DaMoshe:
“CS: I’d use your medical analogy, but turn it against you. If a 3 year old would read a medical text cover to cover, would you trust what the kid says regarding medicine? No, because they can’t hope to understand it.
Learning chassidus/kabalah as the primary type of Torah is like a 3 year old reading a medical text. You can’t hope to understand it, because the foundations are in Chumash, Mishnayos, and Gemara. You may think you’re an expert, but you’re not, because you’re missing the foundations. You just twist the words to suit your goals – just like the story I wrote earlier, painting the targets around the arrows.”
Chassidus is not the same as kabbala, it’s basically the essence of Torah which can bring together all the other parts and apply it to human understanding. (You’re welcome to learn kutres inyana shel Toras HaChassidus for more info and sources.) Because it always ties down to the practical, it’s not dangerous. I think what is dangerous is litvishe people coming with their understanding of Hashem’s Unity, hashgocha protis, Rebbe, Neshama, yid etc, and then seeing a one liner here or there- they’re the ones who seem to have difficulty understanding Chassidus. It’s not that they’re less smart. Is that they may have less education on these topics, as the essence of them is not discussed well in nigle, and they just throw these things around like a joke. Like the Atzmus sicha.