A question I received: What is matter and form in spirituality? What is the desire of the World of Infinity? Why do you always draw it as a circle?

My Answer: A circle symbolizes spiritual perfection and equality. There is nothing lower or higher, or to the left or the right of something else. Everything and everyone is equal in relation to the center of a circle.

Matter is desire and form is the particular thing I desire. Equivalence of form is when we want the same thing, and a difference in form is when we want different things. All the various particular desires still exist in the World of Infinity, yet they unite together and become equivalent because they desire to give to each other, to integrate, and to understand each other. In fact, each incorporates the others within itself.

It follows that my task is to turn myself into the World of Infinity. I am a part of the World of Infinity, being a small organ of the common soul. In order to connect with others, I need to absorb all their desires, the desires of the entire World of Infinity. I need to become equal to that circle and include everything within me, so it will all be mine. Then I will understand what everyone wants and will be able to provide it. I will be able to express my infinite love to everyone.

Every part of the common soul must include all the others within itself. But how can we do this? This is why the breaking of the vessels occurred – in order for all the pieces to mix together and become integrated in each other. Now everyone consists of others. Knowing this, we can appreciate the breaking and understand where it has brought us and how essential it was. Without the breaking, I wouldn’t be able understand anyone or absorb their desires. I wouldn’t be able to connect with them and reach the World of Infinity.

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A question I received: Should I try to understand the meaning of every word while reading The Book of Zohar?

My Answer: We should swim along with the current with the story. We are reading about what is happening inside our soul similar to how we’d read a book about the physiology of a human body. It tells about the body’s metabolism, the different organs, how they influence each other, what kind of electrical and chemical reactions and processes are going on, and so on.

Well, a spiritual organism is an exact copy of a physical one. The difference is that with our physical body, we are unaware of all the thousands of systems inside it, whereas when studying our soul, they are revealed to us. Thus, the main thing while reading The Book of Zohar is the internal search – where is it inside me?

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We have to submerge deep inside ourselves and try to feel the processes described in The Zohar from the very depth of our souls. I don’t know where all these desires and properties are inside me; I just want to sense what The Book of Zohar tells me about the processes that take place within me at this time.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand what kind of processes they are, or that everything happens on spiritual degrees which are concealed from me. I want to uncover them, because they are all happening within me, here and now. I want to feel where these qualities are located, where these processes are happening, and how all these parts work within me.

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Our entire nature is made of a desire to enjoy, and this desire will forever remain with us. However, the desire itself contains many contrasting parts which are different and disconnected from each other.

It is similar to how impossible it would be to compare certain functions of the human body such as the liver to the heart, or the brain to the kidneys, since each one has its own cells, distinct from the other. In fact, if we were to transplant part of one organ to another, it would poison and kill that organ; that is how different and alien they are to each other. But their common work together in harmony, for the same goal, unites them into a whole body.

That is why it is not unlike that which we read about in the spiritual systems within the soul’s body. The functions or qualities of Job, Pharaoh, Israel, Abraham, and so on, seem contradictory to us. However we must not destroy even a single quality. We only need to assemble them correctly so that they are ultimately included in one intention of love and bestowal, which is for the sake of the Creator.

Moreover, there is room for each and every desire, even the “negative” desires like Pharaoh, Job, Bilam, Balak, and even Amalek (the biggest desire for self reception). There is not a single desire that doesn’t connect to this one intention of bestowal. Our desires will remain different, but in the end, these differences will not be felt. Indeed, all parts of the system will work in harmony, interconnected and joined together with the aim of becoming like the Creator.

To become like the Creator means to replicate the system which is shown to us as an example through The Book of Zohar. It is similar to how we teach a child by example, such as how to behave in this world, while the child tries to emulate it. Likewise, we need to develop our desire to understand how to unite all of our desires, thoughts, and intentions into the system we read about in The Book of Zohar.

Right now very little of that system is understood to us, just as a baby barely understands his mother yet strives to know. While it is extremely difficult for the baby since he doesn’t yet grasp spoken language, body language, the world he lives in, or anything at all, he nevertheless exerts tremendous efforts to do so. Imagine that we are in this baby’s place; that is the exact same state described for us by The Book of Zohar.

We stand before big adults (the Kabbalists) who tell us about a world, which we neither know nor understand. But there is a critical difference between a baby in this world and us as babies in the spiritual world, and that’s the baby’s natural, inherent instinct to attain the world. It is a great desire to attain which defines an infant’s whole life, whereas we must create that same great desire to attain the spiritual world within ourselves, by absorbing this desire from our environment. Thus the environment functions as the organs of that same body, which are particles of our own soul that we unite together and attach to ourselves, so as to attain this whole system.

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Suppose we are reading a book about the functioning of our physical body. It explains how our brain, heart, liver, and other organs work, how they exchange substances, what happens when we feel or eat something, how our blood and other fluids circulate, how electric signals transmit; basically it describes how our physiology works.

Listening to a lesson in human anatomy and physiology we learn about parts of the body and how all components of one body act together, each in its own place in accordance with its function, resulting in the sensation of life. Likewise, this is how The Zohar describes the physiology of a soul’s body (Kli), its organization, internal connections, and functionality. In reading it and by applying effort to our studies, we gradually start to reveal our soul, in which we attain revelation of the whole world and the Creator.

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A question I received: What is the difference between desires and qualities? What is a desire, and what is a quality?

My Answer: Desire is the matter of creation, which always receives. There is nothing else to say about it. A quality is the form that the matter (the desire) takes; it determines how the desire works, what it expects from its work (meaning its intention), and its goal – whether for oneself or for the sake of someone outside of it (others and the Creator). Although this matter is the desire to receive pleasure, it can carry out various forms of work and be in different states, depending on the circumstances and the surroundings.

Despite the fact that I am, for example, the quality of “Abraham,” which is a completely bestowing quality, I have no opportunity to bestow because I am under someone’s control. Maybe my circumstances are such that I have no one to bestow to, or the people surrounding me don’t want me to bestow to them.

This is called a quality. A quality means that the desire to receive pleasure works in some specific external form, being clothed in it. There are ten main Sefirot, and all other spiritual “objects” are forms or qualities that are clothed within them.

When reading The Zohar, we recognize different qualities in us, such as Job, Pharaoh, and the Creator. All of these are qualities, clothed in our desire to receive. Anything we can imagine is merely the desire to receive pleasure. Therefore, from our point of view the Creator is also a particular form of the desire to receive pleasure – illuminating, elevated, high, wonderful, and bestowing to everyone. We are unable to imagine Him any differently because we cannot have any other matter except the desire to receive.

Gradually, to the extent that we try to distinguish all these qualities within us, we are influenced by the Surrounding Light. As a result, the spiritual system begins to be clarified within more and more and we begin to perceive these qualities the right way. We only need patience.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Bo (Come Unto Pharaoh),” Item 41: This monstrous crocodile comes into the source (Keter) of the Nile River and gradually strengthens in it. It swims and enters the sea, Malchut de Atzilut, where it swallows several species of fish, which are degrees within the sea that are inferior to it. He rules over them and swallows them. They are completed within him, and he returns to the still Nile.

It is so difficult for us to imagine this inside us! Where is the desire called “Nile,” and where is the “crocodile” inside me – where is all of this? We don’t know what to think of these qualities and what picture to imagine as we read about the ten Sefirot, the ten rivers (one of which is Keter, and the others are below it), and all kinds of monsters…

Yet, it doesn’t matter that we can’t put our finger on them. It’s even better that we cannot draw any picture of The Zohar. It’s better than if we were trying to imagine something we knew, things that we have some conception of already. When we read about Moses, the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, Pharaoh, sheep, cows, and so on, we don’t know what all of it really is, and therefore we only imagine qualities.

All of these names are not important since there are spiritual qualities standing behind them of which we still have no understanding. We are trying to learn something that is impossible to cognize!

Therefore, we need to understand that our efforts will never end up successful. We should have no delusions about this. Rather, our success will come when we find ourselves facing an impenetrable wall and understanding that we don’t know what the spiritual qualities mean, even after all the efforts we have made to reveal them.

When we complete the necessary measure of effort (called “Se’a”), our cup will overflow and the spiritual world will be revealed to us, according to the rule, “I labored and found” (Higati ve Matzati).

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Inside of me I wish to see the Creator and all the parts of my soul: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Daat, Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, Malchut, and their connections with each other. These qualities can also be called Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Ishmael, Jacob and the 12 brothers (Jacob’s sons), Josef, David, and Solomon. And from all sides, they are clothed by good and evil forces such as Job, Pharaoh, and so on.

We need to imagine this spiritual body not just as three lines, but as multidimensional. It’s similar to how the human body contains a multitude of various systems: the lymphatic system, the nervous system, the circulatory system, and many others which we don’t even know about. And in addition, there are energies, liquids, and chemical substances flowing through them. The spiritual body contains even more components and connections because each of its sections has different qualities, different kinds of connections, and different forms on all the various levels.

We are incapable of learning this until we actually feel it. Anyone who thinks he can learn it is a fool. We only need to desire to exist inside this integral system, all of which works for the sake of bestowal. In that system, we will find the Creator and the creation; in fact, everything is within it. We must look at it according to the principle, “A human being is a small world.”

However, we are not talking about our world and the physical bodies. A “human being” is me, and “a small world” is The Book of Zohar and its story.

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I am told that everything exists within me, including all people and the whole of reality. However, on the other hand I am told that I need to unite with other souls which exist somewhere outside of me. There is obviously some duality by which we are currently challenged. However, by reading and trying to permeate The Book of Zohar, it will fix everything and resolve this inner confusion we have.

As we strive to reveal our soul and to imagine that the whole world is within it, we begin to understand the need for a connection between souls. Therefore, we start to search for people like us who also aspire to the spiritual goal. We then try to create a system of connection between us where we will reveal the Creator. And when spirituality is finally revealed to us, even in its very first degree, we begin to understand how we are each connected to the other.

Right now, we perceive reality only from one side, which is worthless and false. We cannot imagine the second side or the connections between the two sides. Therefore, the more we study, the more confused we become, but this is good because it is the path to understanding. We need to get confused in order to later understand. From a lack of correction, we come to correction.

For the time being, we need to imagine that the studies develop an individual soul in each person, and in our practical work with each other, we are trying to unite the points in the heart for the sake of one goal: the revelation of the Creator. Along with the point in the heart, each person has his own part of egoism, but we cancel it for the sake of reaching the spiritual goal.

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A question I received: Is everything we are now reading in The Book of Zohar describing my present state or my future state?

My Answer: That doesn’t matter. There is no present or future; everything takes place here and now. If I am reading a novel, then I experience everything its heroes do. I feel as if I am really together with them on a ship amidst a raging storm. I am overtaken by worry and fear, when I suddenly see a beautiful, enigmatic island…

Am I really there or not? No – it’s just my imagination. When I close the book, I go back to the “real” reality.

However, when I read a book about the spiritual world and identify with its characters, forces, and qualities, then I am really there in my desire and I reveal my true self more and more through the reading. I reveal a new world where I really live.

The Zohar describes everything that takes place in your desire. If you unite with this book, you really go through the phases it describes. You are really living inside that spiritual reality, and you just might be swallowed by a hungry crocodile…

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