The goal of creation is to acquire the quality of bestowal, and through it to attain adhesion with the Creator. We exist in the opposite quality, in the intention to receive for our own sake.

In order to correct our intention from reception to bestowal, we have to attract upon us the Light that reforms, that brings us back to the source, the Creator. This Light is on a higher level than we are, and it continually corrects us, raising us to higher levels of bestowal and love.

The Light comes to us during the time when we unite together in our hearts, in our desires, the intentions to become corrected, and when we study the same corrected system that the Kabbalists tell us about. By studying this system and wishing for the description in these texts to happen to us, to become revealed between us, we thereby attract the same Light that is inside of it on the levels of the proper connection between the creatures. Then we correct our connection and enter the same states that the book tells us about. And this means that the book becomes revealed.

The book with the strongest influence on the reader, with the greatest capability to bring him to the corrected state, to bestowal and love, is The Book of Zohar. Therefore, while reading this book, let’s desire to feel all of us together so that inside of the right connection between us we would reveal the general quality of bestowal, the One who is good and does good, the Creator who is revealed to the creatures.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/19/11, The Zohar

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Man’s Essence Is the Will to Receive

All the vessels and the bodies, both from spiritual worlds and from physical worlds, are deemed spiritual or corporeal substance, whose nature is the will to receive.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

Creation refers to appearance [relative to itself] of something that did not exist before [this realization]. This is considered existence from absence [and upon realizing it, it is called “the creature”]. Yet, how do we picture something that is not included in Him, since He is almighty and includes all of them together? And also, one does not give what is not in Him.

As we have said, the whole Creation that He created is only the Kelim (plural for Kli) of the souls, which is the will to receive. This is quite clear, since He necessarily does not have a will to receive, as from whom would He receive? Hence, this is truly a new Creation, not a trace of which existed previously, and is hence considered existence from absence [and the Creator fills it].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 4
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Man’s Essence Is the Will to Receive

The primary innovation, from the perspective of Creation, which He has created as existence from absence, applies to one aspect only defined as the “will to receive.” All other matters in the whole of Creation are not innovations at all; they are not existence from absence, but existence from existence. [They are imposed on the desire to receive by the Creator’s desire to bestow. For this reason everything consists of only these two desires: the creature’s desire to receive, the Creator’s desire to bestow, and their combination called a “human.”]
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

All the corporeal entities in our world, that is, everything within that space, be it still, vegetative, animate, a spiritual object or a corporeal object, if we want to distinguish the unique, self aspect of each of them, how they differentiate from one another even in the smallest of particles, it amounts to no more than a “desire to receive” [and hence is felt in this world].
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Man’s Essence Is the Will to Receive

The desire [to receive, to enjoy] is the [primary, only] essence of the person.
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard), Article No. 153, “A Thought Is an Upshot of the Desire”

The essence of all the details in reality is no more and no less than the will to receive [the difference between all parts of creation in all the words comes only from quantitative and qualitative differences in their desire for fulfillment].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 20

The very essence of the soul is the will to receive [pleasure, fulfillment]. And the difference we can tell between one object and another is discerned only by its will.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 21
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

A Prayer of Many

It is as our sages [a sage is the one who has attained the Creator] said: “Anyone who is saddened for the public [as for himself and before himself, exactly for this reason] is rewarded and sees the comfort of the public.” The public is called “The Holy Shechina (Divinity)” since public means a collective, meaning the assembly of Israel, since Malchut is the collection of all the souls. [That is, the one who exerts himself for the correction of the collective soul merits the comfort of seeing it].
– Baal HaSulam. Shamati (I Heard), Article No. 35, “Concerning the Vitality of Kedusha”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Love of Others Is the Means to Attain the Love of the Creator

There is no other cure for humanity but the acceptance of the commandment of the upper governance: bestowal upon others for the sake of the Creator, which consists of two stages:

1. “Love thy friend as thyself,” which…means that the measure of work to bestow upon others for the happiness of society should be no less than the measure imprinted in man to care for his own needs.
2. “And you shall love the Creator with all thy heart and soul….” This is the goal that must be before everyone’s eyes when laboring for one’s friend’s needs. This means that he labors and toils only to be liked by the Creator.
   – Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Love of Others Is the Means to Attain the Love of the Creator

In general, there are only two commandments:

1. between man and the Creator, and
2. between man and man.

Yet they both aim to bring a person to the final purpose of Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator. Furthermore, even the practical side in both of them is the same. It’s because when one performs something without any mixture of self-love, meaning without finding any benefit for himself, then one does not feel any difference whether one is working to love one’s friend or to love the Creator.
– Baal HaSulam, Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah), Item 13
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Love of Others Is the Means to Attain the Love of the Creator

With respect to a person who is still within egoism, there is no difference between the love of the Creator and the love of his fellow person. This is because anything that is beyond egoistic interests is unreal to him. … Hence, the aim of love of one’s friend is nearer and is revealed faster since it is mistake-proof and manageable.
– Baal HaSulam, Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah), Item 15

Man feels that he exists independently. But in truth, it is an illusion because everything that exists is but Him. Hence, when lying to or saddening one’s friend, one is lying to or saddening the Creator since beside one, there is only the Creator. For this reason, if one is accustomed to speak the truth, it will help him with respect to the Creator.
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard), Article #67, “Depart from Evil”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Love of Others Is the Means to Attain the Love of the Creator

One cannot deceive himself in love of friends and say that he loves them if in fact he doesn’t. Here he can examine whether he truly has love of friends or not. But with love of the Creator, one cannot examine whether his intention truly is “for the Creator” or “for himself.”
– Rabash, Rabash—the Social Writings, “Come unto Pharaoh (2)”

The correction of man’s relationship with his friend is more capable of bringing one to bestowal to the Creator because this relationship is changing and irregular, and the questions about one’s relationship with his friend surround him wherever he may turn. Hence, their cure is much more certain and their aim is closer.

Whereas the work on the correction of man’s relationships with the Creator is fixed and specific, and is not demanding, and one becomes easily accustomed to it, and everything that is done out of habit is no longer useful.
– Baal HaSulam, Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah), Item 14
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Question: What is so special about the Torah that even The Book of Zohar is just a commentary on it?

Answer: The records that Moses made on parchment are the earthly expression, through material symbols, of spiritual actions of Light on desire. Moses wrote down everything he taught his students in a book. Over the course of 40 years of wandering in the desert, they wrote down the whole Torah, going through the entire process in record, as well as in bodies, and in spirituality. This is the entire path from the Egyptian exile (earthly and spiritual), through the desert (earthly and spiritual), and into the land of Israel (earthly and spiritual). All of this came true in the connection between the root and the branch. Moses expressed this entire process in this concrete, symbolic form.

The Zohar expresses the same process on a different level, in a different form because the general desire to enjoy that the Creator created had by that time advanced several steps forward and was perfected by the influence of the Light. Therefore, this desire, which went through ascents and descents, the destruction of the First and Second Temple, the exile, and then reached the last breakage before the last exile, had to be given the method that is appropriate for the end of the exile, for our time.

That is why The Book of Zohar was written, whose authors were the successors of many generations of Kabbalists, starting from Abraham until the destruction of the Temple. Rabbi Shimon was the student of Rabbi Akiva, who revealed a great Light, and therefore he was able to express this in The Book of Zohar.

The Torah itself is divided into two parts: oral and written. This comes from the difference between Zeir Anpin and Malchut. Zeir Anpin of the world of Atzilut is the “oral Torah,” while Malchut of the world of Atzilut is the “written Torah.”

The Torah is the revelation of Light. The Light that comes to Malchut contains everything that is necessary for changing Malchut. But this Light still hasn’t come true in practice, and is therefore called “the oral Torah.” For now this is work with the screens.

Under the influence of the same Light in Malchut, inner changes take place and are impressed in Malchut, this is called “the written Torah.” This is talking only about actions of the Light in the desires from the beginning of creation and until its end. That’s because there is nothing in existence besides desires.

Among these desires some feel that they exist by themselves, separate from all the others. This is us. These desires contain qualities that can help them on the path of correction. And that is why we receive a sensation of lacking, our own lack of correction, the realization of evil. This is how we perceive ourselves.

These are exactly the desires that need to be given “the Torah”—the instructions explaining how they can participate in their own corrections out of their own free choice, how they can attract the Light by wishing to become corrected faster, instead of waiting for the Light to come and shake them up.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/11, Shamati
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