The Book of Zohar, VaYetze, Item 13: King Solomon established his book on seven Havalim [“Hevel” means breath vapor, as well as vanity, futility] on which the world stands. These are the pillars and ledges that form the existence of the world, and this is why they are called Havalim.

Hevel (vanity) is the foundation of the world. From the translation, it follows that everything only operates on vanity. This is not quite true.

Hevel is what comes out of the mouth. Not even breathing but sound—everything that a person seems to let out of himself with his inner breath.

In a spiritual object, such an exit from inside out is the power of bestowal, the power of going out of oneself, the desire to share with another, the desire to love another, to connect with him with his aspirations and fill him like a mother fills a child. It is precisely upon this desire, the love of one for another, that the whole world can exist.

On the other hand, Hevel can mean vanity, i.e., all unnecessary, husk, garbage.

Question: Then what should we do? How to relate to this word?

Answer: It is necessary to translate the Torah correctly with a Kabbalistic meaning because it speaks about the inner matter of humanity, about its desires, about its connection, and its rise to the level of the Creator.

Therefore, if you translate just like that, in our everyday connotation, then the translation will have the opposite meaning.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #12

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Question: Is there any reason that the word “Evel” means sometimes bestowal and sometimes vanity?

Answer: Of course! This is how our egoism breaks it. This concept has been translated incorrectly—egoistically. Any word has two meanings: one on the spiritual and one on the corporeal level.

Being at our level, we treat everything for our own sake, and therefore, all words have only corporeal meaning because we look at everything with our earthly eyes. If you look from the level of the upper light, from the level of the Creator, then all this takes on a completely different meaning.

Therefore, any word can be rotated as desired. And the Torah, the Prophets, and the Holy Scriptures, all three books are written in such a way that their understanding depends on the level of the person who reads them. For one person these are just stories describing all kinds of corporeal actions of ancient people. And for another individual, these are spiritual actions that take place in souls and not among people on earth, in the property of bestowal and love and not in struggle and wars.

When you read the Torah, it seems to you that there is a continuous struggle between the chosen people and the Creator, endless wars and disappointments, because you perceive this story in your earthly egoistic properties.

And if you change these properties, you will understand everything completely differently. And it will happen automatically! You will suddenly begin to understand what is being said about how we should unite with each other and, having been united, be filled with the knowledge of the Creator, the feeling of eternal, perfect life.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #12

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual meaning of receiving the Torah?“

Receiving the Torah means that a special force becomes revealed that helps us rise above our ego and align ourselves with the spiritual force of love, bestowal and connection.

If we wish to receive the Torah, then we must study it on ourselves. How else could we study it if not through our own experience, by gradually transforming from a tiny egoist to a big egoist, and then from a tiny altruist to a big altruist?

We can accept the method of correction called “the Torah” only when we understand that we will voluntarily transform ourselves in order to become spiritual, aligning ourselves with the quality of love, bestowal and connection for all.

Based on the TV program “Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on April 9, 2021.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: What is the spiritual meaning of receiving the Torah? What does a person receive? Some kind of instruction within himself, how to work with his egoism, some kind of insight?

Answer: Receiving the Torah means that a certain power is revealed in a person that helps him be above his egoism.

If you want to receive the Torah, you must begin to study it for yourself. After all, how else can you study it if not through your own experience when you gradually turn from a small egoist to a huge egoist, and then from a small altruist to a big altruist.

You can accept this method of correction only when you understand that you are voluntarily going to change yourself to become a spiritual person, spiritual, in the property of bestowal and love for all.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/9/21

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The Torah is the internal program of our desires, we must organize them according to it, feel its stories and actions generated in us, and begin to live within this system. We are all broken, but due to the fact that we engage in the Torah, its reforming light corrects us and correctly connects all the broken parts.

It is not the elements themselves that are broken, but the connections between them, and by adjusting them, we build ourselves, which is called “raising the Shechina from the dust.” Divinity is all fragmented into small egoistic desires and we need to gradually combine them into one system, which will become one person, Adam, similar to the Creator, where everyone is in mutual bestowal.

In fact, we study our correct internal structure and how to correct it according to the Torah so that the single higher force, besides which there is nothing, will open in us, fill and envelop us. In this way, we will correctly implement the Torah and feel how the upper force operates in us. We will attract it, hasten its opening, and create all the conditions on the part of the desire (Kli) for the manifestation of the power of light in it.

It is said that the Torah must be written on your heart. You need to go through and feel everything that the Torah says from the first words, “In the beginning” (Bereshit), to the last word, “Israel,” the whole process described in the Torah. In this way, we will adjust ourselves correctly and allow the Creator to clothe in us without any hindrances on our part. On the contrary, we will attract and engage Him, by become a correct vessel for the light, Divinity, in which the Creator is revealed.

The Creator created one complete desire, called Adam HaRishon before the sin, but then broke it into many parts. And we need to try to connect these parts, put them back together like a spiritual puzzle in each one of us and between all of us together. And after that, instead of this world, we will begin to see what is beyond it: the spiritual world in which one force, the Creator, rules, and all parts of reality are mutually connected in perfect unity.

Therefore, our perception of the Torah will completely change and instead of history, geography, events of ordinary life, which were presented to us in our egoism, a completely different form will appear—the spiritual one. Instead of many characters and people, we will see desires and how the two forces act: the Creator and the Pharaoh. And between them on this map stands Moses and all of us behind him.

The more we study the Torah, the clearer it will become that all of reality is included in this little book. Nothing else is needed except to imprint it on your heart, that is, on your desires. Then we will be certain that there really is nothing but this.

And for this to become a reality, it is necessary to embody this whole process in the group, in the ten, between us. It is necessary to find out how all the studied material is revealed between us, in our relations. We will begin to recognize these processes, see how they change, improve, and mend.

And the more we want this to happen to us in practice, the sooner we will reach the end of correction and clothe in the Torah, the entire upper light in the Kli called Israel, that is, directed only toward the Creator. The Creator will fill this vessel and “On that day, the Lord will be one and His name, ‘One.’” The light is perfect, the vessel will become perfect, and they will merge with each other.

All this is realized in a group, as it is said: “I dwell among my own people,” that is, within a group that reveals the light more and more as it unites. The light unites us and brings us closer until we feel that we are together in the same process under the influence of one light and become so close that we merge with the Creator, as it is said: “He is one and His name, One.” He, the Creator, is the light, and His name is the desire, the vessel, us. The light and our desires will thus become so similar to each other in the action of mutual bestowal: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” that the Creator will completely clothe himself inside the creation He created.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/2/21, “Pesach (Passover)”

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Question: Why is the Torah offered to us not directly, but through parables? What is this system?

Answer: You cannot offer the Torah to egoism in a direct way. How can I offer you: “Slaughter yourself, kill yourself, cease to exist” if you are an absolute egoist? Or say: “I am offering you a way to exit egoism.”

What does it mean to exit it?—To think only about others and in no case about yourself, to annul all your needs, that is, to be above them and think only about the needs of your neighbor. How is this possible? To think about whom, about what? Naturally, you cannot imagine your future existence in this way.

Why do you need the upper force that is intended only to lift you above your desire, above your world? To lift above means not to use your egoistic desire, to become an altruist. Do you need this?

In fact, when a person goes through a certain period of preparation, he begins to see that this is the greatest quality that he really needs.

Before that, however, he does not feel any need for it. He thinks that he can own the world and achieve everything with the help of his egoism. He does not think about eternity, which is acquired precisely in the quality of bestowal, by rising above the ego. Here we need the influence of the upper light.

After all, the special power of Kabbalah and, in particular, The Book of Zohar is that when I read it, the upper light influences me and builds completely new feelings and new thoughts, which I did not have before.

This is when I begin to understand and feel those levels of the universe that I did not feel before. I have a completely different approach, different values. I begin to relate to the world in a completely different plane, to dissect it, to feel it, to analyze it, to evaluate it by other standards that I did not have before. From the outside, they look very strange.

The light gives me completely different thoughts and feelings that are above our world. Then a person may seem strange to others. He prefers to love, to bestow, and he devotes his life to such seemingly unworldly values. He begins to evaluate his actions quite differently from the others.

People from the outside may ask him: “Why do you need this? What is the use of it? What is the point?” He cannot imagine how we can still be in our little interests in life, and only in them.
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From From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” 2/16/21 #9

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The Torah, Devarim, Deuteronomy, 5:18: “And you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

States in which I advance must always be aimed only for bestowal and not for my own sake.

On the spiritual path, man is in a very interesting state. On one hand, I am alone and the whole world is inside me, as it is said: “Man is a small world.”

On the other hand, all my internal desires seem to me as attributes that exist outside of me. It is the same with regard to my like-minded friends, it seems to me that they exist outside of me, and I later gradually begin to see that all of them are within me.

Therefore, they are my neighbors. I must work at the degree of bestowal on all their desires, called “wives,” (their female part, the will to receive) when I clothe in them, that is, for their sake.

This is what means not to covet my neighbor’s wife. I only work at the degree of “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is already a more serious system.

After all, the ten commandments of the Torah are at the level of the ten Sefirot. The commandment “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” is the most serious of them because it deals with the lowest internal egoistic quality. By the way, it has nothing to do with the egoism in our world and the physical states between the genders.

It is about the way we can fully direct our egoism toward the intention for bestowal to the common connection between us at the upper level where there is no longer any division by gender. After all, men and women are desires and intentions and not corporeal qualities.
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From Kab TV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/16/16

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Question: What is the difference between The Book of Zohar and the Torah?

Answer: The Book of Zohar is a commentary on the Five Books of the Torah. It comments on each passage and explains what is hidden behind the allegories and behind the everyday language in which the Torah is written.

It seems to us that the Torah tells about history, geography, and certain earthly incidents. And The Book of Zohar raises all this to the next level and speaks of those forces that descend into our world and form everything spiritual.

Through the picture of our world, through the earthly description, together with The Zohar, you seem to enter a spiritual state and start to see not a world of physical images but of higher forces.

You begin to live in it as in a spiritual matrix that influences you and you influence it. You tear yourself away from your body, bare your inner properties and forces, abstract from everything you feel with your five corporeal senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch), and bind yourself only with your soul.

All properties, forces, desires, thoughts, and intentions that remain with you after you cut off everything earthly from yourself begin to contact the forces that The Book of Zohar describes. It explains to you how you can now put yourself in order as if “combing” yourself inside your soul.

How can you create a new order in you every time: new occurrences, new shifts, connections, combinations of different properties, thoughts, intentions in order to understand more deeply with whom you are dealing.

As a result, it turns out that the soul, which now manifests itself in you in isolation from everything earthly, in the form of your inner forces, begins to draw to you the qualities of the Creator. But they are also your qualities; they are portrayed on you.

It turns out that on one side there is you, on the other side is the Creator, and there is a screen between you upon which your joint properties are depicted. These joint properties can change depending on how you change.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #7

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Question: The fifth commandment is “Honor your father and your mother, in order that your days be lengthened on the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you.” What is it about? Who are the father and the mother?

Answer: Father and mother are the forces of Hassadim and Hochma.

The Creator is the upper force. He is followed by two lower ones: Hochma and Bina. Hochma is the force of the father and Bina is the force of the mother. Then there are another six derivatives that compose Zeir Anpin: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod.

The last Sefira is Malchut, and this is the complete creation.

The phrase “honor your father and your mother” means that we should give Hochma and Bina the opportunity to build, to create, so that everything that exists in them would appear in the six Sefirot of Zeir Anpin, in six forces.

Question: What does “to honor” mean?

Answer: To honor means to wait when they are revealed in creation because Hochma and Bina, father and mother, are above the created being and above creation. The Creator creates through them. Therefore the six Sefirot of Zeir Anpin are created by the father and the mother, which practically shape the creation.

“Honor your father and your mother” means to give these forces the opportunity to act within you. It is like in our world: can the fetus do anything? Even a small child? Everything is done for him by his parents. And here we are talking about the correct attitude of the lower one to the upper one. A person in our world must allow the upper forces to act, to form him.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/26/19

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Remark: Before the people of Israel received the Ten Commandments, there were Seven Commandments of Noah: six before the Flood, and one more was added after the Flood.

Answer: According to the Talmud, God gave them through Adam to Noah, and he passed them on to all humanity. Then a group emerged from this humanity, called Yehudim, which means “aspiring to the Creator.” Therefore, additional commandments were added to them.

Question: Why did the seventh commandment of Noah, which was added after the Flood, oblige creating a fair judicial system?

Answer: Because before the Flood everything developed instinctively, and people did not need to be corrected. And after the Flood, when a huge, terrible egoistic force was revealed, which, as it were, caused the Flood, this additional commandment was introduced.

That is, before the Flood, people were at the elementary animal level, they did not need judicial laws, lawyers, courts. And when the ego grew, then a judicial system to correct interactions and everything else was necessary.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 12/26/19

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