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Hukat Rabbi Haim Lifshitz
Essays and Articles:
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The Inner, Unlimited Center: Beyond Space and Time Translated by S. Nathan
l'ilui nishmat Esther bat Mordechai There are two tendencies that exist in human beings. One is a derivative of the survival mechanism, and faces the outside. The other is the creative tendency. It tends to face toward the inner space, to explore its territory for untapped treasures, buried in the Godly kernel inherent in human beings, in order to actualize their dormant potential. The former moves along the track of time while the latter eludes time, and turns its face toward the infinite spaces of the Godly creation. “The light of my eyes has gone dark, in both senses,” lamented the elderly man who had unfortunately lost his eyesight. “What you have seen until this point has been enough for you,” replied the rabbi. This man had been blessed with abundant creative talent, yet had spent his entire life accumulating information. The curiosity that characterizes talented people had intensified his appetite for knowledge, which had turned into a gluttony for any fact available. He had never concerned himself with the need for cautions, rigorous classification of categories of knowledge according to levels of importance or according to what is admissible and what must be filtered out. We learn from this man’s experience, the vital need for strict attention to the laws of the prohibited/permitted categories, regarding both food and the laws of purity and impurity. The innermost center, through a rather poetic error called “a small bit of God,” is really not so small at all. “When a man wins a moment of serenity, of respite from the ravenous hungers of lust” (Chazon Ish: Emuna Ubitachon) which means, when a man wins a moment of freedom from the shackles that bind him to the survival mechanism, he turns toward his innermost center, which embraces the Godly kernel, which contains all that is special and original in him. The lightest touch upon this innermost point of his quality creates an experience of existence that causes him to reject the suffocating wrap of existential reality in disgust. He requires no effort of spiritual courage to fight reality’s outer shell, for it fades like the smoke given off by the burning flames of creativity, that ignite upon contact between the spark of the soul and rational awareness. The explosion that results is the outgrowth of existential contradiction, between survival, which flows along the track of space and time, and creativity, which hovers like the spirit of God over the face of the waters. Waters refer to the force that conquers and limits a human being. It is the force of the flow of space and time, sweeping man along in its current, denying him self-control, preventing his qualitative introspection into the depths of existence, causing him to overlook the treasure of creativity that has been awaiting him since the six days of creation – an oversight caused by the sin of the Golden Calf, in the wake of which he nearly lost the opportunity for repair that he had gained at Sinai on receiving the Torah. The Red Heifer deals with the water that purifies. Water purifies when one controls it and subjugates it to one’s own will. Water purifies when one knows the secret of purity, the secret of quality that is not brute-force-based. Here is the secret of the absurd, of quantity transformed into quality, of the ashes of a cow, which is the symbol of physicality, transformed into an indicator of purity, and purifying, by its quality, any water in the world that comes into contact with it. “Waters of Strife.” It was through water that Moses and Aaron were faulted. Being that water holds the secret of eternal flow, the secret of purity – for it purifies the limitations of physical matter, washing one clean of the incautious contact with physical matter – it can become waters of strife: It can be perceived as a power in itself, a quality in its own right – an enslaving power that becomes an idol of idolatry. This explains the excessive stringency of response to this incident, the moral lesson for all generations, for the greatest leaders of all time, who did not refrain from striking the rock, from using force in order to control water. Force against force does not bring forth the spirituality that is freed from the track of time. Speech is the spirit’s touch against physical matter. Speech, persuasion, is the sign of the superiority of the spirit – the human spirit, that is, not the Platonic spirit. A human being is a Godly presence. Man need not disconnect from the reality he has built for himself in the world of creativity. He must do precisely the opposite. He must delve more deeply into himself. By doing so, he frees himself from his condition of being an insignificant particle in the great mass of uncontrolled quantity. The secret of existence is to metamorphose from a particle into a perfect whole, to simultaneously liberate oneself from the system of survival that is ruled by force, and to become – oneself. One becomes a perfect whole by virtue of one’s contact with the kernel of Godly quality in the root of one’s soul. Do not be fooled into kicking aside the wrap of physical matter, as preached by the Platonic religions, such as Christianity. Nor should you erase your own uniqueness and disappear into the vast spaces of existence, as the far eastern religions believe. “Not in heaven is it, nor across the sea…for the thing is very near to you. It is in your own mouth and in your own heart to do it.” Truth is to be found very near to you. It is inside you. Should you seek it in the vast distances, you will distance yourself from it. This is the Ibn Ezra’s secret: “The interpretation that is correct in my eyes – I will disclose it through hints. Know that when the part will know the whole, it will cling to the whole, and it will innovate signs and wonders within the whole…Now behold, the part remained a part, for he struck the rock, and no water came out until he struck it a second time. Thus they did not sanctify the Name.” That is to say that when they used the staff and struck the rock, they were using brute force, which divides and truncates the whole into separate parts. They were thus separating the part from the whole. Whereas – had they spoken to the rock, their speech would have had the power to connect the part with the whole, thereby upholding the accumulating levels of perfect wholeness in this limited world. According to the wording of the Ibn Ezra, speech brings about the part’s knowledge of the whole, the part’s recognition of Godly truth and the part’s awareness of the Godly presence found throughout the whole, meaning that there is no place free of it. It is what grants the separate part its place within the perfect whole. It is what grants the part its wholeness. “When the part will know the whole, it will cling to the whole, and will innovate signs and wonders within the whole.” British physicist David Bohm suggested the hologram as a new way of perceiving physical reality. The hologramic perception avoids seeking the solution or the explanation for physical phenomena within an organized system of space and time, due to a difficulty stumbled upon by physicist Alan Aspect of the University of Paris, who discovered (in the year 1982) that sub-atomic particles such as electrons are capable of transmitting information among themselves in simultaneous fashion, and of doing so regardless of the distance separating them. In some wondrous way, each particle “knows” what the other particle is doing, and influences and is influenced by the behavior of the other particle. This phenomenon is a breach of the principle determined by Einstein, according to which information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, for doing so would constitute a breaking of the time barrier. Enter Bohm with the claim that yes, in fact, this knowledge communicated between the particles does not take place along the track of space and time, but rather, this knowledge is pre-existent within every cell. This means that reality does not exist as a system of space and time within an existential object, but rather in the particle’s innermost qualitative space. Thus, information supposedly stored in the brain is not a combination of accumulated mass within a specific place, which is the brain. Rather, it exists within every particle of the human spirit. The human spirit’s information, comprehension, and insight do not derive from any place whatsoever. The human spirit is not given to imprisonment within the limited and restricted framework of space and time. The very perception of reality as a space defined by place and time makes it difficult to grasp unlimited phenomena such as the human spirit. How is one to explain the hologramic principle? How is one to explain the reflection of the whole within the part? This critical question creates a lacuna, an empty space, a gap in comprehension regarding this issue. In order to address this gap, the Ibn Ezra introduces the revelatory idea that a particle’s capacity to attach, to recognize and to consciously consent to be connected and bound to the whole – “when the part will know the whole, it will cling to the whole.” Identifying with the whole to the point of attachment to the whole liberates the part from its condition of truncation, enabling it to acquire the quality of the whole. Here is no Platonic perception, which views the higher reality as the essential one and the lower reality as insignificant. The Torah perception sees Godly presence in the tangible reality that is found in human quality. This is not on the condition that man will distance himself from reality and nullify himself. On the contrary: He must delve deeply into himself in order to uncover, and in order to actualize the dormant potential of the creative force inside himself, the perfect whole inside himself. Here is no subjective perception of objective reality, as the hologramic approach is often perceived, but rather a perception of objective truth – objective because it reflects reality’s dimension of depth, as opposed to the dimension of the external, which is superficial, two-dimensional and devoid of depth or height. At the “waters of strife” they were meant to delve more deeply into the reality that outwardly appeared to be a rock. “From this rock, will we bring forth water for you?” Aaron’s death is accompanied by a detailed process of the removal of his garments and their placement upon Elazar. Here too, the external aspect is dealt with, as liberation from the external in order to merit eternal life. The Copper Snake: Dimension of Height. “When Israel would look upward, and would enslave their hearts to their Father in heaven, they would be healed.” Here too we find an expression of liberation from the external, superficial dimension, in order to make contact – the contact that leads to attachment – between the dimensions of depth and of height, which have been concealed by external superficiality. Exposing the vertical track that connects depth with height creates a connection between the part and the whole, transforming the part into a whole. “Therefore shall it be said in the Book of the Wars of God…then did Israel sing this song.” Discovering one’s inner kernel of quality and connecting it with the dimension of height transforms reality into song. From this point onward, we find verses of exquisite poetry, the details of which appear to deal with a dry survey of the journeys traveled by the children of Israel and the events that transpired – teaching us that exposing the axis that connects depth to height has the effect of uncovering the spiritual presence in what appears to be superficial reality. |
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