The Sulam Commentary isn’t simply an addition to the text of The Zohar. Baal HaSulam wrote it in a special manner so that when we read this commentary together with The Zohar, it acts like a teacher who takes the material and renders it into different forms with respect to us. In other words, The Sulam Commentary isn’t just a formal explanation using Kabbalistic terms which explains the mechanism of relationships between the spiritual worlds, Partzufim, and Sefirot. The Commentary helps The Zohar to express itself like a teacher who presents the study material to the student in a clearer, more suitable way.

When we listen to The Zohar with The Sulam Commentary, it’s like a translation with additional information which the translator adds to help us to feel the original better. It’s as if it is translated for us from Chinese, adding clarifications to the text about the country’s nature. It gives us information on attendant circumstances (similar to a list of exhibits attached to a document) in order to help us perceive the material more clearly and to feel close to the text. This explanation is built like a ladder (Sulam).

After all, The Zohar is this grand structure that contains all creation spanning from us until the very World of Infinity. In addition, we did not receive the entire Zohar; we have only a small part of it. With his Commentary, Baal HaSulam supplemented what we lack from The Zohar, in addition to organizing it like a ladder. Regardless of the order in which we read it, the Commentary passes through a certain matrix, and works by arranging within us the degrees (rungs of the ladder) which we can use to ascend upward, step by step.

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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Ve’Eleh Toldot Itzhak (These Are the Generations of Isaac),” Item 147
The good can’t break through the shell of evil. The Evil has to come to an independent realization that it is evil.
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“Beit Shaar HaKavanot,” Item 13, Lesson 3
Building a group as a miniature model of humanity will allow for major changes to occur.
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“Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Item 60
Soon the world will feel a need for the science of Kabbalah for true attainment of the spiritual world.
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Kabbalists On The Book Of Zohar

The power of study of The Book Of Zohar eliminates all sentences from Above.
—Ravs of Jerusalem, year 5681 (1941)

Because Israel is destined to taste from the Tree of Life, which is the holy Book of Zohar, through it, they will be redeemed from exile.
—The Book of Zohar, Naso, Item 90

One who did not engage in the wisdom of truth, who did not want to learn it when his soul wanted to rise to the Garden of Eden, is rejected from there with disgrace. …And do not follow the example of the greatest in the Torah in the revealed who do not want to engage in this wisdom, since the words of our sages in the Midrash and in The Zohar are truer than the greatest in this generation.
—Sefer HaBrit (The Book of the Covenant), Part 2, Article 12, Chapter 5

Many fools escape from studying the secrets of the Ari and The Book of Zohar, which are our lives. If my people heeded me…they would delve in the study of The Book of Zohar…. They would revoke all the harsh sentences and would extend abundance and Light. The life of man depends on The Book of Zohar and the writings of the Ari, to study with sanctity, joy, and pleasantness, with fear and with love, each according to his attainment and holiness….
—Rav Yitzhak Yehudah Yehiel of Komarno,
Notzer Hesed (Keeping Mercy), Chapter 4, Teaching 20

Indeed, when the wisdom is left bare, abstruse words without understanding, another evil is born from that: Great sages leave it aside, since it is the nature of the wise to seek sober understanding and to know the depth of the issues, and not consent to mere words. And when they saw that there was nothing in the words to fill their desire, they said, “Why should we waste our time with the unattainable?”

Others have harmed even more: They not only loathed it, but defamed it, considering it gullibility that people have assumed, to encounter obscene and unacceptable things. Moreover, they have come to deny its essence and negate the Holy Zohar being composed by Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai) and his friends. And all this was because the words of the sages were alien in their eyes, until they considered the Tanaaim, the foundations of Rav Yitzhak Yehudah Yehiel of Komarnohe land, unworthy of attention.
—The Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato (The Ramchal),
Shaarey Ramchal (Gates of the Ramchal), Introduction to the Article, “The Debate,” p 37

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A question I received: What should I do if out of an entire hour of reading The Zohar I could only spend a few seconds thinking about the Surrounding Light that brings me correction?

My Answer: This is not good. There’s a legend about a person who dies and goes to the upper court of judgment. There he is asked, “Did you engage in Torah and await salvation?” You won’t be asked anything else there but this. The Torah refers to the Light that Reforms. So did you desire this or not? After all, this was the only reason you were sent to this world. This is the only thing that counts out of your entire life.

You may be studying Kabbalah and have a burning desire, but that is not your own accomplishment. It was given to you by the Creator. He brought you to the Kabbalistic group and gave you the means. But what happened afterward? What did you yourself do within the system that influenced you? Did you desire salvation, correction? This is what you will have to answer.

After we have just completed reading The Zohar today, are you able to say that you were inside what was being read? It’s too late to think about this during the study itself because everything depends on the preparation. You have to come to the lesson prepared, burning with desire and demand, as if you are coming to a doctor and asking him, “Doctor, give me some kind of medicine! Otherwise it’s all over for me — that’s how bad I feel!” When you come to the lesson with this mindset, you await salvation during the study. But if you initially came there without a demand to receive medicine because you don’t feel your evil, your egoism, and your inability to unite with the friends, and if you aren’t looking for love for your neighbor, then you won’t remember about it during the study either.

You have to reveal these deficiencies, your evil inclination even before you open The Zohar because when you open up The Zohar it will already be too late to change anything. Our entire work takes place during the preparation. Everything depends on it alone.
The pain must already be felt inside you in order for you to desire to soothe it with The Zohar, instead of trying to artificially remember that at this time you are “supposed to” ask for a connection with your neighbor. You can’t deceive the Creator. He reads what is in your heart and sees such a deep inner desire that you don’t even suspect it is there. Meanwhile, He considers: Should He give you an answer to this desire or not? If it assists your spiritual advancement and creates the middle line within you, then the Light helps you. But if not, then the Light pushes you forward from the opposite side through suffering until you finally connect everything together correctly and receive the true answer.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Ve’Eleh Toldot Itzhak (These Are the Generations of Isaac),” Item 30: Jacob knew that Esau would cling to that Slant Serpent. For this reason, he followed him in all his actions like another Slant Serpent, opposite him, cleverly and shrewdly.

It is precisely the desire to receive pleasure that teaches us to be shrewd. It teaches us how to work with the same desire and lie to it. After all, the desire to bestow does not have wisdom or a mind; it has no Light of Hochma (the Light of Wisdom). It’s meant for the desire to receive pleasure. Therefore, in particular, the serpent is smart. We need to learn wisdom from it for the right line. This is called “help against him” since the serpent, itself, teaches us the right line and how to work with it. It teaches us how to kill it, extract only medicine from its venom, and to work with this medicine for the desire for the intention to bestow.

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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Ve’Eleh Toldot Itzhak (These Are The Generations of Isaac),” Item 131

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The most important thing when reading The Book of Zohar is to keep yourself naive and simple in regard to it. This book is so lofty and great that in relation to it we are like little children who have been given an encyclopedia and are hardly able to turn the pages.
We don’t understand any of what is written in The Zohar. However, this is irrelevant. If you study it to the extent that you are able to, then you will receive a great influence of the Light contained in this book.

You are not just reading or listening about what is written in a book, but it is as though you are standing by a touchscreen of a computer which is controlled by the touch of a finger. This is how The Book of Zohar works. By looking at some word, it is as though you press it and put a certain system into gear. By reading or listening to some word from The Book of Zohar, you “press” it and draw an illumination (Ohr Makif) upon yourself from its spiritual root.

This continues word by word, one illumination after another. In addition, The Zohar is written in such a way that it knows how to advance you. In the spiritual world we grow in the same manner as babies grow in our material world, naturally and instinctively. Much like a baby is affected by outside influence, simply opening up to it, we need to open ourselves up to the spiritual influence. As a consequence of this influence, we will acquire spiritual sensations and intellect.

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A question I received: The Book of Zohar takes me into an unknown jungle where I feel completely disoriented. Why is it helpful to detach from my corporeal intellect?

My Answer: You don’t have any choice. You find yourself in a situation where logic no longer works. You begin to see that you will only hurt yourself by continuing to use the same logic that you used in the past. When we start to learn something that’s brand new, it’s better to abandon all prior knowledge and approach the information like a child, with a blank slate. Then you can compare the information, and later on find parallels between them.

This is how learning happens even when studying modern sciences like genetics or quantum physics. You need to find a brand new approach; you cannot comprehend the theory of relativity by simply trying to apply Newton’s principles. But you have nowhere to find a new logic because it comes only from the Surrounding Light. Therefore, we have no choice but to wait for the correction to come from Above.

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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “Ve’Eleh Toldot Itzhak (These Are the Generations of Isaac),” Item 106
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“Beit Shaar HaKavanot,” Item 2, Lesson 2 
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“Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Item 57
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The Zohar, Chapter “BeHaalotcha (When You Mount the Candles),”Item 142: “A person walks in this world and the Creator gives him wealth so he will be rewarded with the next world by it, and will remain with a capital of his money. The capital is money that exists forever, a place in which to bundle the soul. This is why he must keep this capital after him, and he will receive this capital after he departs this world.” Item 143: “…while the capital exists for him in that world, to be rewarded with it in the upper life, above.”

If one does not have an anti-egoistic screen, he cannot receive the Light for the sake of bestowal and thus, he has nothing with which to continue his life. Therefore, one is either forced to live like a beast and then die and return to this world once more, or move into the spiritual world, to ascend to the next degree.

After The Zohar Convention, we have received additional Surrounding Light, which has awakened additional egoism within us. This is the desire to enjoy that is now being revealed in every person. Every person is beginning to feel darkness and heaviness, loss of energy, strength, and desire. If we overcome this state with the help of the study, dissemination work, and our environment, then we will begin to attach the new desire to this Surrounding Light that shined for us during the Convention. In doing so, we will build our new degree and advance.

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