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
packs and herds, i.e., groups of all sorts. They have developed mutual aid
on a very high, animate, instinctive, egoistical level.
Baal HaSulam writes in paragraph 37, “to feel compassion for others’
suffering”. Compassion means to feel someone’s suffering as one’s
own or to be happy for his good fortune. When someone else receives, I
feel as if I receive.
If man can reach such a level of his will to receive, he rises above
nature, above all the other worlds, starting from phase zero, where he is
still at the animate level of development. If he rises to the human level,
i.e., absorbs in him all the negative and positive desires of those around
him and identifies himself with them, then he turns into an immense
vessel that includes all souls, all worlds, including the world of Infinity.
This whole circle enters inside his large, common soul.
This is because the will to receive at the animate level, which lacks
the sensation of others, is unable to beget desires and needs other
than what is imprinted in this creature alone. Whereas man, who
can feel others, acquires their desires and properties as his own,
absorbs them, becomes needy of everything that others have too, and
is thus filled with envy wishing to acquire everything. He then
acquires additional egoistical desires, the Klipot, that he can
now correct.
When he has a certain share, he wants to double it. (He sees that
someone else has something and craves it). Therefore, his needs
multiply until he wants to swallow all that there is in the whole
world.
He desires all that exists in the world, including the desire called
“Pharaoh”. He wants the Creator to fill, delight, and serve him. Only
owing to our inner quality of envy, meaning sensation of others, can we
evolve and reach the level called “man”. The rudiments of this opportu-
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