How Rav Chaim Vital Came to the Arizal

Rav Chaim Vital lived in Damascus. For some months the Arizal came to him in his dreams each night, speaking with him and urging him to come to Tzfas to learn from him. "Come, and I will reveal to you secrets that have never been revealed since the Creation of the world," he said. Rav Chaim paid no attention to these visions. He assumed that his own learning was superior to the Arizal's, since he had already written his own sefer of commentary on the Zohar. One day, after thinking it over, he agreed to go and see for himself whether the visions were true and what the Arizal could teach him.

He traveled to Tzfas and tested the Arizal with a certain ma'amar in the Zohar, a very difficult passage that Rav Chaim believed he understood very well. The Arizal explained the passage and revealed profound hidden secrets within it, so powerful that Rav Chaim felt his soul almost leaving his body. He asked about another passage, and the Arizal opened many more gates of great spiritual light. Rav Chaim became humbled before him like a servant before his master. When he asked for yet another explanation, the Arizal raised his hand and said, "The boundary is here. You are unworthy of knowing more."

Rav Chaim was deeply distressed. He went home, put on sackcloth and wept in ashes, pouring the ashes over himself and begging to be found worthy of learning Toras HaKabbalah from the Arizal. He fasted and prayed through the night. The next day he threw himself at the Arizal's feet, kissed his hands, his feet and the hem of his robe, and cried, "Please, for Hashem's sake, do not send me away empty-handed."

The Arizal answered, "I should really turn you away, because you stayed away for some three months. But your fasting and your sackcloth and ashes have succeeded, and now I will hold back no more secrets of Torah from you."

Rav Chaim sat among the talmidim, but he learned and forgot, learned and forgot, again and again, until they traveled to Teveria. There they took a small boat out on the Kinneret, sailing until they reached two large pillars, the ruins of an ancient shul. The Arizal filled a small flask with water from between the sunken pillars and gave it to Rav Chaim to drink. "Now you will be able to hold on to this wisdom and stop forgetting," he said, "for these waters are from the wellsprings of Miriam's Well." From then on Rav Chaim no longer forgot, and he could remember and understand the depths of the secrets of Torah.