Description

The story behind Rav Baruch Ashlag׳s notebook of Baal HaSulam׳s talks, Shamati (I Have Heard).

Transcript

Shamati means "I have heard," and these articles were lessons spoken by Baal HaSulam to his students, and his son Rabash, Rav Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag, was one of his students. And he wrote what his father said, and he kept it in a little personal notebook. And it was something, this notebook was something that he kept with him all the time. He had a few books that he constantly referred to, and this—the directions, the instructions and the words of his father—he kept close to him.

Rav Michael Laitman, who is my teacher and the teacher of Bnei Baruch, was Rav Baruch’s personal assistant. He took care of all of his affairs and was with him all the time. And he was his direct disciple. And at the time, towards the end of Rav Baruch’s life, Rav Laitman was with him. He was with him in the hospital, he was with him during that process.

And during the time that he had studied with him, Rabash had shown him many texts that he hadn’t seen before and that hadn’t been shared with some of the other students, and Rav was aware of this notebook, and he had seen it and had borrowed it occasionally to learn from and so on. And it was a very precious thing.

And when Rabash was on his deathbed, he gave this book to Rav Laitman. And Michael Laitman published the book, and it contains beautiful articles describing the inner work of a person. A lot of the work in Kabbalah is technical work—The Study of the Ten Sefirot (Talmud Eser Sefirot), and other technical works, The Tree of Life and The Zohar, which deal with the technical aspects of creation as well as the inner states related to them. Well these articles, the book Shamati, they’re specifically made for the student to find himself, to identify inner states and to connect these inner states to the technical work and the Kabbalistic work as a whole. And they contain thought from the highest level of reality.