{"id":389,"date":"2011-02-02T07:11:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T11:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramchal.wordpress.com\/?p=389"},"modified":"2011-02-02T07:11:41","modified_gmt":"2011-02-02T11:11:41","slug":"what-lies-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/2011\/02\/02\/what-lies-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"What lies ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not following the order of the Petachim<\/em> themselves, we\u2019re going to be delving into the following in this section, God willing:<\/p>\n

A.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What occurs before<\/em> the appearance of the Sephirot<\/em>? That will touch upon the idea of the Sephira<\/em> of Malchut<\/em> (9, 11) which is said to be the root of the lower realms (11), and thanks to which one can \u201cascend\u201d to higher worlds and \u201cderive things\u201d (11).<\/p>\n

B. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All of creation as a single entity in human shape known as Adam Kadmon<\/em> (12).<\/p>\n

C. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The whole array of God\u2019s governance constituting a Merkava<\/em>, a \u201cchariot\u201d, (Ramchal\u2019s comments to 7), which has all sorts of associations in Kabbalistic and Rabbinic literature.<\/p>\n

D.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The idea of \u201ccircles\u201d and \u201cstraight lines\u201d in God\u2019s governance (9, 13).<\/p>\n

E. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Sephirot<\/em> (as well as everything else) as interdependent, sequential, interwoven phenomena that follow specific rules (10); and the idea of certain Sephirot<\/em> being \u201cencased\u201d in or \u201cemerging\u201d out of others (10).<\/p>\n

F.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All that having been explained we can then speak to the assumed \u201cappearance\u201d of the Sephirot<\/em>, including the idea that the Sephirot<\/em> only assume shapes in visions — that they don\u2019t really have them (7); that those shapes can be self-contradictory (8); and that we gain our knowledge of God\u2019s governance as well as of the upper realms from those \u201cshapes\u201d (11). This subject also touches on Ramchal\u2019s controversial idea that the Ari\u2019s depictions of things are all metaphors and not to be taken literally which we\u2019ll discuss.<\/p>\n

G. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The significance of the fact that each \u201cviewer\u2019s\u201d makeup affects his perception of the Sephirot <\/em>(8).<\/p>\n

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman<\/p>\n

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org<\/a><\/p>\n

———————————————————-<\/p>\n

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here<\/a> at a discount.<\/p>\n

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here<\/a> at a discount as well.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).<\/p>\n

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence<\/a>\u201d and \u201cRamchal<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not following the order of the Petachim themselves, we\u2019re going to be delving into the following in this section, God willing: A.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What occurs before the appearance of the Sephirot? That will touch upon the idea of the Sephira … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}