ARI Films
Always with Me
In the beginning…
I remember how it happened with me. I had the best of everything. I had a profession, I was self-employed, and I lived in the city of Rehovot back then. And I felt unable to go on living the life that I had been living. So much so, that all of a sudden I was overcome by some internal impulse, and I just felt I had to search for something.
I sat in my car and started driving. It was in the evening, during the winter, and it was rainy, and windy; the weather was very unpleasant. I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
While driving, I kept thinking: How will I find this place? What is it that I in need?
Where is my heart taking me? It was some sort of an internal impulse, I can’t really explain it. So, I drove to the city of Bnei Brak. Before that, I had only been there maybe once or twice. When I got there, I rolled down my window and asked a man standing by a traffic light: “Tell me, where does one study Kabbalah around here?”
And he, as if ready for it and waiting for me said: “You know what, take a left here, and drive up to the orchard. Right across from that, at the synagogue, that is where it is. Just go in; they study Kabbalah there.”
I arrived there and I saw some sort of a dark building and I went in. And there was this small room where five or six elders sat, studying something from a book. The elder at the head of the table said: “You can sit down.” So I did, and I didn’t understand a word; they were studying The Book of Zohar in Aramaic. And then one of them said: “Alright then, let’s study something,” and he opened a book. I was sitting across from him, and he began to read and explain the text very slowly. Five minutes later I already knew that this was my place.
I felt it in my heart, and I knew that I would never leave it. I realized that there was nothing else in life, that the whole world, and everything humanity has gone through, was created for the sole purpose of delving into this internal point.
All of the questions I had asked all of my life (and possibly not just in this lifetime but in previous incarnations as well) I began to understand; they were starting to make sense. You begin to understand what you are living for, how to live, how the world is structured, how the whole system works. I know which types of actions affect the world for the better or, G-d forbid, for worse. The book opens for me the possibility of actually becoming a master of this life.
So I kept going, one time after another. At first it was twice a week, later on I started coming every evening, and then eventually I started coming in the mornings also.
This elder, their leader, became my Rabbi, and later on became my Rebbe, so to speak, meaning, the great one, the Teacher. I started spending all of my time near him, connected to him throughout the day, and thus, slowly, slowly, absorbed from him everything I possibly could.
Always with me
We used to come to the park quite regularly. I used to park the car and go this way with
my teacher, on our daily walk. And this is the way it was every day, from about 9am till 12 or 1pm. And the park was empty. For years, apart from Independence Day or maybe some other special events, this park was literally deserted.
So then we used to start walking, usually this way, with my Rabbi next to me, and I to his right. Our entire walk was filled with my questions, and his answers, and we continued in this manner for years.
Rabash was very interested in this world. He would listen to the news, he was interested in everything that went on in the world, naturally, weighing all of that against the Higher Providence. Every hour I’d have to turn on the radio and let him listen to the news
for about two or three minutes.
During the war in Lebanon, he’d listen to the news even during class. And back then, there used to be visitors, from time to time, and he used to stop the class anyway.
It was the strangest thing: you interrupt a Torah discourse, the study of such exalted things, to listen to the news? Someone once asked him: “How can that be? What is going on here?
"It’s not our custom to listen to the radio," said some orthodox that just happened to be there, by chance or not, I don’t recall exactly. So Rebbe said: “If you had sons up there, you would certainly be interested in what was going on there, and with your heart, you’d be there; and you would definitely turn the radio on and listen, because you would feel that your destiny depended on it. And up there, are all of our soldiers, all of which are my sons, and I am deeply sad and worried about them.”
From this account, one can definitely understand the extent to which a Kabbalist, who was part of Judaic Orthodoxy, develops a special sentiment for the people, caring about the entire nation, the entire world, just as Baal HaSulam writes in the articles The Arvut (The Bond) and Matan Torah (The Revelation of Godliness), that the more developed a person is, the more his preoccupations progress from himself to his family and from his family to his relatives, from his relatives to his society, and from his society to his country and to the entire world. And certainly, when a Kabbalist begins to develop his soul, he begins to feel, through his soul, the extent of its connection to the rest of the souls, regardless of gender or race, and he begins to care for the entire world. Because on the whole, we are all connected, like one Kli (vessel), in a structure called Adam ha Rishon (the First Man), toward the Creator.
Over here, we always used to turn left, to bypass the tropical garden they have here, and keep on walking. Rabash was really the last of the Mohicans. And with every year that goes by since his passing, we see more and more that it is really so. No one of his stature has risen after him, either in scope or magnitude, and there are basically no Kabbalists at all these days. We are truly the last generation that has fallen into a huge descent, and so out of this descent, there is just one way out: we have to ascend upward.
His father was the Divine Kabbalist that founded the whole wisdom of Kabbalah for this generation. This is something that no one had ever done before him, in the entire history of Kabbalah. All the Kabbalists, up until Baal HaSulam (Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag), used to write only for themselves, for those of their generation, and for those who were already in attainment of the Wisdom.
In other words, hardly any Kabbalist prior to Baal HaSulam wrote Kabbalah for those who had no spiritual perception; who were not Kabbalists. Baal HaSulam was the first. And he did it by writing the wisdom of Kabbalah in a language, and a particular style that anyone—who is not yet at that level of higher attainment, nor even knows what it’s all about, yet has only a yearning for something that is above this world—could attain spirituality with the help of his books; enter the perception of the Upper World, and draw near to the Creator, and understand what the Creator’s thoughts are.
Lately, we have started enlightening the academic circles in Israel regarding Baal HaSulam: who he was, and the extent of his achievements in the field of Jewish Philosophy. They now recognize that they missed him altogether, not realizing that this was a giant, who in his books, provided explanations regarding all of human history and the reality in its entirety, the creation of the worlds and our world, the whole process that humanity goes through. And with all of that, he paved a path for us for attaining the purpose of Creation. He also explained what really lies ahead for us.
Baal HaSulam’s son, the eldest son, my teacher, clarified the words of Baal HaSulam even further, especially with regard to the internal work of an individual, a man’s personal attainment within the spiritual worlds, so that each and every person—if he just has desire, if he's interested and yearning for something that exists above our nature, above this world, feeling that this world can not fulfill him—could open the books of both Baal HaSulam and Rabash, and really fly into heaven with them.
I used to come here with these questions, strolling here with him, and we'd talk about the articles that he was going to write next. And later on, when we’d get back home, I’d stay downstairs—it was dark and deserted—and my teacher would go back upstairs. I would make him a cup of coffee and he would sit at the typewriter and later, I would hear him typing from his apartment. He would be doing articles with one finger, and they turned into seven or eight-page long articles, every week.
This man was by no means lazy. He used to provide comprehensive explanations in every which way and manner possible, only to make sure that we would be able to feel and understand all the roads we travel on our path to spiritual attainment.
We see that from time to time, Kabbalists leave their permanent settings, they leave their families, their children, their wife, disciples, the seminaries—the places where they study and where they live—and they go to a completely different place. I used to go with my Rabbi for a few hours a day, and also occasionally for a couple of days out of the week to the city of Tiberias, Mount Meron, up north, where we would could be completely alone.
Getting away like that is a necessary thing for a man who wants to feel how to departs from the influence of society, even from the influence of his close environment. He feels he must be by himself, he and the Higher Power, in a secluded place, absent from all alien thoughts; absent from all influences. Where people aren’t coming to see you, and you are all alone for long periods of time, engaged in writing and reading special texts. You get into them and connect through them to Upper forces, to the Creator, to the Universal Higher Power. This enables you to remain there, and not be cut-off by external disturbances.
My first time, I felt it in a very powerful way. I had already been connected to my teacher
for about a year, a year and a half, when one day he just took off, all of a sudden, and went to Tiberias all by himself. That was before we had started going up there together. And so I happened to visit him, while he was in that state there.
I remember going up to the apartment, where we later used to spend time together, for many years. I went up to this apartment and I knocked on the door. He opened the door for me, and I could not see that this man was actually looking at me; he did not see me.
A few minutes later he able to refocus on me, and he looked at me and then he abruptly said: “ Who told you to come to me?” He blurted out spontaneously: “What did you come here for? What are you doing here?” He said it in such a manner that I felt myself alienated from him; as if I didn’t belong to him. He was in such a high level of existence that he didn’t even know me. Even though I was so close to him, I was his disciple and his aide.
After two years past from the time of that encounter in Tiberias, he said to me: “Let’s start going there together.” And then, I was absolutely able to feel that he was taking me with him.
In Tiberias we studied mostly from Beit Sha'ar ha Kavanot and Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), part 16, which explains about the structure of Adam ha Rishon (the First Man) and the structure of his soul; how his soul divides into parts, and which parts. How these parts go on dividing all the way down until they reach the souls of humans, who are already in existence at a lower level called, "this world." And then this soul, from within, begins to feel that it exists not only in the spiritual world, but that there is a physical reality before it. So what is the physical reality in actuality? It is the soul’s perception that there is an additional reality, as a result of its descent to the abyss, to the lowest state of its desires.
The studies were extremely profound and very emotional: parts of The Zohar, The Study of the Ten Sefirot and some other Kabbalists’ writings, which I’m not yet permitted to discuss. There’s this thing called Megilat Starim (The Secret Scroll) that was written by Kabbalists in private, it was only for themselves or for those who had an understanding. He used to take these texts and explain them to me, reading all sorts of letters and articles that where incomprehensible, were it not for his clarifications.
Nowadays, there is regret. Naturally I’d be able to absorb more from him if he was still with us today. Today, people are coming to realize that there is no way that we can achieve anything in our lifetime here in this world.
Fatigue, drugs, a global crisis has hit the entire world and it has made people loose interest in what is happening; lose interest in any of the illusions that they used to have, and they just don't expect anything good from technological progress. That is why today, the writings of Baal HaSulam have come back to life. And making him known to the public is our goal, our mission and it is our duty.