woman's first intuition is always correct?

The press agent of Hitler [Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl] that eventually turned against him, and had to escape made note of how Hitler would address a crowd of people that had plenty of people were there specifically to heckle him and shout him down.  The way he did it was brilliant. His very first remarks were about how woman's first intuition is always correct since they are more spiritually attuned to reality. That immediately silenced his detractors who were eager to hear more about how great women are.

Praising women as always right is the general way that people try to gain power. 

immediate non intuitive knowledge and faith.

I suggested a long time ago to David Bronson in Uman that immediate non intuitive knowledge is the exact same thing that Rav Nahman of Breslov was talking about in his emphasis on faith.

[This came up because I was noting that Einstein has an essay commenting on Bertrand Russel's approach to Hume.]

To me it seems clear that there is another way to access knowledge besides pure logic which can detect contradictions and empirical knowledge based on sense perception.

Hegel was trying to get to a kind of nationalism without the flaws of the nightmare of the French Revolution.

Nationalism has support from Hegel. But some people are not happy with Hegel like Dr. Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer.  Brand Blanshard defends Hegel and also Walter Kaufman. My feeling about the State is that along the lines of Blandshard--that no human good is possible without the State. But why the state? Why not the village? or the whole world? The answer is like why the human brain works like it does. It is not that it is big. There are bigger brains. The point is it is right size for abstract thought. Too big would ruin it. So the state. Village would just be in conflict with  other villages. World government is too big and just would be the same as war of all against all. The State is the right size for people to work together. [This aspect of State I think Dr Ross would agree with.]

Hegel was trying to get to a kind of nationalism without the flaws of the nightmare of the French Revolution. And as Walter Kaufman noted he thought the America is the country of the future, not Prussia.

And the more people depend on the Zohar, the more they fall in delusions. The reason is that the Zohar itself has a certain flaw.

I agree that there were great mystics like the Ari Isaac Luria], Rav Nahman, the Remak [Moshe Cordovaro]. But to the degree they depended on the Zohar they seem weak.  But that does not invalidate their teachings. It just means that was the sort of looking glass that they were seeing through. It is like when one wears green colored glasses everything looks green.

But to account for the true revelations of great mystics you do not need the Zohar. There is more or less a basic path that people can follow--of separation from pleasures of this world and to spend time learning Torah. That in and of itself leads to attachment with the Divine.


But to account for mystic revelation I think the best approach is the Kant Friesian School which is a kind of Neo Kant School different than the Marburg School of Herman Cohen.

[The sad thing is no one has translated Leonard Nelson which is a very important development of Kant. So unless you have time to go and learn him in German, he is more or less a closed book. However Dr Kelley Ross does make up for that to some degree in his development of Nelson's Philosophy. But that still does not replace the original.]



The fact is that kabalah has flavor. It is Geshmak. But not accurate. And the more people depend on the Zohar, the more they fall in delusions. The reason is that the Zohar itself has a certain flaw. Though it was written to encourage people towards the service of God and is based on previous great books like the Sefer yezira. Still the intention of presenting it s as if it was written by R Simon Ben Yochai leaves it with a certain degree of some aspect of the Sitra Achra, a sort of spirit of fraud. Andthat spirit gets into people that learn it.

the four elements that turns up in Kabalah

The odd thing about the four elements that turns up in Kabalah quite a lot is that it does not really seem to be all that accurate. If the kabalists were receiving this idea  by Ruach Hakodesh [the Divine Spirit] then it seems that they were being fooled. If they were just borrowing from Aristotle and the ancient Greeks then why not at least attribute their sources?
[The four elements idea in fact seems to have been an obstacle instead of a help in coming to understand the nature of matter and energy. It took a lot of effort of Boyle, Dalton, Newton, Locke et al to get to the idea that matter has elements that are not divided so neatly into Fire Water Air and Dirt.




The system of the Ari towards the end of the Eitz Haim also has the regular Ptolemaic scenario of the sun going around the Earth.

While I would not doubt the Ari and the Remak [Moshe Cordovaro] on the deeper meaning of Torah, still I tend to limit their validity to areas outside of their expertise.

However when I really what to learn about the Wisdom of God as it is revealed in the Work of Creation and the Divine Chariot as the Sages said it seem to me that the Rambam and Ibn Pakuda were more correct to say that that is what the ancient Greeks were learning and what they called Physics.


[Also the עם כל דא [although] that comes up all the time in the Zohar is a medieval invention of the Ibn Tibon family meant to replace the other ways of saying "although" that you have in the Midrash and Gemara like אף על פי, אף על גב which are in fact really difficult. (One means "also on the mouth," the other is "also on the back.") You can see why Ibn Tibon would have replaced them. But this does show that the Zohar is not from R Shimon Ben Yochai.]

Rav Isaac of Aco asked the person that publicized the Zohar in Spain about the original manuscript. But was never shown it, and when he asked his wife about it, she said there was no original manuscript.

[It is like people are looking for  a Jewish point of view about the world, and kabalah seems to be the only thing out there that is presented as authentically Jewish and has flavor and interest. But is it so accurate? Once I stated looking for accuracy in my world view, the Zohar seemed less impressive. But as far as mysticism goes I think Rav Avraham Abulafia and the Ari and Remnak are important. However at least Rav Abulafia was simply stating his own revelations with no reference to any books at all. [He even attacked the kabalists.] This seems a lot better than even the Ari or Remak who are basing themselves on the Zohar at least to some extent. And philosophy does not seem to have any validity at all. Philosophers spend their time wondering what scientists do and thinking about words. Philosophy is meaningless.]

Recovered memories

Recovered memories are just one of many examples how people get work themselves into a frenzy to believe what they want to believe.

This all goes back to Howard Bloom's the Lucifer Principle. People get hard wired to hold to certain beliefs. [e.g. like their father raped them.] And then after a certain age the belief is transformed from software to hardware. That is the way circuit boards are made nowadays as opposed to long ago.
Once long ago you could rewire a circuit board because it was made of removable parts . But after the transistors were thought up by Shockley people started making the wiring onto boards and then putting them into the oven to harden them. after that you can not change the wiring. It is hard wired. All you can do is to throw out circuit board and make a new one.
That is how people's brains work. They accept certain beliefs because their mother told them so. After that it becomes hardwired.

Self justification is the way people makes excuses for what they ought to know is wrong. Recovered memories is one of the ways people do that.

The best approach to combat self justification is to get the meme at a young age.

The best approach to combat self justification is to get the meme at a young age. That is to learn the Shaari Teshuva by R. Yona of Gerondi.[Gates of Repentance.]

That is to get it hard wired into yourself to not assume your are correct but to check your work.

This is one of the great advantages of the Musar Movement of R Israel Salanter that he emphasized the classical works of Ethics from the Middle Ages which includes the Gates of Repentance.