A person must remove the garments from the Torah and break her shells in order to comprehend her depth and her hidden spirituality. . . . They must without doubt strip the Torah from all of her shells . . . then they will understand without any external garment. This is the secret of the Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, will create in the future. . . . All her shells will be broken and the inner core of the Torah will be comprehended. . . . The kabbalistic secret is clothed in the literal sense for one cannot know how to expound it except by way of the literal sense, as if one said Abraham was a merciful man [i.e., from the attribute of Hesed or mercy], and his going to Egypt [symbolizes] his descent to the shells. . . . In this manner one cannot speak of kabbalah without it being mixed with the secret of the literal sense and corporeality.

Translated by Elliot Wolfson in- “Beautiful Maiden Without Eyes- Peshat and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics.” In The Midrashic imagination – Jewish exegesis, thought, and history. Edited by Michael Fishbane, Albany – State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 155-203.