I receive many responses regarding how people feel about reading The Book of Zohar. In the science of Kabbalah a person teaches himself; he is the child and the teacher at the same time.

We have to discover a whole new world where our development starts from scratch, from a total absence of perception. We gain an increasingly greater perception of it until we attain all of it, and in the process, we go through the same stages of development as children: we experience confusion, look at the world childishly, and perceive it strangely or incompletely compared to adults. We don’t really understand what we are doing and what’s the use of it all. But meanwhile, we develop.

We have to go through the phases of development labeled 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4; when we reach the fourth level (Behina Dalet), we attain our root, the primary cause. Then we understand “why and how.” We understand the path we went through and how we have to react to it. But this attainment comes only at the end.

That’s why you don’t show a fool a job half done, since halfway through it looks even worse than in the beginning. It’s similar to how pieces of material appear before they are sown together into a suit, or a car that has been disassembled into parts, or a patient’s body in the middle of an operation. We are unable to understand the final result since we must first develop the desires and qualities necessary for seeing this. It says in Item 137 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot” that heroes are those who are patient, and they are the only ones who will reach the King’s castle and enter through its gates.

We have to accept all the stages of this path where we start out like small children, having no understanding of what we are doing and what is happening to us. Sometimes we feel new qualities emerging within us, and sometimes we feel completely empty. Throughout it all, we must remain patient and aim for inner development.

The science of Kabbalah is called the inner part of the Torah because it talks about a person who develops his own desires. When one’s desires go through the four levels of development, then on the fourth level one reveals the spiritual world. Therefore, all our attention and focus must be aimed inside ourselves. We must develop inner sensations along the four phases of desire, together with the mind that develops alongside.

Everything The Zohar speaks about is intended for developing our inner sensation. All our work lies in developing the sensation of the spiritual reality from the point in the heart. This point does not feel any spirituality yet, which is why we don’t understand the words and notions we read in this book. We are just trying, with the help of the “Sulam Commentary,” to imagine what we read in the form of three lines: the right, left and middle lines, and to discern whether something is higher or lower in the ten main Sefirot, whether it’s external or internal, Galgalta ve Eynaim or AHP, Tzimtzum Bet or Parsa.

If I don’t understand what these names mean, then I must at least try to see the geometrical relationships between them so that some kind of picture will emerge. In this way I gradually reveal the true perception of reality and understand that it exists only inside of me. I understand the significance of the material existence in relation to the spiritual one and find out which one of them is the true reality and which is just a dream.

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