The Experience of Reading in The Zohar
The Book of Zohar is a wondrous tool that can unlock an entire world before us, a world of astounding revelations. The Zohar is like a gate to the actual reality, which is currently hidden from our perception. However, to use the revealing power of The Zohar we must know how to read The Zohar properly. The five below guidelines will help us prepare for the great journey in the paths of The Zohar.
Rule One—the Heart Understands: Do not Study with Your Intellect
The Book of Zohar should be studied with the heart, by feeling and wanting. Unlike ordinary forms of study, which rely on processing information and analyses of data, with The Zohar, the approach is fundamentally different. The study of The Zohar is intended to invoke internal transformations, to qualify us to perceiving the hidden reality.
The student’s success depends solely on the extent of our desire to discover and feel that reality. For this reason, there is no need for any prior knowledge, skills, or special talents for the study of The Zohar. All that is required is to have a genuine desire to open one’s eyes and heart to a broad new world.
Rule Two—Man Is a Small World: Interpreting the Words Correctly
The Book of Zohar contains many descriptions and terms that we know from our world, such as sea, mountains, trees, flowers, animals, people, and road trips. Keep in mind that all the details, characters, and events mentioned in the book do not speak of the world around us, but only of what unfolds within us. Therefore, while reading The Zohar, we should interpret the words within it as expressions of what happens within us, in our souls. We should see the text as a bridge that leads to our deepest qualities and desires.
Rule Three—the Light in It Reforms: Seek the Light
We often hear about The Zohar having a special quality, known as Segula. Segula is the natural law of development operating within all of life’s forces. It is not a mystical, imaginary power.
Kabbalists explain that our material world is dominated entirely by the egoistic desire to exploit others, while the spiritual world is dominated by the intention to give and to love. Therefore, we have been given a special means by which to tie those two opposite worlds together, that is, to make our own qualities similar to the quality of love and giving that governs the spiritual world. That special means is called “the light that reforms.”
The light affects us during the reading in a manner we cannot currently perceive, and this is why we call it Segula, or “miracle.” But for Kabbalists, who already perceive the spiritual world, there are no miracles at all here, but a completely natural process. All that we must do, they stress, is read The Book of Zohar and wish for the power within it to affect us during the study. Gradually, we will begin to feel a change developing within us. This will be the reforming effect of the light. Then the spiritual world will open and what seemed to us as a Segula, a miracle, will become a clear and vivid natural law.
Rule Four—Everything Depends on the Desire
We know what tremendous efforts babies are required to make to take their first steps in life, how diligently they exert for it, never giving up, trying time and time again until they succeed. We, too, must persist with the study of The Zohar patiently and diligently until we begin to “walk” on our own two feet and discover the spiritual world. The system required for our progress has been prepared in advance, and all that is required is that we provide the great desire to attain it.
Rule Five—As One Man in One Heart: Bonding Is the Key
The Book of Zohar was written by a group of ten Kabbalists who created among them a complete Kli [vessel]—a unified desire to discover reality’s supreme force, the Creator. It was only the profound connection among them, the love, and the bonding that enabled them to break through the barriers of the material world and rise to the eternal level that The Zohar narrates. If we wish to follow them, we must try to build a similar connection among us, to search for the power of bonding that existed among the students of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. The Zohar was born through love. Hence, its rediscovery in our time will be made possible only out of love.
“When we stand before Rabbi Shimon, the fountains of the heart are open to all directions and everything is revealed.”
The Book of Zohar, Yitro [Jethro], item 412