This final Petach of the section helps to explain what happens when Erich Anpin is engarbed within Attik but it can also address what happens when any Partzuf is engarbed within another. It also discusses the idea that the reasoning behind this is beyond us.
In each instance, the differences in an case of a higher Partzuf being engarbed in a lower one show whether its actions i.e. the actions of the one that’s engarbed, are to be significant or not. This is true when Attik is engarbed in Erich Anpin and in all other such instances.
And it, i.e., the degree of its significance, is always proportional to its, i.e., the engarbed Partzuf‘s, size. That’s to say that “if the engarbed Partzuf is of large proportion, that indicates that it has a lot to do,” Ramchal offers in his comments, “and if it’s of small proportion, then it has little to do”.
For, whether the engarbed Partzuf is to be of large or small proportion depends on whether the action in one instance is to be larger than the other one, and it all depends on the size of the parts of the engarbed Partzuf.
But the reasoning behind the proportioning is based on what the all-embracing intention for creation requires, which is beyond our ken. In fact, Ramchal offers that we aren’t even allowed to ask for the reason behind the makeup of “the edifice” (i.e., of the supernal prototypes) [1]; we’re just to accept the way things are set up. We are allowed to draw implications from their makeup, though. In any event, we’re to know that God uses all of these phenomena to govern the universe in ways it has to be governed to reach its end.
As he puts it, the study of Kabbalah requires us to know what follows what and what occurs in fact, but not the reason why anything in particular occurs. “Indeed, we could find many valid reasons for (the makeup of) these structures, but that’s not our intention. We’re (simply) to know what exists and its function in each instance”, Ramchal says.
In fact, various reasons could be found for each proportion, because each has many facets. But we’re not to explore that.
Footnotes:
[1] See Petachim 14-15.
(c) 2016 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org
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