The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 22

Table of Contents

• The logos beyond the ideas, and the move from seeing to hearing
• The superiority of sight and the division of the senses
• Empiricism, Hume, and causality as a challenge to sensory knowledge
• The alternative to empiricism: a sixth sense, direct sensing, and auditory logic
• Cognition and thinking: a critique of the input-processing model and the comparison to a computer
• Light, Kabbalah, and a necessary metaphor versus the danger of anthropomorphism
• The warning of the kabbalists: light is physical, and light is only a metaphor
• Energy, Einstein, materialism, and blowing wind as opposed to light

Summary

General Overview

The text continues clarifying Don Yehuda Abravanel’s addition as “the addition of logos to the world of ideas,” meaning that there is a hidden source beyond the idea, and it cannot be grasped by ordinary intellectual “seeing.” It points toward undermining the fatalistic conclusion from section 15, saying that although the source cannot be attained through sight, it can be attained in a certain way through “hearing,” and therefore the discussion opens by asking what sight is and what sensory perception in general is. In that context, the position of empiricism is presented through Yashar of Candia and Aristotle’s opening to the Metaphysics, and a broad critique is brought through Hume’s problem of causality and induction, in order to show that there must be cognition that is not reducible to the five senses. Finally, the image of light in the books of Kabbalah is discussed, along with the warning against anthropomorphism, while arguing that light itself is physical and that the metaphor of light is necessary, but still only a metaphor; an additional distinction is then made between light, energy, matter, and blowing wind.

The logos beyond the ideas, and the move from seeing to hearing

The text defines Don Yehuda Abravanel’s addition as an addition of logos to the world of ideas, in which the idea is not the highest thing, and there is something beyond it that is a simple and hidden source. It states that section 15 ends with the claim that no intellectual sight can attain anything except within divine wisdom, and even there not the first beginning, the simple and hidden source. It identifies that source as the matter of the ideas, or what lies beyond the ideas, and emphasizes that it is hidden and cannot be grasped in the ordinary way. It explains that the following sections are meant to explain why it seems impossible to attain the logos, but also to challenge that and say that it can be attained in a certain way, in the formulation: “It is impossible to attain it by sight, but it is possible to attain it by hearing.”

The superiority of sight and the division of the senses

The text opens section 16 with an inquiry into visual perception and knowledge of the world through the senses, and brings a formulation according to which there is no way to know anything except through the senses; and even in subtle spiritual matters, one relies on the two choicest senses: hearing and sight, while touch and taste are viewed as more physical senses. It attributes this opening to Yashar of Candia in the book Novlot Chokhmah, who relies on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which opens with praise for the sense of sight. It brings the Aristotelian quotation, “All human beings by nature desire to know,” and explains that the love of knowledge is evident in the love of the senses, and especially in the love of the eyes, even without practical need. It explains that sight is preferred because it brings more knowledge and many distinctions, and is therefore considered the most significant sense in terms of richness of information.

Empiricism, Hume, and causality as a challenge to sensory knowledge

The text states that the sentence “We have no other way by which to know anything except through the senses” is a sentence of Yashar of Candia, and declares that the Nazirite does not agree with it, defining this as empiricism: the claim that the only way to know the world is through the senses. It uses Hume as a central example: Hume argues that we do not see causality, only temporal succession, and therefore the concept of causation is not given in the senses and is a fiction that teaches us nothing about the world. It presents Hume’s underlying assumption as follows: whatever does not come from the senses cannot be inferred about the world, and it emphasizes that the problem remains even in the face of physical formulations, because any component that does not come from sight is, under that assumption, a fiction. It clarifies the difference between causality and induction, and shows that even from the facts one cannot derive a single generalization, illustrating this by the infinite number of lines that can pass through a finite number of points, and by the claim that the criterion of “the simplest generalization” is an aesthetic criterion, not a logical one.

The alternative to empiricism: a sixth sense, direct sensing, and auditory logic

The text presents the only way not to be an empiricist as the claim that there is another way to know the world that is not one of the five senses, and it calls this a “sixth sense” or “auditory logic.” It describes cognition of the causal relation as something given, absorbed from outside inward in a way similar to sight and hearing, and not as the conclusion of detached intellectual processing; and it distinguishes between thinking, which is an internal operation performed on data, and sensing, which is direct reception. It argues that this sense can also distinguish between accidental succession and an essential connection, and that the way it works is not trivial and depends on work, including work on one’s character traits, because a person’s traits interfere with sensing. It connects this to Talmud study as a kind of sharpening of intuition, and to the concept of “Torah insight” as the discernment of someone who correctly grasps the intention of the text. It presents the goal of the whole book as gradually leading toward recognition of the existence of auditory logic, because Greek tools do not explain how one infers relations that are not visible to the eyes.

Cognition and thinking: a critique of the input-processing model and the comparison to a computer

The text describes the accepted division according to which the senses receive and the intellect processes, and argues that this is a division that leads to the view that there is no cognizing element besides the senses, while the intellect merely thinks. It illustrates this by saying that the computer was built according to a model of input/output מול CPU, and therefore the distinction there is sharp; but in the human being the distinction between cognition and thinking is not sharp, and the intellect also cognizes and does not merely process. It connects this to the intertwining of epistemology and logic, and illustrates that in the examination of logic the human being becomes both observer and observed, and therefore the hierarchy between the fields is unclear.

Light, Kabbalah, and a necessary metaphor versus the danger of anthropomorphism

The text moves to the “shining imagination” and identifies the Zohar and the Bahir as books of inward wisdom connected to concepts of light, along with the expression “sun and shield,” and presents a tension between the statement that the Holy One, blessed be He, is “truly light and illuminating,” and the assertion that “this is nothing but a transference, an image of that which is above it, the unseen and the unforeseeable.” It points to section 21, where Averroes is credited with the reason for calling Him, may He be blessed, light—namely, in order to rescue the masses from belief in anthropomorphism—but it also says, “though this accords with justice,” in a way that hints at an essential connection that is not accidental. It incorporates the distinction between an accidental metaphor and a necessary metaphor, and presents the metaphor of light as an example of a necessary metaphor in Kabbalah, in which there is no incidental descriptive alternative, and the metaphor both lowers the referent into the human world and raises the human being into the world of what is being referred to.

The warning of the kabbalists: light is physical, and light is only a metaphor

The text brings, in the name of great kabbalists, a warning that whoever likens divinity to light because “this matter is not a body” reaches “the height of confusion,” because “there is no imagined likeness in reality that is not a body.” It quotes from Elimah and from Shomer Emunim (Rabbi Yosef Ergas, Second Debate, the fifth principle) that light is “physical,” even though it is the most precious of perceptible things, and the sefirot are not physical, and therefore these are metaphors; and it attributes this also to what the Ari wrote at the end of the book Mevo She’arim. It explains that “body” here does not mean mass in the modern sense, but rather the negation of spirituality—meaning that everything grasped in imagination and sensation belongs to the physical domain—and therefore the image of light is dangerous if one turns it into an actual identification rather than remaining within the framework of metaphor.

Energy, Einstein, materialism, and blowing wind as opposed to light

The text examines whether energy is something spiritual, and determines that anything that enters equations and is subject to deterministic laws is not spiritual, whereas the spirituality in the human being is connected to free choice and to being beyond the causal process of nature. It brings Einstein’s conversion relation between mass and energy as proof that they are of the same kind, and that “one cannot convert mass into spirit,” and emphasizes that after the creation of the world there is no creation of matter except at the expense of energy. It brings a quotation from Chesterton via Hugo Bergmann, to the effect that the discoveries of the new physics supposedly bring down materialism, but then adds in Bergmann’s name that this is an exaggeration, because force is no more spiritual than matter, and the central question is the existence of the soul and its relation to matter. It explains that for Einstein, energy is not only a defined magnitude but something that actually exists, because matter can turn into energy and vice versa; therefore, in a certain sense, this actually strengthens a more refined materialism.

The text concludes with a distinction between “spirit” in the sense of blowing wind and light, and states that blowing wind is a property of the air and not a substance—that is, energy of motion within a medium—whereas light can propagate even in a vacuum and is therefore perceived as an “entity” of energy that is not a property of a material carrier. It suggests that in a certain sense blowing wind is more abstract than light, because it is only a property of air; but precisely for that reason, light is suitable as a metaphor for saying that spiritual reality is not merely an abstract attribute but something that “exists.”

Basically, with aesthetics we were with the person through whom we tried to understand Don Yehuda Abravanel’s addition to what came before him—basically, or in the language of the previous sections, section 8 for example, the addition of the logos to the world of ideas. An addition that says there is something beyond the idea; the idea is not the highest thing. There is something behind it, that is what continues it—there is something beyond. The last section, section 15, which we finished, basically ends with a somewhat fatalistic sentence: no intellectual vision can attain anything except the divine wisdom, but not its first beginning. That cannot be attained—the beginning, the simple and hidden source. So we said that that source is basically the matter of the ideas, or what lies beyond the ideas, and that cannot really be attained; it is hidden. The next sections come to explain why it seems impossible to attain it, and in fact to challenge that determination and say that yes, it can be attained—attained in a certain way. Or in one sentence, we’ll say that it cannot be attained through vision, but it can be attained through hearing. That is basically the direction things are going. We’re starting with section 16. At the moment these sections are basically coming to explain to us why that logos cannot be grasped, why it cannot be seen, why it cannot be seized. So they begin to discuss a bit what seeing is, what visual perception is—not only seeing itself. So they begin with the excellence of sight: “We have no other way by which to know any thing except through the senses, and even in subtle spiritual things, where the physical senses are of no use to us, except through the two superior senses, hearing and sight.” Touch and taste are, as it were, physical senses; hearing and sight are superior senses, more refined senses. As stated in the book Novelet Chokhmah by the great figure of modern Italian Jewish philosophy, the Yashar of Candia, known as the Yashar of Candia—Yashar is Yosef Shlomo Rofeh. He relies on the book of books of Greek speculative philosophy, Metaphysics. What is Metaphysics? Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which opens with the excellence of the sense of sight. The beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is a hymn to sight. “All human beings by nature desire to know”—that’s a quotation from there—“all human beings by nature desire to know.” Meaning, it is human nature to want to know things. Curiosity, yes, curiosity. “A sign of this is the love of the senses,” and proof that people love their senses is that even without any need we love them, and more than all the others, the eyes. Meaning, our love of the senses is not only because they serve us, but because we have some love for them even apart from the way we use them—not only because we currently want to use them for something, but our senses are beloved in themselves. I want them, they matter to me. It matters to me that I have this ability of sight, that I can hear—but not only as some instrument for using something else that matters to me. Having this ability of sight matters to me more than, say, being able to eat—I don’t know what—more than having, say, a finger or a leg. At least that was true for Aristotle; it seems to me it’s true for me too. Maybe for soccer players it’s less true, I don’t know. But fine, today, you know, there are all kinds of intelligences—emotional intelligence and all sorts of intelligences. Even being good at soccer is a kind of intelligence; to each his own intelligence. So maybe a leg too is an intelligent organ, and people would worry just as much about missing a leg. Fine. “And more than all the others, the eyes, because not only for the sake of action, but even without any practical purpose”—meaning, even when we don’t currently want to do anything concrete with the eyes—“we prefer sight over all the others.” The reason is that more than all the senses, it brings us to know what—or to know the what, I’m not sure how to read this—“and many distinctions.” Meaning, sight is the thing most important to us because it is the most powerful sense. It gives us the most information about the world, the most distinctions or differentiations, and therefore sight is basically the thing most important to us.

All right, just a few comments. And maybe we’ll manage to move a bit faster than in previous times, though every time I hope that. The first sentence that opens: “We have no other way by which to know any thing except through the senses.” That is how the sentence begins, how the paragraph begins. This paragraph—this sentence—is not a sentence of the Nazir; it is a sentence of the Yashar of Candia. The Nazir does not agree with this sentence. What this sentence basically says is the view known in the world as empiricism. Empiricism is a view that says that our only possibility for taking in information from the world, or knowing something about the world, is through the senses. We have no other means by which to know the world apart from the senses. And that is the definition of a sense: the thing that supplies me with information about the world, through which I can interact with the world.

In the night classes, those who were there—we talked a bit about Hume’s problems, the problems Hume raised regarding causality and induction and so on. Maybe we also mentioned this here at some point. So what did Hume actually claim? Hume claimed: how can we infer that there is causality in the world at all? After all, we cannot see causality, right? If someone kicks a ball and therefore the ball flies, then the kick is the cause of the ball’s flight, right? That’s how we usually tend to think. Hume asks: what do you mean? Who told you that? All you saw was that first there was a kick and afterwards the ball flew. You also see that this always happens, fine, okay—you can say that every time there is a kick, the ball also flies. But that still isn’t the concept of causality. The concept of causality means that there is also a connection between the kick and the ball, a connection of causing, not just temporal succession. What Hume argued is that what we can perceive with the senses is only temporal succession between the event of the kick and the event of the ball’s flight. That is all one can see; beyond that I have nothing, nothing is given to me in the senses. Right? A physical analysis won’t give me a solution? Physical analysis—I don’t know what that is. Break down the physical analysis too. Applying pressure to the ball, fine, okay—but what is this physical analysis? Again, we need to understand. Meaning, all the elements in the physical analysis that do not derive from sight are fiction. There is no such thing. What we usually call a cause, Hume argued—not that I agree with him, he was just very bored. Very bored. All philosophers are bored, otherwise they wouldn’t philosophize. Nietzsche already said that without idlers in the world no significant philosophy would emerge. And it’s actually written in the Talmud: ten idlers in a city. So in order to deal with matters of the spirit, you have to be an idler—an idler in the positive sense of the word.

Anyway, what Hume said was that every time we speak about a cause, we cannot really speak about a cause; we can speak about temporal succession. And that too—if we don’t get into the problem of induction—for how do I know that every time I kick the ball it will fly? That is another question Hume discussed, not important for me right now. Now, what assumption underlies Hume’s argument? That whatever does not come out of the senses, I cannot infer about the world. That is basically what is there. After all, through the senses I do not see causality; I see only temporal succession, right? The concept of causality does not come from the senses. I do not know causality—the property of the world that everything has a cause—through the senses. Through the senses I only see temporal sequences, not causing; I do not see the process of causing. So if that is so, Hume says, it is fiction, because where did it come from? Or it is my invention, whatever—but what does that have to do with the world? My inventions are very nice, but what do they have to do with the world? If you claim that in the world itself there is a relation of causing, then you need to see that through some sense—and no sense sees it. Hume was an empiricist. Just an example of an empiricist argument. That is, empiricist—empirical means experiential; something empirical is something that comes from experience, meaning I saw it, I sensed it with the senses. And empiricism is the approach that says only the empirical is a means of knowing about the world. He does not deny all science; he only says that every time we talk about a cause we need to be aware that this is not cause in the sense of something producing, but cause in the sense of temporal succession. You do not have to deny science; you do not have to say the kick caused the ball’s flight. You can interpret the same scientific law to mean that every time there is a kick, there will be a ball flying. I’m ignoring the problem of induction here; I’m talking about the problem of causality. I think there are even practical differences, but I won’t get into that now. So if he didn’t have Hume’s problem of causality? Fine. Hume himself also did not believe what he said—that’s how it is. No philosopher believes what he says, at least that’s my opinion. Someone who truly believed what he said also probably would not fly on a plane built on the principles of mechanics. But I assume there is no such person, except perhaps people with various fears of flying.

In any case, the empiricist approach basically claims that only the senses are the way to know the world. This is the first sentence here in the paragraph: “We have no other way by which to know any thing except through the senses.” The alternative—I’m already jumping ahead, even though that’s premature, because right now he is presenting this position, while the continuation is supposed to present the alternative. So what is the alternative really? Do you think there really is causality? What do you say? Is there such a thing as causality, not just temporal succession? You said before that to you this sounded like a weak objection. So you believe in productive causality? Where did you get that from? I don’t know. Well then, apparently there is no such thing. What do you mean, “I don’t know”? How can you say that in the world the kick causes the flight of the ball? You never saw that anywhere. All you saw was that one always comes after the other. Why does that happen? Why does it really happen? Intellectual inference—from what? Why does it happen? Why does it happen every time? Every time there is a kick there is a ball flying. It is always correlated. Why should the temporal succession be constant? Because it always happens. Why? What do you mean, why? I have no idea why. So that means it’s causality. No—if you say that, that’s saying: I have nothing else, so I call it causality. The question is—that’s not good enough. You can keep pushing this question further, and I’m not… Every process of learning is like this. Every basis of learning is like this. Every learning process is problematic in exactly the same way. It won’t help me to say that this is a process of learning, right? You’re right. Every process of learning is problematic in exactly the same way. Every process in which you add something beyond what you saw—you will always need to explain where it came from. From your gut? Then why does it fit the world?

How did Hume learn to speak? How did Hume learn to speak? No, he learned to speak. What they taught him, he learned. I mean Hume-the-theorist. What they taught him, he learned. To draw conclusions beyond what they taught him—he really doesn’t know how. That is exactly the point. To learn that every time I kick a ball, the ball flies—that I am willing to learn. Yes, but so what? The question is why this is causing. Why do I perceive that this is not just temporal succession? I can ask even more sharply: where did the very concept of causing come from? If I am already equipped with the concept of causing, then I’m at least willing to hear—though I don’t agree—what you said before: okay, I think about why this always happens, and it probably happens because there is a causal relation between the events. But I am asking: where did the concept of causing itself come from? Where did you invent it from? After all, it did not come from the world; you did not see it through any sense, right? So where did you invent such a thing? How did such a thought even occur to you? If it is just something you invented, then you understand that it is not supposed to tell you anything about the world. You’re just living in one fantasy and someone else lives in another fantasy. If you took it from the world, then you need to explain to me from where—meaning through which sense you saw it. Understand? Hume’s question is a serious question. It is not so simple to evade it. And it seems to me that all attempts to evade it really have not succeeded to this day.

But what if cause doesn’t mean it will always be like that—maybe we’ll say it’s temporal succession? No, no—that is exactly the point. To say it will always be like that is induction, not causality. From the fact that it happened several times I infer that it will always happen. True, that is also a practical consequence of understanding that there is a causal relation here—that is what I meant before when I said there are practical differences. Meaning, once you recognize that there is also a relation of causing here, and not just correlation in time—not just that one thing always appears after another—it is plausible, it is part of the content of the concept of cause, that whenever the cause is present, the effect will occur. But the concept of cause itself is not “that it always happens.” The fact that it always happens is a practical consequence of the concept of cause. The concept of cause is that very concept of causing—that this thing causes that thing, that there is a causal relation between them. I don’t know how to explain it better. One of the practical consequences is that it will always happen. But that is not the meaning of the concept of cause, otherwise Hume is right. Then there really is no such thing as cause. There is only “always comes after.” “Always comes after” is not called a cause. “Always comes after” is an implication of the fact that A is the cause of B. But the fact that A is the cause of B contains more information than “this will always happen.” It could theoretically happen that something always occurs after something else and there is no connection between them—such a thing could exist, right?

If I manage to develop something, take a principle of something and develop it and do other things with it and it works for me, that supports what I’m saying, that there really is something causal here—naively, it supports it. So I want to say all kinds of things. You saw five balls falling to the earth, five objects falling to the earth. I can always explain that to you in a hundred thousand different ways. In infinitely many ways, not a hundred thousand—all of which will explain those five cases, but they will have practical differences in other cases. If you now try a sixth experiment that will distinguish among all these theories, then think of it as if you started with six experiments. Again there are infinitely many. The examples—only a small infinity comes out. Doesn’t matter, you understand? You can never derive a generalization from a detailed set of facts. That can never happen. There are always infinitely many ways to generalize. Right, you have three points on a graph. Now try to draw the general line. Can you draw the general line? No chance. There are infinitely many lines. You can draw infinitely many lines that pass through those three points, right? You can draw one like this, one like this, one like this—infinitely many lines. Through any finite number of points there pass infinitely many curved lines, right? That is exactly what I said before. You have a finite number of discrete observations; there are infinitely many generalizations of which those would be particular cases. So the question is: how did you decide on this generalization? Understand? So in philosophy of science, in the problem of induction, they talk perhaps about the simplest generalization. In short, you need to understand exactly what the definition of “simple” is—but suppose that is one of the criteria. But that is an aesthetic criterion, not a logical one. Why should the simplest be true? Maybe the most complicated is the correct law. Why do you think the simplest law is the right one? Or the most general? The most general actually sounds least plausible, because you have the least support for it. You ought to derive the minimum you can from the facts. Whatever you add beyond that are conclusions you are not compelled to reach, so you tend not to do that. All right, I don’t want to get too deep into this; this was only an example. But we do need to understand what the alternative really is. Someone who is not an empiricist—what does he think?

But these innate tools—what do they have to do with the world? With them you want to make statements about the world. What does it help that these tools are innate? No, no—the phenomena you observe, I’m not talking about your brain, that too is part of the world. But now I’m asking: you assume that in the world there is a causal relation between events. That is a statement about the world, right? My thought about the world is basically exactly like the tools that are within me and with which I operate. I didn’t understand. The concept of causing does not exist in the world I see, because I do not see it, but it exists in the world of my thought. No, then you are saying something different from what he says. We’ll get there. It exists in my world of logic. Fine—but maybe that is a statement about the world or a statement about you? What does “a concept” and “a statement about the world” mean? In the world itself, is there a causal relation between event A and event B or not? If I had been born without that intuition of causing, then there would be no relation of causing in the world? The concept of causing—the very concept that exists at all—would not exist. So that is my claim; he simply agrees with me. That is exactly what he said. The question is who can be a non-empiricist. I hope that slowly you will start to be convinced that what Hume says is not complete nonsense. So how can one be a non-empiricist? Is there any practical difference in this? Is there a practical difference? No, there are many practical differences, certainly many philosophical practical differences. Yes, but not a practical difference in the sense of—for example, as Gilad said before, you believe that this will always happen. Yes. Why? Because there is in your head some miraculous belief that it will always happen—that doesn’t mean it really will always happen. Your eyes are not subject to that miraculous belief. The question is whether your eyes will see this phenomenon every time or not. You are betting that yes, right? Regarding the law of gravity, for example, you are betting that tomorrow morning objects will continue to fall to the earth. Right? On what basis? You are saying something about the world; it is not enough to say this is my fantasy. Right? That I believe objects will fall tomorrow—that’s fine, that I can explain as an illusion. But the fact that I am willing to bet that objects will fall, and I will be right—believe me, I will be right—that is a sign that apparently there is a true statement here about the world. All right? So that probably derives from some perception that there is a force of gravity here that causes this falling, and therefore as long as the force exists, there will also be falls. Someone who thinks this is just temporal succession has no guarantee at all that this temporal succession will continue tomorrow as well.

And to the same extent that he thinks the temporal succession will continue tomorrow, he’ll say the same thing about causality. No—he says that that too doesn’t exist. He will challenge induction too. Also the connection—not the succession, but induction, the generalization that this succession will always continue. Now let’s think about the same problem, and then we’ll see—and it really is a question—where does it come from, how do I know that the sun will rise again tomorrow morning? And were it not for the covenant of day and night, I truly would not know it. In any case, it seems to me that the only possible alternative to empiricism is not really an alternative to empiricism, but an expansion of it. And that is what you proposed before, which is why I said it was different from what Hatzi said. Hatzi suggested that this is some concept that exists within you. You say no—there is another way, besides the senses, to know the world. You can call it a sixth sense, you can call it whatever you like. But I have another way to know the world that is not through the five familiar senses. You can call it a sixth sense; the Nazir calls it auditory logic; you can call it all kinds of names. But that is the only alternative to the empiricist view; there is no other alternative. Everything else can somehow be mapped onto Kant, and what he says doesn’t advance us at all, as we will try to show in the night classes. Immanuel Kant is basically the only serious solution offered to Hume’s problem, and on it sits the entire modern worldview and contemporary philosophy of science. And it is nonsense. It is simply ridiculous.

So what are you saying, basically? Huh? What are you saying? That whenever I see temporal succession, I have some sense that tells me it’s a cause. Just as you see the temporal succession, you see the causal relation. In a certain sense you see it—you just don’t see it with your eyes; you see it with some sixth sense. Does that sense decide that temporal succession is a cause? No, that sense sees that there is causing here; it sees the causing. It simply sees it. Just as the sense of sight sees the kick and the ball’s flight, the sixth sense sees that there is causing here. It’s a special camera—it photographs causes, not… No, really, that is the only alternative. There is no other alternative. Sometimes can you tell me—if I see temporal succession—can that sense tell me that even though there is temporal succession here, this is not the cause? Yes, yes, and I think very often we explicitly say that. Very often you will see something and it will look like a strange coincidence, and yet you will say: okay, but it’s a coincidence. You won’t decide it’s a cause. You do not always make an induction. Suppose you were born in this room and you see that all the tables here are green. I’m not sure you would conclude that all the tables in the world are green. Because you feel this is not something essential to a table; the table could also have been the color of that wall there—white, right? Fine, but that doesn’t come from nowhere. Somehow you feel that this induction is not essential; this induction I will not make. There are things in which I feel there is something essential here—meaning, this will continue forever; it has to be here. That feeling is what I call a sixth sense.

And note: this thing is sensing, not thinking. This is a very important point. This mode of operation is a mode of sensing, not of thinking. I know the world by the sixth sense. The sixth sense is not the intellect. It is not thinking. Usually the world tends to believe that the senses pass information to the intellect, and the intellect thinks, processes the information, and draws conclusions from it. What I am saying now is: not so. There is something—call it a part of the intellect if you like, doesn’t matter—but there is something besides the senses that performs an act of sensing, not of thinking. It is presumably part of the intellect, but it performs an act of sensing, not of thinking. Meaning, it is like seeing or hearing; it gathers information from the world into me, into the person. Thinking is a detached act. When I think, I live inside a bubble. I am not looking at the world. The senses pass me data from the world, and then the intellect thinks. When the intellect thinks, it has no connection to the world. It is detached, and operates on the data currently within it, which were brought by the senses but are now within it. That is the act of thinking. Here I am talking about an act of sensing. Because if I say that causing is the result of thinking, then I arrive at what Hatzi said. I want to say that I grasp the concept of causing the way I grasp that the ball flew. I simply perceive it. Like a sense, I see it. It is given; it is not a conclusion I reach as a result of thought. It is a datum that I simply collect from outside inward through a sense. Okay? It’s very important to understand this.

Maybe it’s a bit hard to say in concepts where we have lots of information about all kinds of things, but say in the Talmud, when they state some law and suddenly we don’t have the information, then we don’t have such a clear intuition of what… We don’t always have intuition, but often we do have intuition. Fine. I also don’t always see things even though they exist in the world. That does not mean I don’t have the sense of sight. We have intuition; in the Talmud, at every step of the way, we use intuition. It’s true that not always. Fine. You also have to work on the field of intuition in the Talmud—that is one of the goals, to sharpen this sixth sense. Good morning, everyone. How do you define it as intuition? Huh? How do you define it as intuition? Yes, you can call it intuition. Is there erosion in conventions? Huh? Is there erosion in conventions? What do you mean? Not everything is—every time someone says “I have intuition,” he says nonsense. Fine. But he has intuition; his intuition is simply wrong. Fine. That’s some kind of erosion, maybe… No, but it’s real erosion; that is his intuition. It could be that his intuition is not correct. So that is exactly the point. This sense is a sense that, like all senses, perhaps can be improved and repaired somewhat. But this sense critically depends on work—among other things, for example, work on character traits. A person’s traits are things that interfere with sensing. Now I don’t think—and this is written in many books—I don’t think the intention is that I literally see less well. That’s not what they mean. Rather, my character traits apparently somehow affect the way my intuition perceives the world. Not through the senses—how the sixth sense works. Intuition also in the Talmud. I read things in the Talmud, I try to think: what is the reasoning behind this? That too is some kind of sixth sense. Trying to understand what is really going on here, why it is really so. Right? Fine. This is something that needs work, this sense.

And this is not intellect? No, certainly not. If it were intellect, then this would not be a statement about the Talmud; it would be a statement about yourself. The intellect takes part here, but it is not all intellect. Yes, of course the intellect also participates in it, but not everything is intellect. The most significant parts are not intellect. But of course, this is a kind of contemplation that is not trivial. Some people do it better, and some people do it less well. Sometimes they call it “the Torah’s perspective”—why a person sees correctly, meaning he really gets at what the text really intends. That is basically someone whose sixth sense is sharpened, and he is well attuned, he grasps the Torah well. Okay? Anyway, I’m only presenting this here so it will be clear where there is any room left—meaning, how one can disagree with the statement that we have no other way except through the senses. How can one be a non-empiricist? One has to recognize this matter, and that is basically the goal of the whole book. The goal of the whole book—what the Nazir calls auditory logic—is this. And he leads us slowly, step by step, to understand that there is no choice; we must recognize the existence of such a thing. Because all the Greek means will not explain to us how we really infer the existence of relations such as causing, for example, or relations that are not visible to the eyes. Okay? But we’ll get to that later. I’m jumping ahead a bit just so we’ll see the context. Visual perception is a perception that claims there is really no such thing. Hume’s perception. What comes through the senses comes; everything else is fiction. In other words, cognition is achieved only through the senses. There is no cognitive element besides the senses. The role of the intellect is to think, not to cognize. That is, it seems to me, the accepted division in the world today: the senses are what receive, and the intellect thinks. People do not perceive that the intellect also receives, that the intellect also cognizes.

What does it mean, “thinks”? As I said before, thinking is a detached act. I take the facts that the senses bring to me and perform some processing on them, like a computer. A computer has input and output, right? Input and output, and it has a CPU. The CPU is thinking, and input-output is cognition, right? Input-output is… yes, yes. Fine, that is exactly the distinction; that’s how they created the computer. Exactly according to this picture, according to the picture that distinguishes between data supplied from outside inward to the intellect, and the intellect performs processing on them that is completely internal, not connected outward. You take the data themselves and process them, infer conclusions from them, make calculations on them, whatever. Okay? This is basically the classic division between input and CPU. A very efficient division, of course, and the computer is a very useful creation—but the question is whether this really exhausts all human actions. Today there is a very strong tendency, precisely because the computer is such a useful and sometimes sophisticated creature, to identify the human cognitive mode of operation with the mode of operation of a computer. That is a common mistake in many fields, and this is one of the mistakes that stem from this perception. In the computer age people are even more inclined to think this way, because there is a very clear distinction between a process of cognition and a process of thinking. This is input and that is processing. One of the Nazir’s claims is that the distinction between cognition and thinking is not sharp. Meaning, the distinction between thinking—what we called that detached act of processing—and creating contact with the world or drawing information from the world, is very blurry. It is not correct to say that the senses do that and then the intellect processes. The intellect also does the sensing, not only the processing. There is some mixing here between the domains.

Also in philosophy there is a field called epistemology—we talked about this once. There is a field… but this is somehow a first principle no one speaks about at all—that there really are two such sharp and separate actions. The machine—that’s the input, yes, the input. How do I know? How do I receive input? You feed a computer input, right? So does a computer have senses? Yes, certainly it has senses. What do you mean? So what is the difference between a human and a computer? Because in the human being the distinction between thinking and receiving is not really sharp. That is exactly the point. In the computer it is sharp—that is how they built it. A computer has only what was put into it. If they built it in such a way that it first cognizes and then processes, then it will first cognize and then process. So it is a very convenient model, but the human being is not built that way. A human being cognizes and processes simultaneously. The processing intellect also cognizes. Epistemology and logic are two fields that are not sharply separated from one another. When you discuss the question of how you think, for example—just some very simple argument—what is logic? A retrospective attempt, yes, to look at myself and see how I think. That is logic, right? How do I look? I perceive myself as an object. Right? I look at how I think. So I am serving here in two roles: I am the observer and I am the object observed, right? Fine? Now I, as observer, am engaged in a process of cognition. Right? I know something, and that something is myself. Yes? Fine? So I investigate logic through epistemology. Epistemology, apparently, according to this, comes before logic. But on the other hand, the prevailing view is usually that logic comes before epistemology. First of all, you need to know how to think; that also guides the ways through which you know. I think one can show even by simple philosophical means that these domains are not sharply separate from each other, there is no hierarchy and no clear distinction between them.

But returning now to our issue, that is basically the point at which empiricism errs, in my opinion, and in the Nazir’s opinion, and humble me as well. But here he is still presenting empiricism itself. All right, let’s continue. “The image of radiance.” “The Zohar,” “the Bahir”—these are the names of books of inner wisdom, which included “For the Lord God is a sun and a shield.” The Holy One, blessed be He, is perceived there as some kind of light. “Sun and shield” is the expression. And not for nothing are the books of inner wisdom called The Zohar and The Bahir—all kinds of concepts somehow connected to light. Lights, yes. “Which is not only by way of image and metaphor, but truly He is light and gives light. As the Neoplatonic philosophers called Him.” Here I’m not even sure whether this sentence is meant literally; it seems to me perhaps it is, but it is a bit strange. Meaning, he says that this is not only by way of image and metaphor, but truly He is light and gives light. This is not a metaphor. In what sense is it truly so? After all, it is obviously true that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not light, right? It is clear that this is some metaphor through which we grasp Him. Yes, maybe he wants to say that it is not just a metaphor, but really something sensed—that’s what he wants to say. That it’s a sense. What sense? The perception. I don’t know, the perception he presents here—I don’t know. What inner wisdom wants to teach, then a person really senses it like light. It is not just a metaphor. Again, I say “like light,” so it is a metaphor. No, no—but not inner wisdom: “the Lord is a sun and shield.” The light is not the inner wisdom; the light is God.

The next sentence: “Nevertheless, this is only a transfer, an analogy to what is above it, the unseen and unforeseeable.” Is this expression written below in Novelet Chokhmah? That’s it—I don’t know, but from the placement it looks a bit like a new passage starts, I don’t know exactly. At first I thought this was really some continuation of Novelet Chokhmah. What? And he brings that quote from below. Ah, so it’s just a continuation of the quotation from above. The “nevertheless” is already his own comment. Right, that could be. I’ll tell you why I’m hesitating. I also initially read it that way, independently—I didn’t even notice it was a continuation of the quote from Novelet Chokhmah—but it seemed obvious to me that this is a view he simply does not accept, regardless of who says it. In section 21—do you have it on the next page? In section 21, read the second paragraph: “Indeed, the sage Ibn Rushd said: it is fitting that we choose the most noble among the things that apprehend corporeality, and say that He, blessed be He, is light, because in this way we save the masses from the belief in corporeality, and He will be, in their eyes, existing and honored among existents.” Up to this point it really sounds like this is only by way of transfer—to call Him light in order to explain to everyone that this is a subtle concept. But he continues: “even though this accords with justice.” And that means it is not just a transfer. There is something truly essential here; this is not merely some accidental analogy where I chose the concept that was closest. There is something essential here. Which means, on the one hand, not the thing itself—it is only for the sake of the masses—but on the other hand, it is not for nothing that they chose this metaphor. Meaning, there is some essential element here. In some respect, the Holy One, blessed be He, truly is light, and He performs the same function that light performs, or something like that. In that sense there is something essential and not accidental in this metaphor.

So I don’t know. Meaning, even in the passage in section 17 where he says, coming back to section 17, “Nevertheless this is only a transfer and an analogy,” it does not seem that he completely rejects what was said before; he adds to it. He did not say: and they were wrong. Rather: it is only by way of transfer and analogy. Is it not true that He is light? And he begins by saying: “not only by way of image and metaphor, but truly He is light and gives light.” Meaning literally? Seemingly, yes—that is exactly what we are discussing now. So that is what the first passage seems to say. In the second passage he qualifies it, but he does not say no, this is false; rather, the truth is that this is only by way of transfer. He says it is true that in some sense it really is true, and nevertheless, still, this is only transfer and metaphor. So how exactly are these two things to be reconciled? It seems to me that the root of it lies in section 21 that we just read, and when we get there we’ll talk about it. But I’ll just remind those who were here: we already spoke about two types of metaphors in prophecy—an accidental metaphor and a necessary metaphor. We said there are cases where the metaphor is connected to the thing signified in an essential way, and places where the metaphor and the thing signified have some accidental similarity and it is simply convenient for me to convey the thing signified through the metaphor. We talked about this in… what? In myth? Right, we talked about myth, we talked about this—I think we spoke about this in several places. What? In charity? “Like righteousness standing before God,” like values standing before God. And how did we mention there a necessary and accidental metaphor? Regarding Kabbalah—I don’t remember how it came up there. With Kabbalah it is very common that these are necessary metaphors. After all, when Kabbalah speaks about light—and that is our discussion too—light is a kabbalistic concept. When it speaks about light it obviously does not mean actual physical light, right? It is talking about spiritual things on the one hand, but on the other hand it is clear—and I think it is even written somewhere in the Ari, or at least one can infer it—that there could not have been another metaphor. Meaning, all the structures described in Kabbalah—there is no other way to describe them. It is not that by chance they found one metaphor but could also have described it with another. There is something necessary in this metaphor, something real in this relation between the metaphor and the thing signified.

We spoke about this at the beginning of this essay too, for example in section 6. We said that the goal of the metaphor is also to raise the person up to the level of the thing signified, not only to lower the thing signified to my own level, where the metaphor is spoken, yes, as in “fox parables.” I am trying to convey to someone an idea that lies above his world, in terms of his own world. We said that this does two things. First, it lowers the lofty idea downward; but it also raises the person from below upward. Because otherwise the person down below gains nothing. The way to advance him is to try to formulate things in his own language, but in doing so also to improve him and change his language itself. Meaning, this is both a process of lowering the lofty thing and raising the person more toward the lofty thing. Then his language becomes increasingly refined; he can now receive subtler metaphors, and thus the person himself also progresses. It is not that one only keeps lowering all the lofty things into his world all the time. All right. And I think this was mentioned in several contexts, so here too I think it is something of that sort. Meaning, light is some metaphor for the Holy One, blessed be He, by way of transfer and metaphor. But on the other hand there is something real here. He truly is light and gives light. And that is what is written here in the name of Ibn Rushd in section 21; when we get there we’ll discuss it.

“The great kabbalists warn and teach: many thought to liken God to light, thinking that this matter is not corporeal; and this is the height of confusion, for there is no image of anything in existence that is not corporeal.” So here he wants to explain further. He says that it is clear why they chose this metaphor of light to describe the Holy One, blessed be He—because this thing is not a body. And the Holy One, blessed be He, is also not a body. So up to this point that is true in certain respects. But just because both are not body does not mean that they are the same thing. That is exactly the point. This resemblance to light also contains a certain danger—that you may now also identify the Holy One, blessed be He, with light. And that is already not correct. Now he goes on and says: “for there is no image of anything in existence that is not corporeal.” Here he goes further. He says not only that both are not body, but that the Holy One, blessed be He, and light are still not the same thing. True, neither is body, but they are not the same as each other. These are two different things, neither of which is a body. More than that, he says: light itself is a body. That is what he wants to say. Because “there is no image of anything in existence that is not corporeal.” So that is what I want to discuss now a bit. Who says this? Is it the Nazir saying this, or is he continuing a quotation? No, no, I assume this is the Nazir speaking here. Fine, these things are quotations from books listed below, but these are certainly the Nazir’s words, not the Yashar of Candia.

Below he brings a list of books that basically say exactly this sentence. I think this is a quotation from one of them—both from Elimah and from Shomer Emunim. Shomer Emunim took it from Elimah; the fact that there are two is not coincidental. So for example, in Elimah he says: “Not because the light is spiritual, for it is corporeal. And the sefirot are not corporeal. Rather, they are metaphors.” Right? The sefirot are light, but light is material, light is not spiritual, light is material, and the sefirot are not material, and therefore it is only a metaphor. Is it the most spiritual metaphor we can imagine? Yes. And therefore, in the book Shomer Emunim by Rabbi Yosef Ergas—one of perhaps the most important introductory books to Kabbalah, who was the teacher of the Yad Malachi. Yad Malachi, the author of the… You don’t know Yad Malachi? A very well-known book of principles. Rabbi Malachi HaKohen. Huh? No, sorry—he was the teacher of the Yad Malachi. Rabbi Yosef Ergas, second polemic, fifth principle—he fights there against the Sabbateans and their various kinds of followers. The fifth principle, that He is not a body: “Many think to liken God to a great, pure, clear light, thinking that this matter is not corporeal. And this is the height of confusion and error. For light, despite being the most precious of things sensed, is corporeal. And there is no image of anything imagined that is not bodily.” Which is what the Ari wrote at the end of the book Mevo She’arim. Also in Avodat HaKodesh he brings this Shomer Emunim, and so on.

What is really the point here? I think it is important to clarify several things in this context. What does it mean that light is a body? Isn’t it true that light is not a body? Up to now how did we begin? We began by saying that light too is not a body, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is also not a body—but that still does not mean they are the same thing. Here there is something beyond that. Here it says that light is corporeal. There is no image of anything that is not corporeal. It is obvious that this is only a matter of terminology, and the question is what terminology we mean. So what is called “body” here is in contrast to spirit. Light is not a spiritual thing; it is a physical thing. In that sense it is called “body.” The intent is not that light has mass—the ideas of Einstein, that’s not what he means. Rather, light is not a spiritual thing. That is the point in calling it corporeal.

How do we actually define such a thing? How do we know it? Maybe according to the five senses perhaps? Huh? Maybe according to the testimony of the five senses and, say, that sixth sense we spoke about before? What? That anything that can be attained through the five senses is physical. Could be. And that is exactly the question. What? That is exactly the point—the same way I know there is causing. Exactly through that same sixth sense. And the empiricists are exactly those who do not believe that there is spirit. That is how they become materialists, because they believe only in what they see. I hear; so maybe that is a criterion similar to what I am about to say—we’d need to think about it. Once someone asked me whether energy is a spiritual thing. Light is just photons, bundles of energy—that’s light. Light is energy, right? So that is basically the same question. If we ask whether light is spiritual, that is to ask whether energy is spiritual. Today we know there are other forms of energy too, not only light. So instinctively I told him that to me it was obviously not. Afterwards I tried to think why not. I can suggest two reasons why not, two criteria according to which it would not be a spiritual thing. I don’t know whether they are reasons or criteria.

One reason is that anything that enters into equations must be a physical thing. The essence of spirit is that it is not subject to those causal processes and physical laws that appear so deterministic and necessary. Everything spiritual in the human being is that he has free choice, that he is not driven by causes—“driven” in quotation marks—by causes, and that he is not subject to the causal process of nature; he is beyond it. In that sense he is a spiritual creature. And in that sense, energy is subject to laws exactly as mass is. Different laws, but subject to them in the same way. Right? So if it is subject to laws, then it is not a spiritual thing. A spiritual thing is a free thing, a thing not subject to laws, above laws. That is one formulation I thought of then. It seems to me one could perhaps formulate it better following Einstein. When Einstein says that energy is basically some equivalent of mass—the famous E equals mc squared—what that actually means is that energy is an expression of mass. Or that it has an equivalent in mass. Or let’s put it differently: one can convert energy into mass and mass into energy by a very high conversion ratio, because very little mass turns into a lot of energy—and that is the atomic bomb. Very little mass turns into a huge amount of energy, because the ratio is c squared, the speed of light squared, which is an enormous constant. Right? So a tiny mass, if you multiply it by something enormous, gives the energy. So huge amounts of energy emerge from very little mass. But the very fact that one can convert mass into energy and energy into mass means that these are two things of the same kind. You cannot convert mass into spirit; there is no such thing. The law of conservation of matter was broken by Einstein. There is a law of conservation of matter-and-energy together, because some energy can become matter and vice versa, so there is no longer conservation of energy alone and no conservation of matter alone. There is conservation of mass-energy. Okay? So he brought everything into this category of matter. Exactly. But it is obviously the case that matter cannot become spirit. Yet matter and energy together are conserved, right? Meaning they are something of the same kind.

I would say that energy is matter in potential rather than in actuality. It can be turned into matter. Yes, that’s what I mean. Meaning, it is matter in potential and not in actuality, but it is not spirit. Spirit is something altogether different. Spirit is not something that, once brought into actuality, becomes matter—there is no such thing. Maybe yes, the Holy One, blessed be He—maybe that’s what He did. He created matter from a state where before there was no matter, only spirit. Right? So that is the process of emanation. The process of emanation is to create something physical from something more spiritual, gradually. But in the processes we know in the world there is no such thing. Once the world has already been created, then the business is conserved. No more matter is created. Okay? Or not except at the expense of energy—it can be created only at the expense of energy. Okay? So in that sense it seems to me this is perhaps even a stronger argument for why light, as a private case of energy in general, is a physical thing and not a spiritual one. And what about wind? Huh? And wind as in blowing wind—is that physical? Right, I’m just getting to that now.

Maybe—I brought here just an example so you can see that this isn’t… A book by Hugo Bergmann, a well-known thinker, Shmuel Hugo. He brings here: “Physicists today identify matter with force”—something in somewhat old-fashioned Hebrew, meaning with energy. “Many indeed exaggerated the importance of this turn in modern physics for the sake of worldview. Thus Chesterton wrote in an English weekly: It is an amusing spectacle to see the efforts made by the materialists to cover over the bankruptcy of materialism before the masses. I mean the front-line fighters of the method. In war it often happens that front-line fighters do not know what is happening behind them, while hundreds and thousands of writers continue to write books according to the tradition of Huxley and Haeckel”—two materialists, disciples of Darwin—“and do not notice the development of the sciences in the days of Einstein and Eddington. For already a disaster has occurred behind their backs”—disaster, of course, ironically—“materialism has gone bankrupt. The philosophers did not overthrow it; its downfall is the work of the natural scientists themselves, who made their discoveries at the expense of the creed in whose name they began their inquiry.” The creed is materialism. “And as they made the inquiry, they suddenly discovered that materialism had fallen. The materialists destroyed materialism. While they were investigating matter, matter slipped away from under their hands.” This is the view that basically says that from the fact that we discovered matter can become energy, that there is such a thing as energy, we discovered that materialism is not right. Of course that is not true, because this too is just an expansion of materialism. That is what Bergmann says: “It seems to me there is much exaggeration here.” End of Chesterton quote. “It seems to me there is much exaggeration here. I do not think that with regard to the principal question of materialism—the question of the existence of the soul, the existence of matter, and the relation between them—this identity of matter with energy decides anything. That is an internal physical question, because what practical difference does it make whether the material world is matter or energy? Energy is no more spiritual than matter.” The continuation is not relevant for us here.

What is he saying, basically? He says: what have we gained by turning matter into energy? Fine, so now materialism needs to be a bit more refined, but it is still materialism. Materialism that acknowledges the existence only of matter and energy, but not of soul. In other words, he assumes as obvious that even if I recognize the existence of energy, that still is not soul. Energy is not soul. Okay? What exactly was new in Einstein? After all, even before Einstein physics knew there was such a thing as energy. Just like that—what was new specifically in Einstein? Why did everybody run around Einstein? Before that too physics knew of something called energy. Did they know E=mc² before Einstein? No—on the contrary. After Einstein you can be even more materialist, because you turn energy into matter. Right. It seems to me that’s even true. No, that’s not it. Time enters the formulas, but it doesn’t connect with—it doesn’t stand in the place of mass, it can’t combine, it isn’t equivalent to it. Energy as well—so there was already time. It seems to me the point is that the energy before Einstein could be treated as fiction. Why? Because what does 1/2 mv² mean? A body moving at velocity v—so I define a quantity called the body’s energy, 1/2 mv². Fine, I defined a quantity, but who says it exists? Fine, I call a body moving at velocity v a body charged with energy 1/2 mv²—but where does the energy exist? There is nothing here that exists. What exists is only matter. Okay? With Einstein, he shows you that a certain matter turns into energy—meaning that in place of the matter there is now energy. So energy exists; it is no longer some fictive property that is our invention. That is what happened with Einstein. But on the other hand I think you are definitely right in saying that Einstein lowered energy beyond where it had been before. Before, it was still a fictive concept that was not matter. Einstein showed that this too is matter, completely. Because it even interchanges with matter in the formulas. And what about time? No, time is space. Not with matter. Time does not turn into matter; time is space. Fine. But time is something that enters into equations, right? You can regard time as a fiction, as a coordinate within which things happen, not as a thing. Matter does not become time, but matter does become energy.

Is materialism here understood only as a scientific theory, or maybe also as a moral theory that perhaps really does break down here? Why? Because materialism as a moral view perhaps talks about the existence of things—if energy is something we do not see, do not sense, and now it enters into matter, then materialism as a moral system cannot speak about emotions and things like that. Maybe you left emotions in the form of energy or something like that. If one can speak about them through energy, then it will speak about them. On the contrary, that is what all the materialists do today: they claim these are functions of matter. Energy. The collapse of materialism as the moral derivative of that materialist science collapsed at that time, and perhaps even more than that. Why? No, I don’t see why. Why moral? Because then I can insert the concept of emotions into mathematical equations. On the contrary, materialism gets stronger, you are saying. Because now, look, a materialist can live even more peacefully with the fact that a person has emotions, because maybe it’s in terms of energy and has some connection to matter. The view has indeed changed in essence. Fine. So there was once an objection to materialism—what do you do with emotions?—and later there is no more objection. No, I mean, of a scientific theory one can say that something new has emerged; a new moral theory was broken and re-formed. When you grasp morality as a theory you can certainly break it. And that was exactly the point. Fine.

In any case, one final remark that relates to this, and then we’ll stop. They asked what happens with wind. We also spoke about the concept of wind—wind that blows. What is that? Wind is seemingly a noun when I say “wind,” right? And what is this noun? After all, the thing that moves is air, right? Not wind. Wind is the energy moving within the air, right? Meaning, wind is not a thing at all. Wind is a property of the air. Okay? Light, for example, can also exist in a vacuum—a light wave, unlike an acoustic wave, a pressure wave, wind, yes, as it’s called—light can move in a vacuum. Sound will not exist in a vacuum, because sound is a pressure wave, and where there is no medium pressure cannot propagate, right? But a light wave propagates even in a vacuum. So in some sense it turns out that wind, physical wind, a blowing wind, is an even more spiritual concept than light—notice this. Because light is a thing; it’s an electromagnetic wave. What do I see when a light wave moves in a vacuum? I see the light itself, not something else. With wind, when I feel wind I feel air. The moving air has energy, has velocity, but there is a substance that bears this property of the energy of motion. That substance is air. So wind, as distinct from air, is only the property. It is not the thing itself, only its property, right? It is pure energy. Light, when I look at light, there is no substance there that bears the property called light. Energy of what is light? Energy of nothing—it is simply energy, period. What I see when I look at light—I do not see a substance that has energy; I see the energy itself. In wind there is air, some clear tangible substance, with mass and all, that has a certain property: it moves, it has velocity, it has energy. Okay? In some sense wind, as distinct from air, is not a substance at all. It is something completely abstract. Because there there is a substance—that is the air—and this is a property of the air, let’s say. Meaning, it is something completely abstract; it is not a thing at all, it is a property. Light in that sense is actually closer to being a thing, because what do I see when I see light? The light itself. It is not a property of anything; I see the light. That is what I see. Even in a vacuum there is light, not only in air, right? So in some sense wind is even more refined, supposedly, than light.

So why did they choose the metaphor of light? First of all, the expression “spirit” is very successful—wind blowing—because it really fits something spiritual. It fits something spiritual because what is “wind” in this whole business, beyond just plain air, the thing that makes it into wind, really is something that is entirely energy, something completely abstract, a property. By contrast, light is something that exists. It is not a property of something; right, it is energy just like wind, but it is something that exists. It is not a property of something; right? It is itself; it is an entity, not a property. Okay? It may be that this is why they chose the metaphor of light to describe the Holy One, blessed be He. Seemingly the metaphor of wind would have been more suitable, but wind makes it sound as though it is a description of something else, and that it itself does not exist. You want to explain that this abstract thing, this purified, spiritual thing, is also a thing—it exists. It is not some abstract entity that doesn’t exist. So you say that it is light. Hence the expression “light.” Good.