I contain desires of all the levels of development: the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human. The human level within me contains desires of all types of people that I see in our world. Therefore, in reality the whole world is inside me. All the robbers, liars, kind and righteous people, sages, and fools are inside me. In reality, this is all me.

It only seems to me that this huge world exists, but in actuality it is just imagined by my inner desires and qualities. They are depicted inside me in the form of inanimate, vegetative, animate, or human images in my four levels of desire.

Depending on how I see the world, I can understand to what extent I am corrupted or corrected, good or bad. In other words, I can understand which of my desires I need to correct.

If I correct my attitude towards the world, I correct myself. This is because when I see the world outside of me, I am better able to tell what is evil and egoistic in me, and how to attain goodness and bestowal to what seems external to me. When I correct myself, I see that the whole world becomes better.

In reality, there is no world. It only seems to me that all of this exists, but I am watching it as if I was watching a movie on a screen.

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In order to see the true reality, we have to imagine nothing but our own desire. Since birth we have been conditioned to see a movie that shows the whole as being outside of us. However, it exists only inside our desire. We have to fight an inner war with ourselves in order to become convinced that everything happens inside the desire. However, this fact does not revoke reality, since desire is reality.

We normally think that a desire is simply when we want something. However, desire is everything. The wall that blocks our path is also a desire – when we come up against it, we come up against a desire. Everything around us is desires or forces, which are depicted a certain way on our screen. When we look at a photograph on a computer screen, we don’t think that there are real objects inside the computer. We know that the picture is created by electrical forces. However, when we look at our world, we don’t realize this because we don’t see the screen onto which this world is projected.

Yet, in reality, everything taking place is even simpler. What we see on a computer screen seems to be happening outside of us, on the screen, and from there the image enters our eye, is processed, compared with what is stored in our memory and is then recognized with the help of electro-chemical processes in our brain. However, when we see the world, we see it inside ourselves, in our brain. That is where we see a projection of this world, which appears as being outside of us. In reality it’s also projected on a screen where electrical forces are depicting a picture. Meanwhile, however, we think that this picture is located outside of us.

If we come closer to this authentic perception with the help of The Zohar, then we will see a world of forces and qualities before us. These forces and qualities are operated by one general force, the Creator. Upon reaching this vision and realization, we will reveal the Creator, which is our greatest desire. This revelation takes place inside our desire, depending on its equivalence of form with the Creator. All of The Zohar is aimed only at revealing the right perception of reality.

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When reading The Zohar, we encounter names such as Jacob, Esau, Abraham and Noah, but if we interpret them through our previous notions about the Torah, seeing it as a historical tale, then we will be completely confused and will entirely misunderstand what The Zohar is talking about. We have to go into an empty vacuum in outer space where there is no earth and nothing that ever took place there; all of it had only seemed real to us. Time, motion and space are an illusion which only exists in our imagination. We think that something existed thousands of years ago, and that we are now doing archeological excavations of it; we are even finding bones as proof of its existence. Yet, all of this exists only in our perceptions, which we call reality.

However, now we want to rise to the right understanding – to see the desire which contains Reshimot (informational genes). This is what we want to research, instead of the archaeological excavations.

I want to see this entire world inside my desire, since that is the only place where it really exists. I have to shift to perceiving the true reality instead of an imaginary one. I want to see the people around me as various forms or images inside my desire, instead of the physical bodies that appear before me. I want to see how all of reality – even the Creator – is contained inside my desire. Then my reality will be called Malchut of the World of Infinity.

I have to unite everything into one, since everything is contained inside one desire. The reason I see different images, actions, and movement across time and space (both in spiritual and material time and space) is because the Light, the Creator, is operating inside my desire. In this manner, gradually, step by step, he leads me to the true understanding of His actions.

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There is no such thing in existence as a rigidly defined reality, because all of reality depends on us. This is the first lesson we have to learn. The picture you perceive, see and live in is simply a movie that is being played to you, but you cannot get up and leave. You are used to it; you’ve lived in it since you were born and you sense it as your life, as if it’s real.

However, one day you find that you have become terribly bored with this movie because your desires have evolved or the suffering that is being shown to you has become unbearable and you crave to rise above it and see something else, some other movie. You long to change the movie. At this point, you are told: “It’s possible! You already know that your life is only a movie that’s being shown to you, so let’s go to another theater and see a different movie.” That’s when you really start to realize that everything you considered to be your life was simply a projection on the screen.

Kabbalists teach us that unless we reveal spirituality and gain the ability to see other movies, we won’t understand that we are only dreaming. Sometimes we feel the same way while we are asleep: you’re sleeping and are worried about something in your dream, but you get the impression that this is real life, as if you will stay in the dream forever. That is exactly what is happening to you right now – you are asleep!

Kabbalists, those who have made the transition to another reality, tell you: “You are asleep and are watching a dream. Rise above it, wake up!” Let’s hope that the alarm clock will ring now and we’ll jump out of bed and find ourselves in another movie.

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In the article, “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” Baal HaSulam describes how a person perceives the world once the Creator has been revealed to him:

“The person sees that all those who are on the Creator’s path are well-to-do, healthy, respected, calm and amiable, while those who do not aspire to the Creator are poor, sick, contemptible, stupid, and uncultured hypocrites.”

There is nothing but the desire to enjoy and the Light that fills this desire. The entire picture of the world that we see is determined only by the relationship between them. The world is not a reality independent from me, which I watch from a distance. Rather, each person sees what his desire to enjoy shows him.

Therefore, it is impossible to find two people who see the world the same way; the world can even appear completely opposite to them. This depends on the level of Light that fills the desire. That’s how individual our perception of reality is.

The Creator’s revelation is not measured by material parameters; it only changes a person’s vision. It is not the number of zeros in your bank account that changes, but your perception of them. A person who is illuminated by spirituality feels that he has enough of everything.

Meanwhile, even a billionaire usually doesn’t feel this way. A person who has 50 billion dollars is tormented by the fact that he cannot receive at least another half a million. He needs to see a little more added to his bank account everyday. It makes no difference how many billions are there already; the important thing is how much he was able to add today. This is what his life is all about!

However, if the Light is revealed to a person, then he needs no other awards, because he is already immersed in an ocean of goodness. If he has attained contact with the Light and constantly advances within it, he feels no lack for anything.

Is he healthy or ill in reality? He doesn’t feel that he is ill; he feels that everything is well. What will a doctor say if he examines him? It makes no difference, because everything depends on how the person himself perceives the world.

We don’t understand what this feels like or how it will occur. When the Light is revealed, a person does not rise above the illnesses and problems; rather, he remains with all of them and with the Creator. Otherwise, he would be erasing a part of what the Creator gives him, and this would take away from his relationship with Him.

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A question I received: Everything that the science of Kabbalah says about perception of reality and the Creator’s concealment and revelation seems very subjective. It says that everything depends on me and I just have to change my attitude in order to feel a different reality. So where is the reliability, objectivity, and independence of my research? All of this seems very subjective, and it changes along with me.

My Answer: It’s indeed unpleasant to feel that one’s existence is unstable and subjective, the way we perceive the world in our sensations and mind. However, this is, in fact, true and it obliges us to attain the true, eternal foundation.

Initially we are in a world where everything is subjective. We used to think that the world existed on its own, independent of whether there were people on our planet. We thought that even before the terrestrial globe was formed (let’s say five billion years ago), our universe had already existed and had been developing for 10 million years. But who told us this information? It was a human being. When he did tell us this? Today. But how can someone tell us about what happened in the past? It seems this way to him in his senses because they divide all sensations in a specific way and identify them according to time.

In my senses I evaluate a specific sensation as “time,” I call one sensation “a billion years” and another one “a second,” and place other perceived actions into this sensation. This is how multidimensional pictures of time, space, movement, and changes are formed inside me by various sensations. All of this happens in my senses. The concepts of time, space, and other changes (or movements) are within me; everything is within me.

But what is outside of me? This is something I don’t know; I don’t even know whether anything exists outside of me at all. This is because I can only feel what is inside of me. It is impossible for us to feel anything unless it enters our senses. All of the space that we feel as being outside of us also exists inside. Otherwise, how would we feel it?

Kabbalah separates my Sefirot of perception into inner and outer Sefirot. In the inner Sefirot I feel myself, and in the outer Sefirot I feel the outside world. However, all of the Sefirot are mine and they exist inside me. In the process of correction, they all unite and become inner Sefirot. I then become composite, unified and singular, standing opposite the Creator who is also singular.

When you look at your computer screen, you cannot see anything that hasn’t entered it yet. If you perceive any information on the computer – for example, if you read text, watch a video, or listen to music – all of this must already be inside the computer. This example helps us to see why it is forbidden for us to say that our world already existed 15 billion years ago, unless we take into account that this is only so relative to our perceptions.

All of science is true; we merely have to add a small note on the bottom: “relative to the human senses.” Everything is true, just in regard to me.

This is why in the science of Kabbalah, the Creator is called “Bo-Reh,” which means “Come and See.” If you reveal Him inside of you, attain Him and “see” Him (because vision is the most explicit perception out of our senses), then the Creator exists for you. However, if you have not attained Him, revealed Him, and felt Him, then He does not exist for you.

If you say that you simply heard about Him, then this is not even an abstract form; it is a fantasy that your “instructors” filled you with. After all, the abstract form is when you have felt a phenomenon, and you imagine it afterwards without it being clothed into matter.

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The science of Kabbalah reveals an enormous new world to us, the spiritual world, which includes our entire world of today like a tiny grain of sand in the entire universe. But how can we attain a sensation of the spiritual world? It’s like a baby who has no knowledge or sensations that he can relate to the world around him. But gradually, he accumulates impressions of this world, hears and recognizes sounds, sees images, discerns colors, and feels the difference between cold and hot. He has to learn all of this from the impressions he receives.

At first, for example, he simply develops his senses and learns to discern the presence or absence of sound. Later he begins to discern various sensations in each sense. What makes a developed person different from others is that his senses are able to perceive finer things. To a musician, sounds awaken an entire world of sensations. An artist lives in the world of colors. A writer feels the shade of every word.

But all of this comes to a person gradually. We exist in some kind of reality, which gradually becomes revealed to us. It influences us, makes us progress and forms in us a capability of perceiving it. This is how the material reality, this world, is arranged; and we develop and reveal the spiritual world along the same exact stages and by the same laws.

There is a special book that consistently develops our sensation of the spiritual world in addition to this world. In essence, we are living in one, common world, but relative to us it divides into a part we can perceive and a part that is concealed from us. In order to reveal the concealed part of the world, we must start to feel it in a direct fashion, like babies. This is what the unique book, The Book of Zohar, does for us.

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A question I received: What is the inner work of a person who watches The Zohar lessons on the Internet or the TV? Many people are waiting for these lessons with their breath held and waking up at odd hours of the night for the first time in order to watch the live broadcast.

My Answer: The Book of Zohar is an opportunity for all of us to reveal the true reality, which becomes revealed inside a person. Through the study, a person discovers that he perceives all of reality inside him and gains the ability to put his inner world in the right order, to arrange it and reveal it in a way that lets him feel the spiritual world in addition to this world.

He doesn’t experience any contradictions, illusions or doubts regarding whether his spiritual sensations are true. Everything becomes revealed inside his desires. Simply by correcting our desires, we reveal our inner ability to see and feel the spiritual world inside them.

Even people who have not gone through the preparation to perceive The Book of Zohar, who have not seriously studied the basics of Kabbalah for several years, are able to join us and merit the same revelation, similar to a baby in our world who lives among adults and they provide him with everything. It doesn’t matter that a baby born in the 21^st century does not know about the preceding generations that prepared everything for him and all the things that now surround him. He receives according to the level our world is on today. Our duty is to take everything from the previous generation, prepare it, and bring it in a ready-made form to the baby, the next generation.

Therefore, the “babies” in Kabbalah, those who are now joining us, our new friends, are able to merit the same revelation as we expect to attain. In this regard there is no difference between us, provided that they try to listen to the degree that they are able to join us and if they feel fear, expectation and reverence for this great book. This is very important in order to connect to it.

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A question I received: Why is it so difficult to link everything that happens in life with one force – the Creator?

My Answer: It’s impossible to think of the Creator the very minute something happens to us, unless we feel Him through our senses, unless we are connected with this source of Light, and unless we become present in Him and He manifests Himself in us.

We react to any sensation or thought that emerges in us by searching for a thousand sources other than the Creator, since we don’t perceive Him as the single force that fills everything that exists. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about something that happened 5000 years ago or today. Because of our egoistic nature, a human being is never able to stay connected with the idea of one governing force, the Creator.

We exist in a state of duality, since we are created by two opposites – the Light and the vessel (Kli), the darkness and the Light. Our perception consists of two parts: desire and sensation (reaction), and fulfillment or emptiness within the desire. One of those parts, the desire, originates directly from the Creator, and the other part, the pleasure, comes to us indirectly. Suffering does not come directly from the Creator, and thus we cannot link it with Him.

Therefore, until we reveal the Creator, through both our mind and senses, the statement that He is “the One, Unique, Indivisible” is false for us. A person cannot affirm that there is only one force that rules the universe since according to human nature, it is not true. Only when a person reveals the Creator can he say that the Creator is “the One, Unique, Indivisible,” since he can then feel it from within.

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All our perception is built on sensations of this world. All the products of our imagination are derivatives of our sensations, and we will never be able to imagine anything that has no connection to our former experiences.

Even if we were to try to imagine an animal from a different planet, the image will still be based on something with which we are familiar. It is impossible to imagine something that has no analogue in our sensations. Our actions always arise from them and we are limited by them.

We are prisoners of our sensations, but today, even scientists are discovering that on a practical basis, everyone needs to change their perception of the world.

We currently perceive this world inside the quality of reception, but we have to acquire the quality of bestowal and perceive the world from that perspective – not in the imagination, but in actual perception. This new perception will be the spiritual world.

Our attitude should be pragmatic and practical, since Kabbalah is a practical teaching which is in no way connected to abstract philosophical concepts.

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