There is no middle line in nature. The Creator merely prepared all the conditions for the creature to create a soul on its own by building the middle line using a system of two lines. Therefore, the middle line, which we construct out of two lines, is something completely new.

The gradations of dark and light, and good and evil come to us through sensations of these two lines. However, spirituality is neither the right nor the left line. Spirituality is the middle line, the organ of perception (Kli), which we build from two lines and the Light that fills it. It is an entity that did not previously exist. We succeed in creating it out of two forces.

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A question I received: If a group loses its teacher, can it advance?

My Answer: Everything that’s necessary for the group’s advancement and your spiritual progress is already contained in the tens of thousands of lessons that are stored in our archives. The stronger you unite, the more degrees you will reveal in those lessons. Everything depends on the Kli (the vessel), rather than one who fills it.

As you attain greater unity, you’ll continually reveal new things in all the lessons.  In ten years from now, you will reveal greater degrees in lessons that are ten years old today. Everything depends on the “user,” his sensitivity and openness. You’ll progressively discover new layers in the same materials. Inner changes will allow you to perform continuously deeper revelations. Greater unity will enable you to reveal all the subsequent states in those previous lessons.

The passing of a teacher is not the end. Life continues, a new form of governance comes from Above, and the group continues to move ahead. This is the way it should be in the process of growth.

For example, according to the same principle, we change our attitude to a child as he gets older. With time, he, himself, begins to feel a need to separate. In the same way, a person is given a teacher for a time, and then the teacher is taken away. The teacher receives another mission and the student does too. We need to relate to these changes as an infinite flow of interconnections between Kelim.

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A question I received: What should I do if out of an entire hour of reading The Zohar I could only spend a few seconds thinking about the Surrounding Light that brings me correction?

My Answer: This is not good. There’s a legend about a person who dies and goes to the upper court of judgment. There he is asked, “Did you engage in Torah and await salvation?” You won’t be asked anything else there but this. The Torah refers to the Light that Reforms. So did you desire this or not? After all, this was the only reason you were sent to this world. This is the only thing that counts out of your entire life.

You may be studying Kabbalah and have a burning desire, but that is not your own accomplishment. It was given to you by the Creator. He brought you to the Kabbalistic group and gave you the means. But what happened afterward? What did you yourself do within the system that influenced you? Did you desire salvation, correction? This is what you will have to answer.

After we have just completed reading The Zohar today, are you able to say that you were inside what was being read? It’s too late to think about this during the study itself because everything depends on the preparation. You have to come to the lesson prepared, burning with desire and demand, as if you are coming to a doctor and asking him, “Doctor, give me some kind of medicine! Otherwise it’s all over for me — that’s how bad I feel!” When you come to the lesson with this mindset, you await salvation during the study. But if you initially came there without a demand to receive medicine because you don’t feel your evil, your egoism, and your inability to unite with the friends, and if you aren’t looking for love for your neighbor, then you won’t remember about it during the study either.

You have to reveal these deficiencies, your evil inclination even before you open The Zohar because when you open up The Zohar it will already be too late to change anything. Our entire work takes place during the preparation. Everything depends on it alone.
The pain must already be felt inside you in order for you to desire to soothe it with The Zohar, instead of trying to artificially remember that at this time you are “supposed to” ask for a connection with your neighbor. You can’t deceive the Creator. He reads what is in your heart and sees such a deep inner desire that you don’t even suspect it is there. Meanwhile, He considers: Should He give you an answer to this desire or not? If it assists your spiritual advancement and creates the middle line within you, then the Light helps you. But if not, then the Light pushes you forward from the opposite side through suffering until you finally connect everything together correctly and receive the true answer.

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The most important thing when reading The Book of Zohar is to keep yourself naive and simple in regard to it. This book is so lofty and great that in relation to it we are like little children who have been given an encyclopedia and are hardly able to turn the pages.
We don’t understand any of what is written in The Zohar. However, this is irrelevant. If you study it to the extent that you are able to, then you will receive a great influence of the Light contained in this book.

You are not just reading or listening about what is written in a book, but it is as though you are standing by a touchscreen of a computer which is controlled by the touch of a finger. This is how The Book of Zohar works. By looking at some word, it is as though you press it and put a certain system into gear. By reading or listening to some word from The Book of Zohar, you “press” it and draw an illumination (Ohr Makif) upon yourself from its spiritual root.

This continues word by word, one illumination after another. In addition, The Zohar is written in such a way that it knows how to advance you. In the spiritual world we grow in the same manner as babies grow in our material world, naturally and instinctively. Much like a baby is affected by outside influence, simply opening up to it, we need to open ourselves up to the spiritual influence. As a consequence of this influence, we will acquire spiritual sensations and intellect.

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A question I received: What kind of spiritual advancement did we gain at The Zohar Convention 2010 that was held last week?

My Answer: We went through enormous changes. I felt that the nation of Israel did not simply receive The Book of Zohar, but returned to it. It wasn’t the reception of something new, but the joy of people who found what they once lost.

Maybe they can’t even give themselves an explanation of what happened to them, but I saw that this is exactly what their souls experienced. They felt that they found what they lost two thousand years ago. They aren’t studying The Book of Zohar now, but are remembering it.

Indeed, this is the case: They aren’t finding out something new, but are rejoicing about the return of something that was once lost. Therefore, I think that the nation of Israel went through a great, wonderful spiritual ascent. Moreover, this doesn’t apply just to the people who were with us at the Convention. It was a step forward for the entire dissemination of the science of Kabbalah among the nation of Israel, which will later be joined by all humanity. Thus, all of Babylon (all of humanity) is returning to its spiritual source.

There is reason to hope that all the souls will unite into one soul of Adam in our lifetime and we will attain the state of the Final Correction, the World of Infinity, the corrected common soul. I believed in this and waited for it, but our success exceeded all my expectations. I think that we are being given great opportunities from Above to correct our nature.

There is still a lot of work ahead of us, which is special and yet difficult. At the same time, it is extremely important and exalted, and we have to be grateful that the Creator has chosen to fulfill His great plan through us.

Now all we have to do is continue to disseminate Kabbalah among the nation of Israel with the help of all the people who took part in the Convention together with us. By virtue of the wisdom of Kabbalah and the force of the Light of The Book of Zohar, Israel will unite into a single nation, as Baal HaSulam writes in the newspaper “The Nation” and Item 70 of “Introduction to The Book of Zohar.” This is possible only by uniting the hearts, and that can only happen by the force of the Light that Reforms, which raises us above our egoism.

I would like to thank all the people who came to the Convention from many different countries all around the world. Together we will be able to carry out this great correction, and judging by the speed of its current dissemination, it is bound to happen very fast.

The time has not yet arrived to reveal the true depth and greatness of what is unfolding, but I can say that we carried out exalted and mighty inner corrections. And this will soon be expressed inside us and in the world.

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A question I received: When we actualize our desires at the level of impressions, do we cause the material world to become more amicable toward us?

My Answer: We are all made of a material called the “desire for pleasure.” When the Light affects the desire to be pleased in a way that makes it reach the worst state, it considers only itself; it cares only for itself and feels nothing but itself. This “short circuit” creates the picture of our world inside us.

By correcting our desire, we begin sensing another reality that exists outside of this one. When something is sensed through other people’s desires instead of our own, it is called the Upper, Spiritual World, and it is a world of eternal life.

Correction is a process of learning how to sense that which is outside of us as opposed to within. This is a purely psychological challenge. At the end of the day we all want to be pleased and aspire towards goodness. And the fact of the matter is that we will eventually attain infinite goodness, but only under the condition that we “exit” ourselves.

After we exit our self, the material of creation (the desire for pleasure) starts being treated as “myself,” and in fact, is mine. That is when it becomes more amicable toward us.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Tazria (When A Woman Delivers),” Item 117: We learned that there are upper spirits, from among those who were made of the spirit of the left of Adam HaRishon. Those do not cling below in this world, but hang in the air and hear what they hear from above. Some of them know other spirits below in this world, and appear to people in their dreams and alert them.

Obviously, this is not talking about people who are seeing this in their dreams. The Zohar does not say a word about our mundane reality or our world. Gradually, as we read it more and more, we begin to feel that we are inside a system that is operated by forces and desires.

When a person sees that he is connected to these forces and acts through them, he feels that he is clothed in a specific image, force, or character that is being referred to by the name of an animal, bird, or plant. These words do not refer to animals, birds, or plants that we see in our world, but to the way a person senses parts of the spiritual reality, or the spiritual forces that enliven him.

That is why The Zohar uses descriptions in this manner. In reality, this is the form closest to what we will soon begin to recognize when we start to feel the spiritual world.

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When Baal HaSulam explains The Book of Zohar using the terminology of Kabbalah, he aims to provide an explanation that will develop our soul and sensations rather than our mind. This is, indeed, a challenge because the language of Kabbalah is very precise, logical, scientific, and dry and therefore, a person faces the pitfall of becoming too engrossed in it mentally. This is especially so in our time when egoism is so highly developed that its development occurs through the mind. The modern person is inclined to look for a scientific explanation using the earthly mind instead of feeling the Upper World inside his corrected desires.

As a result, when a person hears an explanation, he is lured into Klipa. If he accepts everything on a purely rational basis and starts to provide explanations to what is happening without relating it to the correction of his sensations, then he won’t aspire for spiritual attainment. He will be satisfied with the explanations on the level of his earthly reason, and that will halt his spiritual progress. Moreover, he will go on to confuse others who don’t understand that his beautiful words hold no spiritual attainment, but just abstract knowledge.

This is why my teacher Rabash conducted his lessons in a way that caused his students to leave the lessons confused, not understanding anything. They did not aspire to acquire pure knowledge, but waited to acquire the ability to feel what they read. There is also a different approach to teaching Kabbalah where a student rejoices after the lesson about receiving certain knowledge and being able to connect everything beautifully into a single picture of the world. These are two completely different approaches.

Either way, life will put everything in its rightful place. The global crisis, suffering, problems, and the development of egoism will bring an end to our superficial interest in science. People will become smarter and realize that abstract knowledge is of no use because it does not provide any solutions to their problems. We have to reveal and feel spirituality, instead of building theories based on things written in books.

When the mind works based on feeling and attainment, we truly reveal nature, the Creator. However, when the mind keeps growing instead of achieving real attainment, it is described by the verse, “One’s knowledge exceeds one’s actions” (Hochmato Merubeh Mi Maasav) and this halts a person’s spiritual development. He starts to be a know it all even though he is actually in total darkness and does not feel what he speaks of.

Therefore, it is my wish to prevent every person from being carried away by speculative commentaries, and to help everyone aspire only to self-correction and the attainment of real revelation.

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I have been hearing reactions that people find it very difficult to read The Zohar. They don’t have the patience for it; they lack connection with the text and the taste for it. I agree with all these complaints because if that’s how a person feels, there’s nothing you can say in objection. However, we have to take an example from our regular lives and how naturally we enter this world.

How do babies learn to live in this world? They simply listen and watch everything, without understanding what is happening to them. Thus, they involuntarily establish connections with the world, and naturally, with the help of the Light, they receive all the notions, language, and understanding of this world.

If we knew how this whole process happens to a person in this world and all the mechanics of it, then we would understand that we go through the same thing in spirituality. It is the only possible development; it happens naturally and enables us to enter an additional world – the spiritual world. Granted, the process is easier for babies in this world because they have already been born into it and all they need to do is assimilate knowledge and sensations of their surroundings, according to the nature of a newborn. We, on the other hand, have to learn the systems and acquire the sensations of a world that is opposite to our qualities.

We don’t even know what this opposition means because we are completely separated from the spiritual world. Therefore, our entrance into it must happen even more naturally; that is to say, it must happen exclusively with the help of the forces of nature, because on our part it is impossible to understand or feel it in any way ahead of time.

On the contrary, we have to rise above all of the understanding and sensations that we already have by virtue of the force of bestowal. This is called, “faith above reason.” We have to make these efforts and desire to belong to the spiritual world above our feelings and our mind. We have to desire for it to influence and develop us, to give us a new heart and a new mind instead of our current, material ones. That way we will reveal ourselves above our current nature. We will then desire to remain open and to absorb everything that the Upper Light is able to do to us.

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The system of nature is organized in such a way that everything is aimed only at helping the human level develop. This is the only level of the desire to receive pleasure that has freedom of will. Only this level can raise MAN (a request to the Upper Level) and thus take all the other levels along with it (the inanimate, vegetative, and animate) so all of reality will reach the End of Correction. None of the other levels have freedom of will, but they still take part in the same kind of advancement. They will ascend to the level that the human being brings them to.

For example, according to our time in the year 2010, we should have raised our whole world, including all its levels of inanimate, vegetative, and animate, as well as ourselves on all the levels, and the spiritual world on the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels (that is, the “chambers,” the “clothing,” the “angels,” and the surrounding souls) ten degrees higher in relation to the Upper Light. We were supposed to make this upgrade in spirit, connection, force, and fulfillment.

Because we did not do this, the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature are now pressuring us to correct ourselves. All the degrees of fulfillment that they failed to receive from us exist in them in a negative form. They pressure us on the human level since only we have freedom of will and therefore, we need to hasten the correction. Therefore, natural disasters, catastrophes, and disasters will increase in our world because we are not performing the right actions on the human level. We are not drawing all the other levels (the inanimate, vegetative, and animate) after us.

This is the case in the spiritual world as well as in the material world. Therefore, a person depends on everyone and everyone depends on him.

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