The breaking of the common soul really was a great thing. Through the breaking, the Creator gave us an opportunity to exist and express ourselves. After all, if the parts of the common soul weren’t distanced from one another, we wouldn’t be able to build the Creator’s image and perceive ourselves in relation to others. We would simply dissolve within the Light as it is impossible to distinguish anything within one unified object.

The creation can’t exist within one whole; we can only exist when there is us and something else. Our perception results from the distance between us. We can’t attain anything in absolute light or in complete darkness.

For this reason, the breaking gives us the opportunity to attain and experience existence. Otherwise, if we were to find ourselves in absolute and total darkness, we wouldn’t sense anything and we wouldn’t be able to feel that we exist. This is because all of our senses are based on perception between two opposites, such as sound versus silence or scented versus unscented. If there were “silence” in all of our senses, we couldn’t perceive ourselves.

So, the breaking happened precisely to give the creation the opportunity to exist and perceive itself. This really is a divine patent. We fill the space where the breaking took place. We fill the empty space between the parts that seemingly appear to be distanced from one another with the Light. In reality, however, it was the Creator who disappeared from the single whole in order to give us the opportunity to reach that same unity independently.

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Kabbalists who lived before the author of The Book of Zohar Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi) performed corrections in the common system of souls on a higher level. Rashbi’s system is connected to us directly, and for this reason we treat The Book of Zohar as our primary source. By carrying out corrections in the system of broken souls, Kabbalists created special connections in it, preparations for a general correction. They revive this system, bringing Light to it through the channels of connection that they have established within.

Therefore, we can now rise and correct ourselves within this system. By correcting itself, a soul not only changes itself; it also brings about its corrections into all the other souls. Yet, there are certain souls, like the soul of Rashbi, which play a principal role in correction: They complete a specific stage and prepare the foundation for all the corrections that follow.

It seems to us that a corrected soul is some isolated part of the system. However, this is incorrect. The whole system of souls is integral, like a holographic picture, each part contains the whole picture. On the other hand, every part is present in the whole picture as well as in each of its parts. I am part of the system of souls, the whole system is within me, and I am also included in each part of the system.

The soul is not a unit of the whole – it is “dispersed” into the whole system of creation. It penetrates the entire Malchut of the World of Infinity, with its qualities. This holds true for every one of us. When each person supplements everyone else, we get one large sphere of souls, where the system of Rashbi acts in providing correction for it. It is through this system that we receive the Light that corrects and fulfills us.

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A question I received: How can I simultaneously fulfill my desire to receive pleasure, on one hand, and identify myself with the Creator, on the other? One contradicts the other.

My Answer: You should understand that the desire to receive pleasure originates from two qualities: bestowal and reception.

If one exists within only one of the properties, then he is a “slave,” and in this case, he doesn’t even understand his actions. Just like any person “off the street” who simply follows his desires like anyone else does, he believes that they are his own for his entire life until he dies.

The Creator’s desire is being fulfilled at all times until a person reaches the condition under which a new desire, the desire to bestow, emerges among his other common, regular desires. Only after this desire for bestowal appears does creation begin to sense the Creator.

The same thing happens to us; we start to feel that besides our actions there is also Someone who acts from within us. Those two sensations allow me to realize that my desires are, in fact, not mine, but rather, belong to Him, and that it is He who placed His hand on me and makes all sorts of changes within me that I am forced to obediently follow.

At this point, I begin to relate to my current state from two points of view:

1. Recognizing that He acts within me, which is what I call “my nature.”

2. Searching for: What is His intention? What does He want? Why does He do this to me?

In other words, at the end of the first state (Alef), we start sensing Someone who created; we start sensing the root or zero state (Shoresh). At this point, the phase Alef is willing to transform itself into the state Bet (the second state) which is a state of giving, bestowal.

Now, we all are at the transition stage from Alef to Bet. Completing the transition depends upon the degree to which we feel the Creator who acts within us. From this moment on, we have to realize that all our desires are not really ours. When I feel, “I am thirsty, ” I must immediately realize, “That’s false! It is not me who is thirsty!”

It means that at each level I rise above my desire, and thus connect with the Creator who is present within my desires. I rise above it and make an effort to figure out what He wants of me. Afterwards, we can do whatever we want with our desires, but only after we observe them, perceive them, arrive at this decision, and then proceed further.

I develop the feeling that it is the Creator who initiates my desires in me and I am simply the one who automatically follows them. This stems from my understanding that He is present within me and it is He who instigates my desires and then fulfills them.

“Where am I in this picture?” This is how a person gets to understand his life in all of its complicity and realizes that he cannot be judged or rewarded and that there is neither hell nor paradise for him, nothing at all.

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Malchut, creation, can never attain Keter, the Creator Himself. He is revealed to creation in all the other Sefirot, which separate the Creator and Malchut. In response, Malchut achieves similarity to Him in the Reflected Light in all the Sefirot. These forms of Malchut are called attainments or names of the Creator.

Everything that happens and everything that we sense are manifestations of the Creator who wishes to show Himself to us in this form. Around me, I see inanimate nature, vegetative nature, and animals: the material ones and the spiritual ones. All of these are forms of the Light, which are revealed this way in my desire, in Malchut; these are the forms of the Creator in me. These forms can be a direct reflection in me, which does not demand my similarity to Him. Yet, these reflected forms are not true, which is why our world is so limited and imaginary.

However, when I begin to take on forms that correspond to Him, they will be called by the names of the Creator in me, since they will be similar to His bestowal. However, this is not His bestowal, but mine. If I create a form in me that is similar to His bestowal, and His bestowal clothes into it, then our joint bestowal is called my spiritual degree, our adhesion, or attainment of the Creator.

On my path upward I go through many such names or images of the Creator. All my attainments are names of the Creator.

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It is a known fact that the more we research ancient Biblical literature, the more we realize that its traditional dating is correct. The philosophers that made groundless claims that The Book of Zohar was written in the 11^th century in Spain or even later in the Middle Ages, recently have had to budge and grudgingly concede to what is written in The Zohar itself, which is that it was authored by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in the 2^nd century.

One common argument supporting the more recent writing of The Zohar was that the vocabulary used in The Zohar did not appear in the lexicon until much later than the 2^nd century. However, recent research of ancient texts enabled by new technologies sheds light on a wealth of documents written in the ancient language of Aramaic.

In a report of these findings in the University of Chicago News, one of the researchers in this Perepolis Fortification Archive Project at the Oriental Institute, Aramaic scholar Annalisa Azzoni, assistant professor at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, states, “We don’t have many archives of this size. A lot of what’s in these texts is entirely fresh, but this also changes what we already knew. There are words I know were used in later dialects, for example, but I didn’t know they were used at this time or this place, Persia in 500 B.C. For an Aramaicist, this is quite an important discovery.”

I want to believe that in the recent future all misconceptions about Kabbalah will vanish and we will be able to use it to better the world.

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Everything we have done until today was just a game where spiritual forces influenced us from Above, leading us through all the historical phases that we have gone through. These forces caused the development of nations, souls, and civilizations, and they governed us without asking whether we wanted it or not.

However, now we have completed our preparation for correction, and from today on, we must start to carry out the correction. This is why for the first time in history, the science of Kabbalah is becoming revealed to the whole world. It is the method of correction, of revealing the Creator, the Light, the force of correction. It is now becoming revealed because this is the first time that we must lead ourselves to correction.

From now on there are two paths laying before us: the natural path (Beito) and the path where we accelerate our development (Ahishena). If we participate in our own correction, then we will take the good path, but if we don’t desire to carry out the part incumbent upon us, then we will lag behind and will perceive our laziness as suffering.

Then, instead of feeling the Upper Forces as good and helpful to us in our correction, we will feel our own uncorrected desires in the form of various problems. These can range from minor troubles with our families and health to world wars and self-extermination. This is what all the Kabbalists have warned us about, as well as the prophets before them. All the prophets spoke about the age of the Messiah, which has now arrived.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” Item 15: When the Creator said unto Moses, “Make the Tabernacle,” Moses was bewildered; he did not know what to do until the Creator vividly showed him, as it is written, “And see and make them after their pattern, which is being shown to you in the mountain.” “In their pattern” means that the Creator showed Moses everything in its higher, spiritual shape, and each of the spiritual shapes above was making its shape similar to the fictitious shape that was made below, on earth. This is how Moses knew.

This is what our work consists of because the spiritual world doesn’t have a form and we don’t know what Upper Light is by itself. This notion doesn’t exist at all separately from the creation. We can attain and define it only in relation to ourselves and through our sensations. However, our sensations are imaginary because we always feel reactions to an outside influence. We will never find out what actually is happening outside of us because we can’t extract ourselves from our perceiving senses.

It turns out that one can perceive properly only to the extent of the similarity of his properties to the spiritual properties. When the properties of man and the Creator coincide, man reveals the Creator to the extent of that similarity. Initially, we only perceive the imaginary form of this world. Our work consists of rising above it and asking for the Upper spiritual form to clothe in it. Once we have these two forms where one is confined within the other, we will acquire the proper perception of the world.

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The process of the world’s correction is a lengthy path consisting of various stages, where every soul fulfills its own part. We have gone through the breaking of the common soul of Adam HaRishon, then the Babylonian Exile, a spiritual birth, and the subsequent fall from the spiritual level during the destruction of the First Temple. This was followed by a resurrection on a new spiritual level, and then another fall during the times of the Second Temple.

Now we are nearing a state where all the desires intended for correction are completely ready for it. After all the ascents, descents, breakings, and revolutions that we have experienced throughout our entire history, all of our desires have become intermixed. As a result, every person contains both bestowing and receiving desires in the right combination. The desires are now fit for correction, and this is what we now have to carry out.

Therefore, the objective now facing us is correction. This is the first time when we are not operating as matter without a will, which undergoes something without participating in it. Rather, now we must take part in our own correction with full awareness, with our own efforts, and according to our own request. We have to realize the correction by virtue of our own forces, to the extent we are allowed to do so by the Upper Governance.

This is why for the first time in history we are starting to study, “Who are we? And how does each of us have to change, as well as all of us together?” The science of Kabbalah teaches us how to live correctly in the reality where we exist.

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Before his sin, Adam HaRishon had attained the world only in one form, without its imaginary reflection in this world. His entire attainment was inside of Bina. He was born already circumcised, which means disconnected (cut off) from Malchut. This is why he saw only the true form of bestowal which was in Bina. However, all other forms of attainment of the Creator take place inside the connection between Malchut and Bina.

The reflection of Bina in Malchut is called an imaginary image while Bina, itself, is the true and authentic form. Malchut is called Bina’s mirror. Bina and Malchut, the true and the imaginary realities, are connected together up until the very End of Correction. We can’t even say that truth is really truth because we always attain the limited Malchut within Bina; ouBina and Malchutr perception is based on a reflection of Bina we receive inside of Malchut. However, the imaginary reality is not a mirage, but rather, a reflection which has true existence.

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Preparation to the Study of The Zohar
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The Book of Zohar — Selections, Chapter “BeHukotai (In My Statutes),” Item 42
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Article — “The Individual and the Nation,” Lesson 1
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“Beit Shaar HaKavanot,” Item 31, Lesson 11
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