민수기 12:8의 Chasidut

According to this it is clear that all that was mentioned in the above quote in the Zohar, Parshat Pinhas – that all of the names, appellations, and attributes, were all created for the purpose of directing the creation – falls within the realm of [God’s] desire to emanate the creation and everything that that includes,²⁴¹Note that the author now applies the concept of a contingent creation not merely to some past occurrence – the Genesis story of the Bible – but to an ongoing, constantly recurring state; meaning to say, just as God originally created the world and everything in it – including human cognition – so He continually creates and renews the world, so that their continued existence is also, at every moment, contingent and mutable. but not above this. For above this, there is no garment or attribute at all. This is as it is written in the Zohar (Parshat Bo, 42a): “To whom shall you liken me, that I shall be his equal, said the Holy One.” (Yeshayahu, 40:25) All of the holy Hayot (angels) are called in the letters of the holy name. This is as it is written (Yeshayahu, 43:6), “All that is called in My name, I have created for My glory.” Everything in the creation was created with the letters of God’s name, and there is no creation that does not have God’s name inscribed in it, in order that one may know who created it. For this reason it is written, “To whom shall you liken Me, that I shall be his equal, said the Holy One.” No creature shall be My equal. Even though I created it in the form of My letters, still, I can erase its form and re-create it as many times as I want, and there is no god above Me that can erase My “form.” Here it is clear that all created beings, even the holy Hayot (angels) and all the supernal powers, even the root of their spiritual forms are only arranged and ordered in holy likenesses, and renewed according to God’s desire. It is in the power of God’s desire to change these likenesses into different forms; for according to the changing of the supernal forms, so will the order of God’s governance change, from the loftiest of heights to the lowliest of levels. This is true even for the nature order of the physical world. There the Zohar concluded (Bo, 42b): If one were to propose a difficulty by quoting the verse (Devarim, 32), “for you saw no image,”²⁴²The verse says, “you saw no image,” not the letter yud, nor the letter vav, or any other letter. How, then, could one say, “Everything in the creation was created with the letters of God’s name, and there is not creation that does not have God’s name inscribed in it”? he will give the answer, “This image I did see, for it is written (Bamidbar, 12:8), “He shall see the vision of God.” “The vision of God,” but not any other vision that He created and formed out of letters.²⁴³That is, you see only the vision of the letters of creation, but no other vision. For this reason it is written (Yeshayahu, 40:25), “To whom shall you liken me, that I shall be his equal.” To whom can God be compared? What form could you possibly ascribe to Him? Even this “form” of God that is accessed by created beings through the letters of creation does not exist in God’s own place, but comes into being when He descends to reign over his creation. Then the vision spreads over the creation, and each one sees it according to his specific ability to perceive. This is as it is written (Hoshea, 12:11), “I have used images through the prophets.” For this reason, God will say to them that even though He appears to them in a vision that they can comprehend, still, “to whom can I be compared,” because before God created any image or formed any form in the world, God was alone without any form or semblance. We have mentioned how all names and appellations of God are created entities, and that before the creation, there was no name or form from the holy forms. This is as it is written Zohar (Bo, 42b): One who receives information about the state of existence before the creation²⁴⁴Despite the limited nature of human cognition, it can receive information about states of existence prior to creation; that is, beyond cognition. However, since that information pertains to unconstricted aspects of Divinity, it is forbidden to make an formal, limited likeness, even in terms of letters, Divine names or other abstract forms. – before there was any form of God’s being that was at all discernable to mankind – is forbidden to make any formal representation of that information, not with the letter Hei nor with the letter Yud. One cannot use a holy name, or even so much as a letter or point to describe this knowledge. This is as the Torah says (Devarim, 4:15), “You did not see any form.” You did not see anything which engenders a likeness or form. However, after God made the form of the holy merkava (chariot) of the supernal man, then God descended there, and He is called in the name of the Tetragrammaton (Yud Hei Vav Hei). This is in order that God may be comprehended through His attributes,²⁴⁵Seven lower Sefirot from Chesed to Malkhut, the supernal source of emotions such as love, fear, pride, and so forth. and perceived through each of His attributes.

Exodus 38,23. “and at his side, Oholiov son of Achisamach ‎of the tribe of Dan, carver and designer, etc.;” Our sages in ‎‎Chagigah 14 comment on the words ‎חרש וחושב‎ by ‎explaining that the word ‎חרש‎, or ‎חרשים‎ refers to a wise student, ‎who as soon as he opens his mouth causes his teachers to become ‎even wiser when they hear his questions, whereas ‎חרשים‎ are ‎people who when they open their mouths cause others to fall ‎silent, acknowledging superior knowledge.‎
Perhaps the Talmud refers to two levels of serving G’d; the ‎first uses his intellect, i.e. the common sense G’d has endowed ‎him with to do so, whereas the second does so by contemplating ‎the enormity of the ‎אין סוף‎, the indescribable superiority of the ‎Creator, something that our common sense cannot even try to ‎comprehend. This distinction has been alluded to in Numbers ‎‎12,8 [where the subject is Miriam and Aaron having ‎compared their statures as prophets to that of Moses, ‎Ed.] When G’d explains to them that Moses’ stature of ‎prophecy enables him to ‎תמונת ה' יביט‎, “to conceptually visualize ‎the Creator as if he saw a picture of Him,” He alluded to the ‎Divine assistance Moses enjoyed when visualizing such difficult ‎concepts. He would only have been able to do so if he had first ‎abandoned and negated any attempt to comprehend G’d’s essence ‎by applying ordinary human intellect. People on that level are ‎described in the Torah as ‎חרש‎, having made themselves deaf to ‎‎“normal” ways of perceiving and comprehending phenomena ‎they see. When a person, after having been granted such ‎superhuman perceptions and insights, reverts to his day to day ‎routine, a residue of his experiences while he was on a higher ‎level remains, i.e. he is filled with ‎שפע‎, divinely transmitted ‎spiritual largesse. As a result he is able to perform the work ‎performed by embroiderers both on blue woolen fabrics, ‎תכלת‎, ‎and on purple and crimson coloured woolen fabrics, ‎ארגמן‎. ‎‎[The finished product of Oholiov’s handiwork reflected ‎that he had been divinely inspired. Ed.]‎

It seems quite clear from several places that the Rambam had possession of a clear tradition of the mysteries of the Torah. Another example is the following. He wrote in the Guide in chapter 45 of the second section, that the eleventh level of prophecy involves, “seeing an angel speaking to one in a vision, as experienced by Avraham Avinu during the binding of Yitzhak. In my opinion this is the highest of the degrees of the prophets – with the exception if Moshe Rabeynu - whose states are attested by the prophetic books, provided he has, as reason demands, his rational faculties fully developed.” In this the Rambam is saying that the level of prophecy experienced by Avraham is the highest degree of prophecy. It follows that the prophecy (of Avraham) recorded in the Torah is of the highest degree known to mankind, save that of Moshe himself, who possessed the absolute highest prophetic perceptions ever. This is what is meant when God describes Moshe by saying (Bamidbar, 12:8), “I will speak to him mouth to mouth,” which attests to the fitness and worthiness of Moshe’s soul. The Mishnah Torah further explains the difference between the prophecy of Moshe and all other prophets.¹¹³See Mishnah Torah, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah (7:6), which spells out the difference between Moshe and other prophets. According to the Rambam, the difference lay in the degree to which the imaginative faculty played a role. When other prophets experienced God speaking to them, they did so through the power of the imagination. Moshe, however, had a direct, intellectual perception of the Divine, without the intermediary of the imaginative faculty, as the verse implies: “And God spoke to Moshe face to face…” (Shemot 33:11) When studying the passages of the Torah concerning prophecy, it is understood that the highest level of prophecy is that which is emanates from the supreme source of prophecy. This is in line with the following passage in the Zohar (Idrat Nasso, 130a), “We have leaned that the name of Atika (the Ancient Holy One)¹¹⁴Atika is one of the highest of the Divine Partsufim (modes of God’s governance) representing absolute and total compassion, beyond the distinctions of good and evil. is hidden above all the rest. It is nowhere explained in the Torah save one place. This is in God’s promise to Avraham (Bereshit, 22:17), where the Lord says, ‘I swear on Myself, saith the Lord.’ Myself is Atika, meaning Ze’ir Anpin¹¹⁵Ze’ir Anpin is the lower more accessible of the Divine Partsufim. It is a level where God’s concealment is broken only through the performance of Mitsvot, prayer, and ethical behavior. swore on Atika.” This is explained in the Beit Yaakov (haKollel, parshat Vayeira, sec. 57).