We don’t know what Atzmuto is, the Light itself, . We can only talk about the forms it creates within the desire. Besides this, we cannot understand or feel anything.

When I drink water, I don’t know what water actually is when it is outside of me. I only know how it is perceived inside my sensations and in my senses. This is the only thing I can talk about, and I can therefore describe the water as being wet, cool, sweet or sour. I can only describe it from the point of view of my own Kli. That is why we only talk about the Kelim and their impressions, the forms and sensations that are present within them.

It seems to me that I go into the shower, turn on the faucet and enjoy the water streaming down on to me. But the faucet and the water streaming down on me, and the water that’s inside me when I drink it, are all my own Kelim.

If we discern the concepts in the right way, then we will be able to read The Book of Zohar correctly.

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A question I received: The Book of Zohar, the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” and Talmud Eser Sefirot all talk about the peak of the universe. So why is The Book of Zohar the most powerful?

My Answer: No book was written from such a high level by ten Kabbalists, who represent sources of ten Sefirot. They all achieved the full correction of egoism, passed all 125 degrees, and were united as one in Malchut of Infinity. They annulled themselves so fully on all the degrees, starting with the lowest degree to the highest, that they were able to transmit a pillar of Light to us from Infinity. Now this Light is in front of every person, and every person can receive it through The Book of Zohar.

No Kabbalist or group of Kabbalists in the history of Kabbalah, starting with Adam and on to our times, throughout 5770 years, had an opportunity to do anything like this. The authors of The Book of Zohar, the ten Kabbalists, representing the ten primordial Sefirot, performed a correction from this world to the highest world. Therefore, they are able to give us the force that can correct everything.

This is why The Book of Zohar is being revealed particularly during our times, when egoism and crises are being revealed in our whole civilization. This is also the reason that it was prohibited to reveal and study The Book of Zohar in previous generations.

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Three questions I received on studying The Book of Zohar:

Question: Baal HaSulam’s regular texts don’t leave us room to get confused, but when we read The Zohar with his “Sulam Commentary” without your clarifications, we begin to imagine images of this world. Why is that?

My Answer: This depends on one’s training and practice. When I read the Torah, I don’t perceive it as a historical novel. The whole Torah talks only about a person’s inner world, the spiritual world that is within me. My spiritual world is formed by my desires for bestowal; they give me a perception of a new world.

Right now I also perceive all of reality within me. What I feel in my mind and feelings is called “this world.” However, since my intentions are egoistic, “this world” that I perceive is a limited, defective, and only a temporary state. If I change my intention from reception to bestowal, then I will perceive the spiritual world, which is boundless, perfect, harmonious, and an eternal state.

The Book of Zohar is meant for those who desire and are ready to change their intention from reception to bestowal. It is now being revealed to all the people in the world who feel a need for this, and the global suffering will cause everyone else to feel a need for this.

Question: Why do the authors of The Zohar, the Torah, and the Talmud confuse us by describing our world instead of the Upper World, and instead of spiritual actions, they seem to describe corporeal actions, such as jobs in the Temple and the history of the Israeli nation? Why do they use this medium to tell me about what is happening in me?

My Answer: By confusing you, they direct you to change your perception, to start perceiving through the intention to bestow instead of the intention to receive.

This world, all of history, the Temple, the laws of the Talmud, the Sefirot and the worlds do not exist. They are all parts of my desire. However, in order to change this desire from the intention to receive to the intention to bestow, you need to perceive it and the precise images in this form. You have to make efforts in order to see the world through the quality of bestowal and to transfer yourself from one type of perception to another. It is precisely the effort that brings about changes in all of us and brings us to a completely different, previously unfamiliar perception.

There is nothing artificial about the perception of this world or the spiritual worlds. All their images are created in us by the natural, direct interaction of the Light and the desire (the vessel, Kli). Nothing else exists except these two things.

Question: After all is said and done, how do we really attune ourselves to studying The Zohar?

My Answer: You have to:

1. Constantly try to feel that everything in this world and everything described in The Zohar is inside of you. Everything happens only within you.

2. Remember that everything written there is about you and your qualities.

3. Try to find the qualities inside you that are named by the words of the text of The Book of Zohar. Which of your qualities do you relate to the words “flood,” “Creator,” “creature,” “Noah,” “wicked,” “righteous,” “sons of Noah,” “animals,” “ark,” “the waters of the flood,” “skies,” “earth,” and so on.

4. Who am I? This is something I don’t know either. I have to expect to reveal myself, to reveal another world and everything filling it. Everything will be new. I need to be ready for any revelation because right now I exist in a lie and in the dark. There is a hollow space inside of me, and inside of which I build a new world from my searches and revelations, like a baby gradually pieces together a picture of our world from his impressions.

I don’t understand the words that I read. I am like a baby, wishing to reveal everything “from scratch.” Gradually I will begin to see myself and the world in another form, as it is written in The Book of Zohar: “I saw a reverse world.”

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The Zohar is a revelation of our true state. This revelation occurs to the extent that we are similar to what is concealed, to the degree that we acquire the quality that is similar to the concealed, spiritual world. The Book of Zohar becomes revealed to us to the extent that we acquire the intention to bestow, and if we don’t acquire it, the book will forever remain a mystery.

Kabbalah advises us to check: do we desire to bestow? We should check whether we have the aspiration to unite all the desires for bestowal of all of our friends. Their unified desire will be the revelation of the Upper Degree – the Creator.

Each of us, regardless of where he is, should rule out everything else and desire only to rise above our world, to unite and feel that we are all “one man with one heart.” This is the only way we can achieve unification and a mutual guarantee, and thus reveal the Upper World inside this quality.

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When I read The Book of Zohar, I want it to change me in some way: to take me through ascents, descents, impressions, and feelings. I don’t want to just hear the words, but I want to feel sensuous changes within me.

This does not happen right away. It is like a baby who does not hear or see anything during the first few days of his life, and then he begins to hear and see, but still doesn’t understand anything yet. After that he begins to actively learn about the world – and then there is no stopping him. He grabs hold of everything, climbs everywhere, he needs to touch everything and learn about everything. That is what we should do – learn from a baby’s example.

After all, this is how we are gradually born into the spiritual world. We need to learn from the example of a baby – to endlessly aspire to feel the spiritual world.

The spiritual world is the unification of all the individual aspirations to the Creator into one whole desire. It is within this desire that we will feel the Creator. When reading The Book of Zohar, we have to search for the sensations it describes inside us: “What is Atik, Arich Anpin, what does it mean to ascend, to descend, how do I join the AHP of the Upper Level, how does it raise me?” By doing so, you will be like a baby that grows and develops!

This is why it is written: “I labored and found.” It is up to us to make the effort and to desire the revelation. We have to aspire to attain the force of bestowal and unification, and then we will find it.

Some people find it difficult to feel, while others find it easy. However, when we are studying The Zohar in a group, everything averages out. If we all wish to achieve this, if each person strives for it according to his capabilities, then this will happen. It’ll simply happen to everyone sitting in the classroom or watching the lesson through the Internet or on TV.

We must only make a constant effort toward seeking out these sensations in us. Then we will gradually feel them inside us and will respond to every word in the book. What matters is not whether you understand what is written in the right or the wrong way, but the effort you make to awaken inner feelings and reactions to the words in The Book of Zohar.

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A question I received: What should we do in preparation for the next lesson on The Book of Zohar to make sure we won’t miss anything?

My Answer: Stay connected with what we discussed in today’s lesson; think of it all the time.

The Zohar is a window to the spiritual world; it is a world that is waiting for you and inviting you to reveal it. If you stray from the path leading to it, you will have to find that path all over again and will waste your time and energy.

That’s why you have to try to maintain the impressions from the lessons. Besides, The Book of Zohar pulls anyone studying it into itself.

Those who work on The Zohar at our center know that it draws you in and doesn’t allow you to pull away. It works like a drug: You feel bad if you move too far away from it. That’s how it works.

By simply reading The Book of Zohar and searching for what is written within yourself, by attempting to identify with its spiritual images and constructing the Upper World out of those images, you start to feel a pleasure that develops into a deeply felt need. It engages you. Reading The Book of Zohar creates a certain palette of impressions, a cloud of sensations that don’t look like clear images at first, but are felt as inspirations and impressions rather than knowledge. Later on, however, you start sensing and understanding the position of the right and left lines and how they both combine into the middle line. And you then begin to sense whether this makes you feel good or bad.

Gradually this sensation starts to interlace with the text you read; it begins to appeal to your intellect and the image of the world you construct. The same thing actually happens in our world: Even when I speak of something totally abstract, I check what I’m saying against my desires, since I don’t have anything besides them. Everything happens inside our desires.

Therefore, the impressions we get from reading The Book of Zohar must be sensory. I have to demand that the stream flowing from it will enter directly into my senses. Then my intellect will follow. When all the sensations I receive from The Zohar come to order and I begin to see connections between them, I will start to understand and analyze the correlations between them. We will all have to attain this in the near future.

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The Zohar: Raise your arms up in prayer, since we are about to reveal the order of the World of Atzilut: GAR de-Arich Anpin, called Keter, Mocha de-Avira (the membrane in the brain) and Mocha Stima (the hidden mind), as well as how they rise to the unknown head of Infinity, which is the most elevated and concealed.

Therefore, let us pray for the Creator to welcome our revelation of these secrets.

We exist inside Infinity. Regardless of our degree of attainment, the lower degree cannot perceive the Upper Degree; it cannot feel and grasp it with its mind. At any point of our spiritual ascent, the next state is always infinite and boundless in regard to the lower one.

I am limited by my range of perception. The Upper One is greater than me and does not fit into my Kli (vessel of perception). So how can I perceive Him? I can do it only by requesting for my soul to be expanded, so that I may acquire qualities similar to His. Then I will be able to reveal Him and acquire a connection with Him. The whole connection between us and the Upper Degrees is realized only through our request.

This is exactly how we advance in our regular lives: A child is always asking a grown-up for something, and the grown-up must in turn provide the child with what he considers beneficial to the child’s development. However, the little one doesn’t even know what is beneficial to his development. If he only acts using his own wit, using the mind of his degree, then he will advance by the path of suffering, by making mistakes. And only after many failed attempts will he reach an understanding that he only has to ask the Upper One, and He will know what to give him.

Therefore, everything is achieved through the power of prayer. However, prayer is not what we imagine it to be in our world! Prayer means that I desire to become more giving, to come out of my egoism. In addition, this has to be my sole desire; this is the only thing I have to ask the Upper One for.

However, this goes against my egoistic nature, and therefore, if the Upper One does not prepare me for achieving His degree, I will never be able to reach it on my own! Through my prayer and exercises, I become more and more similar to the Upper One. This continues through all 125 degrees of my spiritual ascent, until I attain my complete correction: equivalence to the Creator.

Now we can understand what is written in The Book of Zohar: If the soul does not receive knowledge about the world to come, then a person cannot enter it and exist in it. After all, without having this knowledge about the quality of bestowal and how to realize it, he will not be able to live there.

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The only thing that can help one study and reveal The Book of Zohar is constant exercises where the reader longs to feel the text within himself. Otherwise this book will remain forever closed to him.

If we only remove this “plug” from our sensations, we will open up the path for the higher, spiritual sensations to stream down to us from Above. Then our inner world will be revealed to us.

In this manner, day in and day out, one must doggedly await the emergence of an inner response to the words of The Zohar. And then, like a child discovering the world, impressions of that higher reality (the Upper World) that is hidden inside us will spontaneously “surface” from within.

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The Zohar: The illumination of the head of the Partzuf Atik of the World of Atzilut, called “the unattainable head,” is Infinity. It is the source of the small and great states of three heads (systems of governance) of Arich Anpin, called Keter, Mocha de-Ovira (the brain membrane) and Mocha Stima (a concealed mind), which is the Yud Hey Vav of Zeir Anpin itself.

The Book of Zohar consists of different parts. Some of them use the dry language of Kabbalah, while others are more lively, narrating in the language of the Bible or legends. However, we should not pay attention to the words themselves. I don’t care which words I am hearing. After all, the Kabbalists took words from this world, but what is important for us is to receive an inner response, a certain sensation instead of the words. The word itself is not really connected to that sensation.

Baal HaSulam writes in Item 155 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot” that we attract the Surrounding Light by having a great desire and aspiration to understand what we study, where “understanding” means being inspired, receiving an impression, and connecting to something. It is written, “And Adam knew Hava,” which means that they acquired an inner connection. Knowledge does not play any role here; only desire does.

Instead of hearing the words, we should desire to feel what is happening inside us. Then we will be focusing on the most important thing. The spiritual world cannot be attained through the mind. You need new vessels of perception, new senses (Kelim) that develop only by virtue of your aspiration. Your aspiration is what attracts the Light that Reforms, the Surrounding Light.

The dry words written in The Zohar using the language of Kabbalah may not inspire us and may leave us feeling dry; but if in spite of these dry words we still try to find the sensation and picture that must appear before us, then the things written in the language of Kabbalah end up being more beneficial for us than the texts that are written in the language of the Bible or legends. Therefore, even though the language of Kabbalah is dry, it is the one that awakens the greatest desire in a person who wants to advance.

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When we read about the structure of the Upper Systems in The Book of Zohar, the most important thing is to always think about where these systems are found. They are inside each one of us, and we have to reveal them.

When we hear the names of the Partzufim, Sefirot and various actions (such as Atik, Arich Anpin, Parsa separating one from the other, ascents, descents, unifications, divisions), we should be waiting for just one thing to happen: “When will I feel that this is all happening inside me!? Where are these qualities and actions within me, within my sensations? Oh – here’s Atik, and there’s Arich Anpin, and here, in the middle, is Parsa. And it’s the Parsa that isn’t letting me feel it!”

All of this has to be revealed inside us, because spirituality is inside of us. We think that the spiritual world is somewhere far away, in some kind of other realm. However, when we study about perception of reality, we learn that all of reality is perceived inside us, and spirituality is perceived as the deepest, innermost layer within us.

That is why each one of us has to be like a surgeon that is going inside in order to discover the Upper System described by The Book of Zohar. We are trying to find it at the very depth of our sensations. Then, when reading phrases like, “the Upper Plan,” “RADLA,” “Atik,” “Arich Anpin,” and “ascent to Keter,” we will be able to feel how all of it is happening inside us. You have to desire for every word written in The Book of Zohar to evoke a response and sensation in you. When you constantly work on this, it means that you are really trying to reveal spirituality. We should never forget about this!

Before every lesson and every excerpt we read in The Book of Zohar, we have to return to the right intention and remember that we are now studying the inner part of the Torah, the Torah’s internality, which becomes revealed inside a person. We have different thoughts, desires and qualities, and the spiritual reality that we read about in The Book of Zohar becomes revealed at their very depth. That is why all our attention and all our expectations should be focused on what we are about to reveal inside us. This should be our primary concern and we should always be thinking about this, trying to discern inner movements and reactions to the words we read. Even if you just imagine them – it doesn’t matter; the most important thing is to try and feel these inner movements inside you.

This aspiration in and of itself is already a prayer. First we have to get used to treating the text in this way, and later we will add to this habit a connection among us. In the end, The Book of Zohar was written only in order to create a connection between us. But this connection does not take place between the bodies; it transpires inside each one of us – between the points of all the souls, which are all inside me as well. I have to build this connection inside me: a connection between the image of “myself” and the image of “everyone else.” Inside this connection, which I create within, I will build my spiritual vessel of perception (Kli), and in it, I will reveal spirituality.

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