The Ramchal's Essay on Fundamentals - Part 10 - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ullman

the book that you have before you is Turkish em we're not doing Darvish am okay but what we are doing is an essay at the back of Turkish em an essay the back of direction what is Darren definitions translate is the way of God it was written by somebody named rabbi moshe hi I'm Lutz Otto who we generally referred to by the acronym of Ron Paul very good um how well how was a great Torah scholar who lived in the Middle Ages in Italy Padua before he moved to Amsterdam and he was a child prodigy at a very young age he demonstrated excellence in Torah learning and what we called the revealed aspects of the Torah and it didn't take very long before he started penetrating the hidden mystical teachings of the Torah and he became a cob list but a quite a young age when he is renowned spread in order to according to one version flee from the recognition he left Italy and moved to Amsterdam and he was a gem cutter by day and a minor of precious stones of spirituality by night until his fame again grew and according to one version he fled again the fame and the glory and moved to land of Israel where unfortunately he wasn't here for even more than a year i believe until he died and he died at the age of 39 in those 39 years he became a tremendous Torah scholar like I said in both the revealed aspects of the tour that's the and also Minister the the Kabbalistic teachings of the Torah he wrote many many works i don't know how many but many books unfortunately most of them were lost wasn't lost a few remain the darkish am is one mr. Lucius charm is another das who knows is another and sorry according to tradition the rom Hall was actually a reincarnation of rib Akiva and the Ron Paul is actually buried in various the ancient Jewish cemetery on the hill overlooking the canary in Tiberias next to Rabbi Akiva and rib Akiva as you know started learning at the age of 40 40 40 uh where he became of course one of the greatest masters of Torah of all times but there were those first 40 years of his life which he which he did not rectify he was not a tourist collar and it wasn't particularly righteous during that during those years so according to tradition he was reincarnated into the rom ha which is why the ROM ha had such great success in Torah learning because he had a head start being a record inated solar review Kiva and once those first 39 years once those 39 years were rectified he passed away and bringing full circle Rebbe Kiva's long life of 120 wekiva lived to the age of 120 and they're buried side by side for the street according tradition for this reason in in Tiberias in any case he wrote in a way which was unique for his time he did not write as many authors did which was very in a Talmudic style which would be more like a stream of consciousness but rather he wrote in a very organized rational way and and one of the probably the main work that we find that here is in dear fashion director Chen he puts forth the basic beliefs of Judaism and what we started at the end of last term was not the Turkish am but an essay that he wrote which was printed at the back of of definition of the way of God which is like a summary of many of those major ideas of Judaism which he covers in more depth in the actual book of Sirach m itself so that's why you can turn if you have this version of the book to page 181 actually I believe we're Absalon 80 and if you have the English version then you want to look at the back of the book for the essay on fundamentals and you want to find that the SN on Providence just a quick review I suppose of of some we've seen so far the first the first part of the essay is about God and we spend a good two or three days going in a lot of detail about that I don't want to go into any of these points too much in depth because we've done it before it's on camera and it's also been memorized by all the people who were here who did it but the basic idea is that or the way at least the way that I presented it was that a a rational basis for the belief in God is that nothing comes from nothing and if there is something then it came from something that means that anything that exists points to a creator the existence of that object points to some fashioner a table points to the carpenter a watch to the watchmaker anything that exists in the physical finite world doesn't come into being independently spontaneously of its own rather it was fashioned brought into being by something that's something itself is there for a creator visa V the creation or fashion or visa V the thing that was fashioned that crater or that fashioner can simultaneously also be a creation or something that was fashioned by its creator or by its fashioner said something can be for the simultaneously a creator in a fashion ER and also something that is created or fashioned at some point you've got to rationally come to the conclusion that there is only one thing that brought everything into being but that thing itself was not brought into being if it had brought into being then it would be the creation of its creator and its creator would therefore be the creator with a capital C now that led us to the idea that that this one creator of everything is in finite why is it in finite because by definition it is non-finite the Creator created space-time is a function of space so this creator is by definition outside of space and time and therefore in finite mhm there can only be one infinite being even though we can conceive of there being an infinite number of parallel infinities like parallel lines where each line represents an infinity but in that case we are we posited that each infinity represented by let's say a single line is really only a relative infinity it's only relatively infinite it's not absolutely infinite absolute infinity would include all of those infinite lines which exist on a parallel plane and on every possible intersecting parallel plane which would include within it there for all possible relative infinities they would all be included in our concept of the absolutely infinite and that's what we mean we refer to by God so what is the concept of the relative infinite that would be things which are also creations of God but infinite creations of God as opposed to finite creations got okay so God creates the physical finite world God also creates a non-physical non-finite relatively infinite world full of creations just like there's a myriad of creations in the physical world and those creations would be things like souls like angels like demons like forces they're non physical and therefore their infinite but they are creations of God and therefore they're not absolutely infinite they're only parts within the absolute infinity of God okay only God can and therefore they can only be one absolutely infinite being and that's God these are some of the ideas that we discussed about finding a rational basis for the belief in God the next section was talking about the spiritual realm having mentioned this idea that God has created or not only of the physical but of the non-physical he goes into elaborates what the Jewish understanding is of the the spiritual realm that means the non physical realm and he spoke there if you remember about souls he spoke there about angels he spoke there about demons he spoke there about forces these are all things which are part of authentic Jewish belief and elaborate touched on maybe only in general terms in the Talmud or in the Midrash the Kabbalah elaborates on them in much greater detail in the Zohar another such writings and again we won't go into so much detail now but discusses the quality of angels the quality of demons the quality of souls the relationship between demons souls angels of purpose for God's creating all of these things this is kind of what we discussed in the section second part of the essay the third part of the essay was about tori mitzvahs which is being that human beings are creations which inhabit both the physical and the spiritual the physical body being the physical soul being part of spiritual the role of Torah and mitzvot he says is in order to make a connection between those two spheres of the physical and the spiritual the human beings have physical bodies and have spiritual souls yeah those two components body soul are connected into one human beings are there for pivotally placed at the synapse the juncture between the physicalness spiritual and the way in which we make that connection and ensure that the connection is fluid so that the Divine Will divine energy divine bounty divine blessing comes into the world is through human beings being engaged in Torah study which is the wisdom of God and this would be there for a tour I'm its phone we described how mitts vote means in the little level command sea buoy is a command mitzvah is it civil but it also is related the Tsar says to the word slot or said it which is a connector so mitzvah is a connector MIT's was a way of connecting with god and by making that connection with God we're also connecting the physical to the spiritual connecting the spiritual the physical enables this flux of divine energy to come down into the world and that brings about bounty blessing happiness harmony right and that's a very good thing however if people let's say deny the Torah god forbid or they're not involved in Mitzvah the opposite occurs and there's occlusion and there's like a I don't know what is it called and Carly ideology we've got a little clot yeah the NGOs em or something yeah you get this like clot in aneurysm maybe that's it in any case yeah it's like type of a clot and the blood flow is restricted so that anything that is connected to that conduit is necessarily going to be deprived of its vital energy of its vitality of its energy so forth and so on and what you need to do in such a case is a little spiritual angioplasty you just send that catheter up there with that little blue and right or put in this clear out the debris put in a stent yeah that's chula troopers going to clear out the debris and then a person has to make some type of a structure within which he will be able to learn Torah and prefer perform the missiles properly in order to ensure that that spiritually oxygen-rich life force fluid that's the divine energy is able to so this is this is torn this would be torn mitzvah so we discussed creation we've discussed the spiritual realm we've just mankind and its connection to creation through torn mitzvos that would be the third if I believe correct yep and then the fourth section of the essay is talking about reward and there he elaborates on the Jewish concept of reward and Punishment right reward for connecting punishment for not connecting where we tried to elaborate the point that the Jewish concept of punishment is not punitive which is how the English word sounds punishment but rather its purity of its purity to the purpose of own ish is not to punish for punishment sake but it's to purify so that if a person has connected positively the reward is not so much getting a reward like a lollipop for having done good but it's experiencing a full intense awareness of all of the goodness that the person has created okay so it's not a word that a person is given but it's actually an experience that a person is given privy to the person is privileged to a joy spiritual Clifton yeah it's virtually uplifting but it but it but it's basically the the the you know you the bed the present the helm the person made for himself right so if a person worked very hard in order to design a home and get the materials together and built it with own hands ever done and then he finally goes and inhabits that home the pleasure that he has and happening at home will be described that his reward not really I mean it would be a rewarding feeling but it's not so much a reward he's basically just got what he's made yeah and that's what we're talking about reward here as well it's not a god has oh you're in a good boy here take this lollipop but rather you get to enjoy the full benefit of what you've actually created for yourself and the the true is in the opposite as well right in the negative spiritually speaking that is not necessarily punishing a person saying well you messed up we're going to get slapped 1 2 3 but rather you made your bed right now sleep in it you messed up you're going to have to know reckon with the negative energy that you've created you're going to have to correct in some way the caused the harm excuse me that you've caused and this would be the idea of punishment punishment is therefore a way of purifying the person of the of the the impurity that he's tainted himself with through his own miss actions okay this be the concept of Warren punishment and and he describes it it's talking about not only in the spiritual realm but in the physical realm as well right that a person is rewarded here in the physical world yeah for the good things that he does and he's also punished here for the night for the bad things that he does we touched upon the idea about how ah why is it that you see people who aren't particularly holy pure serene individuals have everything that's important in life right they've got money they've got cars they've got rocks I mean diamonds and they've got women and anything you want right but when you look at all that they got mo most people have all that stuff are not very happy in fact most people who have all of that stuff are living a spiral path towards self-destruction unfortunately often they destroyed not in themselves but others as well the USA that people who have things in life are not necessarily enjoying the good life they might have the good life but they're not enjoying the good life on the contrary have plenty people don't have very much they worked very hard right we kind of illustrated the point to might take it an observant person for example he's not earning a lot of money he doesn't have a lot of material comforts he's got a lot of difficulty yeah and if you can imagine that person like slepping along his Pekel whatever they might be yeah and you stop the person schlepping dragging his pickle his package yeah and you stop him like Mitch luck what that yeah Mitch left yet and uh use it are you happy yeah so he's fitting he's sweating he's uh you know his under the gun he's I'm pretty but if he stops and things from it are you fulfilled more than like you would say yeah what I mean we're schlepping I don't mean like talking necessary person like literally slepping something women his whole life is big slept it's not easy yeah just stop all of that rigor that he's expanding on are you fulfilled most people would say yeah oh it's difficult it's true it's difficult but I mean I'm enjoying it I'm enjoying the ride yeah so I don't have much in life but I'm enjoying it and therefore that kind of shows that there is a reward even in this world for the good things that a person does because as far as Jews observing the tourists concern it defines a lifestyle which might not be particularly easy it's true it's not the easy life but it is generally speaking the good life right it's the good life yeah we're gonna say so you know we're punished in the school something and that would be for an available committed hiss once you've had the punishment we're no longer like liable for that so should we be happy that we get punished here because obviously anything here can't be as bad as good yeah it's a very good point John you're mentioning the boudoir says that a person who has an easy life should be worried why you have 40 days without any problems in fast yeah yes it's a sign that God is giving the part it could be a sign that God is giving a person all of his reward in this world in order to save up her the reward for his misdeeds in the world to come and we do say that generally speaking there's something real a braid on actually last time that that the general rule of thumb is that righteous people are rewarded for their good deeds in the world to come but since everybody has some misdeed they have to reckon with them here and that could be one of the explanations why righteous people suffer they are rectifying their misdeeds here in order to have a full measure of their positive reward in the world to come whereas for the wicked it's the opposite they get rewarded for their good deeds here in order for for for them to enjoy the full measure of their misdeeds in the world to come and this is kind of a dichotomy that needs explanation you know it should be standard if the world to call them is a place for the spiritual reckoning so whether you're righteous or not that should be where spiritual reckoning takes place and if this is the world where right negative things are taking our record with and it should be all done here why why do they why is their converse but we discussed that last time and we're going to go into that point a little bit more thoroughly tomorrow don't know if you're going to be with that's what your name so my big struggling but I understand to miss those are supposed to life but not plenty of friends or secular Israelis or you know Jews who don't necessarily do all of the myths but they seem to be a fairly decent Mike Miller good people they don't harm anyone so like how do you reconcile their lifestyle which was not so warranted to doing everything the detail of mitzvah but nonetheless this thing to be done well I'm so that I jackass with that essentially in this world me well in different numbers and we're constantly growing so matter if there's that little bit eventually them get off the bathroom and growing at a concert yeah but he's also the flip side of that would be was you know kind of based on the way I was setting up is that a person is not particularly on the path then they're really probably not going to have a guaranteed such a good luck right they're asking and net you see these people who are not you know quickly and nothing seems to be pretty pretty good right yeah right right yeah so if I understand you correctly maybe I misunderstand you but if I understand you correctly you know I was describing to illustrate the point to extremes very righteous people have a few transgressions that may have to rectify that here or people who are pretty much in the red and they're given a reward in the material world which ultimately isn't such a reward but you have you know people who are in the middle ground a full you know gamut spectrum of people who are kind of you know basically mediocre I mean they're kind of mediocre really you know that bad they're not so great and so they're the lives are like not so great but not so bad and God is the perfect the true judge of how to reckon all these things but ultimately you know a person who could be living in more spiritual life and is not yeah even though he might be having a decent run of it here according to the jewish belief is going to regret not having taken full advantage of the opportunity had here so he could be having a good go of it yeah but afterwards is going to look back and said well life wasn't that bad i thought it was pretty good but I didn't realize how much I was missing a lot and then when a person realizes that often it's too late unless he has to be reincarnated you know something like that so that would that would probably describe what's going to happen to most of us most of us are somewhere in the middle and each person you know is pursuing his own spiritual journey each one's got his own kind of challenges and opportunities and we probably more often than not fall short of the mark and we don't really fulfill our potential and into the stent to which that's true at some point we're going to look back and say you know in truth I could have done a better job I could have done a better job and now I have to reckon with the fact that I didn't know that's going to be a purely you know personal individual thing there's no way pointing fingers and saying this and that why that and you're there and this yet the other yeah it's got have any precautionary measures day if we come back in the next life we don't screw up everything we did in the previous five thrive yeah that's an interesting point there's going to be a section here I believe on reincarnation so I think we'd actually does discuss it a bit this wouldn't be appropriate point to answer your question it which is that the Jewish notion of reincarnation is that there are a certain number of souls let's say six hundred thousand souls and when I say six hundred thousand souls we're talking about a soul that has a male and female component so the college to understanding is you don't have mail souls and female souls but rather you have a soul and that soul has a male/female component and it corresponds to the fact that man was created as one with both a physical masculine and feminine dimension which were separated into two became adam and eve but that in truth physically mankind was one both masculine physical masculine feminine and that was a physical manifestation of the soul which is one with both a masculine and feminine component and and this six hundred thousand souls then which have male female components results in 600,000 quote-unquote male souls or female Souls and these correspond to the souls the number of people that were at Sinai at the time the Jewish people receive the Torah so that there are 600,000 what we call root souls and these souls are splintered into what we call like splinter souls so you can actually ultimately have many many splinter cells associated with one root soul which would explain why in any generation you might have many more than 600,000 let's say men or six hundred thousand women I skipped a point which was that after Adam and Eve were separated into two physically different beings connected nevertheless spiritually through the same soul when God brings souls down into the world he actually separates the soul into the male and female component the mail still going into the body that it actually becomes manifested as a physical male body the same thing with the woman and the the idea of a soul mate is the reunification of these two halves of soul these two halves click like reunite but in any case there are there are the six hundred thousand root souls and any number of splinter souls each soul has five levels each cell has five levels in here oh they're called rua silly nephesh rua neshama hiya and yet hid oh yeah and the notion of reincarnation is basically as follows is that the soul is brought down into the physical world into a body in order for through free will a person to live his life in the physical realm in a way where he connects the physical to the spiritual the body to the soul this world to godliness through the performance of the myth vote if a person makes a good run of it by the end of a hundred and twenty he will have elevated and rectified through his free power of free will the spiritual world should be the physical world into the spiritual which then becomes his stepping stone into right the real reality which is the spiritual realm if a person doesn't quite make it then there's more work to be done one of the ways that that work can be kind of accomplished that leftover hematologist through reincarnation at that point the soul would be reincarnated reintroduced into a different body okay however at this point if a person is reincarnated he operates on each level of salt separately so that if in the initial incarnation and on saying reincarnation but during the initial incarnation the first time the soul comes into a body a person perfects nefesh rua neshama he's perfected the levels of soul which are associated with this world hi nahin da are then completed in the spiritual ok if a person doesn't do that he doesn't accomplish that then he is reincarnated first time around in order to work on nefesh the lowest of the souls that which is more affiliated with the physical aspect of human beings when he perfects ruach excuse me nefesh what happens he dies nice even if he's 24 it might be 57 it might be 93 does it matter the point is when he has perfected nefesh he no longer stays in this world why staying in this world would actually deprive the soul of its progress the soul if you asked it would not want to be here any longer than it has to yeah I finished nefesh been perfected let me out of here I've done my time yeah goes into the spiritual realm however there's still rule to work on what happens reincarnation this time working on rua what happens to nefesh in the meantime and now i'm answering your question even though him a bit long-winded yeah nefesh which he has perfected is preserved and therefore it's not going to be damaged even if he comes back around with the purpose of working on rua and he messes up nefesh is untainted that's preserved frame he might have to come back again and again and again and again again to work on rua but the progress that he's made at least a nephesh once it's perfected will not be will not be harmed soon there lots of how about his neck fish yes yeah yes if the person who comes back now to he's perfected net fish and he's reincarnated and he's working on on rua it's true he might even be doing things which generally harmed the net fish but his nefesh has been perfected it remains untainted yes it goes for all three levels yeah so same thing is for the first three levels then you have Rua and then the same thing with the neshamah when a pro when person perfects again for example rua he does what do you mean my room exactly it's like an wind yeah okay i didn't elaborate in the point it's true but you have these three levels nephesh Roca neshama nefesh is the lower of the lowest of the five level of souls nefesh is a term that's referred to in the Torah as being associated with the blood and therefore it's the part of our spiritual aspect or come which is associated with the physical carnal even physiological bodily functions of an organism and the nefesh therefore gives the person is physical life it's yeah so he's getting where the top two infected no no get him something else the truth is the next sections we gotta and games all that for a minute yeah but that would be wrong generally speaking there's a lot to say about this I'm just giving you like on the edge of the just you know but the next level would be Rua you said well his wind yes or sometimes translated as spirit spirit and it's the level of soul which is associated with our ability to emote have emotions or to speak okay so it's a higher level than nefesh nefesh is the blood that's the body rua energizes our ability to speak and to have emotions which are things which other organisms aren't able to do other and other living things have a nefesh but only human beings have a rule and of everyone having a shaman neshama is breath that's the breath of life coming from God and their verses which associate that with intelligence and therefore the idea is that the level of neshama is what gives us human beings the unique ability to have intellect to think and therefore on these three levels of soul correspond to the plane of action speech and thought okay nefesh row neshama those three levels are the levels of soul which are associated more with this world as opposed to high in Aikido the highest of the of the five levels of soul those are much more super supernal much more elevated much more transcendental and therefore the the primarily realm for their expression is not in the physical world as we know it it's in the spiritual realm Adam and before before the sin was able to incorporate even hiya and yes ido in this world but after that tremendous mishap creating a dichotomy between the physical and spiritual this world is no longer a sphere in which hayashi dog can be properly brought out into fruition and any of the righteous individuals who tapped into those levels of soul they perfected nefesh perfected rua affected the shimmer and then started working on high it for example passed over to the other side you can't be here generally speaking and be working on hiya this is not a place where hiya can be brought into fruition and there are several examples of this what one example is that of elijah your name is elijah right hello yo Navi as many of you know never actually died he literally passed away yeah he just passed on over to the other side and how did it happen how'd it happen a chariot of fire came and enveloped him and he simply crystallized into into the spiritual realm what's that sure to fire the chariot of fire represents the power the koya of the level of neshama which is higher and that vigorous vital force of fire which he tapped into once he started opening the gates into hiya consumed him he could no longer be here and there you can't be here and tapping into hiya if you want to tap into hiya you've got to be there and therefore he didn't die a mortal death rather he was elevated into the next plane alive because he was working on hyah an exception to this was Moshe Moshe Rabbeinu was able to maintain the level of hyah bylem has a in this world without being consumed and that's what we mean that's what's meant by the fact that most of a new had this fire this light emanating from his whole body really but specifically around his head yeah he was like a spiritual transistor yeah he was able to withhold that energy and not be burned by it not be consumed by it not might not be transported by it to the other realm he was actually like a conductor meadow know if I'm using the right terminology here but yeah he he wasn't a like a conductor he was able to was maintained that energy in this world and withhold it withstand it excuse me withstand it so that he was not consumed by it but actually he he became a glow by it and people could actually see that glow emanating from him it wasn't a physical light per se right but it was a spiritual light that everybody has the eyes to see and he was emanating in such an intense way that they did even ordinary people could see that spiritual light that light of hiya that he was able to most people were consumed by it and not only Elijah but others as well that's y le al for example his body became so purified through its connection to hire that it took upon a quality dimension of the eternal life that's what higher is life and that's why he did not die alright but rather his body became infused with life and that life is the life which is imparted by the eternal light coming from God and and and that's what happened to Ellie ow so that his body was actually spiritual eyes it wasn't it didn't it didn't compose it was spiritual eyes and it was and what happened to him is what is similar to what will happen to all of us who are resurrected at the time resurrection after the levels of nefesh rakesh sharma have been perfected after haiyan decade or are brought into fulfillment and fruition in the spiritual realm all five will be introduced into the resurrected body and those bodies are going to come out of the grave a glow in a world which is much different than the world is the way we know it the world to come is going to be a spiritual eyes dworld it's going to be a physical world but it's gonna be spiritual eyes yeah and this would perhaps be a way of connecting to the next section which has gone Eden and getting them but in a nutshell until the time of resurrection occurs you have GaN Eden and genome which is a spiritual realm which in that in which are parts of a spiritual realm that enables the soul to continue its path towards perfection after it leaves this world and before the world of resurrection so that once a person perfects nefesh rule and neshama and then stays in the spiritual realm you have the soul has to be on the one hand preserved and also be promoted said ultimately and we prepare it for the period of of resurrection that's what's going to happen in GaN Eden but there's also ghanem k Hinnom is in order to pure by the soul so that the person will also married ultimately progression and resurrection right that's good that's going on it's not punishment per se there for like I mentioned earlier rather it's a purification it's a creative process of purification and we described that there are it's gone Eden genome each has an upper and lower realm each realm upper and lower has seven compartments or departments and what happens is the sole progresses one by one either from lower de kingdom to hire to gain them or from higher agin him to log on Edun and logging into higher gotta edit the soul progresses over time for many different reasons there's mobility there but the whole purpose ultimately is to get those souls ready for the period of Resurrection being reintroduced into the world into the state that Adam Eve or created here pick up where they left off and bring the world all to its ultimate perfection so today has been kind of a summary of I don't know five or six the first five or six parts of the essay that we've done until now well we'll continue tomorrow the new material that will be in Providence the section on Providence so let me break here officially if anybody has to go to every from this class do so and I'll stay for questions and comments too alright great so I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you tomorrow you