Kabbalah
Music
- Kabbalah music is an expression of spiritual longing, conveying deep emotions that resonate directly with the soul.
- Kabbalah music acts as a bridge between spirituality and corporeality, transmitting spiritual forces much more directly via emotions.
- Kabbalistic melodies pass on spiritual forces via emotions to help awaken and develop our inner spiritual potential.
What Is Kabbalah Music?
The music of Kabbalah expresses two conditions of Kabbalists: an aspiration to sense the spiritual worlds, and an aspiration to merge with the source of life in the joyful sensation of total perfection.
There is no need to know anything about Kabbalistic music before listening to it, since it is wordless. Its effect on the heart is direct and swift due to the intricate connection between our souls and the roots of the notes. Hearing Kabbalistic melodies over and over again allows the listener to feel the music penetrating deep within the soul, completely unobstructed.
Melodies of the Upper Worlds
Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman introduces the music of Kabbalah.
Melodies of the Upper Worlds features melodies of the 20th century’s greatest Kabbalist, Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), with explanations by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman of how these melodies relate to the quest for discovering the upper worlds, the source of our existence.
What Is the Connection Between Music and Kabbalah?
What is the connection between music and Kabbalah? Everyone has a conception of what music is, but not everyone, by far, knows what Kabbalah is.
The essence of Kabbalah is shrouded in secrecy, but there has always been an interest in Kabbalah. According to legends, one who knows Kabbalah and masters its secrets can control our world and the spiritual worlds that influence our world, revealing its past, present and future.
Kabbalah is the science of the structure of the universe, the developmental laws of the spiritual worlds and our world, and the laws of man’s purpose.
Kabbalah is a science of the impact of human desires on the surrounding world.
All Kabbalistic books are written in the language of feelings and desires. This language is unique and strictly scientific, employing graphs, formulae and diagrams. It explains how to alter our desires in order to purposefully influence the entire world. Through such graphs and schemes, Kabbalah describes one’s feelings, the person’s soul. Music also speaks to the person in a language of feelings and emotions, and as such, is close to Kabbalah.
What is music? It is an emotion captured in its evolution. Only music can deliver the process of transforming feelings through time. That is why, to those who have not yet perceived the spiritual world, the music of Kabbalah provides a certain analogy of the impression of spirituality that is felt by the Kabbalist.
The more evolved a person’s feelings, the more one will delight in what is heard. In music, a sensitive person can open an entire world for themselves, undergoing different emotional states from bliss to tragedy. And the more one develops one’s feelings, the more intricately he will sense that which the music transmits.
In much the same way, one who studies Kabbalah cultivates appropriate inner instruments for comprehending spirituality, through which spiritual information can be perceived. As a musician looks into notes and hears music through their inner sensation, a Kabbalist, while reading Kabbalistic texts, senses the spiritual world within.
A person’s very first spiritual sensation when spirituality is revealed is gratitude to the Creator. One begins to sense this higher power and sees how it brought them out of a dead-end existence into an infinite, flawless world of absolute awareness and perfection. It is this sensation that Kabbalist Baruch Ashlag (RABASH) transmitted through his music to the words of the psalm:
My eyes from tears
My feet from entering hell.
The great Kabbalists who wrote the holy books depict the secrets of the universe, and we are also privileged to the melodies created by the great Kabbalists Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) and his son Baruch Ashlag (RABASH). Through the language of feelings, their melodies express spiritual sensations and information.
Baal HaSulam attained all of the universe’s secrets, and depicted them in his compositions, the Sulam (Ladder) Commentary to The Zohar, Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot)… and he also implanted them in his melodies.
The existing location of the soul in the spiritual world is referred to as its root. The roots of souls differ. Souls descend into our world and incarnate in bodies. As the roots of souls differ, the objectives that each soul must complete in our world differ as well. That is why each body is nothing more than a mechanism for completing the soul’s plan of development.
The person begins to feel attracted to spirituality, a striving to one’s spiritual root, desires to attain it right now, to be able to sense all the worlds today, while still living in this world.
Kabbalistic music reveals and develops the person’s spiritual potential.
Kabbalistic melodies are not subjected to typical musical analysis. From the point of view of classical music, these melodies might appear banal in their structure and musical language.
But those with an inclination for the ascent of their souls in this lifetime, who wish to attain the upper world and the entire universe, sense in this music something beckoning them into the unexplored.
We do not know how our musical comprehension is structured. Why do we feel the major chords in a different emotional and sensible tone than the minor ones? Why do we sense the major as something brighter, more open, and happier than the minor?
Many musicians with perfect musical hearing see colors in notes, chords, and tones. No one knows how this occurs and why such associations of color, sound, taste, and sensations appear within us. No one knows the structure of our receptors, which perceive absolutely immaterial information.
Kabbalists, however, understand how these devices work within us because they know the structure of our soul. As such, Kabbalists can instill spiritual information into musical sounds. That is why Kabbalistic music is a means of infusing the inner world of the person with information of everything that surrounds them.
The music of our world contains a connection to the personal, earthly sensations, and emotions of the composers. Composers have always aspired to reflect the predicaments of creation in music, yet these attempts had never gone beyond a mere surmise or
personal feeling.
Only melodies written by Kabbalists actually enable us to enter into sensations of eternity, sensations of the soul’s movement, urging us to understand our essence as a part of one eternal universe.
Kabbalistic music is written by great Kabbalists as an expression of their spiritual sensations. It is inherently located at a high spiritual level.
A spiritual sensation cannot be forgotten. That which was played and felt once remains and can be repeated at any moment. This feeling can later be manipulated, creating more refined shades of emotion. In every melody there is a different feeling corresponding to each particular spiritual state. Due to the elevated level of its composer, each melody speaks of the ethereal as it elevates one across the spiritual world—to eternity and perfection.
Music, Melody, and Song in the Wisdom of Kabbalah - Selected Excerpts from Kabbalistic Sources
1. Baal HaSulam, “The Pleasantness of Songs and Music”
The tune is the medium between the corporeal and the spiritual, meaning that anything that is perceived in the imagination, and anything that the heart can think and contemplate, the mouth to speak, and the ear to hear are the main operators in the heart. Hence, all those discernments are corporeal, and there is not a spiritual form among them whatsoever, for were they not corporeal, they would not be felt by a corporeal being.
There is no sensation in the world that does not incorporate imagination. Since the imagination is corporeal, the feeling becomes corporeal along with it. However, the sensations that are affected by the melody do not carry with them any corporeal force or imagination, except that they connect with the sensations that are already going through that created being because of imaginations, and everything is forgotten. But now, due to the law of the melody, the old sensations emerge, without any similarity to what came before them.
This is why there is pleasantness in them, even in sad feelings. Although at the time, meaning when they were joined with imaginations that preceded them, they were very murky, now that the actions have been forgotten and imaginations remain in their place, and only the sensations are revealed, they are attributed more to spirituality and eternity, which is why there is great pleasantness in them without any murkiness at all, since eternity remains as pleasantness, as is known.
2. Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article No. 50, "Two States"
The Shechina is clothed in the whole world, and then the Creator is considered to be filling the world. Then the world is called “Shechina,” who receives from the Creator. This is called “the unification of the Creator and His Shechina,” for as the Creator gives, so the world is now occupied solely in bestowal.
It is like a sad tune. Some players know how to perform the suffering about which the tune was composed, because all melodies are like a spoken language where the tune interprets the words that the person wants to say out loud. If the tune evokes crying in the listeners to the extent that each and every one cries because of the suffering that the melody expresses, then it is called “a tune,” and everyone loves to listen to it.
However, how can people enjoy suffering? Since the tune does not point to present suffering, but to the past, meaning torments that have already passed, were sweetened, and received their fill, for this reason, people like to listen to them, for it indicates the sweetening of the judgments, that the sufferings one had were sweetened. This is why these sufferings are sweet to hear, and then the world is called “Shechina.”
3. RABASH, Article No. 238, "The Joy of the Groom and Bride"
The joy from the dance is like a sad tune that people enjoy. The tune depicts a collection of sufferings that have already passed, but now we enjoy the benefits we gained from the suffering. Likewise, the dance contains joy that after all the ups and downs they went through, they nonetheless remained standing firm in their place.
4. RABASH, Article No. 7 (1990), "What Are the Times of Prayer and Gratitude in the Work?"
Our sages said, “The Shechina [Divinity] is present only out of joy,” as it is written, “And he will be as a musician playing, and the spirit of the Lord shall be upon him.” It follows that the primary time when one is rewarded with instilling the Shechina is specifically the time of wholeness, for specifically at the time of wholeness is the time when he can receive his soul.
5. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Bnei Machshava Tova
The melody is only a form of revelation of the soul and its feelings. It is revealed in the words that one says to one’s friend about his thoughts and feelings of sorrow and of joy, and even more so in his voice. As it is said in the holy books as evidence of that, when one’s sorrow increases, he can no longer speak, and he only cries out and weeps with his voice. Therefore, the tune, which is happy or bitter sounds, awakens the person’s feelings in which the sparks and organs of the soul are revealed.
6. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Bnei Machshava Tova
When you are in the company of Hassidim [members of the Hassidut movement] when they play music, whether during prayer, or a meal, or in some other way, sing along with them, not only to make a sound, as in, “She has lifted up her voice against me” (Jer. 12:8), etc., only to bring out your soul and elevate it, as in “Then it happened that when the musician played, the spirit of the Lord was upon him,” a kind of tune of the Huppah [wedding canopy], which copulates the groom and the bride.
7. Talks of Rabbi Nachman, 273
It is good for a person to accustom himself to revive himself with some tune, since a tune is a great and sublime thing indeed.
8. Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 26
When the point below appears, the Creator goes out to stroll with the righteous in the Garden of Eden because the door is open and the Shechina [Divinity] says all her songs and praises. This is why David’s violin plays by itself, without any composition except for the trembling of the northern wind.
9. Zohar for All, Beresheet [Genesis], "Tastes [Taamim], Dots [Nekudot], and Letters [Otiot]", Item 15
“The educated will shine” are letters and dots, ZON and YESHSUT, and illuminate with all three phases of tastes—upper, middle, and lower:
1) As the brightness, the melodies of the tastes, the upper tastes above the letters.
2) The firmament is the tastes that expand in the expansion of the melody. They are lower tastes, below the letters, the level of Hassadim for clothing of Hochma, at which time the Mochin spread to the lower ones in their entire wholeness.
3) “Those who lead the many to righteousness” are those ceasing tastes, comma and dash, which stop the melody as they journey. These are the middle tastes inside the letters, since the comma and dash are inside the line, which is an incorporation of the three sowings in them. This is why the word is heard, when the Mochin are heard and dispensed upon the
lower ones.
The Song of the Future
10. RABASH, Article No. 24 (1985), "Three Times in the Work"
If he sees that there is a valid way to achieve the goal, although he has not achieved wholeness, if the confidence of the goal illuminates for him he can enjoy in the present as though the Ohr Makif shines for him now in the Kelim (vessels).
Baal HaSulam said similarly about the words of our sages, “Righteous say psalms about the future,” meaning that the righteous can say psalms about what is destined to come to them later. That is, they believe that in the end they will be rewarded with wholeness, and based on that they say psalms, even though they have not yet attained wholeness.
11. RABASH, Article No. 9 (1987), “One’s Greatness Depends on the Measure of One’s Faith in the Future”
When a person wants nothing of the King except to bestow upon the King, and pays attention to what He thinks, an inspiration from above comes upon him by itself when he engages in singing and praising of the King, to the extent that he has prepared himself.
12. RABASH, Article No. 1 (1991), "What Is, 'We Have No Other King But You,' in the Work?
Is written (Psalms 89), “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, generation after generation I will make known Your faith with my mouth.” We should understand the meaning of “sing forever.” How can one sing to the Creator when he sees that he is full of faults and his heart is not whole with the Creator, and he feels far from the Creator? And sometimes, he even wants to escape the campaign. How can he say that this is the Lord’s mercies and he is singing about this to the Creator? […]
This is the meaning of the words, “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever.” That is, on one hand, he is happy and is singing about this. On the other hand, he sees that he must repent. In other words, he must ask of the Creator to bring him closer and give him the desire to bestow, which is a second nature.
13. RABASH, Article No. 22 (1991),”What Is 'A Lily Among the Thorns,' in the Work?"
Why they must sing to the Creator and thank Him. Does the Creator need flesh and blood to thank Him? The answer is that the created beings should know that all that they have is what the Creator gave them in order to thereby achieve the love of the Creator. Through love of the Creator, they will always be in Dvekut with the Creator.
14. RABASH, Article No. 22 (1991),”What Is 'A Lily Among the Thorns,' in the Work?"
Those who have been rewarded with faith, called Malchut, and the quality of “Earth.” “Sing to God,” they should sing for the Creator awarding them with the quality of faith. Also, Malchut is called God, as it is written, “Sing praises to the Lord, Selah. To Him who rides upon the highest, ancient heavens; He will speak forth with His voice, a mighty voice.”
15. RABASH, Article No. 24, (1985) "Three Times in the Work"
In The Zohar (Vayelech, item 47): “Rabbi Elazar said, ‘Israel are destined to say psalms from below upward and from above downward, and tie the knot of faith, as it is written, ‘Then Israel shall sing this singing.’ It does not say, ‘sang,’ but ‘Shall sing,’ meaning in the future.’” It follows that man should receive illumination from Ohr Makif, which is from the future, after the present, and needs to draw it into the present.
This is why all three times—past, present, and future—are included in the present.
Singing to the Creator
16. Psalms 105:2-3
Sing to Him, chant for Him; tell of all His wonders.
Glorify yourselves in His holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
17. Zohar for All, VaYakhel [And Moses Assembled], "Three Watches", Item 25
When the sun comes out, in the daytime, Israel sing below, and the sun above. When the sun journeys in his wheels, a pleasant voice begins and sings, as it is written, “Thank the Lord, call out His name; make known His deeds among the peoples. Sing to Him, chant to Him.” Israel praise the Creator in the day. If the people of the world were not hard-hearted and blind, they would not be able to face the pleasant sound of the wheel of the sun as it journeys and praises the Creator.
18. Zohar for All, Noah, "The Earth Is the Lord's, and All that Fills It", Item 168
“For David, a psalm: The earth is the Lord’s, and all that fills it; the world, and its dwellers.” “For David, a psalm” indicates that he was citing poetry, and afterward the spirit of holiness was on him. If it is written, “A psalm for David,” it indicates that first, the spirit of holiness was on him, and then he cited the poetry.
19. RABASH, Article No. 146, "Suffering and Joy"
One must be grateful to the Creator for rewarding him by giving him a thought and desire for the least thing in Kedusha, since he sees that he is not more worthy or important than the rest of the people, yet the Creator awarded him with this. Hence, such a state commits him to thank the Creator, meaning that this is the time to give singing and praising to the Creator.
20. Psalms 150
Halleluyah [praise the Lord]!
Praise God in His holiness; praise Him in the firmament of His might.
Praise Him for His might; praise Him according to His great greatness.
Praise Him with the sound of the Shofar [festive horn]; praise Him with the harp and lyre.
Praise Him with drums and dancing; praise Him with strings and organ [string instrument, not modern organ].
Praise Him with small cymbals; praise Him with big cymbals.
The entire soul shall praise the Lord, Halleluyah!
