Nephesh

But for our purposes right now, the earliest source that specifically delineates the five levels of the soul is the Zohar itself in the portion of Terumah, and there it says that there are five names for the soul.

And the five names for the soul in Hebrew are Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah, Chaya, and Yechida.

Those are the five levels.

Now, later Kabbalists spell it out even more, and they explain what are these five.

And I think of the, the, the most interesting way to say this, that's-- which with my friend Adam told me is that they correspond to five levels of consciousness.

So we're gonna build upon that, but just for now, there's five levels.

And what are the five levels? So the Ramchal from the seventeen hundreds in Italy, big Kabbalist, says this, that the Nefesh, the lowest level, lives in a person's liver, and the Ruach lives in a person's heart, the Neshamah lives in a person's brain, and the Chaya above that sur- surrounds a person's body, and the Yechida surrounds a person's head.

Okay? It surrounds a person's head.

We have these words rach and neshama and nefesh.

And part of where it can be so quibbly is, okay, where do we translate a spirit and where do we translate a soul? which might feel like really low stakes parsing hair semantically.

Part of why I feel drawn to it is because taking just to start Neshama and Nefesh, which are both referenced in this verse of animating the first human in the Garden of Eden, which we learn as little kids, it's extended well beyond the Jewish space where it feels like, yeah, this is the myth of how humans were formed, but it really is in Western culture.

It's from, you know, it's this Jewish foundation story.

And it says, Classically by a pop pop nishmat Chayim and God blew in the nostrils in their nostrils, the breath of life, nishmat Chayim by he had done the Nefesh Chaya and the human became a living being, a living soul, a living Nefesh.

And so if we have these two words from these two different roots, Nefesh and Nashama.

What is what here? And if we have, which we do, two words in English, soul and spirit, then it seems like a nice model to say, okay, maybe we can apply one and one to keep some distinction.

And is there a meaningful way to do that? And personally, I like spirit for my little...

They are called also three degrees or vital spirit, intellectual spirit and soul proper.

Nephesh is the fallible part, for sin is suggested neither by ruah nor neshamah.

It is said elsewhere and more plainly that the vital spirit sins, but not the soul.

The three degrees are superposed one upon another in the order already given, and neshamah is attached to God.

The spirit of light and the intellectual spirit dwell together and depend one upon the other, but the soul is independent of both.

Another thesis is that when man proposes to live in purity, heaven comes to his aid, granting him the holy soul by which he is purified and sanctified.

But if he be unworthy and will not live in purity, he is animated only by Nephesh and Ruah.

It is obvious that this fails to concur with the earlier statement, which represents Ruah as a gift to be earned.

The place within a human where this presumptuousness lives is here translated to English as the soul.

In Hebrew, the word is nephesh.

Now, nephesh has a wide range of meaning, from indicating a living being To the seat of our emotions, to the center of life, to what gives a person their sense of self, or as here, it is translated as soul.

In my opinion, that range of meaning is so broad that to reduce it all or perhaps to combine all these attributes to the word soul makes soul nearly indefinable.

I have spoken before how the word Elohim was proclaimed by interpreters as meaning God.

Remember, what's happening here is that the term the righteous, meaning the group that is the faithful remnant of God's people, is being set against the arrogant, meaning the group that is against God and therefore also against the righteous.

And as verse 5 continues, we are told that the arrogant keep expanding their desires.

Desires is how the complete Jewish Bible translates the word nephesh in this verse.

Mibeit timing for two reasons.

So the same idea, but now it's gonna be in a much more pronounced and a higher dimension of this Rotsav Hashuw, because obviously the Nefesh has a role to play that rest of existence does not play.

Even the Malachim who sing Shira and the Swashamayim, we talked about the celestial bodies, what we call the heavenly hosts, even they with all their Rotsi Voshuv, but they don't accomplish what a Nefesh has to accomplish.

When a Neshamah comes down below, and we talked about this at length, is gonna compel us to say and understand that this Rotsi Voshuv is far more intense by a Neshamah, but more importantly, it's coming from a Momaila- Midregalyeniesar than the Rotsi Voshuv of the regular energy that vivifies existence.

And we've ala- already learned about Elakim and Avaya at different levels, how Elokus creates, uh, is, is energizes all of existence.

The Primius, because that's the ultimate Kavana.

We learned that, I believe, in the previous Semaimer, but also earlier as well.

So now we're gonna explain the two reasons why it comes from a higher level as Rotsi Voshuv in a Nefesh, in a, in Neshamah.Okay.Mibaes time for two reasons.Haechad, the first reason,lefishi yared venislaves bolovush kasmi.Because the Nefesh of a person, a human Soul descends and enclothes itself, manifests itself in a livush gashmi, in a physical garment which he means here the body and, and general the material world.

So the Hebrew word underneath this verse is one of my favorites.

Nefesh.

Nefesh.

Nun-fe-shin.

That's how it's spelled.

It can mean the being that prays, the breath in a body.

My friends, that's the name for us.

Nefesh.

The Ruach emerges from Zeir Anpin.

And the lowest foundational soul level, the Nefesh, comes from Nukva.

Okay, let's unpack this for a second because it sounds like a cosmic Matryoshka doll.

To understand how a human being operates, we have to look at what these levels actually govern in our daily experience.

And this is the domain of our emotions, our speech, our character traits.

It acts as the connective tissue between our higher thoughts and our physical bodies.

Which brings us to the Nefesh, the animating soul.

Yes, the life force bound directly to our blood.