Kabbalah Insights – Parchment
Posted on May 12th, 2011
The text of The Zohar is difficult to read in some places since it seems tasteless, doesn’t excite, amaze, or prompt us to respond. I see that it lulls everybody to sleep. What can be done, if we are separated from the spiritual state and have to connect with it? How else can the method of connection be built?
The state which I have to approach is beyond my feelings and desires. Nevertheless, how can I impel myself to come close to it? A small child looks at a driver with eagerness: A driver appears great for him. A pilot is even greater. A fireman is simply a hero. A child sees examples and wants to follow them. He has a sensation, example, vision, and connection. He can visualize the desirable state in the ego in which he exists. Nature itself forces him to desire this. Then, he moves selfishly, driven by his desire, urge, and aspiration.
We face the concealed world. It is hidden because now I don’t have any desire for it, so much so that I don’t see it and reject it. It isn’t even opposite to me since then I would see it as hateful, disgusting, repelling. But I don’t have even that.
So, how can I get closer to it? It cannot be seen because I don’t have any desires for it or any organs to perceive it. I was given a possibility to read about it, but I hear words and don’t know what they mean. I don’t have in me, in my world, in everything I am familiar with, any comparable phenomena.
If I am told about this concealed world by means of the words of our physical world: “the sun,” “the moon,” “an elder,” “mountains,” “sea,” “hills.” This baffles me even more because I begin to imagine what is happening in our world and not in the spiritual one. As a result, these words distance me even further. What can be done?
Therefore, Kabbalists use the language of Kabbalah. Reading the text written in the language of Kabbalah, you are prone to fewer mistakes because you see that Kabbalists talk about something unknown to you: technical terms that describe desires, clarifications, screens, Lights, degrees, and different numbers. All this is technology telling about something concealed from me. This text is much easier to read: It’s less confusing.
Why was The Book of Zohar hidden throughout centuries? It waited for our time so that people would not become confused and begin to materialize it. Until Baal HaSulam wrote his Sulam commentary on The Book of Zohar, it was very difficult to read it. If the masses started reading it, they would have imagined who knows what.
Even now, there are “teachers” who connect parts of the human body with spiritual activities: the right hand with bestowal, the left with reception. They tie a red string on the left hand, and it means correction for them. They haven’t reached spiritual attainment, and they think it is about what happens in our world. They don’t transfer this into the internal sensations, where we discover spiritual forces.
We must keep reading The Book the Zohar with perseverance and wait for the Lights concealed in the worlds to affect us. And it works! We have no book more powerful in its impact than The Zohar.
It is impossible to connect with the concealed world in another way. You need an adapter, an intermediary. What is this intermediary? You are told about something unknown, and you persist with your friends to aspire to it. Although you still have nowhere to aspire to, but if everybody says that it is important and concealed, you start to be impressed from what is still empty for you and to give it importance. Why? It’s because this is important for your environment.
Although it is not important for the environment either, and they simply work on you, this is sufficient. Then, you can develop a desire for the spiritual world which is opposite to us, and you cannot desire it. Thus, we reach spirituality by virtue of desire without a desire.
Otherwise, you will never reveal the spiritual world, or you will reveal it under the pressure of greater suffering, when overtaken by blows, you will rush to spirituality out of hopelessness, and not because you developed a desire for spirituality together with your friends. This is called development by the path of suffering, and not by the path of Light. Decide what you want!
If you are given an opportunity to move forward with the Light, to awaken it with your desire absorbed from the environment, but you don’t use this opportunity, suffering will befall you because you have to advance in accordance with the plan of creation.
It follows that the only free choice we have is to advance either by means of good or evil. But the fact that we have to advance is beyond all doubt. You have only a possibility to choose between the two paths, like a child who can opt either to become good or to remain bad. The end of the path is decided and known, and the time has been set. Everything was given initially except for your approach.
So now, we are at the point of an extremely critical decision: Do we see medicine in the reading of The Book of Zohar? It is true that I want to sleep, nothing disturbs me, the text doesn’t attract me, and it’s completely tasteless. The Zohar makes me sleepy….
But this is the true state. You are shown that you have no connection with spirituality. Get the desire from your environment now! Each is responsible for providing others with mutual guarantee so that they wake up. Then, out of total awakening, when we wish to wake up everybody, the Surrounding Light will come and make a small change in us. And we will immediately begin to sense what is written in The Zohar.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, The Zohar
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Question: Why is it much easier to read those parts of The Zohar where Baal HaSulam explains it using Kabbalistic terms?
Answer: It’s because then it’s clear to us that these are technical definitions and not earthly images. However, everything depends on one’s level of qualification.
If I invite a specialist to fix my computer, I show him the images on my screen and tell him that I don’t like the color shades or display quality, but he doesn’t look at the actual picture. A computer specialist looks at the electric signals, the forces that create this picture inside, at the quantity of the colors installed in the system. He doesn’t care about the picture itself because for him it’s nothing but an external reflection, a symbol for what’s happening inside, which indicates the computer’s proper or improper functioning.
On the other hand, when I show him this picture and ask how to fix it, he explains it to me in technical terms: “Here you need to replace HGT, NHY, reconcile the forces of the right and left lines…” and I don’t understand what he’s talking about either.
We are confused not by The Zohar speaking this way or that, whether it’s the language of legends or the language of Kabbalah, but by our inability to correctly discern the actual picture and realize what it’s talking about. Every word of The Zohar indicates a desire which must be corrected. There is nothing else to it besides that.
The Creator gave rise to desire. This desire must be brought to correction and fulfillment. Until it achieves its correction followed by fulfillment, we’re only talking about this desire. As soon as it becomes corrected and fulfilled, we stop talking about it and begin to discuss the next degree, a deeper desire which follows right after.
This is how we correct desire after desire, layer after layer. This phased approach to the whole power of the desires within us, which we correct step-by-step, one after another, is called Mishpatim—judgments or reincarnations of souls. “Reincarnations of souls” means that I am always undergoing these inner transformations.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, The Book of Zohar
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Question: Why does the greatest advancement happen precisely while reading The Book of Zohar, without understanding anything, just by keeping intention?
Answer: The study of Kabbalah does not require any special mental abilities because it is not learned with the mind. On the contrary, people who consider themselves smart, who are good at studying, who grasp things quickly and have a keen mind, usually do not advance very well in Kabbalah. That’s because the mind and the sensation of their mental abilities stops them, carrying them away to the path of the rational study of this science instead of attaining it by being loyal to the group. This is a problem.
I would say that it’s precisely the regular, “average” people who are more successful in spiritual advancement. The brilliant smart-alecs who come to study the science of Kabbalah usually stumble right away. I see that its as if they jump head-first into the deep sea, and “resurface” from there many years later, once the water washes off all of their pride, feeling of superiority, and power.
Let us hope that we belong to those who are successful in attainment rather than those who have a brilliant mind.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/11/11, The Zohar
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Question: We are looking at the words that are written by Kabbalists and signify a spiritual root. But how can we create an association in our corporeal sensory organs between the words we are accustomed to and the upper reality?
Answer: According to your desire to attain spirituality and your intention, you somewhat correspond to the Light. And in the degree of this correspondence, it starts affecting you, your desire and intention, from afar. It is what we call the “Surrounding Light,” the Light that Reforms.
It illuminates you from a distance since it still cannot come in contact with your desire and intentions, which are not as pure as the Light just yet. But there is still some connection between them since you are striving upward even from your low state.
And the intention emerges if you are connected in a smallest degree with the environment and receive from it the same desire and aspiration to unify together. Only in the degree of mutual inclusion of such intentions, which we are working toward while reading Kabbalistic texts, will you merit an illumination that will begin to affect you.
If you connect your desires and intentions with the others, who aspire to the same unity during the lessons, you draw the Surrounding Light. Now ask yourself: How often do you think about and desire it while you are studying? Otherwise, years will pass by, and you won’t see any results.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/8/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot
While reading The Book of Zohar, one has to understand that The Zohar is not supposed to be processed by the mind. And if a person wishes to figure it out by way of the intellect, he will get tangled in every word since no word in The Book of Zohar points to anything familiar to us.
All of them hint at the spiritual states and properties. If a person is in the same spiritual state or world, he reveals what they are talking about. So, he knows what spiritual properties and definitions are being described; he feels, recognizes within himself this inner, spiritual world. After all, a person reveals the spiritual world inside, rather than outside of himself, as he perceives the entire reality only within.
As to someone who doesn’t possess spiritual perception yet, he is simply reading an unusual text. What are we reading The Zohar for then? We do so in order to add to it an aspiration to reach a state when we will understand, feel, recognize, and even experience all the spiritual states and properties The Zohar is telling about. All that I presently read as an incomprehensible story, I wish to experience inside myself and live in it.
We must cultivate this desire in us. In order to see the spiritual world, we only lack a desire, a yearning for it, and not more. Therefore, now, as we read The Zohar, we must, all together, to the best of our ability strive to reveal this hidden world.
Even though we don’t have a special need for it (since we don’t know what we are reading), we are still reading this text together. Hence, from this very same concealed state, we draw upon ourselves the illumination regarded as “the Light that Reforms,” “the Surrounding Light,” which affects us.
It doesn’t reveal the concealed world, but rather it awakens in us the needs, desires, and properties of perception, new sensory organs, after which the revelation occurs. The Light functions so as to create in us the capacity for sensing the concealed. Hence, we yearn for the Surrounding Light to enable us to feel the hidden world.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/6/2011, The Book of Zohar
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Question: What do we need in order for the system called “Zohar” to bring us to unification?
Answer: We need to have more intention, desire. The Zohar is the integral system of all of reality. But why is it called “Zohar”? And why do we have to open a specific book, read a specific text that is written by a specific person, and listen to specific words?
This general system of reality is designed to be connected to us through the great Kabbalists who are the mediators in creating a tie between this system and us and who express this connection in words and sentences.
I read this Book and understand nothing. I might as well read it backwards. The point is that I desire to connect with them, these Kabbalists that passed on their writings to me, because they wanted me to connect to them, these souls, their unity, and to come to them with this unity as well.
How will I know that I am connecting with them? If I unite with my group, my aim is definitely correct: to unify with these great souls, enter the same global, integral system, become its indispensable part, and to aspire to it at least in some small degree. This is precisely what we need.
One person is thinking about it, another not so much, and the other sometimes. But in general, if we strive to be as one whole, everyone’s individual aspirations will unite as one.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/2011, The Book of Zohar
Kabbalah, first and foremost, is a science. And a science cannot be mastered while you are lying down on the couch with a book in your hands. It certainly counts as well, but a science requires studying.
Hence, we are opening special courses so that a person could gain the most basic knowledge in a few months. First, he or she must understand what the science of Kabbalah is. We don’t pressure them; a person is not expected to work on, to correct himself or herself. For starters, they come and receive a certain amount of information without which they cannot comprehend where they are.
A person receives an explanation about the structure of our and the spiritual worlds, the connection between them, the transition into spirituality, the upper governance, the origin of the soul’s root, and the way to reach it. He gets to know what “luck” (Mazal), the Lights that “trickle” to us (Nozel), is; how Kabbalah relates to religions, faiths, science, and other things; what the meaning of time, space, and movement is; how to approach the perception of reality correctly; what free will entails, and much more.
A person has to learn all of this in a condensed, simple, and clear manner, by asking questions to a competent instructor who has studied with us for many years, has finished the necessary courses, and passed examinations. Our instructors are professionals in their field. In a short time, they will provide you with all the basic knowledge. I personally stand by it.
If, however, a person neglects the correct learning order, he or she will keep lacking it. He will be just like a graduate who was a bad student in school and now cannot find a job since he doesn’t even know the multiplication table.
Therefore, I strongly recommend signing up for these courses. They consist of three semesters: The first two provide basic knowledge, while the third offers a wide range of additional opportunities designed toward continuous education. Some students don’t wish to end these studies continue with them for several years now.
Good luck!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/29/2011, “The Freedom”
Question: What is the method of teaching Kabbalah to children?
Answer: It is very easy to explain any phenomenon to a child. It only seems difficult to us; however, that is not so.
It is written that the one teaching a child is as if writing on a blank sheet of paper, whereas we, grown-ups, must write on paper we ourselves have doodled on. First we must neutralize our thoughts, desires, prejudices, and preconceptions, erase many things within, and only after we can try writing something. But experience shows that it is easy working with children.
I have seen this in my son’s example. When I began studying with Rabash, I would repeat the material we read during the lesson at home. My seven year-old son would sit next to me, and I would recite the text back to him in order to better take in the material. I saw that he perceived and remembered it better than I did. I asked him questions, and he answered correctly.
Then I understood that the more pure the person, even still a child, the more naturally he perceives Kabbalah. This is because in reality, it is a science of nature, and we see this on the children. I am jealous of how naturally they all perceive it!
Many things register in them simply through repetition, without having to sense them, because their sensory mechanism has not yet been developed. The sensation will come at a later time, during the time of the eruption of hormones. But by then, they will already be filled with different laws and formulas. So once their hormones will start working and desires will begin to surge, they will know how to regulate them.
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From Lesson 6, WE! Convention 4/3/2011
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When reading a Kabbalistic article, a person needs to attune himself or herself correctly to its perception. Not a single word in the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks of our world, ever. We do not exist in this world. It is an imaginary world; it is not taken into account at all and does not fit in with the entire system of the worlds. It simply does not exist!
Therefore, Kabbalah does not talk about this world, man’s physical body, or certain geographical places: the land of Israel, the Sinai desert, Egypt, or Babylon. It only concerns itself with the internal states a person undergoes in his aspiration to reach correction, the purpose of creation.
If a person has the point in the heart and aims himself or herself at the purpose of creation, on the path toward this goal, he begins to experience various states. The wisdom of Kabbalah and all the Kabbalistic books—the Torah, Talmud, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Mishna, and so on—describe these states, these degrees in particular. All spiritual, “sacred” books talk exclusively about “sanctity,” meaning about reaching the property of bestowal referred to as sanctity.
Hence, while reading these articles, we need to completely sever ourselves from all familiar material pictures and images and imagine only spiritual degrees, meaning the degrees of coming closer to or further away from the property of bestowal. They talk only about it. These books describe desire created by the Creator, its state in each of us, and our experience on the path when, from our current state, we start aspiring to the property of bestowal, to love of another, which is called “sanctity.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/2011, Writings of Rabash
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