Question: If the key is to draw the Light upon ourselves, why do we so thoroughly discuss the structure of the worlds described in TES (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) during the lesson?

Answer: It’s not our goal to talk about the structure of the worlds in detail; we simply try to grasp some details in order to tap into what Kabbalists tell us about. But when we study TES, as any other source, we first of all must think of the soul since it is there where all these elements I am reading about reside and where all the phenomena occur.

Kabbalists who revealed within themselves the property of bestowal discern what actions they can perform within it, and they write about it. Besides this, there is nothing else. Either we are in some imaginary reality of this world, which doesn’t really exist and dissolves later on, and live in it as in a dream, or we reach the authentic reality of bestowal, the reality of the Creator.

After all, there is “none else besides Him,” and if something actually exists, it’s only there. And TES describes in what form this authentic reality is being revealed to us within our desires.

As a Kabbalist, I can describe to what extent I enter this reality and discover that it does indeed operate in me, how well I connect and begin to identify myself with it. And other Kabbalists do the same. In other words, we all write about the same unification with the eternal upper Light and what we find in it from our black point of creation, the “point of absence.”

When I come in contact with the Light and achieve equivalence with it, I feel how within me various phenomena start occurring, dressing into me from Above downward (the Light of Hochma) or breadth-wise (the Light of Hassadim). These phenomena produce various sensations in me, and I describe them,as I have obtained the opportunity to express them in words and sounds.

But all the impressions we have derive from the encounter of this black point with the Light, where the former becomes similar to the latter. And this is the essence of the wisdom of Kabblah: to find the Light within the black point of creation.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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When we read TES (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), we discuss and clarify meanings that are closer to us, in order to prepare ourselves to understand it. But then we have to read the original, authentic text written by great Kabbalists who channel the upper Light to us.

I don’t possess such upper Light as Rabash and Baal HaSulam do, but I can help you connect to it. In order to teach a child, one doesn’t have to be a professor but just someone who can come down to the child’s level.

Therefore, next to the pupil there is a teacher, the most important person who can help him right now. But besides, there are authentic sources which are very precious to us from which the Light comes down to us. It is impossible to get by without one or the other.

On your own, without such a special person as the teacher, you would never be able to attune yourself to the spiritual source of Rabash or Baal HaSulam. And so it was throughout all generations. We don’t speak about such unique souls as Adam HaRishon and Abraham who discovered the spiritual world on their own. Sometimes, there are moments in life when something gets revealed to a person from Above, for some special predestination of the soul.

But if we speak of Kabbalah as the passing of spiritual knowledge through the chain of Kabbalists from generation to generation (“Kabbalah” means “receiving”), then we always imply a teacher and a disciple. Above everything else, the teacher aims you at the goal; he helps you to get around and gives you direction in life. And its realization is definitely your responsibility—with the help of the great Kabbalists who wrote these holy authentic sources for us.

On one hand, there is a teacher who supports and guides you, and that is why you ought to be loyal to him so that he may “hold you in his arms” like a baby. On the other, you walk along his side in order to connect to the authentic sources.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: In one of the articles in Dargot HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), Rabash writes that it is forbidden to teach gentiles, meaning egoists, the Torah. What then are we doing here?

Answer: "Forbidden" in Kabbalah means impossible. It would be similar to saying that egoists mustn’t get the upper Light. Try to break this law and we’ll see what happens.

We are talking about the laws of nature, and nature doesn’t ban anything. But if you go against it, you will be punished. “Prohibition” means inability. If Kabbalists write “no,” it means you are unable to do it.

Egoists can’t learn the Torah, or in other words, they can’t study the Torah because an egoist cannot do so in principle. He has no means for it, no tools. After all, he is a gentile and worships his own ego that won’t allow him to establish a connection with the Lights.

The Torah, or the wisdom of Kabbalah, is the method that connects the vessels and the Lights. But if you don’t have the former, you can’t find the latter. And therefore, you can’t learn the Torah since “Torah” is the passages of the Light that expands into desires according to the law of equivalence of form.

Question cont.: So what are we doing during the lessons?

Answer: We are moving toward it. We employ the Torah as the Light that Reforms; we use it as if from a distance.

At a higher spiritual degree, there are the Lights and vessels, and I am cut away from them. But I wish to be at this rung and in the degree of my motivation, I draw from it a small illumination that is preparing me for an ascent.

Thus, I use the Torah as the Surrounding Light but not the Light in the full sense of this word. I am not studying the Torah as such yet. The real study is the expansion of the Lights in the reformed vessels (desires), the interaction between the Light and the desire by way of the screen. That is what the Torah is.

My spiritual “I” is the receiving desire which is reformed by the intention to bestow and able to receive the Light. Wishing to achieve this, we read Kabbalistic books, yearn with all our might, and work in the group in order to somehow express our desire aimed at bestowal.

But a response arrives only in the form of the Surrounding Light. I don’t even know what it is, but time after time, I feel changes within me: a little more understanding, a bit more sensation. It isn’t the Torah yet. The real Torah is something concrete: desire, the screen, and connection between them, which leads to the revelation of the Creator, or the Light in the vessel.

But still, even now we are using the force of the Torah. This is described as: “I created the evil inclination and I created the Torah as a spice since the Light in it Reforms.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, The Writings of Rabash

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Question: I just can’t seem to understand: What is the Light that reforms? And how can I demand it during the study?

Answer: 1. At the very least, try to recognize all of these qualities inside of you which we read about in The Book of Zohar. Try to discern where they are inside of you, “rummage” inside of your desires, thoughts, and inside yourself.

That is how you expand your inner Kelim, desires, and qualities of perception. As you search among them, you begin to differentiate between them. But all of these qualities already exist inside of you.

2. If I don’t have a need for correction, then to me the words “the Light that reforms” are devoid of life. If I require correction, then I expect this Light. But if I don’t have this need, then I don’t know what this Light is.

I am told, “You have to wait for the Light to come.” Fine, so let it come. The sages say it’s good, and I agree. If that’s my attitude, then I cannot attract it.

It is written that one must await salvation at every moment. “The Creator’s salvation comes in the blink of an eye.” This is talking precisely about the correcting Light, the Light that reforms, bringing us back to the Creator.

The action we demand from above must always be preceded by our desire, the need for it. Otherwise it will never happen. Either we elicit the suffering inside of us on our own, which is “the suffering of love,” a passionate desire for the Light, or it will come in the form of compulsory suffering, by the path of “Beito” (in due time).

However, without suffering, without a question and without a desire, I cannot attain the correcting Light. That’s because the Light is at absolute rest. We only need the desire so the correcting Light would influence us.

We could say that the Light is present inside of the desire, but is revealed only when this desire reaches the true measure.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, The Zohar

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Question: How does The Book of Zohar teach us the methods of the connection between us?

Answer: Baal HaSulam adds a commentary to The Zohar to stave off the materialization of The Zohar‘s text. It lays ground for the formation of the spiritual state within us, beyond space and time, beyond the images of our world, to make us want to experience it within and not outside of us.

The Sulam commentary, like all the books of Kabbalists, is written for people who have already acquired spiritual attainment to help them understand what they’re already feeling. I am being explained what I am feeling right now; I’m at the level where “a person’s soul teaches him.” Then by reading Kabbalistic texts, I begin to understand what I am feeling.

Before spiritual sensations arise in me, however, the Kabbalistic texts are not a source of knowledge but “Segula” (a miraculous force) for me because while reading them, I am exposed to the influence of the upper Light, washing over me like a stream of living water.

Hence, I don’t want to explain what each phrase in The Zohar means from the standpoint of Sefirot and Partzufim so that a student will not be satisfied with superficial knowledge. I want him or her to search inside, within their feelings, wondering what it is really like. Then they will have a greater yearning for revelation and thereby form a desire, a need, for it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/2011, The Book of Zohar

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Question: What signs can help us tell whether a person is advancing in the study of The Book of Zohar?

Answer: Which books you study is irrelevant in this regard because besides studying The Book of Zohar we also study Talmud Eser Sefirot as well as articles and letters by Baal HaSulam and Rabash which explain how to advance toward unity among us and toward mutual study. They help us to get organized correctly. After we organize among ourselves into a study group, we begin studying actual Kabbalah.

The purpose of the study group in Kabbalah is not to study the material, but to aspire through reading it to realize the “Segula,” meaning to evoke the influence of the Light upon us from a higher level. If during the study we desire for the Light to become revealed inside our unity, then by this effort we build the higher level and then our effort brings about the emergence of that level.

However, if we study trying only to understand the material, then we do not study the Torah. That’s because the Torah refers precisely to our effort and the appearance of a new level in it.

Therefore, progress in studying the primary sources (The Zohar, the books of the Ari, and Talmud Eser Sefirot) is determined by the force of your aspiration to reveal the next level inside of you, instead of the desire just to know the material.

There is no advancement in understanding or accumulating knowledge because prior to the sensation of the upper world, all our notions of it are incorrect.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/11, The Zohar

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Question: It is written in one of the books that there are spiritual objects. What are they?

Answer: In our world there is nothing that would connect us with spirituality besides special books. These books carry spiritual significance because they really speak of spirituality. Reading them, a person attracts spirituality to himself or herself.

It is most advantageous to read these books in the group when everyone gathers together with the intention and attracts the Surrounding Light. Besides the environment, meaning the group and the books, there is nothing in our world.

I highly recommend that you always be with a book wherever you are. If you have a few free minutes, short breaks at work, open a book and read a short excerpt. Little by little you will start noticing that you are drawn to it more, advance more, and that all your thoughts are changing. Start getting used to it.

I grew at Rabash’s very simply: There weren’t any computers back then, and I always had a book in my hands. Wherever I went, I had a book with me. This is how I re-read all the books many times. I even used to take The Study of the Ten Sefirot with me, a book that is hard to read in the middle of the street. But it contains a section with questions and answers, and I read them. I also read The Book of Zohar and different articles.

Today we have a wealth of books. I think that everyone should have them at home. Each month you can read a different book, not from cover to cover, but wherever you open it. This is what Rabash taught me to do.

During our walks, if he got tired, we used to sit for a few minutes on a bench. I always had a book with me. He would open it at random and start to read. After a few lines, he would close the book and continue the walk. And that’s how it was all the time!

Do it: Get a portion of the Surrounding Light for half an hour or an hour, and then do it again and again. A book has to be in your hands. This is why I’m for publishing them in a pocket-sized format.
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From Lesson 4, WE! Convention 4/2/2011

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There are many stories in The Book of Zohar that are written in allegorical language (Midrash). They are seemingly describing people and angels (the forces of nature), animals, and plants, which is because the Book’s authors wished to explain all levels of creation to us: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

Baal HaSulam prepared four introductions to The Book of Zohar:

1. “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah (Pticha)”: It is a scientific preface where he explains the structure of the worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, and the interaction of the Lights and desires (vessels, Kelim).

2. “The Preamble to the Sulam Commentary”: It is connected to the above mentioned preface. Here, he also explains how to work in the three lines, with Lights and desires, if only in a more particular form, closer to each soul.

3. “Preface to The Book of Zohar”: In this introduction, Baal HaSulam explains the perception of reality. He describes how we transition from our ordinary, corporeal perception of reality to the spiritual one, when we start perceiving reality through this world, which becomes transparent, and see the forces working in it instead of the external picture of the world.

Similarly, when we look at the computer screen, we see a certain image. But it exists only pertaining to us since we created this screen and this method of projection on purpose. In reality though, it is merely an external manifestation of information stored inside the computer, on its hard drive. If we could read information directly from the disk, we wouldn’t need to retrieve it onto the screen and read it from it.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is the instrument that allows us to enter the internal, concealed part of reality and see not the external form presented to us at the moment, but rather the internal activity: the forces working behind the scenes of the familiar image of the world.

In this introduction, Baal HaSulam also explains that our perception of reality is divided into four components: the essence, the abstract form, the form clothed in matter, and the matter itself. Until the final correction (Gmar Tikkun), we attain only our matter (desire) and form that this desire assumes: either an egoistic or altruistic one. We cannot know the abstract form and less so the essence. Thus we advance to the final correction.

Hence, the wisdom of Kabbalah gives us a very serious warning not to indulge in fantasies, but rather to be realistic and use a scientific approach while striving to discover the spiritual world in a sound, tangible form.

4. “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”: Here, Baal HaSulam explains various problems a person faces in his or her questions about who we are, what our essence and role in this world is, why the Creator created us so flawed, low, and despicable, why we must walk this entire long path and become equivalent to Him, and so on. In the beginning of this introduction, Baal HaSulam asks these questions and answers them further on.

And in the end of the introduction, there is a very special, well-known, and widespread part where he writes about our correction in our days. There he explains that the world is divided into inner and outer parts. People who feel they belong in spiritual attainment are regarded as the inner part of the world. It is they who must unify among themselves and use The Book of Zohar to draw the Light that Reforms to themselves.

By doing so, they will become the spiritual source and the spiritual center of the world. Having the spiritual force, they will be spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, and the whole world will get to feel that they have something exalted: knowledge, wisdom, the correct, common sense approach to what is happening in the world, and the answers to questions about it.

The world will begin to understand that these people reside at a much higher degree than all scientists and the so-called great leaders of this world since they possess the knowledge of the forces that act and transform our world in such an unpredictable way.

Then, after resistance and confrontations, the world will still begin to feel drawn to these people and recognize in them the upper force, the upper wisdom. And thus, in the end, the whole world will arrive at correction. After all, correction is basically performed between the individuals who are regarded as the inner part of the world, the ones with the point in the heart, while the rest of the world will only join in and cling to them, just like today in the world the masses live their daily lives while the world is ruled by a handful of others.

And thus, as Baal HaSulam explains in the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” the entire humanity will keep developing until the world unifies together, all become as one whole, thanks to the same Book of Zohar, and reaches the same very ten primordial Sefirot that Rabbi Shimon and his nine disciples wrote about.
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From Lesson 4, WE! Convention 4/2/2011

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It’s hard to even imagine to what extent the initial volume of The Book of Zohar superseded that which is left available to us today. It is about 20 times smaller. The majority of the Book is gone. But Kabbalists write that we don’t need more. The remainder of the Book is designated specifically for us, in order to provide us with the necessary assistance.

It is very difficult to discuss The Book of Zohar since it is supremely exalted. Besides, it is written in a very unique manner. Baal HaSulam explains that there are two types of souls: some root in the Inner Light and the others in the Surrounding one.

We reside in the integral system of souls, and the connection between us runs both in the internal stream between the souls and also in the surrounding field. Any electrical system is designed this way, having resistors (resistance circuits), capacitors, and inductor coils. All of this works together, both electromagnetic fields and the resistors between them. Some parts of this system accumulate energy within them, while the others turn the electrical current into a magnetic field and vice versa, the field into electrical current that runs inside it.

The system of souls works in a similar manner. The authors of The Book of Zohar also had to have these two types of souls. This is why they studied in a very specific fashion. They sat in a circle. Rabbi Shimon would talk about what he was attaining, while all his disciples were listening, discussing what he would reveal, asking him questions, and receiving answers. Rabbi Aba would hear what they were saying and write it down.

All of this was occurring during the conversation. Naturally, the conversation essentially lay in the transmission of the forces and Lights between these souls that originated in both Inner and Surrounding Lights. Rabbi Shimon had a soul coming from the Inner Light, and Rabbi Aba from the Surrounding one. Hence, Rabbi Aba was able to record everything Rabbi Shimon said in a concealed form so that today any person can buy The Book of Zohar, read it, and understand nothing.

To attain this Book, a person must undergo a certain preparation in connection with the friends. They have to form the same exact model of relationships between them as the authors of The Zohar did. Organizing such a group (it is not mandatory to have only ten people in it; there could even be 10,000) and striving to unify and wishing to discover what the Book is talking about in their mutual connection, they become similar to Rabbi Shimon’s group. And then they receive the influence of Light from it.

Since some of us belong in the Inner Light and some in the Surrounding one, we begin receiving the impact like a radio receiving waves. Then we start hearing what the Book is saying, at the rung of Bina (hearing is the level of Bina) and even seeing (at the level of Hochma), depending upon our spiritual degree. And if we haven’t reached mutual connection at the level of Bina, then we are still preparing for it.

Therefore, a sign of spiritual advancement is when we, as a group, while reading The Zohar, start sensing this text as the same forces and properties The Zohar is describing. This is the essence of the Book itself. This book is an instructor, a working manual. When penetrating it, a person feels how he rises with this book and discovers spiritual degrees, as if he is ascending a ladder indeed.

I very much hope that during our lessons when we start reading The Book of Zohar, you all together will keep the right intention in order to gain as much as possible from this source.
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From Lesson 4, WE! Convention 4/2/2011

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There are books written by regular people about sensations in this world. And there are books written by Kabbalists, people who attain the upper world and write about their sensations in spirituality.

These books are called special, sacred books. Sacred (Kadosh) literally translates “separate.” The spiritual world is completely separated from our egoism; therefore, a person who is describing it from his sensations is writing a sacred book: special or separated.

There is one special book out of all the books written throughout history by people with spiritual attainment. In Kabalistic sources it is simply referred to as The Book, with no mention of its name “The Zohar.” This book is so unique that in relation to it other books aren’t even considered a book. This is because it was written by a special group of people who attained all ten of the highest Sefirot in Malchut of the world of Infinity.

The special meeting of these ten individuals occurred approximately 2000 years ago. Nine students along with their teacher Rabbi Shimon retired to a cave in the North of Israel. They stayed there and studied.

This cave is a very special place. When my teacher Rabash and I would go to Tiberias, we often visited this cave. Rabash really loved to be there. He would stand for a few minutes, and it looked like he was somewhere else, as if he left his body. That’s the extent to which he connected to the spiritual force of the ten Sefirot, the ten souls that sat in this cave while revealing the world of Infinity.

By connecting together they attained all 125 spiritual levels, from our world to the world of Infinity. Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” that such a high level of attainment by a group of people occurred only once in the entire history because they united and studied together.

Only in the final correction (Gmar Tikkun) will we be able to attain the same level that was attained by this group, and we’ll be able to do so thanks to their unification. They wrote in The Book of Zohar how they were able to unite, what happened as a result, and what was revealed in the connection between them. Therein lies the whole power of The Book of Zohar.

And clearly this Book can give us the greatest force of correction for our souls. That’s why this Book is so important.
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From Lesson 2, WE! Convention 4/2/2011

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