Evening Zohar Lesson – 02.13.10
Posted on February 13th, 2010
The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Tazria (When A Woman Delivers),” Item 80
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Tazria (When A Woman Delivers),” Item 80
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You don’t know what stages you are going through while studying The Zohar, and there is no need to be concerned with this. Your only objective is to use The Zohar as “a miraculous tool.”
Whether you feel good or bad, whether this book attracts you or pushes you away, try to keep going. Patience and continuity on this path is what will bring you success.
The most important thing is to desire to attract the Light of Correction, which will affect you so you will begin feeling and seeing the connection between your study and this Light. It won’t be a miracle anymore, but will become a revealed system. Gradually you’ll understand how it acts and how you are structured; how the Light can affect you and change your desires, thoughts, and intentions.
Also, you’ll see how you affect the Upper System that shines upon you, as well as how your desires and intentions can evoke greater or smaller Light. You will begin to be aware of this system. Just like in any field of study, initially one studies only the external connections without knowing why things are the way they are. But then one penetrates deeper into the system, begins feeling it, and builds a model of it inside oneself. And thus, one begins living in that new world.
Therefore, we can understand spirituality only by building an equivalence to it inside ourselves. If I want to understand how any machine or system works, then it’s not enough to just study it from outside. I need to build its model inside me in order to feel and understand it though my mind. Then I will understand how it works.
However, when building the spiritual model, I have to acquire the forces and qualities first, and then use them to build a model of the spiritual system. In other words, I need to acquire spiritual properties and then the system will gradually emerge and become revealed in me.
Then I will no longer need to make efforts in order to force myself to study. I will understand the entire system of Partzufim, Sefirot, and worlds, and how to purposefully affect them.
This way I will enter the science of Kabbalah and understand what The Zohar is talking about. It will guide me and tell me, “Go there, turn here, and see how it works.” That is how I will learn.
I will feel this system and work with it and all the Partzufim, worlds, and Sefirot. I will begin to reveal its internal force, called the Creator.
We don’t know the qualities of the Creator Himself. We see Him the way He is perceived by our souls, meaning the way He is revealed to us when Malchut (the soul) unites with Him through Yesod – just through one point. Due to its unification with Yesod, it reveals the “picture of the Creator,” something that exists in front of it, inside itself.
This works much like an optical lens through which the Light comes to us. The rays focus in one point, from which we reveal Light in Malchut. This focus is Yesod, the only point of contact, and its revelation occurs in Malchut.
After passing through Yesod, the rays disperse and create a picture in us, in Malchut. The picture shows us what exists before this point, yet we don’t know the Upper System as we have no connection to it.
However, by adjoining it from this one point, which is the lowest point in the system, we reveal the whole picture of what exists above us. Thus, we only need to find contact with this one point; this is our point of contact with the Upper Level, Yesod, and in order for this to happen we all need to unite from the side of Malchut, thereby becoming similar to Yesod. We have to become one man with one heart, with one goal, intention, and desire in the mind and in the heart.
Through this point of contact with Yesod, through one drop of unification that we reach, the whole Upper World that is situated outside of us, becomes revealed to us. It is written, “Make Me an opening the size of a needle-eye, and I will open the Upper Gates of Light for you.” Through these gates we will reveal the whole Upper System, but the contact occurs in the smallest point of focus. Except for this, nothing else is felt in Yesod.
Everything else is revealed in Malchut, which is therefore called a picture (reflection) of the Creator.
Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #23: “You That Love the Lord, Hate Evil”
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“Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 23, Lesson 66
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Tazria (When A Woman Delivers),” Item 62
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Tazria (When A Woman Delivers),” Item 42
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The Zohar, Chapter “Metzorah (The Leper),” Item 6: When the night grows dark and the gates close, the Nukva of the great abyss awakens and several armies of damagers are in the world.
This is an inner state that can come to a person on a sunny afternoon, where a person will feel that he is in the state of night, in the dark, and under the power of evil forces. It is good if a person realizes that it he is in the state of night; it is better than thinking that everything is ok and success awaits him.
At that time, the Creator puts all the people in the world (in a person) to sleep. He puts to sleep even all those who have awakening of life, meaning the righteous (in a person).
This describes a state where all the thoughts and desires through which I once united with others and aspired to reveal the Creator, wishing to be corrected from Above, also fade and vanish.
And the spirits roam the world and announce things to people in their dreams. Some of them are lies and some of them are true. And people become connected in their sleep.
If it was a pure lie, we would be able to immediately reveal it. Therefore, if a person wishes to pass off a lie for the truth, he needs to first say something that is true and then tell the lie. Then others will believe him.
Chapter “Metzora,” Item 7: And when the north wind awakens and the night divides, a flame bursts out and strikes under the wings of the rooster, and he calls. Then the Creator enters the Garden of Eden to play with the righteous.
The “rooster” indicates a person’s inner force of overcoming. This is the force that one uses during the work in the night, before sunrise.
And an announcer comes out and calls, and all the people in the world (in a person) awaken in their beds. And those with awakening of life rise up from their beds to the work of their Master, and engage in Torah and in praising the Creator until the morning comes.
This is how a person experiences the spiritual processes happening inside him.
The Zohar talks only about one person, inside of whom the whole world is situated. This person is each of us. When we study the perception of reality in Kabbalah, we learn that everything that seems to exist outside of us is actually inside us.
This whole enormous world, including the inanimate level of nature, plants, animals, and the people around us, are actually all inside man. All of these things are the qualities and forces of one’s soul which seem to exist outside, but actually they are inside.
To the extent a person develops, the whole picture of the world, which he sees outside himself, starts to seem more and more illusory to him. Therefore, our world is called an unreal or imaginary world, and our whole reality is called a dream.
For example, right now we are reading a story about Joseph who is located in Egypt along with Pharaoh, and about how Joseph’s brothers come and he greets them. As we read this, we have to understand that we are talking about the forces of our soul, which exist within every person in the world regardless of gender, age, or nationality.
The same forces exist in each of us because the Creator created an enormous desire to enjoy that consists of ten Sefirot, each of which, in turn, includes ten more Sefirot, and so on until infinity. This desire breaks and separates into a tremendous multitude of parts which are all remote from each other. They are separate souls, where each of us holds his own personal soul inside.
Therefore, each person includes everyone else since there are ten Sefirot inside him, and all the parts are connected to the ten Sefirot of the common soul and the ten Sefirot of the soul of each separate person. It turns out that everything that’s written in Kabbalah books talks about each of us – the soul of every person.
Therefore, when reading The Zohar‘s description of something that seemingly occurs outside of us, such as historical events, descriptions of nature, people, and animals, we have to try to interpret all of it on the inner level. All these stories are talking about what happens inside of me – the forces of my soul, my desires and qualities, which are in opposition to one another or connected to each other through certain relationships and calculations.
I need to enter and study this inner system of my soul because by learning and realizing it, I will begin to see the Creator’s qualities and forces, through which He influences me. I will see Him inside me, activating all my forces.
Therefore, when we read The Zohar, we need to concentrate inside ourselves, trying to see the forces of our soul behind every word.
A question I received: What is the “dream” that The Zohar describes?
My Answer: The sense through which we perceive everything (our vessel or Kli) is called “the will to enjoy.” We perceive ourselves and our environment, as well as the whole world, inside this desire. We only feel what this sense is able to “catch,” meaning only the things it decides are necessary and that are similar to it.
Therefore, we don’t feel anything spiritual, since spirituality is all bestowal and love. We simply don’t feel this other world, which is arranged according to bestowal rather than reception. Our current state cannot even be called a dream compared to the spiritual state, because it is below even that level. Our state is called the Kista de Hayuta – a thin illumination which revives us.
This illumination is a Reshimo (informational gene) that gives us a sensation of existing in some reality. But this is only in order for us to then work on rising to the spiritual sensation. The reality that is now presented to us by our senses will then fade, since this feeling is given to us on purpose, in order for us to feel independent of the Creator when we undergo our spiritual development. It enables us to develop on our own.
The level of a “dream” is situated above the reality of this world. In addition, there are many types of dreams – good ones and bad ones. For example, The Zohar tells us about the dreams of Pharaoh’s ministers as well as the dreams of Joseph.
One type of dream is when a person enters it deliberately as he descends from a higher level to a lower level, which is the level of a dream. There is a dream when a state called “night” comes, or spiritual darkness. Then we sleep and dream about a part of the Upper World.
On one hand, a dream comes from unifying with a higher degree. And on the other hand, in order for this to happen one needs to lose the lower degree. In any case, we are talking about states of our desire. The desire may be situated on a level that is completely detached from spirituality – in this world, or on a higher level of being slightly connected to spirituality. The latter is called a “dream.”
A dream is not mysticism; it is the reality of a person who ascends up the spiritual degrees. Either he advances on his own and deliberately enters the state of sleep, or this state is given to him from Above.
We must constantly try to find the qualities described in The Book of Zohar inside us. Unless one does this, one does not feel the inner battle that is occurring inside him.
The more we try to imagine the qualities described in The Zohar inside us (such as the Creator, the wicked, the righteous, those who repent and those who do not repent), the more immersed we become in material images, which confuse us. And this, in turn, will give us an opportunity to exert greater effort.
If we do not push ourselves to discern these qualities inside ourselves and will instead simply listen to the text calmly, without searching for anything inside us, then the obstacles will also be very minor and vague. This will be a completely different quality of effort.
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