A question I received: Why do people associate the commandments with correcting the body?

My Answer: Certainly, correction is now about correcting our arms and legs. We are talking about “the body of the soul,” the desire, or parts of the soul, meaning individual desires. The difference between the desires of the soul and the corporeal desires is that desires of the soul are formed of qualities similar to the Creator – using yourself in order to bestow instead of receiving for yourself.

The physical body has nothing to do with this. We can perform transplants, remove body parts or organs, and perform blood transfusions. Hospitals don’t check donors for “righteousness” and it’s possible that those receiving body parts or blood receive them from an unrighteous person. It is due to all the confusion in regards to the spiritual body and our physical body that all the mysticism, gruesome tales, and religious horror stories have developed.

Commandments describe a correction of the desires, not any correction of the animate body. The bodies in which we exist are only necessary for us to maintain a physical existence, but when among the desires of our world, an embryo of the soul emerges, we need to be able to develop that tiny desire to the level of the Creator.

Therefore, traditions and religions have nothing to do with correcting the soul. Let people all over the world hold on to their traditions; at the same time, they can correct their desires in order to love their neighbors as themselves. Meanwhile, the flesh will not change.

There is nothing spiritual in mechanical actions. It is very good if they calm you down and create a comfortable living format. Just don’t lie to yourself, believing that you correct your soul through these actions and earn your way into the “world to come.” The world to come is the revelation of the Creator. If you do not prepare your soul for this, then you have nowhere in which to reveal Him, before or after the animate body perishes.

It’s time to remove the blindfold from the eyes of humanity and for everyone to realize that in our whole worldly life, there is only one spiritual point called “the point in the heart.” This is the entrance into the spiritual world.

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A question I received: Why were we chosen for the wisdom of Kabbalah and not others?

My Answer: People will never know the answer to this. Only after revealing the entire system of worlds and souls, will a person begin to understand his role in this system and see why the desire to become like the Creator has awakened in him at this specific time. This awakening is the soul.

But the meaning of this will only come once people reveal the entire picture. This is why Kabbalists say that once you’ve been awakened – wake up, once you’ve been given a point in the heart – realize it. It is then that you will receive the answer to your question.

We can ask similar questions about our physical situations, such as, why was I born to my parents, why was I born into this specific body and during this time? In our life there are no answers to these questions either, but the wisdom of Kabbalah enables us to attain the entire system and find the answers.

(From the Children’s Lesson at the North American Congress in Buffalo, NY)

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A question I received: Why is it written that Baal HaSulam merited to receive the Ari’s soul? Didn’t he have his own soul?

My Answer: The soul is a “part of the Creator from Above.” No person born in our world has it from birth. The only people who have a soul are those who have attained at least the minimal quality of bestowal, the quality of the Creator.

With the case you are asking about, a person corrected himself, attained the quality of bestowal, built his soul (vessel of perception – Kli), and suddenly this vessel acquired a specific form and was filled with the Light called “the soul of the Ari.” The soul is the corrected desire (this is “the body” of the soul), and the Light that fills it (the Light of the soul) is the revelation, the Creator, which clothes into you. That is why the soul is called a “part of the Creator from Above.”

Receiving the soul of the Ari means thinking like him, feeling like him, being instead of him, seeing through his eyes, and feeling with his senses just like him. Baal HaSulam received the soul of Ari, which is the same soul that was passed from Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Rashbi, from Rashbi to the Ari, and from the Ari to Baal HaSulam. This is a special soul through which the Creator reveals the method of merging with Him during the generations when a special spiritual change has to occur. If the Creator sent us a teacher like Baal HaSulam, who had the soul of the Ari, this indicates that we are living in the generation of the last, general correction.

The soul constantly changes and reincarnates. Throughout the course of a Kabbalist’s lifetime, he always has a different Partzuf and a different degree. A person’s corrected qualities that have the intention of bestowal, in which the Light can be clothed, is called a soul. The Kli is called the body of the soul, and the Light is called the soul. This is the Light of NaRaNHY, but in general it is called “Neshama” (soul) because until we reach the complete correction, we can only correct this degree completely.
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There were many Kabbalists after the Ari, but not a single one of them was able to understand the Ari’s method at the root. Only Baal HaSulam was able to do this because he received the same soul as the Ari. It’s not because other Kabbalists were lower than him, but because the Ari’s method can only be understood by a soul from the same part of the common soul, from the same “spiritual organ” of the body as the soul of the Ari. Other souls understand the same thing from the perspective of their organ, whether it is the spiritual heart, brain, liver or lungs.

Your soul may come from a very important spiritual organ; it may even be higher than the soul of the Ari. However, since he is different from you and has different qualities, you are unable to truly feel his method, to feel “at home” with it as if you are dissolving in water. You cannot feel it as your life unless you are built the same way he is.

Therefore, we do not judge Kabbalists according to the height of their attainment, but according to how much they can help us correct and ascend. This depends on the type and character of their souls and their ability to help us.

Therefore, there is no one we should study besides Baal HaSulam, and no one else we can follow in order to reveal the Upper World. After all, he was the only one who merited the same soul as the Ari.

Any person who feels an aspiration for the spiritual world and desires to develop, is part of one of the most important spiritual organs. The rest of the souls are there to fill up the spaces in the body between the important organs, and thus they carry out a passive role.

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We have gone through a long chain of reincarnations, with previous incarnations being more difficult than what we are experiencing today. Compared to the suffering we’ve previously gone through, our current incarnation is a like a nice walk in this world.

However, our existence in this world is now special, since after thousands of years of egoistic development, we have been awakened to exit out of this world and enter the Upper World; to make a spiritual breakthrough.

Every person has a nucleus of perception of the Upper World called “the point in the heart,” which relentlessly pulls and pushes him. The matter in which we exist is the spiritual field, the Creator. There is no matter and there is no world.  The only thing that exists is the spiritual field that contains all the souls in an unconscious, sleeping state. Some of them, however, get inspired to wake up and reveal their own true state.

But since spirituality is perfect (complete), our desire to perceive it must be also perfect or complete. You cannot, therefore, listen to any arguments against spiritual development. If one’s soul awakens, then a person should listen to it and to no one else! In fact, the Creator Himself presents a person with the possibility to hear Him and a person must then pursue this no matter what.

Obviously, a person has to provide his family with all their necessities, respect his parents and help them when they’re old, but no one has the right to tell him to him how to deal with his own soul. Parents, family, and the entire world only accompany us in this world, but we exist here in order to enter the eternal and perfect world.

The reverse is also true in that we should not force anyone else in this world to engage in the revelation of the Upper World. However, if people around us demand that we give up the development of our souls, then we need to make the decision to either give up our souls for their sake or give them up for the sake of our souls.

This decision is made with the knowledge that the Creator is giving us a chance to attain the Upper World.

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We are now beginning to study The Book of Zohar, so let us speak about how to go about the study. You don’t have to read the text. It’s enough to just listen to it and to let everything being said go through you. Let it happen inside you while you aspire to feel the picture that The Zohar is depicting for you.

Maybe you won’t understand any of what The Zohar is telling you, as if it’s talking to you in a foreign language. Still, your greatest desire should be to know what it is talking about. And indeed, it is telling you about you and your life there, in the Upper World! By aspiring to imagine your existence in this other world with the help of this incomprehensible text, it will simply happen. Out of nothingness, total emptiness and numbness, new sensations will start awakening inside you. These will be your reactions to the words of this book.

The Zohar is written on two levels or in two languages. One language describes certain events using images of your world, the world familiar to you. Meanwhile, the other language that speaks parallel to it leads you into spiritual concepts. You are being shown two worlds that are parallel to one another. However, these are only two levels of perception that exist relative to you. In reality, there is just one perception and one picture, which you divide in two for now.

In order to enter the new world, you have to imagine and feel that additional, spiritual level of perception which is being described. These two levels have to exist inside you one parallel to another. Meanwhile, you have to aspire to ascend from the material description to the spiritual one.

The teacher does not have to explain anything. The student has to consume the text and open up all the “entrances” in order to let the text flow through him freely, like an expansive, tranquil stream of water. You should be expecting and waiting for the new sensations and picture to form in your perception.

You shouldn’t envision any physical images or actions. The text of The Book of Zohar is a journey deep into the soul, and its words have to elicit direct sensations of what is happening inside you, inside your qualities and forces, and eventually, your relationship with the Creator. This has to take place in the deepest place inside of you.

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A question I received: What is the meaning of the verse, “A commandment is the candle and Torah is the Light”?

My Answer: In the science of Kabbalah, a commandment means the correction of your intention from “to enjoy personally” to the intention “to let others enjoy.” How is this done? With the help of the Light called Torah, which “ignites” your desire like a fire ignites a wick inside wax or oil.

There are 613 desires in the soul. But the desires are only the wax or the oil. The wick in the desire is created by our efforts to change our intention to one of bestowal. Then, the Light ignites it.

We have to prepare our desires so each of them will become a candle. To the degree that we make efforts, the Creator will light up lights inside us like a magician, and suddenly there will be Light inside us and we will be similar to the Light, the Creator.

We constitute a material that cannot light up by itself. Wax or oil cannot burn on their own. You have to add a wick to them, which is our efforts to overcome egoism.

We need to have the right ingredients: the Upper Light, the screen (wick) and the desire to enjoy (the material that can burn). Then we will become the Light!

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A question I received: I was reading in the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” in Item 221 that “The smallest soul is equal to the sum of all the souls. There is nothing in spirituality that is be bigger or smaller than something else. Moreover, if one is against all the rest of the 599,999 souls, this one is equal to all the others. This is a marvelous property of the spiritual world.”

Does this mean that one soul with the aim of being corrected, influences all of the other souls that are not aimed at correction, and thus helps to correct them?

My Answer: Undoubtedly, all people are interconnected both in the good and the bad and everyone depends on all. But only today is it beginning to be shown at its full strength. The full revelation of this is still ahead.

Soon everyone will feel that each person in the world holds the valve to their oxygen supply, and that the valve can be shut if someone chooses to do so!

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The entire material of creation is desire created by the Creator, who also sends the Light that fulfills the desire. Man is the correct correlation between the Light and the desire, and since man’s actions most always come from desire, his actions are therefore determined by the Creator.

However, if we aspire to reach connection between us by helping each other, acting “against the Creator” who created this separation between us, it truly becomes our own action.

The quality which the creature acquires by this action is called “a soul.” This soul doesn’t initially exist in us, and the Creator cannot give us a soul. Rather, a soul is created by our desire to connect above our egoism.

All states descending from the World of Infinity to our world (the last stage) exist in us in the form of records, which can be realized only by our efforts towards unification. Our descent resulted in separation, and our ascension is the action of moving towards unification.

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