A person’s entrance into spirituality does not at all depend on whether he knows the structure of the spiritual systems described by The Book of Zohar, or whether he understands what he reads or not. On the contrary, knowledge and understanding can be an obstacle keeping him back him from being able to feel the spiritual world.

We enter spirituality like a baby that comes into this world and starts to feel something very unusual. First he feels, and only later does he begin to understand the connections between the things he feels. He presses a button, and a toy moves, he pulls a handle, and a door opens, and so on. We are the same and so first must develop the sensation then later the knowledge.

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When we read about the structure of the Upper Systems in The Book of Zohar, the most important thing is to always think about where these systems are found. They are inside each one of us, and we have to reveal them.

When we hear the names of the Partzufim, Sefirot and various actions (such as Atik, Arich Anpin, Parsa separating one from the other, ascents, descents, unifications, divisions), we should be waiting for just one thing to happen: “When will I feel that this is all happening inside me!? Where are these qualities and actions within me, within my sensations? Oh – here’s Atik, and there’s Arich Anpin, and here, in the middle, is Parsa. And it’s the Parsa that isn’t letting me feel it!”

All of this has to be revealed inside us, because spirituality is inside of us. We think that the spiritual world is somewhere far away, in some kind of other realm. However, when we study about perception of reality, we learn that all of reality is perceived inside us, and spirituality is perceived as the deepest, innermost layer within us.

That is why each one of us has to be like a surgeon that is going inside in order to discover the Upper System described by The Book of Zohar. We are trying to find it at the very depth of our sensations. Then, when reading phrases like, “the Upper Plan,” “RADLA,” “Atik,” “Arich Anpin,” and “ascent to Keter,” we will be able to feel how all of it is happening inside us. You have to desire for every word written in The Book of Zohar to evoke a response and sensation in you. When you constantly work on this, it means that you are really trying to reveal spirituality. We should never forget about this!

Before every lesson and every excerpt we read in The Book of Zohar, we have to return to the right intention and remember that we are now studying the inner part of the Torah, the Torah’s internality, which becomes revealed inside a person. We have different thoughts, desires and qualities, and the spiritual reality that we read about in The Book of Zohar becomes revealed at their very depth. That is why all our attention and all our expectations should be focused on what we are about to reveal inside us. This should be our primary concern and we should always be thinking about this, trying to discern inner movements and reactions to the words we read. Even if you just imagine them – it doesn’t matter; the most important thing is to try and feel these inner movements inside you.

This aspiration in and of itself is already a prayer. First we have to get used to treating the text in this way, and later we will add to this habit a connection among us. In the end, The Book of Zohar was written only in order to create a connection between us. But this connection does not take place between the bodies; it transpires inside each one of us – between the points of all the souls, which are all inside me as well. I have to build this connection inside me: a connection between the image of “myself” and the image of “everyone else.” Inside this connection, which I create within, I will build my spiritual vessel of perception (Kli), and in it, I will reveal spirituality.

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A sensation is an impression of a desire, the matter of creation. We think that sensations are only feelings, like love or hate. But in fact, sensations are reality itself!

Vladimir Lenin once gave his own particular definition of matter: “Matter is objective reality, perceived by our senses and existing independent of our consciousness.” He couldn’t be farther from the truth with regard to matter’s objectivity and existence outside our consciousness.

Every object exists relative to us and only in our consciousness, to the extent that we perceive it with our consciousness. Matter is the desire to receive (be filled with Light) created by the Creator (Light, the quality of bestowal).

At different levels, matter aspires to different forms of fulfillment. For instance, the still level wishes to preserve its form, the vegetative level already wishes to attract the beneficial and repel the harmful, and so on.

The Light did not create anything besides the desire that perceives itself.

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A question I received: The Creator speaks to us through our own sensations. What can you tell us about this language?

My Answer: A person has to get to know himself. He must make a demand of the outer forces to help him analyze himself, to go inside himself as deeply as possible, and to find out why he is the way he is, and who he really is deep down. There, at the very deepest point within, one finds the Creator, his own root.

We imagine a huge world and the Creator outside ourselves. We think that there are all kinds of things outside us. However, all this exists only to make it easier for us to start exploring and understanding ourselves.

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The science of Kabbalah tells us that there are five worlds separating us from the Upper Force. They are positioned one beneath another, where everything existing in a higher world descends and is completely copied in all the worlds, all the way until the lowest world – our world.

The difference between the worlds is not their details, but the material of each world. The higher a world, the more spiritual (bestowing) is its material. The lower a world, the more corporeal (receiving, egoistic) is its material.

Because the details of all the worlds are identical, by comparing them we can try to imagine the difference between their material or desire, and we can desire for this change to happen to us. The Book of Zohar is special because it creates a projection of the spiritual world onto our world. It tells us a story about this world, and parallel to it, about this world’s source in the Upper World. Moreover, it describes all of this in great detail, enabling us to enter the picture of one world’s superposition over the other.

We thus find ourselves between two worlds: between that which we can understand in the story about our world, and the higher picture that we try to imagine. The difference between the two pictures is that the images in our world are visual; we see them, perceive them and understand them. But in the spiritual world, the images are qualitative; they are qualities, forces, desires and intentions.

If a person is always positioned between these two worlds, then even if he doesn’t yet recognize the Upper World nor have the spiritual senses to perceive it, nonetheless by always trying to imagine the Upper World instead of this world, he begins to feel a revelation. In this way, he comes closer to being born into the spiritual world.

This is what makes The Book of Zohar special. At times it attracts a person and at times it repels him; through these varying movements, it brings him closer to the Upper World, or the next spiritual world above him.

If a person is already on a spiritual level and desires to ascend higher, then this special book performs the same action to him. It works on all 125 levels of the spiritual ladder.

Therefore, when reading or listening to The Book of Zohar, behind every word and action being described by this book, we have try to envision the most correct concept of “what might this really be on a higher level?”

These efforts will enable us to feel the Upper World. The understanding will come after the sensation. For now, the higher senses are starting to form in us, parallel to each bodily sense. That is how we will enter one world from the other.

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A question I received: Physicists also say that we perceive only a small portion of everything that exists in the universe. How are the parts of reality that we don’t perceive different from spiritual space?

My Answer: Scientists can create tools to recognize everything that we don’t perceive with our bodily senses. With the help of these instruments, we expand our senses. However, all the data that we discover with these tools still has to go through our senses and be transformed into signals that we can perceive inside us.

We perceive everything inside the desire to receive, in an egoistic form, because we are egoists within. Therefore, no matter how many new phenomena we reveal in nature, we will not reveal the spiritual realm. We will only reveal more of our material world.

The spiritual world can only be revealed by changing the method of how we perceive our surroundings (nature). We have to change our perception from reception to bestowal, making our perception altruistic.

But in order to have this kind of perception, we need a new method of relating to the world. We have to feel the world “outside of us” rather than “inside us.”

This is why a completely new science about the world – Kabbalah – is emerging to replace the sciences that examine nature through our egoism. No matter how much we examine nature through our egoistic desire, we will not reveal the spiritual world. That is why regular science is now in crisis; it cannot give us anything qualitatively new.

People feel oversaturated by the material things because they do not fulfill us. That is why they are starting to ask the question: Where do we go from here? The only answer is to shift to a different way of using our desire.

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A question I received: Besides the writings of Baal HaSulam, we also study the writings of Rabash. What do they give us?

My Answer: Rabash provides a detailed explanation of the phases of the inner work, yet we don’t understand the entire depth and breadth of his explanation. There are places where Baal HaSulam gives very concise explanations for beginners, and Rabash goes on to expand them. He thus creates a wide entrance for those who wish to enter the spiritual work. When a person reads line after line, he experiences different sensations. That is how Rabash leads the reader with his detailed explanations, like leading a baby by the hand, taking him from one game to another, and from one impression to another.

However, don’t think that his articles are intended exclusively for beginners. They conceal an enormous depth. It’s just that Rabash always lowered himself before his father, Baal HaSulam, and thought that there was nothing more to add after Baal HaSulam. This is why he did not publish anything of his own and did not write many manuscripts. It was because of his modesty. Yet, he was a great Kabbalist and we are yet to reveal him.

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A question I received: In order to feel the spiritual we need to develop a sixth sense, which does not pertain to the physical body. How does it work?

My Answer: Everything that we feel is perceived by our senses, transformed into electrical and chemical processes in the brain, compared to what exists in the memory, discerned, and presented to the consciousness in the form of a ready-made image or concept.

My notion is built from two components which are, “I” and “what I perceive.” In addition, everything occurs in the desire. After all, the desire is the matter of the world.

The desire itself does not exist in the cells of the body. I only measure  its reaction to my desires and intentions within the body. I can measure the electrical and chemical processes in the body, but I only measure the reaction of the body this way, not what happens in the desire.

There is nothing with which I can feel or measure the desire itself. Let’s say I try a drink. I feel the taste, the smell, and I feel pleasure. We can measure different reactions of the body to this drink, but in any case this will be a measurement of the reaction, and not a measurement of the desire.

Therefore, any desire is virtual, in the material as well as in the spiritual worlds. The desire itself, whether it is egoistic or altruistic, does not exist in matter.

(From the First Lesson of the North American Congress  10.16.09)

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A question I received: What does it mean “that which I do not attain, I do not call by a name?”

My Answer: Contrary to philosophy or our perception of the world, nothing exists on its own in the science of Kabbalah. Everything exists only in my perception and sensation, and this is the only thing I am allowed to speak of.

There is no Creator, no creation, no worlds. There is nothing that can be said to actually exist. I am the only one who senses that it exists, I am the one who thinks, I am the one who sees, and this is the only context in which I can speak of anything I perceive.

I perceive everything through my senses, and everything depends on my relation to it and its relativity to me. This is why we can only speak of that which a person reveals and attains. In Hebrew, the Creator is called “Bo-re” – “Come and See.”  There is no Creator without the creation.

The quality of bestowal is revealed within our Kelim in accordance to the similarity of its attributes with something external which we do not perceive. This we call the Creator, “Come and see what I see!”

I perceive Him in my senses, which have changed due to my evolving qualities, due to the changes taking place within me. I say: “The Creator is within me! Look at the form  I’ve taken!” This form is what I call the Creator.

I don’t point at Him directly; I only speak of His form which is engraved into my matter, and it is this form that I call the Creator. The matter (desire to receive pleasure) has changed its form into the desire to bestow.

This is why we evaluate and determine everything only in relation to our personal attainment and not, in relation to anything outside of us. All the worlds are my Kelim, my vessels of perception, and I only perceive them to be external to me.

I perceive myself inside of my internal desires, but I perceive the world in my external desires since my Kelim are divided into the internal and external. When they merge, I will have ten Sefirot of the soul, the world will disappear and everything will enter me.

At present, I sense everyone surrounding me as external because my Kli isn’t complete, it is shattered. If it was complete, I wouldn’t be able to discern anyone external to me. I would feel everything as the World of Infinity.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Journey To Infinity Starts With A Point Of The Soul
Laitman.com Post: We Can Rise Above Creation
Laitman.com Post: For Science To Move Forward, The Observer Has To Change
Booklet: “The Structure of the Soul”

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Everything new in the world is born out of the sensation of an internal conflict, a contradiction of two opposites inside a single object. This sensation is unbearable, which is why it drives us to resolve the conflict. A person is unable to tolerate two opposites together.

This stems from the state before the First Restriction, when the creature senses that it receives from the Creator and is opposite to Him. This is why we cannot bear the sensation of discovering two opposites together.

Humanity is about to reveal this, and when it does, it will be in utter shock: on the one hand, we are connected to each other, and on the other hand, we hate each other. We will then be forced to solve the problem.

Therefore, the revelation of opposites is a necessary starting point for change. It is like a trampoline that facilitates the jump, because this sensation pressures us so powerfully that we simply have no other option but to break out of this state.

Hence, the faster these opposite forces are revealed in society – our inner hate for one another along with the necessity to unite and love, the way nature inherently does, the faster humanity will be compelled to solve this problem. Indeed, this duality is the reason for all the crises we are experiencing today. That is how we will reveal “the advantage of the Light from the darkness.”
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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