Question: What is the secret of reading The Book of Zohar? You say that what is written in it is about love and bestowal. However, is it possible to devote 100 volumes to that?! What is written there?

Answer: The Book of Zohar describes all the phases and stages of correction of the soul, and there are many phases and stages. They include 620 desires, each one of them requiring correction from absolute egoistic reception to absolute altruistic bestowal, from absolute hatred to absolute love.

Each one of the desires must be attached to all the rest of the desires so that they will become one single network. When a person creates this network, within it he begins to discover the upper world and the higher power, the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/5/17

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Question: What triggers negative reactions to Kabbalah? Hearing words like “Kabbalah, The Book of Zohar, hidden knowledge, and Ten Sefirot,” many people in the world and especially in Israel, throughout history and to the present day, cringe inside, feel repulsion, resistance, and even hatred. Where does this come from?

Answer: This is a natural reaction; this comes from human nature. Obviously, this is not based on differences in ideology, but on a deeper disagreement rooted in our very essence.

Even the simplest person, a vendor at a market and a university professor feel the same with respect to the word “Kabbalah,” seeing it as mysticism, black magic, or something incomprehensible that may harm and is not worth touching or even going near.

This is a natural human reaction, completely unrelated to Kabbalah. That is, this resistance was originally put into our nature, which completely rejects the wisdom of Kabbalah, even before we learn anything about it. We are repelled by the words “Kabbalah,” “Sefirot,” “Partzuf,” “upper world.”

Moreover, in my own experience teaching Kabbalah for the past 35 years, I can say that many, even very special and unique individuals, who stood out among the rest who are attracted to Kabbalah and come to study it, these individuals really wanted to grasp the depth of it, and in two-three years they suddenly feel repulsion.

This doesn’t happen in any other science. Studying with original sources, serious students, real specialists in Kabbalah, people suddenly feel that they don’t accept it and don’t want to continue. And so they leave the study and even more so, leave with a negative impression of Kabbalah.

Question: It’s interesting that other forms of Kabbalah, where there is mysticism and magic, draw a great deal of interest from people. Why these forms are liked so much?

Answer: But there are not “other forms of Kabbalah,” they are not Kabbalah at all. Any mystical teachings where they also mention words like “Partzufim” and “Sefirot” dress themselves with the name “Kabbalah.” In essence, all of philosophy came out of the science of Kabbalah as a product of inaccurate understanding.

A person’s own nature resists the science of Kabbalah. Even when he begins to familiarize himself with this science, there are many, the majority, who suddenly discover resistance within themselves, who reject and leave the study. I saw many similar examples, just as it is written, “A thousand enter the classroom and only one exits into the light.”

That is, this reaction is natural; it isn’t a special case and doesn’t mean that the teacher is bad. People leave not because they were taught badly, but because 999 out of a 1,000 were meant to leave and one was meant to stay.

Question: But why don’t people just leave, why do they become hostile to and enemies of Kabbalah?

Answer: Really, why isn’t the science of Kabbalah like physics or mathematics where a person loses interest and simply leaves? The thing is that Kabbalah touches the very inner essence of a person, focuses on his desires, pleasures, repulsions, feelings, and on the fact that he must rise above his sensations, study himself, and perform “open heart surgery” on himself.

He must open his heart, feelings, and reason and begin to dissect himself with a scalpel, as if this is being done by a stranger, examining his desires and thoughts completely objectively like an external observer. These kinds of things are not intrinsic to our nature and that’s why it’s not easy to accept.
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From KabTV’s “Origins of Negative Reactions to Kabbalah,” 7/19/17

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Question: The Book of Zohar was written in a very easy language; why is it difficult to understand it?

Answer: The people who wrote The Book of Zohar were on the highest peak of the ladder of attainment in the spiritual world, and so for them it was simple and easy.

And in truth everything is written in a very soft way, similar to a grandfather who tells his grandson an interesting story, but it is in fact difficult to attain these states. This is the property of the exposition.

Question: Why was it impossible to write it such that everything would be understood and we could read it like any other book?

Answer: We are in this world. How is it possible to understand what doesn’t belong to it?

Suppose that my friend and I know how to read music and I talk with him about musical notes, while you don’t understand anything about it. How could you understand? We don’t have a common language with you; there is not only no conceptual instrument, but also not a common emotional instrument. It is therefore impossible to transmit The Book of Zohar.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/5/17

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Question: How can you properly get acquainted with the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: I think that in order to do so you have to read the book I wrote Attaining the Worlds Beyond.

I wrote it in 12 days. I remember that I was left alone when my teacher passed away. I felt so bad that I didn’t know where to turn. I realized that I had to continue, but I didn’t know how and in what way, so I sat down and wrote this book.

I suggest you start with this book and at the same time take courses at the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah University because nothing can replace these courses. If you begin to read independently, you will constantly be thrown from side to side, and that is not a systematic study. You have to receive a thorough preparation from a teacher of the course, otherwise it is impossible.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/12/17

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The upper force created us with the ability to feel ourselves as separate from it in order to give us the opportunity to come to know it as bestowing and benevolent, as our source.

Question: What do we need this for?

Answer: We feel this need because we are dependent on this force. We find that our lives in this world are very limited, and we suffer. This suffering makes us look for the cause, and the cause is within it, within that same single force. We want to uncover this force in order to improve our condition.

There are people who explore this general force of nature and discover that this is a force of kindness, a force that wants to bring us to perfection. But in order for that to happen, we first need to become aware of our evil. It is impossible to attain kindness without knowing its opposite, that is, evil. It is possible only through our own experience of the contrast, of the fundamental difference between good and evil.

We want to experience comfortable, pleasant conditions. As soon as we experience hardship, we immediately try to protect ourselves, to distance ourselves from it. Then, in addition to our feelings, we need to engage our intellect with which we can begin to figure out how to avoid these hardships. In this way, we develop emotionally and intellectually.

Naturally, we try to distance ourselves from unpleasant experiences and approach pleasant ones. For the thousands of years of our development, beginning with the most primitive forms of life to this moment when we find ourselves in the 21^st century, we are gradually building within ourselves a new mechanism, giving us the ability to better understand and sense how we need to behave.

Ultimately, out of all that’s available to us, we try to build a maximally comfortable form of existence for ourselves. We try to use this general force of nature in which we exist in order to be comfortable, according to our understanding. In essence, this is our entire work in this life.

With this specific goal, we develop the sciences, culture, education, psychology, philosophy, and history. Basically, we just want to know how to feel better because the pursuit of pleasure is a basic human need, our natural desire to receive.

Kabbalah is physics on a higher level, from a more advanced perspective, the “physics of the future.” In ordinary physics, there is no talk of the observer having to change his own qualities. In the theory of relativity, the observer’s experience changes relative to time, speed, and distance. Nevertheless, he himself does not change. His psychological state remains the same.

The correct combination of physics and psychology is when we focus not on the perception of reality, but rather on who is perceiving it and what kind of corrections it is possible to make within him in order for him to experience a new world. This is the next stage of development for the theory of relativity because time, speed, and location do not change outside the observer. Rather, it is the observer who changes in his approach by correcting his own inner qualities.

Then, we find that there is nothing eternal that remains in our world; everything becomes relative and temporary. A person changes all of his qualities and changes reality itself. Then, we rise still higher. Kabbalah says that reality does not have any form at all, that everything depends on the perception of the observer. So, we can draw a conclusion: The force of development in nature is constant and eternal; we exist within it, possessing various changing qualities, and we must figure out what is constant and what is variable within us and within the reality surrounding us, having learned to differentiate between constant and variable.

The constant is the force of nature or the upper force, Creator, and the variable force is the person observing it. The entire reality that the observer perceives is a direct consequence of his inner qualities. If we change the person, then we change the world he perceives.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/27/17

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Question: Why do we study The Book of Zohar, but we don’t study the book Or Habahir (The Bright Light), which is also as ancient?

Answer: There are more ancient books than The Book of Zohar, but it is unique because it describes a person’s whole spiritual path, his continuous ascent, the correction of his soul. The other books are not meant for the continuous progress of the one who attains. This is the reason that The Book of Zohar is unique and special for us.

The main thing is that it was written from the top of the ladder of attainment. The people who wrote it were the greatest Kabbalists.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/5/17

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Question: What is the origin of the word “Kabbalah”? Was it invented by Adam HaRishon (First Man)? And why is it written in this specific way?

Answer: Before Adam HaRishon, the Hebrew and Aramaic languages did not exist. But he did not invent them; rather, he extracted them from his own attainment.

One time I received a letter from a man in a Siberian prison. He absolutely did not know Hebrew, but he suddenly started to write beautiful poetry in this language. And the poetry was Kabbalistic.

When I showed it to my teacher Rabash, he said that this man was experiencing terrible suffering and through it such an awakening came to him.

This is an example of how Adam, who started to attain higher qualities, the upper world, was able to extract the Hebrew language from his attainment.

Question: But why does the word “Kabbalah” (קַבָּלָה) consist of these specific letters?

Answer: This is a depiction of the upper forces that present themselves to us in this way—as vertical and horizontal lines. For example, in an oscilloscope there are only horizontal and vertical lines, which in their combination generate ellipses and various other forms.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/5/17

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Question: What is meant by the five worlds between the Creator and us?

Answer: There are five parts of the spiritual system: Keter, Hochmah, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut, that are reflected in five worlds: Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beriya, Yetsira, and Assiya.

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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/5/17

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Question: What is this force that compels the development of the entire world: all of nature and humanity?

Answer: We exist within a force field called nature, which includes within it a multitude of various forces. We divide this force into levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human, or according to the scientific approach used to study it: physics, chemistry, biology, etc. We define it, according to the trajectory of our development, as a cause and effect relationship.

Within this field there are areas that are completely unknown and incomprehensible to us. All of nature is a single force. The further we advance in our understanding of reality and the deeper we investigate nature, the more we are convinced that it is a single force.

Our perception becomes increasingly more integrated and global; we already understand that there is no separation between physics, chemistry, biology, and zoology; rather, each is an aspect of a single form. It is only due to the limitations of our perception that we are able to tune into a single reality that appears to us in the form of separate fragments. We are simply not able to see all of creation in the form of one picture, one force.

But gradually, according to the degree of our development, we begin to understand that this is actually a single picture, a single force, within which we exist. And this force develops us and gives us the possibility to get to know it. This force called nature, as if it itself, wants us to recognize it.

A person studies nature with his own abilities given to him from birth, and that is why, of course, he is limited by time, movement, space, and his own perceptions. He is not capable of clearing his brain and reprogramming it anew. This is because humanity is the result of a lengthy evolutionary process, which took place under the influences of various activities and forces extending over billions of years.

A person is a result of the development of nature. And that is why a question arises: being that man is an inseparable, integral part of nature, is he able to study it? Because in order to do this, it is necessary to rise above nature.

Only recently, on the cutting edge of science, we have begun to understand that time and space are relative, that instead of matter, there can be energy. But energy is something that disappears, which means that matter too can disappear.

It turns out that all the endless tons of matter that we see in the universe is not matter but energy, that is, something ephemeral and disappearing. In essence, our universe is empty!

Furthermore, cause and effect can change places, and that which seemed to us as being the cause, can be discovered to be the effect, and vice versa. It is possible that the event that needs to occur now, produces the cause for itself, and not the cause producing the event.

There is a phenomenon described in quantum physics where particles that are separated from each other by cosmic differences are observed to be connected to each other. And if one of the particles spins in a particular way, then the other particle, that is billions of miles away, spins the same way. And it’s not that one particle mimics the actions of the other, rather the two of them are bound together. Neither one of them is the cause nor the effect, but everything is a unified whole and is in such a form that we are unable to conceptualize it with our intellect because our intellect is so extraordinarily limited. It turns out that because of this, all of our investigation of nature is extremely limited.

Question: Do we have to admit that there is a great deal we don’t know?

Answer: We know almost nothing! Since our perception of mathematics and physics is also the result of the way we are made. And if we were made differently, we would have a different sort of mathematics and 1 + 1 would not equal two.

It is only an assumption that 1+1=2. If we replaced our sensory organs, then we would see a different reality. All of nature surrounding us would seem completely different.

But the force that develops nature can be accepted as absolute, existing outside of us. This force created nature and us in such a form that enables us to study part of nature, to a limited degree. And if we actually want to study nature, then we must rise to the level of this force, for which it is necessary to acquire new abilities.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/27/17

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Question: How does one read Kabbalistic books correctly? What do we pay special attention to?

Answer: When reading a Kabbalistic book, a person should understand that this reading must reveal new organs of perception in him with which he will be able to feel what’s written in the book. A book will start to play within him and he won’t be just impressed, as from a novel, but will begin to imagine the upper world.

The upper world exists not according to the laws of the egoistic force by which we live in our world, but according to inverse laws. As it is written, “I saw an inverted world.” These are altruistic laws of love and not the laws of hatred.

If a person wants to feel this way and he accustoms himself to such reading, then he begins to perceive an entirely different, opposite story, in which other dimensions, conditions, and characters exist. Thus, he begins to reveal the spiritual world and the forces acting in it.

We must go through two stages in order to discover a spiritual book. At the first stage, due to the reading (mainly The Book of Zohar and the Writings of Baal HaSulam and the Writings of Rabash), we gradually approach the revelation of the book within us forming the sensory organs suitable for this.

Just as a small child doesn’t understand an adult book about adventures or love and must first develop to the right age, so also in Kabbalah, you must first develop inner properties within yourself that are suitable to react to the content of the spiritual book. Therefore, at the first stage, we need to cultivate and develop our organs of perception.

The second stage is when we begin to reveal what is written.

Question: Does it mean that it’s not enough just to open a book and start reading it?

Answer: It is enough to open a book and start reading but with the intention to develop. Obviously, we don’t understand anything in the book yet, but we read it in order to develop ourselves to reach the understanding. This is the main rule so far.

Once a person improves himself and through the book forms spiritual feelings, desires, and definitions within himself, he will start feeling it more and more. Similarly, as a child grows, the child understands and feels more.

There are books for each age in everyday life and in Kabbalah we read the same book as we grow, each time penetrating deeper into it and more and more revealing it’s inner meaning.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” p.155: “There is a wonderful, invaluable remedy to those who engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Although they do not understand what they are learning, through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls.”

This means that every person from Israel is guaranteed to finally attain all the wonderful attainments that the Creator had contemplated in the thought of creation to delight every creature. And one who has not been awarded in this life will be granted in the next life, etc., until one is awarded completing His thought, which He had planned for him.

There are no doubts that we will reach the revelation of the upper world and we all will enter it. And one who hasn’t been awarded in this life will be granted in the next life. But why wait if we can do it right now?

A Kabbalistic book has a special power that influences the reader and develops new desires, concepts, thoughts, and feelings in him. Then he begins to understand, feel, and see with his inner vision what the book says.
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From the Virtual Lesson “The Time of Kabbalah,” 6/13/17

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