Spirituality Studies 59 Arik Segev selfish interest to know, to encounter the good and true Source of all this. This directs attention toward the next movement: from Chesed to Da’at. 5.7 Stage 7. Chesed to Da’at The next spiritual-phenomenological stage marks a transition into a realm that appears as transcendent from a spatiotemporal perspective. It includes (in ascending order) the Sefirot Da’at, Binah, Chochmah, and Keter, evoking experiences and insights into ideas and possibilities. I use “possibilities”, “ideas”, and even “meanings” interchangeably. Da’at (Heb. “Knowledge”) is not always counted among the Sefirot (Steinsaltz 2006, 28; 2025; Matt 1997). Usually, when included, Keter is omitted and vice versa (Steinsaltz 2025). In our interpretation, Da’at and Keter are included together for three reasons. First, although not a direct ontological medium of Being, Da’at is a crucial stage in the phenomenology of Being, that is, the path by which Being is manifested to consciousness, which I attempt to illustrate here. Second, since I focus on the movement between the Sefirot, there are ten movements between the eleven, and including both does not alter but rather preserves the archetypal or typological number of ten. Moreover, when examining each Sefirah individually and not through the movement between them, Keter, as I will suggest later, can be seen as identical to Being’s emanation and the movement between the Sefirot (in the same way that a king’s crown does not just refer to the top of the king’s head but to his whole presence and entire being, including his body, mind, and soul), representing a different medium – less as an instrument or medium itself and more as the content of it. As stated, in the interpretation that will be suggested below, while Da’at is ontologically and creation-wise redundant (because its contents are already present in the combination of Chochmah and Binah, like libraries that store formalized knowledge among the whole truth and all possible knowledge), phenomenologically, it is indispensable since it is how human consciousness accesses the realm of all potential knowledge and truth. Before describing this specific stage, it is helpful to provide a brief overview of Binah (Heb. “understanding”) and Chochmah (Heb. “wisdom”), which I will elaborate on later. Binah is the realm of all possible syntactic structures, thus, of the syntactic building blocks enabling the composition of all possible meanings. Chochmah is the realm of all possible meanings – the semantic building blocks, the core of every content. Da’at (Heb. “knowledge”) between and beneath them contains already formulated and symbolized ideas or possibilities. Again, since it draws from the combination of Binah and Chochmah, every Da’at unit is already, in principle, included. Da’at serves as the entry hall or palace of consciousness into this realm of eternal meanings or possibilities. There are many approaches and theories regarding possibilities or possible worlds (Menzel 2025). I do not commit the description here to one specific approach, even though it is closer to Plantiga’s Abstractionism than Lewis’s (1986) Concretism (Menzel 2025). In addition, I do not use the term possible worlds, but rather, as said, interchangeably, the terms possibilities, ideas, or meanings. By “possibility”, I mean a non-material or spatiotemporal entity that, like all entities, expresses Being by its very existence. By expressing Being, I mean something similar to how a concrete triangle expresses, refers to, or means the definition of a triangle; how a single person expresses the idea of humanity; or how the white light of a crescent moon, or the red color of a rose, expresses, refers to, or means the star we call The Sun or light in general. One of the characteristics of the realm of possibilities is that while in the spatiotemporal world, contingent contradictions exclude each other (the king of England cannot be both eighty years old and not eighty years old; one pixel or subpixel cannot be both blue, red, or green, and so on), in the realm of possibilities, they can. The possibility that the king of England is eighty years old is true, and yet, the possibility that he is not eighty years old is true, even if the actual king is eighty years old, or vice versa. Because even if the king is eighty years old, it is still true that it is possible for him not to be eighty. Another example, an egg cannot be both broken and intact at the same time and in the same place in the spatiotemporal material world. However, these opposing states coexist beyond space, time, and matter in the realm of possibilities. Even when the egg has already been broken, it is still possible that it has not been broken. Therefore, there is a different logic in the “realm” of possibilities where, while in the spatiotemporal world, two contingent, excluding states cannot be both true at the same time and place, they can be both true in the realm of possibilities. Their truth does cohere as possibilities, beyond space, time, and matter, they are both true.
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