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Seeing is Knowing
By Mendel Weinberger
You are idly paging through a glossy magazine. You open to a page with a picture of a white, sandy beach and a clear, blue-green sea. Lush green foliage lines the shore and a yacht sails in the distance. An attractive man and woman are walking hand in hand along the water's edge. You begin to dream about your next vacation and imagine you and your spouse or girl/boyfriend walking through that fantasy.
What just occurred? Your eyes saw the picture, your heart was aroused, and you desired to go to that place.
The eye is an amazing organ. Upon opening, the eye can instantly see thousands of small details in its view. Each image is divided into shape and color by the brain as it continuously interprets the images it receives. In other words, you see by believing what your mind interprets as seeing. The mind's ability to see is always there. It is not something that is created every day when you open your eyes. Even if the eye is damaged, the mind's ability to see is not affected. It is just that the physical eye is now unable to channel to the mind this light shining towards it from the world.
A general rule stated in kabala is that everything that exists physically has a spiritual source. The power of sight comes from a power in the soul. The uniqueness of seeing is the ability to take the relatively simple life force within the soul and attach it to a multitude of images of all shapes, sizes, and colors which exist outside of itself. This attachment of the soul to an object is called ohr yashar, the straight light. Afterwards the person makes a powerful bond with this image and the object is elevated to the inner soul. This movement is called ohr chozer, the returning light.
This is the reason that we feel a tremendous desire when we see something with our eyes. Food manufacturers and restaurants pay millions of dollars to advertising agencies to create images that will draw the eye and with it the desire of the customer. A picture of an automobile with an attractive model beside it is a crass example of the exploitation of the power of sight. The sages put it succinctly, "The eye sees, the heart desires".
Corresponding to physical external seeing is spiritual internal seeing. The source for this kind of seeing is the heart. The mind's internal eyes draw out the simple life force of the heart into ten particular soul powers – the ten sephirot. The catalyst for this internal seeing is called chochma, the wisdom seeking power of the soul. This inner seeing is able to see the things of this world as they are in their spiritual root, not as we see them. It is he sages who are adept at this kind of seeing. They are called ainai ha-eyda, the eyes of the congregation.
When a true sage looks at an object to see its reality, it is first interpreted in his brain like all the rest of us. But he doesn't stop there. His faculty of chochma is aroused which serves to elevate the object even further to its true essence. He then is able to see things as they truly are. The more the sage exercises his mind through deep Torah study, the greater his ability to see clearly the world around him. This inner seeing is not produced directly from the Torah study; rather it is discovered by refining the instrument of the intellect.
The true nature of this world is concealed by veils of illusion, reinforced by the power of desire for pleasure and power, and locked up by consensus reality. There is an unspoken agreement that what we see is what is real. There may be an admission that a greater reality (G-d) does exist but most people feel it is too far away from them and best left for the soul to deal with after it leaves the body.
So we struggle with our desires and never even try to "see" any further than the tip of our nose. But just as we have an innate ability to see with our physical eyes so we have the ability to see with our spiritual, inner eyes, the seeing of the heart. And just like the physical eyes need a ray of light to strike it in order to activate the power of sight, so the heart needs to be struck by the "light" of the wisdom of the Torah.
One last question remains to be asked. Why is the word "light" used to describe the revelation of wisdom? The primordial intellect, known to mystics as the koach hamaskil, already knows everything there is to know about the world. But we are unaware of it. Through our efforts in deep study, we activate this primordial intellect to shine into the sephira of chochma, the realm of spiritual wisdom, and then we see. It is like standing in a dark room unaware of what surrounds us. When we turn on the light, then everything becomes clear and we see the true nature of reality.
Just as in physical seeing the heart follows the eyes, so it is with spiritual seeing. When we see that the world is nothing other than G-d's creation and that the multitude of "things" in our vision only exists due to the godly life force that enlivens them, then our hearts are aroused to love and we desire to be close to G-d. Through inner seeing we not only believe in G-d, we know that He exists. This is the knowing of the heart.
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from the March 2006 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
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