Okay, and what is the meaning of those intuitions? Whereas with the medieval authorities (Rishonim) one can understand many of them, and see how they continue more common lines of spiritual thought, with the Ari himself (and in some places in the Zohar, such as the Heikhalot), it seems that there is a systematic description here of a different kind of reality, something that intuition simply cannot reach. Either he made these things up, or he received some kind of prophecy. How does the Rabbi see it?
Thank you

Several times in the past I explained that the term intuition means a kind of cognition and not pure thinking (contrary to the common usage). Spiritual intuitions are a kind of ability to perceive spiritual reality. Usually, after a person with spiritual intuition describes his spiritual perceptions, people find this within themselves and understand that he has hit on something true. You can call this a kind of prophecy, but all of us have prophecy like this to one degree or another. In my series of columns on philosophy (155-160), I pointed out that the definition of the philosophical domain is this kind of cognition.

I understand the principle of intuition, but specifically regarding the Ari’s teachings it seems to me that clearly one cannot say that. I don’t know whether the Rabbi has dealt with the Ari’s writings—I assumed presumably yes, but in light of these remarks I don’t know whether you have dealt with them, because we are talking about descriptions of things that are not intuition at all, and that even after they are said, the average person definitely does not find them within himself. It’s like someone describing in great detail a dragon in the sky. There is no intuition here, and that is what the Ari does when he describes the supernal partzufim, the orders of shattering and repair, and many other things that have no connection with intuition but with full-fledged prophecy. As I wrote before, either this is an invention, or it is prophecy.

First, if intuition is cognition, you cannot rule all this out.
Second, there is no necessity that he is describing reality. This is a description of a collection of ideas.
Third, there is no necessity that all the details are correct. It may be that only the basic intuitions hit the mark and the others are products of the imagination.
And yes, I have dealt with this.

Y.,
I agree with you. And indeed, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) emphasizes that one must verify that the clear criteria it offers regarding prophecy are fulfilled before giving blind trust to claims of personal “revelation.”

As for whether the descriptions are to be taken literally, the Vilna Gaon already examined the issue in his time and found in the writings of Rabbi Chaim Vital that this is not to be taken literally but rather as parables.
Likewise, the Vilna Gaon himself disagreed with some of the Ari’s views, because he said that some of the things were by revelation and some were intuitions (which, of course, he expressed through metaphor).

That the Ari’s words are allegorical is known to everyone, and obvious to anyone who reads even one line of his writings.
What the Vilna Gaon examined was whether Rabbi Chaim Vital understood the allegorical meaning, not whether he knew that it was only allegory.