Yehuda Ashlag Quotes

It is well known to researchers of nature that one cannot perform even the slightest movement without motivation, meaning without somehow benefiting oneself. When, for example, one moves one’s hand from the chair to the table it is because one thinks that by putting one’s hand on the table one will thus receive greater pleasure. If one would not think so, one would leave one's hand on the chair for the rest of one's life without moving it an inch, all the more so concerning greater efforts.

Because there is no difference or disparity of form between them (...) "The Torah and the Creator and Israel are one."

All of Israel are responsible for one another.

Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, says, ‘Since the world is judged by its majority, and the individual is judged by the majority, if he performs one Mitzva, happy is he, for he has sentenced himself and the whole world to a scale of merit. If he commits one sin, woe unto him, for he has sentenced himself and the whole world to a scale of sin.’ (...) Moreover, it is written, “one sinner destroyeth much good.” This is because one sin sentences the person and the entire world to a scale of sin.

[I]f all people were to come by equal concepts and inclinations, without any difference whatsoever, all the souls of all the people would be regarded as one soul. Its value would be like the light of the sun: the light clothes in all the inhabitants of the world, yet we do not discern that there are separate forms in the sunlight. Similarly, one conceptual soul would robe many bodies, since places do not separate at all in spiritual matters if there are no separate forms in their qualities.

Know that all the sophistications in the knowledge are mostly mistakes that should fall before the truth. Yet, the truth itself is simple, without any wit.

The essence of one's work is only to come to the sensation of the existence of the Creator, to feel the existence of the Creator, that “the whole earth is full of His glory.”

In addition to the animal essence, we have something that is above animal existence. This something is called our egoism. It is based on our aspirations to wealth, honor, fame, power, and knowledge. Animals do not have these aspirations [...] — envy, inclination to pleasures, and aspiration to honor. These aspirations bring a person to a level above the animal. Since they are above animal qualities, these aspirations and qualities are praiseworthy. On the other hand, their common natural utilization puts us below all other levels [i.e. still, vegetative, and animate].

[E]ven if a person excels in Torah and good deeds more than all his contemporaries, if he has not learned the secrets of Torah and the wisdom of truth, he must reincarnate in the world (...) Now the matter is clarified—the whole part of the revealed Torah is but a preparation to become worthy and merit attaining the concealed part. It is the concealed part that is very wholeness and the purpose for which man is created.

If one thinks that there is another authority and force apart from the Creator, he is committing a sin.

[T]he whole purpose of the Torah is to correct the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, which induced the confusion of the conduct of the sustenance of reality.

[S]ince the essence of the soul is but a will to bestow, and all its manifestations and possessions are fulfillments of that will to bestow (...) therefore it is immortal and irreplaceable. The soul, with all its manifestations is eternal and exists forever. Absence does not apply to them upon the departure of the body. On the contrary, the absence of the corrupted form of the body, greatly strengthens it, thus enabling it to rise to the Heavens. Thus we have clearly shown that the persistence in no way depends upon the concepts it has acquired, as philosophers claim, but its eternality is in its very essence, meaning in its will to bestow, which is its essence. And the concepts it acquires are its reward, not its essence.

No mind of a creature can attain Him.

"The whole Torah is the names of the Creator." All the stories and the laws and the sentences, all are His Holy Names.

[W]hen we examine the acts of an individual, we shall find them compulsory. He is compelled to do them and has no freedom of choice. In a sense, he is like a stew cooking on a stove; it has no choice but to cook. And it must cook because Providence has harnessed life with two chains: pleasure and pain (...) there is no difference here between man and animal. And if that is the case, there is no free choice whatsoever, but a pulling force, drawing them toward any bypassing pleasure and rejecting them from painful circumstances. And Providence leads them to every place it chooses by means of these two forces [i.e. pleasure and pain], without asking their opinion in the matter.