In Kant we find  a kind of "apperception" perception that sees oneself . From this we know the unity of consciousness. It is the same faculty of synthesis by which we know universals {synthetic a priori.}  This forms the basis of the transcendental deduction. (note 1) So now we can understand the Rambam about knowing God, who is the thing in itself, the ding an sich. That is knowing God is a kind of knowing that we know things in themselves. That is why it is called knowing. It is the faculty by which we know unconditioned realities.





Let's call this apperception. It can't be the thing which recognizes universals as we know the Rambam holds God has no universals. So it is the kind of knowledge by which we know our inner self. And that implies a strong connection. We have more than an emotional connection with ourselves; we are ourselves. So this connection with God is more than an emotional connection. It means a kind of oneness with God, as if we and God were one.

[I know I am borrowing from Schopenhauer. ]

In any case what we have here is good use of the faculty that Kant says gives us direct knowledge of the existence of the ding an sich, but not its characteristics. So when Maimonides tells us we can know that God exists he can be understood in this Kantian type of way.

And this resolves a conflict about Maimonides. There are people that think the Rambam limited reason. {"Rather in the Guide and elsewhere in his ethical writings, Maimonides goes to great pains to deny that human beings have any innate metaphysical, and especially, moral intuitions." Mark R. Sunwall.} There are others who pointed out the proofs of God's existence as showing that the Rambam did not limit reason. Well as far as God's existence is concerned we can use Kant's idea of a perception to show he did think reason puts us in direct contact with the ding an sich.






When I saw in the Rambam this remarkable statement לא הצם והמתפלל הוא הנרצה אלא היודעו I was struck with it power. {It is not the one who prays and fasts who is desirable to God but rather the one that knows God.}

To understand this statement I think one needs the anonymous commentary on the first four chapters of the Rambam's משנה תורה Mishne Torah. He asks one verse says do the mizvot in order to love and fear God. Another one says love and fear God in order to do the mitzvot. This is a contradiction. Answer: There are two kinds of Love and Fear. For example there is fear of God's punishment and there is awe of God's greatness. So one verse tells us to have the  lower love and fear in order to do the mitzvot and the other verse tells us do the mitzvot in order to come to the higher love and fear.
Thu the mitzvot have a purpose. They are not the goals in themselves. And the purpose is this kind of love and fear.
So it seems to me that what we  call דביקות "devekut" [attachment with God] is at least some component of what The Torah requires of us.

(note 1) Synthesis is required to explain the mineness and togetherness of one’s mental states, and by linking synthesis to the application of the categories, Kant argues we could not have the experience of the mineness and togetherness of our mental states without applying the categories. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The problem I generally see is too much confidence in mystical knowledge.

Rationalism vs. Empiricism vs. Mysticism  

While I think that there is a kind of knowledge that is not from reason and not from empirical observation, still that does not seem to be carte blanche  permission to assume all mystic experiences are a valid source of information. And even if it was, it would only apply to ones own experience. You would not be able to depend on someone else mystical experiences as a source of information for yourself on how to live your life.
There is a kind of sneaky attempt to get people to believe in the mystic experiences of other people by calling it אמונת חכמים faith in the wise. They pick some charismatic insane teacher with mystic delusions and decide to call him wise.


We don't have prophecy anymore. And in any case prophecy seems to be a source of information separate of mystical experience.   Furthermore there is such a thing as סוף הוראה the end of the period when it is possible to make a halachic decision.
This may not seem like a big deal to most people. But from where I come from what I see a lot is people that are depending of the mystic experiences of some loving, lunatic leader deny the other areas of information. To them the only source of valid knowledge is the mystical experiences of their beloved leader.
Though they will use pragmatic reasoning in their daily lives but as for any major decision they will go only with the mystical experiences of their leader.


Why this came up is that I don't think knowledge of morality comes from mystic experience. There are some principles of morality that I think we know by reason. דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה. Others we need Torah to reveal to us. And to understand Torah we depend on the Sages of the Mishna.  We no longer have prophecy and mystic experiences can't cancel the Law of Moses, nor alter its meaning.
Sadly by means of Kabalah learning that is exactly what people do do. Yet people are looking for spiritual wholeness. Where can you find that except by mystical experience?
Though there are substitutes, they do not seem  numinous unless you endow them with numinous meaning and content.

I any case I had a few issues to bring up about this. One is the Rambam. לא הצם והמתפלל הוא הנרצה אלא היודעו. "Not he who fasts and prays is acceptable to God, but rather one who knows Him."   The kind of knowledge of God that the Rambam is talking about is explained in other places in the Guide. It is a kind of knowledge that comes by learning Torah Physics and Metaphysics. He is not talking about mystic knowledge.


The problem I generally see is too much confidence in mystical knowledge. This leads members of cults to all kinds of terrible sins.
  It is not that there is no mystical knowledge. Just that there seems to be too much confidence in other people's mystical knowledge  and that one is supposed to be convinced that they are "tzadikim" and that is supposed to overrule the basic common sense  explanation of the Torah  and common sense in other areas.

 The idea of authority is something we all use. We believe our Physics textbooks without doing every experiment and calculation ourselves. But mystic knowledge can't override the basic explanation of the Written and Oral Law.  When people think their leader has mystical knowledge that can override common sense morality that is when they get into problems.
And I think this was the problem the Gra was addressing when he signed the excommunication. I think he thought that over confidence in mystic knowledge was held to override the Oral and Written Law and he wanted to put a stop to this phenomenon (with zero success as far as I can tell).

I should write a whole new essay on this because I have not  even gotten to the issues that are bothering me which are the Rambam's idea of knowledge of God. What can this means?
Does it mean the Infinite Light? That seems unlikely. After all the Sefer Yetzira itself calls it אור נברא Created Light. This is because the Sefer Yetzira is trying as it should to preserve Divine simplicity.
Or is it Devekut? Or mystical experience of God's light? I clearly need to deal with this at some future date.

songs for God

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Sex in the Five books of Moses is not symmetrical. A woman can be married to only one man. A man can be married to many women.  ניאוף  adultery is when a man has sex with a woman who is married to another man. That gets the death penalty. It is in two lists in Leviticus  that go though the עריות.
Sex outside of marriage is  not ניאוף-adultery. It comes under the category of פילגש concubinage.

There were a good number of people in the Old Testament that had concubines. One well known such person was Calev ben Yefuna (the friend of Joshua, the disciple of Moses). [כלב בן יפונה ] He was not considered a sinner because he had a few wives and few concubines. In the Five Books of Moses he is praised with a kind of praise that is not applied to anyone  else in the Torah, וימלא אחרי השם "He was filled with God." People might not think this is good but they cant call it "sin" in Biblical terms. And when pastors do so they are just displaying their lack of education.

I forget where the list of Calev's wives and  girl friends was. I think it should be in Chronicles one where it lists the people from the tribe of Yehuda that came into Israel. One of them was Calev because Moshe told him and his buddy Joshua that they would merit to enter the land of Israel.
There  are lots of sins in the Bible but typically they have nothing to do with what pastors call sin. And what pastors call commandments are often highly sinful.

If you want to know what the Bible calls a sin just open a Five Books Of Moses and take a look at when it says, "God spoke to Moses saying speak unto the children of Israel say unto them thou shalt not do such and such a thing. and if you do so this and this is the punishment." There are lots of examples. You might say that if God says not to do something that has to count as a sin. There are of course no pastors in the world which do this simple process. It is really not complicated. But instead they have to fish around for other things to call sins.

On the other hand I can see why people just don't jump to the Five Books of Moses. They are afraid of groups that claim to be following these laws. And that is justifiable.  people that claim to be teaching Torah are mainly "Torah scholars that are demons תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאים . So that leaves anyone that wants to keep the Law of Moses in a bind. There is no where to go learn how in a practical sense to keep the Torah. If the people that claim to be teaching it are demons, that limits the options.
In real life, we encounter people that are supposedly teaching Torah that are  demons. I think I have probably met quite a few of them.

In any case, what you could do is to simply learn the Five Books of Moses on your own, and then just go through the Mishna and Talmud on your own to discover how to keep the law in a practical sense. That is what I do. If there was  an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva near me I would go there but that is not an option for me now.

Learning Musar [works of ethics of the Middle Ages  like The Duties of the Heart helps to gain physical and mental health. That is what Isaac Blazer said. He was a disciple of Israel Salanter and we can trust that he knew what he was taking about. 

But this takes  a lot of faith in the wise to believe this. There are plenty of world views out there that claim that fear of God is not even a worthwhile goal. And among people that agree that fear of God and good character traits are worthwhile goals there are many opinions that learning Musar does not help and that there are better ways. From what I have seen all  of these alternative claims are false. {And many of the alternative approaches are negative and harmful.} That is based on my experience and observation.
So while learning Musar has limited capacity, at least it does something positive. It may not work magic but we can trust Israel Salanter and Issac Blazer that it has positive benefits. And it benefits far outweigh the benefits I have seen from alternative paths.

The difference between the Musar Movement and I is that I think people should spend an equal amount of time on Medieval books of Philosophy like The Guide for the Perplexed,  and Saadia Gaon's אמונות ודעות (Faiths and Doctrines). This is because I don't think good character is independent of a good world view. I think rather that good character depends on a good world view.

There will be noticed some areas in which the world view of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides are not in accord with the Kabalah. This speaks more to the detraction of kabalah as a source of information than the reverse. Mystics can be very helpful with their insights but can't change the world view of Torah. Knowledge gained by mystic experience remains mystic.
The major philosophers of the Middle Ages with the approach of the Talmud and Torah are Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Maimonides's son Avraham, Ibn Gavirol, Isaac Abravenal,
Yehudah Abravenal . If one does not know at least what they say it hard to imagine that anything he says on the topic of Jewish world view could be valid or interesting. If one has done the homework then his views can be interesting but not before.
I should mention I hold from the natural law approach of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides-so I respect any system that I feel is striving for natural law. But I have no tolerance for systems that I think are tilting people towards evil.

Songs for the glory of God

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Most of what people worry about I think is  just a distraction. A false flag from the Dark Side to get you distracted from what you need to be thinking about. 

You need רצון razon-- a will to do things right. People need the will to stop depending on handouts and get a real vocation. And  to learn Torah.

That is when I find myself in some difficulty I think to myself what I read in the Shaari Teshuva of Rabbainy Yona--אין יסורים בלא עוון. There are not problems without sin. Based on this idea when I have a problem I often feel that the problem is not because of what other have done or want to do but rather from myself.  I believe all my problems come from the gap between the "is" and the "ought." That is the gap between what I do and what I ought to do.