The Right Approach To The Book Of Zohar

A question I received: What is the inner work of a person who watches The Zohar lessons on the Internet or the TV? Many people are waiting for these lessons with their breath held and waking up at odd hours of the night for the first time in order to watch the live broadcast.

Dr. Laitman's Answer: The Book of Zohar is an opportunity for all of us to reveal the true reality, which becomes revealed inside a person. Through the study, a person discovers that he perceives all of reality inside him and gains the ability to put his inner world in the right order, to arrange it and reveal it in a way that lets him feel the spiritual world in addition to this world.

He doesn't experience any contradictions, illusions or doubts regarding whether his spiritual sensations are true. Everything becomes revealed inside his desires. Simply by correcting our desires, we reveal our inner ability to see and feel the spiritual world inside them.

Even people who have not gone through the preparation to perceive The Book of Zohar, who have not seriously studied the basics of Kabbalah for several years, are able to join us and merit the same revelation, similar to a baby in our world who lives among adults and they provide him with everything. It doesn't matter that a baby born in the 21^st century does not know about the preceding generations that prepared everything for him and all the things that now surround him. He receives according to the level our world is on today. Our duty is to take everything from the previous generation, prepare it, and bring it in a ready-made form to the baby, the next generation.

Therefore, the "babies" in Kabbalah, those who are now joining us, our new friends, are able to merit the same revelation as we expect to attain. In this regard there is no difference between us, provided that they try to listen to the degree that they are able to join us and if they feel fear, expectation and reverence for this great book. This is very important in order to connect to it.

Likewise, we must understand that this book operates on the group, and not on a single person. Therefore, if we do not think about the unity between us during the study, we will miss the most important thing. While reading in The Book of Zohar, we must be united in every word and discussion about it, think about the unity of vessels only.

You can say: "But you always talk about how we must feel the text inside of us, that we must delve in, and there, inside our desires, search for the animals, the fish, Noah, the Creator, the humans in us, and work with them. Whereas here you return again to the group which you have found on the outside!"

Except the issue is that the group is not on the outside. The group is the sorting and the connection of all the desires in me which are called "outside of me." Everything I feel as external to me, is in fact inside of me. And I must link the concept of "I" which is inside of me, to the concept of "externality," the "others" inside of me. I do not feel that the others are outside of my body, but inside me, inside my desires. This is how my desires are divided.

We learn that from the wisdom of Kabbalah as well - there is the vessel's internality and externality, surrounding and internal, and I must correct the internality and the externality through the connection between them. Therefore "the group" is the desires that I join to me. You can say: "One second, what does it mean ‘to link everyone to me'? But there are desires in me that I cannot correct?" Therefore I answer that you connect them, sort them, and only afterwards say: "This one, I cannot correct, but it is mine, there is nothing that is not mine."

This approach allows a person to include the whole world, as it is written "A person is a small world." Therefore it is necessary to think about it all the time, and to invest more and more mutual efforts in it every time-that every one of us will search inside himself, sort and organize inside himself all these things. This is how we must behave throughout the day, from one reading in the Book of Zohar to another. Only thus we will reveal the completeness and not get confused.

Thinking About The Friends

Question by a Student: In Israel and all over the world, there are friends who study the wisdom of Kabbalah with us and are who going through rough times, but yet I do not know them. What can be done to lift them up in spite of that?

Answer by Dr. Michael Laitman: Think about them, lift them up in your thoughts. There is no other advice.

Question cont.: Think about the collective Hissaron (deficit) of the spiritual World Kli?

Answer cont.: Think about you being a guarantor for the entire "World Kli"-to each and every one and to the entire Kli as a whole. You are a guarantor for them in your concern that they will not fall. Or that they will fall, but will immediately understand why they are falling and will immediately equip themselves with the force of the group, recognize the importance of the goal, and immediately be elevated for the performance of a spiritual act. In other words, you must ask on their behalf, connect yourself to them, and demand to the Creator: "If this happens, I want them to immediately recognize the negative feeling as a means for advancement, as a necessary means for advancement, and not that my friend will fail."

And if you think that way-first of all, see how much those thoughts influence you, how much they correct you: I think in favor of someone, and all of a sudden I begin to feel that he is close to me, that it is actually my desire. In fact, I did not think about him whatsoever, but rather I secretly thought about the way in which I would be able to bring my desire closer to me. And then there is no longer "I" and "he," but rather both of us become one. Thus this chain of thoughts brings you to correction. We think that by thinking about someone, we are doing him a favor, or giving Arvut (mutual guarantee) to someone else. No way! I save myself this way.