collective goal. This collective goal cannot be the goal of one person, because the idea is to be connected together toward that one, so it is one opposite another one. I can’t without a group want to connect to the Creator, it just can’t be realized. Because with respect to the Creator, towards the Creator means connecting to everyone, so that vector, that strength, that direction of connecting to everyone that’s the meaning of connecting to the Creator.
As it says, “I dwell among my own people,” meaning within the group there is the Creator. If you want to connect with them in order to connect with Him, then you discover it’s the same thing. Now if you depict this whole situation correctly, this virtual situation, where there is me, group and Creator, it makes no difference where you are or where you go, it doesn’t matter. You can sit somewhere far from us and be with us – we have such people. We have Roberto for example sitting there, and he really feels with his heart and soul that he is in the group. Well, let’s read.
"The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy
What is Spirituality?
Philosophy has gone through a great deal of trouble to prove that corporeality is the offspring of spirituality and that the soul begets the body. Still, their words are not acceptable to the heart in any manner. Their primary mistake is their erroneous perception of spirituality, that spirituality fathered corporeality, which is certainly a fib."
There is no connection between spirituality and corporeality, that’s what we always claim. There are people who say that there is a connection between corporeality and spirituality. Alright, there are many implications as a result of this; either that through corporeal acts we can perform spiritual acts, or that someone dismembered from birth or an accident will influence him in spirituality as well. If you check your shadow on HaShanna Rabba (a Jewish holiday), God forbid if you don’t have a hand in your shadow, then your soul lacks a hand; and so on.
In general you can reach many conclusions in this, and there is a lot of confusion surrounding it. If that’s the case, how can you implant organs and donate blood, and many things? But the important thing is not to talk about corporeality, or rather physical spirituality, meaning bodily, which is called that we can do something with our body performing Mitzvot with our body. Of course, we can’t. But let’s not even talk about the corporeal body, but about the corporeal desires, which is called “in order to receive.”
There is no connection between the desires to receive and the desire to bestow. Well, there is a connection, of course. There’s a cause and a consequence, there’s a root and branch, but it’s not the connection where I, through corporeality, can awaken spirituality. There can be spirituality anywhere. The Upper Light is in complete rest and the Creator is everywhere, clothed in the entire creation. But that’s from his perspective – we always speak from the perspective of the creature. From the perspective of the creature, there is no connection between corporeality and spirituality. This is what it talks about in the transition between corporeality and spirituality, which is, “I labored and found,” which is a very clear sign to how we acquire a spiritual degree –after all kinds of actions that a person does in this world and tries – but have no connection whatsoever to spirituality - but he tries in some way.
He then receives a spiritual degree as a "find", something that is completely detached from corporeality. There is a reason, which is the effort that he made, and the result is somewhere in a different world. The connection, the influence from one world to the next – from corporeality to spirituality – does not exist. But there is a condition – beyond the Machsom (barrier) – there is a condition of the Creator: work on that side of the barrier and do this and that thing; prepare yourself. What you can’t complete, I’ll complement it and you’ll still find it. Not the reward according to the effort, but a find.
A find is something that I didn’t really work for it, that is not exactly what I was looking for and that’s not exactly why I was working... what I was working for. My work doesn’t bring me this produce. I can’t, through my work, build the smallest spiritual Partzuf, where I can become in a state of finding. We can talk a lot about the detachment between corporeality and spirituality, where spirituality does not beget corporeality. As he says here, “They determined that it fathered and begot corporeality...” So where did corporeality come from, if not as a result of spirituality? Of course, it comes from spirituality, as we learned in the concatenation from Above downward. But there’s no connection, there’s no fathering in the desire that from corporeality in the desire appears spiritually. Such a thing is impossible. As if an upper Partzuf will suddenly want to receive in order to receive. It’s obvious. But there was a malfunction there. From Above downward is “I labored and found.” Correspondingly, in spirituality previously there was a malfunction called “breaking of the vessels” of the sin of Adam HaRishon. And it happened involuntarily or not in the connected desire. Again the force of the Creator that’s above the thought of creation to do good to his creations, skips over ‘existence from absence’ to bring the creature to the level of the Creator, for that it creates that transition – a big leap between corporeality and spirituality.
Let’s put is this way, we have the Machsom (barrier) separating spirituality and corporeality. A person is found here - that corporeal person and that’s the spiritual. From spirituality to corporeality, we can descend to the very last level, but not below. To skip over this degree, there was a breaking here – the breaking of the Kelim (vessels). It happened through the force of the Creator that confused the Partzufim. We learned that. Also, when a person wants to return from corporeality to spirituality, he also uses the same force as the Creator. This is called “the thought of Creation to do good to his creatures being above nature,” because all of this is nature. Except this act, which is the act of the Creator, everything else is a system.
Question: What’s the difference, if I say that spirituality fathered corporeality or saying that there is a connection of roots and branches or that it is cause and effect; that corporeality is similar to the spiritual world?
It’s a matter of equivalence of form. There is no contact between corporeality and spirituality. We're not talking about our matter, such as the flesh, and how the spiritual force clothes in flesh. We are not talking about that at all. Only the public speak like this, because they do not understand that it is impossible. Rather, we are talking about equivalence of form. How can there be contact between something that is in order to receive and something that’s in order to bestow. These forms are opposite and there cannot be a connection between them. You might ask if a little bit of intention to receive and a little bit of intention to bestow, of the tiniest in size, are they found near one another? They are infinitely far from one another, infinitely far. Even a big desire with intention to receive and a small desire with intention to bestow are at an infinite distance from one another. It’s an opposite form. They just don’t feel each other, they don’t meet in spirituality. This means they are infinitely far from each other in the spiritual dimension. There cannot be any proximity between the smallest spiritual degree and smallest corporeal degree. They are opposite to one another. So you may ask, “well, but we still go through from below upward, right?” We receive the spiritual degree as ready. We just receive it and that’s it. In that, we leap over Ein Sof. You might call it a leap over a void; but it is such a leap that you simply reverse your phase.
Same drawing as before - Rav points at the arrow between corporeality and spirituality
You pass through it, and you don’t’ know how you did it. You can’t understand it because this is actually controlled by the Creator. It’s controlled by the Upper Force that created existence from absence. Why? Because the difference between spirituality and corporeality is the difference between our original nature and the attribute of Bina, the Creator's attribute of bestowal. He brings you out of the nature of the simple will to receive – existence from absence – and suddenly gives you a Partzuf of existence from existence, which is just a miracle. We cannot even imagine what it is. We just can’t. There is nothing in my nature that can be on the other side of the Machsom (barrier). So just like in the breaking, and just like in its opposite - from below upwards when crossing the barrier - here it is the Creator Himself in all his glory, who takes you out of Egypt, as written.
Question: The attribute of bestowal did not father the attribute of reception?
I would say the attribute of reception came first.
The Creator, who is the Giver that’s true, He created the will to receive. Of course. We learn how He created the will to receive; by combining within the matter of the will to receive a form. The will to receive itself that He created is just an opposite replica of Him, it’s like an imprint. of Him – the matter itself. But there’s the form of the will to receive, which this matter that receives at Behina Dalet (the fourth phase). It is the result of the sensation of dualism; being that one feels pleasure within the desire and at the same time feels the Host. How does it feel the Host? Because it received the attribute of the Host, so it begins to feel the Host. What does it mean to feel the Host? It feels the Giver.
Drawing No. 3
We say that matter itself is a desire to enjoy and it feels nothing. The desire to enjoy then, receives what? An addition to itself.
Suddenly at degree two or state two, it receives in addition to this Kli – that’s Behina Aleph. It receives an addition to this Kli – it receives an addition, a second Kli. What’s a second Kli? The sensation of the Host. Now he feels Him. Because it feels the Host, it decides “All right, what do I do now? What do I do if I want to be like the Host? I’ll use both the first and second phase vessels, and I’ll be like the Host. I’ll receive, knowing what the Host is and what He does – He gives – and by that, I will give Him, and that’s Behina Gimel." This whole process happens in Behina Gimel – it is already similar to the Creator, seemingly. What happens then? It is familiar with the Creator in Behina Gimel, but it knows Him, because the Creator seemingly opened up to him; because the Creator made the first and second phase vessels in him. Now he says, “I have experienced all those things; I know who the Creator is. How good it is. I have all these observations, discernments in me. I have all these discernments and now I feel what? I receive everything from Him, and I feel who He is. I want to receive all this and enjoy. Only this addition that happens in Behina Dalet (the fourth phase) is called the creature, and not the first three Behinot (discernments).
The Creator created the creature, but He created it through combining two contradicting impressions - pleasure within matter and the importance of Him. His importance became inverted as existence from absence; was inverted in the creature to the importance to enjoy, to indulge itself. What does a person add to the pleasure? The greatness, to the Giver. He understands that he could enjoy from Him. The four phases develop only for this. That is why we only work on the greatness of the Creator, to make Him important for me in Lo Lishma, where I have the greatest desire and I want Him more than all other pleasures.
That is exactly the corrupted form found, a very lustful person; as written "until I cannot sleep." From this I begin. I’ve already come to everything I can, the rest is correction.
Question: It is said that the corporeal world we live in and the spiritual world are detached by a clear barrier. Only the act of the Creator caused the breaking, and only the act of the Creator will correct it. The transition is only possible with the interference of the Creator?
What is the Creator? The Keter - the thought of Creation - stands above all the actions. That’s why it is called Behina Shoresh. It’s not contained in all the discernments – one, two, three and four.
Question: Now we are in the corporeal world?
What is our world? You mean our corporeal state.
Question: My question is this: How can some doctorate thesis contribute, for instance by a Kabbalist with a PhD who attained the spiritual world and sees the general picture to someone in the corporeal world? I see a child in the 4th grade studying the multiplication table and afterwards in high school he’ll study Differentials and Integrals. You don’t give him university doctorate-level math in first grade for him to grasp the entire mathematical world.
You’re right. Why are you right? Because you’re making an argument, so you are right, obviously. So I will give you an answer.
First of all, with respect to corporeality, you are right. Here in our world, we always give a child in each grade the appropriate book, according to his development. You learn the same history, let’s say the history of the land of Israel, from grade 1 to grade 12 – for 12 years. But every time, the books are more sophisticated, more complex. Even in math and physics you go through the same things; you repeat them, but in a deeper way, and more comprehensive. What is the difference between that and the Wisdom of Kabbalah?
First, in the Wisdom of Kabbalah, you’re not learning anything intellectual; it’s very simple. Even though it’s called the Wisdom of Kabbalah. Here the study is not a study, but a creation of inner observations that connect the mind and the heart, and the mind is in order to understand the heart. It’s not a study, the way you study in school – that’s A. Second, we study only ten Sefirot, in all kinds of manners. Thus, We don’t have to be 125 above the barrier, plus some 6,000 before the barrier or half of it, and for every degree you’ll have to write a book. You’ll still not know what I am talking about, because you can’t discern even the smallest state in yourself. You want the book to talk about the state you are in. But you will not be able to understand it from the book. They do say it in all kinds of articles. Somehow they talk about it and the situations are different every time, and every article talks about you in a different way.
You can’t define these things, because you cannot discern the states you are in. Rather, in school, we have 2+2, so they ask, take two apples and two pears - how many of them together? Count using your fingers, pens, whatever; everything is in front of you. Here you don’t know. Here you are always talking about a form that you haven’t acquired. Where from? Because we learn that until you experience this form, attain it entirely, and then progress to a higher degree, then from the higher degree, you’ll be able to observe the lower degrees; then you will know the reasons - more or less, not all of them – and results which you experienced, but it is all from the higher degree. Then you will understand something. Can a cat understand it’s own life, that it is a cat, and which world it exists in? It understands what it understands. But, not the way I do, when I look at its life. We, too, cannot look at our own lives and understand them unless we rise above them to a higher level. From there I can understand the lower one, that’s it.
But where I am now, I do not understand the higher degree, and it is always like that. Only from Gmar Tikkun (The End of Correction) do I understand myself. That is why a person never understands anything about his life. This relates to our topic as well, this philosophy; which claims that you only need your mind. You get a University diploma and now you are a philosopher. As if now you understand something about life. Of course not; only from a higher degree. Oh, we have another philosopher …
Question: On the one hand you’re saying philosophy because its intellectual research is not a science. The Wisdom of Kabbalah is an accurate Science. Then I hear you saying, we can never understand any degree in Kabbalah until Gmar Tikkun, and because philosophy pretends it does and calls itself a science, then it isinvalid and incorrect?
Yes, but in the Wisdom of Kabbalah, when I am at a certain degree, I do understand the degrees below me. I just don’t understand them in the full scope that I’ll obtain in Gmar Tikkun because I obtain more broadly and more deeply into the system, where even the smallest detail is like in a hologram. Even if I take the tiniest fragment, I can’t know it in its fullest depth, because I have the whole picture. It is a part of a picture, so no part of it is perfect. You understand? Of course, I cannot attain the … I discovered my connection to the Kli of Adam HaRishon at 1%. Meaning, I attained it entirely, but not 100% deep – only 1% or 2 %. So how can I talk about all of it? But what I did attain, I attain correctly. It is a correct attainment. In that I am not wrong. That’s why it says a judge has only what his eyes can see. What they do see, he sees and in that boundary he can be a judge.
Question: My question is not that. Okay, the Wisdom of Kabbalah is as we explained what it is compared to philosophy. A person who wants can study philosophy and someone else can study Kabbalah. Why does Baal HaSulam make such an effort to compare them at all?
He hates philosophers. What can you do?
Question: I hate a lot of things, too. But I don’t study them and write about them.
No. Surely he is writing in order to clarify things for us about the Wisdom of Kabbalah, not philosophy. What does he care if some philosopher sits there and thinks? He wants to explain the Wisdom of Kabbalah out of all of peoples’ occupations in this world. He wants to show you that there is a wisdom that is above the rest, and also in what it is above all of them. That’s why he goes to all kinds of teachings and scrutinizes them – compares to it. He doesn’t have any other choice. Philosophy is... You know what philosophy is? What it’s about? The love of wisdom. It is actually human engagement in the essence of his life. Of course, it’s not some music even, or things that kind of somehow connected to man’s primary engagement. This is a necessity and it’s the very foundation of all the teachings of philosophy. First of all there was philosophy, then came everything else.Philosophy is like the model, the elementary, the essence of things. That’s what it claims to explain.
Write down questions and we will hopefully clarify them all here.It’s going to be a lot of fun.That completes our lesson for today.