The Strife of the Spirit by Adin Steinsaltz (1988, Hardcover)

The Strife of the Spirit is a unique collection of Rabbi Steinsaltz's essays, stories, discourses and interviews that focuses on the needs of today's spiritual seekers and speaks to readers in astonishingly clear and profound terms. These works-in-progress explore such fundamental themes as the nature of the human soul, the path of the penitent, and the relationship between student and text. This book represents Rabbi Steinsaltz’s diverse interests and deep roots in Judaism, which combine to make the Jewish experience meaningful and accessible to the newcomer.
Here are a few excerpts from the book, highly recommended for anyone interested in reawakening his Jewish soul!
The physical world in which we live, the cosmos which we can observe objectively, is one part in a vast system of worlds. The other worlds are for the most part ethereal, that is, nonmaterial. They can be envisaged as different dimensions of being. They do not exist elsewhere, in different sets of spatial coordinates, but rather in another order or plane of being.



Furthermore, as we shall see, these various worlds interpenetrate and interact with each other. In a certain sense it can be said that each of the worlds is a replication, by means of transformation, change, or even distortion, of that immediately above it. World after world is reflected in that which lies below if, and finally all the worlds--with their complex interrelated influence--are projected in to the world we know and experience.



The terms higher and lower do not indicate a physical relationship of altitude, which does not obtain in the spiritual realm, but rather relative positions on the scale of causality. A higher world is more primary, elemental, concentrated; a lower world is secondary, more remote from the primal source, and thus a replication. However, such a replication is not simply a coarser version, but is in itself a total system with a life and existence of its own, and with its own specific properties and characteristics.



The totality of the world in which we live is known as the World of Action. It is the world of our sensual and nonsensual apprehension. It is not, however, homogenous. The lower part is subdivided into an ethereal realm, and what is known as the material World of Action, which is of a physical nature, and is governed by the laws of nature; the upper part, known as the spiritual World of Action, is the realm of spiritual activity.



Common to both parts of the World of Action is man; situated between them, he partakes of both. Insofar as he exists in the lower part, man is governed by the physical, chemical, and biological laws of nature; from the standpoint of his consciousness, even when it is totally concerned with physical or base matters, he belongs to the spiritual part of the World of Action. The ideas of the World of Action are for the most part bound up with the physical world, indeed, they are functions of it. This obtains both for the most exalted speculations of a philosopher and the cruder thought processes of the ignorant savage or the child.
There are millions of angels, and each of them possesses its own unique character. No two are alike. The distinctive personality of a particular angel is a function of two features, which can be termed “content” and “degree.” The content is the specific feeling or emotion, of which the angel is a pure manifestation, and the degree is its position on the scale of fundamental causality....