1.
All that thus answers the questions we asked, “Why would mankind need all the supernal worlds that the Creator forged for it? What use are they to him?”
See 3:4, 33:1, and 41:1.
For now we see that it would have been impossible for us to achieve (the level of) bringing satisfaction to your Creator without those worlds.
Indeed, we’re charged with converting our ratzon l’kabel to a ratzon l’hashpia and to grant satisfaction to our Maker rather than to ourselves (see 14:1, 32:1, 40:2).
So (we see also that), the more you purify your ratzon l’kabel, the more lights and degrees N. R. N. C. Y. you achieve.
See 32:1.
In fact, each light you achieve helps you to purify it. And you’ll thus ascend to the point where you attain the bliss of (having fulfilled) the intention behind creation…
… which was that we enjoy all sorts of spiritual “goodness, delight, and tranquility” (see 13:2 as well as Ch. 12 and 14:3).
2.
Now, we’re taught that “whoever comes to purify (himself) is helped” (Yoma 38b). The Zohar asks, though, what exactly he’s helped with, and it offers that he’s helped with “a sacred soul” (Zohar 1, p. 62A). (What that means to say is that) it’s impossible to purify yourself to the degree (required) for the intention of creation (to be fulfilled) without the help of all the N.R.N.C.Y. levels of the soul…
… that is, without the “sacred soul” that the Zohar refers to. For, while all souls are in fact sacred and derived from God’s very being, they’re only fully sacred and thus really souls when they’re in full-flourish, and all five of their elements are manifest.
(c) 2012 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.
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Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).
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