A question I received: How can I strengthen my connection to the group if I only see them on the computer screen?

My Answer: This weekend there will be a global Kabbalah congress, hosted simultaneously in dozens of places around the world. Some places will host gatherings of hundreds of people, and other places – dozens. All together there will be thousands of people all over globe in attendance, all of whom desire to feel as one!

We must understand that we can only unite by connecting our points in the heart. Let’s participate together in all the lessons, meals, seminars, concerts, and in everything. But the most important thing is our thoughts.

I must remember that I am together with thousands of people all over the world who share the same desire with me. Thought and desire are not limited by physical distance. They are forces that spread with infinite speed and are unstoppable. The force of thought and desire is more powerful than anything in the universe.

Therefore, if we try to unite together, we will definitely evoke changes within us, and I very much hope for that to happen. Today our world group is strong enough to help everybody make the jump over the “wall” and cross into the spiritual world. If we try to do it together, then we have every opportunity we need to make it happen. It all depends on our willingness to connect and the understanding that one person is incapable of establishing this connection alone.

Our state is identical to the one at Mount Sinai. We are given a condition: Unite as one man with one heart. But everybody understands that this is impossible! We are standing around Mount Sinai (Sina means “hatred” in Hebrew). A mountain of hatred separates us from one another; it separates all of us. But we have points in the heart, which are gathered at the base of this mountain and unable to do anything.

That is why we demand for the Creator to be revealed in order to give us the Torah – the Light. If I were capable of connecting to others on my own, I would have no need for the Creator. He created the evil inclination, which is the evil I reveal while standing at the base of this mountain. We find that we are unable to unite together despite our great desire and understanding that there is no other way to go, that this is our only salvation.

It follows that we demand the Torah as a means of correction. But this is only made possible by the Upper Force, which unites us into one common spiritual vessel by assembling together all of its disconnected parts.

And then the Creator is revealed to the creature; this is called “the giving of the Torah,” where the Creator acts as a witness or a guarantor to our mutual guarantee. It is precisely He who upholds this mutual guarantee; He is the collective force of bestowal that unites us together.

From that moment on we continue to build our common spiritual vessel (Kli) by ourselves, having set off on a forty-year-long journey into the desert…

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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: In a few days we will be getting together for an international virtual Kabbalah Congress, where we will try to feel the desire of all the millions of people that aspire to attain spirituality. But how is it possible to feel the pain of others from lack of spirituality if we are incapable of even sharing another person’s material pain?

My Answer: We will try to achieve this together. Each of us feels a slight pain caused by the desire for spirituality, but it is constantly subdued by the fact that our desire to receive pleasure is perpetually growing.

The solution is that we need to increase our desire for unity rather than our desire for spirituality. Although it is the same thing, our egoism presents spirituality as a personal acquisition, while unity is presented as a corporeal action.

Question cont’d: Is this how we return to the state in which we existed as one soul, the World of Infinity?

My Answer: Yes, we can reach that state only by uniting with each other. However, it has to be a unification of souls rather than of bodies or corporeal goals.

Question cont’d: But we are incapable of achieving this state.

My Answer: We only need to ask for it, to raise MAN for the Light to give us the force of unification.

On one hand, we all need to reveal the egoism in us, our mutual aversion and indifference to one another. However, on the other hand, we have to understand that only the Light can correct all of this, and to cry out to it to correct us.

Question cont’d: But I don’t even have a desire to correct myself.

My Answer: This is why it is called “a prayer that precedes the prayer,” or a desire that precedes the desire. We begin with simple things: let’s dance, sing, and do everything together. Consequently, these simple, primitive, physical actions of our world will give us a taste of unity. They will awaken our material heart more and more until we reach the highest degree of spirituality.

There is a story about a Kabbalist who use to pay street musicians (Klezmers) to play for him. He would listen to their music and be inspired by spirituality. His wife scolded him: “There is nothing to eat in the house, and you are giving our last pennies to these drunkards! They’ll just drink it all away!”

However, he replied, “That’s irrelevant. I cannot live without their music. They could be drunkards who don’t understand anything else, but I need to awaken myself now and I cannot come out of this state on my own.”

This is a story about a great Kabbalist who would give his last money to street musicians just to hear them play a little. Otherwise, he was unable to continue his corrections.

And now we will do the same thing.

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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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I connect the points in the heart wishing to create a Kabbalistic group out of them, or the unification of the souls of Isra-el (“directly to the Creator”). Meanwhile, besides the point in the heart, each person also has a part of the egoistic desire. We are willing to cancel this ego of ours in order to unite. And to the extent that we unite in this common desire, according to its quality of unity and mutual guarantee, we feel the Upper Light, the Creator, the quality of bestowal, which governs within us.

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I am told that everything exists within me, including all people and the whole of reality. However, on the other hand I am told that I need to unite with other souls which exist somewhere outside of me. There is obviously some duality by which we are currently challenged. However, by reading and trying to permeate The Book of Zohar, it will fix everything and resolve this inner confusion we have.

As we strive to reveal our soul and to imagine that the whole world is within it, we begin to understand the need for a connection between souls. Therefore, we start to search for people like us who also aspire to the spiritual goal. We then try to create a system of connection between us where we will reveal the Creator. And when spirituality is finally revealed to us, even in its very first degree, we begin to understand how we are each connected to the other.

Right now, we perceive reality only from one side, which is worthless and false. We cannot imagine the second side or the connections between the two sides. Therefore, the more we study, the more confused we become, but this is good because it is the path to understanding. We need to get confused in order to later understand. From a lack of correction, we come to correction.

For the time being, we need to imagine that the studies develop an individual soul in each person, and in our practical work with each other, we are trying to unite the points in the heart for the sake of one goal: the revelation of the Creator. Along with the point in the heart, each person has his own part of egoism, but we cancel it for the sake of reaching the spiritual goal.

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