A question I received: What should we imagine when we read the words of The Zohar, which we do not understand at all? Should we picture the souls in unity, the Light’s influence on us, or something else?
My Answer: You need to imagine that we are all together in one desire, and that what we read about in The Book of Zohar will be revealed as filling inside this desire. And together, this desire and its fulfillment will reveal the Creator.

We are waiting for and expecting results from our studies. We really need to correct our connection to others because this will become our vessel for the Light. Then, my desire will receive the quality of correction, the quality of oneness – the Creator. The Creator is my correct desire for bestowal.

I need to imagine a state that I want to exist in. I may not know what the Light is or how it enters me, but I still need to picture the correct state that I want to achieve. Just like in our everyday lives, when we wish for something, we don’t think about the actions we have to make in order to obtain it, but only about the end result, about our desire coming true. I am then able to understand what I am lacking in order to attain the object of my desire, and where I can obtain the right example of the future state, meaning, which books can give me that example.

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A question I received: What is the “Surrounding Light”? Is it a mystical force?

My Answer: The Surrounding Light is the Upper Light present within the connection among us. It just so happens that we don’t feel this connection; on the contrary, we feel separated. It’s as if we are asleep or unconscious and do not sense our corrected state. I am connected to others, but I am no longer aware of it, as if I had fainted after a hard blow to my head.

At this very moment the Light is present within the connection among us. The more I desire to regain my “lost” connection with others, the stronger the Light acts upon me. That is, the Light is as strong as my desire.

I remain inside the system filled with the Light where everyone is united into one whole, but I don’t realize it. Then I start to apply efforts to get back into this system. In a physical world, if I feel dizzy to the point of fainting, I try very hard to shake myself up and to hold on. Similarly, I apply all my inner effort to regain the perception of the spiritual world and recover the sense of my connection with others.

The Light that influences me in accordance with my desire to attain the corrected state is called the “Surrounding Light.” Currently I am in Malchut of the World of Infinity, completely connected to her. The problem is that I have 125 layers or steps of “lost consciousness” compared to the real state in which I am already present.

This desire impacts me only in the event that I want to regain my consciousness. We are like a child who dreams of becoming an adult and because of this desire he grows up.

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A question I received: Why is it so difficult to admit that I am egoist and to find the evil within me?

My Answer: Because a person is a living being, he possesses a protective force. He has to protect himself, his life, his nature, and his “I” similar to how the peel (Klipa) protects an apple as long as it grows. If there is a defect in the peel, then the apple rots without ever reaching the state of ripeness. Therefore, the peel must always be there to protect it.

The ego is Klipa and must be protected as long as the desire within it grows. When the desire contained within becomes full, then the Klipa can be removed and the desire (the fruit contained within) used. Therefore, as long as we grow, our egoism constantly protects us by not allowing us to realize the evil because that evil is still insufficient. If there were no Klipa, we would cry and scream to the Creator like a small child who cries and calls out to his mother over every little occurrence that happens to him.

Our ego locks us up from within, making us a “stony heart” and preventing us from asking the Creator for correction. A person says, “I am a man and I won’t ask You for anything. Moreover, You will do whatever I want.” Thus, we oppose the Creator and wage a power struggle with Him. This is why Pharaoh said, “Who is the Creator that I should listen to His voice?” We want the Creator to do everything that we desire. We don’t turn to Him with a request, but with a demand.

Indeed, the demand has to be present, but it has to come from the full, ripe ego, the “evil inclination.” Reaching this takes time because it’s very difficult for a person to come to accept the fact that he is an egoist. Nevertheless, eventually, under the Light’s influence, one reaches the breaking point, a state called “the gate of tears” where a person feels that he has nothing.

At that point, a person is ready for anything. He says to the Creator, “Do what you will. I don’t care if I don’t receive anything. I don’t care if I have nothing. Just let me stop being who I am! Take away everything, but please take me out of this state! I cannot stand it any longer because I am opposite to bestowal.” This is the internal crisis point that has to become revealed in a person.

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A question I received: How do we combine intellect and feelings?

My Answer: There is a scholastic approach widely used at schools and universities to convey knowledge. Often, however, without involving our feelings, we are unable to understand our teachers. For example, when studying music, a person has to hear it inside himself. He has to differentiate between its most minute shades and nuances. In other words, his feelings have to go together with his intellect, which, in turn, will make his feelings work.

The building material of the wisdom of Kabbalah is feelings, not intellect, because the matter of creation is desire. Therefore, we have to develop our desire, making it more sensitive and more complex. We have to fill it with impressions, crevices, and “cells” of the thinnest, most delicate emotions. In the same way, when a person who is not a wine expert tries a 200-year-old wine, he won’t be able to detect the same nuances as the expert who will experience an entire range of unique sensations. Yet, the wine expert wasn’t born that way; he developed this rich wine-tasting palette. We have to do exactly the same thing. We have a point in the heart, which is the initial impulse toward something. But toward what? That is something we don’t know yet because we can’t discern the details within our aspirations.

Thus, it’s essential for a person to develop his point in the heart. He must make it more voluminous so it well have enough room to accommodate the many details of his spiritual perception. It has to become capable of all the inner responses, the depth, height, colors, and tastes of the spiritual sense. This development occurs through one’s aspiration toward the spiritual goal. Thousands of feelings will show up as soon as we can sense them; everything is already there in the spiritual world. Our task is to develop the ability to feel them. In order to accomplish this, we need to aspire toward the Light, to long for the Light to descend upon us, correct us, and make us similar to it.

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In spirituality, “mutual inclusion” is an action that is carried out by a force that comes from the Creator. Although our qualities tune into each other, the mutual inclusion does not happen outside of us since it is impossible to accomplish on our level. I cannot take two qualities and fuse them together in one plate here on the table before me. I need to raise them to the source where they can unite into one whole in the Creator. I can work on their mutual inclusion there.

My desire to include these qualities is here in this world. However, in order to create their mutual inclusion, I need to raise them to the root (Keter) of the given degree and connect to the place where they exist as one whole. This is not a material unification where a few atoms unite into one molecule and create a compound through a chemical reaction.

In spiritual unification, nothing remains from the right and the left lines. The middle line is a completely new entity. It does not consist partially of the left line and partially of the right. Rather, mutual inclusion produces a new quality that supersedes the qualities of which it is made.

The desire to enjoy (which connects to the screen) and the Reflected Light (the intention to work for the sake of bestowal) are depicted as a desire below and a screen above (the intention to bestow), as if the intention and the desire exist separately. They are depicted as if these are two separate components rather than one whole.

However, this explanation is only provided in this manner when using the terms of our world. In the spiritual world, the intention and the desire are forced to be completely inseparable, intertwined, and merged inside one another. The intention can completely change a desire by using it for the sake of reception or for the sake of bestowal.

Therefore, the work we do on the “third day” lies in merging with one another and creating one common body. Each person does the inner work of uniting his qualities from the right and the left sides into one whole in the middle line, tuning in to the Creator as a result. After all, the source of all these opposite things is situated in Him, where they all exist in unity. This is why on the third day, upon ascending to the Creator, a spiritual quality opposite to the Creator was revealed, which is the spiritual death of desires such as Shachem.

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The Zohar, Chapter ”Metzorah (The Leper),” Item 20: “She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who support her.” The tree of life is the Torah, a high and mighty tree. It is called Torah (teaching) because it instructs and reveals what was hidden and unknown. She is called “life” because all the upper life is included in her and stems from her.

The “Torah” stands for the Light of Correction, which is the Light that Reforms. This Light is attracted through the study of Kabbalah. It influences our intention and changes it from the natural, egoistic one to an intention of giving. By changing our intention, our desire is redirected from “for my own sake” to “for my neighbor’s sake,” or in other words, from receiving to giving.

The desire itself is neither receiving nor giving. Desire is defined by the intention. To the extent of our similarity with the Creator, we reveal Him and the Light that fulfills us.

Correction of our intentions is referred to as carrying out the commandments or the Creator’s directions. When we correct the 613 intentions that are “for my own sake” by transforming them into “for the sake of bestowal,” it is called the execution of 613 commandments. The 613 Lights or “613 advices” (Tariag Eitin) correct us by filling the 613 desires.

“Isra-El” (directly to the Creator) refers to a person who strives to attain the Creator by correcting himself. Zeir Anpin of the World of Atzilut is called the Tree of Life because it brings the Light of Correction to us.

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A question I received: How can I find the inner qualities that The Zohar describes if I don’t understand any of it and can’t connect to it?

My Answer: We are like babies who don’t know what kind of world they exist in, but are in the loving hands of their mother and relatives who provide them with everything necessary for their growth. A baby just has to desire to grow up, and nature helps by providing him with this desire.

In our world, meaning on the animate level, this desire exists in babies naturally. Even on the still and vegetative levels, as well as the animate level, which includes a person’s physical development in this world, there is a natural desire to grow. However, if we want to grow on the human level – in spirituality, then the desire has to come from us.

Development happens naturally on the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature. Thus far, we – the people in this world – have developed on all these levels, and our desire has also developed on the same levels throughout all of history. But now we have to ascend to the “speaking” or “human” level. The human level means that we have to develop and attain the goal on our own. Based on all our bodily desires (for food, sex and family) and our social desires (for wealth, fame, power and knowledge), we have to develop our own aspiration to spirituality. We start with a point in the heart, but then we have to continuously push it to develop using the help of our environment.

To do this, we need the group because only it can give us the desire to develop the point in the heart. Armed with this desire, we begin to read The Book of Zohar together with the group. While we read, we have to desire to develop, where “development” means finding our future state or sensation in The Book of Zohar. This is the only thing we are looking for now.

Besides this, all we have to do is wait. Therefore, just desire to grow, like a baby who naturally wants to become an adult. See if you can calm him down, convince him not to grow, or not to desire and demand it. You’ll find that it is impossible to stop him because nature pushes him to develop with an insurmountable force. That is how tirelessly we must work in spirituality. We must always be searching within ourselves, and we must never calm down and never stop changing. Then we will indeed grow up. This is the only condition and the only thing required of us.

The system exists, but we have to set it in motion with our desire, our inner aspiration. Without this inner pressure coming from us, that system will not influence us. That is to say, it will influence us through suffering, in order to awaken us, but we won’t advance an inch this way, by means of suffering sent to us from Above. We can only advance by means of our own desire, which comes from below, from us.

We may be receiving perpetual difficulties and problems, yet be stuck in the same place because these problems are insufficient for us to desire to unite with the correct group and to acquire a desire to develop. Despite the difficulties, we will be standing in the same place. By themselves, the difficulties are not a sign of development, but on the contrary, a sign that we have not made a single step forward yet.

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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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A question I received: In my daily life I try to imagine that everything I come across is a part of my desire. Is this outlook correct, or will it just confuse me?

My Answer: Everything depends on the results of this outlook. The world behaves according to invariable laws. Until you come out of this world into the spiritual world and begin to feel it in a clear and sensory manner, it is forbidden for you to comprehend the spiritual world as though it already exists in a ready-made form for you.

I can only exist in the spiritual world if I am on a spiritual degree, whereas in this world I always exist on the corporeal level. Both of these levels exist until I reach the end of correction, at which point this world will vanish from my imagination. However, until this state of my complete correction, I will always live and exist in this world according to its laws, without fantasizing that I supposedly need to follow the laws of the spiritual nature in this world.

I do not need to pull the spiritual world into this world, and I shouldn’t raise this world into the spiritual world. This corporeal level obliges me to follow all the existing laws in it, as evidenced by the rules, “A doctor has the right to treat,” “A judge has no more than what his eyes can see,” and “If not I for me, then who will be for me?”

Meanwhile, the rule, “There is none else besides Him” pertains to the spiritual world. And there is no connection between the laws of this world and the laws of the spiritual world. This connection is hidden from us and hence “it doesn’t exist.” We have to live in a realistic manner, only within the boundaries of what we really perceive.

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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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