Question: The stories included in the Introduction to The Book of Zohar are encoded parables. To penetrate them and understand what they are talking about, one needs the help of a Kabbalist.

One of the articles in The Book of Zohar is called “The Letters of Rav Hamnuna Saba.” Who is Rav Hamnuna?

Answer: Rav Hamnuna Saba is one of the greatest sages of antiquity who lived over 2,000 years ago. He taught his students the information that The Book of Zohar speaks about.

Question: At the beginning of the article it is written: “When the Creator wished to make the world, all the letters were still hidden, and two thousand years prior to the creation of the world the Creator was observing and playing with the letters.”

What are letters? What does it mean that the letters were hidden and the Creator was playing with them? What is it about?

Answer: The fact is that there was no time then. It is said: “Two thousand years prior to the creation of the world.” What times are we talking about here, what is the time-counting? All this is very conditional.

We must understand that we are talking only about spiritual processes and not about some years or rotation of planets, stars, luminaries, to our world, and so on.

As Baal HaSulam writes, the information given in Kabbalistic books is beyond time and space.
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From KabTV’s “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“4/23/23

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Question: Is The Book of Zohar closer to us in understanding because it was written at the verge of the exile from spiritual attainment?

Answer: Any texts of The Book of Zohar are closer to us than other holy books. The holy books mean books written by the Kabbalists from the attainment of the upper spheres but in different keys, in different forms.

The Zohar is written in a style that has the brightest and strongest effect on us because everything is contained in its words, in their form, combination, and intention.

They operate in the same key, in the same stream, they are on the same line with the system of our internal structure, with our world, with the forces of the upper world. That is, the letters are a graphic representation of the combination of upper forces at all their levels up to the highest, that is, up to the level of GAR de Bina of the world of Atzilut.

But there is no miracle in this! There is only one way for the upper energy to influence us, which will transform us. Other sources cannot influence us so much because they are not written with such symbols. They do not depict the same qualities.

If you copy The Book of Zohar in another language, this will still distort it for you. It must be written either in Aramaic or in Hebrew, in Biblical Hebrew. Both languages complement each other. These are related languages that go back to Adam.

Adam is a man who lived in our world 5,782 years ago. He was the first to reveal this upper sphere, these letters, and began to describe the upper worlds with them.

From there, all knowledge came to us through 20 generations who have attained the upper worlds, from Adam to Abraham, and then from Abraham to us. This is all described in the Torah (in the Bible).

So, it all goes back to Adam, the spiritual source of all created beings, that is, not to our corporeal forefather, who allegedly gave birth to humanity together with Eve, but to our spiritual father Adam.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Secret of the Zohar” 1/9/11

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Question: Why don’t you give as many explanations while reading The Book of Zohar as when studying TES?

Answer: Because The Book of Zohar is not perceived by us at all. Baal HaSulam made some connection between us and it through his scientific Kabbalistic explanations. And the rest of the original texts of The Zohar are not Kabbalistic but descriptive, semi-cryptic, and therefore, difficult for us.

But on the other hand, it is very easy, because reading it, you feel that this does not apply to you at all, and it therefore seems to be easy to build the right intention. However, it is necessary to somehow get attached to the text, so Baal HaSulam made additions.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Zohar or TES?” 11/3/12

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When reading The Book of Zohar or studying The Study of the Ten Sefirot (Talmud Eser Sefirot, or TES), you feel from both of them that you are dealing with the highest information. They are unique. There is something about them that inspires respect and admiration.

This information does not incline you for servile worship or for fanaticism. On the contrary, it raises you. It does not lower you, it does not crush you, or force you to kneel or tremble.

By raising you up, it makes you a Human with a capital “H”; it reveals the upper world, and does not suppress.

This is the difference between The Book of Zohar and TES and any other religious source. Kabbalistic sources talk about the upper world, but at the same time they raise a person to it.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Zohar or TES?” 11/3/12

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Question: You said that Rabbi Shimon conducted pure light, and Rabbi Aba clothed it in letters. What was the function of the other nine disciples of Rabbi Shimon in this chain?

Answer: They represent a common system. If they had not been there, Rabbi Shimon would not have felt anything and Rabbi Aba would not have been able to open the upper light and clothe it in letters. After all, all these ten people are ten Sefirot, a complete Partzuf. How could anything happen without it?

Question: When Rabbi Aba clothed the light in letters, what exactly did he transform?

Answer: He clothed the light in a type of shell you need to acquire to reveal the upper light.

The rest of Rabbi Shimon’s disciples worked in this system together, in harmony, to reveal the upper light that emanated from their teacher.

Comment: Interestingly, Baal HaSulam worked independently and described all this as well as they did.

My Response: Firstly, Baal HaSulam also had his own disciples.

Secondly, when a person enters the spiritual world, he already has other students and another company: those properties, those desires, those corrected and uncorrected elements of the general system, which we simply do not detect with our five senses.

There, contact takes place at the level of desires and thoughts, and not at the level of the bodily matter that we imagine.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How The Book of Zohar Was Written” 6/2/12

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The second commandment… it is love—that one should love one’s Master with whole love…even though you do not know if I will come after you to support you… [and] although I am not giving you anything, your love will still be whole, to adhere to Me with all your heart and soul (Zohar for All, Introduction of The Book of Zohar, The Second Commandment, Item 198).

Ultimately, we are talking about desires. If the other’s desire and my desire are arranged in such a way that I want to use his desire to fulfill my own, this is called “self-love.”

If we are in an equal state: “I give to him, and he gives to me,” each of us perceives his desire and the desire of the other as one.

For example, as in a combat team or as “one man with one heart,” this is the condition “do not do to the other what is hateful to you.” Then you will be connected to each other, but on condition that you are connected together by one desire. This is not love, but the connection of friends.

Whereas love means that I take my desire and put it below the desire of a friend (the level of love depends on how much lower) in order to use my desire only to fulfill the desire of a friend. His desire determines everything for me, and I live inside his desire, like a mother inside a baby. She feels everything he feels and what he needs, and only exists for this. This is called love.

Therefore, “to adhere with all your heart and soul” means to perceive the desire of the other as your own and take care only to serve his desire day and night. When is this possible? When everyone connects together under the influence of the upper force.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/11, The Book of Zohar — Introduction: “The Second Commandment”

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All our work is to transition from the perception of reality in egoistic sense organs to the perception of reality in altruistic sense organs.

This is the whole difference between the feeling of this world and the feeling of the upper world, between our current perception of reality in which we live in a lie, away from the Creator, and without any perception where we are, to understand, feel, and know where we exist, and within whom and with whom we reside.

This change of perception is made by the effort of a person. But beforehand there must be a desire to change our perception because it will happen only if we desire it. Therefore we must make an effort to imagine the upper reality, to create its image in ourselves as the Kabbalistic books speak about, and to build such relationships among us in the group.

Then during the study when we read about this upper reality, we will demand that a force from above come and open to us the organs of sensation, these floodgates of sensations, that we would reveal where we really are and not remain in this false, imaginary, far-fetched picture that appears to us today in our muddied organs of sensation. Thus, all of our work is to give correct definitions of what is called true reality.

Each of us, with all his might and as much as possible, should try to imagine, draw, paint, or form for himself a kind of supreme image in which we are all united in our desires together and with the Creator so there is no difference between us, but within us and between us reigns the Creator, the quality of bestowal and mutual love.

There is nothing but this state; there are no imaginary pictures, and we ask from this reality that it affect us and manifest in us. This should be the result of our efforts.

This is exactly what a person should constantly strive for during the reading of The Book of Zohar and other Kabbalistic books. And this is why these books speak about the true reality. Otherwise we could read books written in a different style, or there would be no point in reading them at all.

Therefore when we read about the upper reality in these books, we must try to achieve it. As Baal HaSulam writes in the Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot, Item 155 “…through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls—from the only existing state, and thus they correct themselves.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/3/10, The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Tetzaveh (Command)”

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Those righteous ones, the authors of The Zohar, and especially Rabbi Shimon, their thoughts and words were in actual deeds, for according to the quality of the innovations in the Torah that they discovered, the upper degrees were promptly set up and arranged after them in actual fact. That is, the righteous build worlds with their innovations in the Torah (Zohar for All, Beresheet – 1, Article “The Sling-Stone,” Item 200).

Question: Are these worlds internal or external?

Answer: Everything is inside a person. There is nothing outside of us. Everything that seems to us as existing outside of us: the world, stars, people, and the Earth is the way we feel what is happening within us. There is nothing outside. All our perception of reality, as if I take something, hold it in my hands, and see it; all this appears only inside me.

Therefore, to the extent that I change and improve my qualities, I see a different world, a new world. But everything is inside a person. A person is a small world and he includes everything.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/6/23, Zohar for All “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “Torah and Prayer”

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The main thing when reading The Book of Zohar is to be naive and simple in relation to it.

After all, this Book is so high and great that in relation to it we are small children who have been given an encyclopedia in our hands and hardly know how to even flip through it.

We do not understand anything written in The Zohar. But it does not matter. If you study it to the best of your ability, then the effect of the light contained in this Book is very great.

After all, you do not just read or listen to what is written in The Book. It is like you are in front of a touch screen of the computer controlled by the touch of your fingers. This is how The Zohar works.

Looking at some word, you as if click on it and turn on a certain system. When you read or listen to a word from The Zohar, you “press” on it and from its spiritual root, you attract the illumination (Ohr Makif) upon yourself. And so on, word by word, one illumination after the other. Moreover, The Zohar is written in such a way that it knows how to advance you.

In the spiritual world, we must grow the same way as babies grow in our corporeal world, naturally and instinctively.
Just as the external influence works on a baby in this world and he just opens up toward it, so must we open ourselves to spiritual influence.

Only as a result of its influence, will we acquire spiritual feelings and mind.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/26/10, The Book of Zohar “BeHaalotcha (When You Mount the Candles)”

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Question: While reading The Book of Zohar, how can I feel that I am reading from a desire that comes from a general connection and not my personal desire?

Answer: You can read The Zohar separately, only it will not give you anything.

Question: What is the difference between when I am together with everyone and read based on my own desire, and when I go through a common desire?

Answer: When you read together, but at the same time you seem to be alone, then you are really alone.

And when you read together with others in one common desire and you have annulled your egoism in order to join together with them and attain the upper quality of bestowal and love to the extent of your equivalence of form to it, that is, you have prepared yourself by connecting with the group to connect with the upper force, then you really have its revelation in the quality that you have prepared in yourself in advance according to the law of equivalence of form.

Therefore, the difference is that you attain two different worlds. After all, when you study only for yourself, you just study wisdom or knowledge. And when you read and connect with others, you attain the upper world firsthand. It clothes on you because your qualities, which love with your friends has prepared, have become similar to it.

Question: If I’m not trying to understand what is written in The Book of Zohar, but I’m trying to catch the general wave, how do you direct your desire through the common mass?

Answer: Only with your love; there is nothing else. Only with your kind attitude! Only by incorporating in the friends! Like a mother through her children; in no other way. Don’t try to find anything else here. It’s very simple.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Read The Book of Zohar through Others” 3/11/12

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