Two questions I received on study of The Zohar:

Question: In order to understand The Zohar, does one need to learn the definitions and try to memorize them, for example, the meaning of Pharaoh and Abraham?

My Answer: I don’t think it is necessary. What matters is that we have a basic idea of what these things are according to what is written in The Zohar. Later these properties that we refer to as Abraham, Moses, and Job will be revealed in us, as well as the way they relate to one another.

A definition is an inner sensation of some quality of yours that you will refer to as “Job,” for example. If, however, you simply memorize the names of things from a book, this will not benefit you in any way. These definitions need to form within you the same way as you gradually get to know someone by being in touch with the person, talking to him, and gradually forming his image within you. In much the same way, we learn the definitions from The Zohar.

Question: People ask you so many questions, but you only answer one to two percent of these questions. Why is that?

My Answer: You shouldn’t worry or think that I do not manage to answer all of your questions and explain everything. It is good that you ask questions; people who write and actively ask questions during the lesson will receive an answer! In order for them to receive the answer, it is not necessary for them to say their question out loud during the lesson and for me to answer it. They will receive an answer regardless, in another form.

All of a sudden, several days later the answer will become revealed to them either during the same lesson or at a later lesson. The most important thing is to ask, to “raise MAN.” So put all your energy into asking questions, and the answer will come from Above. Our entire advancement happens through questions.

Do not be afraid that your question will get lost among the multitude of other questions during the lesson. It does not matter if there are 500 questions and I manage to answer two of them. All of you will receive answers!

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A question I received: It sounds like all the efforts we make while attempting to figure out if we’re receiving for our own sake or giving to others do not really contribute to our spiritual advancement. Am I right?

My Answer: Kabbalists give us the following advice:

– Choose an environment that will make us value spiritual attainment;
– Love the friends, connect with them, and see them as pieces of your soul;
– Read The Book of Zohar together while aspiring to see qualities of bestowal inside ourselves; and
– Trust that these actions will attract the Light that Reforms (Ohr Makif).

The means to do this are:

– A teacher who consistently directs us at the right way to read;
– Friends who raise our aspiration for revealing spiritual forces within ourselves;
– Kabbalah books that we read and work with to find the Upper Reality that is inside of us; and
– Dissemination in order to attract more people that will strengthen the environment and everyone’s aspiration toward the Upper Goal.

The practical implementation of all this takes place during the study of The Book of Zohar. This is the only means of contact we have with the Light that Reforms because while reading it we are between two worlds: the Upper World and the lower world, and we are then able to find the link between them.

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A question I received: You said that we should search inside of ourselves for everything that’s written in The Book of Zohar. However, The Zohar only talks about the correction of the soul, and we receive a soul only when we enter the spiritual world. So how can I correct something that is external, inside myself?

My Answer: That’s true. Sometimes we say that spirituality exists outside of us, where “outside of us” means “outside of our desire.” In truth, all of me is the desire to receive and to be self-fulfilled. Therefore, I say that spirituality is outside of my desire to receive pleasure.

We are not talking about distances and spaces; we are talking about qualities. With regard to the quality of reception there is no spirituality. Spirituality is outside of it. Therefore, when I say “outside of us” I mean “outside of our present desire.”

On the other hand, we say that spirituality exists inside us – much deeper than all our current desires. If I penetrate through all my momentary desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, and power – deeper and deeper within, into more internal, personal, important, eternal, and immense desires – there I find the spiritual world and a spiritual desire.

This spiritual desire is called the “point in the heart,” the innermost desire which is revealed in me now. Why is it the most intimate and greatest desire? It is so because of its elevated stature. After all, we are talking about the goal and purpose of my whole life, and about what will remain after my life. All these most intimate and deepest questions are concentrated within one point.

Kabbalists tell me: right now it is merely a point. However, when we read The Book of Zohar and “dig” within this point, we begin to reveal that there is a whole world inside it: crocodiles, houses, stars, sun, moon, people, wicked people, and righteous people.

This point begins to widen and suddenly we discover that it has within it everything that The Zohar explains to us in the most diverse styles: through the language of Kabbalah, the language of stories, in the form of a historical novel, or in the form of descriptions of laws and commandments. The entire Book of Zohar talks only about what happens within this point and expresses it in a special style every time.

Therefore, I read The Book of Zohar and really want to cognize everything it talks about inside of me. After all, Kabbalists say: there, within this point, is your eternal part. The body dies and disintegrates, and this point remains. Therefore, it pays for me to reveal it. Moreover, I am told: if you cognize this point, widen it, and begin to reveal the spiritual within it even slightly, you remain with this sensation, and there is no life and death for you.

This is because you can already begin to identify yourself with this point and you see life within it. This spiritual life seizes you and draws your attention to such an extent that all your desires and aspirations are concentrated there. And due to this, you attach importance to this corporeal life only to the extent that you can develop it more, reveal, and widen your point in the heart.

Then you suddenly begin to see how this point becomes bigger and bigger, and you reveal a whole reality within it – an inner dimension not perceived before. At first you didn’t feel that there was a point in the heart inside you, then you felt it, and now suddenly you reveal a whole world within it where you exist eternally.

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A question I received: Should I try to understand the meaning of every word while reading The Book of Zohar?

My Answer: We should swim along with the current with the story. We are reading about what is happening inside our soul similar to how we’d read a book about the physiology of a human body. It tells about the body’s metabolism, the different organs, how they influence each other, what kind of electrical and chemical reactions and processes are going on, and so on.

Well, a spiritual organism is an exact copy of a physical one. The difference is that with our physical body, we are unaware of all the thousands of systems inside it, whereas when studying our soul, they are revealed to us. Thus, the main thing while reading The Book of Zohar is the internal search – where is it inside me?

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We have to submerge deep inside ourselves and try to feel the processes described in The Zohar from the very depth of our souls. I don’t know where all these desires and properties are inside me; I just want to sense what The Book of Zohar tells me about the processes that take place within me at this time.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand what kind of processes they are, or that everything happens on spiritual degrees which are concealed from me. I want to uncover them, because they are all happening within me, here and now. I want to feel where these qualities are located, where these processes are happening, and how all these parts work within me.

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Our entire nature is made of a desire to enjoy, and this desire will forever remain with us. However, the desire itself contains many contrasting parts which are different and disconnected from each other.

It is similar to how impossible it would be to compare certain functions of the human body such as the liver to the heart, or the brain to the kidneys, since each one has its own cells, distinct from the other. In fact, if we were to transplant part of one organ to another, it would poison and kill that organ; that is how different and alien they are to each other. But their common work together in harmony, for the same goal, unites them into a whole body.

That is why it is not unlike that which we read about in the spiritual systems within the soul’s body. The functions or qualities of Job, Pharaoh, Israel, Abraham, and so on, seem contradictory to us. However we must not destroy even a single quality. We only need to assemble them correctly so that they are ultimately included in one intention of love and bestowal, which is for the sake of the Creator.

Moreover, there is room for each and every desire, even the “negative” desires like Pharaoh, Job, Bilam, Balak, and even Amalek (the biggest desire for self reception). There is not a single desire that doesn’t connect to this one intention of bestowal. Our desires will remain different, but in the end, these differences will not be felt. Indeed, all parts of the system will work in harmony, interconnected and joined together with the aim of becoming like the Creator.

To become like the Creator means to replicate the system which is shown to us as an example through The Book of Zohar. It is similar to how we teach a child by example, such as how to behave in this world, while the child tries to emulate it. Likewise, we need to develop our desire to understand how to unite all of our desires, thoughts, and intentions into the system we read about in The Book of Zohar.

Right now very little of that system is understood to us, just as a baby barely understands his mother yet strives to know. While it is extremely difficult for the baby since he doesn’t yet grasp spoken language, body language, the world he lives in, or anything at all, he nevertheless exerts tremendous efforts to do so. Imagine that we are in this baby’s place; that is the exact same state described for us by The Book of Zohar.

We stand before big adults (the Kabbalists) who tell us about a world, which we neither know nor understand. But there is a critical difference between a baby in this world and us as babies in the spiritual world, and that’s the baby’s natural, inherent instinct to attain the world. It is a great desire to attain which defines an infant’s whole life, whereas we must create that same great desire to attain the spiritual world within ourselves, by absorbing this desire from our environment. Thus the environment functions as the organs of that same body, which are particles of our own soul that we unite together and attach to ourselves, so as to attain this whole system.

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Suppose we are reading a book about the functioning of our physical body. It explains how our brain, heart, liver, and other organs work, how they exchange substances, what happens when we feel or eat something, how our blood and other fluids circulate, how electric signals transmit; basically it describes how our physiology works.

Listening to a lesson in human anatomy and physiology we learn about parts of the body and how all components of one body act together, each in its own place in accordance with its function, resulting in the sensation of life. Likewise, this is how The Zohar describes the physiology of a soul’s body (Kli), its organization, internal connections, and functionality. In reading it and by applying effort to our studies, we gradually start to reveal our soul, in which we attain revelation of the whole world and the Creator.

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A question I received: What is the difference between desires and qualities? What is a desire, and what is a quality?

My Answer: Desire is the matter of creation, which always receives. There is nothing else to say about it. A quality is the form that the matter (the desire) takes; it determines how the desire works, what it expects from its work (meaning its intention), and its goal – whether for oneself or for the sake of someone outside of it (others and the Creator). Although this matter is the desire to receive pleasure, it can carry out various forms of work and be in different states, depending on the circumstances and the surroundings.

Despite the fact that I am, for example, the quality of “Abraham,” which is a completely bestowing quality, I have no opportunity to bestow because I am under someone’s control. Maybe my circumstances are such that I have no one to bestow to, or the people surrounding me don’t want me to bestow to them.

This is called a quality. A quality means that the desire to receive pleasure works in some specific external form, being clothed in it. There are ten main Sefirot, and all other spiritual “objects” are forms or qualities that are clothed within them.

When reading The Zohar, we recognize different qualities in us, such as Job, Pharaoh, and the Creator. All of these are qualities, clothed in our desire to receive. Anything we can imagine is merely the desire to receive pleasure. Therefore, from our point of view the Creator is also a particular form of the desire to receive pleasure – illuminating, elevated, high, wonderful, and bestowing to everyone. We are unable to imagine Him any differently because we cannot have any other matter except the desire to receive.

Gradually, to the extent that we try to distinguish all these qualities within us, we are influenced by the Surrounding Light. As a result, the spiritual system begins to be clarified within more and more and we begin to perceive these qualities the right way. We only need patience.

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The Zohar, Chapter “Bo (Come Unto Pharaoh),” Item 41: This monstrous crocodile comes into the source (Keter) of the Nile River and gradually strengthens in it. It swims and enters the sea, Malchut de Atzilut, where it swallows several species of fish, which are degrees within the sea that are inferior to it. He rules over them and swallows them. They are completed within him, and he returns to the still Nile.

It is so difficult for us to imagine this inside us! Where is the desire called “Nile,” and where is the “crocodile” inside me – where is all of this? We don’t know what to think of these qualities and what picture to imagine as we read about the ten Sefirot, the ten rivers (one of which is Keter, and the others are below it), and all kinds of monsters…

Yet, it doesn’t matter that we can’t put our finger on them. It’s even better that we cannot draw any picture of The Zohar. It’s better than if we were trying to imagine something we knew, things that we have some conception of already. When we read about Moses, the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, Pharaoh, sheep, cows, and so on, we don’t know what all of it really is, and therefore we only imagine qualities.

All of these names are not important since there are spiritual qualities standing behind them of which we still have no understanding. We are trying to learn something that is impossible to cognize!

Therefore, we need to understand that our efforts will never end up successful. We should have no delusions about this. Rather, our success will come when we find ourselves facing an impenetrable wall and understanding that we don’t know what the spiritual qualities mean, even after all the efforts we have made to reveal them.

When we complete the necessary measure of effort (called “Se’a”), our cup will overflow and the spiritual world will be revealed to us, according to the rule, “I labored and found” (Higati ve Matzati).

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Inside of me I wish to see the Creator and all the parts of my soul: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Daat, Hesed, Gevurah, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, Malchut, and their connections with each other. These qualities can also be called Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Ishmael, Jacob and the 12 brothers (Jacob’s sons), Josef, David, and Solomon. And from all sides, they are clothed by good and evil forces such as Job, Pharaoh, and so on.

We need to imagine this spiritual body not just as three lines, but as multidimensional. It’s similar to how the human body contains a multitude of various systems: the lymphatic system, the nervous system, the circulatory system, and many others which we don’t even know about. And in addition, there are energies, liquids, and chemical substances flowing through them. The spiritual body contains even more components and connections because each of its sections has different qualities, different kinds of connections, and different forms on all the various levels.

We are incapable of learning this until we actually feel it. Anyone who thinks he can learn it is a fool. We only need to desire to exist inside this integral system, all of which works for the sake of bestowal. In that system, we will find the Creator and the creation; in fact, everything is within it. We must look at it according to the principle, “A human being is a small world.”

However, we are not talking about our world and the physical bodies. A “human being” is me, and “a small world” is The Book of Zohar and its story.

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