How to Get the Most Out of Reading the Book of Zohar

While reading in The Zohar, we should want to connect to all the people in the world whose point in the heart has awakened, and who wish to receive from The Zohar the strength to develop, too. Thus, even if we are just beginners, we receive in return for our desire an enormous power that will push us forward.

This is a huge force that can invoke a significant change in the world. All we need is to approach The Zohar with a desire to bond with everyone.

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The Lead Author of the Book of Zohar

The Zohar is a gift that humanity has received from the Creator through the great Kabbalist, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Rabbi Shimon was a special soul. He combined within him all the souls that preceded him. This is why he succeeded in leading the group that authored The Zohar to such unprecedented and never-repeated attainment—the end of correction.

The Spiritual Conditions Surrounding the Writing of the Zohar

The authors of The Zohar lived at a special time, which incorporated two completely opposite points: the end of their correction, on the one hand, and the spiritual ruin of the entire people, on the other hand. This is the reason why they succeeded in connecting the great light, called “upper radiance,” with our world.

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The Purpose Behind Human Reincarnation

Even if one lived a thousand years, on the day he departs from the world, it will seem to him as though he lived only one day.
– Zohar for All, VaYechi [Jacob Lived], Item 293

After the demise of the body, if we did not rise from the animate level to the human level during our lives, if we did not achieve equivalence of form—acquired the quality of love and giving and became similar to the Creator, and thus revealed the Creator— nothing remains of us. The spiritual point that was in us, and which we did not develop, reincarnates into our world, acquires a new clothing (additional egoistic desire), and a new cycle of life begins. only by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah can we rise to the degree of man.

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Kabbalistic Texts Contain a Correcting Force

When we are studying the Kabbalistic sources like the Book of Zohar, we don’t actually “study” for knowledge, but we aim for those sources to influence us, to tune us towards similarity with their source.

In reading The Zohar, we must intend for the upper force to affect us. The Zohar is built in such a way that it oozes into us bit by bit. Time and time again, with the same intention to grow, we should let The Zohar affect us. Then we will feel how it leads us from darkness to light.

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Kabbalah Is a Method to Change Our Internal Nature

In our world, day and night interchange by themselves as a result of the turning of the earth. In spirituality, it works differently: I myself turn the night into day because by reading in The Zohar and the work in the group, I invert the direction of the operation of my will to receive from inward to outward. That is, darkness and light depend on the way in which the desire operates.

The Difference Between Operating in Order to Receive And in Order to Bestow

Let us explain the above statement: The will to receive may operate in one of two ways—in order to receive or in order to give (also known as “in order to bestow”). When the desire operates in order to receive, it cannot contain anything. The pleasure cannot permeate the desire; it only touches the desire and we feel as though we are enjoying it, but it only seems so. In truth, the sense of pleasure disappears promptly after we receive it. This is so because the will to receive and the pleasure are opposites—the desire is like minus and the pleasure is like plus—neutralizing each other.

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