The imagination- a tool with an end

Kochos Ha-nefesh
Up to now we examined zoom as a power to manipulate representations. Where are these representations inputted from?
1) The senses provide information about the particulars of our world as they occur in real time. These are projected onto the video or audio of the nefesh screen or as feeling. In the case of the speaker this is seeing the audience, hearing their voices, feeling their emotional reaction.
2) The dimayon ("imagination" or faculty of representation) retains sensory information for higher processing. This processing is done by various tools: A) a tool of imagining external sensory things in situations they have never been. An example of this is picturing things in an audience in a hall that one has never actually seen them in doing things we have never seen them do. (If so and so were at the hall and heard the speech what would he say?) B) A tool for changing my point of view as in being in my body speaking and seeing the audience or looking down at my body considering myself performing or C) a tool for considering how it would be in someone elses shoes seeing the world as the audience or a particular person other than I would.
The “good” or end guiding zoom control
I can zoom in to Earth at various speeds depending upon what systems and subsystems I want to explore. I may want to spend time examining earth as a planet composed of continents. This is done by orbitting at the height at which I naturally focus upon the features of continents. As I guide my nefesh screen upon this focus land masses and oceans, mountain ranges great forests –identifying features of continents come into view. If I consider the wisdom needed for this cradle of life to emerge - this level of focus calls to mind the grandeur of G’s creation. Based upon this metaphor of nefesh one can also begin to understand the notion of "ahava" based upon Rambam as an experience of the nefesh screen.
When a person gains insight into these d’varim, recognizing (the entire hierarchy) of the creations, from angel and galaxy all the way to man (and his environment), and therefore sees the chochma of hashem in all the creations, he adds to his love of the makom, and his soul thirsts and his flesh yearns to love the makom baruch hu. Simultaneously, this person feels a great awe and fear resuting from his smallness and inconsequenciality.
Now I say that it is inappropriate to tour the pardes except for he who has filled his belly with bread and meat. “Bread and meat” refers to knowing the assur and mutar (ie practical principles) in that which is not first principles. Even though these principles are called davar katan... they come first educationally, since they cultivate (meyashvin) the mind and additionally are the great good by which we develop this world (yishuv aretz) and attain the world to come.
In reality, it is not a speech that is the core example that we must always refer back to. Rather it is the first two perakim of brayshees. The default image on our nefesh screen should be the first or second perek of brayshees. All limud will begin with a zooming in or out from this makom. This is well illustrated in the intro to sefer ha-higgayon.
Higgayon techniques and the problem of “shichecha”
When we reflect upon the creations of aretz along with the processes that they undergo, we observe that G has assigned man an essential place in creation- civilizing the world and promoting its well-being as an ecosystem. By performing this role, man brings into actuality an excellence of aretz's creations that had previously existed only in potential.
Our sages, of blessed memory, make this very point when they say that every part of creation stands in need of tikkun. Wheat needs grinding, lupine must be sweetened etc.…
Indeed, it is readily apparent, that natural things, left uncultivated, function incompletely. Only when man intervenes, developing the mechanisms of these natural things along a proper path, do they function completely.
By way of example, the produce of a tree, left wild, is no match in taste or beauty to that of a cultivated tree. The basic principle here is that the creator has left open a space for human accomplishment, namely, when man improves upon nature to the extent he is able. For example, a tree if left alone without cultivation, though it will bear some fruit, it will not compare in taste or beauty, to the produce of a cultivated tree. So too earth itself, if left uncultivated, neither fertilized nor plowed-either will give no produce at all or at best a pitiful one. The general principle being that the creator has left open a place for man to complete the products of nature.
This principle can be applied to the human mind as well. Intellectual apprehension, so long as it is left uncultivated, will suffer from the same kind of lack as a wild tree or field. This lack will not block the mind’s ability to understand many ideas, just as the uncultivated tree is not prevented from producing some fruit. Nonetheless the uncultivated mind’s ability will not compare to its ability after cultivation, just as the fruit of the cultivated tree will not compare to one lacking in cultivation. Therefore alongside study in the various subjects, ie the principles of things, that are the mind’s proper object and without which it cannot develop, so does the mind need to study thought itself, so that its apprehension of these principles be complete and orderly rather than confused and incomplete.
Indeed, it is with this objective in mind, that the wise of previous generations occupied themselves with ordering the processes of thought taking care to order its procedures fully. This was done by reflecting upon the exact manner of the mind’s transformation from unknowing to knowing through the use of models that are truthful or false,to ascertain ways the mind can guard itself from error when theorizing (seeking to establish causes), as well as techniques that facilitate this activity. This overall study is called melechet ha-higgayon.
Ramchal speaks to a person aware of his nefesh screen. He bids this person to mashkif, to see himself from a higher point of view (see Radak on shakaf). This means to use zoom control. Similar to the speaker the reader zooms into the personal environment perspective. He notes how swiftly he forgets the sense of ohr once he zooms into the personal space perspective. However if we pop back and forth from the higher point of view back to personal environment some of the ohr sense can be remembered. Much like an astronaut, one who views man through zoom control can never see Aretz the same again. If we zoom into our little frameworks in Aretz from the higher perspective of universe our whole sense of craft changes. We see our tendency, so long as we fail to zoom in from a larger Shamayim perspective, to view aretz as our own domain subject to our power. Clearly as Ramchal points out, once we zoom into aretz from shamayim we observe that G has assigned man an essential place in creation- civilizing the world and promoting its well-being as an ecosystem. By performing this role, man brings into actuality an excellence of aretz's creations that had previously existed only in potential.