It should be clear by now that one of the main defenses of Ramak in the Lurianic era is that the Ramak's system it describes a more limited, an earlier stage of the unfolding of the "olamos", the "World of Tohu". While it limits the relevance of Ramak's work, it preserves the validity of Ramak's kabbala from within a Lurianic perspective.
What is "olam hatohu"?
It is a stage after the World of Akudim in which the sefiros came out in the form of ten separate circles or points, one above the other and did not yet relate or interact with one another. Unlike the fully developed and mature vessels of the rectified world of Atzilut to come, these vessels are considered as merely "points." and do not interact. For this reason, this world is also called olam ha'Nekudim, "the world of points."
The world of Nekudim (all of) the lights enter, experiences "breaking of the vessels". The remnants are reconfigured in a way that gives rise to the the worlds of Beriah, Yetsira, Asiaya and results in the formation of a dynamic configuration of sefiros known as Parstufim.
When it is said that the Kabbala of Ramak describes the World of Tohu, what must be meant is that it describes this world, as it exists now within the rectified world of Tikkun, as cited from Leshem in the previous post. It cannot refer to the "historical" World of Tohu, for that world did not have an interaction between sefiros and Ramak's entire thought is based on such interaction ( this appears to be the opinion of the Lubavitecher Rebbe as well, see below). This requires elaboration but not now.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe was a strong defender of Ramak. On many occasions , and publicly, he referred to the fact that the kabbala of Ramak was accepted by Besht and the Maggid of Mezeritch. In an exchange of letters with Rabbis Ishaya Zelig Margolis and Menachcm Zev Haleivy Greenglass of Yerushalaim, he expressed the view that Achiah Hashiloni and Elahu Hanavi, the teachers of Besht, "knew what matters can be relied on" and that acceptability of Ramak (and Emek Hamelech" is based on what they passed on to Besht. On other occasions he called Ramak "Tohu Shebatikkun" and of Ari, "Tikkun shebatikkun". It seems to me that he has a somewhat different understanding of how Tohu can still exist within Tikkun than Leshem but this is a different discussion. I attach a file of an article on this topic.
I think that chassidic thought in general, not only in Lubavitch, saw in Ramak a system that was much easier to relate to the inner workings of the psyche than the much more complex Lurianic framework. It is more simple to relate the first three sefiros (chabad) to the working of thought, from its inception to its conceptualization, and the emotions that it engenders to the remaining seven sefiros, than to deal with interactions between mind/ thought and different contributing emotions at the same time. For example, it is more straightforward to say that anger arises from a negative thought (chabad) and expresses itself as angry behavior (gevurah), then to tease out the contributions of different thoughts and perceptions as well as the contribution from other emotions: frustration, fear, dissapointment, desire for security or dominance etc, and then analyze it in terms of the point of impact, the actual Partsuf, the episode, the angry act itself.
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