Q&A: What Is Known by the Holy Ari
What Is Known by the Holy Ari
Question
How did the Ari know everything he said about the beginning of creation? Where did he get the information from?
Answer
I have no idea. I assume he had strong spiritual intuitions, but that does not mean his words are facts. These are broad insights. I do not put much trust in the details, certainly not as facts.
Discussion on Answer
1. The fact that a person experiences a revelation does not mean that someone really revealed himself to him. Even regarding the Raavad, who wrote, "The holy spirit appeared in our study hall," several commentators explained that his intent was not mystical, but rather that there was a sense that this was the truth.
2. The question is whether he was right. The intuitions I was talking about are universal. I doubt the truth of the details in the Ari's teaching, although anything is possible.
The Ari never actually said about himself that he had a revelation of Elijah or anything like that.
Rabbi Chaim Vital writes in the introduction that it is obvious to him, by reasoning alone, that it would have been impossible to reveal everything the Ari revealed unless he had a revelation of Elijah.
1- How can the Rabbi claim that this is the source of the Ari's knowledge? After all, he claimed that some of it came through revelation. Did he lie?
2- The Rabbi writes that he had "strong spiritual intuitions"—doesn't that itself support the logic of the kabbalistic theories? After all, the Rabbi's own view is that the source of our principles of thought (such as causality, etc.) is intuitive observation. If so, just as the Rabbi accepts ordinary thought, so too should he accept the Ari's way of thinking?