Question: Should I remember the diagrams from Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of The Ten Sefirot) by heart, or should I make an effort to experience them within me, without any understanding?

Answer: If you check our archive, you will see Rabash’s diagrams. If you open the texts written by other Kabbalists, even The Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira) or the ARI’s manuscripts, you will see diagrams there as well. If you open The Book of Zohar, there aren’t any drawings in it, but you will find various charts.

Kabbalah is a science. We are exploring a new world full of various forces, and we want to know the formula by which these forces are mutually intertwined in each state, each place. If we learn about these combinations of forces, we will be able to achieve the same state by obtaining the screen.

Suppose I have a screen, the force or the strength of desire to ask for the force, then I’ll receive the knowledge, strength, and an example from the upper Partzuf. I need all three components: the knowledge, strength, and an example. In front of me, the lower Partzuf, is the upper one. This upper Partzuf demonstrates an example for me by bringing the lower part of its Partzuf down to me (Raglaim, lower extremities).

As Rabash’s article “Inclusion of the Attributes of Mercy and Judgment” describes, the upper Partzuf brings me darkness, but it allows me to clearly define what I must add in order for it to start illuminating as Light. This is how we work.

We reside in a cosmos of forces that act according to certain laws, and we must perform our work with absolute precision and knowledge of how much to take from one side or the other, how to ascend and descend, and how to establish a connection with which properties. And all of this is accompanied by extremely powerful experiences, impressions, discoveries, but at the same time, with clear and accurate knowledge.

In our world, I can appreciate and enjoy music, but it is impossible to compare my impression with that of a musician, who experiences the music in his emotions and mind, feeling it much deeper than I am able to do. If people approach this correctly and try not to egoistically demean another’s work, they become more proficient in the subject. Consequently, they bring their mind closer to their feelings, and the mind enhances the feelings. But in our world, the mind usually overrides feelings because its roots are in the ego, and we desire to belittle each other.

Yet, it is different in spirituality. We may get impressions while looking at the diagrams, but a diagram gives me a chance to understand the relationship between spiritual forces and its properties; it does not reflect the object itself.

If I look at the diagram where Abba ve Ima is clothed from Peh up to Chazeh of Arich Anpin, I don’t receive this impression. But it does give me an opportunity to feel impressed by if I know what Arich Anpin is, what its properties from Peh to Chazeh are (since I experience them), and what are the attributes of Abba ve Ima, what they can receive from Arich Anpin by becoming clothed in it, how they react, and so forth.

A diagram is similar to an inanimate formula since it is just letters. It all depends on what you bring into these letters, what essence. Therefore, we have to know the basic diagrams.

Baal HaSulam writes that we can’t exist in this world without a basic knowledge of the processes taking place in it. Similarly, we can’t exist in the spiritual world without a basic knowledge of it.

In the corporeal world we have to finish school in order to interact with the world and people correctly; only in the same way can we enter the spiritual world and navigate within it. There is no other way. Everyone must have a minimum amount of fundamental knowledge. It gives a person an admission slip to enter spirituality.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/15/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: It is written that Rabbi Shimon cried while writing The Book of Zohar because he feared to reveal the secret. "Woe if I tell it and woe if I don’t. If I do, then the sinners will learn to work for their master. And if I don’t, then the friends will lose this great asset." What is the great secret concealed in The Book of Zohar that Rabbi Shimon cried about?

Answer: The secret of The Book of Zohar is that by relating to it the right way, it is possible to draw Upper Light from it that returns us to the Source. This Light can become the elixir of life for us as well as a deadly poison, depending on our attitude to The Zohar and to the Torah in general.

However, we see that there was no prohibition on studying the Pentateuch or Talmud even though they were also written by Kabbalists. Only The Zohar was concealed and prohibited for many years, and that is because there is a very powerful Light concealed inside this book which we are able to attract. Of course, the Torah also contains Light, but it is nearly inaccessible because of it’s exceeding height.

The Light of The Zohar is closer to us, but if a person is still inside his ego, he will want to use this Light egoistically. Then this Light will turn into a deadly poison for him.

If I want to attain bestowal, then this Light will be the elixir of life for me and will help me attain it. If, however, a person studies the Torah without intending to achieve bestowal, then he becomes more egoistic and starts to consider himself special, greater than others, and righteous. The Torah becomes a poison for him and increases his ego. Instead of lowering himself and feeling that he is smaller than others, he starts to feel the opposite, pride.

For the most part all of this happened recently, over the last century, when egoism reached a new level. That is why Kabbalists feared that people will start studying the science of Kabbalah egoistically as well, taking pride in it, and turning it into a business that sells "magical means" such as red strings, holy water, and blessings.

This will confuse people and push them away from correction, making them lose many life cycles until they finally reveal that this approach is a swindle and lie. But how much time and suffering will it take to get there!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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It is dangerous to study The Book of Zohar with a desire that is not ripe yet, meaning a desire that still hasn’t exhausted itself in this world. This kind of desire still doesn’t understand that there is nothing to be done in this world other than to ascend from it to the world of correction.

A person can only reveal Kabbalah if he looks for the meaning of life and has to find what to live for. However, if he still does not have this question, then he begins to interpret Kabbalah egoistically and to adapt it to his own benefit, deceiving himself by thinking that he is correcting himself. He starts selling it and using it as a weapon for his ego. Instead of using it against egoism, he uses it to conquer things for the ego, and that’s how he turns it from the elixir of life into a deadly poison for himself and for others.

That is why Kabbalists feared revealing the science of Kabbalah and invented many prohibitions, such as first reaching the age of 40, the need to first learn the whole Torah, as well as total observance of the commandments. They even scared people off by saying that you can go crazy. All of this was done because egoism was still undergoing the process of its development.

The Book of Zohar itself states that it is destined to be revealed only at the end of days. Then this wisdom would be revealed for the correction of the world, which is now ready for correction. That is when Kabbalists come out, telling us that the time has come!

That is why Rabbi Shimon cried about how to write The Book of Zohar in such a way that even if it were to become revealed at the wrong time, it wouldn’t cause harm. This is why he wrote it with the help of Rabbi Abba in a special, secret code. We read The Book of Zohar without understanding where Rabbi Shimon is concealed behind Rabbi Abba, who wept so much about the revelation of the great secret.

Rabbi Shimon used Rabbi Abba as a "shield," an external shell, an opportunity to write in a concealed manner. A person can reveal the secret that was hidden by Rabbi Shimon only on the condition that he penetrates inside Rabbi Abba’s protective shell. Then he can accept Rabbi Shimon’s secret message, but he is unable to read it before that time.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/10, “A Handmaid that is Heir to Her Mistress”

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When turning to a Kabbalistic text, especially The Book of Zohar, we must realize the importance of spiritual attainment. After all, at the end of the day this is the only thing we want: not knowledge or scholastics, and not general knowledge of the material, but only pure attainment, which signifies that a person has revealed the Creator. This is the criterion by which we value things.

On the path to attainment the operating law is the law of equivalence of form, which does not make any compromises. On one hand, a person fully and entirely depends on the influence of the Upper Force. Nothing else can help him; he needs only help from Above. Whoever understands this builds the right attitude.

The Torah talks about this when describing the Egyptian exile: “The sons of Israel cried out from the work and their cry rose to the Creator.” In other words, they firmly knew that they will never attain anything by themselves.

On the other hand, spiritual progress is always built on the combination of opposites. Therefore, we also have to participate in the process ourselves. As a result, we make great efforts while at the same time being sure that only a “miracle from the heavens” will lead us out of the land of Egypt into the land of Israel.

It is necessary to reach despair from one’s own ability, and a person should not run away from this feeling. In addition, one must be confident that there will be help from Above and ceaselessly demand it with all of one’s strength.

A person must find himself in the state of the sons of Israel who cried out from the work. That’s when everything inside him along with the external environment fuses into one whole and creates these conditions, bringing him significantly closer to the exit from Egypt.

Therefore, we must try to correctly imagine ourselves in this point. This is where we perform all the necessary actions and later we don’t run away from the despair, but on the contrary, we transfer the entire force of our despair to a cry, a demand for correction.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/14/10, The Zohar

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A comment of the ARI Films Channel user on www.youtube.com after he viewed the video clip “Kabbalah – Five Basic Principles” (230,000 views, takes the third place on Google after Wikipedia and Kabbalah.info when searching for the word “Kabbalah”):

“I am a Sufi Muslim and find the words of this teacher in the video to be very wise and beautiful. The emphasis on the ego as the source of separation and illusion echoes what the Sufi masters also teach. This proves that the Source has always been one and the same – God the Almighty. And that Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and Sufism are the three hairs on the same head.

If more people listened to teachers who taught such wisdom, the world might have a chance.

Love and Light to all”
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Until you receive spiritual attainment, you should not accept the stories of Kabbalists as facts that do not require proof, but only as a condition for your own spiritual development. You cannot use their description as a spiritual law and act according to it because you are not on the level from which it was written.

Therefore, we need to accept it as hypotheses, assumptions that such laws indeed act in the spiritual world. However, they are not carried over into our material world, meaning your state and your world.

Even the words of sages are their attainments, their world. They know how to work there and not make mistakes. If you begin to implement the same principles in the work, you will use all these statements in the egoistic form that you understand, that is, for the sake of your egoism rather than for bestowal like they used them. For this reason, it will clothe into the most egoistic forms for you. Thus, it is forbidden to do this.

Every person should have his own “judge” who limits him and says, “You may act only in accordance with your own corrections.” It is forbidden to come out of the boundaries of your corrections even if you’ve read or heard about it.

However, who is reading this? You are! Who is hearing it? You are! It has already passed through you, and it has already warped in your egoistic perception. How do you know how correctly you understood everything? It’s likely that you understood incorrectly since everyone “judges according to his own Kelim (vessels),” and you perceive everything that was said by Kabbalists in your own defects.

Do you understand to what extent studying comes down only to the Light that Reforms even for Kabbalists and sages? If you don’t draw the Light that Reforms through the studies which changes you, giving you an opportunity to work in accordance with these changes, then you are not allowed to listen to any advice of the Torah. After all, if you use it above your correction, above your degree, it will be to your detriment.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/10, "Body and Soul"

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Question: How can I think about the correction that The Book of Zohar brings us if I feel negative emotions such as hatred?

Answer: Prayer is whatever the heart feels. If there is hatred in my heart now, then this is my prayer, “I want to hurt my enemy.”

In order to correctly use the force that’s hidden in The Book of Zohar while reading it together in a group, I must first prepare my heart so it will desire the same thing the Creator desires. In reality, the Creator responds to every prayer, meaning the desires in our heart. That is why our world is so bad!

However, on the other hand, it is written that He responds only to the prayer that has gone through “the gate of tears.” So does He really respond to every desire, even the whim of a baby or the machinations of a villain?

Yes, say the Kabbalists who have revealed the system of our relationships with Him. A thief who has set his sights on some object, or a criminal who goes out “on the prowl” and is ready to kill someone, also desire to succeed and their prayer is also accepted. After all, we are talking about the desire of Malchut of the World of Atzilut, and everything beneath it, including our world, belongs to it.

Why, then, do we say that the desire can ascend into Malchut, or it can not ascend? The matter is that we draw a division into two types of desires:

– Some aspire in the same direction as the Creator’s will. Then they unite with the upper desire and are perceived as abundance from Above.

– Some do not match the Creator’s will. They also evoke the same response from Above as the positive desires, but are perceived by the negative desires negatively, as a negative reaction. This corrects a person, leading him down a lengthy, difficult path of suffering instead of the short, easy path where his desires coincide with the Creator’s desires.

That is why it is best for us to prepare for the right prayer and to use it when turning to The Book of Zohar. A person cannot sit at the lesson without any desires. One way or another, he desires something, and if his desire has been prepared ahead of time and aspires in the right direction, then he advances easily and quickly while reading The Zohar.

Besides, we have to remember that we are in the group, which helps us to strengthen our prayer. Thus, if a person’s thoughts are not aimed at the goal, then he takes an adversarial position in relation to the group and feels what seems like a negative reaction from Above even more.

Therefore, our entire work amounts to preparing for the lesson, that is, for reading The Zohar and other Kabbalistic books. Once we are at the lesson, it is difficult to change anything because a person’s heart is already tuned to a specific desire.

That’s why it is so important what thoughts I have when going to sleep and how I prepare for the lesson in the morning. These minutes play the decisive role. And we shouldn’t forget about the physical preparation so the body won’t fall into slumber.

Rabash writes the following in Article 36 in Writings of Rabash:
It is written, “He who hears the prayer.” Why does it say “the prayer” in the singular tense? Doesn’t the Creator hear all prayers? The matter is that we have to raise just one prayer: to restore the Shechina from the dust.

To pray for the restoration of the Shechina from the dust means to desire the revelation of the Creator, the quality of bestowal and love for the neighbor inside me in order to become similar to the Creator in this regard. If we all aim our efforts in one direction, then we are knocking on the gate that will definitely open.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/7/10, The Zohar

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Sometimes there are states, when a student thinks that he is smarter than the Teacher, that he understands something better, and that he can have his own opinion about inner work. He simply forgets that “the mistakes of sages are constructive, while the creations of the young are destructive.” It seems to a student that he is right from the rational point of view, and the Teacher is wrong about many things, or maybe he is just insufficiently informed.

However, the spiritual differs from the material, and a person who exists in the spiritual cannot be wrong. Furthermore, even if today it seems to you that the Teacher is wrong, this is not the case in perspective. This can be likened to how a child thinks that a tailor is ruining the fabric by cutting it into pieces. However, one who understands that it should turn into clothing thinks: “What can you do? He’s a child!”

A person who wishes to advance needs to proceed with faith above reason in spite of seeing mistakes in the Teacher’s actions since the whole nature is split into degrees, and one who is situated on a higher degree is likely to act correctly. And the evident mistakes of the Teacher are your own mistakes!

Therefore, we need faith. Faith means that I am working with the mind of the Upper One rather than with my own mind. I annul myself before him and accept what comes to me with joy. It may seem incorrect to me on my degree, but when I rise to a higher degree, I will reveal that it is the truth.

Everything depends on whether a person is ready to accept it. While it strengthens some because they understand that it is a good sign and they need to agree with the Upper governance, others cannot cope with their egoism and become more distant from the path and the goal. It is said about this: “Where the righteous go forward, the wicked go back.”

It is impossible to pass to a higher degree if I don’t accept it with faith above reason in relation to the teacher and the group. I accept everything they have and cancel myself, which is called being “Hafetz Hesed,” not desiring anything for yourself; this is the first correction.

From the very lowest to the very top degree, you should always advance by acquiring the level of “Hafetz Hessed” in regard to the Upper degree. This is called advancing with faith above knowledge.

Joy is a sign of faith! You are “happy with your lot,” and you wish only to agree with the teacher, the group, and the Creator: nothing more! You are happy because you are in consent with them, which means that you have reached correction and can go on to a higher degree. Your egoism has calmed down, and now you need to receive additional obstacles in order to correct them and receive the Light of Hochma in them, and this is already much more difficult.

Now you need to begin to bestow instead of just agreeing with the teacher and the group; you need to work with their desire instead of your own. Your desire should serve their desires, and they are always opposite! We need to go through a few inner overturns in our egoism! Therefore, the extent of faith in the teacher determines the height of the student’s degree.
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From a lesson 11/26/10, Shamati

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Question: You explained that the text we read in Talmud Eser Sefirot and The Book of Zohar describes the forces of connection between us. Can you give me an example of this connection?

Answer: If you were in spirituality, then you would actually reveal everything you read about in the book. You would reveal the forces of connection among us, including their might, character, how they operate, and how they unite together into the net connecting us.

You would participate in the net of these forces and its work, in the illumination of the Shechina. You would see how much you are able to take an active part in it, how much you can add to it yourself. While reading the text, you would see how this entire net behaves.

However, if you do not live inside spiritual attainment, it is impossible to convey this to you. Baal HaSulam writes in his poem, “Whatever your eyes will see, you will see it and no other.”

As long as you do not feel spirituality, you have to read these texts hoping that it will become revealed to you. We read the Kabbalistic texts in the quality of Segula (a miraculous quality), and not in the form of facts.

For example, suppose I am blind and I am listening to a physics professor tell me about optical laws. He tells me how a ray of light splits into several colors. Yet, I am just hearing about it. I do not understand what he is talking about, but only hear that these phenomena exist.

I can keep studying this way my entire life, without understanding what it is talking about. However, if I make special efforts and begin to feel the phenomena I heard about, then they become my life. This is called “Taste and see how good the Creator is.” You have to taste it – to receive these Lights and feel their taste.

The real science of Kabbalah begins only after you have this sensation.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/6/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The studying of the wisdom of Kabbalah is founded on Segula, meaning the drawing of the Light that Reforms. The entire Torah, the method of correction, is designated for this. This is why it says: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.”

The Torah is regarded as a “spice” for a reason. It never replaces desire but “spices” it up with intention thereby readying it for consumption. In the same fashion, a dish is spiced; otherwise, it wouldn’t be edible. A dab of spices finishes it off.

Therefore, regardless of what text we are studying, our intentions must not change. Kabbalists wrote their books while being in spiritual attainment. However, we haven’t entered the spiritual world yet and cannot directly use their instructions as a guide in the Upper reality. At this stage, while reading, we are expected to hope, to anticipate a “miracle.” Let my eyes open so I may see what I am reading about for myself.

It will occur only if my aspiration is correct. Everything depends on what I demand from the studies and how closely my expectations match the force lain in the Kabbalistic texts. It will respond only if I keep aiming at it and wish for it to arrive and endow me with the property of bestowal. Then, I will rise above my egoism and experience true closeness with the other souls, together with whom we will reveal the Creator.

Such an intention is, indeed, aimed at the realization of the method. Thereby, I do utilize it as prescribed, which is regarded as “studying the Torah.” After all, I anticipate the arrival of the Light that Reforms like a rooster that is preparing to greet the dawn. If, however, I am contemplating egoistic rewards, I resemble a bat that doesn’t need light at all.

This work needn’t be despised either. It isn’t desirable, of course, but it still leads to the goal, only through the dark, by making a loop, through jungles of problems, until after numerous incarnations a person arrives at the question of purpose.

Therefore, darkness radiated by the Torah also helps somewhat. Baal HaSulam writes that we don’t always move ahead in the correct intentions and sometimes act like bats.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/2/10, The Zohar, Introduction, Article “The Buds”

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