The Zohar, Chapter “BaHar (On Mount Sinai),” Item 78: And even though he is called “a son,” a firstborn son to the Creator, as it is written, “My son, My firstborn, Israel,” He should not exclude himself from being a slave, serving his father in all the works that glorify his Father. Thus, every person should be a son to his father, to search in His secrets and to know the secrets of His home, to exert for them and to be as a slave to his father.

Everything depends on one’s properties and desires. In small desires, when a person doesn’t have anti-egoistic screens, he is a slave. Upon acquiring big desires and the screens, he is a son. Yet not a single spiritual degree, no matter how great it is, erases the previous ones. Nothing disappears in spirituality: the degrees co-exist without cancelling one another.

What’s the benefit of preserving small degrees (Katnut) on a big degree (Gadlut)? In the Final Correction, they all come together into one picture that contains all previous degrees and attainments.

The reason is that once we begin to understand our previous states and correct the “wicked” (sins and transgressions), they don’t disappear. We see how wrong or right we were on these degrees, how we blessed or cursed the Creator. The entire scale of properties – both extreme right and extreme left, from the past or the future – join together, offering us the full might and richness of revelation.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/26/10, The Zohar

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Revelation is a result of efforts. When we read The Zohar, we only need to exert effort. By trying to discern the properties The Zohar is talking about within ourselves, we penetrate toward a more inner screen within us, toward a deeper picture of the world. This is where the revelation of the Creator occurs.

Personal interpretation and commentaries of the text do not bring revelation. To feel a new world within, to interpret The Zohar internally, in sensations, a person needs to direct himself toward an increasingly inner state when reading the text.

A more internal state means that a person connects the text with his internal properties to a greater degree. He sees them in himself; he discovers that every word points to a property or action within him such as the “twelve tribes,” “Jacob,” a “desert,” and a “well.” As a result of his efforts, he reveals their true meaning.

This is why Kabbalah is called “Torah Emet” or the true Torah. Such understanding of the text cannot be conveyed in words. Rather, it can be revealed only within a person, in his new properties which appear as a result of efforts.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/19/10, The Zohar

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I read The Zohar and wish to penetrate into its inner picture. What desires and qualities are these? I want to erase this material, dreamed-up world, this imaginary picture completely. I want to imagine the true picture instead. What would I see if there were this revelation right now? I want to aspire to it like a child that wants to be a grown-up. Then, I will see the connection of qualities and desires within me, rather than these corporeal images.

With this aspiration, I rouse the Light that Reforms that equalizes me to the Creator. I don’t need to think about this Light; the aspiration to see the true picture awakens it. Really, there is no "Light that Reforms;" there is only an advanced picture of the world in the next, higher degree, which in comparison to me right now, is called the Light. If I am impressed by a more inner picture, this is called the Light in relation to the present picture.

We perceive the Light as a special stimulation in the desire. We record the Light with letters in the same manner that we record desires. "I aspire to the Light," means that I aspire to a more advanced state of bestowal. This is what the Light is for me.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/19/10, The Zohar

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The revelation is always personal; it cannot be received from someone else. Someone else can only teach you how to read. But there has to be someone to teach us to read, since reading and writing belong to the human level, whereas we, who are beginning to read, are on the animate level. Thus, we need someone who is on the human level to help us rise to that level and teach us to read and write.

The book is all of creation, from the initial plan all the way until the final act. However, in order to reveal it, a person has to go through the story and write it on his heart (as the verse says, “write the whole Torah on your heart”). That is how we prepare our spiritual vessels.

When a person reads the Torah, he learns from the Upper One, and when a person records it, he becomes equal to Him and starts to understand Him. That is how one rises to the level of the plan of creation, the end of the book.

The book is the plan of creation, which is attained at the end. The story is what we read and record within us by changing our desires and building letters out of them. Thus, we become the authors by revealing its Author. We create a copy of the book, and that constitutes all of our work.

The author does not invent the book with his own mind. He is already in front of a ready-made book from the heavens, and he transcribes it. He does not work with his own mind; he does not even know how to read or write. He must first learn. If we learn to read and write, and are able to transcribe all of creation upon ourselves, following the Creator’s example, then we will receive the title of “author.”

The Creator is not the author, since He did not write anything. He actualized everything with one thought. But we reveal His plan inside our uncorrected desires, and therefore, for us, His thought divides into the book, author, and story. If I learn to read, then His thought starts to be revealed to me inside my matter and I read it off of myself to the degree that I become equal to it. And then I transcribe it on myself.

The plan of creation is the right line, and my matter is the left line. I am in the middle line, transcribing this thought into my left line. The book, author, and story is the Creator, the creation, and the connection between them, called the Torah.

From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/18/10, Shamati #197

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A question I received: What does knowledge give us if while reading The Zohar we can’t remember anything a moment later?

My Answer: Knowledge does not give us anything. Today I know something, but tomorrow I forget all about it. Why do I forget? If my desires (Kelim) change, then tomorrow, within my new desires, I won’t remember what I knew before because I am no longer inside my previous desires.

I can convey knowledge from one level to another only through sensation. Our states include a wave-like process: knowledge – sensation – knowledge – sensation. Suppose I have just corrected my desires on some level. According to this level of correcting my desires, I acquire some knowledge and sensation of reality, a realization of where I am, on what level and in what world.

Then a new desire comes. The previous level disappears and I am immersed in darkness. What remains with me? Everyone knows that when the sensation of darkness comes to you, then all the previous sensations disappear and you can no longer work with them. However, if you begin working with this new level, this new darkness, then your efforts evoke a new Light that comes and corrects you. You then go on to a new state where you have a deeper understanding of the previous knowledge based on the new, higher knowledge.

Therefore, you should never take knowledge into account. It will always be there and it will always enter the corrected desire. The most important thing is to correct the desire. Then whatever needs to be revealed in it will be revealed, but there’s no point worrying about that.

This is why the people who study correctly leave the lesson without remembering anything. They just go away with a general impression. This impression is recorded in their senses rather than their understanding. It remains in the sensory, not the mental, memory.

I don’t look down on reason at all. In fact, I am drawn to knowledge and serious study. However, when a person studies through the point in the heart,he does not remember or understand what he studies until his sensations develop sufficiently and he starts to understand with his feelings. He then understands “what he is feeling.”

It turns out that what you study for years disappears and the “results of the study” are not apparent. The results should not show in your knowledge, but in the correction of your qualities by the Light of Correction (Ohr Makif), meaning in your qualities.

This is very different from studying at a university, where a person studies for four to six years and then becomes an expert in some field, and then writes a dissertation for another several years. Where is the clear knowledge of a person who studied Kabbalah for ten years? What has he gained? It seems like he has nothing to show for it. That’s because every day he is born anew, in new qualities, until he attains revelation.

When he attains revelation, then it is recorded on his level. Then, in states of ascent he really has mastery of the material and possesses knowledge. But in states of descent, he is in the dark and only his experience holds him up. (See Baal HaSulam’s article, “What Is Support in the Torah, in the Work.”)

One has to understand that until we reach the Final Correction, the states vary a great deal and we should only consider the height or level of correction. Knowledge will always accompany a person according to his degree.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/10, The Zohar

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The story of coming out of Egypt is the revelation of the process of transitioning from feeling our world in the egoistic desires, to feeling the Upper World in the acquired quality of bestowal. A person takes his whole household, meaning all his desires: the desire to receive – his “wife” as well as his “children” – his next states and he tells them about the past.

In other words, he reveals the past in the future desires, through this story. He goes through a revelation, which he performed unconsciously when he came out of his egoistic desire through the Machsom.

At that time, the Creator performed this action on him, and he “ran in a hurry, in darkness,” performing this escape without understanding it. He couldn’t even feel these actions because everything occurred in darkness, in concealment from him.

However, now as he sits and tells this story, he returns to the same states. He examines the Creator’s actions which were performed on him, and carries out these actions on himself, on his “household,” and on the “children,” meaning on his future states. He repeats the Creator’s actions after Him. This is precisely what is called the story of coming out of Egypt, when the “father” tells his “son”: “Look what the Creator has done with me…”

First the Light raised him to the degree of bestowal, “gave on deposit” (Lavu Elai). With the force of bestowal which he has now, he can perform the same actions on his own with the desires that are situated below him (Ve Ani Porea). In this manner, he repeats the Creator’s actions of bestowal and becomes just like Him.

First we receive all the forces, Lights, and knowledge from Above. The Creator teaches us, like children, and gives us everything until we grow up and are able to carry out these actions on our own. No one demands that we become adults immediately, but after we receive all the forces and are led out of Egypt, we are obliged to repeat these actions on our own.

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYaera (And the Lord Appeared),” Item 126: …In the beginning, Rabbi Aha thought that there was Dever in the city, for which a prayer is required to bring the Nukva back to the quality of Rachamim. This is why he told them to pray. But when he heard that there were multiple deaths, when he was told that so and so have died and so and so were about to die, he saw that it was a plague, and a prayer does not help with a plague. This is because this does not require the mitigation in the quality of Rachamim. Rather, the incense is required, to reveal the middle line in it and to incorporate the lines in one another.

The inner sensations of a person who recognizes his numerous properties and acknowledges how far away he is from the state of correction are called “infection,” “epidemic,” “occurrences of multiple deaths” or “near-death conditions.”

The “plague” (Dever) is counteracted by a “sage” that lives within each of us; this unique quality is called “Rabbi Aha.” The authors of The Zohar are, in fact, the source of superior qualities, all of which are present in every soul – you have them too!

This is because we dwell in a holographic system where each of us is included in all of its other parts. Hence, Rabbi Aha is also present inside of my soul; he fights the “plague” and cures multiple “sick people” who sometimes die and at other times manage to survive.

My task is to imagine and sense exactly where they are positioned within me. Where are all those qualities? I strive to sense them. If I am “a small world” then I have to locate those qualities within myself. I am eager to reveal them.

As soon as I reveal the reality that is described in The Zohar, I begin to live in it. I want to identify myself with the righteous men and even with the sinners. I want to unite with everyone. Anything and everything in this world is mine and manifests itself within my soul, which is hidden from me. Unless I manage to reveal at least a little part of it, I won’t sense what is described in The Book of Zohar.

Even a partial revelation makes it possible for me to “read” and sense myself better; my self-awareness emerges and I become able to explain who I am. But so far, The Zohar is completely concealed from us. We are waiting for the Light to impact us and begin the process of revelation of a new reality within each of us.

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A Question I Received: If the gap and the hatred between us remain, then what do we correct?

My Answer: Correction is above the gap and the hatred. We don’t understand this since we exist in one world. We see either black or white, as we cannot see both black and white at the same time. When we begin to enter another reality, and two worlds emerge before us, then suddenly we are able to see that there is no contradiction between good and evil, darkness and light. We see that these two lines unite in a third line, which is neither black nor white, contrary to the way it is perceived in this world.

We are approaching the end of our egoistic development, and as the global nature of the world is revealed through quantum physics, the contradictory forms of the world are revealed, yet our mind is incapable of putting them together to form one picture of the world. Our minds do not agree with the fact that the opposites are connected, that one object can exist in two forms, two places, and so on. In other words, new, spiritual concepts or time, movement, space, and the existence of reality, emerge in us, but still our minds cannot assimilate this; our minds don’t have the capacity to do so in this world.

Therefore, we are unable to comprehend how there can be revelation of evil, and how we build goodness above it without destroying it. We may object that we can imagine this somehow for ourselves, but this is not the true picture since we still lack the senses for perceiving these two worlds – love and hatred, separation and unification, together at the same time. We are unable to imagine this properly. We can only be in one of two opposite qualities.

In order to attain this ability to see both at the same time, we need revelation in the sensations (Kli), and only through this will we understand what Kabbalists are talking about. This is why the science of Kabbalah is called “the hidden wisdom.” After all, it is hidden from me as I am unable to sense what they are saying until I am ready to feel it, before the Light comes and forms the spiritual sense in me.

Then, as the sensation develops and new qualities are revealed in the desire, I will also begin to understand. When I reach the fourth, the last stage of development of each quality, I will already have a sensation and an understanding of spiritual phenomena. But it cannot happen prior to this.

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A year or two down the line we won’t even remember how we used to exist any differently and how the wide public did not share our opinion. People will soon begin to clearly understand that the science of Kabbalah reveals the hidden part of reality to them, and that it is necessary to reveal this part of reality in order to attain a healthy and correct life. In addition, it will become clear that this revelation takes place by virtue of a miraculous force, rather than pure knowledge.

Using a purely scientific approach, we can only reveal nature on our level of perception, where our mind and feelings are operating. On the other hand, the science of Kabbalah miraculously reveals new levels of desire within us, in which we perceive a new reality. I expect that in the near future, we will witness this understanding and sensation being revealed in the masses. We will see this happen very soon.

Anyone that participated in the Zohar Convention 2010 went through tremendous changes, overcame many inner levels, and reduced the time of their development. Some people did not take part in the Convention physically, but they joined us virtually and thereby received the same ascent. Some people were distant from us (in their desire), but they were also influenced by the Convention. Even those who were not connected to us at all and didn’t want anything still received an influence because we are all part of one common system.

No one can avoid participating in this event because we all live in one, single reality. Therefore, when we hold such an event, it affects the whole world, even the people who hate us and are far away from us, as well as those who are close to us. It affects every person without exception, and it has an even greater affect on those who hate us than on those who are indifferent. Therefore, we will soon witness great changes in all layers of society.

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A question I received: Why was The Book of Zohar always treated with respect, and why did it unite people around itself?

My Answer: We exist in an infinite reality where we are all connected to each other. The Book of Zohar is not just a book that any person can pick up from a shelf and begin to read. It is an instrument which allows us to influence the spiritual system, as through we press buttons, and the system reacts. We activate it without even understanding what we are doing; we receive access to a very sensitive sphere.

This is not a book, but a whole system. When we read it and connect to it, we activate ourselves in relation to the system and the system in turn relates to us. We need to understand this and to realize what a great responsibility and special opportunity this is.

Let’s hope that we’ll succeed in activating this system to the extent that it depends on us as small souls that activate it, so it will influence us and reveal unity to us. This unity exists now as well, but we want The Zohar to reveal it – to lift the first, external layer of our egoism and reveal our unity on the smallest, first spiritual degree. This in itself will already be a revelation. So let’s study this book with the expectation for this to happen!

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