Introduction to the Book of Zohar (PDF) - Kabbalah Media Archive

I N T RO D U C T I O N T O T H E B O O K O F Z O H A R
must be united, merged in a single whole, despite their outstanding individual
qualities.
Only then will this gathering of individuals become a group. If they
are not prominent individuals, but simply people united on their small
level, it is not a group, but an amorphous mass. This difference separates
a Kabbalistic group and an ordinary mass of people. A group is made up
of people who are developing themselves individually to the maximum,
while uniting in one whole to the maximum despite their individuality.
Thus, individuality starts from the second vegetative level, when
each of us begins to feel inner movements, to comprehend and distinguish
between the notions of “evil” and “good”, “to the Creator” and “to
myself”, “to friends” – “away from them”, and so on.
37. In addition, we also have the animate level, the third phase of
the will to receive that is so great that it generates in each of its parts
(that is, in every individual who reaches the animate level) a
feeling of freedom, which represents a special life of each part that is
distinct from the others.
Plants and trees in the field shed their leaves at the same time,
and then begin to grow. The leaves fall because there is no sun; the sun
shines for all of them. Conversely, they wake up when the sun rises, turn
in the direction of the sun, and so on. That is, there is a common life
for all, different from that of the still nature, but it is common for each
species.
Each individual animal leads a separate life; each can move around
freely, even though there are periods common to specific animal groups,
such as mating, development, growth, and rearing. Animals are at the
intermediate level, but they have freedom of movement.
In the same way, as we reach the animate level of development where
free inner movements awaken within us, work begins on our egoistical de-
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