A question I received: Why is the upcoming The Zohar Convention 2010 called “Zohar for the Nation?” It’s kind of a loud name, isn’t it?

My Answer: The Zohar is the greatest Light that comes to us from the system of Arich Anpin. It is the Light that corrects us. “For the Nation” means that we want to unite together. It is written, “I dwell inside my nation,” meaning, the Creator dwells inside those who unite into a single whole. The Creator is Light, Love, and Bestowal, and He is revealed inside this unification.

That is why the Congress is named accordingly. Like disconnected pieces, we are trying to draw closer and come together. The Light will change us and weld us together. Like glue, it will enter between us. Thus, the Light of The Zohar changes the nation and so the Congress is called “Zohar for the Nation.” There is nothing mystical about it.

The matter in question is the correction of man, of society, and of the world. I doubt anyone could put up an argument against this. Kabbalah only reveals the good and useful things for humankind.

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Rabbi Nachman from Breslov said, “Many tears are shed over The Book of Zohar until a person becomes worthy of understanding.” When thinking about the corrected desire, I should imagine that it is all mine. There are no other people; they are all, in fact, inside me. They are all me! Therefore, when I read The Zohar I should imagine that everything happens inside me. I read about mountains, summits, a stream flowing out of the Garden of Eden, top or bottom, corporeality or spirituality, Pharaoh, Moses, Abraham, men and women who get married and give birth to children; but all of this happens inside me, in my desires. There is nothing else.

In this manner I am being told about the different phenomena taking place inside my desire. The Zohar tells me about what happens inside me, in this entire, enormous vessel of desire which consists of everyone. Nothing exists outside of it; the whole reality is in me.

So where is the Creator? He is also inside me! If I can attain a feeling of unity, bestowal, and love between all His parts within this desire, it will mean that I have revealed the Creator. The Creator is called “Bo-Re” – “come and see.” This happens in the desire, where the Light is situated. The Light is perceived only in the desire.

The more you try to change your vision in this manner, the easier it will become. We simply need to take off the glasses through which we see our world and begin to look from a different point of view. Then we will suddenly reveal that reality is actually completely different from what we are used to. We only need to remove the regular picture of the world that blocks it.

The Zohar is deliberately written in a language that seems to speak about our world, as if it tells us about a family, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or about a nation that comes out of Egypt, and other things. It explains this to us purposefully, so we would switch from focusing on this world, our customary perception, to another type of focus that is more internal. Then we will see that everything happens inside us.

A person is a small world. Understanding this is the condition for understanding spirituality.

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A question I received: I don’t understand why I have to know about all these minute details that The Zohar describes if I’m unable to penetrate the text so deeply anyway.

My Answer: The Zohar is an entire system, and you exist inside it as though in a spider web or a net. This is the system of the universe which contains all the creatures, and all of it is the Creator.

When we read The Zohar, we desire to unite in order to elicit the influence of this system upon us, so it will begin to work on us and make us active parts of it. Then we will be able to independently understand, act, and move forward.

The Zohar tells us about this system and how it works in its entirety. Of course, you still don’t realize how deep and multi-faceted it is; you reveal only what is vital for you at every moment of your development.

Actually, we are reading the remains of the original Book of Zohar, which was 20 or 30 times bigger than the text that has reached us. And don’t forget that this was all written almost 2000 years ago.

Imagine that one of the authors of The Zohar now came to us and gave us a lesson. We would understand him because he would be speaking the same language as what we are now studying. He would be telling us the same things we now want to learn. But it would be coming from a person who lived a very long time ago. Just think: Would anything like it be possible in any other situation? Can you imagine any other situation where people desire to meet an ancient ancestor in order to learn from him, where they are jealous of his moral and spiritual level and are able to understand him; they desire to hear him, they accept him, and they speak to him in the same language about the same things?

This is possible because the system they describe is real, global, and eternal. We exist inside it, but each of us reveals it to the degree he is able to feel it. We feel as if we are going from light to darkness, and at first it seems like we can’t see anything in the dark. But once you are there for a few minutes, you start to gradually discern more and more things within the darkness. And then you see that you don’t even need the light anymore; you don’t even have to turn it on. There is a slight glow, and it’s enough for you.

When you first enter spiritual darkness, you feel lost. But with a little bit more unity and a bit more influence of the text upon you, you will begin to feel where you are. Instead of your current perception of this world, you will begin to feel that there are different forces operating all around you. They influence us and we are connected to them. The air will thicken and make room for the spiritual world.

All you have to do is keep going.

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A question I received: How should we prepare throughout the day for reading The Zohar, especially now that the Zohar Convention 2010 is approaching?

My Answer: We should aspire to the Light that Reforms together. This is a very simple motto where “being together” means uniting. But what are we uniting for? It’s in order for each of us to be influenced by the Light that Reforms, which will correct our evil nature, namely, our lack of desire to unite.

Everything can be found inside one notion. There is Malchut, the assembly of souls, and we have to unite within it through a common demand to Yesod, asking it to give us the Light of Correction and the Light of Fulfillment. That is all. This should be our intention at the upcoming Congress.

If we think about this and understand that our entire future depends on this unity because it makes us similar to the force of bestowal, then we don’t need anything else. We should reread the story about the reception of the Torah at the foot of Mount Sinai because we are in the same exact situation. It is written that every person should see himself as standing beneath Mount Sinai and receiving the Torah.

The Torah is given every day. But we will only be able to receive it if we all unite as one man with one heart, standing opposite the Creator, who is also One. We will then establish contact with Him and receive the Surrounding Light.

We have to prepare for this state where our souls refuse their individual egos and connect together in order to attract the Light of Correction. The Light will make our unity happen and inside it, we will reveal the Creator.

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A question I received: We have just completed a Congress with tens of thousands of participants all over the world who wanted to unite. What were we missing to make the jump to the next spiritual level?

My Answer: We revealed that there are many people all over the world studying together with us, who we didn’t even know about. However, quantity is not the only thing that’s important. We also have to reach a correct, powerful connection. In the meantime every person still has his own idea of unity, but we already have a good, powerful base for creating it.

Now everything depends on how much every person will be able to understand and feel that:

1. The Creator created just one common desire,

2. It was deliberately arranged that we, the parts of the common desire, do not feel our connection as one inseparable whole in Malchut of the World of Infinity. On the contrary, being in this world we feel the broken Malchut, where we don’t even feel our souls but live in an imaginary reality which is nothing like the real one.

In actuality, all of reality is spiritual and we are now in an unconscious state. We perceive the lack of spiritual consciousness as our world and as us in it. Therefore, we must all understand that everything we see now is a fog, our shared fantasy, and we have to make efforts to return to the true reality. The true reality is founded only on our desire to feel our unity, our mutual inclusion into one another and of all of us together.

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The Zohar, chapter “Shmini (On the Eighth Day),” Item 8: All those who engage in Torah cling to the Creator and are crowned in the decorations of Torah. They are loved above and below, and the Creator offers them His right hand, mercy. It is even more so with those who engage in Torah at night, for they have established that they partake in Divinity and join together. And when the morning comes, the Creator decorates them with a single string of grace, so they will be among the higher and among the lower.

There is no time in spirituality. Therefore, “day and night” refer to a person’s inner attitude to his state.

If one’s desires are still uncorrected and egoistic, with the intention “for the sake of oneself,” then he feels that he is in darkness, in the state of night. He cannot bestow and interprets this as the darkness of the night. However, if he can bestow, he immediately considers it day because this state illuminates him.

These states do not depend on how well or poorly one feels, the way we are egoistically accustomed to saying that the whole world is “dark” for us when we feel bad. In the spiritual world, the ability to bestow is called day or Light, and the inability to bestow is called night.

Some people strive to read the Torah particularly during the night, in states of darkness. In other words, they want to correct themselves while in the dark, since there is no correction during the day. During the day, one only performs an action within a desire that was corrected at night.

It is written that the Torah consists of 613 “do’s” (corrections) and 613 “don’t dos” (states of being filled by the Light for the sake of bestowal). Correction occurs particularly at night, during concealment. Meanwhile, reception of Light for the sake of bestowal occurs during the day, because that is when one gains this ability.

The Creator helps the souls that try to perform all of this work to unite by tying them all together with one common thread. When each soul unites with the other souls, it acquires this common big Kli and is therefore able to ascend.

The ascent from one degree to another depends only on the extent of the connection between the souls, which is increased by continually connecting inside a greater and greater desire or Kli. The Creator unites those who perform such corrections at night and continue these spiritual actions during the day. Then, due to their unification, He allows them to rise.

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I receive many questions about studying The Zohar from old-time students as well as total beginners. People write, “We used to understand what we were studying. Talmud Eser Sefirot and “Introduction to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” (Pticha) gave us knowledge about the structure of the universe. Articles about the group made us think about unity and the goal that the group has to reach. Baal HaSulam’s articles explained Kabbalah’s connection to other sciences and its attitude to religion, philosophy, and freedom of will. It was clear that these articles dealt with the structure of the external society as well as man’s inner structure, which are questions related to psychology. But what the heck are we studying in The Book of Zohar?”

These questions indicate the wrong attitude to the study because everything must eventually unite into one. For example, the group is a collection of souls that have to unite together. It only seems to our vision and sensations that there are different, foreign souls and desires around us, and that we want to attach them to us in order to see the true picture.

It is impossible to study Kabbalah theoretically; this wisdom can only be attained practically. This is the whole point of studying the science of Kabbalah: it is intended for revealing the Creator to the creatures in this world.

The Creator (Bo-reh) means “Come and See” – come experience the quality of bestowal by revealing it inside you, by going from “love for the neighbor” to “love for the Creator.” The true perception of reality is when reality is no longer divided into “myself and others,” but everyone is united together into one whole. But how can we attain this unity and perception if we are still unable to feel all the souls as one man with one heart, to unite them with the Creator, and to feel this whole world inside us? How can we discover and understand it?

All of this has to be done to us by the Upper Light. The Light must bring us to the state where “There is none else besides Him” and “He is Good that does Good,” despite anything that happens to us. These two forms of concealment have to come together and unite; we just don’t know how to make it happen.

This is exactly our purpose when we start studying The Zohar: we have to desire for it to reveal the true reality to us, for the Creator to become revealed to the creation here and now, for the desire to be revealed together with the Light in it! In addition, we have to add a bit of sensitivity, concern, and fear to this approach. Each one of us should ask himself: Am I doing everything that has been allotted to me? Am I making the required amount of efforts that I am supposed to? This, in turn, depends on our sensation of the spiritual goal’s importance and a constant inner concern about it. Then we are guaranteed success.

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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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Our perception of the world and sensation of life are found inside our desire since in truth, our desire is the only thing that was created. Therefore, we live and perceive everything within the self. However, there are two pictures (or formats) of our perception. We perceive one part of the picture as “us,” and the other part as the “world around us.” This perception within our desire is split in two – inner and outer, “us” and “our environment.”

Likewise, our picture of reality divides into circles that expand from inside out. These circles are comprised of the soul, the body, our immediate surroundings, and our distant surroundings. In reality, however, this whole perception exists within us, within our desire. Therefore, if we want to change the world, we have to change our desire. It’s because our perception of the world depends on our desire, and moreover, the whole world is perceived within it.

Our perception that the world exists outside of us is an illusion. The world exists entirely in our desire, but we currently don’t feel it. We relate to nature and to humanity, which are actually parts of ourselves, as something alien, and as a result of this attitude, we suffer. If only we realized the harm we cause ourselves with this imaginative view of the outside world.

It is a mistake, an optical illusion! It only appears that there are people around us whom we can disregard. We simply don’t realize that in so doing we bring miseries and problems to ourselves. Our entire lives are filled with problems and suffering only because we have this terrible and twisted perception of reality.

The science of Kabbalah teaches us how to unite our disconnected parts. Alone we are incapable of it, but we can make a request for the Light to correct our perception. Then we will see one reality, one desire, and inside it – one soul and one Light.

As we move toward this goal, we should try to aim ourselves toward unity. When reading The Book of Zohar we must continually bring ourselves back to the sensation of “the entire world is inside me.” Whatever the text may speak of, all of it is describing forces, qualities, and desires that are inside us.

All the spiritual worlds are within, while outside there is nothing. The world must not be divided into inner and outer, because it is one common soul.

By remembering this we draw upon ourselves the influence of the Light which unites together the separate parts of our perception.

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A question I received: How will The Zohar affect our unification in anticipation of the worldwide virtual Congress and other such meetings?

My Answer: The Zohar will do everything. We just need to add our intention and desire to see ourselves in a more advanced state. The Zohar will perform this work, but only according to our desire.

You can’t just sit there and read this book, even though the fact is that it will affect you by just reading it as well. If you come to a lesson and see that you have no desire – that your heart and mind are deaf, then you will still receive this influence, since you are sitting among everyone else and are connected to them. Even if you are unable to connect to the friends now, you still have a connection with them from past days, like a sick person in an unconscious state who is cared for by other people since he is human.

However, in any case, we have to try our hardest to place ourselves under the influence of The Zohar.

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