Why Study Kabbalah?

Endless Pleasure Hunt

The great Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (writer of the authoritative Sulam commentary on the book of Zohar), explains in item No. 2 of the introduction to his monumental composition “Talmud Eser Sefirot” (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) that Kabbalah is intended for only a certain kind of people: those who ask “What is the meaning of my life?”

In his Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Rabbi Ashlag explains that we are made of a substance described as “will to receive.” It means that everything we do, every thought we think, and indeed, every breath we take, is meant to achieve one of two things: increase our pleasure, or decrease our pain. When one is completely satisfied, content and happy, one never asks about the meaning of life. It is simply impossible to want something else when we are already fully satisfied with what we have.

Our problem is that we are NEVER satisfied. It is arranged like that on purpose. We are not meant to be satisfied with anything. Instead, our will to receive forces us to participate in an endless pleasure hunt. The more we have, the more we want. The end result is that there is not a person in the world who dies with even half the things he wants to have.

Where Answers are Found

When we begin to ponder about this situation, we come to realize that whoever made us, must have either made a terrible mistake, or had something entirely different in mind, something we are nowhere near discovering. If we settle for the first answer, then that’s the end of our search. Nature, or the Creator, made a mistake, we suffer because of it and that’s the end of the story.

But if we decide to follow the latter answer, we must find a way to understand the design that stands behind our mental structure. We all know that the first step in finding a cure for any disease is decoding its modus operandi. Indeed, the way to decode the thought behind our structure is called “Kabbalah.”

Kabbalah is an ago-old science, the archi and meta-science that is the progenitor of every science and stands above all other sciences. That is because it provides the answers not to how things work, but to WHY they were designed like that. Not only that, it tells us what is the purpose of our lives, and what we must do in order to achieve it, and consequently, as we have shown above, be eternally happy.

The beautiful thing about Kabbalah is that no lab is needed, no high-tech institutions. All you need is a keen desire to know the truth about life.

The End of the Race

The Holy Ari states that the meaning of life lies in equivalence of form with the Creator, namely a collective law that encompasses every single aspect of reality on every level. Do not be misled into thinking that this is something that is unattainable. Not only is it attainable, but the book of Zohar clearly states that it is the purpose and the meaning of the life of every single individual on earth.

Now we understand why our desires keep growing: they are meant to become infinite. Only an infinite desire can enjoy infinite pleasures, and only that which is equal with the infinite can communicate with it on every level and receive from it in every aspect.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us about the meaning of being a Creator; it tells us that we can be like that too, and also tells us how!

"Mankind's search for meaning" by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD