Four WorldsFour Worlds
The notion that the universe is comprised of four "worlds," or levels of reality, is an ancient one in the Kabbalah, and reflects the understanding that existence is multi-layered, and in a state of dynamic flux. Originally, the four worlds were described from "God's point of view," as levels of manifestation and differentiation, from will to plan to formation to project, or as angelic realms. In later Kabbalah and Hasidism, they came to be described more from the human point of view, as reflecting the experience of spirit, mind, heart, and body. The four worlds are also associated with the "lower" four of the five souls, which derive from the midrash in Bereshit Rabbah 14:9, and are explicated in the Raya Mehemna portion of the Zohar. The fifth level of the soul, yechidah, is less a separate level of the soul than a state in which all manifestation is erased in essential unity. Following the Hasidic paradigm, the four worlds are here presented as they are known experientially, from the human point of view.
Note: this presentation brings together the Lurianic, Hasidic, and neo-Hasidic versions of the four worlds model and should not be used for scholarship purposes. Experientially, however, each of the worlds has a nest of symbolic associations and experiential elements, but perhaps their most important feature is that, because each world is important, the familiar hierarchies of spirit over body, and mind over heart, suddenly make no sense. The worlds of asiyah (action), yetzirah (formation), briyah (creation), and atzilut (emanation) and four souls of nefesh (fleshly, 'earth' soul), ruach (emotional, 'water' soul), neshamah (intellectual, 'air' soul) and chayah (spiritual, 'fire' soul) roughly map onto the familiar matrix of body, heart, mind and spirit. But all are really a reflection of yechidah ("unity"). Thus the ideal is not transcendence alone, but transcendence with inclusion of the "lower" in the "higher." Forgetting the body in favor of the soul is like forgetting the foundation of a house in favor of the living room; it will not hold.
The energetic world of emotions, sensations, feelings
Soul: Ruach/ wind-water-soul
Self: “Soul” colloquially, Faculties of Heart (compassion, fear & desire)
In the Body: Heart center, lungs, circulation/oxygenation
Human expression: Art, poetry, awe, love
World expression: Eros, forces of love and passion, nature in the Romantic sense
Separation: Sex & Violence, hatred, craving-desire
Prayer: Psalms, cultivating the heart
Element: Water
Torah: Remez, allusion, poetry.
One final note about hierarchy. Jewish spiritual practice is an integral practice whose purpose is not to favor the body, heart, mind, or soul over the other parts of the self—but to join all four together, to experience life fully, richly, and deeply. Why obey the dietary laws, if one could contemplate them instead? Why perform a physical circumcision if a "spiritual" one were good enough? Because the "lower" does not merely serve the "higher." The body, independent of the heart's stirring and the misgivings of the intellect, is the site of holiness; even if there is no apparent change in the mind, and no softening of the heart, transformation takes place within the field of the body. This is not consolation; it is liberation. By no longer evaluating experience according to "how it makes me feel," the grip of an important illusion is loosened: the illusion that you are your mind, and that reality only matters when the ego is affected. Thus the body is simultaneously the ground of traditional Jewish law, and the deepest of its esoteric truths. In the Hasidic view, it is in the material plane that the "extension of the light of the Ein Sof" is most expressed. In the nondualistic view, ultimately the highest truth is the "lowest," as essence is manifestation. This is the esoteric reading of the Shema: that the transcendent is the immanent.
Image: the possibility of suicide by Peter Schwartz