Chapter 1 - Part 9 Going Up

There is also another process, however, which is essential to understand. This is the intellectual process of going up (from below to above, lower level to upper level), the process of the student trying to learn from the teacher (as opposed to the teacher trying to explain which is what we’ve been talking about up until now). For unlike the teacher who already grasps the "point", the essence of the concept and only must bring it down, the student starts with nothing. He must begin with the lowest level, the teacher’s length of Binah, the teacher’s explanations, and work his way up to eventually reach the essence of the concept, and eventually even come out with new concepts of his own, from his own Maskil.

So where the teacher might be able to meditate through connecting with the concept through his Daas or Kesser and meditating on it (we will get more into the particulars of the different. types of meditation soon), the student can not do this, for he does not yet grasp the essence of the concept and therefore cannot connect with it. The student must use a different approach. Since he does not grasp the essence of the concept, the Hokhma, he must focus on the explanations, the Binah. He must do Hisbonenus or analyzation. He must turn the explanations, particulars and details over and over in his mind, reviewing and scrutinizing them so that he may reach the Hokhma, and then, being on the teacher level himself, he can connect with the Hokhma and use the Daas type of meditation.

(It should be noted that the above is not only talking about the interaction between 2 people, but also about the interaction inside of each person as well. Essentially, we all have both characteristics; we are all sometimes teacher and sometimes student. One person can be a business student and a math professor at the same time. Even in one subject, one is usually both student and teacher, as is known that the best teachers are those who have never stopped being students, those who are constantly learning new things in their field. For our purposes, however, it is the meditation of the student, Hisbonenus (analyzation), which is the more important to understand, because it is the student who awakens the teacher to come out of himself. As they say in supermarkets "The Customer always comes first" - without demand, what good is all the supply in the world? In addition, in order to reach the level of a teacher, one must first accomplish the level of a student. As it is known that a good teacher must have been a good student first.

Also, the whole point of our going into the human intellect is to use it as an allegory to understand the way G-dliness comes down through the Hishtalshelus (the chain of creation) to create the world. This is like the part of the teacher, the giver. We, humanity, act the part of the student, the receiver. And therefore, it is of utmost importance that we understand the part of the student, so that we may understand our part in the world - refining physicality and turning the mundane world into a "home" for G-dliness, which is the whole purpose of creation. We must learn how to use Hisbonenus, analytical meditation, the meditation of the student to refine ourselves and the world around us to be able to receive the G-dly presence in our physical world, much like the student, through analyzation receives the spiritual "point" of the teacher’s concept in his physical piece of meat known as the mind.

So now we begin to see why the term "Hear O’ Israel" is used over "see O’ Israel", the lower Binah (Hisbonenus) over the higher Hokhma and Kesser (the teacher’s type of meditation) because it is particularly through the meditation of the student, through Hisbonenus or analytical meditation, that we must get started on our way to getting closer to G-d. And Hisbonenus is a level of Binah, hearing, as we will see).

(Please note: . Rb. Mendel's system uses a slightly different approach than the New Improved Kabbalah Series. These do not negate each other but are different ways of looking at the same thing and actually complement each other - Rabbi Yossi Markel)