We don’t have any freedom in our corporeal life. However, when it comes to our spiritual development, we can choose our surroundings, the desire that creates our surroundings, and our attitude towards society.

Even though we still act within the limitations that the system imposes on us, we can choose the path of our advancement between the two points on our spiritual road – the start and end points. We are unable to change the points themselves, since the end point lies in the root of our souls. This is where we once descended from and where we now have to return. It is obvious that we cannot take any other path.

However, we can choose how we will advance; it is within our power to look for different paths and possibilities of development. By doing this, we attain the Creator’s mind and become similar to Him, and thus, we acquire a certain amount of freedom of will relative to our current and future states.

Today we already possess a portion of our future state, called AHP of the Upper Level. The next step for each of us, “myself+1,” already exists in the spiritual world, and its lower part (AHP) is present inside us.  We can reveal it and start yearning the next state. In other words, We are free to make the decision of whether to move forward or not. Therefore,we have the choice of being in “today” or advancing to “tomorrow.”

If we live only within the realm of this world, then we don’t know anything about tomorrow, meaning, about the next moment. Therefore, it is impossible for us to choose anything, since our only choice is to choose the future.

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In the corporeal world we work on fulfillment, while in the spiritual world we work on desire. This confuses us as we are not used to it. Therefore, without feeling the desire, we leave the spiritual work, thinking, “If I don’t want it, why go ahead with it?”

We don’t understand that the only thing we need to attain is the prayer that precedes the prayer, the desire to acquire the desire. This is the most important thing. We should never be concerned with fulfillment. The fulfillments are our future degrees and they always exist. They are already there, waiting for us to desire them and to become ready to attain them.

We reveal The Book of Zohar by understanding that we only need the desire. As soon as we acquire the desire through our studies, it will be fulfilled immediately.

Approaching a Kabbalah book, study, and any spiritual action without a desire is normal; this is how everyone starts. The awakening a person receives at the very beginning is given to him in order to bring him to the right place so he has the opportunity to clarify everything for himself. However, after this he is left alone and is no longer awakened from Above, because our whole work is only to develop the desire, the vessel (Kli).

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In spirituality, a dream is a certain way of sensing the Light. It is a state of the desire relative to the Light when I don’t use the desire because it has no screen. This is why a dream is called “one sixtieth of death.”

Obviously we’re not talking about a regular dream, but a spiritual state where I use only the smallest part out of all the huge desires that are revealed inside me. I perceive reality and my relationship with the Creator only in this part.

To “fall asleep” means to begin a new period, a new degree, when an old state ends and I begin to work with new, yet uncorrected desires. For this reason I perceive them as darkness, night, a reclined horizontal state wherein all the parts of the spiritual Partzuf (soul) – its head, torso and extremities (Rosh, Toch, Sof) – are on the same level, and there is no clothing of the Inner Light from above downward.

All of the Light is gone, and there is only a faint luminescence left in the Kelim, which animates them. It is called a dream (Kista de-Chauta). When I cannot feel or understand anything, when I experience the feeling of dreaming, it is called “one sixtieth of death.”

From this state or point, I must awaken and rise to my full height (GAR). And then, together with my new desires, I will lie back down again. And so the states succeed one another, cycle after cycle.

At first I surrender myself to the Upper Force, letting it care for me like an embryo inside a womb. And the more I cancel myself, the more it helps me to grow.

Then I begin to actively cancel myself, suppressing my desire to enjoy with my own strength. And then my Partzuf empties itself of the Light and I fall into a dream, until a new day comes, and with it, a new degree.

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A spiritual state never disappears; we just have to find our where it is taking place. For example, by identifying with the text, we can ascend and sense a state called “the breaking” to some extent.

All the spiritual states are constant, like images on an unrolled photographic film that contains all the pictures from beginning to end. If we want to advance along this film to a state called “the breaking” and to feel what transpires there, then the moment we desire this, that state influences us.

It is important to remember that when we read the text, we are being influenced by the Upper Force regardless of whether we realize it or feel it, or whether our perception is correct. The important thing is to expect the Upper Force to come and change us.

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A question I received: During lessons on Talmud Eser Sefirot or Ptiha (the article, “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”), do I have to imagine that everything we read is within me in the same way as when we read The Zohar?

My Answer: It’s good to identify with the text and to want to sense it from within yourself. However, while reading The Book of Zohar, the approach and the system that are built into this text embed themselves into us and show us the shapes, pictures, and sequences through which we enter spirituality. On the other hand, Talmud Eser Sefirot works in a different way. Nevertheless, if while reading Talmud Eser Sefirot, a person is able to begin imagining internal actions that are harmonious with his desires or opposed to them, if he starts sensing that the things described in Talmud Eser Sefirot are talking about him, then it will impact him no less than The Zohar.

We have to understand how all of this works and to imagine that the will to enjoy was created, then it wanted to “receive for the sake of bestowal,” and then it broke. What happened to this desire after it lost its screen, and how do all five components of this desire now behave? How does it empty itself of the Light? It doesn’t want to lose the Light, but the Light goes away because the forces of concealment act from Above. The desire’s evil egoistic powers repel the Light.

All of this is talking about me. For example, inside of my corrected Galgalta ve Eynaim, I refuse the Light and place a screen (concealment) between myself and the Light. Thus I remain face to face with the Creator; I connect only with Him, but I don’t receive from Him since I refuse the Light. Thus, I stay with Him since I possess the power to resist my will to enjoy. However, my connection with the Creator (the Light of Hassadim) is very weak.

While I study, I have to imagine all these processes: how my screen disappears, how the Light goes away from me, how I want to resist my egoism and retain the power of bestowal, yet it disappears because my egoistic desire is bigger than my altruistic desire. I cannot cope with my desire because the connection between the desire and the pleasure is bigger than my power of resistance. I have to place resistance between two poles (plus and minus), but my resistance is so small that it burns out. A short circuit occurs and as a result of it, I burn. So, what can I do if I am no longer suitable for receiving the Light?

If a person imagines spiritual states in this way, he will want to read the text over and over again. Instead of perceiving the text as dry technical details about something that happens up above, he will see it as occurrences happening within him here and now.

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The greatest question facing us is how to obtain a desire for spiritual development, a desire to become similar to the Creator? How can we desire to become “givers”? Kabbalists answer that the best way to develop spiritually is through a means called “the group.”

Natural relationships with people in our environment (including feelings of envy, hatred, love, rejection, and the aspiration for power) can help us to acquire a greater desire for spiritual development. We can simply absorb the desire for spirituality from our friends. In fact, we will desire this despite the fact that it contradicts our own desire, because envy and other “negative” feelings toward others will make us desire this even more.

We are all part of a spiritual system where we are connected as one whole. Therefore, even if the society that surrounds me desires something unnatural and even harmful to me, I will also desire this involuntarily, in spite of my own nature. This happens because we were once connected, and this connection between us still remains. Therefore, I am influenced by others because at some time in the past I received my spiritual life from others, or through them.

This net of connection between us still exists now. I am connected to all other people, but I just don’t feel this connection and therefore there is no flow of life and Light in this net. However, if all of the other people begin to extol spirituality, then even though it is repulsive to me, even though I hate the thought of it and could think of nothing worse than to give to others and love them, I will still be influenced by them against my will. As a result, I will desire this state, which seems unnatural and contrary to my own nature, because there is an inner connection between us that has existed since the beginning of creation.

This desire that I receive from the right environment will, in fact, be the aspiration which I need in order to activate the system which controls and develops me. Therefore, if our friends feel that they do not feel The Book of Zohar, that they are unable to connect to this means of spiritual development, this is a sign that they lack the desire for it. Even though it seems to them that they have a desire for spirituality, it is just another type of egoistic desire.

And the reason they lack a desire to develop spiritually is that they cannot unite. This is what prevents them from receiving the strength and the desire for spiritual development from the group. Thus, the whole group and every person in particular have to work on this.

Initially, no one has a desire for spiritual development, for the quality of bestowal and love. Only the right environment can impose this on us. Our only freedom of will is to receive this desire from the group; this is our only chance to become human. The group should work on providing all the friends in the whole world an awakening for spiritual development, for bestowal and love.

On the other hand, we have to understand that this depends on every person, on every person’s ability to annul himself in order to receive this common desire for spirituality. This desire is present only in the group and can be received only from it.

This brings us to the most important point: that we have The Book of Zohar before us, as well as a ready-made system comprised of the group, the books, the teacher, as well as translations to other languages, television, and the internet. All we have to do is put our inner effort into one point, which is called “freedom of will.” In other words, we have to make efforts to unite with the group in order to receive the force of development from it.

Rabbi Yose ben Kisma said that if a person doesn’t have this force of development, then none of the forces of The Book of Zohar will affect him.

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A question I received: How can I find the inner qualities that The Zohar describes if I don’t understand any of it and can’t connect to it?

My Answer: We are like babies who don’t know what kind of world they exist in, but are in the loving hands of their mother and relatives who provide them with everything necessary for their growth. A baby just has to desire to grow up, and nature helps by providing him with this desire.

In our world, meaning on the animate level, this desire exists in babies naturally. Even on the still and vegetative levels, as well as the animate level, which includes a person’s physical development in this world, there is a natural desire to grow. However, if we want to grow on the human level – in spirituality, then the desire has to come from us.

Development happens naturally on the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature. Thus far, we – the people in this world – have developed on all these levels, and our desire has also developed on the same levels throughout all of history. But now we have to ascend to the “speaking” or “human” level. The human level means that we have to develop and attain the goal on our own. Based on all our bodily desires (for food, sex and family) and our social desires (for wealth, fame, power and knowledge), we have to develop our own aspiration to spirituality. We start with a point in the heart, but then we have to continuously push it to develop using the help of our environment.

To do this, we need the group because only it can give us the desire to develop the point in the heart. Armed with this desire, we begin to read The Book of Zohar together with the group. While we read, we have to desire to develop, where “development” means finding our future state or sensation in The Book of Zohar. This is the only thing we are looking for now.

Besides this, all we have to do is wait. Therefore, just desire to grow, like a baby who naturally wants to become an adult. See if you can calm him down, convince him not to grow, or not to desire and demand it. You’ll find that it is impossible to stop him because nature pushes him to develop with an insurmountable force. That is how tirelessly we must work in spirituality. We must always be searching within ourselves, and we must never calm down and never stop changing. Then we will indeed grow up. This is the only condition and the only thing required of us.

The system exists, but we have to set it in motion with our desire, our inner aspiration. Without this inner pressure coming from us, that system will not influence us. That is to say, it will influence us through suffering, in order to awaken us, but we won’t advance an inch this way, by means of suffering sent to us from Above. We can only advance by means of our own desire, which comes from below, from us.

We may be receiving perpetual difficulties and problems, yet be stuck in the same place because these problems are insufficient for us to desire to unite with the correct group and to acquire a desire to develop. Despite the difficulties, we will be standing in the same place. By themselves, the difficulties are not a sign of development, but on the contrary, a sign that we have not made a single step forward yet.

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With respect to the spiritual world, we are not divided into smart and dumb. If you were to bring Einstein to Kabbalah, he’d be just as confused as everyone else. Until you acquire the qualities of the next spiritual degree, it is impossible to know it or sense it because it must first become revealed in you. Only then will you begin to sense, and then to understand what it’s all about. Indeed, it is comprised of a new set of ten Sefirot, which constitute all new material.

That is why there are no smart or dumb students in Kabbalah. We are all in the same boat, and with respect to the next spiritual degree we are all equal: an intellectual or an ignoramus, a nerd or a dolt, a professor or a student – there is no difference between them. All that’s needed is a desire to attain the goal, steady nerves, and patience. Therefore, you should exercise, stay in good physical shape, and focus the rest of your energies on your inner work together with the group.

We’ve been reading The Zohar for two months now, and it’s beginning to affect us already. However, right now each of us is fluctuating in his own direction, as though on random, chaotic waves. Unity has not yet been attained; we don’t feel that we are parts of one collective movement where a sequence of strong waves washes over us after every lesson, shaking us like a tsunami.

The Zohar must affect everybody in the same way, regardless of how long a person has been studying, in what language, what is his place of origin, sex or age. The very source that we study must affect every one of us.

For instance, when it’s light outside, then everybody knows it’s day and not night, regardless of whether you are a baby, a man or a woman, a senior, and even a cat and a mouse. Similarly, we must come to a state of unity where everybody reacts to reading The Zohar in the same way, in unison.

Our present goal is to work on our unity, so that The Zohar will begin to influence all of us at once, like a single whole. And in so doing we are working to reveal it, for it will only be revealed in a united desire, in the union of the points in the heart.

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A question I received: What is revealed to me when I am reading The Zohar?

My Answer: You reveal what is happening on the Upper Degree. It is like a little child growing up – he sees, understands, and feels the world. By observing his behavior and reactions, you can see that every day he understands life a little bit more, gains a greater understanding of what is happening and reacts to things more consciously.

In spiritual attainment, we suddenly reveal images inside ourselves on a sensory level as a result of projecting the narration of The Zohar inside us. The narration “lands” on our desire and is imprinted in it, and we therefore begin to feel and then understand what is being said, similar to how we revealed this world when we were growing up.

Spiritual revelation is not rational but sensory; it happens in new senses. It is brought about by the Light that Reforms, which simply makes us able to understand the Creator and to become like Him.

This may not sound serious and one may wonder, “How is this a science? Where is the mind? Where is the person?” After all, we are just reading a book, and we desire very much to be in that picture, in that reality about which it is telling us. It appears similar to how a baby acts, “I want and that’s it!” But nothing else is required of us except this desire.

Baal HaSulam writes in Item 155 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” “Although they do not understand what they are learning, through the yearning and the great desire to understand what they are learning, they awaken upon themselves the Lights that surround their souls.” It works the same way as how a baby wants to know the world he is in. When we desire to reveal the spiritual world in the same way, it suddenly becomes revealed to us.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post:Remembering What Has Long Been Forgotten
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Articles: “From the Preface to the Book of Zohar”
Shamati #78: “The Torah, the Creator, and Israel Are One”
Tuning Yourself To The Zohar – 5 Minutes Of Light (5:20)

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A question I received: Why do we have to understand every word in The Book of Zohar according to its spiritual meaning and not according to its simple corporeal meaning?

My Answer: We should never interpret the words of The Book of Zohar according to their corporeal meaning, since by so doing we will be lowering the Torah to the level of this world. We have to rise from the branches to the roots, from this world upward, to the spiritual world. And you are asking: Why don’t we take the spiritual world and lower it down to our world?

First of all, our world does not have the same laws as the spiritual world. The whole confusion in our reality comes from the fact that people imagine the spiritual world without existing in it, and then they clothe the spiritual into the material by force, as though they have the force of bestowal in their right hand, and the force of reception in the left, or some parts of their body are more sacred than others, and so on. All of this is false, and therefore, we are forbidden to connect the spiritual with what we understand, feel, and do in this world. There shouldn’t be any connection between the two.

There is nothing sacred in our world, including on the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human levels. There is also no sanctity in anything that human beings do in this world. The Book of Zohar is called a sacred book because it can help us to rise from this world, from egoism, to sanctity, bestowal, and love for the neighbor.

I am a point in the heart, which belongs to the spiritual world – the world of sanctity. This is the only point in me that is different from my whole nature, and by using a means called “the sacred book,” I can rise to the world of sanctity – to bestowal. However, it is not the paper with the typographical print in it that is called sacred, and the letters in the book are also not sacred. Sanctity is the connection between the Light and the vessel (Kli), which is symbolized by the letters. But there is nothing sacred in our world.

Our whole problem lies in the fact that we begin to attribute sanctity to a person or his actions. However, all of this is merely symbols. All the attributes for following the commandments – the Talit, Tefillin, the book of Torah, Aron Kodesh (the cabinet for storing the Torah scroll) – are just symbols of the interaction of the Lights and Kelim, the relationships between them, and the states of the soul. Thus, it is the states of the soul that are, in fact, sacred, because they hold the quality of bestowal.

A book of Torah standing in an “Aron Kodesh” is just a symbol of a spiritual essence called Zeir Anpin, and which affects the desire – Malchut (the commonality of all the souls) with the Light of sanctity, making it bestowing. Thus it corrects our souls and raises us. There is nothing in our world except symbols. We are all “like mortal animals.”

A person who subdivides the objects and actions of this world into those that are more sacred and less sacred, causes himself to leave the path of correction. These kinds of actions are called “Erev Rav,” because they halt one’s advancement to the spiritual world and the correction of one’s soul.

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