A question I received: Why do we have to understand every word in The Book of Zohar according to its spiritual meaning and not according to its simple corporeal meaning?

My Answer: We should never interpret the words of The Book of Zohar according to their corporeal meaning, since by so doing we will be lowering the Torah to the level of this world. We have to rise from the branches to the roots, from this world upward, to the spiritual world. And you are asking: Why don’t we take the spiritual world and lower it down to our world?

First of all, our world does not have the same laws as the spiritual world. The whole confusion in our reality comes from the fact that people imagine the spiritual world without existing in it, and then they clothe the spiritual into the material by force, as though they have the force of bestowal in their right hand, and the force of reception in the left, or some parts of their body are more sacred than others, and so on. All of this is false, and therefore, we are forbidden to connect the spiritual with what we understand, feel, and do in this world. There shouldn’t be any connection between the two.

There is nothing sacred in our world, including on the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels. There is also no sanctity in anything that human beings do in this world. The Book of Zohar is called a sacred book because it can help us to rise from this world, from egoism, to sanctity, bestowal, and love for the neighbor.

I am a point in the heart, which belongs to the spiritual world – the world of sanctity. This is the only point in me that is different from my whole nature, and by using a means called “the sacred book,” I can rise to the world of sanctity – to bestowal. However, it is not the paper with the typographical print in it that is called sacred, and the letters in the book are also not sacred. Sanctity is the connection between the Light and the vessel (Kli), which is symbolized by the letters. But there is nothing sacred in our world.

Our whole problem lies in the fact that we begin to attribute sanctity to a person or his actions. However, all of this is merely symbols. All the attributes for following the commandments – the Talit, Tefillin, the book of Torah, Aron Kodesh (the cabinet for storing the Torah scroll) – are just symbols of the interaction of the Lights and Kelim, the relationships between them, and the states of the soul. Thus, it is the states of the soul that are, in fact, sacred, because they hold the quality of bestowal.

A book of Torah standing in an “Aron Kodesh” is just a symbol of a spiritual essence called Zeir Anpin, and which affects the desire – Malchut (the commonality of all the souls) with the Light of sanctity, making it bestowing. Thus it corrects our souls and raises us. There is nothing in our world except symbols. We are all “like mortal animals.”

A person who subdivides the objects and actions of this world into those that are more sacred and less sacred, causes himself to leave the path of correction. These kinds of actions are called “Erev Rav,” because they halt one’s advancement to the spiritual world and the correction of one’s soul.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Zohar | Add Comment →