Chapter Thirty-Eight:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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And lastly comes the fourth, human (i.e., “verbal”) stage. The ratzon l’kabel is fully active and definitive by then, and it includes an awareness of others.

On the one hand, while we humans are able to move about freely and are aware of ourselves piece by piece unlike lesser entities, and we’re also able to sense others’ needs and commiserate with them altruistically unlike our closest type, animal-kind, we humans are correspondingly imbued with an ironic fierce and overarching need to take-in and satisfy ourselves piece by piece.

In fact, if you’d ask me to succinctly contrast the ratzon l’kabel of the third, animal stage with the fourth, human stage of it, I’d say that they were as different as a single being versus all of creation. For the ratzon l’kabel in the animal stage in which there’s no awareness of others can only foster the needs and desires that are specific to that one being, while the ratzon l’kabel of humans, who can sense others’ (needs), can also incorporate the needs of everything else.

For not only are we aware of what we need and want, we’re likewise only too well aware of others’ needs and wants, and we're inclined to want those same things -- and more -- knowing about them, since we have so potent a need to take-in.

And so we can covet and want whatever others have; and if you were to “give us an inch, we'd take a mile”. Indeed our needs can be so great that we’d want everything!

But while all that seems to damn human beings for our pettiness and to rail against our bottomless self-absorption, Ashlag’s point will be that our natures are God-given and intentional, and they bolster God's ultimate cosmic goal.

(c) 2008 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Yashar Books.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Chapter Thirty-Seven:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

__________________________________________________


The third (even more developed) “animal” stage comes next. The ratzon l’kabel is very potent by then, and it engenders a sense of self-will and uniqueness for each and every detail.

If the last stage was organic, this one is out-and-out agile, brisk, and alive. It's depicted as the "animal" stage because aside from the same freedom of movement we humans have, animals likewise have nearly the same broad sense of self and freedom that we do. Thus they too know what they need and want over-all, and take pains to get it, detail by detail.

But those details don’t yet sense the existence of others, and they haven't the means to commiserate with another's pains or to share in its joys.

It’s just that animals can’t transcend their selves as we humans can or identify and empathize with others. But identifying with others is a complex of reactions, in that it enables one to be selflessly generous to others, or to selfishly envy them, as we'll see.

(c) 2008 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Yashar Books.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"