What Is Kabbalah All About | Kabbalah Explained Simply

The wisdom of Kabbalah has been cloaked in mystery for millennia, since its inception around 5,000 years ago. In this session Gil Shir opens it all up.

Many concepts have been taken from the wisdom of Kabbalah and filtered through various sciences, mysticism, religions and other teachings, but authentic Kabbalah has been studied and developed by a relatively small number of individuals and groups throughout history, mostly in hiding from society at large.

Therefore, after thousands of years of Kabbalah’s authentic practice taking place in secret, and many non-Kabbalists in history blending whatever they understood from Kabbalistic texts into their respective teachings, it has become strewn in myth and misconception.

The wisdom of Kabbalah thus needs clarification.

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), the most renowned Kabbalist of the 20th century, and the only Kabbalist who wrote commentaries to both The Book of Zohar and the writings of Kabbalist Isaac Luria (the Ari), defines Kabbalah as “no more and no less than a sequence of roots, which hang down by way of cause and effect, in fixed, determined rules, weaving into a single, exalted goal described as ‘the revelation of His Godliness to His creatures in this world.’”

According to this definition, there is a superior power in reality. Kabbalah has given various names to this superior force, such as “His Godliness,” as in this definition, as well as “the Creator,” “Nature,” “upper force,” “upper light” and “Ein Sof (Infinity)” to name a few.

From this superior power extends a cause-and-effect chain of forces that cascade into our world.

In our world, we perceive a very small fragment of the complete reality surrounding us, as the superior power and the forces stemming from it are concealed from our perception.
While alive in our world, the wisdom of Kabbalah enables us to discover these higher forces all the way to the original superior power that created and includes all forces in reality (“the revelation of His Godliness to His creatures in this world”).

Engaging in Kabbalah grants us access to perceive and sense beyond a certain barrier that is positioned between our inborn corporeal perception, and the perception of the higher forces.

On our way to the revelation of the superior power in reality, we discover many other phenomena that are concealed from our current perception, such as

five upper worlds (Ein Sof, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira and Assiya),
ten Sefirot (Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod and Malchut), and
125 Partzufim.
These phenomena make up what Kabbalah describes as a tree of life between our world and the superior power, and which we can reveal from our world all the way to its original causal force.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is thus the research of everything existing beyond our corporeal perception, and it depicts a greater reality of fixed, absolute and omnipresent laws, which are directed so that every person who so wishes can discover the causal forces behind everything happening in their lives and in nature, while alive in our world.