Kabbalah Is No Philosophy

If there is any definition that can tell the spiritual apart from the corporeal, it belongs only to those who have attained and felt a spiritual thing. Those people are the genuine Kabbalists ..."

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam),
"The Difference Between Kabbalah and Philosophy"

Kabbalah talks about the soul, life's meaning, man's spirituality... Sounds like philosophy, right? Wrong. Kabbalah is the exact opposite of philosophy, and it's important to understand the difference. Here's why.

Everything in this world consists of four levels: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking (human) levels. These levels are present in all of reality and in every person. The first three levels: the still, vegetative and animate levels are systems that are activated by Nature automatically, through instincts. But the speaking or human level within us does not function automatically.

What exactly is that speaking level within us? It's our thoughts, desires and intentions - everything that comprises the hidden, non-apparent realm of our existence. This realm is not automatically regulated by the laws of Nature. We decide how to use the speaking level, and although this makes us the pinnacle of all creation, it also poses a great dilemma for us: how should we use this level, and is there any right way to use it?

We're certainly not the first to ask this question. Humanity has pondered a great deal about how to handle the human part within it: how should we arrange our thoughts and desires, and how should we use them? These questions were scrutinized by some of the greatest minds that ever lived, and thousands, even millions of books have been written on them. All the experience and theories that humanity has accumulated throughout history in attempting to answer these questions - is called philosophy.

Kabbalists, too, have focused precisely on these questions for thousands of years. Side by side with philosophy, they have written thousands of books that address these profound and important questions. So what makes Kabbalah so different from philosophy?

Kabbalah allows a person to raise his consciousness to the speaking level, the hidden realm described above, and to study it the way a scientist would. Furthermore, Kabbalah explains that by doing so, one actually rises to a higher degree of existence higher because it's above our present, ordinary level of consciousness.

It's impossible to study that higher level or to say anything definitive about it until one has risen to that level himself. "Rising to it" means tangibly feeling it, living in it and this is exactly what Kabbalah enables us to do. Its entire method focuses on developing one's personal qualities, one's perception, and as a result one begins to feel the realm that was hidden to him before - the speaking level of reality.

And once he feels it and lives in it, he can study it with scientific precision. There is no need to speculate, philosophize or guess about what's happening there, since the facts are clearly revealed before him.

Philosophy, on the other hand, is not based on clear attainment. It instead takes the liberty to "philosophize" about the higher realm of existence without actually rising to that level. It engages in abstract, non-fact based discussions and debates that rely on imagination. And it can never know whether its conclusions about the higher degree of existence are correct because it does not have the tools to verify them on that level.

Hence, Kabbalah fundamentally differs from philosophy. Kabbalists speak from their own, practical experience. Their descriptions are not abstract or speculative: they only describe things that they have tangibly attained, analyzed, and discerned.

So what is Kabbalah, then? It is best described as a science that's based on personal attainment and a practical approach. It gives us the tools to rise to the speaking level in order to study it, and by doing so we find out how to use that level in the best possible way.