We have to understand that The Zohar is intended for revealing our point in the heart, and not for fulfilling our regular senses or intellect that belong to this world. You open the book and fall into despair because you don’t understand or feel it; but what kind of sensation or understanding do you expect? The Zohar impacts you in a different way, not the way you think it would.

You have prepared a barrel or a bucket (egoistic desires) and expect them to be filled with what seems like spiritual fulfillment, while you actually desire egoistic fulfillment. The Zohar, however, gives you a different type of receiving vessel – one that’s bestowing, anti-egoistic, as well as the corresponding fulfillment – the pleasure of bestowal.

These are the normal phases that every person goes through, gradually revealing his Kli, his attitude and the fulfillment he should expect. As a result all the delusions eventually fade away and one reveals the right Kli which is ready for the right kind of fulfillment.

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Sometimes during the lesson a person is overcome by thoughts about various “mundane” problems, which make it seem as though he has to solve them right there and then. “Mundane” in this case means everything related to our world. The mundane problems – meaning our entire world – are the conditions from which we have to ascend into the spiritual world. If it weren’t for these problems and difficulties that present themselves to us in the form of this world, we wouldn’t have anything to ascend above.

Problems at work, the bank, the supermarket, with your health, children, spouse and others, are not artificial problems of this world, but spiritual levels that descended to this level and now appear to us in their opposite form. This opposite form only appears as a bank, supermarket, health, family, work, and so on; in reality it is the Upper Level creating conditions for us which we have to use to push ourselves into the spiritual world. We have to break through them like through a thick filter. We have to go through this sifter, because that work will constitute our effort.

If we try, however, we will see that we aren’t capable of this and we need the Light that Reforms. All of these circumstances are the conditions created for us by the Upper Level. Therefore, when we understand that we are having a hard time, and that we are deaf and do not desire spirituality, that is when we have to distinguish our current animate state (this world) from the point in the heart, which is concealed and bound by this world. We have to pull that point out from underneath this mound of corporeal problems (or rather, what seems like corporeal problems) and thoughts, and raise it upwards, above them.

If a person collects himself and persistently continues to read The Book of Zohar over and over again, then this confusion, fog and uncertainty disappears because the Light influences a person. “Whatever the mind doesn’t do, time does,” and The Zohar is especially powerful in this regard. We must only give it the chance to freely flow through us.

As I read a paragraph from The Book of Zohar, I don’t even want to remember anything that happened to me in the past. I have gone through it and it’s over. While I read The Zohar, I want to experience it fully; I want to completely absorb it so it will permeate all my cells. These are my expectations.

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You know you are studying The Zohar correctly when you keep reading it over and over, yet you don’t understanding anything. You shouldn’t be afraid of this or try to lie to yourself. On the contrary, you must accept the fact that it’s unknown like a baby, and then it will indeed begin gaining clarity.

Studying The Zohar brings a Déjà vu sensation, where something you have ready before suddenly surfaces in your memory while reading a different part of the text. When you read it the first time, you didn’t understand a thing, but now it suddenly all comes together, similar to how something in our world becomes revealed to a baby.

If it seems that the material is clear to you, then this is a grave error on your part that hinders your progress. You must clearly realize that you are reading about phenomena that presently do not exist inside you.

If your soul becomes corrected, then you will perceive them properly. But for now you are merely hearing the words without knowing what they really mean. For example, you read the word “darkness” and think that you understand its meaning, but actually it means something else entirely; it refers to the inability to perceive something. After all, the book talks about bestowal, whereas you only know how to receive.

Your opposition to the Light, to this exalted state of bestowal, is called darkness. Similarly, your likeness to the Light and ability to connect to a more advanced desire is called Light. In this regard, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand and cannot imagine these notions. What is important is your desire. This is what draws the Light – the force that develops you.

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You cannot calculate how to advance to the next state. It is always incomprehensible to you and concealed in darkness and uncertainty, since all the desires there are new. In fact, everything there begins anew.

You have no way to grab onto it. It can only be revealed by the Upper Light; therefore, this revelation does not depend on you. You make efforts, but you don’t know what mechanism you are triggering to do the work. You are like a little child who plays and accidentally presses some button, turning on the whole system and eliciting great consequences.

And like a child, you should not be concerned with what the next state will be like, since this is exclusively the Creator’s prerogative. Everything moves according to His plan, and no one knows exactly how it works.

You are about to reveal a completely new level, where all the souls begin to be corrected together, according to the general structure of the common soul. It is like an embryo in which all the organs grow gradually, sometimes the liver, sometimes the lungs, and sometimes the legs. Every day one organ grows faster while another one grows slower. In much the same way, the common soul is growing now because it has begun the process of correction. No one knows how exactly it will grow and at what rate.

All we have to do is make every possible effort, focusing only on what we can do right now, instead of trying to guess what will happen tomorrow. And we shouldn’t forget that our objective today is to reveal The Book of Zohar to all of humanity.

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A question I received: Does The Book of Zohar reveal the realm of desire to us? Can we reveal this through this book?

My Answer: The Light that shines upon us reveals various forms of desire within us. These forms are already inside us, but they are concealed. It seems to me that I grow, turning from a child into an adult and putting on weight and height. But this is not so.

In reality the Light influences me and I reveal a greater desire within me, along with its various new forms. All of these forms are my own and they have always been inside me. It’s impossible for anything new to be revealed; things only seem new to me.

I am enormous and infinite, but I perceive myself as being small. I have to evoke Light upon myself in order for it to reveal more and more of my forms to me, until I return to infinity with all my different qualities and desires. This will mean that I am growing, that is, ascending up the steps of the ladder.

The same thing takes place in our world, and it is how children grow as well. There is nothing new under the sun. There are only new revelations. Everything exists from the beginning, as it is written, “You will eat what has been stored away for a long time.”

It turns out that all I have to do in this entire process is desire for the revelation to happen to me, to reveal my inner qualities and forms that are more developed and closer to the Creator. I want to open myself up so the Light will come and open me up even more. I don’t reveal the Light, but attract it so it will open me up and show me the real me – the me that is greater and closer to infinity. When I can become more and more revealed to my own self, this means that I ascend up the spiritual ladder.

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A question I received: Why do we simply read The Zohar – why don’t we go over the meaning of every word?

My Answer: If I explain the meaning of every word, such as “mountains, night, darkness, and day,” then you will think that you have found out their meaning and will relax. You will think that you have read and learned an excerpt and now you can go home happy. However, this is not how you should feel when leaving the lesson.

You have to leave The Zohar lesson feeling as though you did not understand anything at all – not one word. Everything is locked and closed; the book talks about a world that you don’t feel and don’t belong to. You tried to feel it, but didn’t succeed, and you still don’t know how to do this.

Until a person enters the spiritual world, he is unable to understand that the only thing that’s important is his desire. As for knowledge, the game of playing around with words, and memorizing the theory, all of this merely constructs an artificial system inside of you which calms you down and leads you away from the goal.

My great teacher Rabash had the ability to make a person leave the lesson feeling even emptier than when he came to the lesson. Our task is to awaken such a desire inside us that even our numbest places within will sense that the problem lies in our soul, which does not feel its state. Our soul feels that it is in the dark because it is receiving the illumination from the following state, and it does not match that state.

When I feel that I am unable to feel, it means that I have reached the realization of being opposite to the Upper Level. It’s as though I am standing opposite a person that I completely depend upon, but he ignores me like a wall. I can stand on my head for him and cry, but he remains impenetrable and does not react to any of my pleas.

At that point I have to collect all my strength and understand that this is the Creator’s behavior towards me, and that is how He is showing Himself to me in order that I may persist despite everything. It is written, “Only those who are persistent and truly patient attain the King’s castle.”

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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.

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When we read The Zohar we encounter many notions that we do not understand. With time, we will begin to recognize what they are, but actually this is not very important. The process of studying The Zohar is similar to how a baby always sees a lot of new, unknown things around him. He does not know what they are intended for, yet he becomes acquainted with the world even without knowing how he does this, instinctively and simply.

In the same manner we shouldn’t be afraid of not understanding something that we read and not knowing how one thing relates to another. We just have to listen and “touch” everything, and have a burning desire to understand. This is the only way to get to know anything in our world as well as the spiritual world.

Later on when we read the Torah, we will see where all these images came from, why one name is mentioned first and then another, or why different quotations are used. We will understand what spiritual actions and qualities are being described and what force operates at each degree (such as Josef, Jacob, Abraham, Moses, and so on).

The Zohar in particular and the science of Kabbalah in general appeal to these internal forces we have inside us. Thus, little by little we begin familiarizing ourselves with our qualities. As these qualities develop, it becomes possible for us to work with them, to organize them and use them properly.

One’s degree of vitality in the spiritual world is measured by how familiar that world is to him and by the level of one’s acquaintance with it. Therefore, the more we will know and feel, the more significant our spiritual life will be, and the greater the degree of our spiritual awareness and existence. That is how we will advance.

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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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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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