II. Before there Was Time. 9. Unlocking the Language of Kabbalah

In this chapter, you start to understand how to unlock Kabbalah knowledge. You see that the roots and branches of Kabbalah language bring out more in the stories than generally meets the eye...

As we’ve explained in Chapters 7 and 8, the worlds are created by a series of causes and effects. Therefore, "roots" refer to the spiritual forces, which create our world and the people in it. They exist in the spiritual worlds beyond this material one, but they influence and operate on our world. The roots are like many unseen fingers pushing and prodding a piece of clay—our existence—into a certain form. They mold existence by guiding objects. These objects that the spiritual forces, or roots, guide are the "branches." The branches exist in this world. They have material existence. Every object in this world, including you and me, is a branch of some spiritual root...

The Bible (or Torah) is sublime and spiritual, but, frankly, it can be a bit long on history with its lists of relations. You read about people marrying, divorcing, cheating on each other, and killing one another. A fair question might be: what’s so spiritual about that? In the framework of Kabbalah, however, the Bible doesn’t tell stories of people. Instead, it presents relations between spiritual forces...

The Language of the Branches is the expression of higher forces that operate on our world. It is expressed in objects and in everything that happens. Where does it come from? It’s like a computer monitor: if you looked behind the monitor, you would not see the picture—you would see the electronics that built it...

All that The Zohar speaks of, even its legends, are the 10 Sefirot — Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut—and their interactions. To a Kabbalist, the entries and their various combinations are sufficient to reveal all the spiritual worlds...

The writing of The Tree of Life by the Ari, marks the beginning of the last phase in the evolution of the souls. The Ari writes that his phase is the last generation. From his time on, the wisdom of Kabbalah begins to emerge from hiding, though it still takes centuries. With him, a new qualitative process has begun...

All things in this world are branches of roots that first appear in the spiritual world...