The Zohar: The soul says to the Creator: “Let me in on the secrets of the Upper Wisdom. Tell me, what do You see and how do You govern the Upper World? Teach me the secret wisdom that I had never known or learned, so I won’t feel ashamed walking on the Upper Levels.”

The phrase, The soul says to the Creator indicates that a person has already attained a connection with the Upper Force and therefore he feels how the Creator acts and awakens him. Let me in on the secrets of the Upper Wisdom is a request to know how I can attain the Light that will correct me, so I would be able to reveal the entire Upper System.

We reveal everything inside our desire. Nothing was created besides this desire, and therefore it is the place where everything becomes revealed, including this world and the world to come, the Creator, creation, the worlds and all the spiritual levels. Everything takes place inside the desire and we can only ascend by correcting it.

What do You see and how do You govern the Upper World? At this point we might wonder: why is the soul so curious? It’s because knowing the Creator is the same as bestowing to Him, as it is written, “Know your Creator and work for Him.” Our objective is to come to know the entire universe on the level of the Creator, and to become equal to Him in every way.

That is why the soul asks, Teach me the secret wisdom that I had never known or learned! We ascend to higher levels with the help of the Light that Reforms, and on every new level a person has to reveal a new inner desire for the secret wisdom – the wisdom of how to use all of your qualities in order to bestow to the neighbor.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

When we study The Book of Zohar, we have to remember that it was written by a group of Kabbalists and therefore, it can only be understood within a group as well. In order to understand this book, we have to first unite, find the connections among us and try to reveal those connections with the help of this book. We will be able to reveal this book only inside the connection between us.

Everything that The Book of Zohar talks about is between the souls, between us. If we desire to bestow to one another, these desires will become our souls, and inside them, inside the connection among the souls, we will reveal the Creator, the Light that connects us together.

The Book of Zohar talks about how we can reveal the Upper Light: It is revealed inside the intention of bestowal and love. That is why preparing for the study and engagement in The Book of Zohar is the same as preparing to acquire the quality of bestowal and love, the thought of unity, mutual guarantee, and “love for your neighbor as yourself.” We are preparing to attain this state in order to reveal the Light of bestowal and love. This is what The Zohar will help us to accomplish.

This is exactly the reason why Kabbalah is being revealed in our time: in order to help humanity attain this quality. But it will only happen to the degree we realize that it is necessary.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: You have explained that all worlds from the World of Infinity to our world are similar to each other in all their details as branches and roots. When I read about these worlds in The Book of Zohar with the desire to attain spirituality, and if I connect to the text, then I will enter the Upper World and see the spiritual picture through earthly images and through the book. Is this correct? Does this contact happen only when studying at a lesson?

My Answer: When we proceed through the text in The Book of Zohar, we start seeing an internal spiritual picture by receiving impressions and qualities from the text that the book talks about. We start identifying names of characters, objects, and places of our world as qualities of reception and bestowal that are big or small or good or evil.

A panel of qualities emerges in us in parallel to the picture of this world. This spiritual picture remains in us as a model that corresponds to the allegorical story line. The Zohar uses words of our world to explain the world of the qualities of reception and bestowal, which make up all that exists. These two qualities draw a picture of our world for us, and they also form the picture of the Upper World.

As we accumulate examples of correspondence of the two languages and the two worlds while reading The Book of Zohar, as we learn and organize them within us, we are able to perceive more spiritual impressions.

Question cont’d: For now, does my whole study consist of sitting in front of a book and trying to feel what is written in it, so that it will create spiritual models within me?

My Answer: The result of all our actions in the group and in dissemination, and the conclusion of all our efforts to attain the spiritual world, is revealed within us as images of reception and bestowal, and of qualities of the creature and the Creator as well as their various combinations. Revelation of the soul, which is the sensation and understanding of the Creator, happens as a result of these actions.

Filed under: Zohar - 1 Comment →

A question I received: I consist wholly of the desire to enjoy. Then who within me is observing the twists and turns of this desire from the side?

My Answer: Indeed, if I am a desire to enjoy, I can only compare the intensity of its particular manifestations.

However, if I have a “point in the heart,” the embryo of my soul, the Creator’s part from Above, a particle of the desire to bestow, a grain of truth – it is precisely against this point that I begin to appraise and systemize everything else. I then find myself incapable of agreeing to anything if it bears no relation to it.

One comes to Kabbalah with a point in the heart, which becomes a reference point for his entire life. He no longer plunges into comparative calculations of egoistic desires, no longer strives for maximum profit with respect to money, fame, power and all the other “blessings” of this world. No, now he checks everything against the truth – the spiritual point that had awakened within him.

This leads one to a new level, which carries with it new expectations. After all, now he feels that without the method of Kabbalah he is unable to develop his point and include everything else inside it. This point now becomes his touchstone and the standard by which all his desires are assessed.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

A question I received: How does love of others transition to love of the Creator?

My Answer: There is no transition. Love of the Creator does not put an end to love of others; it’s just that the system of connections among all desires in the universe becomes revealed to me and within me.

But this system is me as well. The concept of “another” stops being “outside” and is discovered “inside,” as part of me. In the World of Infinity, we were all one single desire, which then descended along the spiritual degrees as the desires became distanced from one another. That is how all the people in the world feel now.

We think that we are different and distant from one another. But as I correct myself towards unity, I discover the truth: that we are all part of one system. And the fact that I used to perceive us as disconnected was simply an error on my part. From unconsciousness I revive myself to consciousness and become aware of this wholeness. Nothing at all changes except for my outlook, attitude and perception, as I discover that there is no “I,” but only “we.”

“Others are part of my soul” isn’t just some lofty rhetoric. As I clamber out of my present self, I discover my soul existing in all the external desires. After all, the soul lives outside of me, since the soul is the desires of “others,” and within these desires, I discover the spiritual me and my eternal state.

Presently my perception of self is imaginary, a sham. However, as I discover the desires of others, I suddenly realize that these desires are mine, that they are my soul. Whereas previously I was being shown a “movie,” showing me that I existed in a body that I must care for.

It follows that my true desires are outside of me. They make up the vessel of my soul, and the Light that fills them, the Light of the soul – is the Creator.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

The screen (Masach) is an anti-egoistic force that blocks the way of the Light. It allows a part of the Light to enter the spiritual Partzuf (the soul), in order to become the “Inner Light,” while the other part of the Light cannot be received for the sake of bestowal and remains outside as the “Surrounding Light.”

The Inner and Surrounding Lights are opposite to one another, even though it is the same Light. The screen splits them by relating to each of them differently. It is like two friends that come to my home and wish to come inside. I let one of them in gladly and I turn the other away harshly. How will the two former friends feel about each other now, after I’ve separated them!?

The same thing happens here. The Light comes as a single whole, but is split into two parts by the screen. These two parts differ from one another, but only with respect to the screen’s attitude to each one. That is why the two Lights strive to cancel the screen so as to unite once again; they feel that the screen is in their way. The Inner Light wants to cancel the screen so that its friend would be accepted as well. The Surrounding Light says: “If you don’t want both of us, then you’ll get neither!”

Then the screen is left without a choice and revokes its decision. It ascends and expels all the Light. So what is the decision it revokes? It is the decision to split the Light in two. The barrier that has been put between them must now be removed. This process is called the weakening (or thinning) of the screen. The unity of the Light is stronger than the barrier that the screen wishes to lay through it, and thus the Light defeats the screen with the power of its unity!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

Kabbalistic books don’t contain even a single word that alludes to corporeal objects, places or even qualities that can be observed in this world. When we read phrases like “the Temple wall” or “man,” we must not imagine a wall in Jerusalem or a person in our world. Our world is an imagined reality, and Kabbalistic books do not say anything about the corporeal world.

The spiritual world has no names, and that is why it is described using the language of branches. For instance, the excerpt: “And his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives” means that the World of Infinity will spread (be revealed) and touch our world in the entirety of our desire.

The notion of “our world” also alludes to what we do not presently feel. The world we perceive is not defined in spirituality whatsoever, which is why it is called imaginary (Olam HaMedumeh). “Our world” or “this world” that’s described in Kabbalistic books is the last degree of the spiritual worlds. It is only our point in the heart that can be called a “point of this world,” because it is the last point of descent from above downward. If we tend to its development, then through this point we’ll be able to “ascend” back from below upwards.

We will then have the ability to perceive the world through the point in the heart, rather than from our corporeal senses. We will understand that this corporeal (illusory) life has been given to us as a temporary existence in an imaginary world. However, none of the Kabbalistic books (including the Bible, the Tanach, and others) ever actually mention this world.

The Bible doesn’t even speak of morality, despite what many people may think. It doesn’t speak of what I am to do with my animal body, but only of the correction of my soul. For example, the laws of the ritual bath (Mikveh) allude to the correction of the “body” (desires) by the qualities of Bina (water).

The laws of Kashrut (preparing food) tell us how to prepare one’s “animal” desire so it will be fit for being consumed by the “human” inside of us, or in other words,  how to elevate one’s vegetative and animate desires to the “human” level inside of us.

Sacrifices in the Temple (Kurbanot) describe the process of drawing closer to the Creator (Kurban means “sacrifice,” and comes from the word Karov – “one who is near”) or how to utilize the desires of all levels to resemble the Upper Degree, and how to change one’s intention towards the Creator from “for one’s own sake” to “for the sake of bestowal.”

In our language, all of these writings appear to describe bread and meat burning atop an altar, or water and blood flowing from it, but in the language of branches, the subject is the correction of one’s intention. So don’t bother building any stone structures, but instead focus only on correcting your soul! Through these imaginary “corporeal” images, we must learn to see the spiritual forces behind them.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

A question I received: How can I imagine myself in bestowal?

My Answer: Only with the help of the environment. There is no other way. We’ve been given a truly miraculous instrument from Above. In this world, on every spiritual degree, and in each state, we have “us versus the environment.” That’s why even before the appearance of this world and the inclusion of humans, there was a breaking, a division of the souls and the emergence of individual bodies.

We are unable to picture an image of the Upper One ourselves, since we don’t have anything within us that is similar to Him. In the same dimension where we exist right now, in our world, there’s “us” and the “environment.”  On the basis of the relationships between each of us and the environment, we can then build the relationship between ourselves and the Upper One. The principle of assembling among us the model of connecting with the Creator, is called “from love for the created beings” to “love for the Creator.”

By overcoming the egoism within us, by putting the importance of attaining the quality of bestowal above our quality of reception, and by working on these relationships within the group (the connection between the points in the heart of our friends), we create the quality of bestowal within us. To the measure of the desire that the Upper One grants us, we sense the Creator by experiencing the attribute of bestowal within ourselves.

Here we can understand the need for the breaking of the universal soul. If it were not for this breaking into individual souls, none of us would be able to create the desire to attain the quality of bestowal on our level, nor to bring upon us the effect of the Light of Correction.

By verifying everything relative to the environment (points in the heart), it becomes clear to us how we relate to the Creator, to the Upper Degree. We cannot sense it, but we can prepare ourselves for its attainment.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Two questions I received that relate to a soul’s age:

Question: Why do innocent children have cancer, AIDS or other incurable diseases? Is this not injustice from the Creator?

My Answer: The same souls are present in all  people. In addition, the souls have no age.

Question: What is the purpose of a baby dying or having a severe disease? Does the soul gain experience from it and is there any meaning in it?

My Answer: A soul has no age. All souls have been born together in the shattering of one soul. This is why only bodies have different ages, but there is no preference given to a baby over an old man.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Humanity Is One Integral Interconnected Organism
Laitman.com Post: Why Did God Create Death?
Laitman.com Post: About Rabash And The Spiritual Meaning Of Death And Revival
The Kabbalah Experience: “Soul, Body and Reincarnation”
Shamati #1: “There is None Else Beside Him”- Lesson
Video: How To Develop Your Soul – 5 Minutes Of Light (5:43)

Filed under: Suffering - 1 Comment →

The spiritual world is built as an analogous or analog structure, not a discreet or digital one. We imagine it as discreet because our brain is incapable of understanding an analogous structure. We will never, with our minds, be able to understand how an analogous system works.

Even when we study the human body, a system in which everything is interconnected, we still perceive the organism as a discreet system where every part works on its own, be it the heart, the kidneys, or other organs. If we interpret the body as a discreet system, we make measurements which can only be made when something is separated from the whole. Only eastern medicine exercises a partial and purely superficial approach to understanding our body as an analogous whole.

There is a contradiction between the unlimited property of the Light to “bestow” and the limited “screen” that is being corrected by our egoistic desires to match the properties of the Light. There is opposition between the round world of infinite bestowal and the square world of creation (our physical world).

We assess the properties of Light through the Kli, just as we assess the integral between the connection and the sum of all its discreet parts. In spirituality, each new state constitutes a new world and subsequently a new correlation between its elements.

In the system of souls, everybody is connected and any change I make also changes the state of the whole system, and vice-versa. It is impossible to feel this spiritual reality with our discreet intellect; we are automatically limited by our inability to measure beyond discreet parts.

Those who start sensing the higher world are given a new set of tools (instruments) to live in this new system. They start to understand and feel everybody’s bestowal as part of a single whole and are able to superimpose the circle on the square – the analogous and discreet systems. Only by having both forces – reception and bestowal, can we can join these two systems together.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →