The underlying principle of the Zohar (if we may speak of principles in reference to this book) is that the historical narratives and religious statutes of the Bible were never intended to be understood in a plain, simple sense, but that they contain something higher, mysterious, supernatural. "Is it conceivable," the Zohar makes one of Simon bar Yochaï's circle exclaim, "that God had no holier matters to communicate than these common things about Esau and Hagar, Laban and Jacob, Balaam's ass, Balak's jealousy of Israel, and Zimri's lewdness? Does a collection of such tales, taken in their ordinary sense, deserve the name of Torah? And can it be said of such a revelation that it utters the pure truth?" "If that is all the Torah contains," remarks Simon bar Yochaï (or Moses de Leon), "we can produce in our time a book as good as this, aye, perhaps better. No, no! the higher, mystical sense of the Torah is its true sense. The Biblical narratives resemble a beautiful dress, which enraptures fools so that they do not look beneath it. This robe, however, covers a body, _i.e._, the precepts of the Law, and this again a soul, the higher soul. Woe to the guilty, who assert that the Torah contains only simple stories, and therefore look only upon the dress. Blessed are the righteous, who seek the real sense of the Law. The jar is not the wine, so stories do not make up the Torah." Thus the secret lore of Moses de Leon naturally has free play to pervert everything and anything, and give it the seal of sublimity, and in this manner to promulgate a false doctrine, not only absurd, sometimes even blasphemous and immoral. All laws of the Torah are to be considered as parts and constituents of a higher world; they resolve themselves into the mysteries of the masculine and feminine principle (positive and negative). Only when both parts meet, does the higher unity arise. Consequently, whenever any one transgresses one of the laws, he obscures the brilliant image of the higher world. It is almost impossible to give an idea of the abuse which the Zohar, or Moses de Leon, practices in the interpretation of Holy Writ, and how he twists the sense of the words. In the verse, "Raise your eyes to heaven, and see who has created this," a profound mystery is supposed to reside, which the prophet Elijah learned in the celestial school, and revealed to Simon bar Yochaï; namely, that God had been unknown and obscure before the creation of the world, in a manner existing, and still not existing. He was the "Who" (the unknown subject). The creation is part of His self-revelation. It was by the creation that He first proclaimed Himself as God.