Knowledge and Attainment

Q: It is natural for man to aspire to knowledge. Why, then, has he not satisfied that aspiration over thousands of years?

A: The aspiration to know is wonderful, although it mustn’t be an aspiration for knowledge alone, but rather for attainment: in order to attain the studied material from within you, on your own flesh, to discover who my “self” is and where within me lie the matters the books write about. After all, everything that’s written there is written from “within,” from personal attainment.

Therefore, when we read books about Kabbalah, the authors speak to us from exactly the degree they are describing. There is no “time” in spirituality. As the greatest Kabbalist of our time, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag says, “…but out of the great desire and yearning to understand what they are studying, they awaken upon themselves the lights that surround their souls” (Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot, item 155).

Out of a great desire to attain what they are studying, the readers awaken in themselves a surrounding Light from the same spiritual degrees they’re reading about.