Sin death and beyond

SIN, DEATH AND BEYOND: M.M.NINAN
In Kabbalah's description of Adam, he originally "extended from one end of the universe to the
other."
"His body reached from earth to heaven [or from one end of the world to the other] before sin
caused him to sink" (Ḥag. 12a, Sanh. 38b; compare also Philo, "Creation of the World," ed.
Mangey, i. 33, 47). (This is referring to the dimensions of the cosmos from material to divine)
Adam filled all the worlds and all dimensions of existence. This means that by virtue of his
knowledge of and relationship to the Edenic universe at large, he represented the totality of all
that was - a unified whole that contained all the elements of life as we know it. The expulsion
of Adam from Eden and the subsequent direct contact with God the Father directly implies the
Spiritual Death. Adam contained all the humans within him.
Talmud says, quoting Rav: “Adam, the first man, reached from one end of the world to the
other. . . . When he sinned, Hashem placed His hand on him and shrank him. . . . “ R. Elazar
also quotes the same almost identically : “Adam, the first man, reached from the earth to the
heavens. . . . When he sinned, God placed his hands on him and shrank him. . . . “ This is the
expulsion from the freedom of the Divine realm. Now on he remained within the lower realms
of physical, soulish and spiritual realms outside of the divine. He could still make contact with
the divine through the spirit but not directly. This is usually termed generally as the Spiritual
Death.
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