The Spark of all Truths

He created the world. There must be a purpose.

Man, as the most sophisticated of that which was created, must be central in this purpose.

It makes sense to say, then, that somehow, somewhere, this purpose is, was, can be, communicated to man.

If archaeologists today were to find a brilliant description, carved on a rock, of a grand battle fought between two mighty kings and their great armies, three and a half thousand years ago, we would assume that such an event occurred.

The description could have been the fanciful dream of an opium smoker -- but how are we to know?

If, however, historians had other clues, or related information, that would indicate that this battle did take place, the rock-carved description would take on an air of validity.

If there were a similar description, found many hundreds of miles away, it would become a historical fact.

Imagine, though, that there were hundreds--no, thousands--of families who owned rock-carved descriptions, in all parts of the world, each one describing the battle in exactly the same way.

And every family telling how their parents told them in the name of their parents, etc., that this event happened to their ancestors.

This would certainly be the most valid historical fact ascribed to that time.

Such a document actually exists.

The Torah.

It has been all over the world, amongst Jews who have not communicated for centuries.

Each is exactly the same as the other, hundreds, thousands of miles away.

It even describes the Jewish people at that time as being disgruntled and dissenting.

Two million dissenting people (they counted 600,000 of draftable age) saw the revelation on Mount Sinai. It is described in the Torah. Yet there is no dissenting version.

Only the one Torah.

"And [Moses] was there (on Mount Sinai) with G-d forty days and forty nights; bread he did not eat and water he did not drink" (Exodus 34:28).

Very interesting. Have you ever tried it?

Imagine you are sitting with a few other people, attempting to solve a problem. Each one thinking on his own.

Suddenly you have the answer.

You jump up and exclaim, "I have it! I have it!"

"What is it? What is it?" everyone asks.

"Sh! Sh!..."

You brush them off. You push them out of your mind. You don't want to talk. You just close your eyes and signal with your hands for them not to disturb you.

But you had the answer, didn't you? How can they disturb you by asking you to tell it to them?

Yet you can't. You know that you have the answer, but you can't (yet) explain it to anyone. You have to think about it. You don't even know yourself how it answers the question.

All you know is that you have the answer, and if those people don't stop bothering you, you'll forget it.

Forget it? Why? How?

Because the answer is still too intense to be completely understood by the conscious mind.

It is like a bolt of lightning-a bright and intense flash that can disappear if not given the proper attention.

(Small wonder, then, that an idea is symbolized by a flashing light bulb.)

Yet in this small point, ray, or flash of intellectual concept lies the answer to the problem at hand -- that is certain. You can feel it.

How it will answer the problem is not yet consciously known, but what is certain, at this stage (in our intellectual faculty to conceive) is that this is the answer.

Given the undisturbed time to contemplate this bright and flashing idea, we can relate it to the problem at hand; the details begin to emerge, but the brightness, and the sheer thrill and delight, begins to dissipate.

We are now using our intellectual faculty to comprehend, and it is a different intellectual experience.

First we conceive of the new idea, and then we understand what it was that we conceived -- how that bright conceptual flash relates to this problem. We can also relate it, with our comprehension, to another problem, and another and another, even though it may take opposing positions in different problems.

Many questions can be answered, many problems solved, and many theories may evolve from one such conceptual flash.

It is only that the details of all this intellectual content were completely outshone by the brilliance of the initial concept. But they were there -- in a pure and intangible form. Everything, including the specific word choices we later use to articulate these details, is included within, and dictated by, the initial flash of illumination.

All knowledge, in all its details, be it mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology, geology, or anatomy, comes from one perfectly pure and abstract, inconceivably intense and bright, inhumanly all-encompassing and self-complete spark of conceptual light.

No human can reach this spark of all-truths on his or her own -- that is, it cannot be grasped by anyone's faculty of intellectual conception.

If one idea, in one subject, related to a specific area in that field, can be, for us humans, an intense and thrilling experience to the extent that we may forget our surroundings, how is it possible for a human to accept in his size-six, -seven, or -eight head a single concept that holds in it all existing (past, present, and future) knowledge?

It is humanly impossible.

But this was given to Moses as he stood at the top of Mount Sinai.

... Forty days and forty nights, bread he did not eat and water he did not drink.

The absent-minded professor is well known to all of us. He misses his train stop, forgets where he parked his car, loses his coat, forgets to eat lunch, etc., etc. All because he is often so deeply involved in thinking.

He was so immersed in the solution of a mathematical problem when he was taking his coat off that he forgot where he took it off and where he put it. A new idea occurred to him half an hour before he was due to go for lunch, and he didn't even realize that two hours had passed while he was theorizing.

Yes, the absent-minded professor is a very familiar person to all of us because we see him in ourselves so very often.

It is human nature that when we are struck by the lightning of intellectual conception, we can become so absorbed as to forget our surroundings.

The brilliance of conceptual inspiration can also give us a new surge of physical energy, even at a time when we are most tired and hungry. Not to mention that time, in such instances, often passes completely unnoticed.

Imagine, then, that a man was given to conceive the most pure and sophisticated concept--that one all-encompassing concept -- the spark of truths.

Surely this would be the experience of experiences. It would be an abnegation of the physical, for the physical cannot receive it -- but if it were given to him, it would be the supreme inspiration.

Time would not exist for the duration of that experience. Food and physical matters would never enter his mind. For this experience, with its inspirational surge, would provide more than enough energy for life.

It could take days of a continuous trance for a human to accept this pure flash of knowledge --but after it was over, this human could recall it as a split-second-experience that had not drained him of either time or energy.

And so it was with Moses.

Had we been there to ask him why he was on the mountain so long, he might well have replied, "Long? I was only up there for a couple of seconds!"

For forty days... he did not eat and... he did not drink.

This spark of all-truths is the essence of Torah.

This Moses received on Mount Sinai. He then proceeded, by command of G-d, to write the Torah--to convey what he had grasped with his faculty of concept via the particular words of the Five Books of Moses.

If we were to have watched Moses as he wrote the Torah, we might have assumed that because the words were flowing naturally, they were his own (personal) selection. In truth, however, he was speaking and writing (as we all do) with words chosen and arranged as his faculty of concept dictated; but his conceptual faculty was totally dominated by the essence of Torah, so that the selections, although from Moses' conceptual faculty, and thus having passed internally through him, were still dictated by G-d's concept, the essence of Torah--the spark of all truths.

If I were stranded on an island with barely enough room to move about, with a breadfruit tree and a spring of fresh water, and nothing else except a spy-thriller to read, I would learn, after a very short time, that I must spend my time doing something lest I go mad.

I read the mystery-thriller once. I read it again.

It isn't so interesting to read a mystery that you have seen solved, but I read it a third time for lack of anything else to do.

On the fifth reading it occurs to me that the author could have ended it in a more cheerful way. I later discover that his character portrayals are all somewhat cynical. I reread and reread the book, and I become more and more familiar with the personality of the author through his writing. By his descriptions, it sounds as if he is short and would have liked to have blue eyes...

When I am rescued by a ship twenty-five years after I was stranded, I know the author as one knows a personal friend -- his attitudes, his personality, and even his physical appearance...

After all, this is all that I did, day in and day out, for twenty-five years. I used the details and descriptions of the book, even the word selections, to abstract (assuming I had the proper skill) and to understand the author.

In studying the Torah, we take the words dictated by G-d through (to) Moses, and study their literal meaning, then restudy and restudy, abstract and understand, until we can reach and transcend to (or as close as humanly possible to) the pure essence of Torah. Ultimately we can, through the Torah, understand G-d, for He is the real author.

This, of course, requires a great amount of skill and know-how -- and more than a lifetime.

As all possible knowledge is embodied in this spark of all-truths, it must be possible--theoretically (if not practically within the human lifetime)--to transcend from the words of the Torah to the essence of all knowledge, and from that vantage point to know and understand everything.

So it is that although it is impossible now to practice some of the laws spelled out in the Five Books of Moses--those regarding a Jewish king, the sacrifices, etc.--the very words are holy for the deep content that they convey of the essence of Torah.