480. Happy are those who engage in Torah to know the wisdom of their master. They know and look at high secrets. When a person departs from this world and repents, and only transgressions that death atones remain for him, by dying, all the judgments in the world depart from him. Moreover, thirteen gates from the secrets of the pure persimmon—on which high wisdom hangs—open for him.
481. Even more, the Creator engraves him in the royal attire where all the forms are engraved. The Creator entertains Himself with him in the Garden of Eden and bequeaths him two worlds: this world and the next world.
482. The wisdom that one should know: to know and to observe the secret of his master, and to know himself, who he is, and how he was created, where he comes from, where he will go, how the body is corrected, and how he will be judged by the King of all.
483. To know and to observe the secret of the soul. What is this soul within him? Where does it come from and why does it come into this body, which is a foul drop that is here today and in the grave tomorrow?
To observe this world and to know the world one is in, and over what the world will be corrected, and then to gaze upon the sublime secrets of the upper world, and to know one’s master, oOne beholds all this from the secrets of the Torah.
484. Anyone who walks into that world without knowing the secrets of the Torah will be sent out of all the gates of that world, even if he has acquired many good deeds.
485. “Tell me.” The soul says to the Creator, “Tell me the secrets of the sublime wisdom, how You shepherd and govern the upper world; teach me the secrets of the wisdom that I have not known and have not learned thus far, so I will not be shamed among those high degrees among which I come, for until now, I have not looked at them.”
486. “If you do not know, O fairest among women.” The Creator replies to the soul, “If you have come and did not gaze in the wisdom before you came here, and you do not know the secrets of the upper world, ‘go you out’; you are unworthy of entering here without knowledge. ‘Go you out in the footsteps of the flock,” reincarnate in the world and become knowing in these “footsteps of the flock,” who are people that people trample with their heels, meaning regard them as lowly; and they know their master’s sublime secrets. From them you will know how to observe and to know, and from them you will learn.
487. “And shepherd your kids [young goats].” These are young disciples of Torah, in the seminary, learning Torah. “By the shepherds' tents,” more than in those synagogues and seminaries where they study the upper wisdom. And even though they do not know, for they are children, you will know and understand from the words of wisdom that they say.