I was in position to know Rav Shick {Moharosh} fairly well But I think he got way too much into his pantheism thing. This same process happens often with religious leaders. At some point they start getting absorbed into some kind of archetype. [Or they just get too much caught up with themselves.]
I think I gained a great deal by learning the basic path of Rav Shick.
Still the Intermediate Zone has too many problems, and people that get caught in it seem to lose some aspect of their humanness.
The Gra accurately identified this problem, and thus came to be the basic approach of the Litvaks that tends to be straightforward--learn Torah --and don't get into spiritual trips.
The best long and involved treatment of this problem was given by Arubindo, a Hindu saint. And his extended treatment of this problem seems to me to be as accurate as one can get. [What often happens is when people hear about the Intermediate zone and powers that come from the Dark Side they think that is only for those other groups but not our group--because we are on the path of truth. This is in it self usually a delusion.]
Litvaks --if anything simply don't have enough faith in the Gra to realize how accurate he was. Philosophy does not seem to have any way of dealing with the problem of delusion nor have any way of discerning between the different zones. Some people simply dismiss all spiritual phenomena as delusions and this seems to me to be based on scientism--a belief that only what science knows can be true--which is a highly non scientific attitude.
I think I gained a great deal by learning the basic path of Rav Shick.
Still the Intermediate Zone has too many problems, and people that get caught in it seem to lose some aspect of their humanness.
The Gra accurately identified this problem, and thus came to be the basic approach of the Litvaks that tends to be straightforward--learn Torah --and don't get into spiritual trips.
The best long and involved treatment of this problem was given by Arubindo, a Hindu saint. And his extended treatment of this problem seems to me to be as accurate as one can get. [What often happens is when people hear about the Intermediate zone and powers that come from the Dark Side they think that is only for those other groups but not our group--because we are on the path of truth. This is in it self usually a delusion.]
Litvaks --if anything simply don't have enough faith in the Gra to realize how accurate he was. Philosophy does not seem to have any way of dealing with the problem of delusion nor have any way of discerning between the different zones. Some people simply dismiss all spiritual phenomena as delusions and this seems to me to be based on scientism--a belief that only what science knows can be true--which is a highly non scientific attitude.
