Transcendence and Eminence
In the SD
Hello Rabbi. In the teachings of Kabbalah, there are two interpretations regarding God or the beings of the worlds. One is the concept of the “surrounding all the worlds” which is ostensibly the transcendent concept, and the other is the concept of the “filling all the worlds” which is ostensibly an immanent concept. Although in simple terms there is a contradiction between the two concepts, in the teachings of Chabad it is customary to explain that the surrounding light is the creator and created from nothing the very essence of physical reality or the physical person, and the light that fills is the creation of his attributes and private life. I wanted to ask whether the perception of man as something that is not only the sum of his thoughts and mental attributes belongs, can he be perceived as a physical being, and do we even have the possibility of perceiving physical things (a kind of Descartes’s melted wax problem)? (I know that the Rabbi usually says that he does not deal with the occult, but from the Rabbi’s previous answers it seems that the Rabbi has some understanding and discussion of these matters, and that is why I allowed myself to ask the Rabbi.)
Honorable Mention
Hello.
I did deal with it (in Kabbalah, not Hasidism), and when I said I had no business with the occult, I meant that I did not know what was right and wrong in relation to mysticism (such as an evil spirit, etc.).
I see no contradiction. The filling and the surrounding (the transcendent and the immanent) are two faces of God and His relationship to the world. This is not a description of Him Himself. Although some Kabbalists believed that the light of God is the bones (as I believe the ancient Keeper of Faith did), this is a very problematic view (and the author has already elaborated on this).
By the way, what you brought up in the name of Chabad is not an explanation, of course, because if these are descriptions of himself, there is a contradiction, and if these are metaphors or descriptions of his relationship to the world, then there is no contradiction at all and no explanation is needed. You can of course offer an explanation for the complement and the twist, but only for the substance of the matter and not as an explanation for this difficulty.
I did not understand your question regarding the perception of man as a physical being. And do you think he is not a physical being? And is it for nothing that he is called Hantu Hantiya? It is clear that man is not just the sum of his thoughts, since there must be someone whose thoughts they are. Otherwise, why don’t you combine your first three thoughts with my last 17 and define them as a specific person (Yankal’a). See this in detail in the second chapter of Two Carts.
Just as the pantheism that identifies God with the created whole is nonsense or a mere semantic confusion. And so it is also clear that the Chabad confusion about not being reduced as it is is nonsense, and for the same reason: if man does not truly exist, then it is not clear who it is in whose case the illusion of reduction is created (to whom was this parable told?).
Ultimately, these are vague and pointless ideas. I see no point in engaging with them.
Why is the reduction not as simple as the Chabad is a confusion of the mind? To the best of my knowledge, they do not claim that man does not exist, but only that the Creator disappeared and did not go away.
As I understand it, they do claim this. In their view, only the Creator truly exists and everything else is an illusion of a not-so-simple reduction. Their assumption is that nothing exists apart from the Creator, and if He is all-encompassing then there is nothing else besides Him. If He is not reduced then where are we and who are we?
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