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How the Book of Zohar Can Help You Develop Spiritually

What Is the Book of Zohar?

“Studying The Zohar builds worlds.”
– Rabbi Shalom Ben Moshe Buzzaglo, The King’s Throne

Ten Kabbalists, headed by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi), joined together at the highest spiritual degree. From their union, they wrote The Zohar for us. The Zohar is not merely a book. It is a closed system, from our level to the highest level of reality. It is a system designed to launch us into experiencing unbounded existence, both in understanding and feeling the whole of Nature.

 

Why the Book of Zohar Is So Special

The book is built in a very special way. It speaks of things that seemingly happen in our world: stories about people, animals, trees and flowers, mountains and hills. However, in truth, it tells us about the soul and the higher forces.

Thousands of years after the writing of The Zohar, the greatest Kabbalist of the 20th century, Baal HaSulam, wrote the Sulam [Ladder] commentary on The Zohar, where he explained The Zohar in the language of Kabbalah. The language of Kabbalah helps us put the pieces together and understand what is really being said in The Zohar.

 

A Book That Inverts Your Perception Of Reality

When you read The Zohar with the Sulam commentary, even without first understanding how everything unfolds, The Zohar begins to change our perception into an opposite perception. It changes our attitude toward the world. The Zohar provides examples that connect us to our next state, a more evolved state in giving.

It is similar to the way we rear our children. We continue to show them examples of a slightly more advanced state in order to develop them. Thus, we gradually bring them to more evolved states. The Zohar affects us similarly, unveiling the next degree that awaits us.

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How Can We Imagine the Upper World?

Dr. Michael Laitman: 

Do you ever think that your hand feels odd because you have only five fingers? Probably not. Although we can increase the range our five senses perceive, we cannot really imagine what perceptions we lack. It’s impossible to recognize the true reality because it isn’t something that we feel the absence of any more than we feel the lack of a sixth finger.

Because imagination is the product of the five senses, we can never envision an object or creature that is not in some way already familiar. Think of the most creative children’s book illustrator or the most abstract artist you know. Do their designs in some way resemble things that exist in the physical world? Try to imagine the wildest thing, and you will still create something already known or that you can puzzle out from your experience of everyday reality.

Quite possibly, you and I receive many sensations from external objects. But because our senses do not have the same qualities as those objects, we do not perceive them. We perceive only that part of the object that resonates to qualities we already have. For a complete perception of anything, we need to first be complete within. In other words, we have to be aware of all the forms of reality that exist in us, and then our picture of reality will be complete.

So how do we attain the sixth sense that enhances our perception beyond conventional reality? In fact, it exists in everyone but is hidden. With right intention we can bring this dormant sense into action.

Through persistence and study, we begin to gain perception of the world of the Creator—the world of giving. In Kabbalah, that world is called “the Upper World.” By study and development of the sixth sense, we gradually begin to feel and to understand the Upper World.

 

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What Is the Cause Of the Ecological Collapse?

Dr. Michael Laitman: As of now, the ecosystem of the Earth is collapsing, being crushed, shattered, and annihilated. Our incorrect relationship to nature causes terrible problems. We have already reached the North and South poles, where they are getting ready to drill for oil.

But on its own, planet Earth possesses an amazing characteristic of renewal under the influence of positive signs that descend from above. So a person’s task is to invite these signs, not to clean the Earth of garbage. This won’t work. As much as we clean it, it becomes filthier and filthier, for chemical and biological cleansing damage the ecology even more.

Rather, the idea is that everything found on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature can regenerate and recover at an amazing speed. And this is possible only if a higher spiritual level brings positive signs.

The moment that humanity becomes harmonious through integral consolidation, the entire ecology will, in fact. immediately become balanced and the world will begin to blossom and spread a pleasant fragrance. It is not necessary to be concerned about it in particular, just as it isn’t necessary to be concerned about anything that is found below the spiritual level. If we make a correction on the spiritual level, the corrections will pass down and immediately cause changes on the physical level.

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Contrasts – Ego and Love

 

 We must not destroy anything within us.

Even the most negative attributes should remain.
We do not create anything new,
but only correct how we use
what already exists within us.

Question: Why were we created with ego in the first place, if we will eventually have to correct it?

We come to know the world by comparing opposites —hot vs. cold, black vs. white. We recognize one in relation to the other. If everything were white, we wouldn’t detect anything. Likewise, if everything were black, we wouldn’t detect anything, either.

Contrast is always necessary, the disparity between colors, sensations, and places. We sense the differences between things, but not each thing separately.

The Creator is love and bestowal. However, we will not be able to sense what bestowal is if we are not opposite to it. This is why we need the ego—“help made against him.” Being opposite from the Creator helps us know and sense the Creator.

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