Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, also known as Baal HaSulam (after his Sulam commentary to The Book of Zohar ), is the most renowned Kabbalist of the 20th century. He is the only Kabbalist of the 20th century who wrote commentaries to The Zohar and the writings of the Ari.
The first text that Ashlag wrote is Panim Meirot uMasbirot . This book was a result of 3 factors:
1) After Ashlag attained spirituality and understood that he lived in the era when humanity would start needing the wisdom of Kabbalah for its spiritual progress, he saw how humanity doesn't understand the wisdom of Kabbalah properly, and felt a need to explain it in a way that humanity could understand.
2) The wisdom of Kabbalah was only available in languages that people with spiritual attainment could understand and use, and people without spiritual attainment had no access to understanding.
3) Panim Meirot uMasbirot is commentaries to the Tree of Life by the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria). Ashlag saw that the Ari's Tree of Life was written in a way that was inaccessible to the public. Not only did it take three generations for the Ari's writings to become organized and printed, but the Ari himself did not write his own texts, but spoke and taught, and his disciple, Rabbi Chaim Vital, was the one who wrote from the Ari's teachings .
In short, Ashlag saw that there was a rising need for the wisdom of Kabbalah by humanity, and that it was written in a way that was impossible for humanity to understand and use, and thus he felt the need to start writing texts that made the wisdom of Kabbalah usable by humanity, and also that explained how to approach the wisdom of Kabbalah.
This was the reason for Ashlag's writing of his first text, Panim Meirot uMasbirot , and also the introduction to the text, "Introduction to Panim Meirot uMasbirot ," which explains how one should prepare oneself toward the book.
This was the first among many books and articles that Ashlag would continue to write throughout his life, each one further opening the wisdom of Kabbalah making it accessible and understandable to the public.
