Kabbalah and the Secret Doctrine

Thank you.
Just to Debbie, the last sentence, why was the Ramach not acceptable [the words of the speaker] Personally, I do not accept that there are issues that do not concern our world, because if they do not touch our feelings and sensations here in this world, what is the point of dealing with them, what is it for us and the worlds that are not significant to us in any way, as if we were donkeys who do not understand fruit soup, as the cliché says. . Therefore, if this interests us and speaks to us, then these are things in this world. I hope I have been understood, or am I so far from understanding anything. It is similar to a blind person who talks about colors or a deaf person who knows theories in music that there is no point in learning the theory of music if he cannot even imagine music for himself [not accurate because a deaf person can imagine music and a blind person can imagine colors, but the analogy is understandable in my opinion. Although we do not understand infinity, we can feel it, and therefore there is still a point in dealing with it, let alone dealing with worlds in which we have no touch of sensations.

I disagree with your answer:

1. There is value in engaging in things that are not related to us and our world. Study is devotion to God, and it is not necessary that it will do anything for us (except for the universe of course). As a kind of theoretical science (models of 63 dimensions of space and two dimensions of time, or different universes that existed and do not exist or that exist simultaneously with us) that does not concern anything practical.

2. Even if we study higher realms, it can do something for us. But that does not mean that we are learning about ourselves. When we learn about the infinity of God or that He created the world, we are not dealing with ourselves in any way. It has one or another consequence for us and our world. It goes even further: that Kabbalah is nothing but a language, but in fact we are dealing with ourselves and our world. These are not implications, but rather there are no worlds, and everything is a parable whose purpose is only to clarify and enlighten the parable.

1. There is indeed value in knowing and engaging in wisdom even if it is not practical at all and will never be so. The mere knowledge of wisdom and engaging in it enriches the soul. [It does not necessarily improve it but it is indeed a positive experience] and therefore there is interest in knowing it. But when it has no experiential meaning, it is unnecessary. For example, a person who is not completely musical does not have it. He will learn all the theory and great wisdom in the wisdom of the major and minor scales and know how to recite it well. There is no wisdom in it and there is nothing in it, or knowing all the words of a certain language without knowing the meaning of the word and what it expresses. For myself, for example, who is not very good at mathematics [unfortunately], even if I know how to recite dozens of formulas without knowing what the formula means, there is no experience of wisdom. Therefore, my question was whether what happens in the sky, even if it is formulated in the patterns of numbers and sequences, but I do not experience or understand what the world of nobility is and what the sephirah of Keter is, are there formulas here that remain only words. But then you tell me that I feel them and experience them even if they are not practical at all.

2. Is the knowledge of how things are going in the infinite heavenly world a prophecy? The Holy Spirit? Or can a person whose soul is refined arrive at this through his understanding, and the wisdom of Kabbalah that we have is a wisdom that people have reached step by step and built a complete building.

3. The fact that even secular people find interest in studying Kabbalah and enjoy it probably has wisdom and logic in it.

Again, I disagree.
A person who does not know what music is but studies this wisdom scientifically is a wise and enriched person. His occupation has great value. According to ‘Mary's Room’ on Wikipedia.
Regarding the Kabbalistic concepts, as I wrote to you, after the occupation you get a sense of what it means. But it does not necessarily concern our world. These are feelings about what is true in those worlds.
If we take as an example a Chinese speaker who does not know what the words mean, this has two drawbacks: it tells him nothing about himself, but it also tells him nothing about something else. Therefore, this is not an example for a serious discussion. I am talking about an occupation that tells me nothing about my world, but I understand what it says about other worlds.
2. In my opinion, Kabbalah is essentially spiritual intuitions of people with spiritual sensitivity. I do not really believe that it came down to us from above in Sinai (perhaps some kernel). There is a rather surprising similarity between various mystical teachings, and this means to me that there is something real here that they perceive. It turns out that we probably have some kind of access to other worlds, and those with particularly sensitive spiritual intuition perceive it better. After they tell us what they perceive, we too can understand that there is something real in it.
I think this is the difference between the Holy Spirit and prophecy. Prophecy begins with information given to the prophet from above. It is mainly passive. The Holy Spirit is your active perception. You observe (with the mind's eye) the information. It was not given to you and there is not necessarily another factor involved in it. Genius scientific intuition is also a type of the Holy Spirit (Torah is in a sense a find that comes to a person in absent-mindedness). Kabbalah is also like this. Metaphorically, the description is used as if there are revelations of Elijah and revelations from above. In my opinion, they mean to say that there is a spiritual observation of ideas and insights. This is the Holy Spirit and not prophecy. And as we know, although prophecy ceased, the Holy Spirit did not cease. It is found both among Gentiles and in areas far from Torah.
3. Indeed. This is what shows that people do encounter it in some way. It is not information that has been given and not something uniquely Torah. It is part of our world (its spiritual dimensions), and it is exposed to those who have spiritual intuitions. A great writer and poet also have the Holy Spirit in this sense.

I know that this sounds very atypical of my rationalism. But there is a difference between rational and rationalistic. In this context, I will tell you (maybe I have already told you) a story. During my time in the yeshiva in Gush Etzion, there was a guy (now a well-known man) who fell ill with jaundice and was not cured for several months. At some point, they brought him a sorcerer who placed pigeons on his navel that died one after the other and after a few days he recovered and returned to the yeshiva. I heard this from a friend who was there and he is faithful to me (even before this matter was widespread). I went back to my parents and told them the story, and they clapped their hands and started laughing at me and the dark yeshiva that was making my brain go crazy (= the block. To show you how much they understood in the world of yeshiva). I told them that in my opinion a rational approach is not to deny everything you don't understand. If that were the case, today we would be with the physics of Adam the First because we would deny every new finding that didn't fit our theory. Rationality is to accept reliable facts, but then we have to think about what explains them. The first approach is rationalism (the Greek who pours out his heart and denies everything his eyes don't see. As the Ramban said, which is known after death). The second approach is rationality (to act logically and accept reliable facts, then explain them). As a rational person who is not a rationalist, I tend to think that there is something in Kabbalah. Although of course there is a lot of garbage and charlatanism and cynical exploitation of innocence. This is the problem in non-scientific fields that cannot be scientifically tested.
I will just make a reservation and say that as a rationalist who tends towards rationalism, I treat with great suspicion evidence about phenomena that I do not understand. I do not reject them out of hand (because I am not a rationalist) but I also require good evidence in order for me to accept them (and usually there is no such evidence).

Hello,

Rabbi Michael, if I may try to offer a different perspective, my impression from studying this wisdom is that all Kabbalists proceed from the premise that there is indeed a great deal of connection, similarity, interdependence and influence between the upper worlds and our world in general, and our lives in particular. Moreover, this is the main point of the book.

The Ramchal did a wonderful job and claimed that nobility is not the main thing from which we can learn things that are relevant to us, but rather we are the main thing (according to the leadership to us), and not this or that, not necessarily that there is nobility. And that is where the fury came from.

When the author of the book attacked, he attacked both points, both the presentation of nobility as a mere parable, and the preoccupation mainly with us, instead of this being only a marginal benefit from the study.

I would love to hear what made you have a different impression.

PS What you wrote about the Holy Spirit already appears in the Zohar's words about the revelation of Elijah, which the Rev. R.H. brought in the introduction to the introduction chapter: “And Elijah will be revealed at the end of his days, and with him who will reveal himself in a certain way, and with him who will reveal himself in his secret, in the eye of the mind, in his own way.”
And there is no reason to divide.

So according to the rabbi, there is no advantage in engaging in Kabbalah over engaging in the mysticism of the universe?

Elisha, I didn't understand your question. It seems like you write like me.

Student, not essential. As long as it's about interesting and useful spiritual intuitions. In Kabbalah, they are linked to the Torah, so I think it's closer and more essential to a valuable pursuit. It's some kind of interpretation of the Torah. In other mysticisms, you have to make the connections. It's a bit like the difference between studying mathematics and analyzing a Talmudic issue with mathematical tools.

You wrote that the serious Kabbalists did not deal with meaning, and I commented on this that as far as my poor mind understood, they did deal with meaning, not that it was a violation of the order of delegation that was their main concern. And that the anger at Ramchal came out because he not only made meaning the main concern, but also turned the delegation into an example.

I understand. As far as I know, many of them really didn't deal with the meaning and parable (and even denied the existence of parables). But of course I didn't conduct a survey.

Sorry to repeat most of what I said,

Since the Ramach”el proudly carried the banner of parable, and he claimed that nobility is not just a parable, people have become a soup of parable-meaning-leadership, as if everything is one, and in any case the atonement in one atones in all,
and it is not.
In the end, it seems that two main topics occupy most of the teaching of Kabbalah, the chronology of nobility – that is, the order and form in which things happened and developed, until they reached the current situation, and the leadership of nobility – that is, how nobility actsleadsbehaves.
And in any case, it is difficult to talk about Kabbalah that does not deal with ”meaning”.
When you say parable, you are presenting the requirements of nobility as a parable, and many have been agitators about this.
But we were not prevented from even all the great and good who saw nobility as a reality - trying to understand a compromise and its meaning.

It is worth noting the wonderful book of Rabbi Yosef Aviv, who showed that "parable" (although in the definitions I have proposed here, of course, it is not called a parable, but a meaning) is explained from the letters of the Rabbi.

And although I am almost certain that the Rabbi agrees with this, since there is no reason for a talented person who has dealt with the field to reach different conclusions, perhaps it will be of benefit to others.

Elisha wrote: “In conclusion, it seems that two main topics occupy most of the teaching of Kabbalah, the chronology of the Atzilut – that is, the order and manner in which things happened and developed, until they reached the current situation, and the leadership of the Atzilut – that is, how the Atzilut acts/leads/behaves.” This is absolutely not true. The main focus of Kabbalah is on intentions as explained in the introduction to the tree of life. Further proof of this is the fact that the authors of the parables were mainly concerned with reduction and development. And they did not at all explain and illustrate the “movement of the mind” the main teaching and innovation of the Ari. None of them (except R’ Isaac of Homil) went into detail and explained the parable.

In the debate between a researcher and a kabbalist, and the following signs 3-4 (in passing):
“Researcher: …But I still have a big question about the reality of most of the necessary things required in this wisdom because they fulfill the things with great fulfillment… and this is impossible because when speaking with the powers of the Supreme Will, it is not appropriate to speak of physical things… And if you say that they are parables, all the necessary things are parables and proverbs, and none of them are things as they are, and why is this lost in the parables?
Kabbalist: It is not a certain parable… I also tell you that the vision of the Supreme Honor according to the prophetic imagination is the whole matter of the Sephiroth and the faces, and what the prophets summarized, the sages interpreted, and the prophet to whom the Holy One, the Blessed, will see from His chariot, will see all that is mentioned in the words of Rashbi Zel and his interpretations, and all that is mentioned in the chapters of the Temples and all that is similar to them. Therefore, the detractors of this wisdom do not complete it, because they are true, and in other words, they are all that was seen by the prophets when they saw the Supreme Honor and His chariots. But we know that everything that the prophets see is in the way of imagination, and they themselves know the truth about it.

And perhaps, what the author of the book did not see, is explained in his writing in the Book of Opinion:
“And although I did not have the privilege of studying his books and did not look at them except a little of the little”.

Rabbi Charlap, a section on Baal HaLeshham in understanding the Ramachal, who is exalted on eight chapters of the Ramachal, page 101:
Here it is appropriate to comment on the truth in what there are those who want to give explanations about the tests of the noble ones and remove from them the true reality and they stray from the path of wisdom, turning the words of God into living things to make a philosophy out of it, and even the Ramachal, may God be pleased with him and his family, who calls all the virtues by the name of the ways of the Lord, except for the righteous one who removed the reality from the Sephirot, God forbid. But just as the previous Kabbalists, when they wanted to escape from physical images, called them by the name of lights, and the Ramachal saw that there were still such fools who imagined that the intention was on fire and blazing fire and went astray on the path of the lost So he saw that calling them by the name of leadership would certainly not come true, but it certainly did not negate their true reality, and it was wrong to be mistaken about that.

Elisha wrote that two main topics occupy most of the teachings of Kabbalah: chronology and leadership. From this it is easy to understand how much significance they gave to the parable. However, this is not the case according to most schools of thought even before the Rashi, and even more so after him. The main concern of Kabbalah is the study of what leads to action, which is intention.
And it is not guidance from the Creator, but intention from the created, who shares in the Creator's leadership.
Thus writes Rabbi Chaim Vital, long before the Ramachal, on whom we only rely, or better yet, on the Mehari Tzemach: “I swear by His great name that whoever has prepared his soul to come into my chambers of this wisdom, will take upon himself to turn away from evil and do good, and among them he will direct in prayer the intentions as I will write in the Book of Intentions” And in the book Meil Kodesh and Gaddi Isah, glosses and explanations on the Tree of Life, “If he does not have this in his mind in truth, he will not enter to learn this wisdom, and he will not pass the written oath that he swore from the Lord.” And

From what does Kabbalah mean? Someone believes that the Book of Zohar was written by Rashi or that the Book of Creation was written by Adam the First.

What is the connection between these questions?

As a continuation of Dvir's words, I will copy the language of the Ramchal in the book "Hoker and Kabbalah" in which the Ramchal explicitly denies what the author of the book mistakenly attributed to him, and thus he writes in the mark 53, 54: "Hoker: This is called speaking through a metaphor, and it is found that these things have no reality, except in thought. Kabbalah: Now you are mistaken even in your investigation. I say this to you as a general introduction to all matters of wisdom: Whoever wants to understand the matters of the Sefirot, must take into account "the soul of man and its matter." The soul is not a purely intellectual matter, but a single, real force. It is true that it is subtle and does not fall under the senses, but in any case it is a force, and all the powers and qualities it includes are real things in it, not through a metaphor, and they are real matters found in the constitution."

We can also add to the discussion the words of Baal HaSulam who said that the worlds are structured in the form of a root and a branch, and according to the well-known words of the Ramban, who said that the scripture speaks in the lower and hints in the upper. According to this, we understand that when the subject being studied is the guidance of God and the work of man in this world, then the Sefirot serve as a parable to understand the parable that is the subject being mentioned. However, if the subject is the worlds and the Sefirot, then the guidance of God and the work of man in this world - it will be the parable to understand the matter.

Regarding the origin of wisdom, it can be explained simply that what we received at Sinai, in addition to the language that Moses used and in addition to the practice, we also received the fundamental principles of things, and the spirit of things, and every so often, there are those who are granted spiritual attainment in the fullest form, and they are the ones who copy the wisdom from generation to generation.

A-You wrote above that indeed prophecy is void but the Holy Spirit is not, but that is not how it is presented

“From his death the last prophets Haggai Zechariah and Malachi the Holy Spirit ceased from Israel”, (Sanhed’ 11., Tosefta Sota 134),
“One of the five things that were stored up is the ark and the menorah and the fire and the Holy Spirit.. and when the Holy One returns in His mercy and builds His house and temple He returns them”, (M”r Be’Alotach 15:10, see Yoma 21:)

B-You wrote that this is amazing. There is a rather surprising similarity between different mystical systems
I don’t know if you read the debate on the wisdom of Kabbalah that shows how Kabbalah simply took philosophical concepts and sanctified them, the concept of infinity, the intellect that operates the The debate between Ibn Rushd and Sinai, etc.
So it is no wonder that such and such matters of Kabbalah, which are all based on such and such philosopher kings, would be similar

You are just insisting. I see no point in this discussion. See an overview of the Holy Spirit here: https://www.hamichlol.org.il/%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%97_%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A9#%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%97_%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A9_%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%97%D7%A8_%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%91%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94

See here on the Ratio website they did a much more serious and authoritative review
https://rationalbelief.org.il/%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%93%d7%a2%d7%94-%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%91%d7%95%d7%90%d7%94-%d7%91%d7%99%d7%94%d7%93%d7%95%d7%aa/