"The Way of G-d"
Part 1: "The Fundamental Principles of Reality"
Ch. 5: "The Spiritual Realm"
Paragraph 7
Since, as we've been saying, the transcendent forces are the backdrop behind
everything that happens here on earth, it follows that they're also the
backdrop behind both good and bad things.
Now, that would seem to suggest that G-d is responsible for bad-- since He’s
the backdrop behind the transcendent forces, as we’ve been saying. Yet we saw
early on in this work that G-d is All-Good (see 1:2:1). So how could He be
All-Good yet be responsible for bad?
This will prove to be a rather complex concept, with new terms and
implications. So we’ll lay out the groundwork here, and delve into it in more
detail next time.
We’re taught here that the transcendent forces experience “good” and “bad”,
i.e., favorable or unfavorable conditions, themselves.
But don’t misunderstand-- the transcendent forces are the very most subtle
and immaterial of things. So the sort of favorable or unfavorable conditions
they’d undergo are decidedly out of our own experience, and are only
favorable or unfavorable relevant to each other. There’d be an imponderably
abstruse “hair’s-breadth” difference between the two. Let’s go on from there,
though.
The favorable condition they experience is referred to as the state of
“repair” (“tikkun” in Hebrew), while the unfavorable one is referred to as
the state of “impairment” (“kilkul” in Hebrew).
(Now, only dynamic things can be said to be either “repaired” or “impaired”
rather than “right all along”. That explains why the world itself-- which is
an offshoot of the transcendent forces-- is always in flux and always
advancing or receding.)
The state of “repair” the transcendent forces experience is brought on by
what's called "G-d's shining His light” upon them (i.e., approving of them);
and the state of “impairment” is brought on by what's called "G-d's
withholding His light” from them (i.e., disapproving of them).
There are very many implications to all this. But suffice it to say for our
purposes here that G-d either shines or withholds His "light" each and every
moment-- in varying degrees, in every corner of the universe and our beings--
depending on circumstances. Ramchal’s point is that like everything else,
this phenomenon starts off in the transcendent forces.
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