Knowledge – Thought, Consciousness, Soul

Knowledge ˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ ˙˙˙Mellow Wolf Publishing   PROVERBS CHAPTER 2 From Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum: Azamra Institute, Jerusalem The moralistic philosophy of Proverbs is rooted in a worldview that sees man as a free agent living in a dangerously deceptive world from which God has purposely obscured the truth in order to make it necessary for man to strive to attain it through toil and effort, thereby earning his reward. Caught in a confusing maze in which the most likely-looking paths turn out to be blind alleys and worse, man desperately needs true guidance, which is precisely what Proverbs offers. Proverbs 2 1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, 4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, In verses 1-4 the voice of wisdom calls to the young, inexperienced “son”, appealing to him to heed the message. He must dedicate all his faculties to the pursuit of the right and left columns of the kabbalistic tree – HOCHMAH-wisdom (v 2) and BINAH-understanding (vv 2-3) – in order to attain the center-column attribute of DA’ATH ELOKIM, the “knowledge” of God (v 5). This is more than merely cognitive knowledge: DA’ATH has the connotation of deep attachment. It is necessary to seek out and cultivate these attributes with the same eagerness that people seek out wealth and treasure. End quote from Rabbi Greenbaum Comments: We have a need to change the paradigm of our very thought about the interests of the heart. Our questions about the human will, its power and freedom, have themselves been framed on the basis of a notion of the human being as an entity that is one with itself alone, on its own mentally and emotionally – alone to think this or that, alone to be interested in this or that…, on its own, defined as being in its nature a complete entity unto itself. We have done this, accepting this philosophical presupposition of thought, even though we know that the human being is a social entity, which if left entirely unto itself from birth, even if physically sustained, would not develop into the human being we are discussing at all. It would not develop the mind we speak of, nor stable emotions, nor even life… How is it then, that the Bible speaks of Adam as having at first been an individual alone? He was not alone “by nature”, neither in heart, mind or soul. He was with God. And even so, this was not enough in God’s estimation. Adam needed to be a fully social being in order to even be a completed creation. And God made a very strong point of this, lest there be any mistake. What do we mean if we say that true knowledge is attained as a reward – through seeking for wisdom on the one side and understanding on the other? First, it is a reward like that of the little child who is rewarded with learning when effort is applied under proper supervision and guidance. Indeed, the reward that comes is not one that the child can be proud of in any sense of self-sufficeincy – not even for the child’s own part, as if it were a part that had the merit to stand on its own, as in an adult partnership. For a child who is truly learning is at the same time learning how to learn. That is to say, even after Adam was a complete creation, male and female, they were no less with God because of it, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. They were children learning how to learn through the guidance of their Father Above. They were not like our idea of an independent adult that knows how to teach themselves what they need to learn and how to learn it. Their real nature was and is the real human nature; it is the nature of a learning child with its parent. It is the nature of a child of God. This is not the condition of a human being, it is the true nature of a human being, and it always will be. True knowledge comes as a reward, but it is the reward of receiving the gift of a shared mind with the Teacher who loves you as a child, has directed you and has supported you to learn in the way you were uniquely designed to learn. The reward of knowledge achieved and acquired all by one’s self in complete isolation would be a pretty sad reward indeed. The reward of a knowledge that is actually achieved through the grace of the Teacher who then says to the student, Well done, my child! is a glorious reward indeed! Thought, Consciousness, Soul   There are two places from which to start the mind, the place that is with the Torah of God and the place that is without the Torah of God. Why is this so? The mind begins to think with God or the mind begins to think without God. In order to better understand this and what it means we have an analogy of experience in our inter-human or inter-animal encounters. We encounter another creature like ourselves and we begin to think. We will either begin to think with the other or separately without the other, as if the other were an object incapable of thought. Even though we know they are certainly thinking about us, we treat them as though they had no mind or soul by thinking about them behind an invisible wall that we project between ourselves and them. It is in this same way that we face God. Sometimes when facing another, especially if we find the other to be “very other”, we delude ourselves into actually relating to them, at least temporarily, as if they were simply an object. By doing so we make sure that we do not begin our thinking with them, that we do not share any consciousness. Sometimes also, as highly vulnerable people, we find the reality that we are at all times facing God too overwhelming. God is just “too other”. At least temporarily, we delude ourselves into relating to God as if God were not God, as if there were only a physical universe out there. By doing this we make sure that we will not form our thought from its beginning by thinking with God. The Torah is the expressed will of God. It is the mind of God expressed in the way that He wants human beings to know it. Why did God share his mind in the form of the Torah only with Israel? There could be two answers given to this. First it could be said that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then Moses and the whole nation of Israel at Mount Sinai, were the only people to fully open up their minds in encountering God in order to begin their thought with God and with God’s thought – instead of meeting God with a wall, like the untrusted stranger. Yet, if this is the case, we must further ask the question, How did Israel come to be open to God in this way when no other people were? Asking the question how Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then all Israel, became open to learning to begin all thought with God’s thought brings us to the ultimate answer as to why God shared his mind in the form of the Torah only with Israel. If we ask why it is that we are so afraid of strangers that we do not always greet them in love, with completely open minds and hearts, with no walls, with no assumptions, indeed, with no thoughts except those which are developed mutually, we could answer this by saying that it is because we live in an imperfect and dangerous world. And why is the world this way? We might like to blame others. We might even consider blaming God for making it this way, or at least so that it was possible for it to end up this way. However, it is always better to take responsibility than to judge and blame others. And we know that we have done many things ourselves over the course of time to make the world a less perfect and more dangerous place to live. We come again to the idea that it may be that when we face God we do not face God openly because we have a bad conscience. In the evening God walked in the garden. Instead of coming in joy to meet him, the man and the woman hid themselves because they were ashamed. It is said of Abraham that his tent was open on all four sides so that if any stranger should be passing by on any side he would see them and could run out to greet them and invite them into his home with joyous hospitality. From Abraham many people have learned to strive for this ideal of hospitality. But who did Abraham learn it from? A careful reading of God’s Torah will show that Abraham learned it from God himself. Indeed, Abraham was not always of a trusting mind. He like others was vulnerable in this world, subject at times to the fear of death. Abraham sometimes thought with a logic that began with the inevitability of death, just as, at times, we all do. It was not that Abraham became capable on his own of meeting God with an open heart and mind. Abraham became capable of this because God first came to him in a special way, in a gentle and powerful way of blessing and the promise of blessing. God first went out of his tent to find Abraham as a passing stranger and to overcome his fear and doubts and bring him into his tent. It was from this experience that Abraham learned his own hospitality toward strangers. God saw Abraham, out of his open tent, passing by in a world cursed with suffering and death and he went out to Abraham and spoke to him only of blessings. With the music of blessings, God sang to Abraham of life from the dead, for his family and for all families of the earth. Abraham was turned by the music of God and went with God. Although he did not go to enter into God’s tent and God’s hospitality by walking only in a straight line. He stumbled this way and that, but God gently corrected him and was faithful to guide him. And so it was with Isaac. And so it was with Jacob. And so it was with all the children of Israel. They did not walk only in a straight line, but God was faithful to his promise of blessing to Abraham. He was faithful to extend his blessing and his promise of blessing to Abraham’s family and to all who entered their tent of hospitality. God was faithful to bring them unto himself and to the hospitality of his own mind. For the hospitality of God is the sharing of his mind, his Torah, with a lost and wandering Humanity that has become a stranger unto him. Here, then, we have the answer to our question how it was that Israel came to meet God and learn to start its thought, its very mind, with the Torah, the revealed mind of God, when no other nation or people did this. It was due to God’s own choice of how to approach Humanity. This is the gentle, kind and gracious approach of God. This is the way of God, to meet the lost, the wandering one, the criminal who has no escape from the sentence of death with a blessing. He has not come to Humanity to excuse Humanity’s crimes, but with an invitation into his tent to dine with him, to eat and drink the food that has the power of life, that can raise the dead. This is the promise of God to us where he finds us. If we believe this promise and turn from our own way and go with him we will find him strong and faithful to help us, as he helped Abraham, from turning aside again through our fear of death. For it is in receiving the gift of the mind of God, which he gave to Israel, that we can overcome the fear of death. The Torah of God is the promise of the resurrection of the dead. Our minds either begin with it or without it. The highest hight of consciousness that we experience is really that consciousness that we experience in love, ethical love. Ultimately, we will find that the life of our soul is in love. When the day comes when our consciousness is only in love we will then truly know ourselves. We will understand that our eternal souls are not self-made but are given to us, each by the other, as we think together and know together thoughts of gratitude and praise for the holy God of Israel, who gives all to all.