Electricity on Shabat

On the subject of Electricity on Shabat: if you invent elaborate enough evasions, you can make any idea at all work.
What happened is no one cares about the Chazon Ish but forbidding electricity on Shabat is a good way to de-legitimize Reform Jews.

Orthodox Judaism encountered, and failed, its first great test of whether it had the qualities a truly religious person is supposed to have: humility, and respect for the truth. (Sorry the first great test was Charles Darwin. No sorry the first one was the Rambam. At least that test the Jewish people passed well enough. Though his philosophy is not taken seriously by any Jewish group, at least he is accepted as part of the cannon.)


But I can understand why someone would want to be strict like the Chazon Ish just from faith that he knew what he was talking about (faith in the wise), but personally I have never been able to make any sense out of that particular place where he says using electricity is binyan בנין.
(It fits with the Gemara but it introduces an outside principle not implicit in the Gemara-- plus it is against all the Rishonim. Given enough ad-hoc postulates, it is possible to make any theory, no matter how bizarre, work.)


I once thought the Chazon Ish had some support from an argument in Kelim between the Rambam and Raavd. But subsequent thought convinced me that neither the Rambam or Raavad gave him any support.
And the problem is in fact greater than this. The problem is that in the Chazon Ish most of the time he is absolutely brilliant. But then sometimes out of the blue he writes stuff that just makes  no sense.

Reb Shelomo Zalman Aurbach  spent a lot of time in his book trying to disprove  the Chazon Ish, but then put in some statement at the end to make it politically correct--(not for halacha he wrote)

The best reason to forbid electricity I could ever come up with to say that electricity should be forbidden is in the fact the basic act of work of lighting a fire is when it is in order to make coal [as was done in the Tabernacles], so that a light bulb would be forbidden by מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה  work done not for its own sake. If electricity was fire then this would in fact be forbidden. The problem really comes from the fact that electricity is not fire

Rebitzin's husband: Adam,
What do you mean, don't quote R' Shlomo Zalman? Of course in Meorei Esh he attempts to completely disprove previous halachic understandings of electricity, including that of the Chazon Ish. However, what do you mean that his psak forbidding electricity was to be "politically correct"? He forbids on a Torah level an incandescent light-bulb as you mention, and forbids ALL other electrical devices because of minhag. I am pretty confident that just as he davened maariv every night, he did not use electricity on shabbat.




Me: True he also noticed that particular Rambam about the burning coal. If that is what he is standing on then you are right-a light bulb is forbidden according to that Rambam.

Later I heard Rav Shach [Menachem Eliezer Shach] discusses this and in particular brings that Rambam about the coal. But I don't have his book.  In the meantime I did a little work on "work that is not necessary for its purpose" concerning coals. This area of investigation is totally separate from the making vessels or building aspect on things and here I admit that I did not finish. The reason being that we were in the middle of that Tosphot in Yoma, [You know which one. The biggest Tosphot in Shas, page 34.] and then I saw the Rabbi Akiva Eiger who tries to prove the opinion of the Aruch. At that point I gave up and decided to go to Sanhedrin. I admit there is still plenty of work to do on this issue but so far I have not seen a thing which would indicate any problem about electricity.
I must have written on some blog some of the issue that came up in those days. The main area of investigation at this point seems to the page in Tractate Kritut and the Reb Chaim Halevi Soloveitchik.
The major point that comes up is that burning of a fire is liable when one's intension is to make coals. And this seems to be the case no matter how you look at מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה.
That is to say there is an argument how to understand this basic concept. But no matter turning on an electric light is not going to be considered needed for its sake in any case.
So since we go by Rabbi Shimon this at least is not liable. And the Rambam that thinks it is liable is because he does not decide like Rabbi Shimon.

But so far all we have is an electric light which is far anyway from electricity in general

The higher root of sex.

higher root of sex. Freud insisted in seeing animal urges in all higher human aspirations. And he had to do this because the teleology of Aristotle had been rejected by science for many years and Freud wanted his steam engine model of human psychology to be respected as a science. But this resulted in the amazing failure of psychology to see goals and principles in human beings. And in the Orthodox Jewish frum world the attitude towards sex comes from the Puritans--also no insight.



Many people thought by psychology they would reach sexual happiness. This was the sexual revolution. Instead it left people with all the same problem but no way to even begin to understand from where those problems come from. So immediately after the sexual revolution came the extreme vilification of sex by the Feminist movement with an explicit understanding by therapists and psychologists that all men are sexual abusers and most men (expect of course psychologists and therapists) were all child abusers.
As opposed to all this stupidity and wickedness, the approach of the Torah is special and amazing and refreshing --that sex is powerful and holy but needs to be directed towards marriage. Because sex is the most powerful force in the universe and the most holy. It is like a atomic reactor. When it is running alright then there is a great energy and power. But when things get off track --then the result is nothing less than total disaster.

My approach to sex was based on the ideas of Rav Yaakov Emden in his Sidur.

Sexuality is the center of life. Not reducing it to the basement of the human being deserves study.


 And it is not simple. Mainly you need a Neo Platonic idea of the world in the first place which people don't have anymore.

You need a concept that sex between a man and his wife does great corrections in the higher worlds and the more holiness in that relationship the more corrections are done. If done with attachment with God, sex is the highest divine service. But if a person is not attached in his soul to God, then sex  loses its holiness. So according to the degree sex is removed from this standard, that is the degree it loses it holiness and becomes a tool of the Sitra Achra, [the Dark Realm].

My approach to sex was based on the ideas of Yaakov Emden in his Sidur. That is to sanctify oneself before the act and during. Especially when conception is possible. [Read the Sidur, I do not want to be a spoiler, but the main idea there was when conception is possible it it must be after the exact  middle of the night and only on Friday night. That is when holy souls come into the world.] That is you have to calculate the exact middle of the night of Friday night and go  to the mikvah or a river or lake and pray to merit to bring in holy souls into the world.
[The way to go into a cold river is to take off your shoes first and dip you feet into the water.Then draw out your feet. Then the pants, and to go into the water up to your waist. Then leave the water. At that point the body knows that you are going into cold water so it automatically begins to send the blood into the inner region of the thighs, and the outer areas become used to the cold. Only then do you take off your coat and shirt and go into the water only once [as the Rambam said.] Also your feet need to be not on the snow or cold ground, but on a towel or other piece of clothing.

Franz Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig seemed to me to be over influenced by Hegel. Yet on the other hand I understand the need for Reform Judaism to have some book to base their movement on besides the Guide for the Perplexed and after all the Star of Redemption is a deep book. But that still does not make it a great book or a book you you base a meme on. This is why reform Judaism flounders. But in their need for a modern Jewish thinker they are not alone.
The problem really is that after the Rambam there has not been a Jewish philosopher of his stature. [i would perhaps suggest Leonard Nelson.--the neo Friesian. See kelley ross' web site for information ]

Love

I want to mention few words about my parents

Their relationship had the effect on me that I was permanently effected by this rose colored picture of reality. Things may be hard,  but they retain this rosy soft color for me. I believe love, marriage, and having children as the greatest privilege a man or woman can have. This image in my mind was definitely painted by my parents.

Beyond this was also Mom's and Dad's introducing me to amazing aspects of the world--Torah, Einstein, the Mount Palomar Observatory, Cal Tech, Mozart. [I went with my Dad to the yearly Alumni day at Cal Tech.] [My Dad gave me the Magic Flute by Mozart for a Hanukkah present.]

 Also he brought me to his laboratory in TRW where he was the chief scientist working on laser communication for the SDI, (i.e the Star Wars) Strategic Defense Initiative for NASA.

(My Dad was working on laser communication in connection with SDI (Star Wars). He was the head of the team that developed it. He was the head of the engineering team that made the infrared night vision at Monmouth, NJ.)

Incidentally, he was the first to create a camera that could detect infra red waves --i.e. he made the first night vision device for the USA Army. [There was a write up about it in Life magazine. His sister told my brother that my grandmother would have given ten years of her life just to see my Dad's picture in Life magazine. Life magazine July 26. Pages 24-26 ] Later he made the camera for the U-2 spy plane. [Later note. I am not sure, but it looks to me that the reason his name is not mentioned in connection with the U-2 is from what my brother told me there were two teams, and the camera from the other team was the one they used on the U-2 most often. My dad's camera was used less often. It was extremely sharp but bulky.  ] Incidentally, almost all the scientists that created the devices that make the American military the top in the world were all created by Jewish and German scientists. Frankly speaking they were mostly Jewish. In the lab where my Dad created the infrared telescope, there were 50 Jews and one German. (From what I can tell without the Jewish input into American technology, America would not be a first world power.) (All the Jews were fired after McCarty held a press conference there; except for the two top scientists, my Dad and a friend, Marcus. But they were brought back shortly after that. But that was the reason my Dad and Berny Marcus moved to California.) Also I might mention, my Dad was a Captain in the US Air Force during World War Two, and later worked for the Army on many secret projects which I still know nothing about.) Their attitude towards us children and their tolerance and wisdom in guiding us was amazing. We sure gave them hell with our own stubbornness and the atmosphere of the times that rewarded subordination against parents --and yet we must remember that they were not superhuman. They had no good information about how to raise children or how to act in society. Everything they did was intuitive. But their combination of tolerance but firm guidance was amazing.

In short their approach was "to be a mensch." That is a decent human being. That was their idea of what Torah is about. It is  a kind of balance between obligation between man and God and between man and his fellow man. You could say it was their way of keeping the Ten Commandments, but that in itself nowadays has become subject to debate. But if one tries to keep the Ten Commandments simply and plainly that just about approximates as closely as possible the approach of my parents.--As in: Don't lie. Don't cheat. Honor your parents, Belief in God, etc.

On Shabat we went to Temple Israel in Hollywood and that is where I had my bar mitzvah. Jewish education was very important to my parents. I remember that we also went sometimes to Mount Sinai conservative synagogue.
Their approach towards Torah was one of balance.  That is it is good to keep Torah but with balance.תורה עם דרך ארץ. Torah with a vocation. [But Torah with Dereck Eretz means more than just a vocation. It means the whole spectrum of being a "mensch."]

The way I try to live this dream is by a kind of balance between learning the Oral Law Gemara, Rashi Tosphot, along with Physics, and outdoor skills.

After High School I went to Shar Yashuv [a yeshiva in N.Y.] and then to the Mir in NY and then to the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Mainly I am trying to walk in the way my parents taught to me. Torah and Dereck Eretz. The kinds of learning were very different. Shar Yashuv concentrated on לחשבן את הסוגיה to calculate the sugia. They were open about that. The Mir however was more interested in global issues as you would see in the book of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik.[However each Rosh Yeshiva at the Mir had his own set of ideas he would give over in each lesson. The only one however that wrote his ideas down was the Sukat David.] In any case, in my own learning I try to combine both approaches.

I feel that after the 60's when academic standards and requirements were lowered because of affirmative action that the result was that a humanities degree and a social science degree are worthless.

I feel that after the 60's when academic standards and requirements were lowered because of affirmative action that the result was that a humanities degree and a social science degree are worthless. (I have to say there are Achronim that I respect like the Aruch Hashulchan and the actual commentaries on the page of Shuclan Aruch. Achronim (later authorities after Yoseph Karo) written on the Shas (Talmud) like the Maharsha are the exception here. They tend to be very good.)
(The scam of the insane religious world  is that it is built on the Achronim or later authorities that simply ignore anything in Talmud or first authorities that seems to them to be not strict or fanatic enough. This used to have the name of Maharil'ism but now you could call it Mishna Brura'ism.)

So the Gemara has great validity in the realm of value. But what value structure is implicit in the Gemara itself?


And this affects the very future of Democracy. For the modern world is a result of a small handful of thinkers starting with Machiavelli up until John Locke. Yet this Enlightenment project has come to a crisis of no content inside the human being.\
 Freud to saw all higher aspects of a human being as coming from his basement (Id).

My basic approach is to accept John Locke in the political sphere and inside of political society I put civil society. And civil society needs a spiritual backbone which I consider to be Torah and Talmud. But this would not give the Talmud authority in the political realm. For the realm of freedom is the thing in itself--the core of individual.
 
The result of the Enlightenment thinkers is that wonder of the world,-- the U.S.A. But this wonder of the ages has become under siege. It values are no longer treasured. Freedom is seen as sham. Human rights has become a mercenary tool to deprive others of their rights to their own property and freedoms.

.
  Democracy is no longer in danger because of the Soviet Union. It is now in danger from within. The rot has spread so deeply that some leaders of the free world are conspiring to make it no longer free.

I say that only the Torah can't hold up democracy any more. But when Torah becomes a tool of oppression then where can we go for help?

  This is where Reb Nachman becomes essential. Reb Nachman is the only thinker that sees the source of value and authority in the individual. In fact the only path to God in the thought of Reb Nachman is by the aspect of "one was Abraham."
RN said: "Abraham served God only by this aspect that he thought in his own mind that he is alone in the world with God and he did not look on any obstacles from people discouraging him."
And this is where Reb Nachman adds the key words--"and similarly any person that wants to come to God can do so only in this manner --of thinking he is alone and not paying attention to those who try to prevent him."

Rosh Hashana in Uman

I want to suggest that Hobbes and John Locke were correct about human rights. This is an essential aspect of natural law (Avrahamic law in the conceptual scheme of the Rambam). But there are many problems in John Locke. The most obvious one is that there is no social contract!! (Kelley Ross used the word "implied" (i.e. implied social contract in order to answer this question.)
But the attack on the Enlightenment starting in Rousseau and reaching it intellectual low in Marx I disagree with.
I suggest the Rambam saw all of this before it happened. and suggested Divine law as a higher category than natural law--but that you need the natural law for it to be based on [otherwise what looks like Divine law maybe be the based on communion with the spirit that pervades the universe (chasidut)--not with communion with the Creator of the universe.]
And we find that even divine law depends on natural law dorshin taama dekra. (which in one place the Rambam says is the even for a Law of the written Torah (deurita din) if the reason does not apply then the law does not apply.)
This is to say in politics I agree with John Locke and I place the emphasis on freedom--not equality like the school of Marx and Rousseau. In fact I say that equality is not a ideal at all and contrary to reason. And this can be proved logically.
But I am seeing Democracy implode on itself just like Aristotle foresaw that it would. I think that Democracy can't be held up without The Torah to back in up in private life.

Rosh Hashanah in Uman

terrorism

September 11

September 11

What is lacking here is the recognition that faithful, religious, believing Muslims (not fanatics--rather simply believers in the simple meaning of the Koran) attacked the Jewish people and America and Western civilization. Moses already had an answer for that. "Call to them for peace; and if they don't accept people, then give it to them over the head." (or something like that)

After Pearl Harbour not only did we defeat Japan and Germany, with no quarter given, but went on to crush and obliterate the ideologies that drove them. The result is a decent and democratic Germany and Japan, never again to return to their self-destructive ideologies.

IN opposition to this, the actual response after 9/11 has been weak and self-defeating. The result is that Islam is empowered worldwide, and more so in America. What else can one expect when the immediate response of Pres Bush after 9/11 was to visit a mosque and proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace.

A way of seeing the hidden nature of reality.
This starts with Huygens principle (Huygens proposed that every point to which a luminous disturbance reaches becomes a source of a spherical wave) and a vector potential (that is something that you take its derivative and you get a vector field) called A which is the potential that you derive the Maxwell equations from.
The next step is to look at the scattering of a wave of an electron acts when it interacts with another electron. (This is by the Born approximation).
Then you have to see how this scattering is described by a Green's function.
(The Green's function is something you put into an integral--like a kernel to make the integral come out to be a solution of a non homogeneous differential equation.
It sounds mysterious but in fact most people are probably already familiar with in in the regular context of integral equations in which there is a function you put inside the integral to make the equation come out just right.


)

So you see that when you are looking at an electron that is in close contact with another then you are really looking at a very small part of the actual infinite electron wave.
This was suggested by David Bohm to show how reality might have higher layers.
This seems to be born out by string theory. the only real rival to strings was the GUTs but the fact that the blue and red light from that super nova a few years ago arrived at the same time showed that all GUT s are wrong. This left String Theory the only person still standing in the ring. (Its projective aspect is a refinement of David Bohm idea of noticing how the Green's function takes a little piece of the infinite electron wave.)


I mean to say that the Mind body solution is very trivialized nowadays because people in general don't understand the problem and therefore think they have solutions when they in fact do not.
The mind body problem comes from five basic facts that are all very hard to deny and yet they contradict.
Personally i think the one fact that might be the weak link in the chain may be the fact that mental states do not seem derivable from physical states. Kindness, opinions, love do not seem to be properties of atoms.
I suggest that since the first one cell organism at some point seems to have swallowed a bacteria which became its nucleus that we can see a mental state coming from the characteristics of atoms. Ie the larger call wanted to eat the smaller bacteria and it could not because of the defenses of the bacteria and so the bacteria became a nucleus inside the cell.
This would push back the mind body problem to God the creator of the laws of physics and of matter and energy himself. i.e. it dissolves the mind body problem and simply says that mind states are derivable from physical states and the only mystery remains God himself.

Accusing Richard Feynman of being anti women.

Richard Feynman wrote, I received a long letter from a feminist group. I was accused of being anti-woman because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There's a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop's definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the woman look stupid.
The other story they objected to was told by the great astronomer Arthur Eddington, who had just figured out that the stars get their power from burning hydrogen in a nuclear reaction producing helium. He recounted how, on the night after his discovery, he was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend. She said, "Look how pretty the stars shine!" To which he replied, "Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows how they shine." He was describing a kind of wonderful loneliness you have when you make a discovery.
The letter claimed that I was saying a woman is incapable of understanding nuclear reactions.
I figured there was no point in trying to answer their accusations in detail, so I wrote a short letter back to them: "Don't bug me, man!"
Needless to say, that didn't work too well. Another letter came: "Your response to our letter of September 29th is unsatisfactory ..."—blah, blah, blah. This letter warned that if I didn't get the publisher to revise the things they objected to, there would be trouble.
I ignored the letter and forgot about it.
A year or so later, the American Association of Physics Teachers awarded me a prize for writing those books, and asked me to speak at their meeting in San Francisco. My sister, Joan, lived in Palo Alto—an hour's drive away—so I stayed with her the night before and we went to the meeting together.
As we approached the lecture hall, we found people standing there giving out handbills to everybody going in. We each took one, and glanced at it. At the top it said, "A PROTEST." Then it showed excerpts from the letters they sent me, and my response (in full). It concluded in large letters: "FEYNMAN SEXIST PIG!"
Joan stopped suddenly and rushed back: "These are interesting," she said to the protester. "I'd like some more of them!"
When she caught up with me, she said, "Gee whiz, Richard; what did you do?"
I told her what had happened as we walked into the hall.
At the front of the hall, near the stage, were two prominent women in the American Association of Physics Teachers. One was in charge of women's affairs for the organization, and the other way Fay Ajzenberg, a professor of physics I knew, from Pennsylvania. They saw me coming down towards the stage accompanied by this woman with a fistful of handbills, talking to me. Fay walked up to her and said, "Do you realize that Professor Feynman has a sister that he encouraged to go into physics, and that she has a Ph.D. in physics?"
"Of course I do," said Joan. "I'm that sister!"
Fay and her associate explained to me that the protesters were a group—led by a man, ironically—who were always disrupting meetings in Berkeley. "We'll sit on either side of you to show our solidarity, and just before you speak, I'll get up and say something to quiet the protesters," Fay said.
Because there was another talk before mine, I had time to think of something to say. I thanked Fay but declined her offer.
As soon as I got up to speak, half a dozen protesters marched down to the front of the lecture hall and paraded right below the stage, holding their picket signs high, chanting, "Feynman sexist pig! Feynman sexist pig!"
I began my talk by telling the protesters, "I'm sorry that my short answer to your letter brought you here unnecessarily. There are more serious places to direct one's attention towards improving the status of women in physics than these relatively trivial mistakes—if that's what you want to call them—in a textbook. But perhaps, after all, it's good that you came. For women do indeed suffer from prejudice and discrimination in physics, and your presence here today serves to remind us of these difficulties and the need to remedy them."
The protesters looked at one another. Their picket signs began to come slowly down, like sails in a dying wind.
I continued: "Even though the American Association of Physics Teachers has given me an award for teaching, I must confess I don't now how to teach. Therefore, I have nothing to say about teaching. Instead, I would like to talk about something that will be especially interesting to the women in the audience: I would like to talk about the structure of the proton."
The protesters put their picket signs down and walked off. My hosts told me later that the man and his group of protesters had never been defeated so easily....
After my talk, some of the protesters came up to press me about the woman-driver story. "Why did it have to be a woman driver?" they said. "You are implying that all women are bad drivers."
"But the woman makes the cop look bad," I said. "Why aren't you concerned about the cop?"
"That's what you expect from cops!" one of the protesters said. "They're all pigs!"
"But you should be concerned," I said. "I forgot to say in the story that the cop was a woman!"

The pluses and minuses of Nachman of Uman.

The minuses:

(1) The groups founded on him are cults. ( Versions of the Rimbardo prison experiment.)

(2) Groups founded on him are innocent when it comes to science. But his paradigm of believing in all saints (tzadikim) can solve this problem in potential, since believing in all saints (tzadikm) includes Maimonides who made it his major project to marry Aristotle and Torah together.
The innocence in regard to science is also a problem in the Litvak world (see Genesis and the Big Bang) but at least there is acknowledgment of the validity of science in the realms where it applies.

Pluses are he was a true tzadik filled with great advice. If people would not have turned his "thing" into  a cult, he would be a great role model.


The major issue with Reb Nachman is the movement he was involved with was put into excommunication by the Gra for good reasons. Reb Nachman by himself is obviously amazing and fantastic. But combined with that movement,  that ruins the whole thing.



Appendix:
1) The Rambam (Maimonides) had a system. The idea of his system was that in the Torah there are no contradictions. and he expanded that to include the Talmud. So in his system there is no contradiction between Torah and Talmud. Furthermore he also had a modified Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian system {that he does not define exactly} and this system he assumes is the underlying world view of Torah.

The idea that there is no contradiction in Torah was common in the Middle Ages.  It led Aquinas to create his system based on his idea that there is no contradiction between the Old Testament and the NT and later people called the church fathers and Boethius. This is very different from today when people feel they individually interpret the Torah to mean what they feel it means to them. Or when groups interpret the Torah to mean what it means to their particular charismatic leader.

There is no idea that the Torah is a self constant whole that means something very specific and and nothing else. and that meaning can be discovered by human reason. For if it could not be discovered then why was the Torah given at all in the first place? So in terms of understanding the Torah we have to call the Middle Ages the "Age of Reason." the period stated after the middle ages we should call the age of darkness.

Even in Musar you can see this. Musar had three distinct periods: (1) The Middle Ages, (2)  then all Musar became Kabalistic, and then (3) the post Israel Salanter Musar which was getting back to \the Talmud kind of Musar

Marxist mouthpieces.

Many people wonder why the social studies and humanities of American universities are all Marxist mouthpieces. This is no mystery. Both departments were targeted and penetrated by the GRU.
I used to speculate that maybe it was the KGB that managed to turn the collage professors and get them into their pocket but now I have come across some information that in fact it was the GRU and not the KGB.
Obviously the KGB had a lot of interest in the hippies in the 1960 but they were did not take any active part. They simply saw that it would be too difficult to influence America through its collage students. It was the GRU that saw that all they needed to do was to get the collage humanities and social studies professors in their pocket and that would trickle down to the collage students that would eventually become America's leaders. And in that way they succeeded in putting a closet Marxist into power in America even after the USSR became defunct.

In the word of Steven Dutch
When we try to discover what fascism, Marxism, and radical Islam have in common, the field shrinks to a single common theme: hatred of democracy.

Here is the answer of Dr. Kelly Ross about the need for non intuitive immediate knowledge.


"Kant's sees the content of Reason in terms of the forms of logic, as he details in the Analytic of Concepts in the Critique of Pure Reason. This provides thin ground for his view that the concepts of substance, causality, etc. can be derived from these forms by way of the Schematism and the Analytic of Principles. However, none of this provides more than the quid facti -- that we have in fact such concepts. The quid juris, that we are justified in using them, is something else. That is where we get the Transcendental Deduction, and this indeed is the answer to Hume. We are justified in using the concepts because they have already been used to generate, through synthesis, our experience of the phenomenal world.

"Non-intuitive immediate" knowledge does away with Kant's approach that rational truths come out of the forms of logic. The theory is more Platonic, but without the temptation of intuitive justification that bloomed in Neoplatonism. Instead, mediate knowledge, which represents immediate knowledge, is tested by Socratic examination and falsification -- i.e. discovering possible contradictions."

(Best wishes,
Kelley Ross )

This was in answer to my question why reason alone can't take the place of non intuitive immediate knowledge.
I did not mention the fact that I did not make up this question on my own but I saw it in Mike Huemer. I have anyway assumed for a long time that Kant was building on Hume to discount mediate knowledge and this has bothered me greatly.
I did not want to mention Mike Huemer because I needed to hear what Dr. Ross would answer to the question directly without having to deal with people's other opinions.
I am still very afraid of the sin of gossip (lashon hara) and try not to mention anyone's name in a negative context--even on my blog.


Anyway look at this sentence: "...mediate knowledge, which represents immediate knowledge." You can see that Dr Ross is holding a close connection between what reason by itself perceives and what this beyond reason faculty perceives.
This is what I have suspected for a long time: that reason is closely connected to non intuitive immediate knowledge. Dr. Ross calls it a "representation." What does this mean? Is it like the way we perceive the "thing in itself"?
Does he in fact mean that nonintuitive immediate knowledge perceives universals the way the senses perceive the "thing in itself"?
I am thinking of writing to him again but I want to be sure to frame my question in the right way.
I don't want this to turn into a debate between great thinkers. I just want to understand Kelly Ross properly.
Also I am not sure how to frame my question. You see in his letter (I hope he forgives me for publishing without his permission) he again says the same thing that has been bothering me. He limits reason to perceiving outright contradictions. Why can't reason perceive universals also?
And perhaps even more? In the mind of Maimonides and Ibn Pakuda (author of Chovot Levavot Duties of the Heart) there is a point that reason gets so perfected that it starts to perceive spiritual reality also; and one comes to attachment to God! This is the Rambam's program of devekut (attachment with God --as opposed to oneness with God)--Torah, then Physics, then Metaphysics along with good character.

This from a bewildered Texas rancher:

While riding down along the border this morning, I saw a Muslim extremist bobbing in the Rio Grande River- he was struggling to stay afloat because of all the guns and bombs he was carrying.

Along with him was a Mexican who was also struggling to stay afloat because of the large backpack of drugs he has strapped to his back.

It was clear to me that if they didn't get help soon, these men would surely drown. Being a responsible Texan and abiding by the law to help those in distress, I informed the El Paso County Sheriff's Office as well as the US Department of Homeland Security.

Alas- it is now 4pm -both have drowned- and neither authority has even responded!

I'm starting to think I wasted two stamps.

My recommendation is Conservative synagogues or Reform

My recommendation is Conservative synagogues or Reform simply because of the commitment to the "between man and his fellow man" part of the Torah and the realization that that part comes first.

Religious synagogues seem to lack that basic knowledge of what the Torah is really about. And too many doctrines got mixed up with Religious Judaism that come from Shabati Tzvi for my taste. They might not know where they are getting their idea from from, but I do. [Others are beginning to notice this. You can read the three books of Natan the false prophet of the Shatz and discover where most doctrines of the religious today come from.]

Many ideas and approaches from Shabati Tzvi's kabalah got into mainstream Judaism in subterranean ways.
At some point I just could not stomach it anymore.
I also noticed a determined effort to hide any of these connections

The fact is, the links between the religious and and the Shatz are  so  strong that  I am surprised that they are not more widely known. (I think this be a deliberate attempt to  put  some  "distance" between the Shatz and his false prophet Natan  and the religious world?)  Actually,  one only has to Take a cursory look at the readily-available information to begin to see  the  very strong linkages.

[No critique intended on Reb Nachman himself who was a tzadik in spite of his being born into a false movement.]

The  problem in the religious world is  the problem of the Sitra Achra, the spirit of uncleanliness that came in through the Shatz but evolved in order to sneak in in more clear and subtle ways. This is readily seen in the leaders who are guilty of spiritual abuse and manipulation and leave long trails of broken and dead souls behind them. When the religious world worships corpses and human beings and then has teh audacity to lie about it and cover it up, then you know it is time to move on and move out.

https://sites.google.com/site/midifilesfamily/
This is music written on midi files.

The problems with Orthodox Judaism are several. And the reasons for the problems are twofold.
Moral corruption and mental corruption and spiritual corruption are the problems.

The reason for these problems is a dark side has gotten mixed with Torah.
Therefore the solution is two fold.
First is to subtract the books that have gotten mixed up with Torah that are disguised as Torah but are in fact planted agents from the Sitra Achra (Dark Side). The way to do this is to determine which exact books represent Jewish spirituality and morality in its highest form. That would be The Old Testament, the Mishna and Talmud.
Almost all other books are planted agents from the Dark Side.
Most Musar books (even classical Musar) are from the Dark Side --from people that their mental processes determined that the Rambam (Maimonides) was a heretic. We for some strange reason still read and learn their books as if they have something intelligent to say about morality.
How can anyone who considered the Rambam a heretic have anything intelligent to say about Torah or morality or spirituality?
The next step is a bit more subtle. After the destruction of the first temple the ten spheres of holiness fell into the Dark Side. This is the reason that right at that time several aspects of holiness are seen to have gone to Athens and the Far East. The only Sephere that remained in Israel was Royalty which is contained in the Talmud.
It would be supposedly an easy task of finding the other spheres and brining them back into the realm of holiness except they all became mixed up with the dark side.
so the separating process has to be done there also.
It is also important to identify locations of positive holy energy and negative energy and mixed energy. Positive energy places like the Mir in Brooklyn are easy to tell. You just walk in the door and you know what they place is about without anyone having to tell you. It hits you in an instant.
Mixed places are harder to understand. This is the paradox of Noga-- the intermediate zone--it is helpful for some and hurtful for others.
These places have a seductive power given to them from below in order to create zones of darkness.

Cults

The Zimardo study shows cultist principles apply to any closed group. Add a little theology with that and you have a full fledged cult. The point is to stay away from all spiritual schools--period. It does not matter if the leader is totally enlightened or just in the intermediate zone or con artist.






In Kabalah we find that everything must start with thought; then trickle down to speech; and only then come to deed. Philosophy for better or worse is the beginning of everything. Before there could be an America there had to be a John Locke, Hobbes, and John Calvin.
But this morality (what was called by Rousseau "bourgeois") gives legitimacy to the self enlightened person. While the Enlightenment originally meant to strip priests and princes of their power and put the industrious man in its place, this ideal has been corrupted

Maimonides spelled out the proper path of attachment to God and enlightenment

I believe the Rambam (Maimonides) spelled out the proper path of "devekut" (attachment to God)and enlightenment--Talmud, Physics, Meta-physics.
I think that a lot of the many problems in the Jewish world come from the fact that this plan and path of the Rambam is not taken seriously.
In the Rambam's approach, Talmud and his own Mishna Torah are not meant to displace Philosophy and Science. They are meant as introductions to philosophy and science.

But even in science and philosophy the Rambam has a very specific path in mind. That would be to learn only natural sciences.
And in philosophy also he would go only with Aristotle and begrudgingly he might say to learn Plato after Aristotle in order to understand Aristotle. I personally can't agree with that. Because Aristotle has a few problem if taken alone.
A good example of a problem in Aristotle is the fact that the form of the tree is not visible in the seed.

The best thing in my mind would have been to go back to Plato instead of the radical Abelard approach where there are no universals.

What caused the problem of Islamic expansion in America. To my mind it is explained very nicely in the closing of the American mind by Allen Bloom. The basic idea is that there were real problems in Medieval philosophy and in the medieval system.
The solution proposed by the Enlightenment Philosophers, Freedom and Justice (and thinkers among whom Calvin was one and also highly influenced John Locke) eventually became one of the wonders of the world--the United States of America.
But in this solution there remained great problems that were noticed by Rousseau. from the array of problem in the Enlightenment project became the Left--the French revolution and communistic Russia. This does not mean the problems with America are not there. It simply means the project of the enlightenment is incomplete.

But this left an opening for Islam to expand. When a fascination of the noble savage gained prominence in Christian lands this was easily misunderstood and identified with Muslims. the myth of the noble savage led to many unfortunate incidents when people discovered the adjective (''noble'') missing.

The Ancient Greeks rise like a Phoenix in every generation which is looking for new inspiration.
At the end of the middle ages the world needed new understanding of what a human being is and what a proper politically and religious system might be. It went to the Greeks for inspiration. They survive and thrive through the most contrary ages between pagan Rome, Athens, Christian Europe, then the Renaissance ages.
This is because the sparks of holiness of wisdom and beauty and royalty fell to ancient Athens. Similarly when an age need new spiritual inspiration they go to the ancient Hindus. They also arise Phoenix like in every searching generation. Even in the Jewish world to understand what people are talking about one needs to go to the ancient Hindus otherwise you know you are getting information second and third and that has been watered down and the Hindu names attached to the doctrines are taken out and the teachings are then ascribed to Kabalah.

German philosophers are like that also.

For better or worse even in the Jewish world people think in Nietzschian terms of "self esteem" and the "ego" and "Id" and "subconscious" and "life style" and "values" and "commitments and goals"all easily tranced to Nietzsche and appropriated by Freud and other later thinkers. (No books before Nietzsche said that you are thinking thoughts that you don't know you are thinking. The discovery of the Id goes directly to Nietzsche.) Even the modern gurus had go the Nietzsche for the subconscious and the Id.

My complaint about all this is that I am not much of a fan of Nietzsche. Nor Hegel which are the sources of most Jewish though today (The ideal of the state of Israel being the realization of the spirit of Israel, Rav Kook got from Hegel the state being concrete essence of the Spirit of God in the world.)

halacha. i used to think a lot more about halacha than i do nowadays.
Though the Gemara is a master piece and the rambam has never been matched before of after in his redaction of the halacha but the problems are several.. First for something to have hope of being a moral system it should be logically derivable from it that unmoral actions should be forbidden-- and not just derababan.
Since this is not derivable from halacha therefore halacha needs to be combined with reason in the typical rambam and old sefaradi school of thought (Rif and chovot levavot etc.)
I say this with sadness because i used to think that sincere commitment to halacha was enough to make a person moral. The sad truth is that it does not. Only that after a person is already moral then halacha can guide one to devekut in God.

But even halacha itself i have a few comments about.
Shulchan aruch was never written as a pesak halach rather as a short review of the beit yoseph. the beit yoseph itself is not the actual opinion of the beit yoseph. he wrote that he wanted to write his opinion but that road is short but long. So instead he wrote the majority of rif rambam and rosh. In plain English that means he poskin like the rambam except for ketuboth. but the idea was that comminities were going in different directions in pesak and the beit yoseph wanted to make a sefer that everyone would accept--even if it is not his actual opinion. This is a major problem in the idea of the validity of the shulch an aruch as being a viable halacha sefer. It was written to be political correct --not to be accurate.
The other problem is that when you say shulch aruch what exactly do you mean. The shach taz and magen avraham on almost every page disagree with the shulchan aruch. The actual page is many different conflicting opinions.
In my opinion the only real halacha sefer ever written is the rambam with the rif a close second.The rest iof iy is just like some kid with a crayon trying to copy the Mona Lisa/.
The further problem is that it is a mask to hide rabbinic agendas.
So my actual opinion of halacha (which i wrote in my little booklet on bava metzia) is that the only real source of halacha is the Talmud. The rambam himself claims validity only in so far as it can be proven that his pesak is the real pesak of the gemara.

  The modern dilemma. It is the search for meaning. With many so called "Torah" books the problem is there has to be some possibility that the author had some idea of the meaning of life.
  

  This you don't see much in Musar [books on ethics]. Musar today has de-evolved into simply psychology.
And Psychology has no coherent theory of the human being. It has one school in which man is simply matter --Skinner. Another school which is just the opposite.
  

The Litvak approach is in essence a straightforward attempt to get back to classical Torah of Talmud and the medieval Jewish thinkers. This is admirable. And it has an important ethical backbone. And that ethical part of it is important because devekut [attachment to God] is impossible without ethics.

  However there are flaws in Medieval system. These flaws were there in the first place and creating a pseudo Middle Ages --i.e. a movement to supposedly return to that type of mentality does not work.
And it's weakness is already apparent by the fact that Nietzsche has already conquered  ultra religious Judaism (by way of his messengers Weber and Freud.). You can't have a conversation with a ultra religious person without Nietzschean concepts --commitments, life-goals life-style, values, self esteem taking over.
I was having a conversation with one religious person who had never even heard of Nietzsche and had learned in Satmer his entire life, and he was trying to prove to me that the Rambam hold lack of self esteem is the source of sin--not pride. You see from this that chasidic thought has been emptied out and replaced by Nietzsche's thought.

Plato or Shakespeare

There is a richness of thought in certain Jewish books like the Tenach. They have taste and content. In the secular world the appreciation of such books is rare. Instead there is psychology which has no coherent picture of a human being but can make lots of money by the pretense that it does. I think that you might be used to the spiritual content of great books of Torah and perhaps find the secular world a bit shallow when it comes to the understanding of a human being. I recommend finding the great books that would satisfy your soul. I don't say they have to be Jewish.
Plato or Shakespeare might be the right thing for you. Feed yourself on the best and the great thinkers and great spiritual people.

There are very good and important values in Torah.

There are very good and important values in Torah.
I think there are three great books in the Torah world–the Old Testament, the writings of the Ari'zal . Somehow it seems to me that these books reveal a depth of the human being not found in other Torah books. My question to many people  why throw out the baby with the bath water? Why not still keep Torah as a pipeline that can connect one with God? This does not imply that it automatically works but that it can work. The problem with the secular world is that there is freedom to think but no thoughts to think. You need some book that can provide you with depth and guidance.

idols

Idolatry is the attempt to draw down into a physical object the spirit of some spirit or being besides God.
In the Torah we find spirits besides God --serafim, ofanim, refaim, seirim etc. To believe that these forces exit is not idolatry. To pray to them is. Pantheism is not the faith of the Torah. The faith of the Torah is Monotheism. And considering God separate from the world is not idolatry. Monotheism does not deal with the question of God's physical location. 

Rambam rational

There was traditionally a school of thought that thought there was a mystical element in the Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides. The mystic Abraham Abulafia wrote a whole mystical commentary on that book and also said the secret of the redemption is contained in the first 40 chapters of the Guide.

The Rashba however was not thrilled by Avraham Abulafia. I have mixed feeling about the Rashba. His letters attacking the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam and the great mystic,  Avraham Abulfia annoy me. And yet he is quoted by the Maharsha. In general you can see people that were against the Rambam still being quoted by the great achronim (later authorities) like  Akiva Eiger. So who am I to judge? If the Maharsha saw value in the Rashba then maybe you could attribute the whole thing to the "Argument between saints." Two true points of view that are not consistent one with the other ontological un-decidablity .  The existence of the world depends on there being  the Empty Space (חלל הפנוי) that needed to be created by God so that there could be a creation. See beginning of the Eitz Chaim and the Mavo Shearim of Isaac Luria for details.]
Schelling says the same thing: This is the emergence of the finite world of entities that are connected to each other in an infinite chain of predicates from an originary indifference which is unconditioned. This emergence is not a smooth transition but a qualitative leap, a diversion, a falling away (Abfall) from its originary ground. And this in fact comes from the preSocratics.  [I got that quote from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]



And as for the Rambam himself: apparently there is a mystic element in the Rambam that goes along with the  Geonic school of thought of the Chovot Levavaot (Duties of the Heart) that seems to have begun with Saadia Geon.
There was traditionally a school of thought that thought there was a mystical element in the Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides. The mystic Abraham Abulafia wrote a whole mystical commentary on that book and also said the secret of the redemption is contained in the first 40 chapters.

[Incidentally, you can get his works in Mea Shearim bookstores nowadays. It used to be the case that you had to learn him with microfilm in the basement of Hebrew University. But recently someone printed them in regular Hebrew. But I perhaps should mention that they are difficult to understand. Professor Moshe Idel at Hebrew U and made a career of studying and publishing about Avraham Abulafia.]


,

Fear of God

I would like to suggest that the basic path of fear of God of Torah is well explained in Gemara and Musar.


That is why I think education should be first:  the great books--Torah, Talmud,  Plato, Aristotle, the Ari. These are world books that extend infinitely beyond their time and space. Then there are lesser books which are also important which also extend beyond their time and space but not infinitely--i.e.  and Kant.

The problem though with Kabalah as some people have noticed that the Dark Side gets into the act.  Nowadays they are almost synonymous. And with chasidut a similar kind of problem exists--it is idolatry.


My suggestion for fear of God in a proper way is to "learn Torah." [That is the idea of Reb Shmuel Berenbaum, of the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY. His answer to most people when they came to him with some kind of problem was to learn Torah. This is in accord with the general idea that the Torah {the Oral and Written Law} contains all the answers to life's problems. I should mention that "learning Torah" in the Lithuanian yeshiva world is  considered a life goal in itself. The idea is that by learning Torah one brings good things into one's own life and into the world in general. This is a radical idea I know and hard to accept. But it is the major premise of all Litvak Yeshivas.

Worship as Will

Worship as Will
Of Man
1)

 To him the soul was not the bottom of the ladder (the bottom of all creation) but contained all the good and evil worlds, and in it is room for much more.


But his idea of the "self" is different from that of Nietzsche [which was borrowed by Freud and modern psychology.] Nietzsche opened the door for the idea of false consciousness- which is so well used by the Left. If people don't want what the Socialist government tells them is for their good, it is because they don't really know what they want--false consciousness. the depths of the soul into subterranean hell and into the highest of heaven are vast--but one always retains free will and knows what he is choosing.









Faith
2) The faith is faith in God now— faith in God is trust in God right now. Not any theology . Just simple plain trust in God right now. Anything that detracts from that, like creating articles of faith outside of that simple principle is simply a trick of the sitra achra (Dark Side) to detract from faith.\

 Prayer is actual prayer--not Shemona Esra. ) [Rav Shick did try to tell people \the Torah itself is pantheism. However this goes against the understanding that the Rambam and Saadia Gaon and all the rishonim (first authorities) had of the Torah. Plus לבד  means "alone". For example I  can say," I went to the market alone without Joe." So when the Torah says אין עוד מלבדו. It means nothing exists alone without God. No one that ever knew Hebrew thought it means pantheism. It is well known that the world view of Torah is monotheism.]
It is common to find books that supposedly explain the Torah but in fact change its meaning. That is why it is important to stick with books from the Middle Ages which were written before the different falsifying movements began. However the Musar schools of Israel Salanter do attempt to understand teh Torah as it is without changing its message to fit their agenda.



Reason and Faith
3) The crisis of our age is that our first principles are contradictory and incoherent. Reason and Faith (as in belief in reason and belief in Torah) is an absolute contradiction in belief.
4)a strong connection between reason and faith,  but it can't be at the expense of nullifying the essence of either one.

5) Just like the human brain is structured like a computer with levels and sub-levels so all aspects of a human being are reflected in mathematics. But the connection is inverse. It is not parallel but anti parallel. For in the purest form of mathematics logic there is absolute necessity but zero content—the sentence of logic can stand for anything you like. A sentence “A” can stand for any proposition you like and formal logic just deals with sentence like A, B etc. Spirit it is just the opposite. God is perfectly free. He is not bound but the law of contradiction, but he is infinite in content. Similarly everything in Mathematics is located in soul in an inverse relation.



6) There is a third type of perception that is not based on sensory perception and not on reason. It is called faith. It is how God is sensed. The first thing is to have faith and then a type of perception comes in. This is how the writings of the Arizal work also—one believes and then perception comes in. The main thing about it is it perceives content while reason only perceives form or universals.

7)  The rejection of reason is the equivalent of the rejection of morality.-This does not happen at first but eventually rejecting reason means a persons loses his conscience-- because all moral values have their basis in reason. One could object that he believes in Torah and that is a higher morality than reason, but in fact even the mitzvot of the Torah are perceived through the sense of reason (beside the fact that the Rambam and the Gemara understood that all mitzvot are based on some reason and are not goals in themselves).

8) There are different types of perception. Sometimes there is a zadik had the spiritual type and therefore he is believable in that area but not in areas where that kind of perception is not relevant—like areas of music or reason or justice or morality.


Values

9)  the underlying values in Torah.  speaking with God simply with no formulas, faith in God not in doctrines nor faith in books, the disagreement between tzadikim and also the disagreement between system of thought—all this to   is in the category of ontological ignorance. Not only that we don’t know and can't know but also that that lack of knowledge leads to great things e.g. the existence of the world itself depends on that lack of knowledge.

10) At first I thought there are paths of holiness. For a Jew only the Jewish path works. There are religions that are straightforward evil. But outside of them many religions have some very important elements of good and one born inside of that system should stay they and just ignore or get rid of the bad elements. But even a good path like Torah can become perverted. It can start out in the direction of God but right before it gets there it veers off to the side.
But now this seems to me now to be ridiculous—there are not several paths to holiness. There is only one—simple plain human decency and morality-pay your bills speak the truth, don't steal, honor your parents. i.e. The common sense morality of the Ten Commandments.)





Education

13) That means I am essentially saying a very simple thing: that education should consist of learning the great Torah books that deal with the essential questions of life—the existence of God, the meaning of life, is there reward and punishment? What is good? What is justice? Therefore the books that I think people should learn are the Torah, the oral and written law.[i.e.Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud, Tosepfta, Sifri, Sifra. [You don't need to do every Rashi if you understand the Gemara, but you do need to do every Tosphot and Maharsha] This should not be particularly hard of you learn fast--say the words and go on. saying the words brings the מקיפים (surrounding light) of what you are learning closer]. But this also means not reading books that destroy the mind and morals. It means being able to discern what are really great books and what are modern fads, and shiny new theories that will disappear in a short time because essential they are just second rate hacks offering up re-digested material they got from else where and are presenting it as if it is original thought. (World books—books that contain a picture of the whole world and there is at least a possibility that they are believable and know something about what they are talking about and have some essential insights about human beings and human problems. And possible solutions)

) Existence itself is a field. Abstract objects hit the field and then start existing. Like when an electron hits a magnetic field and starts reacting.



) The indication is that fields of existence or of justice or music or morality are fields. That is why music was specifically in the area and time that it was. It is why Kabalah was specifically in Tzfat in the specific time and place that it was .
Talmud Study

16) Rather that the Gemara is a path to the light for one who already has good character traits.
Misuse of the Talmud does not cancel use. One can learn from the Talmud great morality and decency. That is the proper use of the Talmud. But one can misuse it also.

17) The unreasonable ineffectiveness of Musar (Books about Ethics written during the Middle Ages) to make moral people is disturbing. This is what I always noticed about Musar. It was not very effective to change people’s character. The reason is that it is not believable that it has some deep insight in life or human beings or the universe in general.

18) Torah has holiness and brings one close to God—but only to the degree that it influences one not to lie, not steal, to honor his parents, pay his debts, work honestly for a living. I.e. the essence of Torah is this and everything else about Torah has value only to the degree it is connected and brings to this. And that there is only one path towards the infinite light of God and it is to never lie and never to allow a lie into ones soul. It is not by lots of prayer or learning Torah.




19)  The purpose of Creation is to know God. Torah is to know God. But to know that something exists is not the same as knowing what it is. “To know God” means content. And that can't be known by doctrines and dogma. That comes by a simple faith that is totally independent of any doctrine not opposed to anything and is totally self sufficient. And it effects an person’s entire personality and every waking thought.

A school that would take the Rambam would learn Mishne Torah, Aristotle's Metaphysics, and Physics

I suggest a school that would take the Rambam/Maimonides seriously. That would be Tenach [Old Testament] and the Mishna Torah of the Rambam himself (containing the entire oral law) plus Maase Merchava (Aristotle and Plato) and Maase Breshit (Math, Physics, chemistry, and Biology.)Talmud \The Rambam also held it is a small thing as compared to science and philosophy (as he understood science and philosophy which means Greek philosophy and natural science—not all the nonsense today which poses as science).

 To understand halacha, is impossible without the Rambam. (The Beit Yoseph wanted to decide like the Rambam. And he knew the Rambam and the Rif always poskin (decide) the same way except in one particular tractate (Ketubot) in which they always disagree. Saying to go by the majority of Rif, Rambam, and Rosh just means that he decided like the Rambam in 80% of cases. Still I admit to understand the Rambam on any particular case without the Gemara is also impossible.

I met one fellow who had a edition of the Mishne Torah with no commentary at all. That seems to me to be  a great idea for a halacha session. But it does not take the place of learning Gemara.


To sum up: In the Mir Yeshiva in NY there was an official Halacah session from 9:15 AM until 10:00 AM. In practice this  was only from 9:30 until 10. At 10:00 you learned Talmud until 1:45 PM which is when the Musar session began. What I suggest for halacah is to do the Tur, Beit Yosef. In the afternoon learn the Metaphysics of Aristotle as the Rambam said and also Modern Physics. This would be the complete Rambam program in three easy steps.

(1) Rambam with the Gemara and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri, (2)The Metaphysics of Aristotle. (3) Physics. 

HI

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Is it not better to see the chazon ish as simply seeing the failure of musar to create moral people even to the degree of having a simple understanding of the difference between right and wrong and concluding that no one has so far not found a better solution that sitting and learning Gemara?I do agree that it might have been deeper also. Perhaps the Chazon Ish had discovered the vast underworlds inside the Self that he thought was better not to open up like some Pandora’s box. I see all the time all types of distorted warped sanctimonious personalities that come out of of the religious world.

The Ari over the Ramak

 Kabalah. There are serious problems involved in learning it. The Ari himself warns that one who is not properly prepared, Kabalah kills them--spiritually. [That statemnt is in Parshat Haazinu]. [And the Ari repeats this warning  a few places].  That means: they enter into the Intermediate Zone and think they have reached great spiritual heights, when really they have sunken deeply into a world illusion. And who am I to argue with Isaac Luria?
So learning Kabalah at all should be short and sweet.--if at all.
And if you do learn it at least make sure it is authentic.

Kabalah in the Ashkenazic world after 1700's  got thematic material from Shabati Tzvi. Plus most Ashkenazic interpretations of the Ari are all derived from Natan the false prophet of the Shatz.

So my recommendation when it comes to Kabbalah is to learn one or all three of these schools of thought: 1) Reshash (Shalom Sharabi) --in Jerusalem that would be the yeshiva, Shaar Hashamayim of Mordechai Sharabi. 2) Yaakov Abuchatzeira --in Israel that would be David Abuchatzeira in Nahariya. 3) Moshe Luzzatto.

You could do this on your own if you are not in Israel. The Kabbalah Center in Israel has a great edition of the Ari, with Shalom Sharabi's book in the back of the Eitz Chaim and the notes of the disciple of the Ashlag. And that is a very good place to start.
As for what people are looking for authentic kabbalists or mystics-- I think many descendants of Bava Sali [maybe all] have some degree of the Divine Spirit because of some kind of merit that he must have had.
In Netivot, I was very impressed with Shimon Buso, a grandson of Bava Sali from the side of his mother. If authentic mystics is what you are looking for, that is probably the first place I would start.--and his mother also -the daughter of Bava Sali Avigail Buso.

But outside of that Abuchatzeira  family, I would avoid mystics. Most are heavily into the Intermediate Zone, and drag their followers down into the bowels of hell with them. I see this all the time.

In the thought of Isaac Luria the way the world was created was this

 In the thought of Isaac Luria the way the world was created was this: (step 1) The light of God is everywhere and thus no place for creation. (step 2) He withdraws himself from a certain area to create an empty space ("the Halal Hapanui"). (step 3) Then He sends down his light into that space; first as 10 circles [concentric spheres like an onion], and then in the form of a human being (Adam Kadmon), mentioned by Hegel.  (Step 4) Then the light comes down from Adam Kadmon to make the world of "Nekudim". (step 5) Shevirat Hakelim breaking of the vessels of Nekudim. (step 6) Bringing up the broken vessels and bringing down the light of the Divine name 45 to create the world of Emanation. (step 7) Ditto for the world of Creation, Formation and then the Physical Universe.

[This is based mainly on the verses of the Old Testament about the kings of Edom mentioned in Genesis.]

The main place to learn this is in the עץ חיים or מבוא שערים.

[I should mention that the Gra held highly with the Ari.]

The major thing to learn in the Ari is the Tree of Life.  In terms of the intentions I have found the best thing is the large sidur of the grandson of the Reshash. If one does not have that, then the best in the small set of the Sidur HaReshash. Both are good but the large sidur is more thorough. [The small one is actually a version not directly from the Reshash himself.]  

The Rambam posits a system of a priori values that the mitzvoth are to bring to.

Learning Rambam is not claiming he had absolute truth.
It is searching to truth and justice. The Rambam posits a system of a priori values that the mitzvas are to bring to. [The Sefer Hachinuch brings them on each commandment] Certainly you will admit that is already an improvement on judicial activism of Supreme Court judges that think that if they say something that makes it moral and obligatory for people to listen to them. 

But there are books on a secondary level that are needed to find the depth of the first level books--for instance Aristotle I think is necessary to understand Plato. Some later people are important to understand Kant.

So an author like Reb Chayim HaLevi is important to understand the depth of a first level person like Maimonides. For example most people open up a Rambam and don’t see any problem at all. (They never get past the superficial level.)

What happens when you read book is your stream of consciousness is focused into what the book is saying. And if it is bad it can affect you badly. And some of it might even seep into your sub level subconscious]

I think most problems in the  world comes from a blurring of the distinction between
 books and great  books.
I mean there are  Jewish books that are not great. Even bad. [What happens when you read book is your stream of consciousness is focused into what the book is saying. And if it is bad it can affect you badly. And some of it might even seep into your sub level subconscious]



My orientation is as a Rationalist. But that does not cancel out the fact that I believe knowledge is available by non rational non perceptive means.
I have great respect for the Ari (Isaac Luria)and Rambam
The general rule of thumb I would like to suggest is that people learn the great books of Torah that are original, fresh, powerful, i.e. The Torah, Talmud (Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot).

The more spirit the less form

The more spirit the less form. Content increases as form lessens. In total form (logic) each sentence has no content (the sentences of logic are just A, B, C and you can fill them with anything) then science has more content but less formal logic behind it. Then morality and ethics has even more content (people and the meaning of life) the God is beyond logical form (even the impossible is possible) but total content. So in this context I would say that the religious world in as much as it stresses halacha [law] loses spiritual content

Rational Approach to the Torah [Maimonides]

I wrote only a short note before about my personal experience. I wanted to leave my answer out of it. But I do have an answer. I believe that the Rambam's rational approach to Judaism holds the key. In the way of thinking of the Rambam's [Maimonides] Reason (i.e. Aristotle's Logic and Metaphysics) and Torah are one organic whole. I think where Judaism (Yidishkeit) went wrong was when this Rambam approach was rejected. (One example of the way of thought of the Rambam is the parable of the King in the Guide for the Perplexed.) In this parable there is a king with a country. People outside the country are barbarians. People in the country are goyim with civilization. People near the palace of the king are Talmudic scholars that know and keep the whole Torah. People in palace are natural scientists. People with the King (God) are the philosophers and prophets.
You can see this approach also in Saadia Geon and the Chovot Levavot [a medieval book on ethics, Duties of the Heart].
This rational approach to Torah was wide spread during the Middle Ages. I think after the time of the Rambam,Yidishkeit deteriorated into fanaticism.
The "Middle Ages" were the age of reason. You almost can never punch a hole in an argument of a medieval philosopher whether Anselm or Maimonides or Aquinas. The characteristic of the great Mediaeval thinkers was that every counter argument against them can usually shows the shallow thinking of the one trying to find the hole. Later thinkers never approach that degree of rigorous thought--ever-- even Kant. 
 The greatness of the Renaissance was in art and in the beginning of empirical thought-not reason

a priori values

A priori values. Freedom and Reason. Sometimes there comes a person into the world whose purpose is to reveal some a priori value.
Or President Kennedy bringing the idea of jogging into national consciousness.
The Rambam also discovered the value of the fusion of Torah with reason.
But with every value that is revealed there is a false value which surrounds it. And there are "chevra mans" that pretend to be supporting the true value, but enforce the false value.
(Just like the idea of freedom got perverted in America to mean the welfare state--the right not be to be insulted, the right to feel good etc.)
The truth be told, we need a process by which good values can be separated from bad values.
To reveal the combination of all good values, that can't happen until one discovers the process by which bad values can be sifted out.
I believe that there is a minimum requirement for a moral value system--that it should be logically deducible from it that murder, rape, and torture of 10 million people is wrong.  Neither does Islam fulfill that requirement. But if you would take the Talmud along with Maimonides who says that the mitzvoth have a priori rational basis under them that determines how the halacha is applied, then Torah and Talmud could be part of a moral system. But only in connection with this idea of Maimonides. Without  him, the Torah could be  as vicious and evil as Islam.