Monthly Archives: October 2011

It’s important to review some things at this point in order to recoup our perspective.

Recall that this whole section is in response to Ashlag’s sixth inquiry as to how it could be that all the upper worlds as well as this corporeal one were created exclusively for the sake of humankind — who by all appearances is, “so insignificant, and hasn’t a hair’s-breadth of worth in comparison to all we see before us in this world — to say nothing of the upper worlds” as he put it in Ch. 33. Thus, “why would man need (for there to be) such august and hallowed worlds?” as he asked there. But as he said at the end of that chapter, it would be proven to be “worth God’s while to have created all the worlds, higher and lower alike, for the sake of the satisfaction and delight He’ll derive” from those of us who reach our full potential.

Ashlag then went on to explain that “since God wanted to prepare His created beings for the aforementioned exalted levels, He wished there to be four grades (of them) to unfold out of each other” (Ch. 34), so that we might ease into revelation. The four grades are “known as the ‘mineral’, ‘vegetable’, ‘animal’, and ‘verbal’ (beings)”. And as he then said, which we’ll begin to see later on in this chapter, “those beings correspond to the four degrees of the ratzon l’kabel which the upper worlds are differentiated by.

As we then summed up in Ch. 39, it all has to do with the following: (1) with the fact that the only reason God created the world in the first place was to grant pleasure to His creations; (2) with the idea that the mechanism He created for us to enjoy that great pleasure is our ratzon l’kabel; (3) with the fact that while “some entities … can’t sense God’s presence or great largesse at all … ; others only sense it to a limited extent … ; and others (yet) … sense it fairly much … “; and it touches upon the idea that (4) in the end, it’s we humans alone who can fully sense God’s presence and benevolence.

What will prove to qualify us to sense God’s presence and benevolence will be our adherence to the mitzvah-system, which is unsurpassed in its capacity to refine our ratzon l’kabel and to help us develop the sort of full-spectrum soul that will enable us to gain an essential affinity with God which is the greatest pleasure of all, and to thus satisfy God’s full intention for creation.

Ashlag will now go on to discuss our souls and their component parts; to examine how they relate to the mineral, vegetable, animal, and verbal realms; to indicate how all that ties-in with the sephirot and the various supernal worlds; and to explain what all that has to do with the mitzvah-system after all.

The discussion itself will get rather complex and convoluted at times, but we’ll do what we can to resolve it and enunciate its overarching points.

1.

            We each receive a holy soul (nephesh) as soon as we’re born. But it’s not a nephesh per se that we receive so much as the hindmost part of one, which is the soul’s last rung, and it’s termed a “point” because it’s (so relatively) small. 

While holy, the soul we’re each born with isn’t a whole and utterly pure one so much as the augur of one in the form of its posterior, faintest tiny sheen.

            And it’s engarbed in our heart, which is to say, in our ratzon l’kabel, which manifests itself in our heart for the most part.

We’d been told earlier on about this hindmost part of our soul that’s termed our “point in the heart” and is engarbed in our ratzon l’kabel. And we learned that it’s only operative from age 13 onward, when we’re liable for mitzvah observance (see 30:1 and our remarks there). So we now start to see the connection between the elements enunciated to the mitzvah-system.

2.

            Now, note this principle: Everything found in existence in general can also be found in each and every world, as well as in each and every one of each world’s tiniest fragments.

Like a colossal clan-family and regardless of whether its members are in close proximity or not, everything is in everything else by degrees; a small or large part of this is found in that, and some of that is in this. As such, each world contains facets and parts of each other one, and each facet and part contains the lot of them to degrees.

            As such, just as there are five worlds overall which are the five aforementioned (cluster) sephirot of Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut, there are likewise five (cluster) sephirot of Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut in each and every world, as well as five (cluster) sephirot in the smallest fragment of each world (ad infinitum).

3.

            Recall that as we indicated, this world incorporates the four elements of mineral, vegetable, animal, and verbal which correspond to the four (cluster) sephirot of Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut. (Know that) mineral corresponds to Malchut, vegetable corresponds to Tipheret, animal corresponds to Binah, verbal corresponds to Chochma, and their all-inclusive root corresponds to Keter.

Minerals, the entities that can’t sense God’s presence or great largesse at all, correspond to Malchut, the least Godly of worlds; and in ascending order, vegetable corresponds to Tipheret, animal corresponds to Binah, and verbal (or, human) corresponds to Chochma.

Their all-inclusive, unfathomable root, which transcends all adroitness including the very-human abilities to verbalize as well as think, make choices, and even to worship, corresponds to unfathomable, impenetrable Keter.

            Now as we indicated, (given that everything is in everything else by degrees, it follows that) even the smallest fragment of each grade of mineral, vegetable, animal, and verbal contains four (sub-) grades of mineral-ness, vegetable-ness, animal-ness, and verbal-ness in its being.

            Even a single component of the verbal grade, which is to say, even a single person, likewise contains mineral-ness, vegetable-ness, animal-ness, and verbal-ness, which are the four grades of his ratzon l’kabel and is where the “point” of his nephesh is engarbed.

The statement that “mineral-ness, vegetable-ness, animal-ness, and verbal-ness … are the four grades of (man’s) ratzon l’kabel” alludes to things said in earlier chapters. We learned that the mineral stage’s ratzon l’kabel only holds sway over the entity itself and not over its details (Ch. 35); the vegetable stage’s ratzon l’kabel prevails over each and every one of its details, but the details don’t exhibit a sense of self-will (Ch. 36); the animal stage’s ratzon l’kabel is very potent, and each and every one of its details has a sense of self-will (Ch. 37); and the human (i.e., “verbal”) stage’s ratzon l’kabel is fully active and aware of others (Ch. 38).

Thus the larger point is that each one of us has four degrees of a ratzon l’kabel, from an inert and self-contained one to a dynamic, far-reaching one.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

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

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”

1.

            We’ve now explained the five worlds (of Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah) that incorporate all of existence from the Infinite Himself to this world. We saw that they’re all interconnected and that each world contains five worlds — the five (cluster Sephirot of) Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut, in which are engarbed in the five (supernal) lights of Nephesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and Yechidah, which correspond to those five worlds.

As we’ll see below, when something is said to “engarb” something else that means to say that the thing that’s overlaid serves and derives from the more exalted thing hovering over it. Thus we now learn that the Nephesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and Yechidah all derive from and serve Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiyah. We’ll soon see the significance of this.

2.

            Now, aside from the five (cluster) Sephirot of Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut found in each and every world, the four spiritual grades of mineral, vegetable, animal, and verbal are found in each as well.

Like many of the ancients who were also concerned with the makeup of the spiritual realm and at a loss as to how to depict it, the Kabbalists likewise used commonplace material phenomena to explain the workings of the heavens. And so they came to use the mineral world as symbolic of inert, apparently lifeless and less evolved phenomena; the vegetable world as representative of more dynamic and evolved ones; the animal world as a step above all that; and humankind (known as the “verbals”, since our ability to enunciate and think is what is most outstanding about us) as the most perfected of all. And as we’ll soon see, they spoke of “clothing” to depict things that come into contact with a phenomenon that still-and-all don’t participate in their being; of “hallways” as emblematic of things that also surround a phenomenon, yet don’t approach it directly; and of palaces (not used in our text) as representative of far more distant surroundings that while vital nonetheless don’t come into direct contact with the phenomenon under discussion whatsoever.

In any event, the point here is that we’ve come to see just how conjoined our souls, the Sephirot and the supernal worlds are with each other (along with the letters of God’s Name). We’re about to start to explore how they all combine with the mitzvah-system by connecting that all with the four grades of being.

            For, the human soul corresponds to the verbal grade here, the animal grade corresponds to angels in this world, the vegetable grade corresponds to the world’s “clothing”, and the mineral grade corresponds to its “hallways”, and they’re all interwoven.

Parenthetically, one of the reasons why the animal grade is said to correspond to angels in this world, curiously enough, is because there’s a rather exalted class of angels that are termed “Chayot” which are usually translated as “Living Entities” (from “chaya”) but which could also indeed be translated as and thus taken to be “animals”, since they’re tantamount to brute creatures in relation to God’s Holy Presence which they serve (notwithstanding their exalted place in our own eyes).

The point is that we’re each part human, animal, and angel, and overlaid by fibrous pieces of “clothing” (i.e., bodies, personalities, etc.), and surrounded by all manner of inanimate extraneous hallway-like things (i.e., surroundings, belongings, etc.). And the lot of it is interconnected and interdependent.

Nonetheless …

            The verbal stage which corresponds to human souls is engarbed in the five Sephirot of Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut here, which are this world’s Godliness. The animal stage, which is the world’s angels, engarbs human souls; the vegetative stage, which are its “clothes”, engarbs the angels; and the mineral stage, which are its “halls”, encircles them all. (Now, what) “engarbed” connotes is that the overlaid entity serves the thing hovering over it, and derives from it.

That’s to say that our spiritual-physical-situational self is viscerally intertwined with the Sephirot and higher worlds, and with Godliness itself. And while there’s a hierarchical relationship between them as we’ll soon see, at bottom, each member of our being supports the whole.

3.

            But as we explained in regard to this world’s actual physical minerals, vegetables, animals, and verbals, the (first) three grades — mineral, vegetable, and animal — didn’t emerge for their own sake, but only so that the fourth grade, humankind, could derive and advance thanks to them. Hence, their whole raison d’être is to serve man and help him advance.

See Ch. 39.

            The same is true of all the spiritual worlds. Their mineral, vegetable, animal, and verbal beings likewise only emerged in order to serve them and help the verbals in that world, which (corresponds to) the soul of man, advance. That means to say that they all aid — (serve and) help advance — man’s soul.  

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

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

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”