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Page 35 – below the middle of the page. Line starts, “le ha hamshacha...”
We are talking about the 3 levels. Chochmah, siyag, and shtikah (silence). The reach into pnimius is shtikah/silence.
What is silence? What kind of access is it? The difference between sechel and midot is that the midot are a personal experience and sechel is a sighting of the truth. In sechel there are chochmah and binah. The level of binah means it can be grasped as a metziut. “i know it by a means to which I have a grasp”. Chochmah is like sight, you relate without having a grasp.
Chochmah has the least formulation and presentation. It is accessing the thing as it is itself. This means there is the least amount of participation by the chochum. Chochmah is called bitul. Withing this is the siyag and then the shtikah. The principle behind chochmah is relating to something that you don't grasp, but is not imaginary. It is becoming your personal knowledge – it is not theoretical.
There is a reality in this chochmah, even though there is no personal experience. The 2 levels above the chochmah give it its reality – these are siyag and shtikah.
“i know deep down that there is a truth even though the world is just precarious, a combination of conventions... my sense that there is truth is in the essence of the nefesh, which illuminates my thinking and makes chochmah viable...”
“there are 2 levels in 'there is a truth' – they are siyag and shtikah. The inference from silence is in direct contrast to everything in the world. In the world everything that hits you and can be described is real. If it is silence it is not seen to exist. Here we are saying we relate to the truth that is beyond tangibility completely.”
“A tangible sense of this silence: one looks down the tunnel in the subway to see if the train is coming, why does one look? To show oneself that it is real and coming. One wants a sense of what he's waiting for. At the level of intellect he doesn't need that substantiation. To him he waits because it is scheduled to come. I don't need to see the whole system in order to be convinced that it works. This is a mashal.
This silence is the complete antithesis to nervousness.
We are talking about “why there is silence”, but we can relate to it only by silence , not chochmah. It gives reality to chochmah.
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| NYC subway - early years |
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