Introduction to the Zohar
1) In this introduction, I would like to clarify matters that are seemingly simple. Matters that everyone fumbles with, and which much ink has been spilled over in attempting to clarify. Yet we have not reached a concrete and sufficient knowledge of them. And here are the questions: What is our essence?
What is our role in the long chain of reality, which we are but small links of?
When we examine ourselves, we find ourselves to be as corrupted and as low as can be. And when we examine the worker who has conceived us, we are compelled to be full of praise. And is it not necessary that from a perfect worker will come out only perfect works?
Our mind tells us that He is utterly benevolent, beyond compare. How, then, did He create so many creatures that suffer and agonize all through their lives? Is it not the nature of the good to bestow, or at least not to harm so?
How is it possible, that the infinite, with no beginning and no end, will extract from itself finite, mortal, transient creatures?
2) In order to clear all that up, we need to make some preliminary inquiries. And not, God forbid, where it is forbidden, meaning in His essence, of which we have no conception whatsoever, and thus have no thought of Him. But where the inquiry is required, meaning an inquiry in His deeds, as the Torah tells us: "know thou the God of thy father", and as it says in the poem of unification: "By your actions we know you".
Inquiry No. 1: How can we picture a new creation, meaning something new, that is not a part of Him, when it is obvious to anyone of right mind that there is nothing that is not a part of Him? Can one give what one does not have?
Inquiry No. 2: If you say that from the aspect of His almightiness, He certainly can create existence from existence, meaning something new that is not in Him, there rises the question - what is that reality, that can be conceived, which has no place in Him and is completely new?
Inquiry No. 3: Deals with what kabbalists have said, that a man's soul is a part of God, in such a way that there is no difference between Him and the soul, but that He is the "whole" and the soul is a "part". And they'd compared it to a rock carved off a mountain. There is no difference between the rock and the mountain, except that He is a "whole" and the rock is a "part". Thus we must ask: a stone carved from the mountain is separated from it by an ax made for that purpose, causing the separation of the "part" from the "whole". But how can you picture that about Him, that He will separate a part from His essence to become separated from Him, meaning a soul, to the point that it can only be understood as part of His essence?
3) Inquiry No. 4: Since the chariot of the Evil Side and the shells are at the other end of His holiness, that nothing farther remote can be conceived, how can it be extracted and made from holiness, much less that it will sustain it?
Inquiry No. 5: The matter of the rising of the dead: Since the body is so despicable, that immediately at birth it is doomed to perish and be buried. Furthermore, the Zohar said that before the body rots entirely, the soul cannot ascend to its place in Heaven, while there are still remnants of it. Therefore, why must it return and rise at the revival of the dead? Could the Creator not delight the souls without it? Even more bewildering is what our sages said, that the dead are destined to rise with their flaws, so that they will not be mistaken for another, and after that He will cure their flaws. We must understand why God would mind that they would not be mistaken for another, that for that he would recreate their flaw and then would have to cure it?
Inquiry No. 6: Regarding what our sages said, that man is the center of reality, that the upper worlds and this corporeal world and everything in them were not created but for him, and obliged man to believe that the world had been created for him. It is seemingly hard to grasp, that for this small human, who grasps no more than a wisp of this world's reality, much less of the upper worlds, whose height is immeasurable, that the Creator troubled Himself to create all this for him. And also, why would man want all that?
4) In order to understand these questions and inquiries, the trick is to start by looking at the end, that is at the purpose of creation. For nothing can be understood in the middle of the process, but only at its end. And it is clear that there is no act without purpose, for only the insane can be found to act purposelessly.
I know that there are those who cast over their backs the burden of Torah and Mitzvot (precepts), saying the Creator has created reality, then left it alone, that because of the worthlessness of the creatures, it is not fitting for the exalted Creator to watch over their petty little ways. Indeed, without knowledge they have spoken, for it is not possible to comment on our nothingness and lowliness, before we decide that we have created ourselves with all our tarnished natures.
But while we decide that the Creator, who is perfect in every way, is the one who created and designed our bodies, with all their admirable and contemptible attributes, surely from under the hand of the perfect worker there cannot emerge an imperfect act, since each act testifies to its performer. What fault is it of a bad garment, if some no-good tailor made it?
Such as this we find in the Talmud (Ta'anit 20): A tale about Rabbi Elazar who came before a most ugly man. He then said: "How ugly is that man". The man replied: "Go and tell the craftsman who made me - how ugly is this instrument you have made". Hence, those who claim that because of our nothingness and lowliness, it is not fitting for Him to watch over us, and therefore He has left us, do nothing more than publicly display their ignorance.
Try and imagine, if you had met some man, who would create creatures, precisely so that they would suffer and agonize their whole lives as we do, and not only that, but cast them behind his back, not wanting even to look after them, to help them a little. How contemptible and low you would regard him? Can such a thing be thought of Him?
5) Therefore, commonsense dictates that we grasp the opposite of what appears to be on the surface, and decide that we are truly noble and worthy creatures, of immeasurable importance, actually worthy of the worker who made us. For if you wish to find faults in our bodies, then behind all the excuses that you give yourself, it falls only on the Creator, who created us and the nature within us, for it is clear that he created us and not we. He also knows all the ways that stem from the nature and attributes He created in us. It is as we've said, that we have to contemplate the end of the act. Then we will be able to understand it all, as the saying goes: "Do not show a fool an unfinished work".
6) Our sages have instructed that the Creator created the world for no other reason, but to bestow to His creatures. Here is where we must place our mind and heart, for it is the final aim of the act of the creation of the world. And we must bear in mind, that since the thought of creation is to bestow to His creatures, He had to create in the souls a great amount of desire to receive that which He had thought to give. For the measure of each pleasure and delight, depends on the measure of the will to receive it. The greater the will to receive, the greater the pleasure, and the lesser the will, the lesser the pleasure from reception.
So the thought of creation itself, dictates the creation of an excessive will to receive, to fit the immense pleasure that his almightiness thought to bestow upon the souls. For the great delight and the great desire to receive must go hand in hand.
7) Once we have learned that, we've come to understand the second inquiry to its fullness, with complete clarity. For we have learned what is the reality that one can base clear decisions on, that is not a part of His essence, to the extent that we can say that it is a new creation, existence from existence. And new, that we know for sure, that the thought of creation is to bestow to His creatures, He necessarily created a measure of desire to receive from Him the bounty and delight that he had planned for them. Thus we see that that will to receive, which certainly was not a part of His essence before He had created it in the souls, because from whom could He receive, that is a novelty that is not in Him.
And along with that we understand, according to the thought of creation, that there was no need to create anything more than the will to receive. For this new creation is sufficient for Him to fulfill the entire thought of creation, that He had thought to bestow upon us. But all the filling in the thought of creation, meaning all the benefits He had planned to render us, stem directly from His essence, and He has not a need to recreate them, since they are already extracted, existence from existence, into the great will to receive that is in the souls. Thus we see that the whole matter of the renewed creation, from start to end, is only the "will to receive".
8) Now we've come to understand the words of the kabbalists in the third inquiry. We wondered how it was possible to say about souls that they were a part of God above, like a stone that is carved from a mountain, there is no difference between them except that one is a 'part' and the other is a 'whole'. And we wondered: it is one thing to say that the stone that is carved of the mountain becomes separated by an axe made for that purpose, but how can you say that about His essence? And with what were the souls divided from His essence and excluded from the Creator to become creatures?
From the above we clearly understand that just as the axe cuts and divides a physical object in two, so the spiritual change of form divides it in two. For example, when two people love each other, you say that they cleave to one another as one body. And when they hate each other you say that they are as far from one another as the east from the west. But there isn't a question of near or far in this case, but it goes to show the resemblance of form, that when they are equal in form, that each loves what the other loves and hates what the other hates, they become lovers and cleave to one another. And if there is some change of form between them, meaning that one of them likes something that the other hates and such, then to the extent that they differ in form, they become distant and hateful to one another. And if, for example, they are opposite in form, meaning that everything one likes is hated by the other, and everything he hates is liked by the other, they are deemed as far away from each other as the east from the west, meaning from one end to the other.
9) And you find that in spirituality the change of form operates as the axe in the corporeal world, and the distance between them is proportional to the oppositeness of form. From this we learn that since the will to receive pleasure has been imprinted in the souls, and since that form is absent in the Creator, because from whom can He receive, that difference of form, that the souls acquired, separates them from His essence, as the axe that carves a stone from the mountain. And because of that difference of form the souls were separated from the Creator and became creatures. However, everything the souls acquire of His light is extended from His essence as existence from existence.
It therefore turns out that as far as the light that they receive in their vessel (which is the will to receive) is concerned, there is no difference between them and His essence. That is because they receive, existence from existence, directly from His essence, and the difference between the souls and His essence is only that the souls are a part of His essence. That means that the amount of light they receive in their vessel, being the will to receive, is already separated from God because it is being received through difference of form of the will to receive, which made it a part through which they were separated from the 'whole' and became a 'part'. Thus, the only difference between them is that one is a 'whole' and the other is a 'part', as stone that is carved from a mountain. And scrutinize this meticulously for it is impossible to expand further on such a sublime issue.
10) Now we can understand the fourth inquiry: how is it possible that from His Holiness will emerge the chariot of defilement and shells, since it is at the other end of His Holiness and how can it be that He supports and sustains it? Indeed we must first understand the essence of defilement and the shells. Know, that it is the great will to receive, of which we said that it is the essence of the souls by creation. And because they are willing to receive the entire filling that is in the thought of creation, it does not stay in that form within the souls, because if it had, they would have had to remain eternally separated from Him, because the difference in form would have separated them from Him.
And in order to mend the separation that rests upon the vessel of the souls, He created all the worlds and separated them into two systems, as the verse goes: "One against the other God made them", which are the four worlds of ABYA of holiness and opposite them the four worlds of the impure ABYA. And He imprinted the will to bestow in ABYA of holiness and removed from them the will to receive for themselves, and placed it in the system of the impure worlds of ABYA. And because of that they've become separated from the Creator and from all the worlds of holiness.
For that reason the shells are called "dead", as the verse goes: "sacrifices of the dead (Psalms 106, 28)". And the evil are attracted to them, as our sages say: "The evil are called dead when they are still alive", because the will to receive imprinted in them in oppositeness of form to His Holiness separates them from the Life of Lives, and they are remote from Him from one end to the other. It is so because He has no interest in reception, only in bestowal, whereas the shells want only to receive for their own delight and nothing to do with bestowal, and there is no greater oppositeness than that. You already know that the spiritual remoteness begins with some difference of form and ends in oppositeness of form, which is the farthest possible distance in the last degree.
11) And the worlds concatenated onto the reality of this corporeal world, meaning to a place where there is a body and a soul and a time of corruption and a time of correction. For the body, which is the will to receive for himself, is extended from its root in the thought of creation, through the system of the impure worlds, as the verse goes: "and a wild ass's colt, shall be turned into man!" (Job 11, 12) and he remains under the authority of that system for the first thirteen years, which is the time of corruption.
And by observing Torah and Mitzvot (precepts) from thirteen years of age and on, in order to bestow contentment to his Maker, he begins to purify his will to receive, and slowly turns it in order to bestow, through which he extends a holy soul from its root in the thought of creation. And it passes through the system of holy worlds and dresses in the body. And that is the time of correction.
And so he accumulates degrees of holiness from the thought of creation in the Infinite, until they aid him in turning his will to receive for himself to be reception in order to bestow contentment to his Maker, and not for himself in any way. And by that, one acquires equivalence of form with his Maker, because reception in order to bestow is regarded as pure bestowal.
In Masechet Kidushin it says, that with an important man she gives and he says - by that you are sanctified. Because reception that is in order to delight the giver is deemed absolute bestowal and giving. By that one buys complete adhesion with Him, for the spiritual adhesion is no more than identicalness of form, as our sages said that "one does not cleave to Him, but to His attributes", and by that a man becomes worthy of receiving the delight and pleasure and the gentleness within the thought of creation.
12) Thus we have clearly explained the correction of the will to receive that is imprinted in the souls by the thought of creation. For He has prepared for them two systems of worlds, one against the other, through which the souls pass and divide into two aspects, body and soul, and dress one in the other.
And through Torah and Mitzvot they finally turn the will to receive to be as the will to bestow, and then they can receive all the pleasures in the thought of creation. And along with it they acquire a solid adhesion with Him because through the work in Torah and Mitzvot they have attained sameness of form with their Maker, which is deemed the end of correction. And then, since there is no longer a need for the evil Other Side, it shall be eliminated from the earth and death shall cease forever. And all the labour that was given to the world over the past six thousand years, and to each person for the duration of his seventy years of life, is only in order to bring them to the end of correction, to the above-mentioned sameness of form.
The issue of the formation and extension of the system of the shells and impurity from His Holiness is also thoroughly clear now, that it had to be in order to extend by it the creation of the bodies, which would then correct it through Torah and Mitzvot. And if our bodies, with their corrupted will to receive, would not have been extended through the impure system, we would never have been able to correct it, for one cannot correct that which is not in him.
13) Indeed we still have to understand, how could the will to receive have extended from the thought of creation in the Infinite, whose unity is beyond words and beyond description, when it is so flawed and corrupted? Indeed, by the very thought to create the souls, His thought completes it all, for He does not need an act the way we do. And right away there came to be all the souls and worlds that were destined to be created, filled with all the delight and pleasure and the gentleness He had planned for them to have, in the final perfection that the souls were destined to receive at the end of correction, meaning after the will to receive in the souls has been fully corrected and turned to pure bestowal, completely identical to the emanator.
That is because in His Eternalness, the past and present are as one, and the future is as the present and in Him there is no such thing as time. And because of that there was never the issue of the corrupted will to receive in its separated state in the Infinite. On the contrary, that identicalness of form, destined to be revealed at the end of correction, appeared instantly in the Infinite. And our sages said about that: "Before the world had been created there were He and His name as one". For the separated form of the will to receive had not been revealed in the reality of the souls that extended in the thought of creation, rather they were cleaved to Him in sameness of form, as "He and His name as one".
14) Thus you necessarily find that on the whole, there are three situations to the soul:
1st situation - Their presence in Infinity in the thought of creation, where they already have the future form of the End of Correction. 2nd situation - Their presence in the six thousand years, which were divided by the two above systems into a body and a soul, when the work in Torah and Mitzvot was given to them, in order to convert their will to receive and turn it to a will to bestow contentment to their Maker, and not to themselves at all. During that time there will be no correction to the bodies, only to the souls. That means that they have to eliminate any aspect of reception for themselves, and remain with but a will to bestow, which is the form of the will in the souls. Even the souls of the righteous will not be able to rejoice in Heaven after their departure, but only after the body rots in the dust.
3rd situation - That is the state of the End of Correction of the souls, after the revival of the dead. At that time the complete correction will come to the bodies, for then the reception itself, which is the shape of the body, will take on the form of pure bestowal, and become worthy of receiving for themselves all the delight and pleasure and goodness in the thought of creation. And with all that they will attain solid adhesion because of their equivalence of form with their Maker, since he now takes complete delight in bestowal. And in short I'll use from now on the names of these three situations, meaning 1st situation, 2nd situation and 3rd situation. And remember all that is said here in every situation.
15) When you examine the above three situations, you'll find that one completely necessitates the other, in a way that if one were to be cancelled, the others would be cancelled too.
If, for example, the third situation, which is the conversion of the form of reception to bestowal, had not materialized, then certainly the first situation would never have materialized as well. It is because the perfection did not materialize there, only because the future third situation had already been materialized there as though it were present. And all the perfection that was pictured there in that state is like a reflection from the future into the present, but if the future could be cancelled, there would not be any present. Therefore the third situation necessitates the existence of the first.
All the more so, when something of the second situation is cancelled, because there is where all the work that is destined to be over in the third situation, meaning the work of corruption and correction and the continuance of the degrees. Thus how will the third situation come to be? Therefore we see that the second situation necessitates the existence of the third.
And so it is with the existence of the first situation in infinity, where the perfection of the third situation resides. It definitely necessitates that it will be adapted, meaning that the second and third situations materialize, in complete perfection, no less and no more in any way. Thus, the first situation itself necessitates the materialization of two opposite systems in the second situation in order to allow the existence of a body in the will to receive, which has been corrupted by the system of impurity, thus enabling us to correct it. And if there hadn't been a system of impure worlds, we would not have that will to receive, and we could not have corrected it and come to the third situation, for "one cannot correct that which is not in him". Thus we need not ask how the impure system came to be from the first situation, for it is the very first situation that necessitates its materialization and that form of existence in the second situation.
16) Therefore, one must not wonder at how it was that the choice had been taken from us, since we must be completed and come to the third situation, since it is already present in the first. The thing is that there are two ways the Creator has set for us in the second situation to bring us to the third situation: A) The Path of observing Torah and Mitzvot. B) The Path of Pain, since the pain refines the body and will eventually compel us to convert our will to receive to take on the form of a will to bestow and cleave to Him. It is as our sages said - "If you repent, fine, and if not, I will place over you a king such as Haman, and he will make you repent". Our sages said: "If they are granted, I will hasten their time, and if not, in due time". That means that if, we are granted, through the first path, meaning by observing Torah and Mitzvot, we thus hasten our correction, and we do not need the harsh agony and the lengthening of time that they take in order to compel us to reform. And if not - "in due time".
That means that only when the pain will complete our correction and the time of correction will be forced upon us. On the whole, the Path of Pain is also the punishments of the souls in Hell. But the End of Correction, which is the third situation, is an utter must, one way or the other, because of the first situation. Our choice is only between the Path of Pain and the Path of Torah and Mitzvot. Thus we have made it very clear how the three situations of the souls are connected to one another and necessarily necessitate one another.
17) From all the above we thoroughly understand the third inquiry, that when we examine ourselves, we find ourselves to be corrupted and despicable as can be. But when we examine the Creator who created us, we must be exalted for there is no higher than Him, as becoming of the Creator who created us, because the nature of the complete is to perform complete acts.
Now we can understand, that our body, with all its little incidents and possessions is not our real body, since our real body, the eternal and complete body, already exists in Infinity, in the first situation, where it takes its perfect form from the future third situation, meaning receiving in the form of bestowal, that is equalized in form with the Creator.
And if our first situation necessitates that we receive the shell of that body in the second situation, in its corrupted and loathsome form, which is the will to receive for himself alone, which is the force that separates us from the infinite so as to correct it and allow us to receive our eternal body in practice, in the third situation, we need not protest against it. Our work cannot be done, but in a body as transitory and as wasteful as ours, for "one does not correct that which is not in him".
Thus we already are in that perfect, worthy state, adapted to the perfect operator who has made us in that second situation, for this body does not defect us in any way, since it is going to expire and die and is only here for the time necessary for its cancellation and reception of our eternal form.
18) With that we settle the fifth inquiry: how could it be that from the eternal would extend transitory, wasteful actions? And we see that indeed they have already been extended as they should, worthy of His eternalness, meaning eternal and perfect beings. And our eternalness necessitates that the shell of the body had been given to us only for a transitory, wasteful work, for if it had stayed in eternity, we would have remained separated from the Life of Lives for all eternity.
We've said before (item 13), that this form of our body, which is the will to receive for himself alone, is not at all present in the thought of creation, for there we are formed as the third situation, but it is a must in the second situation, in order to allow us to correct it. And we must not ponder other beings in the world but man, since man is the center of creation.
And all other creations do not have a value on their own, but to the extent that they are useful in bringing man to his completeness. Therefore they rise and fall with him without any regard for themselves.
19) With that we also settle the fourth inquiry: since the nature of the good is to bestow, how did He initially create beings that would be tormented and agonized throughout their lives? Because, as we've said, all our agony is necessitated from our first situation, where our complete eternity that comes from the future third situation compels us to go either by the Path of Torah, or by the Path of Pain, and to come to our eternal state in the third situation (item 15).
But this agony is felt only by the shell of our body, created only to be perished and buried. And that teaches us that the will to receive for himself, is created only to be eradicated, abolished from the world and turned it into a will to bestow. And the pains we suffer are but discoveries of its nothingness and the harm in it. Indeed, when all human beings agree to abolish and eradicate their will to receive for themselves, and have no other desire but to bestow upon their friends, all worries and jeopardy in the world would cease to exist. And we would all be assured of a healthy and complete life, since for each and every one of us there would be a whole world ready to satisfy his every need.
Indeed, when everyone has only the will to receive for himself, from here originate the pains, the wars and slaughter which we cannot escape. They weaken our bodies with all sorts of sores and maladies and you find that all the agonies in our world are but manifestations that are offered to our eyes, so as to push us to annul the evil shell of the body and take on the complete form of the will to receive. And it is as we've said, that the Path of Pain in itself can bring us to the desired form. Bear in mind that the Mitzvot (precepts) between man and man come before the Mitzvot between man and God, because the bestowal to his friend brings him to bestow to his Maker.