The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 11

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, he got hold of it. Within the system of events he expresses it in such a way that this is an ideational perspective, he calls it that; it’s a kind of looking through the event toward the eidos. Through the event toward the overall phenomenon. The event itself is transparent; through it you actually see the overall phenomenon. But afterward he ruins it. He starts well, but then he ruins it. He reaches the conclusion that really the phenomenon is, like Kant, located within us. Fine, but he still says: okay, it’s within us, but how do I make the generalization? Certainly this is not clear, even to me. Fine, this I see, that one can make a generalization. I don’t see something about the world. He starts well; I thought I’d finally found someone speaking to the point, but in the end he ruins it. Fine. Phenomenology—that’s what this approach is called. He calls it transcendental. And that is exactly the point; it’s very important. It’s not phenomenology in the simple sense, that just sees the phenomena and is impressed by them, but transcendental. Meaning, in the Kantian sense, that it is within me, not outside. And therefore I think he really didn’t innovate anything significant. But here he truly means the first part without the second part: that one can grasp the law of gravity by means of a reason that is impressed from outside. The intellect is not only thinking, detached, in light of sensory data. The intellect—it doesn’t matter, you can call it intellect or not intellect—but in that section of our cognition, of our mental activity, there is both awareness and thought. Fine, call it one thing, two things, I don’t know; I tend to distinguish them. But it is awareness—and what is the second? Thought? No, no, the opposite. Precisely awareness, that’s exactly the point: it is aroused by something from outside that I become aware of; that doesn’t belong to thinking. And therefore he says this is being impressed by something else. Can there be any encounter with a thing without trying to think about it? No, not that you don’t need to try to think about it, but you have to encounter it; you can’t invent it. You are impressed from outside. Now who exactly is the one being impressed—whether it’s the intellect or awareness—I said, the points are in any case at ninety degrees; I don’t know if there is some way to call it within the human being. Not by sitting in a closed room and thinking, but by what? Imagination? No. This contemplation—you can sit in a closed room and contemplate. Not think: contemplate. You understand? You sit there; you do not see it with your eyes. The sense that grasps it is not a sense that needs light in order to see gravity. You sit in a dark room and can also see the law of gravity. Meaning, it’s not… Yes, but when you grasp the entity. Or listen to it with the eyes of the intellect. About the law of gravity, everyone claims this force exists. The question is: do we encounter it in the sense that I encountered it directly, or is it only a result of this being how I explain why bodies fall? As if there is no force, I only… There is a force, only I don’t know it. No, no, no—the opposite, exactly. There is a claim of Popper’s, it seems to me—or some wild speculation—that there is no gravitational force at all. It is just an illusion of motion. And why do things fall? Why do things fall? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, arranges matters so that two masses always move toward one another with acceleration proportional… There is a force called heaven and it pulls everything all the time, yes—seventy facets. Aside from those who bring the Holy One, blessed be He, into the picture, everyone else claims that it is being pulled. Or others… there are many others who say: I do not presume to know. They say only: as if it is being pulled. It could be that there is no force, and this is really only a mathematical description of the motion. I am not claiming the existence of a force. The motions always proceed this way. Whoever said that a force also acts between the two things? Gravity is a very strange thing. Two inanimate bodies stand far from one another and exert force on each other. What is going on here? Logic says fine, but where does that force come from? This is the question of time… If gravitons were found. Huh? There are gravitons. I assume they are searching for them, but in theory there are certainly gravitons. Today people do not believe in action at a distance. But certainly there are, as it were, two nuances here, and this is like the relation to divinity. The question is, say there is divinity because otherwise I can’t explain various things—meaning, I did not encounter God. He is the result of a logical consideration. The question is how you relate to that: either as a Jew he knows that He exists, or I invent this concept because it nicely organizes the collection of phenomena for me. That is the question. Fine. It is clear to me that there is such a thing that is responsible for everything. I have not encountered Him, but He is the only thing that is clear to me, that everything points toward Him. No, but there is a direct encounter. Not that of a prophet, say; it is not a logical conclusion from something. It is an encounter with the thing itself. And this too is not a logical conclusion from something, not in the narrow sense. I simply experience Him, I see Him. It is an encounter. Not on the level of clarity with which a prophet sees, but I too see Him. Yes, but one can also say that there is a force of attraction without this kind of encounter of seeing it, but rather like the philosophical encounter with God. He experiences no experience… It doesn’t matter; it is still an encounter. Without encounter you cannot reach a conclusion. No, not according to me—without encounter you cannot reach a conclusion. You cannot reach this conclusion. How can you reach this conclusion without encounter? All you can know is that the collection of phenomena appears in such-and-such a way. Fine, up to that point I agree; those are empirical data that you can arrive at with a reasonable level of certainty. But how can you infer from here the existence of a force? Only if you claim there is some rational explanation here, a deeper rational explanation of the situation, that this thing is not moving for no reason; something is pulling it. I have not seen anything here, but apparently it is clear to me that something is pulling. And that enters the realm of the law of causality. Right—you shift the problem back to causality. And how do you know causality is true? I am not coming to talk about the force itself, whether it exists or not; I am saying that in this specific situation… No, but that is exactly the point. You cannot get away from that. All you can do is copy the problem backward in the direction of causality. Now you answered my question of how you reached the conclusion that there is a gravitational force. Why? Because I know there is no thing without a cause. Now I will ask you: how do you know there is no thing without a cause? That, you encountered. Yes. Fine, okay. I said that you can draw conclusions from previous encounters. Obviously. But at some point there has to be an encounter with something from outside. You cannot produce conclusions just out of yourself, full stop. And that is the point—where exactly does the encounter occur? It can be at different points in the chain; that is not… Fine. Good. This thing is really an introduction to what comes later, to pessimism. This point—this is an important point. It’s a little hard to understand what he means, but I think that in light of this the continuation is clear. He uses the concept of pessimism somewhat differently from what is customary—or very differently from what is customary. He basically starts from the fact that we are impressed from outside, right? That is really the point. Pessimism is to be impressed from outside. But not only in the heart, not only in the emotions, but also in the intellect or in the mind. Now he continues. Logical pessimism is connected to pure and refined pessimistic ethics, in the complete nullification of visible being through sufferings of love, which transform pessimistic bitterness into supreme joy. For a person cannot come to accept the truth of the mysteries of the Torah and true deep apprehensions in the light of the Infinite, unless there is within him the natural and intrinsic black melancholy rooted in him from his youth, in the aspect of the prime matter within it, precisely toward the depth of truth, until he literally despises his life constantly, at every hour and every moment. And this is the matter of one whose heart worries within him. Up to this point it sounds quite pessimistic. There were a few remarks in the middle. Then there will dwell within him, from the source of all life, that which revives the spirit of the downtrodden, and then his sigh and his natural black melancholy are transformed into joy and delight, solely on account of divinity that dwells literally upon his soul. Creator—you made the pit collapse. What he is basically saying is probably the following. What is pessimism? Usually we think pessimism means being depressed or expecting a dark future, yes, black melancholy. He claims that pessimism is a deeper phenomenon, of which that can be one consequence. Pessimism is the nullification of being—that is pessimism. Pessimism… that is his new definition, and I think it really is the definition. I don’t know, I don’t know it from elsewhere. But here he doesn’t even bother defining it; it seems as if he uses the term in a simple sense, as though this is how he knows it from Chabad. Maybe; I really don’t know. In any case, it is true that it often comes together, and I think that is a nice indication. Usually idealists—not nihilists—are heartbroken people. Philosophical idealists, those who do not believe in the existence of an external world, are usually people who are depressed. That is a fact. Schopenhauer, for example. Jean-Paul Sartre maybe. It comes together; it is not accidental that it comes together. It comes together because pessimism is not a mood; pessimism is a philosophical outlook. This philosophical outlook says that basically everything is nonsense, as they say in foreign languages; nothing here really exists, and the whole business is as if someone is pulling a huge fast one on us. You can reach two conclusions: either to sink into depression, because in fact I can no longer attain any conclusion and nothing is necessary, and such skepticism can perhaps sometimes be liberating, but in practice that is usually not its result. Modern life is full of skepticism, and because of that depression and despair are very common in it. Because people have no certainties in life. That is known; it is a well-known psychological phenomenon. The claim here is that this is simply a philosophical phenomenon, not only a psychological one. Opiate for the masses—exactly. Meaning, they perceive everything on the psychological plane, and once again, in our method we always try to see the philosophical roots of these psychological phenomena. And the point is that in fact pessimism at its root is simply the nullification of being. It is philosophical idealism. The rendering of the world as vanity, yes—the turning of being, of reality, into vanity. Now from that you can of course arrive at pessimism and sink into black melancholy, as many perhaps really do. But on the other hand, if you grasp—if you are not an atheist and you grasp that there is actually something beyond the material being visible to the eyes, yes, that there is also soulful being, spiritual things that cannot be reached with the eyes—what is in the eyes is all nonsense, nothing exists, fine. But now there is another way to reach truths, not only through the senses, through the eyes; one can also listen. If you believe that this too exists, then on the contrary, you can reach radiant optimism from it. Meaning, you can reach the idea that all the misery and all the disgusting things you see before your eyes are really backed by positive forces; behind them stands the Holy One, blessed be He; they have a positive purpose. We are of course familiar with such outlooks and such attitudes, but here it is put this way as a general matter. When you recognize that there is a spiritual thing behind the visible thing, behind the tangible thing, this can lead you to great optimism precisely because that tangible thing is vanity. In Hasidism, the nullification of being leads to joy, not to sadness. It leads to joy because the nullification of being reveals what is behind being. Being is perceived as something that conceals true reality. What is usually called being is actually nothingness; it is not being. And what is usually called being—this is what is meant by the nullification of being: to understand that it is not being but nothingness—exactly, the nullification of nothingness. Meaning, to reveal the true being behind it, the spiritual being, the being one listens to and not the being one sees, okay? Now look, the question is what your point of view is. If your point of view is that the whole world is DNA, molecules, and matter, then once you understand that this too is nonsense, nothing remains; you can only commit suicide. But if you understand that behind this there stand things—on the contrary, that all this black and repulsive screen is not really there, that it is some kind of screen for spiritual forces, that it has exalted functions, that the business really is progressing behind the scenes although through the senses we see things we perhaps do not like—then if we know how to listen well, behind it there is an optimistic process. Yes, what we would call on the spiritual plane: I am optimistic. I nullify material being; with respect to it I am pessimistic. With respect to spiritual being I am optimistic, specifically… Right, but if he renders being vain and understands that it is only the illusion that it is in control, and that in fact spirit is what rules, then he will arrive at joy precisely out of the nullification of being. So that is probably what he means. Pure and refined pessimistic ethics, he says here, in the complete nullification of being. But which being? The visible being. Visible being. Which being? The being grasped by the senses, not the being that is heard. The opposite of the being that is heard. One must nullify the visible being, and then the heard being will emerge into the light, yes? That is how one is impressed. It is the continuation of the previous paragraph. In that same paragraph. You have to understand. And that is it—this is how one is impressed. How are you impressed from outside? By rendering all these screens vain, these screens that do not let me approach the spiritual things that are outside me, those that cause me to think that in fact spirit does not exist and only matter does, and therefore one can grasp only through the senses. One renders vain what the senses grasp and understands that only then can one begin to be impressed by what is happening outside. To be impressed in the double sense. Black melancholy, did we say? What? And what does it mean to begin first of all from… I also think black melancholy is not a state—it is not an ideal corrected state, as far as I understand at least. It is a tendency toward a state… it is the tendency at the root of things that often leads to depression. But for him it really leads to joy. A person needs to be here in some kind of natural black melancholy all the time when he sees being. So as long as you have not reached the conclusion that behind this there is something spiritual that impresses you, then you really are in black melancholy in the ordinary sense. You are in some kind of ugly world, yes? But when suddenly you understand that in fact this is not the right world, then you become optimistic precisely thanks to your black melancholy. After you nullify being, you become optimistic. That is the way to be impressed by the world outside. That is the point of sufferings of love. What are sufferings of love? The deeper conception here speaks about sufferings of love, right? Yes. Sufferings of love transform pessimistic bitterness into supreme joy. What does sufferings of love mean? One who loves God—then what is bound up with that is the nullification of being. He relates to the spiritual root of the world and not to the world as it appears. Attached to the spiritual dimension. Then for him even the sufferings—when my body hurts, what does that mean? On the contrary, it helps me render the body even more vain. Why should I care? It doesn’t interest me. The way to be encouraged by suffering—many times out of suffering one also comes to spiritual elevation. Instead of sinking completely into some kind of paralyzing depression, many times out of suffering one comes to spiritual elevation. And that spiritual elevation is a great delight. It is a great delight because what is spiritual elevation that comes out of suffering? Spiritual elevation that comes out of suffering means understanding that suffering belongs to the body, so the body hurts. So who cares? Meaning, somehow I manage to detach from the feeling that the pain is the whole picture and I can’t function and can’t think about anything because it hurts me now. It doesn’t hurt me; my body hurts. I understand who stands behind this. What is my worth? What? What is my worth? In this personal, emotional problem, yes? Not that I die. What is this—connecting to the Infinite? No, but you need to arrive at this recognition and understanding while you are alive inside a body. That is the whole purpose for which I was put into a body. So if I manage to arrive at this recognition while I dwell in a body, that is much more joyful than being an angel and understanding it naturally. So you return to that recognition, to the recognition of the paragraph. Out of black melancholy, you suddenly come to the understanding that in fact you are an angel and not a human being. Because if you are simply an angel, then what is the cleverness in understanding that you are an angel? Like the Kotzker, yes? About the lowest spiritual level—Mount Sinai, on which the Torah was given, because it was the lowest. Why was it not given in a valley, which is even lower? So he says: because a valley is not humility; it is really low. It really is not a mountain. So it has to be a mountain that is humble. He says the same thing here. If you are simply an angel, then what is the wisdom in understanding that you are an angel? The wisdom is to understand that you are an angel when it somehow appears to you that being, the real thing, is this—that is, that I am the body. Out of that, to understand that I am an angel or that I am a spiritual entity—that is something entirely different. Meaning, from within that to return to life. What? From within that, yes, to return to life? Yes, of course. Certainly. To live within life but understand that the philosophical layer, the meaningful layer, is the spiritual layer that operates within this life. That operates within this life—not to rise into some philosopher who is interested in nothing. Yes, right. That is what I said—that one can also arrive at that. Meaning, even within joy there can be joy in two ways. Meaning: okay, so I disconnect and can go to India for two years and do whatever I want there. Or not. To understand that all this nonsense conceals behind it optimistic forces—that is, positive forces. There was some optimistic theory some time ago—did you hear about it? In stage two at Machon Lev. And in the end it turned out that apparently it was not true. Why? What was it? Speech therapists communicated with various autistic children, and it was simply—I don’t know—they said in the end it was not true. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but in any case, fine. They said facilitated communication, someone told me. I may be mistaken; I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense, but someone told me. Fine, never mind. In any case, there was some theory there whose correct use—we do not need the facts to prove it—but the theory itself is correct, I think: that as soon as you starve the body, so that the body does not function, Adam saw from one end of the world to the other. Because he did not have a body in our sense. In Kabbalah it is written in general that in the first stage he had no body; he had no body at all. He was purely soul; he had no body, a soul that is a life-force. So he saw from one end of the world to the other, because the body is an interference. Now we have a body, so one has to make sure that it does not interfere—that’s all. If the body is defective, ill, then it is certainly possible that this opens possibilities before you that a person with a healthy body does not have. No, I am not saying that now we should cut off our legs. The goal is—no, obviously—but the goal is not always to reach high attainments. There may be other ways. The Ari, of blessed memory, did not want everything in Kabbalah to be revealed to him from Heaven; he wanted to learn by himself. Why? Because if his aim were only to reach understandings, he could have done it easily. That is what I am saying: the goal is not to be autistic and grasp the Holy One, blessed be He, just as the goal is not to be angels. An angel too, supposedly—I should have been an angel, and that would be it—but that is not the goal. The goal is to grasp it within the body. I only bring this as an indication that indeed, in this sense the body is an interfering thing. The intellect with a body worked differently. Right, that points to the fact that the body is not really the true entity, as we feel here. On the other hand, by means of proper, healthy, spiritual life, you come to full realization, and then the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed precisely in that way… Maimonides… all the laws, all the laws are meant so that people break through from the body into the Torah. Maimonides speaks a bit in that direction; we see this throughout the whole approach. Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Kook, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”—fine, that is already another method, I don’t know. Rabbi Kook? There is some contradiction there in the chapter… No, I’m not sure it is a contradiction. It is simply work toward perfection, an all-inclusive perfection. Fine. Maybe we will learn something from the later authorities. Fine. Optimism and pessimism—also the new philosopher of pessimism descended to the depth of the value of hearing. He was speaking about Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer is a classic example of someone who on the one hand really did render being vain. Meaning, he drew the conclusions from Kant that everyone should have drawn, and in many respects became an idealist—meaning that the world outside does not exist. He claims to be an interpreter of Kant, but he actually goes one step further, and he had many contradictions. One of the contradictions is—Schopenhauer’s philosophy is a whole story unto itself—but important elements of that philosophy are idealistic elements. Optimistic? I don’t know. There are statements there this way and that way, and I don’t know—of the sort of German types you can’t read, I don’t know, in every paragraph… There was also a Christian, half-such-a-thing, a Christian philosopher, who was that? Kierkegaard? No, no. Schopenhauer? No. In any case, on the one hand—but on the other hand, not on the other hand, on the same side—he was also pessimistic. Pessimistic in his view of life. He was kind of despairing, poor fellow. Was he a Nazi? Was he a Nazi? I don’t think he was the philosopher of the Nazis, just as Spinoza was a Jew—he wasn’t even… Spinoza was very Jewish, for better and for worse. Here you really see a very sharp example of the connection between pessimism and the nullification of being. Schopenhauer was a great nullifier of being on the one hand, and on the other hand he was also pessimistic. And he spoke there about hearing. I won’t get into that either; I’m no great expert on Schopenhauer, but a little—he speaks about some kind of way to absorb things nonetheless, even though it means absorbing things from a world that does not exist. That is one of the contradictions—I don’t know, there is a lot of confusion there, in short. What perhaps operated on the basis of his method, when he hears the unknown—when he hears the unknown, which cannot be seen in an image—when he is in the spiritual state of nullifying visible being, then he hears the unknown, yes, so they hold. He hears the unknown when he is in a spiritual state of nullifying visible being. That is the continuation of the sentence. But his teaching is flawed by its passive ethic, which in essence is a transformed version of the doctrine of passion, of suffering. By passion I understand that he means passivity—I’m not sure—but passivity, like dreams, I keep reading. If I need to prepare something at the end of the lesson, that is what I asked: if I have to make myself into a vessel and remain passive, a receiving vessel, or whether all along we have been speaking here about active hearing—then decide: is this hearing active or passive? Sometimes people say that a person needs to make himself into a vessel in order to receive the Torah. That is true, but a vessel is not a passive thing in this approach. Meaning, there is a vessel; it is a vessel in the sense that I receive, not invent. In that sense I am a vessel, because the other approaches say that if I become smarter then I will come up with smarter ideas. Here, if I become more aware—not smarter—if I become more aware, then I will grasp different things. In that sense I am a vessel: I receive from outside, I am impressed, that is what he said here. But this receiving is active receiving, not passive receiving. I have to direct myself toward the thing that I am receiving. It is not that suddenly I open up and am a tabula rasa and whatever is poured onto me I receive. The receiving stems from some active intentionality on my part in order to receive. Preparation. Yes, but that is part of the… it is not just a matter of being in better character traits. I mean, not in the abstract sense of becoming more and more nullified, more and more non-existent. Rather, also in the very act of receiving, one must direct oneself toward the thing being received. We spoke about exactly this yesterday. We said that in order to grasp causality, you need to possess causal capacity. Meaning, there has to be in your head something responsible for receiving causality, and you have to direct it toward the event you are receiving in order truly to grasp that thing. And the same you can say about causality, you can also say about Torah. The same thing, the same thing. Causality is only a parable; causality is only a parable. Yes, but what happens within you? The prophetic force is an active force. People always speak about the prophet as something passive. Throughout this prophecy he is constantly explaining to me that Hebrew hearing is active, that hearing is the prophetic force, the Hebrew auditory logic, the whole introduction to Hebrew auditory logic. What am I supposed to do? You are supposed to direct yourself toward the thing that you are receiving. You do not need to sit like this and wait for it… You are not a jug into which something is poured. This jug… Yes, you need to turn your eyes in that direction. It is true that in the end the information comes from outside, that is true, but it does not come from outside while I sit like this. It comes from outside when I sit alert. Meaning, I am not… do you want to say that one must activate the intellect in the sense of thinking? No. Activate the intellect in the sense of knowing, not in the sense of thinking. The sons of the prophets—the awareness itself is not passive awareness; it is active awareness. You need to penetrate the thing that you know. That is why he uses the concept… No, yes, I know what it is—why does he… I am not talking about mysticism, that is what I’m saying. I don’t know; I don’t feel it. Why think? Why feel it? I am not… I am not talking about mysticism; I am talking about the opposite. I am trying to demystify things. But he himself was never a prophet; he does not know how to explain to me how to prophesy. No, prophecy is something else. But the claim is that within Torah there is prophecy, a kind of prophecy at the most minimal level there is. So he was never a prophet, so he does not know how to explain to me how to prophesy. The same thing—he is asking me how to carry out this Torah in practice. But the root is that the Nazir tells us that there is a prophetic power in each of us. And therefore we also use it—not only that it exists in each of us, but when we learn we use it. Not only Torah; in Torah it is much more dominant, in my opinion. Everything we learn, in my opinion, we learn this way. You have to… You are not… When you know, with that same intellect by which you grasp, you know and do not think. Thinking is perceived by everyone as something active, right? All this thing is claiming only that it is not thinking but knowing. Why? Because when I think about the concept of causality or the concept of God, I am doing an active operation here. I am doing something in that awareness; I am not sitting and waiting for people to pour something into me. I don’t know how to describe it better than that, but it seems to me to be a pretty clear feeling. You have to intervene. Do you understand? You intervene when you do this. You are not sitting and waiting for someone else to do it for you. Even at the very stage itself—not that you first work hard on your character traits and then sit like this, and now after my character has been perfected, the Holy One, blessed be He, can put into him… This too is work. Awareness itself is also an act that is active. I think about a reasoning; let’s talk about a reasoning, because that is our everyday experience. Right? When you grasp a reasoning, you do nothing—you grasp. But you think about a reasoning, and that is the point. You think about a reasoning and suddenly you grasp it. What is before that? You are directing yourself the whole time until you grasp it. But the moment of grasping—you do not participate. But what difference does that make? It is preparation. But in the end it happens—if you really arrive at the reasoning, you and it meet somewhere in the middle. Do you understand? It eventually comes to you, right? And it comes from outside—that he emphasized at the beginning. But this requires active action on your part; you are not sitting there. If you sit there, you will not arrive at any true reasoning in Torah. Nothing will arrive, because there are no perfect things here; that doesn’t matter. In the end, regarding the topic, no reasoning will come, yes? It is like our electronics lecturer who told us the joke about the Jew who… I don’t remember which group of stingy people he was talking about, Scots or Persians or whoever people tell jokes about—I have no idea. One of them, in any case, someone generally categorized that way, sat and prayed that the Holy One, blessed be He, never sends him a lottery win. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: all right, in the end, just once I’ll bring you a lottery win. A voice from Heaven says to him: listen, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him: fine, just once buy a lottery ticket. He sat and kept praying why the Holy One, blessed be He, would not give him a lottery win. What did he mean? We prepare for the exam; the exam is easy but we have to prepare. If you do not prepare, it won’t help. So the same thing here: in order to grasp a reasoning, you need to exert yourself in order… to try to do it. True, by yourself you will not do it. Meaning, you will not arrive at the law of gravity if the law of gravity does not really exist in the world, because you grasp it; you do not think it up. And that is the point. But you will not arrive at it if you do not make an effort to arrive at it. Nor will you arrive at it without seeing the phenomena. What? You would have no reason to try to think about the topic, obviously. Fine, but that means it is not simply the second actor in this scene, the coordinate… No, here you saw phenomena, very nice, but now you are thinking about their meaning. Fine, but that is analysis… No, no—that is exactly the point, no. It is not analysis, because otherwise the intellect is an act of thinking, and that is exactly the point from which we came earlier, to exclude it. You look at gravity through the phenomena, but when you look at a phenomenon of gravity, not only your eyes see it; your sixth sense is also now at work. And through this phenomenon of gravity it sees the law of gravity or the force of gravity. That is exactly the point—you need to direct yourself to see it. Thousands of people before Newton had apples falling on their heads; none of them asked this question of why, because they really were not in a state directed toward receiving this matter. After Newton switched on the spotlight, suddenly we all see it as something simple. Before Newton, no one thought about it. Why did no one think about it? No one thought about it because… because he was not directing himself toward it. That is, he was not thinking about the topic. Do you understand? You need to think about the topic so that the reasoning will finally come to you. Okay, but the effort required—it has to be a cognitive effort, and that is not what… for example, people say: break the effort. But it is not cognitive; it is more than that. You are saying that self-nullification does the Torah. You are going to an extreme here—that someone who has high intellectual capacity, meaning that he is on a high level in Torah, must have intellect in a critical way. Someone with plumbing… with philosophical attainments or something like that, with attainments in mathematics, will not arrive at Einstein’s attainments with plumbing. That is what I think is connected here. No, he is not talking about Einstein, he is talking about… not Einstein, Einstein in Torah. Maimonides. He did arrive, but he also… Einstein too in his time—he could absorb… he did hear things. Fine, he heard things according to the structure of his soul, according to his talents. Everyone has a portion in Torah. He heard things others did not hear. Fine, okay. So always… self-nullification is always for a person in order to absorb things within himself and absorb as much as possible, because as long as you are more of a being, there is no room for it to enter. Meaning there is no room, that is… That is exactly… that is what he comes here to exclude. And that is exactly the point. This section comes to exclude that conception precisely because it is close to what he says. But isn’t that what people in Hasidism always say? Meaning… What he claims is that this is not everything people say in Hasidism, only part of what people say in Hasidism. That one should nullify oneself completely and then one can absorb everything so that there will be room for things to enter. Nullify being—that is the metaphor. Nullify being so there will be room for Torah to enter, because Torah does not dwell in a place where there is an “I,” a substantial self. That is true—it is a necessary condition, but it is not enough. One must nullify being, and then one will be able to direct oneself in order to grasp. But if you simply nullify being and wait for it to come, it will not come. That is exactly his claim. And that is what he comes to exclude. It is only half the work. Meaning, if I exist then I am not nullified. Meaning, I exist—of course I exist. I exist, but the question is who this “I” is. Is the “I” the divine part in me, the soul, or is the “I” my molecules? That is called… that is what he says: nullify the imaginary being, not nullify being altogether. And he emphasizes that here, yes? Here in this paragraph. He says: this is complete nullification of imaginary being. Is that what is meant by nullifying the self? It is not only that my body is nothing… No: to nullify the being of my “I,” to nullify the self, meaning to stop seeing yourself as standing independently. Yes, fine. But it is still you. “I think, therefore I am”—against the cogito one cannot contend. Do you understand? You can nullify yourself as much as you like—who is this one who nullifies himself? It is you, right? Fine. So you always remain there in the background. The whole question whether it is a nullified you or a non-nullified you is a different question. You can perceive yourself as part of the Holy One, blessed be He, or perceive yourself as something independent standing against its Maker. But in the end, you are still you; nothing will help. That cannot be escaped. The first awareness from which one cannot escape, even before awareness of divinity, I think, is the subjective awareness that I am here. And what is Schopenhauer’s second awareness? What? Where is the second awareness of the objective “name”? Ah, that—yes, he has various statements like that. Again, I have not studied Schopenhauer systematically in the end, but I know a little. There are all sorts of things there where from time to time one hears the familiar echo. I don’t know. There too, one thing was clear: there was pessimism and nullification of being. Meaning, it was there and it was connected. The pessimism came because everything around him seemed pointless; nothing was really so. That leads to despair. But it leads to despair only if you do not understand that behind it there is something that comes to awaken when you nullify visible being. Fine. Out of the doctrine of motion and the heard logos comes the pessimism of the ancient weeping philosopher, stricken in the ferment of drunkenness, when through motion he arrives at the unity of death and life. The immortal are mortal, the mortal are immortal—like the aphorisms of Heraclitus. They live their death, and in their life they die. It is said in one of his sayings that influenced the Alexandrians, who would say that the wisdom of Heraclitus had its source in Hebrew wisdom. These are famous aphorisms of Heraclitus. He is known for saying that being is nothingness and death is life and all that sort of unity of opposites in the loftier sense. Pessimism perhaps—I don’t know if there is such a thing. Therefore motion is the source of Heraclitus’s active logos, whose aphorisms resemble the sayings of Ecclesiastes in their content and form. A remark connected to the previous chapters. But here begins an interesting discussion in its own right on the subject of motion. The connection between motion and spirituality. First of all, in the conceptual sense. Spirit—what is spirit? Wind, I mean. “It flies away like a dream.” Wind blowing and spirituality—why are they linked? What is wind? Wind is only motion, not a substance. Right? Wind is the movement of air; the substance itself is air. Wind is only the movement of air. That means wind is a phenomenon; it is not a substance. But somehow the phenomenon here got a noun-name. Do you understand? Meaning, to grasp the phenomenon as a noun—that is wind. What advances in waves? Today they call it energy; it has all kinds of pretty names, but these are names. Nothing advances except the advancing itself. With wind it is not like that. Maybe with light; with wind it is not like that. With wind there is something that moves. No—that is not called wind. That is called air. Wind is only the phenomenon in which air moves. Wind is the movement of the air, not the air itself. So wind—you could say rain is not the water but the movement of water; there is no end to it. That is not a good example. There is something to it, true, but the most classic example is wind. Because if you bring rain from above, it is called rain, right? It is a kind of rainwater. But it is also connected to the water itself. Wind is clearly not connected to air in that way. Wind is only the phenomenon. Therefore it is exactly the right expression. Motion and spirituality are two things connected in many contexts. To be in motion is basically to be between static states. To be in motion—do you know Zeno’s paradox of the flying arrow? I don’t remember whether I spoke about it with you. Zeno says—we spoke about it last year, I don’t know if you were there. We spoke about it quite a lot in the Torah classes there; at the beginning I opened with this. And the paradox of the flying arrow is basically this: Zeno says as follows—Zeno was Greek, so he could not tolerate such a thing; this is a classic example. An arrow is flying. At every single moment that you look at it, it is in a different place, right? It is there. Take a picture and you’ll see it being there. If you take a picture, it doesn’t move. Right, because if you take a picture it doesn’t move—what are you talking about? No, no, no: we are talking about a picture at a point in time, not a picture taken over a long time that gets blurred over time. A picture at a point in time. What is a point in time? A mathematical point of time. You open the shutter for a mathematical point of time and take a picture, okay? Something theoretical. So look at this thing—you’ll see that the arrow each time stands in a different place. When does it move? When Zeno himself moves. An amusing question. And what Zeno did not understand is: at what moment, if at each moment it passes it is in a different place, then when does it pass between the places? The jumps of both of them—the concept of motion, the concept of motion—is exactly the integration of time and place. Zeno wanted to prove that there is no motion. And Zeno knew this was absurd. He wanted to prove that there is no motion—this is the logical scandal, Aristotle’s statement. That is what they always say about Zeno. So apparently you should stop talking; I think that is the only proof better than his paradoxes. In any case, what is really going on here? The concept of motion is indeed grasped as something that exists between static moments. The static moments are something that exists; it is a substance, yes? A substance is a static thing, enduring, standing—that is what characterizes substance, right? It exists. Motion is as though that elusive sequence between those static moments, yes? But there is no such thing as between moments, for time is dense—that is, everywhere there is a point in time and the arrow stands in a different place. So motion is basically a concept that does not exist; it has no place in tangible reality. All these static things—only they exist, and I cannot manage to see where this phenomenon is located. So the phenomenon is not located there—the transition. Motion is a transition between states. The static states are as if the classically existing thing, the enduring, the thing it is very easy to relate to as existing. It is obvious; it is there, yes? Motion seemingly does not exist. It is in between, but there is no in-between. The points are adjacent to one another. There is no in-between. So what is going on? Does motion exist or not? Once again, it is like grasping that motion is something we feel, but it does not really exist. But why do we have that feeling? Because what do we call existing? We call existing only static things. So naturally we have no interval between the static things in which we would characterize motion as existing. Where is Zeno’s mistake? It is very clear, because Zeno’s mistake is that he did not grasp that the motion occurs at the very same moment that the body is standing. It is unrelated. After all, the body is not standing in the place where it is in the picture; it is located in the place where it is in the picture. There is a difference between being located and standing. Yes, yes, right—we’ve gotten completely entangled here with the issue of wholeness, with Aristotle, yes, the same thing. But in any case, let’s get to it now. In any case, the point is that when you take this picture, the body has velocity. You do not see it in the camera because at a point in time you will not see it move. A body that you see at a point in time—you will not detect that it is moving, but it is moving. At that same point in time it is also moving; it has a velocity of eighteen kilometers per hour. Okay? Besides that, at any given moment it is also located in a different place; it is not standing in a different place, it is located in a different place. A moving body can be located; it cannot stand—that is a contradiction in terms. It cannot be located? A moving body is also located somewhere. Fine? This also reminds one of the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle basically says that you cannot grasp the place and the velocity of a particle simultaneously. Why? Because physicists too are Greeks, and physicists grasp the place of a body not as the body’s being located there but as the body’s standing there. So that can’t be—if it moves, this is exactly Zeno’s paradox, yes? How can it both move and stand at once? So if you know its velocity, you do not know its place, and vice versa. I always feel that somehow one should pay this a compliment, give it a mathematical translation, and derive a quantum Torah from the uncertainty principle. The point is that this says simply that you can’t know—it’s only scientifically, not mathematically, that you can’t know what its velocity is. Right. Mathematically you can’t know what its velocity is. Okay, very good. Okay. But the fact is that it exists. After all, when in science they represent velocity, how do they define velocity? As the difference between two points over an interval, right? How do they define velocity? Place minus place divided by time minus time. That is how one measures velocity, not how velocity is created. That is how science defines velocity. So that is only a useful definition, not a true one, because it is a derivative. I use an interval to calculate it because I do not know how to calculate it at a point. Exactly because my perception is static, not dynamic. But in the end I arrive at a function, a derivative function that has a value at a point. The derivative function has a value also at a point, not only on an interval. A body has velocity also at a mathematical point in time. It has velocity there. You will not see a change of place as a result of that velocity, and in order for velocity to be actualized and expressed in the body changing its place, of course some time has to pass. Without time passing, at a point in time even if the body has velocity you will not see it moving at a point in time. Yes? A body with some velocity at one point in time does not traverse a distance, right? So how do I detect that it has velocity? Through the fact that it changes place. But the change of place is not the velocity. Velocity is a value that exists also at a point. One of the phenomena of velocity is that the body changes place. Fine? So if one detects velocity indirectly through the fact that the body changes place—and for that indeed an interval is needed—but velocity itself exists at a point. And this is exactly… now why does it work like that? Because velocity too is an existing thing; it is not a fiction. The true relation to velocity is not a fiction. The conception—even the scientific one—that velocity is a fiction, meaning that place is a thing that exists and one can define such a concept as velocity, which is basically the derivative of place; it has no entity of its own, it is only the derivative of the place function and has many uses, and it is very entertaining to deal with, but it does not really exist—that is a fiction, after all. Because there is no such thing as velocity at a point in time. The conception of the nullification of being, the conception that says that in fact no: visible being, substance, matter—this is not the true being. The true being is motion. Motion represents true being. And spirit as well. Place does not exist in the sense that it has a lower level of existence, in the same sense that matter does not exist. Matter is basically nothingness. Where there is no spirit, there is matter. The negation of spirit is matter. It is not that matter is being, and wherever there is no being there is spirit. It is exactly the opposite. Spirit is being, and wherever there is no spirit there is what we call matter. Therefore matter is basically nothingness and not being, in the higher conception. And in that same sense, place too basically does not exist, only velocity. The higher the derivative, the more spiritual it is. The more you recognize the existence of motion, the less you recognize the existence of place. That is even a formulation closer to the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle does not say only that you cannot know place and velocity simultaneously. It also posits uncertainty between them. It goes further and says: the more you know about the place, the less you know about the velocity, and vice versa. Meaning, it is not only a pointwise statement; rather, the more you know about the place, the less you know about the velocity, and vice versa. There is even some relation. That is only because of problems at the point. No, no—that is exactly the point. The uncertainty principle—what I am offering now is a certain interpretation of the uncertainty principle—it does not emerge from there. So it need not. What I am offering is really only an explanation for the pointwise level. Now when I explain what lies behind it, I am basically saying that what lies behind it is the rendering of being vain, the nullification of being. And then here it does become quantitative. Here there is a quantitative issue. The more you understand that place does not exist, the more you understand that velocity does exist, and vice versa. Here there is already room for degrees. It is no longer merely a pointwise potential thing; here there are degrees. Fine, this really is the uncertainty principle beyond that now. There is motion of one dimension, of two dimensions. There is motion of a line; a line is an expression of time. And there is motion of three dimensions, where three dimensions can move within time. But also three-dimensional—a three-dimensional thing can move within time; in a four-dimensional world it can move within time. The four-dimensional world is time? Yes. It is expressed in the four-dimensional world. A three-dimensional body can move within a world. The question is whether the world itself can move. A three-dimensional body that moves within a world can move only under the concept of time. That is why I say time-motion. I did not want to say time-motion. Not only time—motion. Not only time. Fine. Right. Fine. Good. Right. Fine. The subject of motion—I thought I would finish it today, but I think it will still take perhaps until next time. I hope next time to finish the first article. Maybe next time we’ll start earlier, and fine, I want to finish this, so that at least there will be some section we have completed. We’ll start at six, okay? Good. We are in Gevurot Hashem, chapter 56. The Maharal in this chapter comes to explain the matter of miracle and wonder. He says that the fundamental difference between miracle and nature is the matter of time. Nature acts under time, and therefore every change in nature requires time and gradation. By contrast, miracle comes from the separate world, a world that is above time, and therefore the miracle is done in a single instant. The wonder is something that comes to show the Creator’s rule in the world. Moses our teacher performed the wonders in Egypt in order to show that nature does not stand on its own but is subject to the divine will. When the staff turned into a serpent, that was not an act of magic but a revelation of the power of creation anew. The Maharal emphasizes that the miracle is not a disruption of the order but a revelation of a higher order. The world of nature is a world of limits, and the world of miracle is a world of infinity revealed within the limit. Therefore in a miracle things can happen that are the opposite of nature, because their source is above nature. And here the Maharal in chapter 56 points this out: for the miracle comes from the blessed God, and the blessed God is utterly simple in absolute simplicity, and there is in Him no composition of time or place. Therefore His action is immediate. And this is what we say, that the wonder is testimony to the Creator. Because in nature one can err and say that the world follows its usual course, but when there is a wonder that is above time, it cannot be attributed to any natural force. And this is the depth of the matter of the plague of blood, that the Nile turned to blood in a single instant, and this reveals that there is none besides Him.