We discern many degrees and discernments in the worlds. We must know that everything that relates to discernments and degrees speaks of the attainment of the souls with regard to what they receive from the worlds...
What is Baal HaSulam telling us here? To the extent that man controls nature, the laws of nature, by correctly using them for himself, to that extent he measures his life, his essence, and his status, both in our world, as well as in the spiritual world. Meaning, he has to know where he is, the kind of laws that operate on him, how he can operate them for his own benefit. Is it really for his own benefit? Maybe it just seems that way for a short term then he discovers that it’s the opposite...
The profoundness of the wisdom in the holy Book of Zohar is enclosed and caged behind a thousand locks, and our human tongue too poor to provide us with sufficient, reliable expressions to interpret one thing in this book to its end. Also, the interpretation that I have made is but a ladder to help the examiner rise to the height of things and examine the words of the book itself. Hence, I have found it necessary to prepare the reader, to give him a way and an inlet in reliable definitions, concerning how one should contemplate and study the book...
In this introduction, I would like to clarify matters that are seemingly simple. Matters that everyone fumbles with, and which much ink has been spilled over in attempting to clarify. Yet we have not reached a concrete and sufficient knowledge of them. And here are the questions: 1. What is our essence? 2. What is our role in the long chain of reality, which we are but small links of?...
At the outset of my words, I find a great need to break an iron wall that has been separating us from the wisdom of Kabbalah since the ruin of the Temple to this generation. It lies heavily on us and arouses fear of being forgotten from Israel...