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Articles
by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi
Journey
Beyond Knowledge
By Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
OLAM
Founder and Editor David Suissa sat down with Rabbi Zalman
Schachter-Shalomi at his home in Boulder, Colorado, for an
evening of philosophy, learning and song. At one point, David
asked, “Tell me - where does our knowledge end? What
is it that we don't know?” “Hit the record button,”
Rabbi Zalman answered. “This is important.”
There
is a psalm that goes as follows: “You fools among the
people, try and understand, When will you fools get some wisdom?
The One who plants an ear, does He not hear? The One who plants
an eye, does He not see? The One who reproves the nations,
does He not know? The One who teaches knowledge?” (Psalm
94:8-10)
There
is some understanding we gain when we ask ourselves “How
do we know what we know?” If something comes through
the senses, then I don't know what it is, until I label the
experience by joining the collusion of people who say “This
is brown, this is white.” The senses themselves do not
naturally have words associated with them. So we have to give
them words. Feelings are even deeper and more deprived of
words, because we have to borrow words from sensation to describe
them, as we say “this is bitter” or “this is
so sweet.”
When
it comes to the intellect, we have many words, but when it
comes to intuition, we have no words at all.
The
reason for this is that our brain is made in the following
way: The bottom part of the brain is called “The Reptilian.”
It
is very primitive, and it is all about my turf, my food, flight
and fight. It corresponds to the lowest level in Assiyah,
the world of action.
Then
we have another part of the brain called the “Limbic
Brain.” We share this part with mammals. It loves rhythm,
loves to sing, enjoys being an “us” - and this is
where feelings are. This is the region that vibrates to our
connection with the world of Yetzirah, or formation.
Reason
is contained in a third major component of the brain: the
neo-cortex. Here we work with ideas and theories. In this
part of the brain we can meet God in Torah. Here we vibrate
with the world of Briyah, or creation.
Still,
even the most conscious of us fail to use 85 percent of our
brain capacity. It is like having a big hard drive with only
15 percent of it formatted. That unformatted part, where much
of the neshamah (soul) is at home, has fractal attributes
of the loftiest region. It is “the head that knows not
and is not knowable.” (Zohar III Idra Zuta p.288b)
When
we get information through our intuition, we don't know where
it comes from. And most of the time, this shocks people. They
ask “How do you know?” and I say “I know, but
don't know how I know.” Because “The wisdom comes
from the nothing place.” (Job 28:12)
If
I want to get to wisdom, I have to be open to the nothing
place.
If
my attitude is that I know, then I don't have an open vessel.
There
is something about knowing that always has to do with the
past and not the future. When I say “I know it already,”
I am looking through the rear view mirror. When I say, “I
don't know yet,” I am looking ahead, through the windshield.
In
Hebrew there are two words for the English word why. One is
“lamah”, the other is “madua.” Madua is
etiological, which means that I go back to the past and work
out what caused me to do something.
The
other word, lamah, has its root in the word “l’mah”,
which means “To what end.” To what end do I want
to do it? And that is in the future. In order to be able to
get anything from the future, I have to be in the place of
not knowing.
People
whose minds are closed say, “If it isn't in a text from
before, then it doesn't exist.” What we are saying is
“What do you think? Did Hashem stop communicating with
us now? In fact, there is a future that is drawing us.”
Of
course, we don't have all the answers yet. If we had all the
answers, we wouldn't need Mashiach. We do need Mashiach because
we don't know. The Talmud says “[When] I don't know the
answer to something I say teiku - which means Eliyahu will
come and give us the answer to that.” Now, why should
I have to wait for Eliyahu to come and give me the answer?
Because our capacity for complexity has not yet been developed.
When people want to make everything simple, they see it in
black and white and run away from the complexity in the world.
An
example of this is the white spaces of the Torah. Reb Levi
Yitzchak of Berditchev asked: “Why is it that Az Yashir,
the song of the sea, has to be written like bricks - with
spaces in between?” He answered his question, saying:
“Until Mashiach comes, we are only able to read the black
letters. When Mashiach comes, we will be able to read the
white spaces between.”
Translated
into psychology, the black letters are the figures, the white
letters are the ground. Reb Levi was pointing out that what
connects the letters is the white space. No letter in the
Torah can touch another letter, and it is the white spaces
that prevent this. Now, there is a verse in Jeremiah that
says “A female surrounds the male.” (Jerem. 31:21)
The female, meaning the Torah of Shechinah, begins with not
knowing. About the Shechinah, it says “It does not have
anything by herself - she is like the moon. All the light
that she has is the light that she receives.” Even in
her dark light, the moon attracts the water and the tides;
so, too, the Shechinah attracts the infinite. How does it
attract the infinite? By asking questions, by not knowing.
So
the Shechinah keeps asking: “Mi barah eileh? Who has
created all this?” And when we talk about God, what do
we mean? The collection of all the souls. And what do all
the souls say? They all say “Fill me, God, teach me,
God.”
So
we come with our not knowing, and our not knowing is the white
spaces between the letters - and if they weren't there, if
you were to print black on black, we couldn't see anything.
Therefore, if we can create the white spaces that are in our
mind, we can achieve the state of not knowing which will enable
us to see.
Following
these thoughts was a discussion between Rabbi Zalman and David
Suissa, transcribed below:
David
Suissa: You know, in graphics, the white spaces are also
important. They get you noticed. We live in a world where
we are so bombarded with stimuli and so talked down to that
it is almost suffocating. Ironically, it's the white space
- the visual silence - that screams the loudest. It gives
the viewer a little space to enter.
Rabbi
Zalman: Let's try a shared, socialized meditation: I am
going to say half a sentence and you are going to finish it.
You don't know what I am going to say, and I don't know what
you are going to say. Then you are going to have to say a
half sentence in connection with the first, and the same thing.
Let's begin.
Rabbi
Zalman: One of the functions of not knowing is…
David
Suissa: To instill a sense of humility in us, so that
we can rise up and… Rabbi Zalman: Encounter our own souls.
Once we realize that our soul is…
David
Suissa: Organically connected with God, then we are able
to…
Rabbi
Zalman: Experience that connection with joy and with ecstasy.
That will bring us to a place where…
David
Suissa: We can identify with the essential place of every
other human being, which gets us to a place...
Rabbi
Zalman: Where we see our sameness and the God within the
other. When that happens there is…
David
Suissa: True love. The love that comes from…
Rabbi
Zalman: The shared experience of being children of God.
As
you can see, David, because we both don't know what is going
to happen, it lets the spirit in you come out. It is written,
“The question of the wise is half of the answer.”
If we could provide a list of all the things that bother us,
that would be half the quest. From our not knowing we might
come to knowing.
If
someone says, “I have the question and I've got the answer,”
then it is a lie. They come with the answer before the question
and they construct the answer around the question. Then it
is not a real question, because it is tainted by smugness.
Smugness
closes all doors so that one is locked in. There is no smugness
in the white space of not knowing. A real question comes from
‘Eini yodea' - I really don't know. The admission of
not knowing is the prelude to redemption and revelation. So
Moshe Rabbenu himself said: “We won't know with what
we shall serve God until we get there.” (Exodus 10:26)
Articles
by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi
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