The science of Kabbalah is the method of developing the soul. However, while developing my soul, I don’t really understand the process. I don’t know what is good or bad for its development, what kind of desires should increase in me and to what extent. It’s as if I wander aimlessly between egoism, disdain and self-sacrifice.

Here we need to obey a simple rule: love for the Creator will come after love for others. I will attain Him exactly inside the connection between myself and others. Our entire study is devoted to this.

At first thinking of others seems like the most repulsive thing to me. I am sick of it, and I would prefer to just study and work on myself, but not depend on others. However, I soon discover that there is no other way to go.

Although we are not familiar with the program of our development, we can still try to establish an interconnection among us. But the fact is that the Light does all of the work. It reveals various properties inside us, revealing them individually in every person depending on the root of his soul. Therefore, one person advances in huge steps while someone else advances by small steps. Someone reveals anger in himself and someone – apathy. There are no exact templates and standard rules.

The thing Kabbalists explain to us are what belongs to everyone with no exceptions – what is the goal we all have to reach and how to exert efforts on the path to the goal. Kabbalists reminds us time and time again that no matter what is happening, we shouldn’t forget to push on the gas, always strive to accelerate and always move straight ahead.

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We start out advancing to the goal egoistically. Because we don’t see any other way out, we unite like soldiers in the army in order to attack new frontiers. But then, as we work internally and yield to each other, we become more sensitive and find that we don’t have the property of bestowal. We realize that we would be happy to unite with our friends, but we are unable to.

In regular life, we find the strength to unite and reach the desired goal together because the goal is egoistic and we see mutual benefit. But the spiritual goal is opposite to the familiar egoistic unity. There is a contradiction between the set goal and the separation that rules among us. We gradually reveal that we are not joining together, but, on the contrary, we hate each other. That is how we reveal the evil inside us, which we did not notice before.

As a result, we are left helpless, not knowing what to do. From then on, we come to a state called “prayer,” where we begin to cry and entreat with the Creator to give us and our friends strength – the strength to unite.

Because of this, three elements come together: I, my friends and the Creator, who links us together and provides the connection between us and the Light, which starts to fills us. That is when the spiritual world opens up to us.

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In spirituality, an action is valued by its strength and the help rendered. For example, a mother takes care of her child, trying with all her strength to fulfill the child’s desires. The same happens in a group: I am trying very hard to unite with my friends in order to fulfill their desire.

By doing so, I will feel that the friends also lower themselves before me. They have a great spiritual goal, and they are willing to step on themselves for the sake of it and to help me as much as they can. The goal compels them to do so the same way as love compels the parents.

From this we can understand how we can begin attaining the Creator. Initially, we do not reveal Him as great, but as small. This is because He intentionally lowers Himself to help us attain the spiritual advancement. A child also sees in his mother as “a maid,” since she puts herself at his complete disposal.

This is also how we reveal the Creator. But then we gradually begin to understand that the Creator intentionally expresses Himself modestly to us and lowers His greatness to teach us how to bestow.

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The source of Upper Light created a point of desire “from nothing” and then began to influence it through pressure, until the point reached a state called the World of Infinity. In this state the point is no longer a point, but a sphere filled with the Light that created it. It then performs a restriction (Tzimtzum Alef) on the desire, expelling the Light from itself. That is how we exist – under this restriction.

The condition of the first restriction is very simple: there is Light, pleasure, perfection, and eternity on top, and on the bottom there is desire, darkness, and emptiness. They are separated by a border called “the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Alef),” which is a condition that can never be cancelled. It states that this gap will remain between them as long as the desire (Kli) is not similar to the Light. Stated differently, as long as your vessel of perception is dissimilar to the Light, you will not feel anything besides what you feel now.

In this state, we are unaware of the spiritual world and perceive only “this world.” This state, in which we currently exist, is the smallest possible degree of life. It lies beneath any realization, in darkness, as though we are in an imagined reality and the deepest possible sleep.

I once saw a sci-fi movie where people were placed into capsules filled with a special liquid so they could be sent into outer space at a distance of a thousands of light years. They slept in their capsules until they landed on another planet and began to awaken there. We exist in a similar state – in a state of sleep, torn away from the genuine reality. The condition under which we can awaken is the intention “for the sake of bestowal.” For this to happen, our initial desire to be fulfilled or to receive pleasure does not change; the only thing that changes is “why do we enjoy – for what purpose?” If we wish to receive the Light (fulfillment) for our own sake, with the egoistic intention of “for myself,” then we are going against the condition of Tzimtzum Alef. This is called reception “from above downward.”

If we wish to receive the Light with the intention of giving pleasure to the One who gives it to us, this is called reception “from below upward.” Only then does the Light, the revelation of the Upper World, fill us completely. We receive in both cases, since the only thing present in us is the desire to receive; what changes is the intention, the condition for our reception.

We don’t understand how it’s possible to receive the Upper Light from below upward, or what it means to return the pleasure to the Giver. However, this condition opens the path to the Light. If we execute this condition, the entire World of Infinity will be ours.

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The Zohar: It is known that there is World, Year, and Soul in everything. In the stony heart (Lev HaEven), too, there are World, Year, Soul. World is the primordial serpent (Nahash Kadmoni), which Samuel rode; Year—the ninth of Av; and Soul—the thigh-vein sinew (Gid HaNasheh).

The Zohar tells us that there are two ways of perceiving the reality that we feel. There is the perception “for one’s own sake,” where one feels an egoistic “year, world, and soul,” which belong to the stony heart (Lev ha-Even). There is also the altruistic “world, year, and soul,” where one’s perception of reality is directed in the opposite direction, away from oneself. One perceives through bestowal rather than reception, and therefore one perceives the Upper “World, Year, and Soul,” because it is perceived through bestowal (sanctity).

What’s the difference between the perception of reality by way of absorption and reception, when one separates the perception into world, year, and soul; and the perception of reality by way of bestowal, when one also separates the perception into world, year, and soul? This is, in fact, a big difference between these sensations, because by absorbing into oneself, one is limited and feels that he exists in rigid boundaries of time. One feels that he lives and dies; he feels suffering and problems. One constantly wishes to fill himself, but this fulfillment fades immediately. One’s whole existence in these egoistic bounds of “world, year, and soul” takes place in reception, in the stony heart (Lev ha-Even), in absorption “into oneself.” However, in spite of the suffering, one is forced to continue existing in this manner because one’s environment conditions him that this is how he has to live. The environment obliges a person to strive to be successful at this egoistic absorption, and one is compelled to listen to them and thereby to kill oneself.

However, it is possible to perceive reality different – through bestowal, by exiting out of oneself. There, “world, year, and soul” are infinite dimensions, not limited by the considerations of how a person can fulfill himself. One feels the spiritual world, eternity, and perfection.

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The Zohar: It is known that everything is comprised of “world, year, and soul.”

One perceives oneself and the world through limitations called “world, year, and soul.” “World” is everything one perceives as the space surrounding him, in which he and everything else exist. “Year” is the sequence of actions, times, and states that one goes though, perceiving them as an order of cause and consequence. This gives one the perception of life and the flow of time. The soul is the person who feels that he exists and lives within space and time.

Thus, there is the person, the world that surrounds him, and the perception of a changing reality – world, year, and soul. This is how we all perceive our existence. However, in actuality, the limitations of “world, year, and soul” do not exist. They are all the Upper Force, which depicts these feelings, coordinates, and boundaries inside us.

In the science of Kabbalah we learn that there is Malchut and Bina. When we perceive our existence in Malchut, we feel that we are standing on earth; when we perceive our existence in Bina, we feel that we are in the clouds; and when we perceive that we are situated between Malchut and Bina, we feel that we are between the sky and the ground.

The Upper Forces depict for us the whole world that surrounds us and our existence in it. They are like vectors on a computer screen, giving us a sensation of time and space, which consist of many objects. However, all of these are just forces that illustrate a colorful, three-dimensional picture for us and within us.

All of this is, in fact, one force, but its influences are presented to us in a way that separates them into time, space, and motion, or, as The Book of Zohar says, into world, year, and soul. As a result, we feel that we exist in a world where everything moves and exists in a continuous fashion.

However, all of this is the influence of one force upon us. It is this force that creates all these various impressions, giving us a sensation of ourselves, a three-dimensional space, and time.

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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYishlach (And Jacob Sent),” Item 198

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It seems illogical to us, but if we wish to rise to the next degree and receive more Light, we have to “come out of the house,” from the state where we had fulfillment – the Light of Hochma, and rise to a degree where there is only the Light of Hassadim. That way we guarantee that we will not fall from our spiritual degree and nothing will be able to harm us.

After all, the only thing that can harm us is us! A human being is a small world. Everything we see around us exists inside of us, in our sensations. This whole world, which seems external, actually exists inside us. We just imagine it to be outside.

When we begin to obtain spiritual sensations, we will feel that all of these qualities and phenomena occur within us. Right now, however, it seems obvious to us that everything exists outside, including the inanimate and vegetative levels of nature, animals, people, all the stars, the whole universe. Besides, how could all of this fit inside a person? However, later we will feel all of this inside of us.

It is a great delusion to think that the world is external. Regular science is also beginning to reach this conclusion, although The Zohar wrote about this more than a thousand years ago. All the characters and objects described in The Zohar exist only in our perception, including the Creator and the created being, Leah, Rachel, Yaakov, Israel, angels, evil spirits, various forces, ourselves, and all the worlds. All of this is inside us. Therefore, when we read The Zohar, we have to try to feel how it is happening inside us.

There is nothing outside of us. There are no friends with whom we study, and there is no television displaying the lesson for us. All of this is just our perception.

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The perception of reality that Kabbalah explains to us seems very strange and extraordinary to us. However, a newborn baby also finds the world he sees around him very extraordinary. He is not used to anything taking place and begins to study this world from the very beginning. We are exactly the same in regard to the spiritual world.

In addition, we have Reshimot (informational genes), inner definitions of the spiritual world, and therefore, it is as though we are returning to a place we were in previously, the place from which we came.

When we are born, we enter a different world each time because the world develops; it undergoes technological progress and life around us changes. However, when we enter the spiritual world, we find ourselves in a world that we were in previously, and therefore, we have memories, information, feelings, and impressions about it. We simply have to awaken them.

Through its stories and explanations, The Zohar draws us upward, leading us into the feelings of the spiritual world. Although we aren’t there yet, by reading The Zohar we begin to awaken our inner memories about the path that we went through from above downward, when we went through all these stages before.

Now we are returning there from our world. We are beginning to ascend back where we came from.

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