But what is the correct way of studying and how do you make sure you study properly? Students who study correctly work on themselves and their inner beings, and they are guided by a teacher.
Experiencing the Creator requires a teacher. The teacher guides the student as the student rises to the spiritual level of the teacher and bonds with the teacher’s wisdom and thoughts.
In fact, today, a single individual cannot enter the spiritual world. This would be like one individual beginning to develop the whole of physics or chemistry and then developing the technology to apply them. It would be similar to living like a Neanderthal without using all that humanity has achieved so far. In other words, it would be senseless.
That’s why a beginning student needs a teacher who has already attained the Upper World and can show the student how to attain each step toward the Upper World. The teacher ushers the student into spirituality, but the student will fully understand the connection with the teacher only after attaining the Upper World independently.
Unity with the teacher occurs in the preliminary stages because both are on the worldly level. But unity with the Creator is possible only when you experience the Upper World. The teacher is your leader in that journey. Contact and unity with a teacher leads to contact and unity with the Creator.
Let Your Heart Decide
How do you find such a teacher? Kabbalah has a very simple answer: Study where your heart desires, where you feel you belong. The right teacher doesn’t persuade you to think this or that. Kabbalah is a wisdom you learn of your own free will and choice. Spiritual development can take place in no other way.
When you detach yourself from persuasions, from anything external, from your upbringing, and from everything that you have heard in your entire life. When you feel in your heart that you have found a teacher and place of study, you should stay. That is the only valid test, and nothing else matters.
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Spiritual Sparks
When I asked my teacher, Rav Baruch Ashlag, if he could prove he was the right teacher, Ashlag replied: “I have no answer for you. It is something you will have to answer in your own heart. You should believe no one. I do encourage you to go and look elsewhere, and if you find a better place for you, that’s where you should stay.”
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As Rav Baruch Ashlag said, "Criticize and doubt everything. The most important objective is to be freed from prejudice, from education, and from public opinion. Free yourself from anything extraneous and try to absorb the way your nature tells you. That would be the truest, because any education and any external opinion is coercion."
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Off Course
The teacher’s role in Kabbalah is very subtle. The teacher must direct the student away from himself, and toward the Creator. There is no way a person can avoid the attention and admiration students shower on a teacher, unless the teacher has already transcended the ego and entered the Upper World. And how do you know your teacher is the right one? Let your heart decide!
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