After listing and characterizing the four worlds (leaving out Adam Kadmon because it’s too sublime, as we said) Ramchal defined a world as an “amalgam of many objects in a certain place that are divided into many parts that are (nonetheless) related to each in various ways” [1]. All that is rather straightforward.
(We’re sorry but we already offered the next two paragraphs, but they really belong here). Elsewhere, though, Ramchal understands a world as a system consisting of “a benefactor (משפיע) and a recipient (מקבל)”. That suggests that each facet of reality — each world — must consist of an environment in which two polar opposite entities can form a mutually beneficial relationship and produce vital results [2], much like an electric circuit which, despite or most especially because of its polar opposite elements, manages to generate power.
Not only is it that so, but it’s likewise true that “every world exhibits various sorts of engarbments”, or instances in which one world steps into another one which thus surrounds it, and in which the inner one governs the outer one and acts as a soul to its body (as depicted above in R’ Vitale’s name); each world has its own individual “makeup” despite the broad strokes we’ll be painting them all with; each has its own “couplings” between the various parts; and each has its own “ascents and descents” and other movements. It’s thus clear that a world is a dynamic, unique realm with infinite numbers of interactions between its parts [3].
Notes:
[1] Derech Hashem 4:6:13
[2] We’re comparing the “benefactor” and “recipient” functions here to the reciprocally beneficial relationship of the “upper waters” of the heavens which are taken to be male and beneficent, and the “lower waters” of the earth which are taken to be female and receptive (see Breishit Rabbah 13:13; Zohar 1, 29b, etc.)
[3] Ramchal’s own comments to Petach 31.
(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org
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