The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 23

Table of Contents

• Spirit and materiality, light and energy
• The course of the article: from the Ideas to the Logos, and from sight to hearing
• The superiority of sight and its limit in relation to the Shekhinah and divinity
• Seeing the Shekhinah at death, the dispute among the tannaim, and the wisdom of the esoteric tradition
• Talmud, Zohar, hearing and sight as methods of approach
• Seeing God in Paradise: kalam, Mu’tazila, and Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance
• Pleasure, seeing without a body, and Maimonides’ distinction between metaphor and actual knowledge
• The thing in itself, appearance, and manifestations of the Holy One, blessed be He, as metaphor that is not matter-form
• Light as a metaphor for the Holy One, blessed be He: Arugot HaBosem, Ibn Rushd, Narboni, and the radiance of the Bahir
• The double role of light and the claim about the conditions that make vision and cognition possible

Summary

General Overview

The text continues an attempt to distinguish between spirituality and materiality by examining the superiority of sight over hearing, and by understanding light and energy as mediating concepts. It lays out a historical-conceptual movement from the Greeks and the Ideas, through the addition of the Logos behind the Ideas, to the conclusion that sight can grasp, at most, Ideas and manifestations, whereas hearing is the way to attain what lies beyond them. Along the way, it establishes that divinity itself cannot be seen, and that any language of seeing in the sources refers either to intellectual apprehension or to perceiving the light of glory and the Shekhinah. It then develops a broad discussion of the dispute over seeing God in the World to Come, the notion of a “sixth sense,” and Maimonides’ claim that the pleasures of the World to Come are not of the same kind as experiences familiar to us. It also adds a distinction between our perception of objects in the world as the product of interaction with the thing itself, and our perception of manifestations of the Holy One, blessed be He, as a metaphorical projection that is not a matter-form relation, and explains why comparing God to light is both metaphor and also “justly so,” insofar as He is the cause of both existence and knowledge.

Spirit and materiality, light and energy

The text continues from the attempt to define the difference between spirituality and materiality, not between wind and rain as meteorological events. It returns to clarifying the nature of light in that context, and the way energy and various definitions help locate the boundary between matter and what lies beyond it.

The course of the article: from the Ideas to the Logos, and from sight to hearing

The text describes the course of the article, beginning with sight, hearing, and imagination, and from section 7 onward presents the Greek-Platonic approach according to which the world of Ideas is the highest reality. In section 8 it presents the Alexandrians, who insert the Logos into the world of Ideas as a divine utterance behind them, and in section 9 the distinction that the Ideas are grasped through sight, whereas the Logos behind them is grasped through hearing. It states in sections 10–12 that one can “hear what is seen,” meaning to attend to what lies behind it, and adds a parallel development in aesthetics: beauty is first measured by conformity to the Idea, and Plotinus places something above the Ideas but still measures beauty by the Ideas. The text is aiming at the point that praise of sight remains Platonic even if one admits something beyond the Ideas while denying the possibility of connection to it, and it sets up the future conclusion that in sections 22 and onward hearing is greater than sight as a way of attaining the Logos beyond the Ideas.

The superiority of sight and its limit in relation to the Shekhinah and divinity

The text states that many regard the sense of sight as the highest of the senses, but even so, the Shekhinah cannot be seen as literal seeing with the eyes, only as a visual-type apprehension, while divinity itself cannot be seen at all. It quotes that “the great figures of Jewish religious philosophy” clarified that visibility does not apply to Him, and that if seeing is attributed to God, it refers to the created light of glory or to the Shekhinah. It goes on to cite the determination in section 26 that the sense of sight grasps only body in its appearance and form, and any “seeing” attributed in Scripture to separate intellects and to God is intellectual apprehension, not eyesight, as Yonatan and Onkelos translated and Rabbeinu Saadia Gaon followed, and Maimonides already elaborated on this at length in the Guide. It explains that the light of glory is God’s manifestation in the world, linking “glory” to “weight” as marking reality and mass, in contrast to light, which is perceived as less substantial, and places this in sections 3–4 and 2 of the article.

Seeing the Shekhinah at death, the dispute among the tannaim, and the wisdom of the esoteric tradition

The text brings the statement from the Sages that “the soul does not leave the body until it sees the Shekhinah,” based on the verse “for no man shall see Me and live,” and explains that in their lifetime they do not see, but at death they do see. This refers to the light of glory, not to divinity itself, and on this there is a dispute among the tannaim. It presents the view of Rabbi Akiva that “for no man shall see Me and live” implies that even the holy living creatures that bear the Throne of Glory do not see the Glory. It quotes a note: however, according to the inner wisdom, the title “the Holy One, blessed be He” refers to the sefirah of Tiferet and not to the Infinite One, blessed be He. It identifies “the Holy One, blessed be He” in the esoteric context with Ze’eir Anpin and Tiferet, and explains seeing at death as the ability of the soul without a body to see something “according to its own level,” because it is then in the same refinement and at the appropriate level of spirituality, whereas during life one can at most create an interaction of hearing.

Talmud, Zohar, hearing and sight as methods of approach

The text connects the language of the Talmud, with hearing expressions such as “come and hear” and “I had not heard that,” to the language of the Zohar, “come and see,” and establishes a distinction in which hearing is directed toward something hidden behind a covering, whereas sight is directed toward the thing being discussed itself. It argues that studying Talmud deals with the same matters that appear in the Zohar, but there they are hidden behind the Talmud, and so the way to them is hearing, whereas in the Zohar the matters are revealed and therefore “seen.”

Seeing God in Paradise: kalam, Mu’tazila, and Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance

The text reports that in Arabic religious philosophy the mutakallimun said that part of the perfection of every existent is that it be visible, and that God is seen through a sixth sense in Paradise, whereas the Mu’tazila denied that God is seen by the eyes in Paradise. It includes a discussion of terminology between mutakallimun and mutakallimin and connects this to the school of kalam as representing Muslim orthodoxy, and to the Mu’tazila as a philosophical approach that does not take Scripture literally. It quotes Maimonides in Laws of Repentance, chapter 8, that the good hidden away for the righteous is the life of the World to Come, and that “in the World to Come there is no body or physical form,” only the souls of the righteous alone, without bodies, “like the ministering angels,” and therefore there is no eating, drinking, or other things that bodies require. It also cites Maimonides’ words against “the foolish, stupid Arabs, drowned in lust,” who imagine the reward for commandments as eating, drinking, sexual relations, and other bodily pleasures. It presents the Raavad’s objection to Maimonides, that these words come close to the view that there is no resurrection of the dead for bodies, only for souls, and brings the Raavad’s proofs from statements of the Sages about the righteous standing in their garments and being healed. It also brings the Raavad’s conclusion that perhaps the Creator will make their bodies strong and healthy like the bodies of angels and like the body of Elijah, of blessed memory, and that the crowns are to be taken literally and simply, not as metaphor.

Pleasure, seeing without a body, and Maimonides’ distinction between metaphor and actual knowledge

The text argues that pleasure is always something spiritual, even when it is caused by material actions, and illustrates that in principle one could produce the experience of the pleasure of eating without eating, by means of electrodes, in order to show that the experience is not the body itself but a state of consciousness. It presents the possibility that the soul without a body can “see” and sense without the mediation of sense organs, because what sees is the intellect, not the eyes, and links this to the explanation of the statement that “Adam saw from one end of the world to the other.” It sharpens the point that Maimonides disagrees with the view that the World to Come is made up of the same familiar experiences, just without a body, and states that according to Maimonides “there is no way in this world to attain or know” the good of the soul in the World to Come except through metaphor, so even the experiences are not of a kind familiar to us. It explains that this understanding prevents the disputes from turning into a merely semantic argument and frames them instead as a real disagreement over the meaning of the soul’s pleasures when it exists by itself.

The thing in itself, appearance, and manifestations of the Holy One, blessed be He, as metaphor that is not matter-form

The text connects this to section 4 of the article and to the Kantian distinction between the thing in itself and the way it appears to consciousness. It explains that with every object in the world, a mental image is formed in a person as the result of interaction with the object itself, even though color and image exist in consciousness and not in the world. It states that with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He, the image is not the result of interaction with His essence, but rather a “nonliteral imagined construct” that He, so to speak, sends and implants in order to allow some kind of perception, and that any possible relation is only with manifestations, not with the essence. It clarifies that manifestations of the Holy One, blessed be He, are perceived as nouns, as entities existing in the world, not as attributes in the sense of form dependent on matter, because the relation between the essence and the manifestations is not a matter-form relation but a disconnected relation of metaphor and transfer.

Light as a metaphor for the Holy One, blessed be He: Arugot HaBosem, Ibn Rushd, Narboni, and the radiance of the Bahir

The text cites Rabbi Moshe Ibn Ezra in the book Arugot HaBosem, who says that the Arab stylists compare the Creator to the light of a lamp, imagined as exalted and beyond every likeness, and identifies this with “a great thing suspended on a small thing” from the fourteenth of the thirty-two hermeneutic rules of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, by which aggadic literature is expounded, as an explanation of comparing the great thing to the small one “by way of transfer.” It presents Ibn Rushd, who says that one should choose the noblest among the concepts of body and say that He, may He be blessed, is light, in order to save the masses from belief in corporeality, and adds that this is “justly so,” because just as light is the cause of the actual existence of colors and the cause of our seeing them, so God, may He be blessed, is the cause of all beings and the cause of our understanding them. It brings that Rabbi Moshe Narboni praised this view as an interpretation of the Guide of the Perplexed and called it “a forceful statement,” and quotes, “and light dwells with Him.” It returns to section 17, where it is said of the Zohar and the Bahir that their light is “not only by way of simile and metaphor, but truly is light and gives light,” and immediately adds the distinction that “even so, this is still only a transferred likeness of what is above it, which is unseen and unforeseeable,” noting that “the great careful kabbalists” instruct that one should not imagine God as light.

The double role of light and the claim about the conditions that make vision and cognition possible

The text presents light as filling two roles: it is both something seen and also the medium that makes it possible to see other objects. It illustrates the uniqueness of light by the fact that it travels through a vacuum, unlike sound, which does not travel through a vacuum, through a description of an experiment in the science museum. It adds the claim that in fact a person sees only light even when he “sees a table,” because the eye comes into contact only with rays of light, and the “table” is a reconstruction in consciousness from the arrangement of those rays. It expands that the comparison to light points also to the idea that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not only the cause of the existence of things, but also what makes possible our ability to apprehend them at all. In this connection it cites a variation in the name of Richard Taylor on an argument for the fit between sense perception and reality, using the example of a sign reading “Welcome to Scotland.” It argues that one cannot assume the eyes arose by chance and at the same time trust them to reflect reality faithfully with that same certainty, and it presents a critique of evolutionary explanations as insufficient to justify that certainty.

Last time we talked a bit about trying to define, as much as possible, the difference between spirit and matter. More accurately than “substance,” it seems to me. I don’t mean spirit and rain as meteorological events, but spirit and physicality. We tried a bit to clarify what light is in this context, and energy, and we offered a few definitions. Let’s go back for a moment to the general line of thought—that is, where we’re coming from and where we want to get to. The exposition of this article actually began earlier: first of all it spoke about sight and hearing and the supposed imagination and so on. And from section 7 it begins the move within which we’re now situated, where first he describes the Greek approach, which says that even the Platonic Greek approach says that the world of ideas is the ultimate world—there’s nothing behind it. In other words, that’s the highest thing there is. Then in section 8 he said that the Alexandrians place the Logos within the world of ideas—that is, that behind the ideas there is some divine utterance. In section 9 he explained that the ideas are something visible—that is, ideas are grasped through sight and not through hearing—and in parentheses, of course, that same Logos that lies behind the ideas has to be grasped through hearing. In section 10 he says that the ideas are a passage toward the Logos; that already hints that one can also grasp the Logos, not just say that it exists. And he continues that in section 11 as well, really, right? 11, 12—to hear what is seen is basically to listen to what is behind it. Then once again he returns to this line of thought from another angle: he goes back to the Greeks and speaks about contemplating beauty through a certain approach, through an analysis of aesthetic concepts. And then he says that in aesthetics too there are really those same faces: first there is the Greek approach that defines beauty through conformity to the idea, or the distance from what the idea looks like. Then he brought Plotinus, who came after Plato, and explained that in fact there is something above the ideas. We said that, from the Nazir’s perspective, he didn’t quite go all the way, because that something can’t be grasped; he only says that it exists, but beauty is still measured according to the ideas. I’m summarizing right now what we said there. Now in section 16, what we dealt with last time was the superiority of sight, and that is really the continuation of what we’ll be dealing with today: the superiority of the sense of sight. He will explain the superiority of the sense of sight, and show that many people, Jews and non-Jews, understood it to be the highest of the senses. And in the course of that he’ll explain that the Divine Presence cannot be seen, even though sight is the highest of the senses; the Divine Presence cannot be seen. And that’s how he’ll basically arrive at his goal—therefore the second kind of logic is needed, right? That’s really the move. So since Plotinus already said that there is something—here in this context he calls it the Logos—some power that stands behind the ideas, and he shows that sight is something that can grasp only the ideas; that is what is grasped through sight, but only the ideas. Beyond that, sight can’t work. So all those who praised sight, about whom he’s speaking now, are in fact Platonists—even if they believe that there is something beyond that, no connection can be made with it. And his conclusion will be that hearing stands at the head of the senses, and that in fact—this is section 22 and on, or section 24—that hearing is greater than sight, and that is the way to attain the Logos that lies beyond the ideas. So we are now at section 18. “The great figures of Jewish religious philosophy, in discussing divine unity, clarified and determined that sight does not apply to Him, because sight has no dominion over attaining Him. And if sight is said with regard to God, it refers to the created light of glory, or the Divine Presence.” Now after he explained to us that sight is a wonderful sense, he continues and says: but the Divine Presence—the Godhead itself—cannot be seen. You know that this is really preparation for some account of how one can nevertheless approach the Godhead. If seeing is impossible, and sight is the best of the senses, then he leaves us with a kind of gap that is supposed to be filled later. What? That the Divine Presence can be seen. What? “If sight is said of God, it refers to the light of glory or the Divine Presence”—so yes, it can be seen. The Divine Presence and the light of glory can be seen; the Godhead itself cannot be seen. Just two comments. Also, the “sight” written here—I think he does not mean sight in the literal sense. He means visual apprehension, not seeing with the eyes. The light of glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, the Divine Presence—you can’t see that with your eyes. Even those who spoke about sight in this context, it is perfectly clear that literal seeing is not what is meant. And even after we understand that this is not the Godhead itself but rather the light of glory, the Divine Presence, and so on—even then, this is not about the literal sense of sight, just plain seeing with the eyes. It refers to some kind of visual apprehension. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Let me jump ahead for a second—I don’t know whether section 26 appears in your copy—but in section 26 he says: “The sense of sight apprehends only matter in its appearance and form. But every seeing of man found in Scripture, concerning separate intellects, and all the more so concerning God, is not seeing with the eye but intellectual apprehension, as Yonatan and Onkelos translated, and following them Rabbi Saadia Gaon; and Maimonides already elaborated on this in the Guide.” All right? So it’s obvious that even after we understand that “sight” in the sacred texts does not refer to the Godhead itself but to the Divine Presence or the light of glory, it is still clear—and this is not emphasized here, but that’s how it should be read—that the intention is not the sense of sight in the literal sense, simply seeing with the eyes. That would be far too crude a reduction; it doesn’t apply even to the light of glory or the Divine Presence.

Now two more comments. First, regarding the light of glory: I’ll refer you to the beginning of the article, where we spoke about why the light of glory is in fact the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He. We said that “glory” and “heaviness” are actually—if “heaviness” isn’t just the Yiddish pronunciation of “glory”—then “heaviness” is from the same root as “glory,” and both of them really refer to the thing’s quality of being heavy, of being present, as though heaviness or mass—the more massive something is, the more present it is, right? Mass. Light is perceived by us as less present. Mass, a heavy thing, means a present thing. All right? The light of glory is the way in which the Holy One, blessed be He, is present in our world; that is how He is revealed. The light of glory is the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He—synonymous terms. It’s not that by chance He is revealed through the light of glory; that is what is called the light of glory. The light of glory is the mode in which the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed here. And we spoke about that in sections 3 and 4—actually starting from 2. We’ll return to this in a moment. There is a saying of the Sages—I’m now in section 19—there is a saying of the Sages that says: “The soul does not depart from the body until it sees the Divine Presence, as it is said, ‘For no man shall see Me and live.’” Now, “For no man shall see Me and live”—while they are alive they do not see, but they do see in their death. But clearly what is being spoken about here is seeing some revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. “Indeed, these matters refer only to the light of glory, and concerning this there is a dispute among the tanna’im. Rabbi Akiva says, ‘For no man shall see Me and live’—even the holy living creatures that bear the throne of glory do not see the glory.” That is in note 28 below. So he brings—here, at the beginning, he brings the midrashim themselves: “A person does not depart from this world until he sees the Divine Presence, as it is said, ‘For no man shall see Me and live’”—Tractate Hibbut HaKevar, and so on. However, according to the inner wisdom—at the end of that note—the term “the Holy One, blessed be He” refers to the sefirah of Tiferet and not to the Infinite, blessed be He. Tiferet is what is called Ze’ir Anpin, the second configuration in the world of Atzilut—the second from below in the world of Atzilut—and that is what is called—and that is what is called—what? No, from right and left, not from below. That is what is called “the Holy One, blessed be He.” Usually when we say “the Holy One, blessed be He” we mean His essence, but in the literature of esotericism, “the Holy One, blessed be He” always means what is called by us Ze’ir Anpin, what the kabbalists call Ze’ir Anpin—it’s like the son. There is father, mother, Ze’ir Anpin, and Nukva. All right? So Ze’ir Anpin is the sefirah of Tiferet. Tiferet is the inclusive whole of Ze’ir Anpin; it’s not all of Ze’ir Anpin. And that is what is being spoken of here. What is written there, yes—“he does not die until he sees the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, as it is said, ‘For no man shall see Me and live’; while they are alive they do not see, but they do see in their death”—what this means to say is not that one sees the Holy One, blessed be He, but some revelation of His. And he specifies what this revelation is: what is called Ze’ir Anpin.

And really the meaning of this seeing—we already explained that… He brought many times, and I think this may still come later, that in the Talmud there are many expressions of hearing: “Come and hear,” right? “It was not heard by me.” And in the Zohar—yes, and in the Zohar, we already said this—that in the Zohar it is “Come and see.” And we said that the difference lies in a simple question: whether we are dealing with the thing itself, or whether we are dealing with some covering or manifestation of it, depending on how you look at it. In other words, when we study Talmud we are studying those same things that are spoken of in the Zohar, only there they are hidden behind the Talmud, and therefore whoever wants to reach them has to hear: “Come and hear.” But when you speak in the Zohar, you are speaking about the things themselves, and then there you simply see them. It’s not something hidden behind something else. Hearing is always meant for hearing something that is hidden behind something else. Sight is something you have when you are speaking about the thing itself. All right? In the same way, that is also true in the context of what is being discussed here regarding death: when a person departs from the world, his soul no longer has a body. Then the soul can see something that is of its own order. And when it sees something that is of its own order, then it sees it, it does not hear it. That is true. Then it really sees it, because it is simply before it, on the same level. The fact that now we cannot see it and can only hear it—that is what is written: “For no man shall see Me and live.” When I am alive and still in a body, I cannot see it, but I can create some kind of interaction with it—an interaction of hearing. When I die and my soul has already shed the body, then the soul is in that same—let’s call it refinement—on the same level, at the same degree of spirituality, and then it can also see spiritual things. That’s the idea. I still intend to come back to these matters, but a bit later, after we’ve also seen a little more of what follows.

“In Arabic religious philosophy, the mutakallimun, the theologians, said that it belongs to the perfection of every existent thing that it be seen, and God is seen by a sixth sense in Paradise.” By the way, this term, these mutakallimun that Maimonides talks about—Kalam, yes—that is basically Muslim orthodoxy. And opposite them there is the Mu’tazila, which is the more philosophical approach among the Muslims, who do not accept the Muslim sacred texts literally—that’s the Mu’tazila. And Maimonides speaks a bit about the discussions that took place between these two sects. And just terminologically, it seems to me that “mutakallamun” and “mutakallimun” are not the same thing, I think—you’d have to ask someone who knows Arabic. Because I think I simply saw in several places that “mutakallamun” refers specifically to the Mu’tazila, not the mutakallimun. Those whom the mutakallimun speak about are the mutakallamun. Because of the words kalam and mutakallamun. Yes, maybe—I just don’t remember now, when I read this I think I recall something like that, but that needs checking. Here terminologically he does mean Kalam. He says: “In Arabic religious philosophy, mutakallamun, the theologians”—this is Kalam, yes—“said that it belongs to the perfection of every existent thing that it be seen, and God is seen by a sixth sense in Paradise. But the proponents of the intellectual approach in Islam, the Mu’tazila, the separatists, denied that God is seen by the eyes in Paradise.” So first of all, here too, what does it mean that “God is seen by a sixth sense”? They too agree that God cannot be seen by the eyes. This is to exclude various conceptions, whether in Islam or conceptions of Islam or of the mutakallimun themselves. I don’t really know that God can literally be seen with the eyes in Paradise; that is, I think even the mutakallimun do not say that. Here he explicitly says He is seen by a sixth sense. They are not sufficiently expert in their own doctrine—but I don’t think they mean to say that God is literally seen with the eyes.

Is there a Maimonides here? Could you just… Mishneh Torah. Somewhere here. Maimonides mentions this topic. He begins chapter 8 of the Laws of Repentance like this: “The good hidden away for the righteous is the life of the world to come, and that is the life in which there is no death, and the good in which there is no evil. This is what is written in the Torah: ‘that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.’ By tradition they learned: ‘that it may be well with you’—in the world that is wholly good; ‘and that you may prolong your days’—in the world that is wholly long. And this is the world to come. The reward of the righteous is that they will merit this pleasantness and be in this goodness, and the punishment of the wicked is that they will not merit this life but will be cut off and die. And this is the excision spoken of in the Torah,” and so on. Halakhah 2: “The world to come has neither body nor corporeal form, but only the souls of the righteous, without body, like the ministering angels. Since there are no bodies there, there is neither eating nor drinking nor any of the things that human bodies need in this world.” Of course, in our context, no seeing either, yes? World to come, Paradise—I assume the intention is the same thing. “Nor does any of the things that happen to bodies in this world occur there, such as sitting, standing, sleeping, death, sadness, laughter, and the like. Thus said the early Sages: In the world to come there is neither eating nor drinking nor sexual intercourse, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Divine Presence,” and so on. After that he continues to refine these statements a bit more. Then in halakhah 6—I’m skipping a few halakhot—he says: “Lest this good seem light in your eyes and you imagine that the reward for the commandments and for a person’s being whole in the ways of truth is to eat and drink good foods, have intercourse with beautiful forms, wear garments of fine linen and embroidery, dwell in tents of ivory, use vessels of silver and gold, and things of that sort—as these foolish, empty-headed Arabs, immersed in licentiousness, imagine. But the wise and understanding know that all these things are emptiness and vanity, and there is no benefit in them, and they are not a great good for us in this world except because we possess body and corporeal form. And all these things are needs of the body, and the soul desires them and longs for them only because of the body’s need, so that it may attain its desire and remain sound. And when there is no body there, all these things are nullified.” Let me perhaps continue reading a bit more: “The great good that the soul will have in the world to come—there is no way in this world to attain or know it, because in this world we know only bodily good, and that is what we desire. But that good is exceedingly great and has no comparison with the good things of this world except by way of parable. But in truth, if we compare the good of the soul in the world to come with bodily goods in this world—food and drink—it is not so. Rather, that good is beyond measure and has no comparison or likeness. And this is what David said: ‘How abundant is Your goodness which You have hidden away for those who fear You.’” He mentions these Arabs who think that in the world to come—yes, it is known that in the world to come there will be eating and drinking and intercourse and conversation and bathing and pleasures, and the peak of pleasure is bodily pleasure. Here it seems, apparently, that the intention is body literally. Here we are speaking about seeing, but it’s exactly the same issue, of course. Right? This is exactly the same debate between the mutakallimun and the Mu’tazila. The Arabs Maimonides speaks about are the mutakallimun. The Mu’tazila did not believe all this. These mutakallimun really do say that God is seen. But note the addition: He is seen by a sixth sense. In other words, they too did not grasp this in the literal sense, that we simply see with our eyes.

The Ra’avad here, interestingly, objects to Maimonides on halakhah 2 and says—when Maimonides says “The world to come has neither body nor corporeal form, but only the souls of the righteous”—“Abraham said: The words of this man, in my eyes, come close to one who says there is no resurrection of the dead for bodies, but only for souls.” That is what he says against Maimonides—a major objection. “And by my life, this was not the view of the Sages, for they said in Ketubot 111 that in the future the righteous will arise in their garments, by an argument a fortiori from wheat. And similarly they instructed their children: Do not bury me in white garments, nor in black ones, perhaps I will merit. And similarly they said that the righteous will not return to dust but will stand in their bodies. And similarly they said: they arise with their defects and are then healed. And all these prove that they stand and live in their bodies. But perhaps the Creator will make their bodies strong and healthy like the bodies of angels and like the body of Elijah, of blessed memory. The crowns will be according to their plain meaning and literally so, and not metaphorical.” Yes, “the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads”—so that is literal. So he says that perhaps the bodies will be some kind of thing that does not decay; that’s what he means by strong and healthy—not Olympic, but like angels, something non-perishable. In other words, a kind of body like the angels—I don’t know what that means. And that’s it. In what way is that different from what the father says—that they won’t have a body? Here it’s not entirely clear to me, but it seems to me that what the Ra’avad says is very similar to what these mutakallimun mean here. Because he says there will be some kind of body, perhaps a more refined body; perhaps the seeing will be by a sixth sense, not simply by the eyes as one sees in a body. But there will still remain some aspect of body.

Well, it is known here that the Kesef Mishneh, right on the spot, says that it is not at all clear this is a dispute, even though the Ra’avad understood it as if it were. One is speaking about the world to come, the other about the resurrection of the dead, and that is not exactly the same stage—and the old, ancient, lengthy disputes—we won’t go into them now. But it seems to me that the direction there, that debate there, is more or less the debate we have here. And even the Ra’avad, who speaks about a body, ends up with a body that is refined like the bodies of angels—to the point that I no longer understand in what sense this is still a body. It seems to me that this is very similar language to “seeing by a sixth sense.” In other words, seeing by a sixth sense—well, that’s not seeing.

Now perhaps—and this also touches on what Maimonides said about pleasures—when those Muslims, if it is really true, as he said here, that this refers to a sixth sense, and they too do not mean a full materialization of the world to come, then what they mean is this: after all, even for us pleasure is a spiritual thing. Pleasure is not a material thing. Pleasure even from eating, drinking, and sex—the pleasure itself is also something spiritual, yes? An automaton cannot enjoy. It can perhaps perform sex, eating, and drinking, apparently, but enjoy them it cannot. In other words, whatever pleasure there is in these things is always something spiritual. We are often used to saying in our language that there are spiritual pleasures and physical pleasures. But pleasure is always something spiritual. It’s just that sometimes pleasure is caused by material acts, acts of matter, and sometimes pleasure is caused by acts of the spirit, of the intellect, in different forms. People also distinguish between levels or grades of pleasure; maybe there are distinctions there too. Pleasure from food is not like pleasure from a good argument, right, or from understanding. But it is clear that both concepts are spiritual concepts in the basic classification. What the Muslims seem to mean is that one could move now from pleasure to sight. And this is the same parallel model; it’s just easier for me to illustrate it through something else. When I see, I use my eyes—but it’s not the eyes that see. Right? What sees is the intellect. And not even the brain—the intellect. The brain is an organ; the intellect is the intellect, yes, the one that uses the brain. Seeing resides in the intellect. True, one uses the brain and the eyes and the whole sensory system, all right? So in principle it is certainly possible to speak about seeing even without a body. That experience of reception, of apprehension, that exists in the intellect—not “experience” in that experiential sense—but that consciousness, that cognitive state of seeing, can also exist for me without a body. In the end, it is not a state of my body; it is a state of my intellect. It is also written of the first man that he could see from one end of the world to the other, yes, with that light which afterward the Holy One, blessed be He, hid away. What does it mean that he could see from one end of the world to the other? As though his soul was—his body was more refined and the soul really acted. Well then—can one say of the soul that it sees? A soul does not see; only a body sees, ostensibly. So that is not true. Seeing—the result of seeing—just like the result of eating and sex, namely pleasure, always resides in the spirit. Or in the intellect, or in other parts of the spirit—it resides in the spirit. Therefore it can be produced. A crude analogy: to cause me the pleasure of eating without my eating, by connecting electrodes to the brain. That would be skipping half the system, saving the eating stage, going directly from the brain—really from the brain straight to the intellect—to cause me the pleasure of eating without my eating. There is no problem in principle with doing that, right? So the claim is that there is likewise no problem in skipping the brain too. And there too no electrodes are needed for that. Not that I know how to do it, but in principle that too is possible. The brain is not the pleasure itself either; it is only a stage on the way. One could skip that too. Then one can certainly speak about a soul separated from the body having pleasure, and seeing, and hearing—sensing, everything exists also for the soul in the literal sense, not metaphorically. Literally. Do you understand? It seems to me that that is the intention. And Maimonides argues with that. Maimonides says that even this is not true. That is, Maimonides claims that we have no idea what that pleasure is, from within physical pleasures—even though those physical pleasures too reside in the spirit. But… the pleasures that will exist in the world to come—they too are not the pleasures that are the results of physical enjoyments. That too is not true. In other words, it is not simply that we will be without a body but the intellect or the spirit will undergo the same experiences, just without the mediation of the body. Otherwise, what have we gained? Then it’s basically the same thing. Maybe a quantitative difference, but not more. The body perhaps limits the matter in some way, but it is still the same thing. Maimonides says no—that is only by way of imagination, by way of parable. It is not really so. That is why he says, “The great good that the soul will have in the world to come—there is no way in this world to attain or know it.” He is confronting this approach. Because according to the mutakallimun, that really would be true. In principle I could know exactly how I will enjoy myself in the world to come. After all, I know all physical pleasures, and those will be exactly my pleasures in the world to come. I know how one sees in this world; so too one sees in the world to come. One simply does it without the mediation of the body, because there will be no body. Maimonides says that is not true. In principle, Maimonides understands—I think he also understood—that he did not think the Muslims were speaking about literally seeing, sex, eating, and drinking in their plain sense, but about the same experiences that are the result of those actions. They just thought these really are the experiences that will be in the world to come, experienced by the soul without the mediation of the body. But they are the same experiences. Maimonides says no, even in that regard you are mistaken. Not only will there be no body—the experiences too will not be the experiences you know. That too is not true. Then it’s not really pleasure, basically. Why can one call it pleasure? That is what Maimonides says: only by way of—“there is no way in this world to attain or know it,” only that “it has no comparison with the good things of this world except by way of parable,” or what he calls by way of transfer. One cannot, one cannot, one cannot even really call it pleasure. So I’m saying: it is something akin to what we now call pleasure. Perhaps from the same family, perhaps not from the same family—I don’t know. But it is the closest concept available in this world. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is not light. We learned that in the previous sections. Yet the metaphor used for Him is light, right? For His revelation. He is not light; light is a material thing, as Maimonides explained. But this is the closest expression available in this world to describe what is there. Like the idea? What? The idea—we understood that the idea is not like our idea. Yes, the same thing. The idea, what we call an idea, is probably the closest thing to describe what happens in His revelation, but it isn’t that.

It seems to me that this is the dispute, and one has to understand that without understanding it this way, there is really no dispute at all. Because just as between Maimonides and the Ra’avad there is no dispute, so too there is no dispute between the Muslims and the Nazir, or between the Mu’tazila and the mutakallimun, between the adherents of Kalam. What is the dispute? You think there is a world to come and they think there is no world to come. It’s not a question of some thinking that the world to come has a body and others thinking it has no body. If the world to come has a body, then there is no world to come—what does that mean? Then you simply think there will be only the messianic era, or there will be no world to come. It would be this world, just improved—without suffering, without death, without wars, or something like that. But then it’s just this world improved. You simply don’t believe in the world to come. This is not a debate about what the world to come will look like. It’s just a semantic debate—what to call this condition, whether to call it the world to come or not. It does not sound as though that is the debate. There is here some dispute that seems completely unnecessary: one thinks there is such a world and one thinks there is not. It’s not a debate over the nature of the world to come. It seems to me that if we understand it as we now do, then it really is a debate about that. That is, it is a real dispute. Everyone agrees there is a world to come; the world to come is not this world—it is a world to come. It is soul, not body. The question remains: what is the meaning of the soul’s pleasures when it stands alone without the body, as a soul? Is it the same thing that exists here, only without the mediation of the body—that is the simple formulation of the matter, and that is the mutakallimun—or do the Mu’tazila and the Nazir and Maimonides say that this is not true? That is, not only does the structure of what the human being is change; the type of pleasure changes too. That’s it.

Now all this was said regarding seeing and pleasure and so on. But when we speak about seeing the Holy One, blessed be He, now an additional problem enters. Here we are no longer just seeing ordinary objects; we are speaking about seeing the Holy One, blessed be He. And here I return to what we read in section 18: that sight does not apply to Him, but only to the Divine Presence. Yes, that’s what it says there: the soul basically sees the Divine Presence. So it seems to me that we already mentioned, when we spoke about section 4 of the article—“hinted at in the imagination of Him, and including the parabolic quality special to Hebrew-Semitic logic”—that was section 4. We spoke there about the fact that in every object this is true. In every object, I do not see the thing’s essence but only the way it appears to me. This is Kant’s distinction between the thing in itself and the way it appears to me. So what is the difference between the Holy One, blessed be He, and every other object? In every object I cannot grasp the thing itself but only how it appears to me. So what does it mean in every place where it says—as here, for example—that we cannot see the Holy One, blessed be He? No object can we truly see. That was clarified there: when we look at a certain object, we do in fact create an interaction with the object in itself, but the result of that interaction is an image that lives in our consciousness. As a result of the fact that I establish contact with the thing itself by means of my eyes and my senses, the result of that contact—or the way in which I grasp the thing—finds expression in my head, after processing, in the form of some image, which looks like a table. This is what is meant when they say that I do deal with the thing itself, because it is what causes these images in me. For the simple reason that two different objects cause different images in me—or say, different colors of the same table—it is presumably caused by two different tables affecting my eyes, right? But the color exists only in my head. Color does not exist in the world. Color exists only in my head, as we have already discussed several times. But clearly, if I see two objects in different colors, then there is something in those objects that differs from one another; otherwise why would I see them differently? What differs between them is not the color, because color is only the way in which I see them. Color exists only in my intellect, not in the thing. But clearly something in the thing differs, because otherwise I would not see it in a different color. All right? Therefore the conclusion is that when I look at a thing, it is not correct to say that I cannot see the thing itself. On the contrary: I see the thing itself, but the result of the seeing—the image formed in my awareness—is the image that my senses and my sensory system create after this interaction with the table.

Now all this stands in contrast to what happens with the Holy One, blessed be He. With the Holy One, blessed be He, some image is likewise formed in me—more intellectual, admittedly—but still some image of how He appears in the world, how He acts in the world. That image is not formed as the result of my interaction with His essence. That is the difference. In other words, this image is some detached thing, by way of transfer—what he calls here parabolic imagination. The Holy One, blessed be He, as it were, gives me a parable. It is not He Himself that I am looking at. And what I see is not His essence, because no essence can be seen. The image formed in me is the processing or result of the interaction I have with the thing itself. Whereas with the Holy One, blessed be He, the image formed in me is not the result of an interaction I establish with Him. It is an image He sends to me; He implants it in my mind, as it were, so that I will somehow have some means of grasping Him. But it is not that I established contact with Him and as a result an image was formed in me. With Him I cannot establish contact. I can establish contact with certain revelations of His. The more refined I am, the higher the revelation with which I establish contact. And that is what we saw here: when the soul leaves the body—“For no man shall see Me and live.” When the soul leaves the body, it establishes some contact with a higher revelation of His. But all of this, in relation to His essence, is always by way of parable. And in the revelations of the Holy One, blessed be He, it is not a form for which He is the matter, in the same sense that the form of this table is a form for which the table is the matter. It is not the same thing. That is why the revelations of the Holy One, blessed be He, are often perceived as objects, not as forms. The form of the table is not an object; it is the properties of the object. But the configurations in the world of Atzilut, all the revelations and powers and names of the Holy One, blessed be He, are perceived as names of entities. They are things that exist in the world; they are objects. Why? Because although they are revelations of the Holy One, blessed be He, the relation between Him and them is not a relation of matter and form. They are completely detached. That is, if the relation were one of matter and form, then in order to grasp them I would have to create contact with His essence, and the result would be that all kinds of images would be formed in me. And not only that, the images would also exist only in me; they would have no existence in reality. The images exist only in me, the forms exist only in me—they do not exist in reality. But in the names of the Holy One, blessed be He, and in His revelations, the names themselves are names of entities; they exist in the world. They are not attributes of something in the same sense as when we speak in other contexts. All right? Therefore, when we say that one cannot see the Holy One, blessed be He, there is something much more substantial here than making the Kantian statement that what we see is not the thing itself. There is something beyond that here.

So when we speak here about how one sees the Holy One, blessed be He—until now I spoke by comparison to Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance, and I said that such a thing is possible because in the end, even when I am in a body, it is the soul that sees. So even when there is no body, the soul can continue to see without the mediation of the body, and on the contrary, perhaps it will see even better, like the first man. But all that is when I’m speaking about seeing objects. So I said: seeing objects also applies to the soul. But when I speak about seeing the Holy One, blessed be He, then one must understand that we are in an entirely different plane; it is only by way of borrowing the term. So perhaps that is what is meant here by a sixth sense or something like that, yes. It’s not that one sees the Holy One, blessed be He. And in fact I think what they mean here by Paradise is that one sees some revelation of His. And there too, once again, it is not grasping Him through some revelation of His, but seeing the revelation. From my perspective the revelation is a noun, the name of a thing. It is not an attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. For me the Holy One, blessed be He, is an entity that exists in the world exactly like me, and I see it. True, in some sense it is a parable for the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, but it is not a form for which the Holy One, blessed be He, is the matter. So it is not correct to say there…

“According to Rabbi Moshe Ibn Ezra in the book Arugat HaBosem, the Arabic rhetoricians…” What is the difference between the Mu’tazila and what Maimonides says? There is no difference. It seems to me that here, at least, no difference is indicated. Perhaps there are other differences between them that I do not know, but here he represents the correct approach. He says: “Seeing in Paradise according to the theologians”—that is the heading of a chapter. And only the theologians say there is seeing there; the Mu’tazila do not agree. “According to Rabbi Moshe Ibn Ezra in the book Arugat HaBosem, the Arabic rhetoricians compare the Creator to the light of a lamp—an image more honored and exalted than any imagination. And this is called in the language of our Rabbis, of blessed memory, ‘A great thing is hung upon a small thing’”—the 14th of the 32 hermeneutic principles of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean by which aggadic literature is expounded. Yes, there are the 13 principles of Rabbi Ishmael, and there are also 32 principles. There are several baraitot of hermeneutic principles. The principles of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean are the principles by which aggadah is interpreted. The 13 principles of Rabbi Ishmael are the principles by which Jewish law is derived, the principles for halakhic midrash. “And its meaning is to compare the great thing to the small thing by way of transfer.” As we said just now—note that “transfer” does not mean form in relation to matter. “Transfer” means a parable: a certain object that stands as a parable for another object. The configurations of the Holy One, blessed be He, or the revelations of the Holy One, blessed be He, are objects in their own right, standing as a parable—or yes, His names—standing as a parable, as it were, for His essence, although there is no direct relation between them.

“However, the sage Ibn Rushd said: It is fitting that we choose the noblest among the concepts of matter and say that He, blessed be He, is light, because that will save the masses from belief in anthropomorphism, and He will remain for them existent and the most honored of all beings. And this also contains an element of justice, for just as light is the cause that all colors exist in actuality and the cause of our seeing them, so God, blessed be He, is the cause of all beings and the cause of their being intelligible. And Rabbi Moshe Narboni praised this opinion, as explained in the Guide of the Perplexed, praised this opinion and said of it that it is a forceful statement. For Scripture says, ‘And light dwells with Him.’” Light is a good description, as it were, of the Holy One, blessed be He; it is something that dwells with Him. So he says that this is really the intention of Ibn Rushd’s description.

Now here we have already read this paragraph, if you remember. And if you don’t remember, we read it. We read it when we studied section 17. In section 17, section 17 begins: “The Zohar and the Bahir are names of books of inner wisdom, included in ‘The Lord God is sun and shield,’ which is not only by way of image and parable, but truly He is light and illuminates, as the Neoplatonic philosophers say.” Here there is a very strong statement. The claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, truly is light; this is not only by way of image and parable. That is what he says in the first paragraph. We then discussed the question whether this really means—as the Platonists say—but he disagrees, or not? And I said that it seems to me he does not wholly disagree with them. In the next paragraph he says, “Nevertheless, this too is only by way of transfer, an image of that which is above it, the invisible and unobservable.” He doesn’t say “some say” or “that is not true; I say otherwise.” Rather he says: know that even though this too is correct, and there is something real in the light, nevertheless it still is not literally light. There is something real there, but it still is not entirely that; it is also by way of transfer and image. And note that above too he writes, “which is not only by way of image and parable.” He did not say not at all. It is not only by way of image and parable—it is also by way of image and parable, but there is also something real here. There are two aspects: it is both parable and image, and there is also something real here. Afterward he says, “The great kabbalists caution and instruct us not to imagine God as light, because one must be careful.” Although we say that there is something real here, still the Holy One, blessed be He, is not light. So I said that the explanation of these things is found more here, in section 21. We are getting there: in what sense is it both parable and real? What does that mean?

In principle, it is written here too, right? Ibn Rushd says on the one hand that it is fitting to call Him light only so that the masses not get confused—or rather not become confused in a worse way. In fact they are confused anyway. So this is the mildest confusion I can offer them: light is good, that is not too great a confusion when speaking of the Holy One, blessed be He. But he continues: “and this also contains an element of justice.” In other words, it is not only a parable; there is something real here. I am reminding you of section 19, yes, that is what is written here. There is something real here beyond just an incidental metaphor that, fine, light is a refined creation and therefore a good likeness for the Holy One, blessed be He, even though in truth there is no connection between them. He says no—there is “an element of justice” in this; He really is light, as he writes in section 19. The question now is: in what sense? The reasoning here is that light serves in two roles. Light is “the cause that all colors exist in actuality,” and “the cause of our seeing them.” In other words, light plays two roles. First, light is an object, right? Light is something I look at. Second, light is the intermediary that enables me to see all the objects in the world, right? So light is both a medium through which I see objects in the world, and also something itself that is seen. It is “the cause that the colors exist”—the colors are the expression of that object called light, or what we would call the electromagnetic wave. All right? In other words, the form in which it is expressed to us is light. And besides that, it is not only an object, but it really is also what enables the eyes to see all the surrounding objects.

So apparently light really does have a dual function. If you look at it more closely, though, you see—did you want to say something? Why first of all do we see light itself? What’s the problem? Because it hits something. What? When do you see light? When it hits something—hits the eye, obviously. That’s the process of seeing, but not hitting another object. If there is light in a vacuum, won’t you see it? Why won’t you see it? Of course you’ll see it. How will you see it? With your eyes. I see a board; I don’t see light. I understand. If you shine a flashlight into a vacuum—what do you mean, you don’t see light? If it didn’t hit anything? It didn’t hit anything in the vacuum before it hit the eye on the way. Right, good. Around the sun maybe there is a bit of atmosphere, but that’s not important. Light’s special property—as opposed to a sound wave, which doesn’t live in a vacuum—is that light passes through a vacuum as well. In the science museum in Haifa—I once took my children there—there’s some glass enclosure that they made into a vacuum, and you ring some bell inside it and you hear nothing. There’s a bell in the middle of that thing, and you ring it and hear nothing because there is a vacuum. Then with a button you can let air back in, and then you ring it and hear a ring like at school. Now inside there is also a flashlight, not only a bell. If you turn on the flashlight, then whether you evacuate the air or not, you’ll see the same thing. Nice, in other words it sounds simple when described, but it is very beautiful when you see it—a very nice illustration. You ring a bell—obviously, when you ring a bell you hear. You ring the bell and hear nothing, simply nothing at all. It’s incredible—the bell moves and you hear nothing. Nothing at all, just because you pressed some button that removed the air around it. That’s all. There are no pressure waves to pass through, because they pass through air, and if there is no air they can’t pass through. Air with an a, yes, with an a and a yod.

Anyway, light really does two things. It is both an object and also the thing that allows us to see other things. A very interesting point: whenever I look at a table, what do I see in the table? I see a table, right? But how do I see it? Only through light rays that my eyes exchange with it, right? That is the mechanism of seeing. So here light is the intermediary that allows me to see the table. It is not the thing I see. The thing I see is the table. Light is the means that enables me to see the table. On the other hand, light is also a thing—when you look at light, you see light. So there are two things here, two modes of appearance or two operations that light has. But it seems to me that that is only from a homeowner’s perspective, so to speak. I think the truth is that you always see only light. The only thing one can see in the world is light. Even when you see the table, what you see are simply rays of light reaching the eyes. The eyes interact only with light—nothing else can be seen by a person. Because even when you see an image of a table, that is just rays of light arranged in a certain way. What you see is the rays of light—they are what strike your eye. And of course from that you reconstruct the object that sent the light rays. So you infer that there is some table here. But what you see is only rays of light. In other words, what you can see is only light. So really light is just one thing. It is not a means through which I see the table; the table I do not see. I see the light rays that come from it and become arranged in me in some table-like form. So it does not really have a double role. But the simple way of looking at light is indeed that it has a double role: through it one sees the table, and besides that it is itself a thing. Okay? It seems to me that this is what he wants to say here: this is the essential resemblance to the Holy One, blessed be He, and not just an incidental one. Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, serve in these two roles here? Apparently, yes—and He is the thing. Not only that He is also a thing; that is, there is actually nothing else besides Him at the highest level. Certainly He is an existent entity. But on the other hand, He also serves as intermediary. We also spoke about that in… perhaps we haven’t yet spoken about it—we will speak about it on Tuesday nights—but the Holy One, blessed be He, also serves as the intermediary who enables me to see or know or think about other things. Without the Holy One, blessed be He, I would not even have the technical possibility of doing that—literally, I do not mean in the faith sense. There is no other way; otherwise one simply cannot do it. There is no connection whatsoever between what I see and reality unless there is some factor coordinating them.

We spoke about learning, that one cannot learn. Right, that is another claim of the matter, correct. But I mean even concerning seeing and all the… But this really is a topic that deserves more elaboration. Still, I’ll say a few more sentences about it. The simple assumption we have—that what we see really does exist in the world—is an assumption that, apparently, has nothing to stand on. Especially if we take the approach that the human being came into being through some random process. Yes? If a human being came into being through some random process, there is a book by Richard Taylor, Metaphysics—an American philosopher, translated into Hebrew, a recommended book. What? Didn’t mention that? Yes, maybe, I don’t remember. So in Foreknowledge and Free Will there on page such-and-such, yes—he brings some variation on a proof for the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, a more refined variation. Usually people bring the variation: look what an ordered and planned world this is; it can’t be that it was formed by chance. Yes, if you were to arrive on the moon and find on the lunar surface a Coca-Cola bottle, would you think that this was simply atoms that joined one another and happened by chance? There are another million moons in the world on which there is no such bottle—only here this bottle was formed? I assume that if someone thought that, the public would agree to have him committed and a district psychiatrist would be appointed. That is not an assumption we would make. So it is not reasonable to assume that about the world either. That is the proof usually brought—what Kant calls the physico-theological proof. Kant claims there are three kinds of proofs for the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, and none of them holds up—that is his claim. But Taylor offers some variation on this proof. He says: you know what, fine, let’s accept that this Coca-Cola bottle really was formed by chance, and the whole world too was formed by chance. Fine, that says nothing. Something can be formed by chance. There were infinitely many worlds before that tried and failed, and in one world, with some probability, it finally happened. Such a thing could happen. But he gives the example of the train to Scotland. He says: imagine a person traveling to Scotland by train, and at some point on the way he sees on the mountain a sign made of stones saying “Welcome to Scotland.” Now he has two options for inference: either to infer that these stones were formed by chance—that somehow the stones happened to arrange themselves, and… it’s just chance, it means nothing. Or to infer, as any sane person would infer, that apparently he has reached Scotland; the government of Scotland is welcoming him with “Welcome,” or whoever it is that welcomes him there. But one thing—fine—he says: you know what, the two possibilities are equivalent. I’m not going in the ordinary physico-theological direction right now. In other words, fine, that too could be. It was formed by chance. The fact that in a thousand other places there is no “Welcome to Scotland,” only here—that can be probability; it happened by chance. But he says one thing cannot be: after deciding that it happened by chance, you then start packing your suitcase and preparing to get off. You infer that you’ve reached Scotland and it’s time to prepare to disembark. That cannot be, right? And if you assume it was formed by chance, then certainly you cannot infer from seeing those stones that you’ve reached Scotland, right? That is obvious. So you can infer that it was formed by chance, and you can infer that it was not formed by chance. But one thing you cannot infer—or one way you cannot act—is this: you cannot infer that it was formed by chance and then start preparing to disembark, inferring that you’ve reached Scotland. That’s nonsense. And there are people who believe this. They say “by chance,” and they really do believe it. But even that, he says, is possible. No, fine. I said—wait—he says, correct. So he says: fine, you can say that it was formed by chance, and that’s it.

Now he says: the same is true here. The eyes are a very sophisticated instrument. Every sense is, but especially the eyes are known as a very sophisticated instrument. The proof usually brought is: look, it can’t be that something so sophisticated was formed by chance. And if you know what? Maybe it was formed by chance. Let’s not fight over it. But one thing cannot be: that it was formed by chance, and that you also assume it faithfully reflects what you see in the world. How can that be? It is exactly the same thing. You assume on the one hand that the eyes were formed by chance, and on the other hand you also trust the eyes that what they show you really exists in the world. How can such a thing be? That is exactly the person who assumes that the stone sign was formed by chance and then packs his suitcase and gets ready to get off. Right? Perhaps let us assume that those stones spelling Scotland stand not necessarily right on the threshold of the entrance to Scotland? He doesn’t know; after all, he doesn’t know whether he has reached Scotland or not. He sees a sign, he sees a sign. The question is whether he is in Scotland or not. So he says it was formed by chance exactly in the right place—what did you say? No, but formed by chance in the right place is absurd, because you cannot—no, I’ll explain why. Because it can be formed by chance in the right place, but from the fact that it was formed you cannot infer that the place is indeed the right place. Do you understand what I’m saying? There is no such side to it. Such a position does not exist. But if right now you don’t know that you’re in Scotland, then from the fact that this stone sign stands on the mountain, you cannot infer that you have reached Scotland. If it becomes known to you that you are in Scotland, and there also happens to be such a sign, you can still say that it was formed by chance and by chance in the right place—that I agree. But if you have no other information, you don’t know where you are, then from seeing this sign and assuming it was formed by chance, you cannot infer that you are in Scotland.

Now you do not know whether your eyes faithfully reflect reality. You do not know. Right? Maybe yes, maybe no. There are people who question it, right? So what? But you believe it. How do you believe it? By the power of what your eyes see. But that’s nonsense. You understand—that’s like inferring that you are in Scotland from the fact that the sign says so. If by some indirect other route you knew that the eyes do faithfully reflect reality, and they also happened to be formed by chance—fine. Then that too is a kind of nonsense, but that’s not what he’s talking about. I mean, that one I’m willing to swallow, you understand? But it simply cannot be that from this you infer the conclusion that if I see a table, then there really is a table there. That’s nonsense. How do I know? From my experience? I can ask you the same question: how do you know to trust your experience? It doesn’t matter—you can continue this, but I don’t want to elaborate more. The standard answers are evolutionary answers: whoever sees well is the one who survives. So once you have survived, then apparently you see well. Every creature before us, of course, could also have made that assumption before it went extinct. We too may be heading toward extinction in who knows how many thousands of years. Who says we see well? And who says that seeing well is what best promotes survival? Maybe seeing things in the most frightening way is what best promotes survival, so that I constantly defend myself lest anyone attack me. Reality—who says? The one who thought optimistically got wiped out. Who says? That is exactly what I said: you are assuming you see well, but who says? I say maybe you see in a frightening way, not in a true way. You are assuming only on the strength of your own seeing that you see well, not for any other reason. And I am telling you, no—you do not see well. You see a table; there is no table there at all. But it is very useful from an evolutionary point of view to see a table there, even though there really is no table. Very useful evolutionarily. The question is whether you believe that there is a table there or not. If you believe there is a table there, then you believe that the sign here is reliable. You believe your eyes were not formed by chance. It simply cannot be—just cannot be. Even evolution—which is the most plausible answer in this context—cannot explain this. Certainly not at the level of certainty with which you relate to your sight. You see a table here; if someone told you there is no table here, you would bet against him at a million to one. And random evolutionary processes, with all due respect… I do also take into account that my eyes don’t function perfectly, right? Yes, but the fact remains that your trust applies in many areas; even the rules of logic. Sometimes I’m wrong in mathematics too. So I’m wrong, right?

Fine, why did I get into this? Because I wanted to explain why the Holy One, blessed be He, is not only the thing that is seen—the one standing at the basis of things—not only is it by His power that this table exists, but it is only by His power that I can even apprehend that I see this table. That is exactly like light. Light is also something that is seen, but it is also the medium through which alone I can see things. All right, that seems to me to be what he means here: light is on the one hand a parable, but on the other hand not only a parable. There is also something real here.