60 Spirituality Studies Another aspect of the issue is the characteristic of the relationship between possibilities and actual states of the spatiotemporal realm. There is a long-standing debate between at least two perspectives on this issue. The first is actualism, a common view among empiricists, which considers possibilities as secondary, namely, as mental constructs derived from experience with the actual spatiotemporal world. It views actuality as the limit of what exists and equates it with “the world”. Menzel (2022) links this approach to early Putnam (1975) and Kripke (1980). The second, which I adopt in this article, is often referred to as possibilism, or, from a different angle, realism, Platonism, or, specifically regarding Lewis’s theory of possible worlds, Modal Realism. It sees possibilities as preceding and as sources of the spatiotemporal world. It views the realm of possibilities as no less a part of reality – possibly even closer to the core of reality – while spatiotemporal actuality is only one aspect of being or reality, not necessarily the most accurate representation of it as a whole (on the difference between possibility and potentiality see Menzel 2022, 2025; Lowe 2008; Tahko 2023; Vetter 2010, 2018). Under this last perspective, I assume that “actualizing” or “not actualizing” possibilities at the spatiotemporal level of being, that is, the way we act, talk, and mentally behave (feel, think, emotionally react, etc.), does not bluntly affect the realm of possibilities. In other words, painting the wall green does not erase the possibility of it being red. To return to the main discussion on Da'at as the realm of formalized possibilities, by symbolized, formulated, or “offthe-shelf” possibilities (the content of the consciousness while it pays attention and awareness to the movement from Da’at to Chesed), I mean possibilities or potentialities that, while totally abstract within Binah or Chochmah, have been humanly formulated and symbolized. For example, a category of (1) letters, numbers, as well as words in their conceptual level; a category of (2) formulated “images” or other characterizations of places and characters as concepts (say Paradise, Harry Potter, Tokyo, and Angela Merkel); a category of (3) all the syntactical and semantic formulated symbols in our languages, among them “and”, “or”, “therefore”, and the spatiotemporal relations as concepts as well; a category of (4) propositions, arguments, narratives, social and constitutional laws, and possible theories in any discipline or practice. Two remarks concerning the Sefirah of formulated possibilities. First, Angela Merkel is an entity of Da’at, because if something is actual, then it must be possible. Thus, the realm of possibilities includes, as possibilities, entities such as you, me, the oak tree in the street, or the city of London. Second, formulated possibilities or ideas include statements like “an average human can hold their breath for 20 minutes underwater” or “people love their neighbors as themselves”. Some possibilities, such as “the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees”, are necessarily true within the axioms of Euclidean geometry. Other scenarios, such as “Hamlet will be performed on stage” or “the presidents of the USA and Russia will read a passage from J. S. Mill together”, are possible but not necessary; their actualization is uncertain despite the existing conditions. We can distinguish between real possibilities, which have some measure of existence, and pseudo-possibilities, which are impossible. For instance, it may be possible (real possibility) for human life expectancy to reach, sometime in the far future, 150 or 300 years, while it is a pseudo-possibility that a tile on the floor could give birth to a baby whale. Additionally, we differentiate between a priori possibilities, which we encounter through reasoning, and a posteriori possibilities, which we encounter through empirical or historical events. The measure of the realness of the whole realm of possibilities exceeds that of the spatiotemporal realm (Malchut to Chesed) (Lowe 2008; Tahko 2023; and, of course, Plato and many realists and Platonists in the tradition of philosophy). Its existence is eternal, immutable, and outside time and space. The possibility that the cosmos would be actualized had existed before the Big Bang. Therefore, metaphysically, this realm is closer to the essence of Being than all the distinct spatiotemporal entities and language-bound relative identities [5]. In brief, at stage seven of the spiritual development, attention to the movement between Da’at and Chesed reveals formulated, symbolized possibilities: concepts, narratives, theories, explanations, logics, principles, which are influenced, to some measure, by Being-ness and Its Truth, Good, Justice, and Beauty, as well as by our spatiotemporal deeds, talks, and mental behavior (see Plato 1969, Rep. 4:443e–444a; Shneur Zalman 1973). 5.7.1 On the Actualization-Worth of Possibilities Beyond containing formulated possibilities, this dimension includes principles regarding which ideas are good, true, just, or beautiful to apply and actualize within specific spatiotemporal contexts, as well as the measure of worth in applying them at all levels of the Sefirot.
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